Iron Lace #1

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

D usk stole over the island while Aurore read the letters. The evening was quiet except for the screeching of seagulls. She rose once to light a lamp, once more to fill the enameled coffeepot with boiling water. When she finished the letters, written over a period of years, she rearranged and read them again. Nothing leaped from the pages. Instead, one embroidered on the other to tell the story of the night of the hurricane.

Father Grimaud’s responses had been kind and priestly, absolving her father of all guilt. But her father had continued the correspondence, as if absolution were still withheld.

That afternoon, Father Grimaud had asked her whether Lucien had found forgiveness before he died. She had been puzzled by the question. Her father hadn’t been a man who concerned himself with spiritual things. Why would he care whether the God he ignored forgave or condemned him?

But the picture that emerged from the letters was one of a different man. Lucien had been tormented. On the night of the storm, he had struggled toward the presbytery, towing a small skiff occupied by a pregnant woman and two small children. Nearly to safety, he had been overtaken by a wall of water and forced to release the rope or die. He had saved himself, but the others had been lost.

The woman’s name had been Marcelite. Her children had been Raphael and Angelle.

Could Raphael be Rafe?

Rafe had changed his name after Nicolette’s birth. By doing so, had he taken back his real identity? Had Raphael come back to haunt Lucien?

Aurore pictured the man who had watched her in the churchyard. His stance had been that of the youth she had met on Bayou Lafourche, proud, cautious, ready—if necessary—to attack. The years had heightened his masculinity; he was someone men wouldn’t easily challenge or women easily forget. Since seeing him that afternoon, she had thought of little else. Rafe and her father’s letters were now entwined.

And what of her father’s letters? Discrepancies proved that Lucien had been trying to hide important pieces of a puzzle. Sometimes he referred to Marcelite as a stranger; at other times he wrote as if she were someone he had been long acquainted with. In one letter he was poetic about the little girl, Angelle, how sweet she had been, how healthy and full of life. He had eloquently captured the warmth of a child’s chubby arms around his neck, the feel of her childish kisses.

One letter dated 1894, not quite a year after the storm, was more garbled than the others. He rambled at length about his father-in-law, Antoine, and demands he had made. But as the letters continued, Antoine was never mentioned again. Near the end of his life—and bemoaning his poor health—her father had seemed only to care that his acts not be held against him.

There were mysteries still, but the mystery she had lived with for so long might be explained. If Rafe was Raphael, perhaps he had blamed Lucien for his mother’s and sister’s deaths, and set out to avenge them.

But why had he chosen her as a vehicle? Had she simply been the easiest avenue to Lucien? Had he believed that her father loved her so much that her shame would finish his destruction?

She paced the cottage with a full cup of cold coffee clutched in her hands. Rafe had come for the dedication. Had he followed her? Did he want her to suffer more punishment?

The house seemed unbearable. She went outside to the gallery, where a warm breeze ruffled her hair. As she stared into the darkness, she realized that if he had wanted to punish her again, a million opportunities had probably passed. Perhaps he had simply come to make peace with his memories, just as she had.

Peace. Could a man like Rafe really hope for such a thing? Even as she told herself it was impossible, the picture of a small boy in a storm-battered skiff crowded her mind. When the lantern came into view in the presbytery window, it must have seemed like a beacon from heaven. Then Lucien, the boy’s only chance for survival, had abandoned the tow rope, and the skiff had rushed toward certain death. If Rafe was Raphael, as much as she hated him, how could she believe that he needed peace less than she?

There were so many unanswered questions. She was halfway to the beach before she realized where she was going. She couldn’t endure the cottage any more than she could endure her own thoughts. She didn’t want to think of Rafe as a frightened child; she didn’t want to think of her father as a coward. Most of all, she didn’t want to forgive Rafe Cantrelle for what he had done to her.

The waves were almost calm. A nearly full moon hung low in the darkening sky and silvered the water. She had been wrong to come. Tonight there would be no memories of childhood days. Despite the placid surf, she saw waves as tall as the island oaks and heard the screams of children. She covered her face, but the picture grew more horrifying.

