Bayou Nights

by Julie Mulhern

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Some say Paris. Some say a house on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. She was gone. Delphine was an evil woman and New Orleans was better off without her.”

  “But now her ghost has returned and wants the coins.”

  “Apparently. Can you imagine bringing that woman back to life?”

  “We can’t let that happen.”

  “Well, we can’t let Desdemona get it either. The best thing to do would be to find the other coins, then the treasure, then pour out the water.”

  “You wouldn’t bring your father back?”

  The air around her stilled. “No. There’s a certain order to things. People who are dead should stay dead. My father lived his life. It’s over now.”

  “But he lingers.”

  “As a ghost. That’s different.”

  “Why does he stay?”

  “He says he won’t leave until…never mind.”

  Her expression was so fierce he didn’t press for an answer. Instead, he asked. “Are we going to find Celestine?”

  Her shoulders sank, just for an instant. If he hadn’t been watching her, he would have missed that tiny expression of fatigue.

  Christine put her empty glass on a spindly side table and stood. “Let me freshen up and grab a hat.”

  …

  Christine donned a hat with a heavy tulle veil. If she was lucky, it would hide her face and no one would see her knocking on doors in Storyville. Who was she kidding? Someone would see her and the gossip would start. For a half-second her shoulders slumped and every bit of bravery or gumption or grit she possessed ran off to play hide-and-seek with her better judgment. Somehow her lower lip worked its way between her teeth and she bit. Hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to straighten her spine.

  Next to her, Drake checked the chambers of his gun. Thank heaven, he’d missed her moment of weakness.

  Christine donned a bright smile. She’d rather take afternoon tea with Desdemona than have Mattias Drake see her falter. “Are you ready?” Her voice was as bright as her smile.

  “You do remember we’re going to brothels, not for a walk in the park?”

  Christine sniffed and picked up a hatbox that held an exceedingly fetching cloche.

  Drake sighed, a long-suffering sigh. The sigh of a man who’d resigned himself to putting up with hats or shoes or bits of lace and ribbon. “Where will we start?”

  “Gilcie’s.” She allowed him to escort her out of the shop, hail a cab, and help her into the conveyance. “On Basin Street.”

  “Basin Street,” Drake said to the driver.

  “Who is Gilcie?” Drake asked.

  “She used to work for Trula. The house we’re going to, it belonged to Trula.” How bad could it be? It wasn’t as if they were going to Emma Johnson’s. The stories of what happened at that establishment had reached the Garden District and the Vieux Carré and even the ladylike environs of her hat shop. Perhaps the stories grew more lurid with each telling. More likely they were true. A shudder ran down the length of Christine’s spine.

  “Are you unwell?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Drake raised a brow as if he sensed her lie.

  She centered the hatbox on her lap and stared straight ahead until the cab rumbled to a halt in front of the mansion.

  “You’re sure about this?” Drake asked.

  It was the middle of the day. It hardly seemed likely a second man would accost her. And if he did, she had a sword cane, a gun, and a Yankee to protect her. Of course, they couldn’t protect her reputation if she was seen. Christine adjusted the heavy veil then nodded. “I’m sure.”

  They descended to the banquette where no one paid them the least mind. No one except for a dapper little man with a distinctly olive cast to his skin. He stared at them. At her. Christine turned her back on him and hobbled up the steps.

  The door opened and four girls spilled onto the stoop. They smelled of lilac perfume and talcum powder. Their dresses were expensive and daring. Their hats were nothing special—swoops of straw accented with feathers. Christine moved past them toward the still-open door.

  Drake did not.

  The girls surrounded him like parched men at a fresh well. One stroked the sleeve of his coat. Another dared run her finger down the length of his jaw.

  Christine’s hand tightened on the handle of her sword cane. It would be wrong—very wrong—to run the girl through just for touching Mattias Drake.

  The girl rose on tip-toes and whispered in his ear. Her enormous, half-exposed bosoms settled against his arm.

