Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection) Read online

  Following that happy event, Justin went into the country to his plantation to inform his family of his approaching marriage. His absence relieved Claire of the necessity of entertaining him of an evening and removed the possibility of the many parties that would have been given to celebrate their coming nuptials. He returned when two weeks had elapsed, and the morning after his return the corbeille de noce, a basket of gifts from the groom arrived. It contained a handkerchief edged in lace as fine as cobwebs, a fine hat veil of lace to screen her complexion from the sun and a fan of white silk edged in lace and marabou tufts and with sticks inlaid with mother-of-pearl. There was a cashmere shawl in a delicate shade of blossom pink, so fine it could be pulled through a ring, two pairs of kid gloves with meticulously set-in fingers, a comb for her hair with gold and mother-of-pearl inlay, a cameo of Louis XVII, and a pair of earrings, pearls shaped like teardrops.

  Madame de Hauterive helped Claire unpack the basket, exclaiming as each treasure was lifted from the tissue paper. And before she took the basket away to the salon to be placed on display she sent Claire a thoughtful look, her eyebrows raised. “He doesn’t appear to be a clench-fist,” she said.

  Claire was forced to agree, but she had no enthusiasm for the gifts. The arrival of the corbeille de noce was a signal. Three days more to the wedding. Three days during which time she was not allowed to leave the confines of the house.

  “Claire, wait!”

  She turned back at the foot of the stairs to let Jean-Claude, leaving the salon behind her, catch up with her.

  “I haven’t been able to talk to you,” he complained, “since this whole thing came up. You are always surrounded by women, seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers, and maids rushing around with armloads of trousseau linens. And if it’s not that, it’s my mother guarding you, or at least it seems so. I’m forever being told to take myself off.”

  “Poor Jean-Claude. I suppose we have rather pushed you around from here to there,” she said with a quick, nervous smile.

  “It isn’t that—”

  “You aren’t feeling—hurt, are you?” She covered his hand where it rested on the newel post, a coaxing smile in her eyes.

  “Perhaps a little,” he agreed with a wry grin. “You are a beautiful girl. I had grown used to thinking of you as mine, and was quite looking forward to being your husband—in a few years’ time.”

  “I rather thought France and the tour mattered more. I am sorry I won’t be here to wish you bon voyage.”

  “Yes, so am I, and I’m glad I am to go abroad at last, but that isn’t—”

  “Are you put out then at being jilted? Have your friends been saying things you don’t like?”

  “I’ve had a few nudges and the odd look or two, but nothing to signify, not if you are happy. But that’s just it, Claire. Are you happy? You seem pale and thinner, not at all the blooming bride-to-be. Is—anything wrong? I mean—I know I am putting this clumsily, but I am concerned for you. I have this feeling there is something you are not telling.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” she said, smiling into his brown eyes, touching with the tip of one finger the earnest frown between his thick brows. “It is just that everything must be done at once, before Lent. I am a little tired, and I suppose all brides are a bit on edge. It seems so strange, to be leaving all of you and going away to live with people I have never met. But I expect I will soon become used to it—with J-Justin’s help.” How hard it was to say his name so casually while the very thought of what lay before her filled her nights with distress.

  “You are sure? Mother assures me it is a love-match, but I thought you quite disliked the man on sight.”

  “Did you not know that love often begins that way?” she said, forcing a light laugh.

  “Fickle, that’s what you are.” His face relaxed. “A cruel jade, leading men on. I should count myself lucky to have escaped from your toils.”

  “Indeed you should. I would have led you a merry dance, always reminding you that we are of an age and interfering in your affairs. But, of course, if you prefer to arrive in Paris posing as a young man with a broken heart to make yourself interesting, I have no objection to being the villainess in the piece!”

  He grinned. “A tongue like an adder! You will be lucky if Justin doesn’t break your neck for you if you give him any of your fine parole.”

  “Yes—” she answered, but the smile curving her lips did not reach her eyes.

