The Devereaux Legacy

by Carolyn Hart

  Leah hesitated. Mrs. LeClerc swung her stick forward and tapped Leah’s arm. Slowly, Leah stepped out into a patch of sunlight, standing close enough to the woman to see the question in her dark brown eyes.

  Mrs. LeClerc touched Leah’s arm with a claw like hand that had no more warmth or substance than a feather.

  “Blood tells,” she said huskily. “Bad blood and good blood. There’s no getting away from it.” Then, almost angrily, she asked, “What are you doing, tramping around my garden, pretending to be a stranger?”

  “I am a stranger.”

  Mrs. LeClerc thumped her cane pettishly. “My husband was cousin to the Devereaux. I’ve spent a hundred evenings in that drawing room.”

  Leah shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

  For a moment, the surety in the woman’s eyes faded, and she looked puzzled. “You don’t know what I’m telling you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll say it plain, young lady. Yours is a fated face. There’s been love and hate and death, and no one knows what happened, no one. They tell me, too, that The Whispering Lady walks again at Devereaux Plantation. You’d best beware.” She took a deep breath and sagged against her cane. “I’m tired now. I’ll go in.”

  Leah watched her until she disappeared inside the house.

  A fated face. What could that mean? Leah had no idea, but she realized she couldn’t slip into Mefford and not be noticed. Yet she had every right to be there if she wished, no matter how much she might look like these Devereaux whom she didn’t know.

  Abruptly, she made her decision. She was going to visit Devereaux Plantation.

  Chapter Two

  Devereaux Plantation.

  The words had a ring of magic. Her name. Her people. As the Vega picked up speed, Leah felt a tingle of excitement. Soon she would be meeting kin, bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh.

  But why had she spent all those years in Texas believing she was an orphan with no living relative other than Louisa? Why had Louisa hidden her family from her?

  She slowed the car, searching for the side road to the house. The apprehension she had felt in the cemetery returned. Perhaps she was foolish to seek out these Devereaux. The elderly Mrs. LeClerc had said, “Yours is a fated face.”

  Leah glanced up at the rearview mirror and smiled a little at her reflection. She looked the same as usual, her black hair a little unruly with its thickness and curl, her eyes a matching color, her face a bit thinner as a result of her grief over Louisa’s death. Normally, a laughing face. But she hadn’t laughed much these past few weeks.

  Fated. That word carried with it a dark and haunting message.

  Just a few yards ahead, Leah saw the turnoff. She hesitated, then, almost angrily, wrenched the steering wheel, and the little car plunged onto the narrow, rutted track.

  Every shade of green gleamed in the dusky tunnel formed by the overlapping branches and the vines that swirled up tree trunks. Delicate ferns, spiky stalked plants and tuberous runners carpeted the spaces between the trees and edged sinuously out onto the dirt road. Leah drove slowly, feeling as if she were trying to swim underwater in a silt-heavy lagoon. The underbrush and vines shimmered and waved like seaweed, creating a murky, ominous atmosphere.

  The road twisted again, and gates loomed ahead. Leah stopped the car and got out to open them. They were warm to the touch and moved grudgingly. She drove the Vega through, then got out again to shut the gates. In the overpowering heat, that small exertion tired her. Her blue cotton dress clung to her, and she paused to rest for a moment.

  The road curved sharply to the right, running along the river. Through scattered pines she could see a double row of live oaks and knew they formed the avenue that led from the river up to the house. At the end of that road, atop a long rise, she glimpsed patches of slender white columns and two huge brick chimneys. Brightness flashed against her eyes. She looked a little to her left and saw, separate from the house, a brick tower with windows at its top.

  A yellow Porsche bucked to a stop only a few yards from her Vega, angling across the narrow road and blocking the way to the house. The driver’s door swung open, and a stocky blond man climbed out. The emphatic click that filled the air as he shut the car door was a crisp reminder that his car blocked her way.

  Leah glanced over her shoulder. She was hemmed in by the closed gates behind her and the car in front of her. No breeze moved in the pines; no sound emerged but the man’s quiet footsteps.

