Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection) Page 6

  Justin moved slightly to one side, and she knew he had been watching her face in the mirror when he tossed the brushes to the top of the table and turned to face her. With a brief gesture, he dismissed her maid, then shrugged into the coat his valet held ready before dismissing him also.

  “Well, mon ange,” he said, a glint of laughter in his eyes. “How do you like your married life so far?”

  So he had noticed her embarrassment and it had amused him. It did not matter that he was always up and dressed before she awoke. He still managed to suffuse the proceedings of his toilette before her with an air of casually accepted intimacy. Or was it only in her mind? She did not know.

  “Have you nothing to say?” he insisted.

  “I—I have no objection,” she answered, staring into her cup of coffee so black it gave back her reflection.

  “Not even to our living arrangement?” He reached out and took the coffee cup from her hand and placed it on the tray.

  “It is your room,” she said stiffly, avoiding his eyes.

  “Our room,” he corrected, then went on. “But tell me, how do you feel this morning?”

  “Very well. I would like to get up today and go outside, now that the five days are over.”

  For five days, six counting the day of her arrival that she had spent in drugged sleep, she had been confined to this one room. It was not just her injury, it was also the custom that decreed that a bride and groom must spend the first five days after their wedding in confinement together. Justin, under the circumstances, had not observed the custom strictly, but he had spent much of his time with her. Their meals were brought to them on trays, they had received no one, not even the family, after that first day. They had played backgammon, read, and sometimes she had sketched amusing little flower portraits with pen and ink, as she had been taught, while Justin worked on the plantation accounts, propping the great journals in his lap while he sat in one of the low slipper chairs made for putting on slippers, shoes, and boots, not for comfortable resting. Often they talked—skirting gingerly around anything that bordered on the personal—and in the afternoons they napped, he on the day bed and she alone on the great four poster that reminded her of a catafalque. But in the early morning and late afternoon he left her while he rode out visiting the fields, searching for a breath of air, or so he said. Claire wondered if he enjoyed the reprieve from her company as much as she enjoyed relaxing away from his. Only the doctor, a tall, middle-aged, gangling man with limp fingers and an ingratiating manner, had been allowed to disturb them. He agreed with Octavia’s diagnosis, ate an enormous supper, spent the night, and left early the next morning with his fee in his pocket.

  “If you will wait until after dinner, I will carry you out onto the back gallery,” Justin answered her.

  “I’m sure I can manage. I am not nearly the invalid you all make of me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of allowing you to put your feet to the floor,” he said shaking his head, a curl of amusement at the corner of his mouth. “I will give orders that you are not to move until I return.”

  “Will you?” she countered. “Then I will wait until everyone’s back is turned.”

  “I can see I will have to tie you to the bedposts,” he said with a mock sigh.

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “No? I promise you I would. Gently, of course.”

  “Oh, very well,” she agreed, looking away, willing the flush on her cheeks to subside.

  “Come, Claire,” he said softly, his eyes on her gold-tipped lashes. “You can’t begrudge me this small victory. These past few days have been yours.”

  She raised startled eyes to his. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think you do. Underneath your injured ribs you must be laughing inside. You won.”

  “What?”

  “You agreed to ‘nothing else—’“ he quoted.

  Comprehension came, and with it, confusion. There was a grain of truth in what he implied. She had welcomed the injuries of her accident, since it prevented the consummation of their marriage. But to say so would sound like a challenge she knew only too well he would answer with all speed. And yet, to deny the accusation would be to invite his embrace.

  He laughed, a low sound that had a hollow ring, and reached out to lift her chin so he could look into her eyes. “Don’t panic. I am not forcing you to the wall. I find, to tell you the truth, that I have enjoyed our days together. I enjoyed your smiles that were neither afraid nor—designed to delude others into thinking you were deliriously happy. They were friendly smiles, I think, unaffected, without guile—for a change.”

  Claire wished, as the quiet seconds passed that she could agree, could say that she too had enjoyed their days together, but the lie stuck in her throat. She had not enjoyed them. She had known constantly that she was only there because Justin willed it, And she had never been certain, given his reputation for ruthlessness, that he would consider a cracked rib and a few bruises a deterrent to his desires. His presence, regardless of what he was doing, made her nervous, less perhaps in the last day or two, but still she was certain she would never be able to ignore his presence as he so easily could her own.

  A look of cynicism came into his eyes as she remained silent. “I am a fool. But I find I prefer a smile in your eyes to hate or fear. And so I will wait—for as long as my short patience will allow. In the meantime I would advise you to take great care. Your best protection will be in total indifference, or in a consistent expression of distaste, for I warn you, I intend to take advantage of your first moment of weakness.”

  She drew in her breath, sharply, but before she could turn her head he dropped a kiss upon her parted lips. Then he got to his feet and, picking up his hat from the table beside the bed, stepped through the open french window out onto the gallery. She was so bemused she did not hear him walk away.

