The Seven Sapphires of Mardi Gras Page 28

  “Christine!” With an exasperated cry, I started after her. I had only gone a few steps when a hand touched my arm. I spun around uneasily, remembering my unpleasant encounter with Nathan earlier. But something appeared to have sobered him.

  “She’ll not come to you now, the stubborn girl,” he said with a weary sigh. I studied him for a moment, surprised. His absurd face smeared with its red paint contrasted oddly with the sincerity in his dark eyes as he said softly, “It’s me she needs now. Don’t worry about her. I’ll see her back to the house.”

  I regarded the young man before me with open suspicion. But he did seem sincere, almost apologetic. When he was not full of spirits, he was a likable enough lad. Though his clothing and manners were rough, I sensed that his affection for Christine was genuine. In my heart, I knew that he was right. Christine would never come with me now. I had no choice but to turn her over into his care until I could find Edward.

  I moved away into the heart of the masquerade to search for the other members of our party. I wondered if Ian had become worried about me. It had been some time since I had left him.

  And Nicholas. I dared not think what might have become of Nicholas! Again and again I was tortured by the shock and horror upon his face as I had come down the stairs in Elica’s dress. And those eyes behind the mask! I had caught only a fleeting glimpse of his burning black eyes as he watched Elica’s ghostlike presence materialize out of the darkness of the masquerade. But that one look had turned my blood to water.

  As I wandered through the crowd, the image of Christine in Elica’s dress continued to haunt me. She looked so much like the woman in the miniature, much more than I had. With her hair piled high, the sun-lightened strands hidden, the resemblance was striking. She could have passed for a younger sister. It was no wonder that she caused such a disturbing reaction. It was as if a ghost had indeed returned from the grave!

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Midnight had come and gone. As I wandered down the heart of the carnival street, I noticed that almost all of the people in costume had unmasked. The crowd had scattered; most of the families had gone home. Near the water’s edge, the dancing still continued. Musicians, drunken or exhausted, played only in sporadic bursts. But the remaining dancers didn’t seem to mind. Peals of wild, abandoned laughter filled in the gaps between songs, seeming to follow me as I walked uneasily past, searching for Ian.

  I looked down, aware of the ruin the parade and dance had made of the village streets near the water’s edge. The gutters were littered with horse droppings. Half-eaten confections and popcorn were trampled into the damp earth. A spattering of raindrops from the sky hastened my step. Where was everyone? I glanced anxiously from face to unfamiliar face. Few women were still on the streets at this hour; most of the stragglers were young men who had partaken heavily of brandy and wine. The restless tension of the remaining crowd was almost as visible as the turmoil of the bleak sky overhead. A strong gust of wind blew from across the bayou. Flashes of lightning illuminated broken streamers floating in the air, searching for places to land upon the lampposts, courtyard gates, and confetti-strewn trees. The merriment of carnival night was gradually giving away to chaos.

  I approached the end of the alley. The bonfires were dying; empty stewpots showed their blackened bottoms. Old women were busy cleaning up. But there was still no sign of Ian. Anxiously, I wondered if he might have returned without me. Though the little pirogue was still dancing in the dark water, he could have walked or caught a ride with Lydia and Edward in the carriage. The terrible thought struck me that they had all gone home.

  I couldn’t blame Ian if he had gone back to Royal Oaks without me. After all, I had left his side without even saying goodbye. He would be justified in being angry. But surely Edward and Lydia would not both have left without knowing Christine’s whereabouts. Or would they? I thought about the casual way they treated her comings and goings. I looked up and down the street, searching for Edward’s carriage. With a feeling of relief, I spotted the huge, dark-wheeled shape in the distance. So I had not been deserted, after all!

  I started back toward the music near the water’s edge with renewed heart, searching diligently for a familiar face or costume among those that remained. Bedraggled witches and demons still danced against the light of the moon, faces now gleefully revealed. Some seemed friendly, others as menacing as the masks they had removed. I studied each passing face, my anxiousness returning. Where had everyone gone? It was as if they had all disappeared, swallowed up by the night.

