Chapter Eleven
The dock at Sweet Dreams, Mal Chance Bayou
Luc waited in the shadows while Grace strolled to the dock.
She’d warned him off, twice. Yet at their third encounter, she’d actually invited him to sit with her.
She now called him by name and permitted him to call her Grace.
Possibly she was beginning to trust him.
Or if not trust, at least be easy in his company.
That ease worked in both directions. The two times he’d whispered warnings on the breeze, he experienced very little increase in the pain of living in two worlds at one time.
He’d whispered, attempting to lessen the fear and despair that dragged at her soul.
Still he had to admire her. She rarely gave in to those stifling emotions, instead displaying a false but icy bravado to anyone.
That is except for someone like himself who had the ability to look beneath outward appearances.
After the kitchen fire, he’d watched her succumb to the fright and anguish at her core.
His inability to help her, comfort her, distressed him.
He would’ve done much to prevent her nightmares and woe.
However, that ability was not part of his cursed repertoire.
Luc could cause illusions, but he couldn’t manipulate memories or thoughts already in progress.
Although he regretted each time his actions had upset Grace, he had a sense she would forgive him, despite her fears.
Empathy with her emotions had driven him deep into the memory of a conversation with his brother.
So deep had been his preoccupation with the past he hadn’t noticed the intruders approaching. Who had sent them?
His prime suspect would be the boss spoken of by Davy and Billy.
That was the man endangering Grace’s life.
“The boss” sought the means to control a cursed pirate.
Luc wanted—needed—to destroy that boss before he caused a full-blown disaster.
Given what DeLille had told Grace, the chance was very high that Guidry was that boss.
He waited, impatient for the full moon to rise above the trees.
He was free and alive the minute the sun set on such a night, but he preferred to wait for full dark.
The risk of moving into a stream of fading sunlight and disappearing in an instant was too great, especially when other folk were around to see him vanish.
Finally, the purple of dusk faded to black.
The only ambient light remaining was the gleam of the full moon on the bayou, and the warmth of lamps inside the house.
Staying within the tree line, Luc walked to a point parallel with the front of the house.
Then he stepped from the trees and aimed toward the dock where Grace sat, lantern by her side. The dogs were nowhere in sight.
She’d braced her hands behind her and was looking up at the sky. He joined her, sitting on the opposite edge of the dock.
“What do you plan to do with this place?” He might’ve been watching her, learning her, for weeks, but she was still wary, even after last night’s conversation. Tonight, he planned to keep the topic to her and Sweet Dreams.
Grace made a slow survey of the scene, from one side to the other. “I expect to live here the rest of my life, so I’m restoring the house. The grounds will have to wait until I’m ready to hire employees.”
“Why wait?” The croak of frogs seemed to echo his question.
She sighed. “For the same reason I threatened to shoot you when we first met.”
“Really? You had a reason other than being frightened by a stranger?” He couldn’t help the smile he flashed.
“I wasn’t frightened,” she boasted.
Liar. You were terrified. You did an excellent job of hiding it. I might never have known the truth, were I not who I am.
“If you say so,” he drawled, so she would hear his doubt.
“You cannot possibly know what I was feeling at the time,” The protest came like the screech of an owl whose nest was threatened.
I could.
Grace pursed her lips and looked away from him. “I refuse to argue about it with you.”
He held in a chuckle. “As you wish. Tell me why you aren’t ready to hire employees?”
“I … ah… I came here to be alone.”
As if anyone could truly be alone in the normally very noisy bayou.
“That surprises me. You’re a very intelligent and capable woman. Why would you want to isolate yourself?”
Her desire for solitude was understandable for someone buried in fear and rage. For himself, Luc had experienced entirely too much solitude in the past nine decades.
Yet, I don’t seek out companionship, not even with the other spirits who occupy the ether. More often, he’d tried to scare people away. Why hadn’t he tried to frighten Grace but kept returning to her?
As fearful as she was, scaring her off should be easy. He hadn’t tried and kept coming back because she was interesting, nothing more.
“I had a very active social life back in Boston,” she said, her tone flat and mechanical. “I ran my own business.”
“Unusual for a woman,” he remarked.