  Rousing herself from her reverie, Claire picked up the small silver bell from the table beside her bed and rang for Rachel. She knew her maid would be waiting not far away. As she gave the order for her bath to be prepared, she heard a louder bell. It was one of several hanging on the small enclosed gallery, or loggia, in the back. Her room, she had discovered, was off by itself at the rear of the house, flanked on either side by galleries. According to Justin, the house was of the French planter style perfected in the West Indies. It was built in a great square of nine rooms, three wide and three deep, surrounded on three sides by galleries to shade and protect the house from the sun and rain. Built up on tall, massive brick pillars in the manner known as a raised basement, its lower floor was used for storage only, since in the spring it was subject to flooding from the bayou that looped and curved around the plantation. The raised basement gave the house the look of two stories, a look enhanced by the hipped roof pierced by dormers. The main floor was the only one used by the family, and was reached by sweeping staircases, front and back, leading from the ground to the second floor.

  In the center front of the house, directly before the stairs, was the salon which opened by high, wide double doors into the dining room, which in turn gave onto the back loggia. On each side of these rooms ran the bedrooms, each opening out onto the gallery and often into the rooms next to them, so that during the hottest weather the entire house could be thrown open to the free circulation of the slightest breeze.

  Claire’s room, at the back of the house, had a greater privacy than most. Though it had access to the side gallery, there was none to the back loggia and the one other door which gave into Octavia’s bedroom was fixed with a large and efficient silver-plated lock.

  In her own room, there was a bell pull that rang one of the different toned bells outside. Justin used it often to summon his valet or for a servant to bring a meal, a hot bath, or simply a boy to carry messages for him. But since the pull was located beside the fireplace, Claire could not reach it from where she lay. The bell that had rung, she thought, was for the personal maid of Justin’s mother. Helene, the mistress o
f the house, must be about to rise.

  In the days that she had lain in bed she had come to recognize the different bell notes and the members of the family to whose rooms they were connected. Sounds had a way of echoing through the house. She had learned that Justin’s mother was a demanding mistress, constantly requiring something. She had learned, too, that across the back loggia from her own room was the room of Justin’s father who was an invalid—though the servants were slow to answer his bell, perhaps because it was rung not by him but by his manservant. She knew that there was another woman in the house, Berthe Leroux, Justin’s aunt. Claire suspected that Berthe was the widow of Justin’s uncle, the man he had killed. But Justin had not told her anything of the matter.

  Berthe Leroux seemed to be a woman of modest requirements, for her bell seldom rang, though apparently she too had her own maid, a shuffling older woman given to muttering beneath her breath. And there was also Berthe’s son, Justin’s cousin, who had the room beyond Octavia’s; a pleasant enough man from what she could tell. He laughed often, sang in his bath, and woke in an ill-humor, for his voice was perfectly audible as he castigated his valet in colorful language in the morning hours. But though Helene might be mistress of the house in name, Claire had decided that it was Octavia who stood at the center of it. It was she who planned the menus, supervised the maids, spoke to the gardeners and often stepped out on the gallery to meet Justin when he returned from the fields. There they would talk for a time about the crops in the home fields, the kitchen gardens, the orchards of peach, pear, and bushy figs and the animals that must be cared for to provide the bounty that came to the table. And though Octavia, it seemed, should have used her bell often with her many activities, it almost never rang. Claire knew, because of the closeness of their rooms, that the older woman had little use for a maid, that she bathed and dressed herself, did her own hair, and was much more likely to go in search of the servant she wanted than to set her bell to clamoring.

  As she bathed, Claire considered the people who lived in the house with a rising interest. At last, today, she would meet them instead of lying in her bed listening, trying to visualize what they looked like and how they would accept her. Now that the five days were over she would be able to receive visitors as well as be able to leave her room herself. Would Justin’s family resent her? It seemed likely, for none of them had thought it convenient to attend her wedding and of them all, only Justin’s father had been really unable to come to New Orleans. A wedding celebration was an occasion that few Creoles cared to miss in the ordinary way, but these people had ignored the marriage of the man who was in actuality the head of the house and the master of the plantation, even if he was not so in fact. Why else would they have done that unless they disapproved of the woman he had chosen as his bride?

  Claire was just easing her arms into a fresh peignoir when Octavia swept into the room. “Charming, I’m sure. But I would like to know who gave you permission to remove your bandages for a bath? I will have to wrap you up again, you know. Couldn’t you have had Rachel give you a refreshing rub with eau de cologne? You should not be up. I am persuaded Justin will not like it.”

  “What business is it of—” she began, then flushed as Octavia raised an eyebrow. “But surely it cannot matter,” she protested. “He has said that he will carry me out onto the back gallery this afternoon.”

  “The man has no more sense than a moonling. You should lie quietly for at least a month.”

  “Can’t I lie quietly outside? I am so very tired of this room.”

  “An admission you should not make, my dear. All brides should profess to be reluctant to leave their confinement. It is expected.”

  Claire stared at her, caught by the warning tones in her voice and a trace of sternness. But Octavia avoided her eyes, and, with a competent and domineering air that was faintly annoying, whisked her into bed, where she rebandaged her ribs to a tightness that left her panting but did relieve the pain.

