Iron Lace (28 page)

She couldn’t be honest with Henry, no matter how much she craved revenge. She had to tell him a lie he might believe, one he could neither prove nor disprove. She had considered this before, but not in depth. She had hoped that Henry wouldn’t notice or care that she wasn’t a virgin. She was older than the average bride. Surely he had considered the fact that, at twenty-five, she might not be pure.

She still wasn’t sure that he cared, but he had noticed. His denouncement might well be a way of gaining control over her, but even so, she still had to answer to him.

She decided to tell him that her lover had been a business acquaintance of her father’s, an older man, a European perhaps, and that when she went to him, after Lucien’s death, she had discovered that he was already married. Heartbroken by everything that had happened, she had sought solace in travel until her heart was healed enough to allow her to return to New Orleans—which would also explain her long absence.

She would beg for forgiveness, assure Henry that she had only been young and foolish, and that the man had taken advantage of her innocence. She would refuse to give his name, claiming that he was rich and powerful and could create great trouble for Henry if he tried to expose him. She sensed that Henry would like knowing that his wife had once been the mistress of a powerful European, that in Henry’s eyes her sins would be at least partially absolved by her good taste.

What to do about the rest of her life was much less clear. She was married to a ruthless man who wanted nothing more than to dominate her completely. She had shut her eyes to the worst truths about Henry, believing that she was strong
enough to stand up to him. Now she doubted her strength. He had not won everything he sought last night, but he had already made inroads into her soul. She had to prevent him from destroying her.

She felt him stir beside her, felt his grip tighten on her hair. She turned on her side to stare at him, careful not to let her feelings show. “My wife,” he said.

“I would say,
my husband,
but the words would stick in my throat.”

“Don’t tell me last night wasn’t to your liking?” He smiled; it was a placid, friendly smile. “Were your other lovers better, Rory?”

“There was only one.”

“And why should I believe that?”

“Because it’s the truth.” She didn’t shrink away as he slid closer. She made herself return his stare. “I’ll tell you about him, if you prefer it that way. Then, perhaps, we can be done with this.”

“By all means, tell me.”

With no embellishments, she repeated the story she had created. “I was young,” she finished. “And ignorant. I made a terrible mistake, but now I ask you to put it behind us. I was wrong not to tell you before we married.”

“I would imagine you hadn’t yet thought of a story.” He released her hair, and his hand traveled to her breast. This morning his fingers were gentle against her bruised skin. “When did this one occur to you? This morning, while I slept?”

She felt him gather her breast in his hand, and then pain streaked through her. “I’m smaller and weaker than you are,” she whispered through a haze of tears, “but if you continue to hurt me this way, I’ll find a way to hurt you. So help me God.”

“Will you? That could be interesting.” He didn’t release her, but he didn’t hurt her again.

“I’ve told you the truth. Now let me go.”

He flattened her against the bed so quickly that she couldn’t defend herself. “You’ve forgotten the truth,” he said. “I’m sure that’s all. You wouldn’t be foolish enough to lie to me, would you, Rory?”

She turned her head and refused to answer.

“I’ll tell you why,” he continued. “Lies only work if the truth isn’t known. And I always know the truth, because I make it my business. Do you see how simple it is?”

She waited for him to violate her. They were married, but what he intended was a violation. And, despite everything, she couldn’t dredge up any hatred for him. She had lied to him, and she could never tell him the truth. Which of them was the more despicable?

When he entered her, she was surprised by the absence of pain. He moved slowly, carefully, as if protecting a precious possession. His thumb traced the path of her tears, caressing her cheek with a featherlight touch. She steeled herself for the return of his brutality, but he seduced her with gentleness, murmuring endearments and soothing words. He didn’t trap her against him; when she moved, he accommodated himself to her. When she tried to push him away, he took her hands and kissed them.

She was more shocked by his gentleness than she had been by his violence, and more frightened. She was exhausted and distraught, and her thoughts were no longer clear. She felt herself responding to him, like a beaten dog who comes back to lick the hand of its master. She tried to steel herself against this new, deceitful tenderness, but the
feel of his body healing what he had hurt was so welcome, she could only relax into gratitude.

