The Seven Sapphires of Mardi Gras Read online

  She started to draw away.

  “I don’t want to be left alone just yet. The nightmare was so real!”

  Slowly, like a ghost in her flowing lilac robe, she flittered back toward me, sinking down upon the plump-cushioned little chair by my bed. “I know what it’s like to have nightmares, God only knows. Sleep has been a long time coming since I moved to this place.”

  “How did you come to meet my uncle, Lydia?” I asked outright.

  She gave a little sigh. “Elica and I were good friends back in New Orleans. She invited me to her wedding—and the masquerade. I remember how she pretended that everything was fine that night, but I felt there was something wrong. And then there was the fire—”

  Realizing that she had drifted far away from the subject, she said, “I met Edward at the masquerade. After the fire, I helped him take care of Christine. She was hurt and upset. A friendship grew between Edward and me that night.

  “He sought me out in New Orleans shortly after. I’m not going to pretend that it was a marriage of love. He was a lonely widower and I was unhappy with my life. It’s just that I feel so trapped here.” She shook her head, realizing that in the cover of darkness she might have spoken too much. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Christine showed me the locket that Elica gave her. A beautiful woman. Christine seemed very fond of her.”

  “Christine adored her,” Lydia said simply.

  A shiver crept over me. “It’s a shame that Christine had to witness—what she must have seen that night.”

  “Elica’s horrible death has left a scar on her” Lydia agreed. “It’s left a mark on all of us.”

  “Christine seems fascinated by Nicholas.”

  “She’s obsessed with him!” Lydia’s voice was brittle, sharp-edged, “It’s hard for me not to blame him, you know.”

  “For Elica’s death?”

  “For everything.” Suddenly, Lydia rose and moved back toward the lamp. “Good night, Louise. Shall I put this out for you?”

  “No, leave it burning a while. Good night, Lydia.”

  The little light by the window was comforting, so I decided to leave it burning just a while longer. After Lydia left, I wandered restlessly about the room. I found myself staring out of the window into the darkness. Evangeline was barely visible, but I could feel its black, encroaching shadow, like some disaster waiting upon the horizon. As Lydia said, the old house seemed to be watching.

  Lydia had not closed the door to my room and it was still swinging back and forth on its hinges, filling the room with the creaking sound of rubbing wood. As I moved over to secure it, a sudden, frightening thought made me stop, trying to remember. Hadn’t I closed the door before going to bed? It was an old habit of mine to close, then try a door, one acquired from many years of living in the city. And yet I distinctly remembered that Lydia had come in through an open door!

  Perhaps I had absently broken my habit tonight. That was the only explanation, for if someone had been in the hallway tonight, Lydia would surely have seen them.

  But the window had been open! Could someone have come in by way of the door and then escaped through the window? I walked back over to the window and looked down. Clinging vines from the garden crept all the way up the stone walls to the window ledge. They looked strong enough to hold a person.

  I was suddenly tired—so tired. My imagination was surely running away with me again. Quickly, before I could catch a glimpse of Evangeline, I snuffed out the little light, throwing the room into darkness. Then I settled back upon the carved bed with its delicate lace coverlet, trying to forget the conversation with Lydia which had begun so innocently but had ended with disturbing talk about the fire and Elica’s tragic death.

  Nicholas Dereux. My mind conjured up a sudden image of him. I remembered how firelight had danced in his eyes that rainy night in Cassa’s cabin. I saw a handsome man with black hair and a charming smile.

  A shadow transposed itself over the image of the laughing man. I shivered a little, remembering that evil face peering down at me, that inhuman face glowing with a ghastly, unnatural light.

  Closing my eyes, the two faces blended together—the one of the handsome, raven-haired man and the other of the demonic creature of my nightmare.

  A dream. It was only a dream! I struggled hard to convince myself. It was impossible to believe otherwise. I would not allow myself to wonder, even for a moment, if the hideous thing I had seen in my half-sleeping, half-waking state could somehow have been real!