  For an instant, the house, the stoop, the girls, and even Drake disappeared in a red haze. Christine shook her head. What was wrong with her? Why did she care if a woman with eyes as big and purple as pansies batted her eyelashes at Drake? It wasn’t her concern if the woman’s lips curled when she looked at him, a smile that promised delights with which Christine was entirely unfamiliar.

  “We’re here to see Gilcie.” Her voice sounded too sharp. She softened its edges and added, “Is she in?”

  Pansy-eyes shifted her gaze away from Drake. “Inside.” Then her hand closed around his arm.

  Why didn’t he shake her off? Christine’s fingers tightened around the hatbox string. Swung with enough force it might knock some sense into his head. Or at least knock his gaze away from Pansy-eyes’ breasts. Had she truly expected constancy? Loyalty?

  She had.

  A hiss of air escaped Christine’s lips.

  The woman dragged a finger across the top of her breasts.

  The other girls tittered.

  Christine gave him another half-second to brush the girl off his arm.

  He didn’t.

  The bevy of rouged beauties could have him. Christine stepped inside. Alone.

  A passing maid saw her and stopped. “May I help you?”

  “Gilcie, please.” She drew out the vowels, a sign her father would have recognized immediately. Anger bubbled in her blood.

  The maid didn’t know her. The woman raised a brow in a gesture that seemed to dismiss Christine, her ladylike dress and the hatbox in her hand. “She expectin’ you?”

  “Tell her Christine Lambert is here.” The vowels were miles long.

  The woman didn’t move. Instead her eyes grew round.

  His scent—cool rain on an unbearably hot day—reached Christine first, then his warmth. Her skin tingled. He stood behind her but she didn’t turn. “You decided to join me after all?” Now the vowels reached for next week, next month even.

  His hand touched her shoulder and she flinched. Mattias Drake was a man like any other—throw the right temptation at him and he’d falter. Her grandfather had been tempted by freedom from responsibility, her father by the lure of cards. All it took to turn Drake’s head was an enormous set of…eyes.

  Gilcie chose that moment to join them. She’d wrapped a silk kimono around her body and her hair hung loose around her shoulders. The woman looked as if she’d just rolled out of a torrid encounter amidst tangled sheets.

  Couldn’t she put on a dress? Failing that, something beneath the peignoir might have been nice. Christine focused on Gilcie’s face and not the deep vee of her cleavage then lifted the hatbox. “Gilcie, I brought you a hat.”

  The madam’s eyes narrowed. “Outta the goodness of your heart?”

  “I—we’re—looking for someone. I was hoping you might tell us where to find her.”

  “Who?”

  “Celestine Paris.”

  Gilcie held out her hand for the hatbox and her robe slipped, revealing a naked breast. The madam pulled the kimono together but not before Drake’s sharp intake of air.

  “Where is she?” drawled Christine, her vowels longer than the road to Baton Rouge.

  “Second floor, third door on the right.”

  Could it really be that easy? “Thank you.” Christine didn’t wait for Drake. If he wanted to gawk at Gilcie, that was his business. Her business was ups
tairs. She climbed the first few steps then paused. Her ankle throbbed and an odd tightness had taken hold of her throat.

  Then she heard it—a tread so heavy it could only be him—right behind her on the stairs. Her throat loosened, she lifted her chin and climbed the remaining steps.

  He drew even at the top of the stairs. “I’ll go first.”

  Of course he would. That’s what he did. He shielded her. She stepped aside without argument.

  Drake rapped against Celestine’s door.

  A girl with sleep in her eyes and a sneer on her lips opened it. “What do you want?”

  “Celestine Paris?” asked Drake.

  The sleepy eyes woke up enough to travel the length of Drake’s body.

  Enough. Every prostitute in the brothel seemed intent on seducing Drake. Christine inserted herself between Drake and Celestine then thrust out her hand. “I’m Christine Lambert.”

  The girl tore her gaze away from Drake just long enough to glance at that hand then ignore it.