A man’s voice spoke from the shadows of a sand dune. “My sister was the first to die, but my mother followed quickly. I wanted to dive after them, but I was too frightened to let go of the skiff. I clung until my fingers were so cramped that I couldn’t.”

She dropped her hands and stared as Rafe stepped away from the dune. “Who are you?” She moved toward him until she was only a few feet away. “Who are you?”

“I’m a ghost. At least, that’s what your father thought ten years ago, when I told him I’d come back from the dead.”

“Then you are Raphael?”

He lifted a brow. “I was.”

“Did you follow me here?”

“I came for my own reasons.”

“What were they?”

“Why should I tell you?” He turned and began to walk.

“No!” She ran after him and grabbed his arm. “I know what my father did. Today, in the churchyard, Father Grimaud gave me letters that he and my father exchanged.”

He stopped. She could feel the muscles tense in his arm. “Letters,” he said. “Filled with the truth, I suppose.”

“He said he was towing a boat with three passengers. He said he let go of the rope before he reached the presbytery.”

In the moonlight, his expression was inscrutable. “Did he tell you who the passengers were?”

“He gave names.”

Without warning, he grasped her shoulders. “Did he tell you who we were? What we were to him?”

She tried to move away, but his grip tightened. “Let me go, Rafe.”

“What, or you’ll scream? Do it. End it all right here. Scream, and if anyone hears you, tell them a man of color dared to touch you. You’ll have your revenge right here and now!”

“What were you to him?” she shouted.

“I was an abomination! But my mother was his mistress, and my sister was his child. Angelle was my sister—and yours!”

She went limp. “No. You’re lying.”

“Am I? Do you think I wasted my youth hating a man who simply wasn’t brave enough to haul our boat to safety? Am I that stupid?” He thrust her backward, turned and walked away.

“You’re lying!”

He continued to walk.

She was torn between running back to the cottage and running after him. She was at his side again before the decision was fully formed. “Why are you saying these things?”

“I would have said them years ago, if you would have listened.”

“Why should I believe you?”

He stopped. “Your father gave my mother gifts in return for her affection. I don’t think she loved him, but she adored her children. She saw Lucien as a path out of the poverty and shame that my birth had doomed her to. I think she believed he’d take us away from the chénière someday.”

“And the child she was carrying? It was my father’s child?”

He faced her. “What child are you talking about?”

She watched the truth settle over him. She hadn’t really believed his story until that moment. But for an instant sorrow gleamed in his eyes, and she knew. She knew.

“No!” She looked away, her fist to her mouth.

“I never knew she was pregnant. She hid it from me, but apparently not from him.”

“Even if this is true, how could you blame my father for what he did? He would have died if he hadn’t released the towrope. Can you blame him for trying to save his own life when everything else was hopeless?”

He gave a harsh laugh. “Is that what his letters said?”

“Then what’s the truth?”

He grasped her chin and turned her head until they were eye to eye. “Do you really want to know, Aurore? Or do you want to go on thinking I had no reason for what I did? The last is easier. You’ve already settled into it nicely.”

She pushed his hand away, but she didn’t flinch. “What should I believe?”

“That your father cut the towrope and doomed us to death because we had become an inconvenience.”

“No! How can you know that?”

“Because I remember everything that was said that night. My mother had begun to make demands on him, and he’d finally realized what I was. We were nearly at the presbytery door when he took an ax to the rope. We were in easy reach of safety. Easy reach for all of us! Your father killed my mother. He killed his own daughter and his unborn child. And he tried to kill me!”

She wanted to refute his words, but she couldn’t. All the pages of Lucien’s letters fell into place; the fact that he’d written them was proof.

“But what did my grandfather have to do with this?” Even as she asked, the answer became clear. Somehow Antoine had discovered Lucien’s love nest and insisted that Lucien end his connections there or face the consequences. She remembered that Antoine had come to Grand Isle unexpectedly, and that because he had, he had died in the hurricane.

He shook her off. “I don’t know anything about your grandfather. But can anything about your family be hard to believe? You know what kind of man your father was.”

“You were young. Can you be sure?”

“By the time I was found in the marsh, I was older than you’ll ever be. And now we’re both sure, aren’t we?”