He kissed her cheeks, her lips, her earlobes. He whispered apologies and gathered her close, as if true intimacy were his only wish. Her eyelids closed. She could almost believe him, almost convince herself that he’d had a right to his anger and that she had deserved the abuse of last night. When his rhythm quickened, the first tendrils of desire warmed her. Her body, taught to respond by a man she now hated, was responding to another. Her eyes flew open, and she gasped in confusion; she saw victory in his. She tried again to push him away, but her hands only fluttered uselessly against his chest.

She cried out once, surrendering in pleasure what she had refused him in pain.

Afterward he pulled her into his arms and held her close. His body was slick with sweat, and she wanted to move away. Instead, she forced herself to settle against him. She was confused and appalled by her own response, but she knew better than to let him see it. She had not found release, but she had given him far too much.

“I have something for you.”

She sighed, fighting back tears. “Do you?”

“A gift. A trinket, really.”

“Why should you give me anything? Haven’t you already gotten what you wanted?”

“Consider it a reward of sorts.” He moved away, and she felt only gratitude. She watched him stride to the armoire where Doris had hung his clothes. He took something from the pocket of his coat before he returned. She sat up, searching for the gown he had stripped away the night before, but he turned back the covers, burying it somewhere beneath
them. She was icy-cold. The fire had gone out, and the sun hadn’t yet warmed the room, but when she reached for the covers he blocked her.

He held out his hand. “For you.”

She was trembling—whether from exposure or from the accumulation of emotions, she wasn’t sure. She held out her hand in response and watched it waver.

He unclasped his fingers until his hand was flat in front of her. A locket lay against his palm.

She drew her hand back sharply.

“Don’t you want it, Rory? I thought you might.”

She raised her eyes to his and saw that there was no use in lying. “How did you get it?”

“Stories are better if they start with ‘Once upon a time,’ but I will tell you that a certain madam in the district is easily bribed.”

She wondered if he knew everything, or if he was making guesses, hoping she would confirm them. “Just tell me you didn’t hurt her.” She pleaded with her eyes. “Tell me she’s all right.”

“Who, Rory?”

She spoke her daughter’s name through a lump in her throat.

“Nicolette,” he murmured, as if savoring the word. “She’s a sassy little thing. She’s allowed in the whorehouse parlor sometimes, I understand, to entertain the gentlemen.”

“Bastard!”

“You’ve aimed your little insult at the wrong target, haven’t you? Your daughter is the bastard—a light-skinned nigger bastard, at that. And her father’s the same.”

“If you hurt her…”

“Finish the sentence.” He stroked her cheek. “I think you’ve forgotten which of us is vulnerable.”

She didn’t flinch. “Why did you marry me if you knew?”

“I married you because I knew.”

She understood then just how far-reaching his quest for power was. He had chosen her because she had a secret he could expose if she fought his control. Her secret, as much as her name and her bloodline, had made her the perfect choice as his wife.

She had only one chance to turn this around, to make the rest of her life tolerable instead of the hell her mother had endured. One terrible chance, and if she waited, it would be over. “There’s one thing you didn’t understand.”

“Enlighten me.”

“You’ve badly overestimated what you can do to me.”

“Have I? I can expose you for what you are. I know at first I might be tainted, too. But when the gossip dies down, I’ll be the martyr and you’ll be the outcast. I might lose a little respect, but you’ll lose everything.”

“You still don’t understand.” She lifted her head higher. “I have nothing to lose.”

“You have Gulf Coast. Do you think you could stay in the city and continue to run it? You would be banned from every social and business gathering. No one would help you. No one would patronize you. In a matter of months, Gulf Coast would be gone.”

“I see that.” She forced herself to appear calm. “And maybe that would be best.”

“There is nowhere you could go, Rory, where your secret wouldn’t follow. Be sure of that.”

