CHAPTER FIFTEEN
B y the time carnival had New Orleans in its whirlwind grip, Aurore had little doubt she was carrying étienne’s child.
For once Cleo, the housekeeper who had few opinions that couldn’t be bought, gave her opinion for free. Yes, Aurore’s friend, whose monthly bleeding had stopped and whose stomach was tormented by the smells of horse droppings in the street, was surely enceinte. Cleo knew how the friend could be rid of the unwanted burden. Horrified by the diagnosis and the remedy, Aurore escaped to ponder both.
Her room looked over the back garden, where something was almost always in bloom. Ephraim, the gardener, and his crew dug up flowers on schedule and replaced them. She had always hated those mornings when the old, spent plants were ripped from the ground and callously tossed in a pile, their tired leaves and blossoms shriveling in the sun until they were carted away.
Today, as mockingbirds sailed back and forth from magnolia to magnolia, the old man and his crew replaced asparagus fern and tiny white snowdrops with pale lavender pansies. Tulips nodded in the row behind, on the verge of bursting into scarlet glory. When they had finished blooming, they would end up in the gardener’s cart, too, because their life cycle couldn’t be sustained in the Louisiana climate.
Aurore was flushed. She could feel heat pulsing against her skin and beading on her forehead, but she didn’t dare open her window. The sounds of Ephraim ripping the snowdrops from the soil would make her worse. Then she wouldn’t be able to control the bile rising in her throat, the sick rumble of her stomach. She drew the curtains closed.
A child.
She hadn’t wanted children. What did she know of caring for a child, of cuddling a baby on her lap or smothering it with kisses? How did a mother listen patiently to a child’s innocent prattlings? What did she say in response?
She was carrying a child. étienne’s child. She wondered how she could tell him. Despite everything, thinking about him pumped an errant giddiness through her veins. étienne, whose dark eyes found all her secret thoughts, whose slender, clever hands knew all her secret desires. She had never imagined that love could be like this, that she would ever believe there was only one man for every woman.
But étienne was that one man. Until her monthly bleeding had ceased, she had thought of nothing but him. She had lied repeatedly to be with him. She had risked her good name and freely given her virginity. She had traded security for love. And, despite everything, she would do it all again.
When she was with étienne, the sheer glory of his touch was enough to make her give up everything. She had found she was weaker than she had dreamed, but stronger, too. Love was worth any risk. She had tried her entire life to earn Lucien’s love, and she had failed. She had done nothing to earn étienne’s, yet he’d given it without asking anything in return.
She wandered the room, afraid to be still. Lucien had firm ideas about his daughter’s room. There was nothing of substance inside the four walls, nothing that spoke of strength or courage. Everything could be destroyed with the sweep of a hand. But Aurore had learned she was nothing like the dainty Louis XIV furniture, the Staffordshire shepherdess on the mantel, the Brussels lace that hung in airy folds from her tester bed.
She was carrying a child, and even as nausea roiled inside her she knew she would carry this child safely into infancy. The pale little girl who sometimes gasped and fainted had changed into a strong woman. Her body would surround and cushion the baby growing inside her. She was not Claire. A cycle would be completed. Neither man nor nature itself would interrupt that cycle until it was time for the child to be born.
“étienne.” The name gave her courage. She felt it on her lips and in her heart. He hadn’t known love, either. He had nearly said as much, and she had guessed the rest. Like her, he had been raised alone. There had been no children in his life to smother with affection. But together they would learn how.
She forced herself to imagine her father’s reaction. She fell to the bed and closed her eyes. It wasn’t a lack of courage that made her heart pound faster. She lived what was to come so that, when it did, she would be strong enough to face it.
It was late afternoon when she rose from the bed and went to the armoire to choose another dress. A sour smell rose from the basin where she had vomited. But the legs she stood on didn’t buckle, and the hands that sorted through tea gowns and walking costumes were steady.
étienne was almost afraid to believe that everything he had worked for was within his grasp. He had spent the years on Bayou Lafourche dreaming of revenge. But even after he had come to New Orleans and the moment was closer, he hadn’t known how to ruin Lucien. He had assumed that finding a way would take years. He would have to gain Lucien’s trust and favor first, then slowly, carefully, work his way into a position of importance, where some plan would present itself.
Instead, he had caught Lucien’s eye immediately. Through no calculation of his own, he had come into Gulf Coast Steamship at a crucial juncture in its history. Expansion had made an old man out of Lucien, and he’d seen the need for young blood.
étienne’s rise had been a series of talent and accidents. He had the correct combination of youth, energy and intelligence. His background and education appeared good enough not to raise suspicions about his character, and lowly enough not to raise suspicions about his motivation or ambitions.
Now étienne was on the verge of taking his revenge. Years hadn’t elapsed; ideas and methods hadn’t been traded in for better ones. The vehicle for Lucien’s destruction had been so clear that at first étienne feared it was too easy. He had gone over and over it in his mind, rehearsed it, sorted through the consequences, but still revenge remained simple. Long ago he had pieced together Lucien’s motivation for setting the skiff free. The details were murky, and might remain so, but étienne was sure that Lucien had murdered his mother and sister because their existence had begun to threaten him. Whether the threat had been to Lucien’s reputation or his assets was a small matter. Now étienne was in a position to destroy both.