“You plotted revenge all those years? And when I came along, you knew you’d found a way to reach my father?”

“Exactly.”

Anger blotted out shame. “You destroyed my life! I had nothing to do with this. I was Lucien’s victim, too, and you knew it! You saw the way he treated me. He never loved me. Wasn’t destroying the Dowager enough for you?”

“Nothing could have been enough.”

“So you used me, lied to me, got me with child, then took my baby, all because of my father’s sins? What kind of man are you?”

“A satisfied one.”

She slapped him, but it wasn’t enough. Her hands balled into fists, and she began to beat against his chest. She was sobbing. She didn’t care if he killed her in return; she only wanted to inflict a small measure of the pain he had caused her.

He grabbed her hands and held them still, but she kicked at his legs. “Bastard!” She choked on the word. “Bastard!”

“Don’t forget the rest of it!” He shoved her away. “Don’t forget what kind of a bastard I am. My father was a mulatto, with his master’s blood running through his veins. My mother loved him, but he was murdered because of his race. And here I am, their child, raised white, living black, neither and both!”

She covered her ears, but she could still hear him.

“Remember exactly what kind of a bastard I am! The kind you wouldn’t listen to when I tried to explain. I didn’t take our baby. You gave her to me. And if I hadn’t taken her, you would have given her to a stranger! You’re no different from Lucien. You sacrificed your own daughter so your life would be easier!”

“I’m not like my father!”

“No, you’re worse. Lucien knew what he was, even if he didn’t care. You think you’re a good woman who’s been terribly wronged. But look at yourself closely. What do you see?”

“I had nothing to do with my father’s sin. Our daughter had nothing to do with it. And still you’ve destroyed us both!”

“You’ve destroyed yourself. You gave away your child, married a monster—and why?” He laughed; it was a twisted, tortured sound. “Because you were afraid of contamination.”

She saw his torture, his shattered pride and rage. Shame and denial warred inside her. “No! You never loved me. You used me for revenge! That’s why I hated you! That’s why I couldn’t keep Nicolette! I couldn’t bear to see your face every time I looked at her.”

He stared at her. “You’re lying, and you’re wrong. I loved you.”

Everything she had built her life on began to crumble. “No.”

“Not at first. I’d forgotten how. But a little at a time. I looked for Lucien in you, and didn’t find him. I tried to tell myself you’d hate me if you discovered why I had come into your life, but I didn’t listen to my own warnings. Then I started to believe I could have it all. Revenge, love…” He shrugged. “When you told me you were carrying our child, I wanted us to go away together and start a new life.”

Her voice trembled. “You sabotaged the Dowager. ”

“I told you. I wanted it all.”

“And what did you think when you watched my father’s ship go down in flames? What did you think when he lay on the floor at your feet? For those few minutes, did you finally have it all?”

“Yes.”

“No.” She moved closer. She could see his eyes. His gaze was steady, but he couldn’t hide what he felt. “No, you didn’t. You knew you’d lost everything, didn’t you?” When he started to turn away, she grabbed his arm. “You knew you’d become like him, and you knew you’d never have me.”

His expression grew cold. “No, I knew I’d never have you when Lucien told you what I was. I saw the horror in your eyes, and I knew there wasn’t any hope, that nothing I could say could ever overcome that, not a confession, not a plea for forgiveness. I was branded by my father’s blood, and so was our child.”

She wanted to deny it, to tell him that she had been horrified by his acts, not his heritage. But she couldn’t, because it wasn’t completely true.

The hate that had filled her for ten long years vanished as if it had never been. Turmoil filled her instead, a rising tide of emotions, and images of the man she had once loved above everything else.

“How did it come to this?” she whispered. “Are we as helpless as the people killed by the storm that night? Don’t we have a say over our lives, or do we spin from one tragedy to the next, causing more tragedy for our children? What about them? You’re right, I married a monster because of you and what you did to me. And now my son pays every day because of my choice of a father for him. Where does it end? Where?”