  Christine swallowed her annoyance and lowered her hand. This was the girl to whom she was to offer a job? “Your grandmother sent me.”

  The girl pushed a fall of hair away from her face. “Interfering old biddy.”

  Perhaps Celestine didn’t understand. “Your grandmother, Marie.”

  “I know who you meant.” Celestine’s lip curled slightly. “What did she promise you?”

  Help in defeating an evil force seemed a melodramatic answer. “Does it matter?”

  The girl shrugged. “It might.”

  Drake cleared his throat. “She offered us help against Desdemona.”

  “In return for what?” Celestine leaned against the doorjamb and her peignoir gaped worse than Gilcie’s. Did no one in the house know how to properly tie a robe?

  “I could give you a job in my shop and train you how to make hats.”

  Celestine answered with a dismissive bark of laughter. “For what? A few dollars a day? I make ten every night. More if I’m feeling ambitious. You tell my grandmother to leave me alone.” Then she closed the door in their faces.

  Christine rapped on the door till her knuckles hurt.

  It remained closed and Celestine remained silent.

  Drake closed his fingers around her wrist, staying another knock. “Now what?”

  An excellent question. She’d counted on convincing Celestine. “I suppose we should go see Granny Amzie.”

  Drake’s straight brows rose and his lips thinned. “What will she want in return for her help?”

  Christine shook her head. Lord only knew.

  Chapter Nine

  Christine stepped onto the front stoop, adjusted her veil, and descended the steps to the banquette.

  Drake was by her side, his eyes scanning those out walking for the next threat. “Which way?” he asked.

  Granny lived to the right but Christine pointed to the left, the fastest way out of Storyville. She ought to feel sympathy for the women at Gilcie’s but, if Celeste with her come-hither smile and knowing eyes was any indication, they wanted to be there. How any staid married lady hoped to compete with lures like theirs was beyond her. How any unmarried lady could compete…well, that was hopeless.

  As if he could read her mind, Drake claimed her hand, tucked it into the crook of his arm, and led her away.

  Christine had actually believed she could convince a highly paid tart to give up a life of relative indolence to make hats. She’d been wrong.

  Marie Laveau wouldn’t help them. Not while Celestine remained at Gilcie’s with a gaping peignoir and a line of eager men willing to fork over fifty dollars for the pleasure of her company.

  They needed an ally. Desperately.

  “We’ll need a carriage to take us to Granny’s,” she murmured.

  “Pardon?”

  “A carriage. To take us to Granny’s.” A wizened old woman might not be the strongest of allies but apparently she was the only one they had a hope of securing. Beneath the cover of her veil, Christine’s eyes filled with tears. Walking blind, she caught her foot on the banquette and her injured ankle bent. She gasped.

  “What? What happened?” Drake sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Nothing. I’m—” The rest of the lie refused to drop from her lips. Fine. She wasn’t fine. Her ankle throbbed and her eyes felt gritty with exhaustion and she was scared—for her father, for herself, even for Mattias Drake. She was also confused, her emotions as jumbled as a basket of spare ribbons. “I—” She spied an empty bench. “I’d like to sit for a moment.”

  He led her to the bench and she sank gratefully onto its planks.

  Then he joined her, reached into her lap and reclaimed her hand. “What’s wrong?”

  “I stepped wrong and felt it in my ankle.”

  His brows rose as if he could tell that the tiny truth she’d told hid something bigger. Her small truth was like an alligator in the bayou with only its eyes and the top of its head above the water, its monstrous ten-foot length hidden in the murk.

  “Just give me a moment. I’ll be fine.” Now she’d added a lie to the small truth.

  Drake’s chin tilted and the sun cast the planes of his cheeks in shadow. He didn’t believe her. He could sense the monster beneath the surface.

  Christine stiffened her spine. So what if she’d been jealous? It didn’t mean anything. If she wasn’t so upset about everything else, a few tarts flirting with a Yankee stranger wouldn’t have bothered her a bit. “I’m fine.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  He snorted. Snorted! Then he squeezed her hand. “You’re not fine.”

