Iron Lace #1

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T he mirror beside Lucien’s office door proved his worst suspicions. He was paler than he had been yesterday. Paler, with the faintest hint of blue about his lips, as if his blood, pumped by a heart that frequently faltered, could no longer defy gravity’s pull.

He turned away and gazed out the window overlooking the wharf recently built for the Gulf Coast Steamship Line. The wharf was the finest monument to his tenure as president, sleek and efficient, like the SS Danish Dowager, the newest of the company’s ships. In Antoine’s time the wharves had been so inadequate and the charges so high that some shipping interests had begun to find different routes for their cargo. Antoine hadn’t had the foresight to realize that a port in trouble meant that a shipping company based there was in trouble, too.

But what could one expect from a man who had resisted logic and convention when he threatened his own son-in-law? A man whose sanctimonious visit to Grand Isle had brought about his own death?

Antoine’s death. The death of Marcelite Cantrelle. The deaths of her son, daughter and unborn child.

The scene outside the window blurred. Lucien’s heart lurched painfully. When the Gulf Coast office building had been constructed after Antoine’s death, Lucien had specified that the walls were to be extra thick and the windows small. He hadn’t wanted city noises to find their way inside. But there were no walls thick enough to keep out the noises of the river, the whistles of the tugboats, the bells.

There was a bell sounding somewhere in the distance now. A man never realized how many bells there were until they began to toll away his final days.

He fumbled for the back of his desk chair and sat, dropping his head between his knees. He managed a deep breath, then another. How could it be that at the beginning of a new century, an age of amazing progress, there was still nothing that could be done about a heart that wouldn’t beat properly?

He had journeyed north nearly a year ago, to New York and Minnesota, unsuccessfully searching for a cure. No one in New Orleans except his personal physician knew the extent of his illness. Even Aurore had no idea. Luckily, she hadn’t asked questions about the trip, even though it had stretched into weeks. He imagined that a rigorous schedule of dances and parties had kept her too busy to worry. She had never been home when he telephoned. He had returned to find her social schedule full, just as he had hoped.

The bell continued to toll. Lucien sat up and reached inside his desk drawer for a letter. He laid it carefully against his chest and willed his heart to beat steadily again. He murmured some of the text of the letter, a soothing French litany he knew by memory.

“‘You are not guilty, my son. You must lay aside this burden and take up your life. There was nothing more you could have done to save those poor souls lost in your skiff. So many people, hundreds upon hundreds, died that night. Can a father blame himself because his newborn son was ripped from his loving arms, or a mother because her daughters were safely nestled in the room of a house that collapsed? These were acts of God, acts that could not have been changed.’”

Lucien fell silent. As he had many times before, he told himself that Father Grimaud was correct. He could not have changed the events that occurred the night of the hurricane. He had seen truth in the form of a giant wall of water. And had he known that Antoine would die that night, making Marcelite’s and the children’s deaths a terrible irony, nothing would have been different. Nothing.

“Papa?”

Lucien sat up straighter, and thrust the letter from Father Grimaud into the drawer. He couldn’t stand with his heart still squeezing painfully in his chest, but he nodded at Aurore, who stood in the doorway, and gestured for her to take a chair.

“I know you don’t like me to come here,” she said, as soon as she had seated herself.

“But you come anyway.”

“The riverfront is just too interesting. I can’t seem to stay away.”

She sounded so much like the young Claire Friloux that for the briefest moment Lucien wondered if he had been cast back in time. But no, the woman sitting beside his desk was Aurore, Claire’s only surviving child. Her voice was like her mother’s, but her hair was a shade lighter, her eyes a paler blue. Claire, at eighteen, had been rosy-cheeked and robust, with a wicked, throbbing laugh that made men yearn for her. He, the victor, had discovered how quickly that laughter could be extinguished.

Aurore was dressed in a dark tailored suit that made her thin features even plainer and a blouse of ivory lace that provided no contrast to her complexion. He recognized the hat that perched on top of her thick roll of hair. He had selected it himself. Bird-of-paradise plumes drooped artfully over one side of her face, a coquettish touch for a young woman who had too little of the coquette about her.

