Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection) Read online

  To hear it mentioned so casually made Claire draw in her breath. Again, there was an infinitesimal movement of the head of the paralyzed man. Claire, looking at him, thought for a fleeting moment there was something like concern for her in those faded gray eyes, the color of his thinning hair. Her father-in-law had also a gray complexion that made him seem all of the same color, a monotone portrait, an impression emphasized by his stillness.

  Claire murmured something, having little curiosity about the painting of the man Justin had killed. But it seemed incredible that Edouard could mention so casually his father and the man who had killed him in the same breath.

  A maid servant came hurrying along the path from the quarters a short distance away to the left, hidden by the branches of the trees. She climbed the steps breathlessly, a plump young girl with a timid look. Bobbing a curtsey by way of a greeting to those gathered on the loggia, she went on into the house. Helene’s maid, she thought as a part of her mind registered in memory the tone of the bell that had rung minutes before.

  “You look puzzled,” Edouard said.

  “Do I?” she fenced, not wanting to bring up what must be a painful subject, but unable for a moment to find another with which to distract him. Then something occurred to her.

  “I wonder if you could tell me—about Justin’s scar? I don’t like to ask him. He—it is a sensitive subject.”

  He smiled ruefully, looking at her, then his hazel eyes turned serious. “I rather suspect that you have another matter in mind. From the expression on your face I thought you were wondering why Justin and I aren’t at daggers drawn. The reason has to do with the scar he carries. You see, I gave it to him.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Claire said, a flush on her cheekbones. “If you would rather not speak of it—”

  “It isn’t to my credit, but I don’t mind. It happened a long time ago, when we were boys. We were playing at war, Justin with his army of slaves’ children, I with mine. We had wooden swords, cudgels of dead limbs, and rawhide shields. All very serious. Justin and I were close to the same age, I have a few months on him, but I was also big for my age. My parents were more lenient with me too, and I was allowed to have a pocket knife. A lot of planning went into those mock wars, and there was a good bit of feeling, rivalry, pride, and anger in them too or things would never have come to the pass they did. Justin had established a fort down in the swamp. My army overran his position, and he and one or two others were fighting to cover the retreat of his main force.”

  He glanced at Claire and she nodded to show she understood.

  “Well, the upshot was that Justin was disarmed and captured. It had been a long, hard, hot battle and I—I was elated. It wasn’t often that I won. I told Justin that I was going to brand him as my captive.”

  She made a small sound of distress and he shook his head. “I know it sounds cruel, but children are cruel—I don’t think I really meant it. I wanted Justin to finally admit defeat. I should have known he wouldn’t. He lay there on the ground with four of my soldiers holding him down, and he stared at me with that arrogant look in his eyes, damning me. For one moment I went blind with pure, animalistic blood-lust, that and a determination to best him. I hated him because—ah, for a number of reasons that seemed important at the time, but chief among them was the knowledge that he was a better soldier, a better general, if you will, and that he knew it and knew I did too. If he had moved, had made a sound, I might have spared him, but he did not. He just lay there looking at me. Then it was over. I saw the blood running into the ground and I was sick, really sick. And I’ve lived with regret ever since. So you see, I know only too well how a man can be pushed into an affair of honor and how closely regret follows. Not that I’m making myself out to be a model of forgiveness, for I’m not. But daggers-drawn is a tiring pose to hold for any length of time. We live and life goes on and the whole thing hardly seems worth the pain.”

  “C—for captive,” she said, staring without seeing out over the back garden.

  “You would think that, wouldn’t you? And it did start out that way. But they were retreating, you see. What I dislike myself most for was the thing I told Justin that day, and have never spoken of since. The C was for coward.”

  The sound of his voice, husky with remorse, was all at once an irritant. She remembered the evening she and Justin had met and his rejection of her pity. His attitude was more understandable, as was his sensitivity on the subject. Remembering suddenly that Marcel was perfectly able to hear and understand despite his paralysis, she turned toward him, appalled at what he might be feeling to hear his son discussed with such intimacy. Then she sighed, relieved. His eyes were closed, and if he was not asleep, he gave no sign that he had heard.