  Her wedding day dawned with thunder. It was so dark in the room that Zaza, her maid, had to light the night candle standing on the commode table before she brought the coffee tray to her bedside. Half-way through her breakfast it began to rain, a slashing downpour that rattled on the roof and beat against the great leaves of the banana tree in the courtyard outside her bedroom window. It was still raining, though at a more gentle tempo, in the afternoon, when the hairdresser was shown into her room.

  The woman, Madame Elspeth, was a mulatto of middle age, with dark piercing eyes, and with her hair decently covered by a madras tignon. She carried the tools of her trade about with her in the pockets of a voluminous overall apron, and at once commandeered the dressing table and began to lay her tongs, pomade, heating frame, pins, and pot of lacquer out upon it. The heating frame was unfolded and set up over a candle, then the tongs were placed upon it. Claire was urged forward to the chair before the mirror with profuse compliments on the beauty of her abundant, freshly washed hair, a linen towel was placed over her shoulders, and the ordeal began.

  First her hair was parted in the center and then drawn back to the crown of her head. Small curls were snipped short at the temples and cheeks and deftly curled with the tongs, then touched with just a suspicion of lacquer. The extra length of her hair was formed into a chignon at the crown, with the free ends being formed with the tongs into masses of shining ringlets that fell down the back of her head. A crown of orange blossoms was then carefully placed on the coiffure with a few of the curls gently teased forward to curl artlessly around it.

  “C’est magnifique!” the hairdresser exclaimed, stepping back and clasping her hands in ecstasy.

  “Most becoming,” her aunt said grudgingly, a little frown touching her forehead as she surveyed the hectic flush that glowed on Claire’s cheeks. “Take care that you do nothing to disturb it. Madame Elspeth must come to me now, and it still lacks an hour or more before time to begin dressing. You might occupy yourself in the meantime with over-seeing the packing of your bandboxes. They have been left to last. Monsieur Leroux has requested that they be placed with your trunk on the traveling coach as soon as it arrives.”

  “Yes, of course,” Claire answered, slipping the towel from about her neck and rising to her feet. Her hats and veils were all that was left in the great armoire that took up one wall of her room, except for her wedding gown. She moved to open the great doors of the armoire and lift the hats down while the hairdresser gathered up her tools and her aunt waited impatiently with her hand on the door knob.

  “Ah,” the hairdresser said as the door swung open, “the wedding ensemble. May I not see?” She glided forward to stand beside Claire.

  The gown was of white silk muslin with small puff sleeves and a low scooped décolleté rising at the back of the neck to a finely pleated standing ruff. The skirt, falling from the empire waistline, had several gauze-like layers. It was full in the back with a demi-train. The hem was edged with a deep frill of valenciennes lace. The small bodice was covered with the same lace and trimmed with seed pearls that her aunt, and her aunt’s mother and grandmother before her, had worn on their wedding dresses. She was allowed to use them because her aunt had no daughter, but she would be expected to give them up if one of Jean-Claude’s children proved to be a girl. On the nearest shelf were laid out the full-length white kid gloves, the short, lace-edged veil, the white silk slippers trimmed with satin love knots, and the fan Justin had sent her which she would carry under her bridal bouquet of orange blossoms and white roses.
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  “Such workmanship, so many tiny stitches, incroyable,” the hairdresser murmured breathlessly, leaning into the armoire to lift the hem of the gown and peer at the handmade lace. “You will be a beauty beyond compare. You will drive your husband mad. Ah, how I envy you,” the woman went on rapturously.

  Claire thanked her a little shortly, conscious of the pins that held her hair so tightly and the pressing weight of her orange blossom crown. A headache was beginning just behind her eyes and she wanted nothing more than to be alone so that she could bathe her temples with cologne and sit down for a few minutes without having to smile and pretend or think of what must be done next. But no sooner had they gone than Zaza was sent to her, and the bandboxes with their French landscape scenes painted on their wooden sides must be filled and made ready. She had still not been able to sit down for a moment when her aunt returned to her and summarily dismissed her maid.