“There must be more important ways for you to spend your time,” he said.

She smiled, but the smile did nothing to light up her face. “Papa, if I’m to provide you with an heir to Gulf Coast, don’t you think I should occasionally see what happens here?”

“It will be enough that your husband sees.”

Her gaze didn’t falter. “And if there is no husband?”

His heart lurched painfully. The morning was still pleasantly cool for April, but he could feel a fine sheen of perspiration dampening his shirt. “Don’t talk nonsense.”

“Nonsense? I haven’t met a man I want to marry.”

“You’re like all young women today. You expect love and forget duty. When you realize what’s expected of you, you’ll find a dozen suitable men.”

“A dozen?” For just a moment, there was a gleam in her eye that hinted at hidden vitality. “Perhaps that’s too much to hope for, when I can’t even seem to find one.”

Lucien wanted her to leave. The problem of his daughter and Gulf Coast Steamship was one he had gone over and over in his head since the surgeon in Minnesota had warned him that the days left to him were few. “What exactly do you want to see?”

This time, there was more than a hint of vitality. Her eyes blazed a more brilliant blue. “Will you give me a tour of the new dock?”

“I haven’t the time.” He stood. “And I see no point, but if you must see the wharf, then I’ll have someone else show you.”

She stood, too. “I’d rather you did.”

Lately it had been hard to dismiss her. “I’ve explained I’m too busy.”

“Papa, are you feeling well?”

Lucien wasn’t pleased that she had noticed a difference in him. “Of course.”

“It’s just that you seem tired recently. And I think you’re afraid the walk will tire you more.”

“That’s foolish. Not another word about it to anyone! There are plenty of people who would be upset if they thought my health was suffering.”

She didn’t flinch. “Why?”

“Because I’ve just made a huge investment in the Dowager, and in building that dock. I built it, not the dock board. I invested in our long-term future by improving the port, just like some of the other steamship companies have done. And I’ve loaned the dock board money for further improvements.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“The money had to come from somewhere.”

“And so you borrowed it in order to lend it?”

He was surprised she had understood. “In a sense. I borrowed it from myself, from other investments and property.”

“And will the commissioners pay you back eventually? Or do you own the dock now?”

“Gulf Coast has sole use. We’ll be paid back by credits on revenue.”

“With interest?”

She was leaning toward him, completely occupied by their conversation. He couldn’t recall ever having seen her so animated. “No. The board wasn’t authorized to pay interest. We can only hope the company will benefit in the long run.”

“But the short run might be difficult?”

“Not if we have a good year. Not if the improvement of the terminal here pays off immediately, the way I expect it to.”

“I think I see why rumors that you’re ill might create problems. Everything is very carefully balanced, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He frowned, realizing for the first time that he had discussed the situation with her as if it were something she needed to know. “But I don’t want to burden you with my business dealings. This is far too complex for you to think about.”

“Oh, it’s not a burden.” She smiled; it was a very different smile from the one he had noted earlier. This time, her face was altered until she could no longer be considered plain. “But you’ve conveniently gotten me off the subject of your health.”

“I told you, I’m well.”

“So you did.”

Lucien wanted nothing so much as to sit down again. He considered who to send with Aurore as an escort. His secretary had a gentleman’s manners, but he was no match for the stevedores and screwmen. Aurore needed an escort who would command authority and still treat her with the proper deference.

“Wait here. If you really insist on this, I’ll find someone who can give you a tour.”

“I really insist,” she said pleasantly. “Yes, I think I must insist, Papa.”

Once again she sounded like her mother, but this time Lucien noted an underlying strength he had never heard in Claire’s voice. Lucien was filled with the disquieting notion that for eighteen years he had badly underestimated his daughter.

Aurore prowled her father’s office while she waited for his return. If she had designed this building, she would have placed it as close to the water as possible; then she would have created long windows that could be thrown wide open, so that the smells and sounds of the river seeped inside the room.