She dropped her hand. She was sobbing again. He moved closer. “Do you even have to ask? We’ll pay forever. Both of us. I’ve despised you for ten years, but I still have dreams about you. I remember you the way you were. I dream that we’ve gone away together, that I wake up in the morning and you’re beside me, and when you look at me, you see a man. Not a black one, not a white one.” He touched his chest. “A man.”

“No!”

“Do you dream of me? Of what we could have had? Or did your father destroy that, too?”

“Don’t, Rafe.”

“Answer me.”

The dreams had been so deeply hidden that she hadn’t admitted to them. Now she knew they had been with her since the night of the fire. Once she had believed in love and in herself. She had dared to reach for happiness, and still did, when she slept. But in her waking hours she had reached for little but revenge. She had struggled to regain everything she had lost, everything except the one thing she really wanted.

She couldn’t tell him; she would never be free if she said the words out loud. “Now I know everything. Be content with that.” She tried to turn away, but he clamped his hand on her shoulder.

“Content? Can you imagine I feel anything like contentment? I don’t care if you understand me. I want you to look at me and see exactly what I am. I’m a better man than the one you married, a better man than your father. I’m the man who could have made you happy.”

“You killed my father!”

“No! Greed killed him. And he took you down with him, Aurore. There’s nothing left of the woman I loved. Nothing!”

Her cheeks were wet with tears. “How could it have come to this? Love ’s a poor word for what I felt for you. You were all the things I’d never even dared to hope for. When you betrayed me, all those things died. If there’s nothing left of the woman you loved, that’s why.”

He touched her cheek. Not gently, but as if he needed a test to see if her tears were real. She thought his hands trembled. “Don’t shut your eyes. Look at me. What do you see? The man you loved? Or the man who betrayed you? A man, or a man whose blood is tainted?”

“Can it matter?”

“It matters!”

“I see Rafe Cantrelle, a man I’ve loved and a man I’ve hated. A man who is what he is despite and because of his heritage. A man.”

“Do you see a man who still wants you?”

She saw desire in his eyes then, desire as new as this night and as old as their first meeting. An answering flicker stirred within her; she turned away to hide it. “No.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “I see a woman who’s learned to lie.”

She could feel each of his fingers through her blouse, drawing her toward him. “I’m going back now. Let me go.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You won’t force me.”

“If you see that much, then try looking into yourself. Tell me what’s there.”

“Nothing! You left me nothing!”

“I left you my heart.”

She faced him. She saw that he meant it, and that he hated himself for it. She saw how he had tried to protect himself and how he had failed. She saw ten years of hell, but, most terrible of all, she couldn’t tell if the hell was his, or a reflection of her own. “No…”

He dropped his hand. “Our lives have led us here. If you’re strong enough to challenge fate, run away now.”

She couldn’t run away. In despair, she realized that she couldn’t move.

He cradled her face in his hands and held it still. His lips were warm and searching, and as he drank her tears she knew there would be no force. She wouldn’t run; she wouldn’t submit. She would consent; she would rejoice, as if ten years and terrible betrayal had never separated them.

His taste, his scent, the texture of his skin, all were unbearably familiar. He moved his fingers through her hair, not to possess or punish, but to savor the feel of it. She was exhausted from struggle; there was nothing left inside her to summon a voice of reason. The only realities were his lips on hers, his fingers releasing the buttons on her dress, his hands against her skin, her heart beating faster.

The years faded away, and she was a young woman in her beloved’s arms. Rafe had taught her what little she knew of love, and she had never forgotten it. Everything that had happened since seemed a blasphemy, and his body was redemption. There was no cruelty in his hands, no punishment in his lips. As he took, he returned pleasure until she was heavy with it.

“This will change your life,” he whispered.

She remembered their night on the Dowager, and her response. “Dear God, I hope so.” And it was true. She wanted nothing so much as change. She wanted to be the woman who had believed in love. She wanted to forget the lies, the deceptions, the secrets, of the past ten years. She wanted him. She wanted to be reborn.

His flesh was warm, and the breeze from the Gulf was cool against her naked skin. He pulled her into a hidden place beside a dune, where the sand was as soft as clouds against her back. In a voice hoarse with emotion, he told her that he loved her, and she knew it was true, just as she knew that he hated himself because it was a weakness.

