Day Dreamer (25 page)

“Cut her down,” he commanded Bobo.

The giant shoved the torch into the mud and stepped behind the tree, then sliced the rope with his cane knife. As Celine fell forward into Cord’s arms, Bobo came around and started to lift her.

“She’s my wife—I’ll carry her,” Cord said, tightening his hold.

“Should I kill him?” Bobo asked a moment later.

Cord looked over his shoulder. Bobo had his cane knife pressed up against the boy’s thin neck. Philip sobbed silently, his eyes as wide as gold pieces.

Cord gave the boy a long hard look, considering Bobo’s suggestion. Near death, Celine lay limp in his arms. It would be so easy to pronounce judgment on the boy, he thought, fully aware that most planters would not have hesitated to hang him. It was well within his rights to mete out justice on the plantation, but as he stared over at the quaking youth, Cord knew that snuffing out Philip’s life would not save Celine’s. Only God’s mercy could do that.

And he was in no position to rankle God.

“Bring him with us,” Cord commanded over his shoulder as he headed back. The boy broke down with relief and babbled deliriously.

Bobo’s long strides soon led him past Cord. He held his torch aloft, lighting the way for Cord as they wound their way back along the newly cut path.

She was dying and she knew it. She was on fire. She was in hell. She was racked with chills.

Celine tried to speak, to cry out against the blinding pain that rippled through her in waves. She would welcome death. Anything. Anything would be better than this.

She felt as if she were moving, drifting through the dark swamp. Where were the stars? Even when she had been so miserable at sea, there had been stars to follow. Now there was only darkness.

She let her thoughts drift away from the pain, let herself settle into the warm arms that she imagined held her. Against the blinding red pain behind her eyes she saw New Orleans, the streets, St. Louis Cathedral, the marketplace. Old Marcel, the vegetable vendor. She silently thanked him for his smile.

Persa. Persa was there. Waiting in the little cottage on rue de St. Ann. Waiting for her. Smiling. Extending her hand in welcome.

Persa would take care of her. She always had. Persa, who’d told her that her dreams of finding one true love were foolish daydreams. Persa had tried to teach her it was enough to be different. To have a gift. To hold love in her heart. She should have listened.

“Hold on, Celine. We’re almost home.”

Cord’s voice came to her through the pain, found her through the red haze. She wanted to beg him to let her go. The pain was too great.

Cord, who had so much left to learn about life and love and laughter. There was so much she’d wanted to do to help him. Alyce’s gardens were not finished. The old house demanded new life.

And there was Foster. Edward. Aunt Ada.

She had stepped into Jemma O’Hurley’s life and out of her own. All she had ever dreamed of was so close, and yet so far. Given time she might have been able to convince her husband that there was room in his heart for love. For her.

But time had run out.

Cradling Celine in his arms, Cord tore across the veranda, kicked open the door and started up the stairs. Ada met him at the top of the stairs and led the way to Celine’s room.

“We’ll need hot water, Aunt,” he shouted over his shoulder as he headed down the hall.

“Foster and Edward have everything ready. They heard you yelling up the drive. I’m certain the entire island heard you—”

“Pull the spread and sheet back.” He hovered in the doorway with Celine in his arms, anxious to make her more comfortable, to wash the mud off her and do what he could to fight the fever raging through her. As he gently laid her in the center of the bed, Foster and Edward arrived with pitchers of hot water and clean rags.

Cord set to work, directing Ada and the others, admonishing his aunt when her trembling fingers were not moving fast enough to suit him. Instead of falling apart, Ada proved far more capable than he would have guessed. She sent the servants from the room and helped Cord strip off Celine’s ruined clothing.

“Damn it,” Cord swore when he saw the welts covering Celine’s skin. He wanted to weep for her, but there was no time. She was burning up with fever.

Together he and Ada sponged the mud and dirt off Celine, who remained unconscious throughout their ministrations. As Cord lifted her bare arm, as he ran one damp rag after another over her lifeless limbs, he swore under his breath. He was cursed, he decided. Anyone who dared to care for him was doomed. His mother. Alex. His father. And now Celine stood at death’s door, with one hand on the knocker.