She had always loved everything about the riverfront: the sight of cotton bales stacked like the building blocks of a snow king’s castle, the warehouses filled with bags of aromatic coffee beans from exotic South American countries. She loved the chants of men unloading the ships, the mule bells and shrieking locomotive steam horns, the odors of creosote and freshly milled lumber, the smoke of coal fires. There was nothing in her life that compared to the thrill she felt on the rare occasions when she came here.

She thought of Ti’ Boo and the days they had spent together on Bayou Lafourche. Ti’ Boo was going to have a baby. Her letters were fewer now, but when she wrote she sounded happy. Jules was a considerate husband and a hard worker. No, Ti’ Boo did not feel like a muskrat caught in a trap. And the baby she carried—a girl, she hoped—made up for the things that weren’t good, the disease that had ruined Jules’s meager sugarcane crop, the flood that had washed away their kitchen garden.

Aurore remembered that she had felt alive in Bayou Lafourche. But afterward she had come home to an empty house and an empty life. There were other young women in New Orleans who reveled in the social whirl of the city, par ticularly the carnival season, with its luncheons and dances, its dinners and formal balls. But she wasn’t one of them. Perhaps if her father had agreed to let her attend college she might have been happier. But Lucien hadn’t seen a need for more education. The Newcomb College set, with their bloomers and their emphasis on exercise, had seemed unwomanly to him.

She looked out her father’s miserly window and envied the men below, all engaged in backbreaking labor. The stevedores unloading tons of bananas might have to worry about hidden tarantulas or poisonous green snakes that had survived the long voyage, but at least they were free when work was finished to do whatever they chose and go wherever they wanted. In contrast, she had to fight for every breath, every idea, every dream.

The office door opened, and she turned at the sound of her father’s footsteps. She stood very still and stared at the man who had entered with him.

“Aurore, this is étienne Terrebonne, our new traffic manager.”

She made the appropriate response, but her eyes never left those of the man standing beside her father. He was dressed in a classically styled blue suit, but there was nothing dandified about him. He looked as masculine in the suit, with its starched white shirt and striped four-in-hand scarf, as he had in rough Atakapas cottonade.

“I understand you want a tour?” he asked in excellent, barely accented English.

Relief and curiosity warred inside her. étienne hadn’t pointed out that this was their second introduction. She still considered it something of a miracle that Lucien had never learned of her trip to C?te Boudreaux. “Yes, I’d like a tour very much,” she said. “You’ll be my guide?”

“If you’ll allow me.” He gave a slight bow.

“Absolutely. It should be fascinating.” She smiled politely, exactly as expected.

“étienne, I don’t want Miss Le Danois to have any unfortunate encounters,” Lucien said.

“I’ve already sent word that I’ll be showing her the dock.”

“Good.” Lucien turned. “Aurore.”

She had been dismissed, and she was delighted. She didn’t speak again until they were outside in the roadway. étienne took her arm and pulled her closer to the building. A wagon loaded with bags of coffee passed. He didn’t drop her arm immediately. They stood together in the shadows and stared at each other.

“Hello again,” he said finally.

“You must have some things you’d like to tell me.”

“What would you like to know?”

“Everything.”

“Everything, and a tour of the terminal, too?”

“We could do the tour another time.”

He smiled for the first time since they had been reintroduced. A year had passed, but she recognized the effect of that smile. A familiar connection had been established. “I told you I was going to find my place in the world,” he said.

“But you never mentioned it would be here, in the middle of my father’s business.”

“I didn’t know.”

“And the clothes?” She stepped back a little to view him better. “The perfect English?”

“The English was far from perfect when I came, but I learn quickly. As for the clothes…” He shrugged. “Do they matter?”

“I’d say they matter a lot. If you dressed as you did on the bayou, my father might have hired you to unload his ships, but not to manage anything.”

“Exactly.”

“Now tell me the truth. Why did you decide to come here?”

