Tainted Love

by Nancy Morse

  The mournful strains of the violoncello sifted through the house as Pru strapped on the metal pattens to her shoes, raising them an inch to protect them from the muddy streets.

  It was a sunless day as she made her way along the crowded streets, past the grog shops to the dressmaker’s shop. The bell atop the door jingled when she entered.

  Papa thought it appropriate to dress in black befitting their undead condition, but Pru preferred more fashionable attire. She stood motionless for the final fittings of a morning dress to be worn at home with a high-neck and long-sleeves to cover her pale throat and wrists and no embellishment, and a new evening dress, extravagantly trimmed with lace and ribbons, cut low, with short sleeves to bare her arms, both dresses high-waisted with soft, loose skirts. Although she could have chosen her dresses made in any color, she invariably chose white in all its varying shades, partly because it was the fashion of the day, but mostly to mock the purity it invoked. For if there was anything she was not, it was pure. Leaving her order with the dressmaker, she left the shop.

  At the French market the vendor stalls just inside the arcade doorways were crammed with stacks of green vegetables and golden fruit, hanging sides of beef, moss-covered baskets of crabs, and cages of rabbits and fowl. The air was thick with the smell of spice and fish, spring flowers and rotting cabbage. Swatting at the flies that buzzed everywhere, she filled her basket with a sack of oysters in the shell, some Irish potatoes, two ears of husked corn, bunches of greens, and some beignets and pralines for Papa.

  Outside, a Haitian woman with huge earrings jangling from her lobes squatted on the banquette selling voodoo trinkets. The woman stood, and as Pru passed, she reached out and clamped a hand over Pru’s arm. “Sister,” she said, “get your good luck charm.”

  Pru cast a heated look at the dark skin covering her own pale flesh, then stared straight at the woman, her eyes cold and arrogant. “I need no lucky charm,” she hissed, “when I have these.” She lifted her lips, devilishly revealing pearly white fangs, reasoning that even if the woman told others what she’d seen, it wasn’t likely anyone would believe her. The woman’s eyes widened, showing yellowed whites around the black pupils. Her hand fell away as she sank back into a squat.

  From there, Pru stopped at the levee, skirting coops of squawking chickens and tubs filled with crabs stinking of brine, and purchased saffron, several sprigs of basil, powdered sassafras and some bay leaves sold by the Choctaws who sat silently beside their baskets. She climbed the wooden steps to a higher level of the levee to purchase dry goods from a vendor, pausing to glance at a chain of black slaves whose necks were linked with heavy rope and cast a furtive sneer at the white man who kept them in line with a black whip in his hand. She had half a mind to track him down, and if he wasn’t riddled with disease or stink too badly of alcohol, sink her fangs into his neck and put an end to his brutish ways.

  The streets were muddy from a morning rain and congested with pedestrians. Heavy wagons rumbled by, making a calamitous sound against the big cobblestones brought over the sea long ago by sailing ships that used them as ballast. Street merchants with pushcarts yodeled their wares. The shouts and curses of flatboat men from upriver joined the cacophony of noise. Sailors stumbled drunkenly out of back alleys. Dark-skinned women from the islands sold fruit from the baskets balanced atop their heads while their men sat on corners hawking hand-made crafts and rum. Planters from the tobacco and indigo plantations crowded the taverns.

  The sun was already beating down on the sloped roofs as she crossed the Place d’Armes, the town square edging the riverfront levee, where beautiful quadroons, some no older than fourteen and fifteen, strolled beneath lace-trimmed parasols on the arms of wealthy white dandies along paths worn bare of grass.

  And everywhere were the conspicuous Americans—the gamblers and the merchants, the gentlemen and the rogues and the Kaintucks—who migrated to the lawless swamps of Louisiana and settled in New Orleans hoping to get rich. Every day brought new clashes between arrogant Americans and old-world Creoles which usually resulted in a duel out upon the open plain just beyond the city.