“True, I had a partner. A man I thought I loved enough to marry. We were engaged, then he betrayed me.”
Rage and sorrow crossed her face in a single blink.
“He was a fool.” The involuntary vehemence in his own voice made Luc pause.
He meant it.
Her lips lifted in a small grin. “That is kind of you to say, and it may be true. However, foolish or not, Eustace was a very skilled liar, cheat, and criminal.”
Liars, cheats, and criminals were no strangers to Luc. Depending on who was asked, he’d been all three at one time or another. He was also familiar with the devastation a woman suffered when she believed she was betrayed. That sort of betrayal was the primary reason for his curse.
“How did you discover this? If you loved him, you must have trusted him,” he said.
“I figured it out the day I was arrested for fraud. A fraud he committed.”
Luc blinked. Arrested?
He’d been arrested once, and for a crime another had committed. Even in memory, the helpless feeling of being trapped was hard to escape. “Were you guilty?” He shouldn’t have asked, and his gut shouted that he knew better, anyway.
Grace shook her head, scattering her auburn locks over her shoulders. “Of course not.”
“I beg pardon,” Luc said. “I mean no offense.”
She studied his face. “I’d spent years getting an education in archaeology.
Then more years building a reputation as a superior and excellent appraiser of antiques.
I earned the money to establish my business by giving appraisals.
Honest appraisals. Sometimes, clients were not happy to learn their treasured antique was worthless, or worse a fake. ”
“Yet you never lied? Never fudged the truth?” He cocked his head to one side.
Why was he so genuinely interested in this woman and what she had to say? She’d snared his curiosity like the vines that choked the live oaks.
“Not purposely. That’s how the fraud charges came about.
My fiancé, my partner, brought in a number of questionable articles that a client wanted appraised for resale.
I was to provide proof of provenance and value to both seller and buyer.
The seller would have lost the sale had the purchaser seen my honest appraisal. ”
“What happened?” Luc hung on her every word.
“The honorable Eustace Van Alder, the man I thought I loved,” The words were as quiet as the lap of water on the shore when the bayou was still.
So soft was her voice, Luc, with his hyper-hearing almost did not hear her.
“Eustace delivered the appraisals, but my facts and figures had been doctored. The changes made the items appear much more valuable than they really were.”
“Who would have done that?”
“Eustace was the only person who could have.” Grace’s words came stronger now. “Appraisals are always sealed before delivery. However, I had not sealed them when he offered to deliver them for me. I trusted him and believed he would seal the documents first.”
“He did not?” Luc asked.
“Only after he changed the numbers and some of the provenance dates. Those changes were significant, and easy enough to make without being obvious,” Grace explained with wry annoyance.
“So, he betrayed you. Who told the police about the changes and implicated you?”
“The original owner. He was head of a crime family, which I did not know at the time I accepted the work. He was not happy with my honest appraisal. He knew it would only be a matter of time before the fraud was discovered. Then he would have to pay the new owner the difference. To recoup his money and for revenge, he blamed the fraud on me. However, the truth came out at my trial. I was acquitted. My one-time fiancé and the crime boss went to prison.”
“You were vindicated, so why run to Sweet Dreams?” With every statement, Luc’s interest in Grace increased. Because of the story she told, of course.
“Only the court acquitted me,” her tone grew hard.
“The press, and popular opinion condemned me. Every so-called friend denied me. I lost all my clients and was forced to close my business. During the trial the press and the public were so virulent, I rarely left the house save to appear in court, and only then with a police escort. Afterward, I couldn’t walk down the street without hearing curses and risking injury from objects thrown at me.
So, I left. My faith in people destroyed.
I never wanted to see another person again. ”
“Yet you are seeing me?” He lifted a brow.
“You’ve made it nearly impossible not to see you,” she huffed.
Luc smiled. Again, he couldn’t help it. She was as interesting as the sea was deep.
You have no idea how often you don’t see me.
The stream of her words flowed on. “You refused to pay attention to my warnings not to come back. Heck, I even see you in my dreams from time to time. For all I know, you are the mystery man who finishes nearly every repair task I start and leaves plants at my door every full moon.”