“Cordero, dear, you really must do something about your language. What would Celine do if she were to awaken and hear such a vulgar tirade?”

She would still love me
.

The words had come unbidden to his mind. Cord did not bother to answer. He continued to swab Celine’s skin, making note of each red welt on her body. “We need camphor oil for these bites, Aunt.”

“Quinine,” Ada said. “A dose of quinine for the swamp fever. And ammonia. Ammonia mixed with sulfuric ether. We must bathe her scalp.” Ada stepped back, crossed her arms over her waist and shook her head. “All that beautiful hair. It will have to go.”

Cord closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Aunt, go find Foster. Give him the medications you’ve mentioned and send him up.” Foster would work in silence, Cord thought; Foster would never dare suggest cutting Celine’s hair.

At the mention of his name, Foster stepped into the room.

“Are you a permanent fixture outside my wife’s door?” Cord did not bother to turn around.

“No, sir. Just when the occasion warrants.”

Both men remained silent until Ada left to find the medications. Cord had discarded the dirty rags, wrapped Celine in a clean sheet and spread her hair out on the pillows. She was as pale as moonlight.

“Poor miss.” Foster sighed.

“She’s going to live, Foster.” Cord clung to her hand.

“I’ve no doubt of that, sir.”

“You don’t look it. I’ll not have any long faces at her bedside.”

“Speaking of bedsides, might I suggest you move her into
your
suite, sir? It’s more fittin’. The ventilation’s better and the furnishin’s more comfortable. That way, should you wish to stay with her—”

“I am staying with her.”

“—there will be ample room for you to stretch out on the bed and rest without bothering her.”

Foster waited for Cord to make a decision. It took all of half a second. Celine was once more nestled in the crook of his arm as Cord gently carried her into the master suite.

Cord sat beside her throughout the night and long into the next day while the others came and went on silent feet. Ada left covered dishes and took them away again untouched. At one point she drew the draperies tight, insisting dim light was best; Foster appeared an hour later, opened the draperies and threw the windows wide, declaring that Miss Celine needed healing ventilation and a sea breeze.

Because all he did was sob, Edward was not allowed in the room.

And so Cord sat alone with Celine hour upon hour. Sat alone and dealt with all his anxieties. Sat alone with his memories of the past and his fears of the bleak, endless stretch of tomorrows he would face if Celine were to die. He clung to her hand as if his will alone would save her; clung to her as he would have to Alex, had he been able to; clung to her as he might have to his mother on the night of the carriage accident, had he only known.

He ached with the ache of a man whose love had been locked inside for so long that the pain of letting it out was as great as having a limb torn off. He ached and he swore and he cursed and then out of fear he even begged God’s forgiveness and made a chain of promises a saint would not have been able to keep, if only Celine’s life might be spared.

It had been years since he had entered a church, aeons since he had recited the prayers his grandfather and the priest had insisted he memorize. They came back to him as he sat alone in the dark with his head in his hands. Every word of every prayer, a litany of supplication and penance.

Celine had asked nothing of him, and yet she had offered him a gift beyond the price of a rich merchant’s dowry. She offered him a lifetime of commitment and a love he had been too stubborn to even acknowledge, let alone accept.

It would be his privilege to have it now, he decided. And to return it. In a hushed, broken whisper he promised her he would try to return that love, pledged that if she gave him the chance he would do everything in his power to learn to love again.

She began to toss and turn again, tearing at the bedclothes, mumbling in her delirium. He left his chair, brushed aside the mosquito net and sat beside her. He clasped both her hands tight and held on.

“Celine, can you hear me?”

“Persa’s dead,” she whispered. Her head thrashed back and forth against the pillow. “Sorry. Should have known. Should have tried to save…. Had to run. Run.”

“Shh.” Cord brushed the damp tendrils of hair off her forehead. “Wake up, Celine. You’re safe. You’re on St. Stephen.”

“Cord …” She began to shake with the chills again. “Hates me. Doesn’t want a wife. No wife. The wrong one. I lied … Thinks I … stole his memories.”

Too well he understood her rambling delirium, and it broke his heart, the heart he’d thought no longer existed, until Celine.