  “You mustn’t worry,” Edouard told her in a low voice. “He often falls into these sudden naps.”

  Within a few minutes, Anatole brought the coffee tray. For the sake of politeness, Claire started to sip the rich, dark brew, and taste of the cakes Edouard recommended. But soon the atmosphere in the loggia grew too heavy to bear, and with a show of confidence in the strength that she was far from feeling, she rose and excused herself.

  Marcel, awake now, looked at her with wide eyes, and Anatole inquired softly, “Should madame not wait for Monsieur Justin?”

  “No, no. I will manage well enough by myself. But I appreciate your concern.” And smiling brightly, declining the offer of Edouard’s arm, she moved into the house.

  She was fine until she reached the salon. But there a wave of dizziness assailed her and she stopped and closed her eyes, holding to the back of a walnut settee covered with gold brocade.

  “Don’t you feel well, Claire?” a soft voice said at her elbow. “You must lie down at once. Octavia will be furious to find you up and on your own. Come, it’s just a step or two to my room.”

  “No, really. I will just stand here a moment.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of allowing it,” Berthe insisted, putting a surprisingly, strong arm about her waist and leading her away. “My room opens here, on the front of the house, beside the salon. So convenient. You may lie on my bed and I will bring my vinaigrette before I send someone for Justin. He must carry you back to your room. Why you thought you were well enough to be up is beyond me. There is no need for such hurry. It is not as if Octavia would allow you to help her manage the house. She is quite jealous of her position and I am persuaded she would not permit it. There you are. Isn’t that better?”

  It was not. She did not wish to be rescued from this room by her husband. She hated the thought of what he would say. She wanted to get to her room by herself, but her weakness filled her with dismay.

  “You must relax,” Berthe told her, taking a rocking chair beside the fireplace and picking up the square of quilting she was piecing together. “It will be a few minutes before the girl arrives. I think the only bells in this house that are answered quickly are those of Justin and Helene. And yours, of course. We are so happy to have you here, all of us, including the servants. We had almost decided that Justin would never marry. He had never shown any inclination to do so in the past. Now we may only hope that my Edouard follows his good example and brings home a lovely girl like you. This has too long been a house of adults.”

  Claire looked away from those avid eyes, hazel like her son’s, and encountered a hard, black stare. It came from a portrait above the fire burning in the fireplace, the portrait that Edouard had mentioned. Justin. Justin without a scar. She knew it was not, but she could not prevent the thought from burning in her mind. It was an oil of a man in the heavily-frilled shirt, the ruby-colored coat and intricate lace cravat of the decade just before the turn of the century. The background was dark, emphasizing his piercing black eyes and the look of indifference combined with a cynical smile and an obvious hauteur that gave him also the look of a fallen angel, a prince of darkness. In his long, slim fingers he held a snuff box with its lid encrusted with seed pearls and rubies.

  “My husband
, Gerard,” Berthe informed her in a soft voice, then she went on when Claire did not comment, “And this is the snuff box he is holding. He enjoyed snuff. It was never an elegant habit. Few indulge any more. I have every snuff box he owned, one to match each suit of clothes to the number of thirty-seven.”

  It was not hard to believe. A pair of tables near the fireplace held innumerable tiny boxes, some glittering silver and gold with elaborate chasing. There were enameled boxes, painted ones with miniatures or French landscapes, jeweled boxes, boxes with wooden inlay or covered with satin, and even one of black enamel picked out in gold in the shape of a tiny coffin. For use with mourning, Claire assumed, conquering a strange quiver of combined distaste and amusement.