  New Orleans had always embraced the French way of life. Even the Spaniards who ruled for a time hadn’t tried to change the flavor. But the Americans were a different breed. They regarded the Creoles of French-Spanish blood as saucy tempered, lazy and lawless. New Orleans itself was like a foreign city to them. And now, with France’s Bonaparte having abruptly decided to sell the territory to the United States, tempers were quick to surface. It was just a matter of time before the French tricolor was lowered and the American flag was raised.

  What a strange people the Americans were, Pru griped to herself as she passed through the mud streets lined with old houses where women scrubbed the stoops with red brick dust and the smell of laundry hanging on lines filled the yards. The Americans couldn’t even tell the difference between a quadroon and a Negro, or a slave and a free man. America’s army in blue uniforms and black leather shakos, its fifes and drums and its red-white-and-blue had nothing to do with her. She had her own problems, not the least of which was protecting the façade she presented to the world and the ever-constant look over her shoulder for fear that a member of the Sanctum, the centuries-old cult of avowed vampire hunters, might have discovered her true nature and come at her heart with a hawthorn stake.

  The cathedral bells began to ring the hour by the time Pru returned home. The candles were lighted and the aroma of gumbo from the cooking pot filled the entire house. She and Papa dined beneath a crystal chandelier, with Babette filling their bowls with Creole gumbo and their goblets with French wine. After dinner they retired to the music room where Papa took his place behind his beloved violoncello and Pru reclined on a silk-upholstered, claw-footed settee.

  “Tell me what you think,” he said excitedly as he closed his eyes and drew the bow across the strings. The music filled the room as the perfect compliment to their sumptuous meal.

  When he had coaxed the final notes from his instrument, he opened his eyes. Tears aglow with candlelight rolled down his cheeks.

  Pru got up and crossed the Oriental carpet to place a kiss upon his cheek. “Oh Papa, it was beautiful.”

  “I finished it while you were out. Yes, I’m quite happy with it. If only…” He paused and looked at her. “You know what I was going to say.”

  “Yes, I know. I long to hear him play, too,” she said grudgingly. She dismissed the momentary sentimentality with a wave of the hand and an edge to her tone. “But it cannot be. Who even knows where he is?”

  She crossed to the rosewood table. Uncorking a decanter, she poured a deep red into two crystal goblets. Handing one to him, she said, “Let’s drink to the beautiful piece you created.” She tilted her glass and clinked it against his, then took a sip of the chicken’s blood, stifling the urge to wrinkle her nose, while her papa downed his in several quick swallows.

  “Are you going out tonight?” James inquired from over the rim of his goblet.

  “I’m tired. I think I’ll stay in.”

  It wasn’t weariness keeping her from the hunt tonight; it was disappointment. She’d gone out every night since that fateful meeting in the alley looking for him only to return home hungry, not for blood but for his kiss. He had probably sailed away with nary a thought about her.

  “What troubles you, Pruddy?”

  Her father’s voice called her away from her thoughts of Stede Bonham. “I met a man,” she answered truthfully. “I thought perhaps I might see him again, but apparently not.”

  James Hightower gave his daughter a sympathetic look. She seemed to be having such a difficult time adjusting to an immortal state, while he had taken to it without care. But then, he was old and had already known the love that comes but once in a lifetime. He thought of his beautiful Margaret and could still hear her humming softly to herself while she wove silken fabrics in the garret room of their Spitelfields house back in London. Lovely, gay Margaret who had turned so
unexpectedly disagreeable and sad. He hadn’t understood what caused her to smash her loom to pieces and throw herself off the London Bridge. But then Pruddy explained that business about the witch Lienore inhabiting the body of Margaret’s sister, Vivienne, and before that, of Margaret herself. No wonder Margaret had chosen death over such a cruel fate. He himself had been a victim of Lienore’s wicked intentions when, in the person of Vivienne, she had tried to drain the life force from him and would have succeeded had not Nicolae come in the nick of time to snatch him from the jaws of death.