“Celine. Shh. You are the one. The right one. The only one. Please, forgive me. Forget what I said. Take my memories, you can have them. Help me make new ones. Just don’t leave me.”

He took her in his arms and stretched out beside her. Her teeth were chattering.

“Cord …” Her voice carried to him on barely a whisper.

“I’m right here.” He could barely utter the words. His throat was closing up, welling with sorrow. She was leaving him. Like Alex. Like his mother and father. Abandoning him.

He hugged her close, pressed his face against her hair and let go all the tears he’d held back for so long. His shoulders shook with the force of his sobs.

And still he held her.

Eighteen

T
he air was close and stuffy, the light dim. Celine gazed around the room, disoriented. She had expected to awaken in the cottage shop in New Orleans, but everything in the room surrounding her was unfamiliar. Filmy mosquito net enveloped the bed like an ecru fog. Rain pelted the roof.

She stared up at the hook that held the gathered net and tried to bring to mind memory of how she came to be lying here in this strange bed. She tried to sit up, only to discover she did not have the strength to do more than turn her head.

The instant she laid eyes on the man at her bedside, her heart fluttered and memory came flooding back.

Cordero.

He was still alive and apparently, so was she.

He was half draped across the edge of the bed, his head cradled on his folded arms. She could tell by the even rise and fall of his back that he was sound asleep.

She managed to raise her hand and reached out to touch him. She let her fingertips trail down the gauzy mosquito net and sighed. They were separated by far more than the lacy web.

As if aware of her return to consciousness, Cord lifted his head. He found Celine staring back at him, her huge eyes luminous in her pale face.

Relief welled up from the depth of his soul. His heart sang with exultation. There was so much he had to say, so many places to begin, but when he finally collected himself enough to speak, all he could manage was, “You’re alive.”

“So are you.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “Where am I?”

“In my room.”

He smiled, then found the overlapping edges of the net and brushed it aside, reached in and took one of her hands in both of his. She closed her eyes and absorbed his warmth, let his strength radiate through her.

“I thought I was dying.”

“I thought you might.”

“You look terrible,” she said, taking in the shadowed growth that covered his jaw. “Almost as bad as I feel.”

She wondered at the changes in him. His face looked gaunt. Deep shadows and new lines were etched beneath his eyes. There was a puffiness she had not seen there before, even after he had been drinking heavily. He acted afraid to take his eyes off her.

She did not mind, for in his gaze she saw a vibrant warmth and newly kindled light.

Cord needed more than to touch her hand. He left his chair to sit beside her. The bed ropes creaked with his additional weight. Fighting the urge to gather her in his arms and hold her, as he had done for so many hours over the past four days, he contented himself with reaching out to brush some hair off her forehead.

“How did you find me?” Needing to touch him, she reached for his hands, found them both.

“Ada, Foster and Edward set up a hue and cry. Bobo got the boy, Philip, to confess that he helped lure you away.”

“The obeah man—”

“Has disappeared. He and Gunnie have slipped off into the interior of the island. They can’t hope to hide forever, but I want you to rest assured, you’ll be safe, Celine.”

“Gunnie came to me with one of your coats. It was covered with blood. I should have never gone with her, but I thought—”

“You believed exactly what they wanted you to believe … that I was hurt.”

“That you were dying.”

He looked away. She watched him take a deep breath, saw his jaw tighten, his dark winged brows draw toward each other. He was struggling with far more than words. Her heart began to pound.

“Cord?” She squeezed his hands, willing him to speak with all the strength she could muster.

He swallowed hard. Her grip felt painfully weak, but he knew the depth of her stubborn will. She was waiting for him to say something, anything. He’d had four long days and nights to think about all the things he would tell her if given one more chance, and now that he’d been given that chance, the words were lodged in his throat.

“It’s stuffy in here,” he finally said. Cord let go of her hands and stood up. He saw the disappointment in her eyes, and still he couldn’t speak. He had faced his fears, but was still a coward when it came to putting his feelings into words.

He raked his fingers through his hair and walked over to the windows. Ada had been the last one in to monitor the state of the room. It was dim and still. He opened the curtains and then the veranda doors. Mist from the falling rain eddied in on a draft. He stared out at the rain that streamed in crystal threads from the roofline until he had control of his emotions again.