One evening, he sat in his small apartment, staring at the photograph Aurore had given him. She was dressed in the white gown in which she had made her debut, with rows of lace accentuating her breasts. Her hair was pulled high off her forehead, with one long curl resting on a bare shoulder. Her eyes sparkled, as if her thoughts were tantalizing.
Aurore’s was not a face best captured in repose. She was beautiful only when she moved, talked, laughed. Love, and the confidence that came with it, had changed her. Now her skin glowed. Her features were more animated; she smiled more often. In bed, where it was impossible for her to hide her feelings, she was capable of a passion the woman in the photograph could never imagine.
étienne felt the cool metal frame, the glass protecting the image. The flesh-and-blood woman was warm, and a familiar yearning stole over him as he stared at her face. In the past weeks, he had given up pretending that he had seduced Aurore to avenge his family. There was nothing of Lucien in his daughter. She had suffered at her father’s hands. Not as his mother and Angelle had, but she had lived through a painful, loveless childhood and sacrificed her own yearnings on the altar of Lucien’s selfishness.
Now, after years of seeking Lucien’s love, she had given up all hope of it. She had come to étienne with no promises, come like a starving child grateful for any crumb he offered. And what had started as a quest for revenge had turned into a fierce need to have and protect her always.
A knock interrupted his thoughts. He laid the photograph in his desk drawer and opened the door to find the real woman. She fell into his arms before he could close the door behind her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought we decided it wasn’t safe for you to come here.” He clutched her tightly. She was trembling against him.
“It seemed safer than the office.”
He touched her hair, drawn back from her face with a spray of seed pearls and white silk roses. His hand settled there, and he dug his fingers into it. “Safer, maybe, but still not safe. Does your father know you’re out?”
“I waited until after he’d gone upstairs. I’m supposed to be at a party tonight, and I was afraid he might attend with me but he didn’t come back down. I don’t think he’s feeling well.” She raised her face to his. “But what he thinks doesn’t matter anymore, étienne.”
He cupped her chin and searched her eyes. “Come in and sit down. I’ll get you some coffee. You’re freezing.”
She turned paler. “No. I can’t drink coffee.”
He frowned. “Tea, then?”
Something wavered in her eyes. A failure of resolve, perhaps. She drew back a little. “All right.”
He led her to a love seat and left her there. In the kitchen, he put the kettle on to boil and searched for tea. When he had a tray ready, he set it on the table in front of her. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yes. It’s warm in here.”
He noted that she had removed her wrap. Her gown was mauve, trimmed with pearls and roses to match those in her hair, and her skin was the translucent white of the pearls. He poured the tea, even though it hadn’t had enough time to steep properly, and added three sugar lumps to her cup. He handed it to her, despite her protests. “Drink.”
She sipped. Little by little he watched color returning to her cheeks. “Now tell me what’s wrong,” he said, when she had finished. “Has your father found out about us?”
She shook her head. “No, but he will.”
He waited for her to go on. She looked tormented. “Has he ordered you to marry someone else? Is he sending you away?”
She shook her head. Fear began to nibble at him. He wondered if Lucien had discovered his identity. Had he told Aurore the full story? Even as he worried, he discounted that possibility. Lucien could never tell anyone what he had done the night of the hurricane. But he might tell an altered version, one that absolved him of all blame.
“Has your father upset you?” he asked.
“No. Not my father.” She set down her cup. “It’s us.”
Fear devoured him. She had changed her mind. So close to making a final commitment, she had realized what she would be giving up. In moments of passion, he had promised to care for her, to someday give her as rich and full a life as she would be forced to abandon in New Orleans. But the fear of losing everything had overwhelmed her. She didn’t want him anymore.
As if she saw his fear, she shook her head wildly. “No, étienne. I still love you.” She clasped his hand. “More than ever. But I’m afraid…”
“Of what?” he demanded. “In heaven’s name, tell me, Aurore!”
“I’m going to have your baby.”
The possibility hadn’t occurred to him. Perhaps in the first moments of their lovemaking on the Dowager, before he realized that taking her virginity was not an act of revenge so much as one of love, he had thought to get her pregnant. Perhaps he had imagined the look on Lucien’s face when he learned that Raphael Cantrelle had planted his seed, the seed of a man of mixed blood, in his only daughter. But the thought, if he’d had it at all, had been fleeting.
And it hadn’t recurred. Not until now. “A baby.” He felt her hands stiffen around his. He covered them and brought them to his lips. “Are you certain?”
“As certain as a woman can be without seeing a doctor.”
“Are you well?”
“No!” She looked away. “I’m frightened, étienne. What will happen now?”
A grand denouement. A drama brought to its close. He squeezed his eyes shut. A vision of Lucien’s face stretched across his eyelids. Lucien, as pale, as tormented, as his daughter.
He opened his eyes. “That’s easy. We’ll get married. And we’ll move away, to New York or the Great Lakes. We’ll make a home and a life together, and we won’t look back.”
“A home and a life.” Her voice trembled. “Are you sure?”