  “What do you think?” she began as soon as the door closed behind the girl. “Justin Leroux has put away his quadroon mistress. He made her a handsome settlement, gave her the deed to the house in which she was staying, and the gaudy yellow carriage and the matched cream-colored pair he had bought for her, and then walked away while she was vowing her revenge to the heavens!”

  “You—you must be mistaken,” Claire said faintly. That Justin would have a mistress was not too surprising, but the possibility had not crossed her mind and she hardly knew how to answer her aunt, who stood waiting for her reaction.

  “I had it straight from the hairdresser. The woman claims to know Belle-Marie—that is the woman’s name—well. She has often been called in to do her hair. And this woman, you know, always knows everything. How many times have you heard it said that the hairdressers hear everything that goes on in Nouvelle Orléans? Well, have you nothing to say? Don’t you find it gratifying to know he has done this for you?”

  “I prefer to believe that it is because he has decided to leave New Orleans. It might have happened in any case.”

  “Oh? Hasn’t it occurred to you that if he wished he could arrange to have his mistress with him on the plantation? He obviously does not wish it. And by all accounts the woman was incredibly stupid. She treated him to a display of despair and hysterics, threatening to kill herself on one hand and vowing revenge on the other. It would be enough to disgust any man. You will do well to remember it.”

  “I will try,” she said with irony, reflecting that it was highly unlikely that she would ever feel so strongly about anyone.

  “And for the love of God, Claire, pull yourself out of this lethargy you have fallen into, or you will have your uncle and Jean-Claude suspecting your reluctance to go to the altar!”

  “It is my head,” she said, “it aches.”

  “Then you had best lie down or you will be unfit for the journey tonight, which if I may say so is the most ill-advised piece of planning I have ever heard of. I can’t think what our friends will say when they hear that you do not intend to stay here for the usual five days. To spend your wedding night racketing across the swamps! It is uncivilized, so bourgeois. But then this whole affair is strange beyond belief. I don’t suppose I can cavil at anything your future husband takes it into his head to do!”

  “No,” Claire said. “I find I do not care when we go, if go we must.”

  “That is fine for you. You don’t have to stay here and answer all the curious questions.”

  “I would have thought that you had become expert at that after these last few weeks.”

  “Yes, I have sworn grand comme le bras that you are blissfully in love, and you are not going to make a liar of me. Lie down now. Here, let me place this bolster just so, under your neck. It will protect your coiffure. It quite reminds me of the neck rests we used to use when I was a girl to protect the elaborate frizzed, lacquered, and powdered styles we affected. You have never known agony until you have worn one of those structures of pins and curls, garlands and ribbons and beads for two weeks. They weighed pounds, I do swear.” Having seen Claire settled, her aunt rang for the maid and stood waiting.

  When Zaza appeared she instructed her to prepare a bath, and since Zaza had already heated the water it was soon done. The maid went to the armoire to lay out the wedding gown, and she had it in her arms along with the matching chemise and the underdress, when suddenly, with a scream, she let the silken garments fall.

  “A gris-gris!” she babbled. “A gris-gris!”

  She turned wide, terrified eyes toward them, pointing with a trembling finger to the bottom of the armoire.

  “What are you talking about, you stupid creature?” Madame de Hauterive demanded, moving toward the girl. “Pick up that gown at once!”

  “Yes, madame, but—but it is a doll of death! For Mam’zelle Claire!”

  Madame de Hauterive hesitated, then leaned into the armoire and gingerly picked up a scrap of dirty white material. It was a doll, a rag of stuffed cloth dressed in a caricature of a wedding gown and veil, and impaled through the body by a long, sharp splinter of wood. As she moved it from its resting place a black ball fell from the rags, landing on the floor with a dull thump.

  Zaza gasped, and, snatching the gown from the floor near the ball, moved hurriedly away to stand shivering in the far corner.

  “What was that?” Claire asked, sitting up in bed so that she could see.