“My father died, and afterward I discovered that he’d stored away a sizable amount of money. So I used it to come to New Orleans. I wanted to learn the shipping business. It seemed like a perfect choice.”

“When was this?”

“Not too long after we met.”

He began to walk toward the dock, and she joined him. They crossed an area where track was being laid for the new Public Belt Railroad, then passed through an alleyway in a huge stave yard. The barrel staves—among the main products that Gulf Coast exported to Europe—were used in wine-producing countries where wood was scarce. Sometimes she wondered if there were any trees left in the northern states.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“But why the shipping business? And why Gulf Coast?”

“What business in New Orleans doesn’t have to do with shipping? And I’m used to the water, so the railroads held no interest for me. Why do we lay miles and miles of track, when we have a river running through the middle of this country? They tell me it used to be so crowded a man could walk for miles just by stepping from one steamboat to another.”

“That’s how it was when I was a child.” She moved to one side and waited as a rat ran from one pile of staves to another.

“We shouldn’t have come this way. Your shoes are getting muddy.”

“The purpose of shoes.” She lifted her skirt a little higher. “I envy you working here every day.”

“Do you?” He sounded skeptical.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who thinks a woman is only interested in what she wears?”

“Then you’re on this tour because you really want to see what’s here?”

“Why else would I be communing with rats and mud?” He was walking faster now, as if he wanted to finish the tour quickly. “When you went to work for my father, did you connect our names?”

“I didn’t start out working for him. My first job was to collect wharfage from the boats along a certain route.”

“How did you move from that to this?”

“One day I was too late. A boat left before I could collect. I learned one of your father’s steamers was on its way upriver, so I offered to unload in Baton Rouge if they would take me with them. When I got there, I found the boat and collected the toll, and then I unloaded a thousand bunches of bananas.”

“And how did you get back home?”

He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I hopped on a barge going downriver, and spent the night on a cotton bale. I got back just in time to collect my fares the next morning.”

She laughed. “But you still haven’t said how you got this job.”

“Your father heard the story and approached me. He said he was looking for someone resourceful and hardworking.”

“And did you know that Lucien Le Danois was my father?”

He hesitated. “I suspected. But it’s not something I could discuss, particularly when I would never have met you if you hadn’t escaped to the bayous without telling your father.”

“Then you know a secret about me. And I know one about you.”

He stopped and faced her. “Do you?”

“Certainly. I know your past.”

“Do you?” he repeated.

“Yes. You’re étienne the knife-wielding Acadian from the back of Lafourche.”

“And what shall we do with these secrets?”

“Guard them carefully.”

“Carefully?” His eyes were opaque, as if he had already started to guard secrets. “Is that necessary? You don’t come to the riverfront often. And your father doesn’t show an inclination to invite me for dinner. I doubt our paths will cross often.”

He asked questions as if they weren’t questions at all. Perhaps it was easier that way, because then he could deny his own intentions if the answer wasn’t to his liking. But Aurore wasn’t fooled. He wanted to know if he would see her again. Even as he pointed out the differences between them, the worlds that separated them, he wanted to see her again.

“I think I’ll be coming to the riverfront often,” she said. “My father has no sons. One day Gulf Coast will be mine.”

“Then we’ll have to agree to watch out for each other.”

“Yes.” She searched the face she had once found so appealing. A year later, it was even more so, stronger and more mature. “Yes, we’ll have to agree.”

“Maybe that won’t be too difficult.”

“Perhaps not.” She forgot to smile. She stared at him and measured this man against others. She had no illusions that knowing étienne Terrebonne would ever be easy. But she thought that it might be worth whatever difficulty it created.

Finally he turned away. “I’ll tell you about the wharves. Before the dock board assumed control, they were privately managed. Originally what structures there were along the riverbanks were built of wood, but now our sheds are made of steel. We can berth two steamers here, and more down at the next dock, with permission. When the Danish Dowager is launched, there’ll be room for her on our wharf.”

“That’s a day I want to see.”