  Was it the heavy silence of the alien countryside that imbued him with menace? Or was it just Leah’s sensation of being trapped? She stood frozen with fear beside the Vega.

  He halted a few feet away and stared at her. His face was a curious mixture of expressions—shock and dismay and something else she couldn’t quite identify. Then he shook his head. “I can’t believe it!”

  Leah knew that once again her face had revealed her. She lifted her chin and said determinedly, “I’m Leah Shaw. And I’ve come to see Devereaux Plantation.”

  He waited a long moment before saying, “Leah Shaw’s dead.”

  Her birth certificate was in her purse. She fished it out and handed it to the man.

  He studied it, his face furrowed in concentration. He was fortyish and handsome in a heavy-featured way. When he handed back the certificate and looked at her, his expression was frankly hostile. “Where did you come from?”

  What business was it of his? “Who are you?” she returned sharply.

  His light blue eyes flickered. “You don’t know?”

  “How should I?”

  He shrugged. “You’ve come here.”

  “I saw a magazine article. My name was in it—and my parents’. It said they sailed from Devereaux Plantation the night they were lost.”

  “Is that all you know?”

  Leah nodded. “Who are you?” she repeated.

  “I’m your cousin, John Edward Devereaux.”

  “Really and truly my cousin?” she asked wonderingly.

  “If you are Leah Devereaux Shaw.”

  “I am.”

  He frowned. “But where have you come from? Where have you been all these years?”

  “I grew up in Texas, in a little town on the Gulf. I lived with my grandmother.”

  His head snapped up. “Your grandmother? That’s impossible!”

  “My grandmother, Louisa Shaw.”

  “My God.” He shook his head like a boxer stunned by a hard blow. “This is incredible. We thought she was dead, too.” He leaned forward, his eyes cold and intent. “What did Louisa tell you?”

  He called her Louisa. That meant he knew her. Leah felt as if she were walking in the dark and missing a step. Louisa had known she had this cousin—and others?—but had never told her. Why?

  “Louisa didn’t tell me much,” Leah said carefully. “She said my parents drowned when I was a baby—that they’d been on a sailing holiday in the Gulf and were lost in a hurricane.”

  “In the Gulf?” He looked puzzled. “There was a hurricane, but it was in the Atlantic. Their yacht, The New Star, sailed from here.” He paused, then added quietly, “It was exactly nineteen years ago today.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “But if Louisa never told you about Devereaux Plantation, then how did you find your way here?”

  Leah told him calmly enough, but her voice reflected her pain. “Grandmother had a heart attack in her study. Later . . . I was straightening up her desk, and I found a magazine article and a letter she’d begun.”

  “A letter? A letter to whom?” He waited tensely for her answer.

  “She was writing to someone named Carrie.”

  The man drew his breath in sharply, and Leah knew he recognized the name.

  “Who is Carrie?” she demanded.

  He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes as unreadable as shiny glass. Then, reluctantly, he said, “Carrie is Mary Ellen’s mother.”

  Mary Ellen’s mother. Shock constricted Le
ah’s chest. Mary Ellen was her mother, so Carrie had to be her grandmother. Leah turned and stared up the hill at the elegant old home. Nothing had prepared her for this. John Edward continued to talk, yet the sound of his voice seemed to come from far away. Her grandmother . . . A quick thought darted through her mind, that her grandmother was dead. But Carrie would be her other grandmother, the grandmother she’d never known. The wonder of it caught at her heart.

  “But you do understand, don’t you?”

  Leah looked at him blankly. What was he saying?

  “It would be too much of a shock for you to burst in on her—”

  “Hey, John Edward!” The shout carried clearly in the hot, still air.

  A man walked confidently down the road. Tall and slim, he carried himself with grace and self-assurance. In the rich flood of afternoon sunlight, his hair gleamed like polished copper above an aquiline nose and a generous mouth. He moved toward them commandingly, but as he came closer, he stopped in his tracks.

  Once again, Leah knew it was her face that held him captive.

  A fated face. Whatever the old woman had meant, Leah knew now that her face indeed meant something to those who lived at Devereaux Plantation.