  Then as she let her gaze move over the room she saw that the snuff boxes were not the only relics of her late husband that his widow had kept. Near the foot of the bed was a collection of canes, ebony, malacca or ivory with silver and gold handles, standing in a large china vase, interspersed with a number of riding crops. Shirt studs were gathered like precious jewels on a piece of velvet in an open stud box. On an étagère in a corner his peruques, in long and short styles in his natural black color and also dress white still showing traces of powder, were displayed. His clothes, Claire was almost sure, still filled the armoire, with his boots carefully polished and sitting beneath them.

  “You are surprised that I still cherish my husband’s things?” Berthe asked. “I enjoy having them around me. It makes it seem as if he has just stepped out or has gone into town, perhaps, and will soon be back.” Her voice trailed away into nothing. She put down her sewing and began to wander about the room.

  “These are the studs he wore in his wedding suit, and this is the snuff box I bought him for our tenth wedding anniversary. He seldom used it but he kept it by him all those years. But you are not interested. Perhaps this now, I don’t believe you noticed it.” She lifted a bronze object from the table beside the bed. She was right. Claire had not really looked at it. She had thought in a vague way that it was a notion box or some such thing.

  “What is it?” she asked faintly.

  “Don’t you recognize it? Most people do so at once, it is such a striking likeness.” With a timid eagerness Berthe glanced from the picture of Gerard over the mantle to the object she held in her hand.

  “I don’t—”

  “It is a death mask, of course. Did you never see one? The idea is not new. Why, during the revolution in France it was the thing to buy a death mask of the aristocrats dying on the guillotine. A woman sat at the foot of the scaffold and as the head rolled into the basket she would catch it and mold it then and there. I had the doctor who attended my husband mold his dear features for me in wax after his death, then, when I went next to New Orleans, I had the wax cast in bronze. It shows every line, every brow and lash, even the grain of his skin. I cannot tell you how much comfort I have derived from it.”

  And there it was, the exact face of a man who had been dead more than ten years; the molding of his nose, the sensuous smoothness of his lips with their cynical twist. Like Justin, and yet with an expression in death her husband’s face had never worn.

  An odd feeling of near panic swept over Claire. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and pulled herself erect by clinging to the post. It was with relief that she heard a knocking sound on the outside french window that corresponded to the one in her own room. Then Justin stepped inside.

  “Anatole said I would find—” he began, then as he saw Claire standing and wavering slightly with perspiration beading her upper lip, he moved forward and swept her into his arms.

  “I am so glad you came, Justin,” she murmured as she felt the cool evening air against her face. And, for the moment, she meant it.

  The days passed, merging into weeks. And in those days the thought of the gris-gris found beneath her bed was seldom far from her mind, for instead of getting better, from that day she seemed to grow steadily more weak. It was not often that she felt completely well. She had little appetite and though she forced herself to eat the tempting meals Rachel brought to increase her strength, the food did no good. She lost weight until her eyes appeared huge in her pale face and the least noise or unexpected movement made her jump, every nerve in her body tingling.

  She was left more and more to her own company and that of the great black cat whose name, she had discovered, was Bast. “Because it gives me a great satisfaction to look at Berthe’s face when I say it, and to see in her eyes what she thinks I am going to say,” Octavia had explained. “And you needn’t tell me that the deity of that name that the Egyptians worshipped was female. I know that, but Bast, poor boy, does not. And it seems so supremely appropriate but for that small cavil. He is a sorry thing, but one I can claim as my own.” She had smiled fondly on the cat, but the timbre of her voice had been oddly defiant.

  And so he slept on the foot of Claire’s bed, draped over her feet like a living shawl. He shared the bones of her meal with her, and as often as not, padded along behind her when she was carried to the loggia.

  Justin was gone for longer and longer periods of time, out under the strengthening sun. His olive skin, always dark, took on a swarthy cast, and the scar standing out pale against his tanned face gave him the villainous look of a pirate. Gradually he lost that look of dissipation around his mouth caused by too little sleep, late hours in smoke filled rooms, and too much to drink. But at night he stretched out on the single bed at the foot of her own with a sigh of exhaustion.