His glance was approving. “We’re equipped with electric conveyors operated by fifteen-horsepower motors. They were installed with lifting and lowering devices to adapt to the water level of the river.”

She walked beside him and listened with interest. But most interesting were the things that had already been said.

There were days during the summer when Lucien was certain each breath was his last. There was no relief from the heat. It seared his lungs and clutched at his heart. He slept sitting up—when he slept at all—in a chair beside his bedroom window. By lamplight he wrote letters to Father Grimaud.

He went to the office in the mornings, but rarely stayed past noon. The heat seemed worse on the riverfront, as if the Mississippi trapped the highest temperatures in its murky depths. He avoided the Pickwick Club, formerly his refuge, afraid that his increasingly gaunt appearance would start rumors. Sometimes he traveled the necessary miles to the outfitting pier where the Danish Dowager was being completed, but most afternoons he simply made excuses and went home.

By October, the temperatures had dropped enough to give Lucien some relief, but the summer had sapped his interest in Gulf Coast. His steamships continued to glide in and out of port, bringing bananas from Costa Rica and coffee from Brazil, carrying cotton to Italy, timber products to France and grain to England. Loading and unloading was easier and more efficient, but there was still less movement on the river than he had hoped to see.

At least he had good men working to improve Gulf Coast’s revenues. Karl, his secretary, could be counted on to protect the company’s interests when Lucien wasn’t in the office. His operating manager, Tim Gilhooley, a veteran prizefighter who had reached his peak in the last century—along with the city’s enthusiasm for the sport—could still crack a head or two if it was called for, or slip a bottle of Kentucky’s finest bourbon to any man who needed a gentler touch.

Then there was étienne Terrebonne. étienne had impressed Lucien from the start. He was obviously a young man of good upbringing, even if he came from the nether regions of Bayou Lafourche. His skin was too dark, his heritage too obviously Latin, but he dressed well and had a good education. Most important, he was not afraid of hard work.

At times, étienne seemed like a man possessed. He had learned more about shipping in the months he had been with the company than most of Lucien’s employees knew after years. He had been promoted twice, most recently to traffic manager. Under Tim’s watchful guidance, étienne was in charge of trade.

étienne wouldn’t have progressed so quickly under ordinary circumstances, but Lucien no longer had years to carefully assess and train his associates. Where once he had expected to ease Aurore’s husband into the company, now he was forced to find alternatives. She had no serious suitors on the horizon.

Aurore was as sought after as any of the young women who attended performances at the French Opera House. She was visited in their family box by young men as often as any of her friends. She had wealth and name. Lucien had been a duke in the court of Proteus, and the young Claire had been the queen of Comus. In New Orleans, a place in the best carnival organizations was a serious matter. The crowned heads of Europe received only a trifle more admiration—and not from the residents of the Crescent City.

So Aurore was New Orleans royalty, with the added bonus of being the heiress to a great New Orleans steamship line. There should have been multiple offers of marriage, but Aurore had discouraged them. Never before had he allowed her to resist his plans for her life. But the year was 1906, and even the sternest patriarch couldn’t force a woman to marry against her wishes.

Faced with a heart that struggled to beat and a willful daughter, Lucien had been forced to look for a man with the youth, intelligence and ambition necessary to provide leadership for Gulf Coast when he was gone. étienne was his top candidate. An offer of stock, a promise of Tim’s job upon Tim’s retirement, a glimpse of the prestige that could be his if he made Gulf Coast his life’s work, and Lucien believed that étienne would commit himself to the company.

One afternoon in late October, Lucien was preparing to leave the office. He had stayed longer than usual to go over some figures étienne had given him. As always, everything seemed in perfect order. He was gathering his gloves and hat when there was a knock at his door. He called an invitation to enter, hoping it would mean only a short delay. His housekeeper had promised him an early supper of soft-shell crabs fresh from the French Market.

“Mr. Le Danois.” étienne waited politely in the doorway.

Lucien motioned him inside. “I went over the papers. Everything’s in order. You’re doing an excellent job.”