  But what?

  Then the man moved forward and stared boldly down at her. She backed away a pace from the intensity of his scrutiny.

  “She says she’s Leah Devereaux Shaw.” John Edward’s voice came from behind her.

  “I am Leah Devereaux Shaw.”

  The newcomer still stared at her, his dark blue eyes electric with energy. Then he shook his head, like a man who couldn’t believe what he saw. “In the dining room there’s a portrait of Mary Ellen.” His voice was deep and musical. “Now I see that portrait before me. The same eyes, dark as the sky at midnight. The same hair, glossy as ebony. But Mary Ellen’s been dead for nineteen years. Where have you come from?”

  Leah wished suddenly that she and this man could have met another way, that they could have come together without the tendrils of a hidden past entangling them, because she had a sense of estrangement from him even though they had yet to meet formally. She knew that this mattered to her and would matter in ways she couldn’t even understand.

  She tried to ignore the past, just for the moment. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m Merrick Devereaux.”

  She shouldn’t have been surprised. She should have expected it, but still she felt a deep, almost aching wrench of disappointment. Merrick Devereaux. He must be her cousin. Leah did not want him to be a cousin.

  “Merrick Devereaux . . . my cousin?”

  “Yes, I’m your cousin.”

  “If she really is Leah,” John Edward put in.

  Leah still held her birth certificate in her hand. Without a word, she offered it to Merrick. Her hand touched his. It was such a small contact, so meaningless in daily life, but this time it was special. Was he as aware of her as she was of him?

  Before he bent to look at the certificate, his glance once again touched her face. For an instant she thought she saw a flash of excitement, but it was almost immediately obscured by puzzlement and worry.

  Why was she causing so much distress? These cousins seemed not only astounded by her appearance but also disturbed.

  Merrick’s gaze moved from the paper to her face. The shock in his eyes was still there. He handed back the birth certificate. “I don’t understand. All these years we believed that you died on The New Star with your parents and Louisa.”

  Again she told her story, sparse as it was, adding that her grandmother had a little antique shop in Rockport.

  “Louisa alive.” Merrick’s blue eyes darkened. “It’s unbelievable. Incredible! Why didn’t she get in touch with us? How could you and she have survived the hurricane, and Mary Ellen and Tom have been lost?”

  Leah had no answers, only questions. She reached out and touched his arm. “John Edward said my other grandmother, my mother’s mother—”

  “Carrie,” Merrick said.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Oh, yes.” His face was unreadable now.

  Leah looked up toward the plantation house. Her Grandmother Devereaux was there. She took one step, then another.

  A hand reached out and gripped her elbow. “You can’t go up there.” John Edward’s heavy face loomed over her, furrowed with disapproval.

  She pulled away from him. These men, her cousins, stood between her and Devereaux Plantation. Why were they so determined to keep her from reaching the grandmother she’d never realized she had?

  “You can’t keep me from her. I’m going to—”

  John Edward again moved between Leah and the house. “Do you want to kill her? She has a bad heart, you little fool. You can’t burst in on her and—”

  “It’s too late.” Merrick’s voice was even, uninflected.

  “Too late?” Leah’s voice rose in distress.

  Merrick swung toward her, but his hand was warm and gentle against her arm. “No, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything had happened to Carrie. I meant that she knows you’re here. Mrs. LeClerc called and told her that she found you walking in her garden.”

  Mrs. LeClerc. The little old lady in the cocoa-colored wrapper, who’d said Leah had a fated face.

  Merrick looked at John Edward, and when he spoke again his voice was expressionless. “Aunt Carrie’s been standing on the front steps ever since with her opera galsses. She saw Leah’s car turn in and sent me down to fetch her.”

  Chapter Three

  Devereaux Plantation gleamed a delicate creamy white in the soft light of the late-afternoon sun. The house was much larger than Leah had imagined from its picture in the guidebook, the double set of verandas broader, the Doric pillars heavier. Even so, it was subordinate to the old woman who stood at the top of the steps, a tiny figure in a gray silk dress. Her thin white hair was pulled back into a bun; her frail hands were clamped to a silver-headed cane. The woman’s expression was stern as she watched Leah climb the steps. But in her huge dark eyes were mirrored the hope and the anguish in her heart.