  During the daylight hours it was easy to see that there was no alternative to their arrangement, no other room where he could have slept. But sometimes, when, after lying in bed all day, she could not sleep, she lay beneath the mosquito netting that enclosed both beds together in a gauze prison and her thoughts grew morbid. It seemed that, like some medieval chatelaine, she was being guarded. Justin lay at her feet between her and the door. Whether he guarded her against harm or against escape she could not decide.

  Once during the night she had been awakened by a scream. She had sat up, her heart beating fast, uncertain if the sound had been real or a lingering remnant of a dream. At the rustle of her bedclothes Justin awoke.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice vibrant with a quiet strength in the dark.

  “I—I thought I heard someone cry out,” she explained, beginning to feel foolish.

  They listened together, then just as she opened her mouth to apologize for waking him for nothing the keening scream came again.

  Justin chuckled softly. “It’s only a panther down in the swamp, chére. Go back to sleep.”

  She heard him turn over in his narrow bed, then she lay back on her own pillows, thinking of the gentle endearment he had used and smiled ironically as she remembered her pity, so long ago, for the girls who married men who carried them off to homes in the wilds where alligators roared and panthers shattered the night with their cries. Abruptly she shivered, and, pulling the sheet up to her chin, lay staring wide-eyed into the dark.

  They had been married the week before Fat Tuesday. Lent came and went, as did Holy Week and Easter. Then summer was upon them, in fact, if not by the calendar.

  “My dear Claire, I don’t care for the way you are looking,” Octavia said one morning. “I have always considered that too much bed rest is not good. For myself, it saps my strength. A month, now, would be enough to put me near the grave! I haven’t liked to suggest that you get up, Justin has been so set against it. But you are weaker than I like, even if it is the fashion, though I must admit you are in looks. Your eyes are bright, and your skin is positively translucent. But I would feel much better if you had a trifle more color. What do you say to a short carriage drive?”

  “Oh, I would like that above anything.”

  “It is sure to improve your appetite. You needn’t pretend to me. I saw you give your gumbo dinner to Bast. He loves shrimp, of course, but you really must not. He will get fat, and I cannot bear an obese cat.”
r />   “I—all at once I could not eat another mouthful, though it was deliciously seasoned, and I didn’t like to hurt Cook’s feelings.”

  “Very commendable, I’m sure, but you need it, and Bast is an excellent mouser and it will make him lazy, though he looks thin enough now, doesn’t he? Come, put on one of your fresh muslins and I will send to the stables to have the carriage brought round.”

  By the time Claire was dressed, the carriage was waiting at the front steps; a landau with a new coachman on the box replacing the man who had been killed. Helene and Berthe, hearing of the expedition, had decided to join them, and the four ladies stepped into the carriage. They set out down the drive, a mere track paved with shells and over-hung with moss-draped trees.

  “Where are we going?” Claire wanted to know, staring back at the house that looked so cool and comfortable at the top of the slope that led up from the bayou curving around it.

  “Just a short drive about the plantation. We won’t be leaving our own roads. I thought you might enjoy seeing the fields, the quarters where our people live, their church, that sort of thing,” Octavia replied.

  Claire nodded, agreeing that she would be interested in seeing the outbuildings and the land.

  “Are you quite all right, dear?” Berthe asked diffidently. “The motion of the carriage does not bother you? I don’t wish to sound inquisitive, but my maid tells me that your Rachel has let it be known that you are not eating well and sometimes suffer from des nausées—the illness of the morning.”

  “Not enceinte already!” Helene exclaimed. “You need not have hurried so. I have no wish to dandle my grandchildren on my knee.”

  “But—I couldn’t be!” Claire said, finding her voice at last.

  “Oh, there has been time enough,” Helene assured her, shrugging pettishly. “Personally, I would have thought—but there, that is Justin. No consideration for anyone other than himself. Marcel never considered my feelings.”