“Thank you. Do you have any thoughts on the new insurance plan I suggested?”

“Gulf Coast has always done business with Fargrave-Crane. I hesitate to make changes now.”

“I can understand that, sir. I only thought you might be interested in saving a considerable amount of money.”

There had been a time when Lucien wouldn’t have considered étienne’s suggestion. There was an unwritten code among the owners and management of the larger companies on the riverfront. The men all moved in the same social and political circles. They demanded loyalty, even if sometimes it was costly. In return, they supported each other by looking the other way when times were difficult. Often a personal guarantee for funds was as good as money in a bank vault.

But étienne was not bound by the ethics of the inner circle. With Tim’s consent, he had entertained estimates from new insurance companies after discovering the large sum that Gulf Coast paid to insure its fleet and cargo. Lucien had only allowed the search to progress because he was concerned about finances. He was sure he had been correct in building the new facility and in making a substantial loan to the dock board. He was sure that the SS Danish Dowager, Gulf Coast’s newest and largest ship, had been a good decision. But his own progressive outlook had put operating revenue at a premium.

He decided to take a gamble. “Have Tim thoroughly check out Jacelle and Sons. Then we’ll discuss it again.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you enjoying your work here, étienne?”

“Very much.”

“Are you finding time for a personal life, too? I don’t want you to exhaust yourself. There must be hundreds of young women who would be happy to show you the pleasures of the city.”

“I’ll remember that, sir.”

étienne smiled, and Lucien read all the easy confidence of youth on his face. The smile made Lucien feel older and closer to death. He envied étienne the years ahead of him. “Do you miss your home? I know you said your family is gone, but don’t you sometimes wish you could go back?”

“Yes.” étienne was no longer smiling. “But as a boy I used to long for this day. Now I’m determined to make the most of it.”

“So you were always ambitious.” Lucien pulled on his gloves. “Generally I’ve found Acadians to be an easily satisfied lot. Why are you so different?”

“Different? Or unfortunate? Who’s to say that devotion to achieving my goals won’t ruin me?”

“I was different, too.” Lucien didn’t know why he suddenly felt so inclined to share his story with étienne, but there was something compelling about the young man’s barely leashed vitality, his dark-eyed intensity.

“How so?”

“How many Creole families held on to their fortunes?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Both men knew that the Creoles of New Orleans were a dying breed. Many of the old names existed still, but they had been grafted onto sturdier, more resilient stock.

“And do you know why not?” he continued. “Because they didn’t believe in work. Even my father-in-law, Antoine Friloux, found it distasteful, if necessary. The war destroyed most of our Creole families. They didn’t know how to take the little that was left and make something out of it. But I did. And now I control an empire, because hard work didn’t repel me.”

“An example for any man to follow,” étienne said.

“You’re young.” Lucien allowed himself a sigh. “You still have so much to learn. I always hoped to have a son of my own to teach someday.”

étienne didn’t reply. Obviously he respected a dream unrealized. “Don’t stay here all night,” Lucien said. “Go home and have a good meal. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Lucien nodded his goodbye. In the carriage, he closed his eyes and let the peaceful clack of the wheels on the granite-block roadway soothe him to sleep.

étienne watched Lucien’s carriage weave through the riverfront traffic. His driver was an elderly Negro who had been with the family since before Aurore’s birth. She had told étienne that she was very fond of the old man, Fantome, who had often lied gallantly for her when she had disobeyed her father. étienne didn’t know where the name had come from, or if it had any relation to the one he had been born with, but Fantome was indeed a phantom. He existed in the shadows of Lucien’s and Aurore’s lives, a tall, stiffly formal specter who gazed at étienne with knowing eyes.

étienne had seen the same recognition in the eyes of the Creoles of color who dwelled in the Vieux Carré. The gens de couleur were a class to themselves. Free a century before the Emancipation Proclamation, some of them had owned slaves and large properties themselves, but the war had not improved their position. Where once they had been a respected part of society, now, in the twentieth century, their rights and privileges had been eroded. Still, they kept to themselves, mixing as infrequently as possible with black or white.