  The other woman instructed Rachel in clearing the room, twitched the covers into place, handed her a book, one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances translated into the French, then paused in the act of leaving.

  “I didn’t come to nursemaid you, though I am happy to do so. I came to warn you to expect a visit from Helene, and possibly, if she can screw up the courage, Berthe.”

  “Oh?”

  “By all rights your husband should have conducted his mother to meet you himself. It would have been much more comme il faut. But he will not, and Helene can no longer conquer her curiosity. I overheard her saying to Berthe that a visit of condolence would be a polite gesture and a satisfactory solution under the circumstances, and so I am sure the royal visit is pending.”

  “I am glad you told me. The prospect is frightening enough without being caught at a disadvantage by surprise.”

  “Oh, you need not fear Helene or Berthe—” she hesitated as if considering the wisdom of what she was about to say, then a resolute expression passed over her face and she raised her chin. “But perhaps I should warn you: Justin and his mother are not on the best of terms. You would do well to take care. You would not wish, I am sure, to be caught in the middle of their quarrel. Just remember that it does not concern you—you need not fear that it does. It concerns what has happened in the past. It need not trouble you unless you allow it to or unless you allow yourself to become a pawn in their battle.”

  “But I don’t understand. Why should they be at war with one another?”

  “You must wait for Justin to tell you. He will, I imagine, when he is ready for you to know. I cannot interfere. Put it from your mind. If I were you I would think well before I asked at all. There is time enough and more to learn the black heart that lies at the center of the fleur de la pois.”

  The fleur de la pois—the flower of the pea—the pick of the lot: that had been the name of the plantation before it became Sans Songe. What had Octavia meant? Claire pondered it after the older woman had gone. She did not know, but it seemed to be sound advice that the older woman had given her. She was in no hurry to learn the dark secrets of her unwanted husband.

  Because of the custom of the five days, Claire had had no visitors to her bedroom. Now that was changed. True to Octavia’s prediction, toward the middle of the morning there was a knock on the door and before she could call entrez, two women stepped into the room.

  “I bid you a good morning,” the woman in the lead said, and Claire, hearing the slow, rather bored tones, did not need the introduction to know that this was Justin’s mother. She was tall for a woman, and painfully thin, with delicate features in a heart-shaped face and enormous, purple-shadowed dark eyes. At one time she might have been a beauty, but now there was a ravaged look about her face. Her hair was fading into gray and her apparently permanent state of tension could be seen in the taut tendons that corded her neck and the backs of her slender hands. But though unhappiness had marked her, she had at least a visible personality. That was more than could be said for the woman in black who trailed into the room behind her.

  “My sister-in-law, Berthe. Her husband and mine were brothers. As you can readily see, however, she is a widow—and I am certain that you know that the blame for that state lies at the door of my son.”

  The woman called Berthe was a colorless nonentity with watery brown eyes surrounded by such pale lashes that she seemed to have none. Her hair was stuffed under a cap of black muslin edged with black ribbon with long streamers hanging down her back. Her high-necked, long-sleeved dress was of black sarsenet with an empire waist and wide skirts over several layers of petticoats that gave her a ludicrous appearance of width, not helped by her tendency toward plumpness.

  Her pasty face turned a shade paler as she gasped in a thin voice, “Helene, you should not say such things, not to your son’s bride. It—it is shocking.”

  “But true, and if she doesn’t know it now she is sure to hear it eventually. I find it hard to believe that she could be ignorant of it.”


  “I—I knew of the unfortunate incident, of course.”

  “There! I told you. Unpleasant things have a way of coming to our attention.”

  Searching her mind for a change of topic, Claire bethought herself of the duties of one receiving guests.

  “Won’t you please sit down, there in the slipper chairs if you could pull them closer? And perhaps you would like a cup of coffee and a few small cakes?”

  “That is very kind of you,” Helene said, taking her seat, “but you need not trouble yourself. I have only this moment finished my morning coffee and I never indulge in sweets before dinner.” She let her eyes flick in the direction of short, plump Berthe.

  “No, no, nothing for me,” Berthe said hurriedly.

  An unpleasant smile touched Helene’s mouth, then she raised her eyes and looked around the room. “I hope you are comfortable here, and that you have everything that you desire. If not, you have only to ask and it will be brought to you—within reason, of course. This is a nice room; I have always thought it one of the best in the house. My husband and I used it, you know, when we were first married. It has been close to ten years since was last in it. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

  “The room is—very nice,” Claire said, choosing the one thing in what Helene had said with which she could agree.

  “And Rachel, she is acceptable?”

  “Oh, yes, she is surprisingly well trained, considering that she was a parlor maid and not versed in tending to ladies.”

  “I am glad she pleases you. I chose her for you myself.”

  “Th-thank you,” Claire said, glad that she had expressed approval of the girl. “I am most grateful. I am sure I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

  Berthe, who had been very quiet, spoke suddenly. “Rachel is a sister to my girl.”