There was nothing to say in return. Her body warmed to his as if it had been frozen in time. As he entered her, she knew that she had never stopped loving him, and that she never would. They were doomed to love each other.

They were doomed.

“Look at me. Be sure you know who I am.”

At the height of passion she opened her eyes and stared into his. She knew who he was. She saw his torment, his struggles, the boy, the man. The man who would haunt her dreams forever. “I know.” She wrapped her arms and legs around him. She wanted to swallow him, to keep him inside her forever, to never relinquish a moment of their coming together. “I know!”

He spilled his seed inside her as she found her own pleasure.

Afterward, they lay without touching. Shadows moved between them, visions of moments that had passed and moments still to come. Tears choked her, and she didn’t know which of them she wanted to cry for first.

“Will you tell me about Nicolette?” she asked at last. “Or will you still punish me?”

He turned to her. “Nicolette is her mother’s daughter. In the end, it was impossible to resist loving her, no matter how dangerous it was.”

She gave a small, choked cry. He gathered her close and held her tightly against him. “You gave her to me when she was an infant, but the day I saw you in Audubon Park was the day you made her mine.”

“Then you’re a real father to her?”

“I try.”

“Tell me about her. Please?”

He told her the little things, and the big. She listened avidly.

In too short a time, he had finished. “She’d rather sing than talk, and usually does. She exasperated every music teacher I found until Clarence Valentine took her under his wing. She knows the words to any song after she’s heard it once. She sings for me every night before she goes to bed. Sometimes, hours later, when I go upstairs to my room, I still hear her humming.”

She couldn’t speak. This was what she had wanted for her daughter, but the picture tortured her. She had sacrificed this: contented evenings, the warm arms of the only man she had ever loved, a daughter she could never replace.

“She asks about her mother more often now,” he said. “Next time I’ll tell her that her mother loved her. That she wanted her very much and watches over her still.”

“Please.”

He stroked her hair. “We haven’t been given a second chance.”

“This…tonight…will only make things harder for us.”

He turned so that she could see his face. “I’m going to leave New Orleans.”

“No…”

“I’m going to take Nicolette and go. I’ll start a new life, and so will you.”

“Rafe, you can’t leave. Not now.”

“Especially now.”

Even as she protested again, she knew he was right. Their lives were so terribly entwined that disaster was inevitable. She couldn’t leave Hugh; she couldn’t live openly with Rafe. There was no place where together they could keep Nicolette safe from hatred and prejudice, no place safe from Henry’s reach.

“Will I know where you are?”

“No. Your husband’s a dangerous man. What would he do to you if he discovered you no longer hate me?”

“I just need to know where you’ll be. I just need to be able to picture you there.”

“Don’t picture me. Forget I exist. We’ve nearly destroyed each other already. You have to be completely free of me or I will destroy you, and you me.”

“Why did it have to come to this?”

“Because neither one of us was pure enough to challenge fate and win.” He brushed her hair off her cheek. “Have you forgiven me for everything I’ve done?”

“Have you forgiven me?”

They stared into each other’s eyes and knew that neither would ever really forget the pain endured at the other’s hands. It was as much their legacy as the love that had brought them to this place and time.

“You’ll be gone, but you’ll still be in my life.” She kissed him, but her lips trembled. “I’ll always wonder where you are. I’ll think about Nicolette until the day my heart stops beating. I’ve always prayed I’d catch another glimpse of her. Every time I turn a corner, I hope that by some chance she’ll be there. Now I’ll never see her again.” Her voice caught.

“It would just be harder for you if you did.”

“No! I’d have a memory of her, a real memory. Rafe, can I see her before you go? Talk to her? Hear her sing? Just once?”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“We could be careful. Please! It’s all I’ll ask.”

“I don’t know.”

She knew she had to be content with that. She touched his face, memorizing all the planes and angles, the textures of his skin. “Remember I loved you. Wherever you go, remember that. I can give you that to keep.”

He kissed her, and no more words were exchanged. Their bodies said what their lips could not. When he was gone, she dressed in the shadows. It was almost morning before she returned to the cottage and packed to go home.