  Chapter Eight

  Edward and I sat opposite each other in his study. His drab, pinstriped suit seemed to match the somberness of his mood. So far we had exchanged only pleasantries and small talk, but the anxious gleam in his eyes made me suspect that he had summoned me here this morning for a definite purpose. No doubt he wanted to talk once more about the purchase of my inheritance.

  “More tea, Louise?”

  “Yes, thank you. I’ll just help myself.” Before Edward could rise from his seat behind the huge mahogany desk, I took the elaborate silver urn from its tray and filled both of the delicate china cups. The platter of thinly sliced cake that Mrs. Lividais had brought in earlier still waited untouched between us.

  The portrait behind Edward’s desk was staring at me again. Uneasy, I glanced away, my eyes exploring the heavy, masculine furnishings of the room. Two more pictures hung upon the walls—one a landscape, the other a battle scene from the Civil War. Beyond the row of carefully polished bookshelves was a slightly opened door, no doubt the entrance to a small sun room or private parlor. Up above the doorway to this adjoining room hung two crossed dueling pistols.

  Slowly, my gaze came back around to the captivating portrait just behind Edward’s desk. The young man in the painting had Edward’s steely gray eyes. In fact, at first glance, I had taken it to be an oil of Edward in his younger days. But upon closer inspection I found that I was mistaken.

  The young man in the portrait had a narrow face and sharper, much more angular features than Edward’s large, blunt ones. Though the unidentified man was strikingly handsome with his dark hair and pale eyes, something about him disturbed me. Was it because he seemed so arrogant in his velvet and fine lace? An odd, intense glitter to the eyes and the bony cheekbones and narrow chin gave him a wolfish appearance. The thin mouth, so much like Edward’s, seemed hard and cruel.

  For a moment I stared, haunted by something familiar in those bold gray eyes. Of course! With a swift, sharp intake of breath, I identified the face in the portrait. “Why, that must be Christine’s father!”

  “Yes,” Edward responded proudly. “That is Racine. And a good likeness, too. I’ve always been glad I had it painted.” Racine Dereux—Edward’s lost war-hero son. The resemblance to both father and daughter was there in Edward’s bold gray eyes and Christine’s sharp features. That would surely account for my haunting feeling of recognition.

  As my eyes moved about the room, small mementoes suddenly took on a deeper meaning. Glimpsing a few book titles, I saw that most of them were about the Civil War. And the dueling pistols, surely they, too, had once belonged to Racine. In a small glass cabinet, I caught the glitter of a silver war medal. Edward’s entire study was a museum of sorts, dedicated to his lost son.

  “You’ve heard of my Racine’s bravery, of course.”

  “Christine told me a little about him.”

  “Did she tell you that he rode at Lee’s side? Why, the general himself gave him that decoration.” Edward bowed his head. “My son was killed near the war’s end, you know.”

  “How unfortunate.”

  “Yes, in April of ‘65, Racine gave his life for his beloved South. Lost in battle, like so many of our brave boys. His body was never found.”

  The man in the portrait looked like a true soldier. I could imagine him living for the excitement of battle and dying in the heat of its brutal glory. I peered at the likeness of Racine once more, noting the same lack of sensitivity I
sometimes caught in Edward’s expression. I shivered, instinctively suspecting that I would not have liked this son of Edward’s. All the same, I regretted the waste of his young life.

  “War is so senseless. So many promising lives lost.”

  “War creates tragedy. But it also makes heroes,” Edward added with unexpected zeal. He turned again to beam at the portrait, and, with a shudder, I wondered if he didn’t love the idea of a brave, sacrificed martyr almost as much as he had loved his flesh-and-blood son.

  “Our tea is getting cold, Louise,” Edward said, as if suddenly realizing that our talk had drifted away from the purpose of our meeting. “And please, do have some cake.”

  “You’ve brought me here this morning to talk about the land.”

  Edward cleared his throat. “Yes. But first I want you to understand that I have every intention of being honest with you. I’m hardly the ruthless scalawag that Nicholas tries to make me out to be. True, Evangeline was once a prosperous, thriving plantation. But that was long ago.