  Suddenly, in the flickering light of the bonfires, a glimpse of something drew my attention. I turned, only to catch sight of a man and a woman embracing in the obscurity of the trees. Embarrassed, I started to look away when, from where I was standing, the amber glow again caught the rich sheen of spotted silk. I glanced back, drawing in a quick breath of surprise. The woman in the shadows was Lydia!

  I peered out into the darkness, trying to steal a look at the man who was with her. Was it Ian? I had to know! But shadows from the drooping trees shielded his face, concealing his identity. Some dark garment, a cloak or cape, surrounded him, making him appear formless. As I stood watching, he slipped back further into the obscurity of the trees.

  Frustrated, I turned away. Obviously, this was no time for me to interfere. But I had only gone a few steps when I heard a voice call my name. I looked back over my shoulder. Lydia was coming toward me now, the coppery glow of the firelight making her hair blaze a brilliant red. Like a harlot’s, I could not help thinking. The arched cat’s brows and shimmering costume accentuated the unflattering effect. As she came nearer, I saw that her face was pale against the black fur collar, her eyes dark and shadowed.

  “Have you seen Edward?” she asked in a voice that was unusually tense and strained. I knew that the man hiding in the shadows had not been her husband! Covertly, I glanced into the windswept trees. Her lover, whoever he had been, was gone now. For all her nervous manner, it was obvious that Lydia believed she had noticed me first. She was not aware that I had caught her in a stranger’s embrace.

  I shook my head. “I haven’t seen him all evening.”

  “We were separated during the dancing, and I’ve been searching for him ever since,” she explained with an edgy laugh. “Well, perhaps he went back to the house,” she added weakly. With a tinge of anxiousness, she inquired, “And Christine? Is she still here?”

  “Yes”

  “You’ve seen her? Where?” There was a touch of relief in Lydia’s voice. Perhaps she cared more about the wayward girl than I had thought.

  “She was with Nathan a short time ago,” I replied. “Over there.” I gestured toward the darkness of the cypress grove. “I don’t want to interfere, but it’s getting late—” I stopped in mid-sentence. The frightened look upon Lydia’s face startled me. She seemed to have turned even paler. She was looking off into the darkness of the tangled trees. Was she searching for some sign of the man she had been with? I watched her, puzzled. She did not look like a woman who had just left a lover’s sweet embrace. She looked terrified!

  “Lydia—” For a moment, I feared that she was about ready to collapse. I took a step toward her. “Lydia, is something wrong?”

  “N-no.” She was looking at me, but her green eyes seemed blank, empty, as if she didn’t really see me. There was a vague, dreamlike quality in her voice that made me wonder if she had been taking the laudanum drops again. “Something happened tonight—earlier—” she confessed faintly. “I thought I saw—but it’s not possible—I thought I saw—”

  “Elica’s ghost!” I finished for her.

  She stared at me, the empty look draining from her eyes.

  Color started to come back into her cheeks. “You saw her, too?”

  “Yes, but it was no ghost we saw,” I hastened to explain, “It was Christine!”

  “Christine?”

  “After we left the house, she returned and put on Elica’s blue velvet dress, the one t
hat she had planned for me to wear.”

  I saw her entire body stiffen. Her smile had become ghastly, as unreal as the grin of a Mardi Gras mask. Her voice was thin and wispy, yet the sound of it sent tingles of horror up and down my spine. “She’s wearing Elica’s dress?”

  “Lydia—”

  A haunted look came into her eyes as she backed away from me. “I—have to go,” she said in a strange whisper. ‘‘You’re right. I must find Christine. It’s time she was going home.”

  “Lydia, wait! I’ll come with you,” I cried, but she did not slow her pace. I stood in awe, watching her stumble away toward the grove of trees near the water’s edge.

  A hand suddenly slipped through my arm, startling me. “So there you are, at last!” I spun around to face Ian. ‘‘Where have you been, Louise? I’ve been searching all over for you!” His expression was pleasant, but there was an odd look in his amber eyes. “I haven’t seen you since that mannerless brute in the black cloak stole you away from me.”