  Immortality was a strange gift indeed. Yes, it made him a creature of the night, but except for the unpleasant reality of subsisting on blood, it was not without its appeal. It enabled him to play his beloved violoncello to his heart’s content and pass on his musical knowledge to his students, albeit during evening lessons when the sun had gone down. All in all, it was not that disagreeable a state, considering that the alternative would have been the cold, finality of death.

  But Pruddy was young yet, and except for her brief betrothal to the pewterer, Edmund de Vere, what chance was there for her to find true love? Not that there had been anything true about Edmund, who had revealed himself to be a member of the Sanctum and used Pruddy as bait to snare Nicolae. Edmund had turned up quite dead, and even though it was never proved, there could be little doubt that it had been at Nicolae’s fangs.

  James heaved a sigh when he thought of the tangled web surrounding his daughter. He had hoped she might come to love Nicolae, for then, at least she would have a companion for all eternity, but she hated Nicolae for the act that doomed her to immortality. And now there was a man, a mortal, to whom she was attracted. A dangerous liaison to be sure. Only heartache waited for one such as her falling in love with a mortal. His heart went out to his daughter, for the disappointment shone plainly on her face. Yet it was for the best, he supposed.

  “Pruddy.” He spoke her name tenderly. “Love will come in time.”

  She turned toward him, blue eyes brimming with sadness, and said in an unconvinced tone, “Yes, Papa.”

  He was about to say more when the door to the music room opened and Babette entered. “There’s a man to see you Madame.”

  “Who can be calling at this hour?” James asked.

  “It must be the man from the dressmaker’s shop,” said Pru. “He promised to have my new dresses delivered tonight.”

  “Must be him,” said Babette. “He carries a big bundle.”

  “Show him in please, Babette.” Pru rose and started for the door. “This will only take a few minutes Papa. Why don’t you play the Prelude from Bach’s Suite Number Five? I’ve always loved that one.”

  In the foyer a man was waiting, a package wrapped in brown paper draped over his arm.

  “Merci,” Pru said as she approached. “You can leave it on the chair.”

  He turned to her then, and her heart leapt into her throat when she found herself looking into smiling gray eyes.

  “Mr. Bonham,” she exclaimed, trying hard to convey a calmness she did not feel. “What brings you here?”

  “This,” he replied. He placed the bundle on the chair and stood back. “Well? Aren’t you going to open it?”

  She hesitated.

  “Hell, Pru, there’s not a gator inside. It won’t bite.”

  There it was again, that lovely cadence of speech with its strangely falling accents.

  She wet her lips and moved closer, all too conscious of her heartbeat growing more erratic with each step.

  “Whatever can it be?” she mused as she gingerly untied the string and opened the folds of brown paper.

  She gasped.

  Inside, was a dress of blue silk.

  “I picked it because it reminded me of the color of your eyes,” he said.

  “You bought this for me?”

  “I didn’t exactly buy it.”

  She shot him a disbelieving look. “You stole it?”

  Speaking proudly, he said, “We took a Spanish galleon a few months back and this was part of the loot.”

  Pru drew back from the dress. “Oh no, I couldn’t accept it.”

  “Why not? I owe you a dress after splashing mud on the other one. Besides, this one was probably on its way to some wealthy plantation owner’s wife upriver. She can always send for another one.” He chuckled, and added, “Which I’ll probably relieve her of, if I’m lucky.”

  Pru wasn’t certain if he meant he would relieve the plantation owner’s wife of the dress before it reached its destination or while she was wearing it.

  The dress was quite simply the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Unlike the sheer muslin fabrics that were so fashionable, this was heavy silk brocade woven with silver threads that captured the light of the candles like tiny jewels. Its square neckline was cut considerably lower than all of the evening dresses in her armoire and meant to reveal as much of the pale flesh of her bosom as decency would allow. The sleeves were short and trimmed with the same exquisite lace adorning the hem.

  “It can get mighty chilly here in Nawlins in the winter, and those muslin dresses you women like aren’t suitable.”

  “Mr. Bonham—” she began.

  He staunched her objection with a chastising look. “Now Pru, it’s not nice for two people who shared a kiss to be so formal, is it?”