  “Your land holdings are extensive,” he went on to explain. “But unfortunately, it’s not so much the scope of land that determines its value but the quality of it. For years the fields surrounding Evangeline have been neglected. It’s slowly turned back into swampland. Now it will have to be cleared and made ready for recultivation, and that will require money.” He paused to take a sip of tea, then turned his full attention upon me, the sharp gray eyes bright as they met my own. “Money that few, in these difficult times, are free to invest.”

  He rapped his knuckles lightly upon the desktop. “Nicholas knows of my ambition. I want to build up a grand and prosperous sugar plantation such as the family had before the war. With my own life’s savings, I’ve managed to buy back most of the original land that your father was forced to sell during the hard times. Except, of course, the land around the old house, which is your part of the inheritance, and also the small bit of adjoining property that belongs to Nicholas.”

  “Nicholas owns land?” I asked in surprise.

  “Dereux land,” Edward replied, his eyes darkening. “He inherited a portion of land through Pierre, though he wasn’t even really his own son. My brother Pierre took Nicholas in, you know. As your mother might have told you, Pierre was a bit of a scoundrel, but he had a kind heart.” Gruffly, but with a look of fondness, he added, “If he hadn’t been killed in the war, my brother would probably have died in a drunken brawl over some card table.”

  “Your son and Nicholas must have been near the same age. Did they grow up together, then?”

  “Nicholas was off with Pierre most of the time during his youth. And Racine was away at school. But they were friends. Edward gave a hollow laugh. “In fact, Nicholas idolized my son. The two of them went off to war together. Toward the end, they both joined Pierre at his regiment. An ambush attack took the lives of both my brother and my son.”

  “Nicholas was lucky to have survived.”

  Edward spoke softly. “He survived because Racine saved his life.”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “Racine tried to shield both Pierre and Nicholas from the sudden shower of gunfire. Then he pursued the enemy into the swamps, where he was either captured or killed.”

  “How terrible.”

  “I try my best not to hate Nicholas.” Edward’s eyes had turned so dark that they looked almost black. “But how much better it would have been the other way around. Racine, alive and well, and Nicholas’s bones in the bottom of some muddy swamp.”

  Edward looked away from me, his face slightly pale. “I’m sorry, Louise. You must think me heartless. But you don’t know how it hurts me. It seems a cruel quirk of fate that left my son dead while Nicholas lives. Sometimes it’s almost more than I can bear!”

  “I understand your grief.”

  “Since he came home from the war, Nicholas hasn’t been the same. I believe the knowledge that he lives only because of Racine’s death has eaten away at him. Through the years, Nicholas has carried a personal vendetta against the entire Dereux family. It’s as if he blames us—me in particular—for his own misfortunes. He knows of my desire to expand Royal Oaks, to build up my lands and property. I believe he would do anything to stand in my way.”

  “Then you think he might be using me to keep you from gaining possession of Evangeline and its lands?”

  He looked up at me with a small, tight half-smile. “You’ve had a look at the place, Louise. You know that any attempt to rebuild Evangeline would be only a fool’s dream.”

  “Do you believe Nicholas is guilty of killing his wife?” My voice was barely a whisper. “Do you think that what happened during the war might have driven him mad?”

  Edward glanced down, away from me. “Madness runs in the poor bastard’s veins. If you had known his father, you would understand.”

  A little thrill of horror raced through me. Nicholas’s father—mad!

  “And as for Nicholas, I only know that, if not for our good name, he’d have followed in his murderous father’s footsteps by swinging from the end of the hangman’s rope. But let’s not speak of this anymore. I find such talk upsetting.”

  With calm hands, Edward lifted a thick white paper from the desktop. “My dear, as your uncle, I feel a certain sense of responsibility for you. I can assure you that you’ll not find another buyer willing to pay the price I am offering for a hollow shell of a house and a few acres of swampland. The only other person interested in the house is Nicholas. And innocent or guilty, mad or sane, he can offer you nothing.”

