Marsha nodded nervously and began, “When my friends agreed to the sailing trip, I put together a gift for each of them. I traced each of their families back several generations, and was excited when I learned that we all had ties to the islands. It was one of the reasons I choreographed the trip to the Caymans, and I was going to tell them my discovery when we were there for the celebration. We all have a relative who was sailing together back to France when the revolution was beginning in Haiti.
When I came to Monique, I focused on the mysterious identity of the woman in the portrait hanging in her bedroom. It took me months to finally track down information, and I was led to a historical society on Haiti. They actually had what they said was one of the woman’s journals, but they made me send them a picture of the portrait before they would tell me anything else. I guess it satisfied them, because after sending them fifty bucks, they sent me a copy of the journal.” Marsha looked at Monique. “I was going to give it to you when we reached the Caymans.”
“Anyway, the woman in the portrait was a girl named Clarette Daniella Fontaine. The journal began when she arrived back in France after narrowly escaping a pirate attack on her first attempt to return home, with six of her friends. She married a French soldier, and she reported she found the experience dull and unsatisfying. The man was killed in the war two years later, and he left her a small inheritance.”
“She missed the islands, and after a terrible fight with her parents over securing another husband, she announced that no one she could possibly meet in France would be suitable. They disowned her and she sailed back to Haiti where she moved in with some of her uncle’s former slaves. I guess, for the times, it was quite a scandal.”
“Clarette knew the workings of her uncle’s former successful holdings, and she helped her friends become wealthy. Although she chose to live frugally, she invested her money into businesses on Tortuga, ensuring the prosperity of the island, especially the outlying areas where pirates were rumored still to be hiding. In return for her generosity helping them re-build and stay free, she increased her wealth considerably. Her original investments are still in Haiti and Tortuga, but by her request they have been filtered through so many solicitors that now it’s difficult to track the source.”
“Clarette wrote in her journal that she had been too young and too foolish to recognize the other, dangerous side of her soul when she had met the pirate. The result of the meeting was a daughter, and her parents forced her into the marriage by reminding her how lucky she had been that the French Captain had been so mesmerized by her beauty that he was willing to accept the scandal of the pirate’s offspring.”
“After her husband died, Clarette never married again, and they only way she knew to make reparations to her lost lover was to care for the island he had called home. Her attempts to unravel the curse with the African women were unsuccessful, and they told her that her emotions were so intense when she had cursed him that it would take time for the strength to weaken its hold. The best they could do was cast a spell, that the two would be together again one day.”
Marsha again looked at Monique, and she noticed the tears in her eyes. “I thought it was such a romantic story, and I thought you would be happy to finally know about the portrait. Peter said Clarette washed overboard in the storm, and that what I was telling him was just a story, but I think I knew what was going on almost as quickly as the Captain. I just didn’t get the chance to tell you.”
Monique’s mind felt like it was splintering. The little hints of arousal and emotion that always seemed to surface when Deegan was near her began to storm over any residual dislike and fear she had for the man. Monique felt as though an entire part of her mind was disappearing, the time with Frank, the time before the pirate, were being sequestered in some black hole in the back of her thoughts.
Marsha looked up at Deegan. He was watching Monique with an expression that was slightly awed that the woman he had obsessed over for centuries had spent her life trying to make up for her hasty actions. Marsha said, “Tell him, Monique. It isn’t fair for either one of you to suffer any more.”
Monique’s head was still splitting into two distinct patterns, and trying to weave a tentative agreement where the edges met. Her eyes watered and her fingers rubbed her temples. “To avoid a scandal from my father’s business ventures, my name was changed when I moved to the States. In Paris, I was Monique Clarette Duboise.”
The End
The Pirate's Witch Page 10