  “That was a mistake. An error in judgment, if you will. I never meant—”

  “To like it so much?” he cut in.

  “Are you suggesting that I took some kind of pleasure in being kissed by a perfect stranger?”

  “Not at all,” he countered. “I never said I was perfect.”

  “Stede,” she said sweetly, “thank you for the gift, but I would hardly know where to wear it.”

  “You can wear it when you’re with me.”

  Pru’s heart thumped in her chest. Papa’s words suddenly filled her thoughts. Love will come in time. Could this be it? Was this the man with whom she might find love? Or was he interested only in the pleasure of relieving her of the dress?

  “Didn’t you say women are not allowed on board your ship?” she asked, testing him.

  “That’s right. I was thinking you could be with me right here in Nawlins.”

  Her pulse quickened. “I suppose we could meet from time to time.”

  “I was thinking on a more regular basis.”

  She tried not to show her eagerness. “Yes, I think I would like that.”

  “Good. I’ll come by tomorrow around noon and we’ll go for a ride along the river. I’d rather not be seen around town, if you don’t mind.” He ran a hand over his neck to remind her of the hangman’s noose.

  Pru prayed he couldn’t hear the wild beating of her heart as she walked him to the door. “Of course. The river. That would be fine. I’ll see you then.”

  He paused to look at her with a gaze that melted over her face. “You’re a fine-looking woman, Pru.”

  She swallowed hard and lowered her lashes demurely.

  “And who knows? Maybe one of these days you’ll even trust me with whatever it is you’re hiding behind those sad eyes of yours.”

  She opened the door, straining to keep her thoughts from showing on her face. “Good night, Stede.”

  “Good night, Pru.” He turned to go, then stopped and turned back around, cocking his head to one side. “That’s real pretty music.”

  She’d been so caught up in the warm sensations flooding through her she hadn’t even been aware of the strains of the Prelude coming from the music room. “That’s my papa. He plays the violoncello. He’s quite masterful at it.”

  “It sounds a lot like the music I heard the last time I went to Bayou Saint John to hunt gators.”

  “That’s not possible,” Pru said. “No one plays like Papa. He was the music master back home in London.”

  Stede slapped his plumed hat onto his head. “Well, someone plays just like him. Heard it with my own two ears coming from one of the Creole cottages along the ba
nk.”

  Chapter 4

  The bayou was a marshy, sluggish place where alligators floated like fallen logs and cottonmouths slithered across the dark waters. At a spot where the water curved like a crescent, tucked behind magnolia and sweet olive trees, was a small cottage.

  Pru peered through the darkness at the pastel-painted exterior covered with half-timbering and mud-and-moss plastering. A wide, central chimney reached toward the night sky and starlight fell across its continuous-pitch roof and porches. A warm yellow light glowed through its louvered doors and windows.

  She crept silently forward, her feet barely skimming the shell and pebble walk lined with columbine, rudbeckia and purple cone flowers. Her nose picked up the scent of the moist earth beneath a thick patch of maidenhair fern and yarrow. With her gaze sweeping in a slow arc, scanning the shadows for treachery, she approached the front porch. Her ears were tuned to the slightest sound, but all she heard was the croaking of bullfrogs in the swampy water and crickets chirping in some far-off tussock.

  Stede had to be mistaken about the music. There was only one person who could make the violoncello come alive as if it sang with a human voice, ironic considering the person with that power wasn’t even human. Could Stede’s untrained ears have mistaken the Cajun fiddle for a violoncello? She was about to back away and fade into the night when the air suddenly filled with sound.

  She froze like a deer in the forest as the music swept over her, spiraling her back to a place and time she wanted to forget. There was only one instrument that could create such a mournful sound, only one musician who could coax such melancholy emotion from it. Pru shut her eyes tight against the onrush of memories. She’d heard this piece played once before in a lonely garret room in Hanover Square. The Bridge of Light he had called it, composed just for her, named for the London Bridge on which they’d met and for the light he claimed she brought into his life.