  I attempted to keep my voice light. “I noticed that you didn’t waste any time finding a partner yourself. I saw you dancing with Lydia.”

  “So you did!” His face was slightly flushed, perhaps from too much wine. “I took pity on her. Edward went home early, you know. Walked back and left us his carriage. He must be getting too old for this kind of excitement,” he added with a cynical twist. I studied him, noticing that he had abandoned the mask and crown, though the purple robe still fluttered about his shoulders. Of course! It must have been the flowing robe that I had seen in the darkness! I tried to decide which direction he had come from. He had crept up behind me so quickly, I could not be certain. But his appearance so soon after Lydia’s was enough to convince me that he had been the man in the shadows with her.

  “And speaking of Lydia,” he asked innocently, “wasn’t she standing here just a few moments ago? Where did she go in such a rush?”

  His questions sounded so earnest that I had to remind myself what a good actor he could be. I was still certain that he had come straight from Lydia’s arms. “She went off to find Christine. She—seemed upset,” I added.

  “And no wonder,” Ian exclaimed. “While Lydia and I were dancing, we saw this—woman—standing in the moonlight. She was dressed all in blue and from a distance—“

  “She looked like Elica,” I finished for him.

  “But how did you know?” he asked, one brow raised.

  “It was only Christine.” Again, I explained how she had gone back to the house and put on Elica’s dress.

  “I should have suspected as much. By God, but that girl is a trial!” Suddenly, the dread that I had seen upon Lydia’s face was reflected in his own. Unexpectedly, he clutched at my arm. “That man you were dancing with—the one in the black cloak—was it Nicholas?”

  I felt my voice quiver. “I don’t know. I believe it was. But there was something different about him—I can’t be certain.”

  “Mon Dieu! Did he see her dressed like that?”

  “Y-yes, he saw her!” I stammered.

  “Then we’d better get Christine away from here as soon as possible! Wait here. I’ll go find Lydia and then well all look for Christine together.” I watched his receding back, purple robe flapping behind him in the wind as he hurried quickly away in the direction Lydia had taken. Then he disappeared into the trees.

  The minutes seemed like hours as I waited for Ian to reappear. He must, I thought, be having trouble finding Lydia. I stood, keeping my eyes trained upon the grove of cypress near the water’s edge, watching for some sign of Lydia or Christine in the thinning crowd. Lydia’s frightened manner tonight worried me. Why was she so concerned about Christine now, when she rarely gave the child a second thought? Unless she knew something that Ian and I didn’t know—something that might put Christine in danger.

  I didn’t know what it could possibly be. From the way Lydia was acting, it seemed to be connected in some way to Christine’s wearing of the dress. Did she, like Ian, believe that seeing her in Elica’s dress might provoke Nicholas to some unspeakable crime of violence?

  I was still anxiously awaiting Ian’s return when, out of the corner of my eyes, I caught a glimpse of a bent, ragged figure passing by in the moonlight. My gaze moved from the torn skins to the long, gray-white braids that framed her dark face. It was Cassa. I called out a greeting as she passed by, but she did not slow her pace. I doubted that she had even heard me. Carrying a load of empty pans under one arm, she made her faltering way down the vine-entangled path toward that lonely cabin in the swamp.

  The sight of her brought back disturbing memories of Mrs. Lividais’s gossip. The unborn baby, Elica’s nocturnal visit to Cassa’s cabin, the potion—Again, I found myself wondering just how much of the story was true.

  I tried to push the unsettling thoughts out of my mind, but they lingered. Again, I found myself remembering the shock of seeing Christine standing there in the darkness, the folds of velvet and satin flowing about her. That uncanny resemblance! The thought that Christine could have passed for Elica’s sister, a younger sister, kept returning to haunt me.

  And then, the cloudy thought that must have been incubating deep in my mind ever since the first time I had seen Christine in Elica’s dress suddenly broke free. Not a sister, but a daughter. Elica’s daughter!

  But that was impossible! Or was it? Elica had been no young girl. Mrs. Lividais had told me that she had been close to thirty when Nicholas met her for the first time. And if she had borne a child young—at the age of fourteen or fifteen—then wasn’t it altogether possible that Christine could be her daughter?