“How can you believe otherwise?”
“I won’t be allowed to bring anything with me except our child and the clothes on my back.”
He saw Lucien’s handiwork as clearly as he had on the night a small skiff was set free to tumble into the face of a hurricane. She believed she was worth nothing, just as she had been conscientiously taught. “You’ll bring everything. You’ll bring yourself. I don’t want anything else.”
“Oh, étienne.” A teardrop ran down her cheek. “I can work to help us get started. There’s not much I know how to do, but my French is perfect. I could tutor young ladies—”
He put a finger to her lips. “Hush. You have nothing to worry about. We won’t be poor. Far from it. I told you I had an inheritance from my father, but I’ve never told you what it was.”
“You don’t have to. It’s not my concern.”
“It soon will be. We should get married immediately.” He stood. “Wait here.”
She was sitting in exactly the same position when he returned. She looked lost and frightened, but fear was only a thin veneer. She was a woman who would get through this trial, and every other foisted on her. Behind the shadowed eyes was a woman who would persevere.
He sat beside her and placed a wooden box on her lap, although he knew the weight would make her uncomfortable. “Before you open this, you should know that you’re looking at dreams.”
Her hand smoothed over the satin wood. “Dreams?”
“A young boy’s, a young man’s.” He watched her stroke the wood. “An old man’s, too.”
“Your father’s?”
He had been thinking of Juan, but now he thought of the man, the slave’s son, he had never known. “I’m sure my father had dreams for his son, though I never knew them.”
“And he left you this?”
“Yes.” He covered her hand and lifted the lid on the box.
“My God.” She stared at the contents, transfixed. “étienne…” She fell silent.
He knew each of the pieces as well as he knew the bitterness in his heart. “Touch whatever you like.”
“Like? What a funny word.” Still, she didn’t move.
He broke the spell, reaching for a strand of rubies. He dragged it across her cheek, and they warmed her skin. “These suit you.”
There was little jewelry inside the box. The man responsible for the cache, probably an ancestor of Juan’s, had not been sentimental. étienne guessed that when the booty was divided, he had chosen mostly gold and silver coins as his share. Or perhaps Juan himself, or others who had once possessed the treasure, had sold off everything else. Now there remained only the necklace, a pair of emerald-and-diamond earrings, a ruby-and-sapphire ring.
And the cross, executed in purest silver.
Aurore lifted the cross. It shone in the cradle of her lap. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
“I haven’t been able to make myself sell it.”
She laid it carefully in the box, against a wealth of gold doubloons. “How and where?” she asked. “These aren’t the usual family heirlooms.”
“Pirate treasure.”
“Dear God.”
“Very dear.” He scooped up a handful of coins and let them dribble through his fingers. “I can only guess where it came from, Aurore. There was a parade of Spanish ships that carried treasure back and forth from the New World to the Old. Some of them are known to have gone down in Louisiana waters. Some were taken by pirates.”
“But how did your father—?”
He told her a story he thought she would believe. “When my father found me in the marsh, the hurricane had also churned the earth nearby. Trees lay uprooted. As he was carrying me to his pirogue, he saw a chest that the storm had uncovered. Inside was this.”
“And he never spent it? Never tried to make your lives better? Your work easier?”
“I think he knew treasure couldn’t change him into someone else. And he was a miserly man. Perhaps he was waiting to spend it one day when he was old. He told me where he had hidden it just before he closed his eyes for the last time.”
“But étienne, once it belonged to someone.”
His lips quirked in a half smile. “But to whom? The Spanish who pillaged the Aztecs? The Mayans? Should I return it to them, do you think?”
She closed her eyes. “How much—?”
“I don’t know. Some of the coins are very old. They’ll be worth more to collectors than they’re worth for their gold. I don’t know if a price could even be put on the cross.”
He lifted the chest from her lap. Her eyes were still closed, and she was still too pale. “There is no one this belongs to more than it belongs to us.” He touched her cheek at the same moment he kissed her. The kiss was gentle and undemanding. He wanted nothing except color in her cheeks.
“I’ll be marrying a rich man,” she said as she opened her eyes.
“Rich? Maybe not. But this can be parlayed into real wealth, Aurore. We can start a business together. We have the means to do it.”
“Then why, with all this, have you been working for my father?”
“Because money is nothing without experience. And the things I had to learn couldn’t be taught in classrooms.”
She seemed to believe him. She nodded. “But this still won’t make my father accept you as his son-in-law.”
“I don’t want his acceptance. I want his daughter.”
“She’s yours.” The color he had hoped for flooded her cheeks. “She was yours before this.” She swept her hand toward the treasure. “And she will be yours after. She’ll be yours forever!”
He clasped her to him. He tried not to think of anything except the woman in his arms. But, despite himself, he thought of Lucien, and what Lucien would say.
“I don’t want you to tell your father,” he said, against her hair. “He’ll attempt to stop us. We’ll arrange a place and time to meet. I’ll have tickets for the train. We’ll leave Louisiana, and we’ll never look back.”
She turned her face to his. He saw both sorrow and hope in her eyes. But as he kissed her, the sorrow disappeared.