  “I am too.” She snatched her hand away.

  He opened his mouth as if he meant to argue then snapped it shut. A moment passed, then another.

  People walked by them on the banquette—chatting, laughing, hurrying. Ghosts flitted about like moths near a lantern.

  Drake leaned back against the bench, closed his eyes, and tilted his face toward the sun. Memorizing the clean lines of his profile was a foolish thing to do. Christine did it anyway. For now, Mattias Drake was her only ally, her only hope of getting her father back.

  Still another moment passed. Christine closed her eyelids and saw Drake’s face on their backs, almost as if he’d been branded there.

  Foolish woman.

  They had things to do. Did he intend to loll away the day?

  She cleared her throat. “Perhaps you should get us a carriage.”

  He opened one eye but didn’t move.

  “Granny lives out by the lake. It will take us a while to get there.”

  The other eye opened and he pushed off the bench slowly, as if she’d interrupted something important.

  “You’re not going to tell me?” he asked.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “Nothing,” she lied. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  He shook his head as if she’d disappointed him then stepped to the edge of the banquette and waved at a passing hack.

  She closed her eyes but Drake still lingered on the backs of her lids.

  “One word and I’ll slit your throat.” The voice was unfamiliar and the words came in a rush. The prick of a knife just under her jaw made her believe those words were true.

  The man behind her kept the knife at her throat. “Now stand up. Slowly.” His free hand reached under her arm and pulled her to standing. “Move to your right.”

  Why didn’t Drake turn around?

  “Now.” The knife rested against her skin, ready to slice.

  Christine moved to the right.

  Without the bench between them, the man holding the knife pulled her closer to him. He reeked of bay rum and—Christine wrinkled her nose—fear.

  The beignet she’d eaten earlier threatened to make another appearance. She swallowed her nausea and squeaked, “Drake!”

  …

  What now?
Drake turned.

  The knife against Christine’s throat glinted in the sunlight. Drake’s stomach plummeted to the banquette and his hand reached for his gun. “Let her go.”

  The man holding Christine didn’t look the sort to kidnap a lady off the street. He wore a well-tailored suit, his mustache was neatly trimmed, and his lips worked beneath the shelf of hair. Sweat stood on his domed forehead. “She has to come with me.” His voice didn’t belong to a street-thug—too smooth, too well-educated, and too desperate.

  “Not going to happen.” Drake cocked his gun.

  The knife at Christine’s throat shook, nicked her skin, and drew blood.

  For a half-second, Drake was twelve and the knife was held against his mother’s throat. He knew what came next—a ribbon of blood, his mother’s wet voice—run—and the shameful progression of his feet. Running. Away.

  Steel bands tightened around Drake’s chest. His ribs, mere bones, felt inadequate for the task of containing his pounding heart. He steadied the hand holding the gun. “I’ll give you to the count of three.”

  “I have to take her.” The man pulled Christine backward, away from Drake.

  “Shoot him.” Christine’s voice was strong. Of course it was strong. Christine thrived in a crisis. Now if only she’d move a hair to the left, Drake would have a clean shot.

  “I’m sorry.” The man sounded almost sincere. “She has to come with me.” The hand holding the knife shook and Christine leaned her head and neck farther to the right, away from the weapon’s wickedly sharp tip, making a shot impossible.

  The man pulled her a few steps farther, angling toward the street now.

  Damn it. Drake was a good shot but not a great one. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—risk hitting Christine.

  She looked at him, her eyes wide and clever. She mouthed shoot him and then she slumped.

  Bang!

  The shot might have hit its mark if the man hadn’t stumbled under Christine’s negligible weight.

  Christine’s abductor regarded him with wild eyes. “She has them. If I don’t bring her what she wants, she’ll kill them.”

  “Who is she and who does she have?” Whoever she was, she wanted Christine. Drake refused to let that happen.