  Edward edged the papers toward me. “I don’t want to rush you into a decision. But I am anxious to start clearing the lands for the next planting season. Too much time has already gone to waste.”

  Curiously, I scanned the carefully drawn document. “The contract is ready for you to sign at your leisure. I’m sure you’ll agree that the terms are fair.”

  I finished reading the contract quickly. Indeed, the price was more than generous. But still, I remained hesitant.

  Edward handed me a quill-tipped pen. As I took it from him, my eyes happened to meet his. What I saw in those steely depths made me almost blot the ink.

  He resented me! He not only resented Nicholas, he resented me! Though he was making an exhausting effort not to let his emotions show, the signs were all too visible. Though his lips smiled reassuringly at me, his penetrating, smoke-gray eyes were cunning and wary, like the eyes in the portrait of Racine behind him.

  It was clear to me that Edward had a dream of buying up all the free land he could get his hands on. He wanted Royal Oaks to take the place of Evangeline, and only Nicholas Dereux and I stood in his way. A vulnerable young woman and a madman! The thought struck a chord of warning somewhere deep inside me. I did not believe that Edward was a man who would permit anyone to stand in his way for long.

  The pen was still poised in my hand. Edward’s eyes seemed to will me to sign my name. But a stubborn force inside refused to let me comply. I wanted to have another talk with Nicholas, to see for myself whether or not the house was beyond repair. I needed to have another look at Evangeline while it still belonged to me, to wander about the wild, tangled grounds and stare up at the crumbled house of ashes, maybe even cry a little. I wanted all hope to die before I gave up my dream forever.

  Edward was a good actor. Not a trace of disappointment clouded that frozen smile as I quietly laid the pen aside and handed the document back to him, unsigned.

  “There’s plenty of time, Louise,” he said smoothly, dismissing the matter with a falsely casual wave of the hand. “I’m sure that you’ll eventually see the wisdom of accepting my offer. In the meantime, please make yourself at home at Royal Oaks. Your mother was my dear sister, and her daughter will always be welcome in my home.”

  I was touched by the invitation. Though his resentment for me was genuine, so was his affection. I was unable to doubt his sincerity.

  His voice softened, and the coolness in his eyes was s
uddenly replaced with a kind of warmth. “You’re very much like her, you know. Gentle and soft-spoken, but headstrong, too.”

  “Mother and I must take after Grandfather.”

  Edward laughed. After a long moment, he spoke again. “If I might, Louise, I should like to ask a favor of you.”

  “Why, of course. As long as I stay here, I’ll want to do what I can to earn my keep.”

  “As you know, my business affairs take up the good part of my time. And my dear wife, Lydia, is in delicate health. I’m afraid that Christine is used to having a free rein. She is becoming far too independent and it worries me. It’s not proper for a young lady to run wild as she is in the habit of doing. If you could spend a little of your time with her, teach her some of the genteel behavior that I see my sister did not neglect to teach you, I would be eternally grateful.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” I assured him. “Already, I’m quite fond of Christine. In fact, she’s talked me into going riding with her this afternoon.”

  I rose to leave, when his voice called me back. “Oh, one more small matter.”

  I waited as Edward reached into his top desk drawer, pulling out a small parcel of yellowed papers held together by a faded ribbon. “These are for you”

  “Letters?”

  He nodded. “I found them in Raymond’s study shortly after his death. I was going to send them on to you—”

  I took the parcel from him gratefully, noting the address scrawled in a fine, spidery print. Letters from my grandfather to my mother. Letters written, but never sent! “You don’t know how much these mean to me—” It had been thoughtful of Edward to have saved the letters when he could have easily discarded them. I felt a little guilty of suspecting him of trying to cheat me out of my inheritance. I was beginning to believe that there was more to Edward than met the eye.

  “And Louise ...” he called out after me as I turned toward the door, treasured letters in hand. His voice reflected genuine concern. “Please heed my warning and stay away from the old house. I’ll take you out there myself if you want to go, but I must caution you about exploring the place alone. The house is barely standing. And with Nicholas still living there—well, it could be dangerous.”