  “Leah.”

  The voice so faint she scarcely heard it.

  “Leah, oh, Leah.” Carrie Devereaux’s mouth quivered, and tears slipped down her crumpled cheeks. She raised her arms to clasp Leah to her. Leah smelled the clear, sweet fragrance of violets and felt the wraithlike touch of her grandmother’s arms. She held the tiny figure close, her eyes brimming with tears.

  The old lady reached up and touched her face. “Oh, dear God, you are the image of Mary Ellen.” She smoothed back Leah’s dark hair and traced the shape of her face. “After all these years of sorrow, I can’t believe you’re here.” Abruptly, anger flashed in those dark eyes so like Leah’s. “Who has kept you from me? Why have I never known you?”

  She turned on Merrick and John Edward.

  “What kind of conspiracy has done this to me?”

  Alarm flashed in John Edward’s eyes. He looked at Merrick.

  But Merrick moved confidently forward, reached out and touched her arm. “Now, Aunt Carrie, you know we had nothing to do with it. We don’t understand it, either, but apparently Louisa took Leah away.”

  “Louisa.” The old lady’s hand tightened on the silver-headed cane. “Tom took Mary Ellen away, and Louisa took Leah.” Her face was terrible in its anger. She jerked back toward Leah. “You must tell me. I must know.”

  Leah stepped back a pace. She understood that the woman’s anger sprang from a terrible grief, yet she couldn’t permit anyone to be ugly about Louisa.

  “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why Louisa took me away, but she loved me. I do know that. I’ll always know that.”

  “Loved you. And she must have hated me.”

  “No, oh, no. Louisa never hated anyone. And she was writing to you when she died.”

  “To me?” Carrie Devereaux stared piercingly at her, then addressed Merrick and John Edward. “Go now. Leave us. I must talk to Leah alon
e.”

  She took Leah inside, down the large central hallway and into the cool dimness of the library, thumping her cane on the polished wood floors as she went. After seating herself in a wing chair near the fireplace, she motioned Leah to sit opposite her.

  They stared at each other across a gulf of time and pain.

  “Well?” Carrie Devereaux said finally.

  Leah told her everything she knew. When she’d finished, there was another long silence.

  Carrie Devereaux leaned forward. “The letter Louisa wrote—do you have it?”

  Leah took the letter out of her purse and handed it to her grandmother. While she read it, Leah looked around the room. Red cedar bookshelves lined two of the walls from floor to ceiling. A Sheraton table held a brass clock. Hepplewhite chairs sat against one wall. Satin-weave upholstery in a robin’s-egg blue covered a claw-footed sofa. A hand-tufted rug lay in the center of the room.

  The old lady finished the letter and placed it on the low tea table in front of her. “All these years I thought that you and Louisa and Tom and Mary Ellen were lost on The New Star. All these years.” She stared at Leah, her dark eyes huge and bewildered. “What happened to them? Tell me that!”

  Impulsively, Leah reached across the tea table and took her hands. “I’m so sorry. I wish I knew. And I don’t understand, either, because Grandmother—” she meant Louisa, and Carrie Devereaux knew it “—was always so kind and so good. I don’t know how she could have kept us apart. I just can’t imagine what happened.”

  Carrie Devereaux said emptily, “If only I’d been here.”

  Leah frowned. “You weren’t here?”

  The old lady shook her head. “Pride can carry you through mighty bad times, Leah. The Devereaux have always had that kind of pride and the fine courage that goes with it. But sometimes pride grows ugly and puffs you up and turns your head the wrong way, and misery will follow you.” Her huge dark eyes fastened on Leah. “Misery’s been following me for a good long while now.” She squeezed Leah’s hands, then clutched the head of her cane. “I haven’t seen your mother since before you were born, and I’d never seen you. Louisa knew that. She must have thought I wouldn’t want you after whatever happened here that night.”