  “It is the conjure ball, mam’zelle,” Zaza whispered. “It—it is of wax—and black—for evil—”

  Even Madame de Hauterive had lost a little of her color. “How did this loathsome thing get in here?” she asked stridently. “Who dares to strew my house with this immoral, heathen voodoo magic?”

  “The—the woman who was here, the hair-dresser,” the maid stammered. “It is said that she knows the Voodooienne.”

  “And she was near the armoire.” There was a look of revulsion on the older woman’s face.

  “But why?” Claire said. “I hardly knew her, and I certainly never harmed her.”

  “For Belle-Marie, I would imagine. It seems the kind of thing you might expect from her kind. I expect she paid the hairdresser to get it into the house.”

  “What did she expect to gain? I’m not a servant to be frightened into illness.”

  “Revenge, I would imagine, was her aim. She must think you are the cause of her displacement. And as for effectiveness, you have felt unwell since she placed this—this thing in your room.”

  “It is the hairstyle, the tightness!”

  “Are you certain?” her aunt asked in a strained voice.

  “Yes, of course! It couldn’t be anything else.” What was the matter with her aunt? Surely she didn’t believe in this voodoo cult so favored by their African slaves and the free men and women of color in New Orleans?

  “I knew a woman once, a French woman, whose husband took a mistress. She went to a voodoo queen called Sanitè Dèdè who made a gris-gris for her to use to keep her husband at home. She carried the woman one of her husband’s gloves and Sanitè Dèdè filled it with—oh, I don’t know, dust, and bits of bone and sugar. She also gave her powders in paper twists to put in his food. But as impossible as it may seem, the voodoo worked.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t scoff, girl. There are strange things that have happened. I could tell you things that you, as a protected jeune fille, have never heard of. These people who have been given into our care, the slaves, have ancient ways we cannot understand. I have known maids who went demented, men who had died for no known reason except for the sprinkling of a little dust, the burning of a few candles of a different hue. I don’t suppose you will heed me, but what the quadroon has done once can be done again.”

  Claire felt a pang of disquiet. To have her usually stolid aunt upset by the voodoo gris-gris gave it more importance.

  “Fetch me a towel,” her aunt told Zaza, and when it was brought she picked up the wax conjure ball with it to protect her fingers, then laid the doll on its folds. “I will throw these things in
the fire in the kitchen and say a Hail Mary for your safety, as insurance. Try not to think of it. Get some rest, if you can. You have a long evening before you.”

  But Claire did not try to rest. It would have been impossible. If her thoughts had allowed it, her pounding head and the turmoil in her mind would not. She bathed slowly in the copper tub filled with warm, scented water, and then, though she felt ill with nerves, she let Zaza slip the low-necked chemise over her head, then the underdress of white silk. Finally, the wedding gown itself was settled carefully into place and the ribbon draw-tapes pulled tightly about her rib cage, just under the bust, and tied in the back. Kneeling before her, Zaza rolled gossamer silk stockings up her legs and fastened them above the knee with rose embroidered garters, then placed the white silk slippers on her feet. For jewelry, she wore nothing but the groom’s gift of pearl teardrops.

  When she had repaired the slight disorder of Claire’s coiffure, touched her face with rice paper squares to remove the sheen and whisked red rose petals across her cheekbones, she stepped back and clasped her hands together.

  “Ravishing, mam’zelle. Utterly ravishing. If that one, that Belle-Marie, could see you now she would dry up and fly away with the envy!”

  Claire stared at herself in the mirror, hoping the glitter in her eyes might be mistaken for sparkle. Then she smiled at the maid. “You deserve the credit, Zaza. You are a genius. I wish I could take you with me, it would be so much more comfortable having someone I know and could talk to near me. But my—fiancé says that he does not wish my uncle to provide me with a maid, he prefers to do so himself.”

  “Yes, I understand, mam’zelle. You must bow to the wishes of the man you marry, it is expected. But I, too, will miss you.” She smiled impishly. “There is no pleasure in dressing madame, your aunt, only a vast challenge!”