A pitcher of tepid water sat on the chest of drawers near the bed. He filled a glass and gave it to her. Her hand trembled so that he sat down beside her again and held the rim to her lips.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, watching her slowly sip the water. Her eyes were huge.

When she finished, she nodded. “A little.”

“I’ll tell Foster to send something up. He’s either lurking just behind the door or seeing to Edward.”

“Nothing’s happened to Edward, has it?”

“He’s been unable to cope ever since your disappearance. Ada has thrown herself into training a new cook—that and crying on Howard Wells’s shoulder. There has been a steady stream of trays coming and going and all manner of reading material is piled up for you to read while you recover.”

“You don’t look as if you’ve eaten much.”

He didn’t comment. Instead he opened the door, expecting to find Foster there, but for once the long hallway was deserted. There was usually more than one member of the household hovering just outside for word of Celine’s progress.

Cord yanked the bellpull three times and then scratched the stubble on his jaw as he walked back to the bed. Celine’s eyes were closed. Beneath the bedclothes her breasts rose and fell in a rhythmic, even motion. Sleep would heal her more than anything else, he knew. The relief he’d experienced when she awakened had left him staggered. Cord wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed beside his wife and sleep the first real sleep he would have had in days.

Instead, he carefully drew the edges of the mosquito net together and sat down on the chair beside the bed. He stretched out his legs and closed his eyes.

He didn’t know if he’d slept for a few moments or an hour, but when he awoke to find Foster standing over him, the rain had finally stopped.

“Has she … Is she …” Foster was staring down at Celine.

“She was awake a few minutes ago. Maybe you can get my aunt to make some soup—nothing heavy; nothing too spicy.”

“I’ll try.”

Cord expected Foster to rush off, but he lingered near Celine’s bedside, fidgeting with the top button of his vest.

“She’s going to be fine, Foster,” Cord tried to reassure him, but the servant’s gaze darted about the room like a sparrow afraid to land.

“Is there something wrong?” Cord asked him.

Foster opened his mouth and closed it again. He tugged on his cuffs, first one and then the other. He stared at his feet and lined the toes of his shoes even with one another. He cleared his throat.

“Celine could starve waiting for the soup,” Cord said. Foster had definitely paled. “What in the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, sir, but—” Foster’s frenetic gaze snapped to the open door.

Cord followed his servant’s gaze. His breath caught in his throat when he saw his father framed in the doorway. For a split second he thought he had developed Ada’s ability to see ghosts, but as Auguste Moreau stepped into the room, Cord knew this was no ghost, but the man he thought had died fifteen years ago. The man who had not wanted him around.

Cord shot to his feet.

“Get out!” Fury whipped through him. He would have recognized his father anywhere. Except for a few silver hairs threaded through the glossy ebony at his temples and creases around his mouth and eye, the man was unchanged. Still tall and straight, impeccably dressed in black and white, he was a commanding figure with the ability to fill a room with his very presence. The leather eye patch did not detract from his appearance, but rather added a touch of drama to it.

“I’m not leaving until I’ve had my say.”

Auguste glanced over at the bed. Cord watched his father’s face soften as without pause he walked to Celine’s bedside. It was another shock to stand idly by and watch his wife smile up at his father as Auguste reached out, took Celine’s hand and kissed it.

“I’m so thankful to find you recovering,” Auguste told her.

“Thank you,” Celine said softly.

“Get away from my wife. Get out!” Cord exploded.

“Cord …,” Celine whispered.

She tried to appeal to him, but he refused to listen. It had been enough of a shock to see his father alive without discovering his wife was already acquainted with the man.

“I have nothing to say to you. Before you walked through that door you were dead to me. I’d like to keep it that way,” Cord told Auguste.

“I can understand your feelings. It wasn’t easy to come here today, but concern for your lovely wife, as well as the need to say what should have been said long ago, has brought me here.”

“Do you think I care how hard this is on you? I don’t want to hear anything you have to say—”

“Cord, please listen to him.” Celine was barely audible over the loud exchange.

“Gentlemen,” Foster put in, “might I suggest you take yourselves out o’ here? Miss Celine ain’t up to this.”