These handsome, cultured hybrids from another century knew étienne’s heritage at a glance, as sensitive to the width of a lip, the arc of a nose, as they were to the slights that befell them every day. They understood why a man of color would choose to be white if he could pass. Many of their brothers or sisters had made that choice. They made no comments in their dealings with him, but he saw their thoughts. If they knew his lineage, then it was only a matter of time before others suspected. étienne was playing a dangerous game.

But no one had any idea how dangerous. étienne stared out the window until Lucien’s carriage was no longer in sight. Years ago, hatred had become the sole purpose of étienne’s existence. Now, the actual sight of Lucien Le Danois made his heart beat faster, his breath come quicker. Sometimes his hands trembled and he couldn’t trust his voice or expression.

He remembered their reunion a year ago. He had been afraid that Lucien would know him, afraid and yet hopeful. If Lucien had recognized him, then étienne could have sought immediate, if imperfect, retribution. But there hadn’t been so much as a flutter of recognition. Lucien had so thoroughly dismissed the child he had sent into the hurricane to die that he hadn’t seen Raphael’s face written on a stranger’s. Lucien wasn’t haunted by uncertainty. He wasn’t haunted by guilt. And he didn’t suspect he was haunted by a ghost who would one day steal everything he held dear.

A noise sounded behind him. étienne composed himself before he turned. Aurore crossed the room and held out her hand. “He’s gone, isn’t he? I saw the carriage and hid in a doorway. I thought he’d be gone long before this.”

“Others may not be gone.” étienne took her hand.

“I’ll tell them I’m just here to see my father, and so sad to have missed him.”

“If you insist on meeting me, we’ll have to find a better place to do it.”

“I insist?” She tossed her head. Her eyes were as blue as the patch of sky outside Lucien’s window. “Aren’t you the man who suggested I might like to go for a ride in the country tonight?”

“How do you get away, Aurore? Aren’t you missed when you meet me like this?”

She moved closer. “Am I missed when I can’t make our meetings?”

In the months he had been secretly meeting Aurore, étienne had searched to find something of Lucien in his daughter. But the woman gazing at him with longing seemed unscathed by her parentage, as genuinely warm as her father was cold. “Yes,” he said. He reached out and ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek.

“I lie.” Her eyelids fluttered shut. “I lie, and I give Cleo gifts so she won’t be inclined to see if I’m telling the truth. And I have friends who lie for me. They think our trysts are wonderfully romantic.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think they could be even more so.”

His awareness of her was heightened. The late-afternoon sunlight turned her complexion to pearl. She was as young as a child and as old as a woman. He bent and brushed his lips over hers. He felt her shudder, and he pulled her closer. This time, he searched her mouth to discover which she was. She sank against him like a woman, her soft breasts pressing over her corset and against his chest. The heat of their bodies infused the space between them until there was only a sudden pulsing of blood and breath mingled with breath.

“étienne.” She was the first to pull away, flustered and clearly unsure of herself. She opened her eyes. “Somebody might come in.”

“So they might.”

“You look pleased with the thought.”

“I’m pleased we’re going to be together this evening.”

“Can we leave now?”

“I’ll go first and wait for you behind the coffee shed. I’ve ordered a carriage to meet us around the corner.”

Her eyes sparkled. “And you really think we can get away without being seen?”

“Depend on it.” He lifted her hand and kissed it without taking his eyes from hers. “Don’t leave right away.”

“I won’t.”

Outside, he started for the coffee shed, secure that she would follow. Unknowingly, Aurore had led him to New Orleans and her father. Now she led him down a new path, a route to ruining Lucien of which the child Raphael had never dreamed.

He had thought to destroy Lucien Le Danois by taking everything he had built. But destroying a man’s business was small punishment for murder. Now the man the world called étienne was presented with an even greater opportunity.

He could destroy Lucien’s daughter and, with her, Lucien’s claim on the future.