  My thoughts swept back to what Edward had told me about Racine’s marriage, about his wife’s death at childbirth. I had thought it odd that Christine knew so little about her mother’s family. It was as if they had never existed. Now I found myself wondering if they ever had.

  What if Racine had never had a wife at all? The story could have been made up by my grandfather when he brought Elica’s illegitimate daughter here for Edward to raise! But why the deceit, the lies?

  The Dereux pride! That damnable family pride! Grandfather must have known that Edward would find it impossible to accept his son’s bastard daughter, a daughter of mixed blood. And so, if I was correct, he had made up the story for Christine’s own protection.

  The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I was right. Christine’s sharp gray eyes, her arrogant little nose, and her stormy temperament had all come from her father, Racine. The Dereux family traits in her were so strong that they all but overshadowed the more subtle reminders of Elica. Barely perceptible similarities that might have gone forever unnoticed if she had not tried so carefully to imitate Elica’s dress and hairstyle tonight. The unfashionably tanned skin which I had attributed to Christine’s love of the sun, the long, slender neck and fine facial features, the thick, slightly wavy brown hair now gave clues to her origin. If I were correct in my assumptions, then Christine was the daughter of Edward’s dead son, Racine, and his quadroon mistress, Angelica Robinette!

  But what could it all mean? Now I remembered what Nicholas had told me about their meeting in New Orleans, his mention that Elica had purposefully sought him out, his insistence that she had never loved him. It all seemed to fit! She had wooed Nicholas and married him to be near the daughter she had given up!

  Who could hate a child? The journal entry of my grandfather’s kept coming back to haunt me. And suddenly, something clicked in my mind. The journal entries, the talk in Cassa’s cabin about the unborn child—Cassa would know!

  Desperately, I searched for her bent, fragile form. In the shadows, just a few steps away from me, was a woman who might be able to help me put the fragmented pieces of the story together!

  “Cassa!” Calling her name, I plunged into the darkness after her. Breathless, I caught up with her on the trail. “Cassa, I must speak with you!”

  She stood patient, waiting.

  “It�
��s about Elica.”

  She waited, a frown creasing her wrinkled face. “Mrs. Lividais told me that she came to your cabin just before her wedding. She said that you gave her a potion—” The creases on her face grew deeper. Shaking her head, she turned an ear toward me as if she was having difficulty hearing. It was obvious that she hadn’t understood a word I had said!

  Tears of frustration burned at my eyes She must understand. Somehow, I must make her understand!

  I forced myself to speak slower. “E-li-ca.”

  She nodded, grinning her gap-toothed smile. “Elica,” she repeated.

  “She come to you. Before wedding—Nicholas.” I imitated her fractured speech in hopes it would help her understand me.

  Again she nodded. “She come to cabin. Ya. She do.”

  “You help her.” I held my hands out in front of my stomach. Then, carefully, I made a shaking motion with my head. “To be rid of baby.”

  The frown upon her face deepened. “She come to me, yes!” She shook her head emphatically. “But no bébé.”

  I formed my hands in the shape of a bottle or vial. “The potion—”

  She stared at my hands blankly. Then, recognition lit her dark eyes, and she nodded. “I give Elica something—to make sleep.” Again, Cassa shook her head. “No bébé.”

  A sleeping potion! Elica had come to Cassa’s cabin the night before the wedding for something to calm her frayed nerves! So my hunch had been right! I realized now what must have happened at Cassa’s cabin that night. Mrs. Lividais had seen Elica crying, had heard Cassa consoling her by saying, “Do what’s best for the child .” Then, she had seen Cassa give Elica the sleeping potion. Of course, she had jumped to conclusions. Quite naturally, she had assumed that Elica was carrying a baby, and had come to Cassa for something to induce a miscarriage.

  But she had been wrong. So very wrong. There had been no scandalous affair with Brule, no unborn baby. In reality, Cassa and Elica had been talking about a child that was nearly a young woman now. Elica had come to Cassa that night for advice on whether or not to tell Nicholas about Christine!