“I will wait for you downstairs, Cordero.” Auguste bowed once more to Celine, nodded at his son and then left the room, with Foster dogging his heels.

Concern for Celine’s fragile health overrode Cord’s anger for the moment. As pale as the lace-edged pillowcase, she had closed her eyes again. When he stepped up to the bedside, she opened them slowly and stared up at him.

“How long have you known him?” he demanded.

“How long have I been ill?”

“Four days.”

“I met him the day I was kidnapped. He came to me in the garden.”

“I thought there were to be no more secrets …”

“I tried to convince him to go directly to see you. He said no, and when I told him I was going to tell you about him, he made me promise to wait three days. Cord, I gave him my word, but I swear I would have told you.”

“We’ll never know now, will we?”

He could see she was exhausted. The long battle she’d waged against death had been hard won. He would not argue with her now, would not risk her life again.

“Foster is getting you something to eat. It shouldn’t take long.” As he drew the chair close to the bed, he hoped his aunt was not experimenting with the broth.

“Go see your father, Cordero. He’s waiting. Ada can sit with me. I would love to wash my face and comb my hair, and she can help.”

He didn’t move.

“Please. Go to him. Hear him out at least.”

“Why should I?”

“Because your heart will never heal until you do.”

He stared down at her long and hard and weighed the truth of her words. Over four days, while she lay feverish, he had battled his demons. He had hoped the hurt and anger was behind him, but when he’d had the opportunity to tell her that he had found the courage to admit he’d fallen in love with her, he could not find the words. The appearance of his father and his reaction to it had proved that his heart was still bleeding from an old wound.

Your heart will never heal until you do
.

“Go, Cord,” she urged. “Hear him out.”

He did it for her.

He left Celine in Ada’s care, although his aunt had apparently been so shocked by Auguste’s appearance that Cord wondered who would be caring for whom.

His father waited in the parlor, seated on a settee upholstered in gold brocade now worn threadbare on the seat. When Cord joined him, Auguste was already holding a crystal snifter of brandy, lost in thought. Foster stood beside a tea cart crowded with decanters. He poured Cord a liberal amount of brandy.

“Nothing for me, thank you, Foster. You may leave.”

Cord had made many promises the night he almost lost Celine, and now was not the time to go back on them. Once he refused the drink, it did not seem much of a sacrifice. After all, he never had drank because he needed to, but because he wanted to.

He walked over to the portrait of his mother above the mantel and stood beneath it. Captured in oil on canvas, Alyce’s likeness was forever suspended in time, a one-dimensional memory of a vibrant, lovely young woman. When Cord finally summoned the courage to face his father, he found Auguste staring up at the likeness.

“She was a beautiful woman,” Auguste said.

Cord remained silent. His father had demanded this meeting, he said to himself; let him talk.

Auguste took another drink. “As beautiful as your wife, but fair instead of dark. How is Celine?”

“Resting. She’s no concern of yours.”

“She is the reason I am here. When we met, she begged me to see you, to break my silence.”

“She is quite the nag.” Cord almost smiled at the old jest, so very thankful that he could make it again. But the moment was far too serious for more than half a smile.

“How is your grandfather?” Auguste asked.

“Heartless, when I saw him last.”

“He had a heart years ago, when I was a boy. I suppose I broke it when I didn’t live up to his expectations.”

“I was forced to suffer for that.” Cord leaned his shoulder into the mantel.

“That is what Celine told me. Cordero, if I had even suspected that he would take out his hatred for me on you, I would have never sent you to Louisiana,” Auguste said.

“He tried to make certain I didn’t turn out like you—a wastrel, a ne’er-do-well … a drunkard. He said he was ashamed of you, a man with no more ambition than to live on a paltry plot of worthless land you gained through marriage.”

He could still hear his grandfather’s voice as he berated Auguste over and over, a repetitive chant that never ceased.

“There was no way he would have ever turned the responsibility of the family plantation over to me while he was alive. I knew if I was to survive at all, I had to leave. I ended up here on St. Stephen and fell in love with your mother,” Auguste said.

“And killed her with your drinking.”

“Believe me, I hated myself as much as you did after the accident.”