“There are places where my secret would only make me more attractive. Places like Paris, places far away from you and your bed, Henry. And if I’m not in your bed, how will you
get the sons you want so badly? This is a Catholic city, and even if your interest in the church is political, you have to respect its laws. You can’t divorce me, no matter what I’ve done, and I don’t believe my past is good enough reason for annulment.”

He smiled. “I knew you had courage. I didn’t realize the full extent. But you’ve forgotten. I know where your daughter lives. I know who your lover was. And I can affect their lives.”

She suppressed a shudder. “Why should I care if you affect Rafe Cantrelle’s life?”

She waited one heartbeat, two. There was no change in his expression, but she thought her words had given him pause. “When you were delving into my past, did you discover how much I hate him?” she asked.

He inclined his head, as if to see her from a different perspective.

“I would like to see him punished for what he did to me, but Nicolette is innocent, and I don’t believe in hurting children.”

“You love her.”

“No. I have feelings for her. She’s my child. But if I loved her, don’t you think I would have kept her? I could have found a way. So make no mistakes when you measure the lengths you would have to go to hurt me. Nicolette is a weapon you have at your disposal, but not of the magnitude you hoped for. And if you harm her, I’ll retaliate.”

He laughed.

She lowered her voice. “On the blood of my unborn children, I swear to you that whatever you do to my daughter, I will do to a son of yours.”

“You’re insane.”

“Like my mother before me.” She smiled, though she felt
sick. “There are things I want from you, Henry. If you give them to me, I’ll stay with you of my own free will and be a model wife and mother. I want Gulf Coast rebuilt. I want children, and whatever kind of life we can make together. But if you harm my daughter or try to ruin me, you’ll find you’ve married a demon!”

He stared at her, as if gauging her performance. Her own words swirled in her head until she didn’t know which were true and which were lies. She only knew she was fighting for what was left of her life, just as she would have to fight him every day of the rest of it.

Finally he reached for her hand and put the locket in it, closing her fingers around it. “We’ll see.”

“Yes. We will.” She saw that his eyes were the same untroubled green, but she thought she saw admiration there. Of course, like everything else about him, it could be a lie, or only a portion of the truth.

A
urore looked down at the sleeping child in the Silver Cross perambulator Henry had ordered from England. Hugh’s hair spread like silk tassels against the linen cover. His hair was a lighter brown than her own, but when his eyes were open, they were the same pale blue. There was nothing of his father in his face, as if Henry hadn’t even been present at her son’s conception. She spoke to the woman beside her. “Do you have anything to tell me today?”

“A thing or two.”

Aurore reached into her handbag and pulled out a folded bill. She laid it on Hugh’s cover. Since her marriage, she was no longer as concerned about money. The merger of Gulf Coast with Gerritsen Barge Lines had been a success, even if her merger with Henry had been a failure.

Lettie Sue stepped forward as if to admire the white woman’s baby and slipped the money inside her dress. “Business’s down. Ain’t half so many men coming, and two of the whores got sent packin’. They’s a couple streets over in a parlor house now.”

“Why? Do you know?”

Lettie Sue shrugged. Her shoulders and arms were as substantial as cypress trees from years of scrubbing floors and washing clothes. In contrast, her neck was long and graceful, and the shape of her head under the colorful tignon that hid her hair was majestic. “Don’t know. Mebbe the men are gettin’ tired of payin’ for what they can git for free if they’s just nicer to their women.”

“Or if they threaten or hurt them badly enough.” Aurore stared at her son.

“Ma’am?”

“What else have you noticed, Lettie Sue?”

“You wanna hear about Mr. Rafe?”

Aurore leaned forward to straighten Hugh’s covers. He smiled in his sleep, but she didn’t smile back. “Yes.”

“He’s not there much. Girls say that’s just as well. Mr. Rafe keeps things quiet, and the girls don’t like that. Girl gets sick or goes a little crazy, Mr. Rafe sends her off.”

“Where does he go?”

“Don’t know. Comes back most nights, though. Didn’t used to, but now he does. Little girl of his, she’s a sassy child.”

Aurore pondered what Lettie Sue had told her. Henry didn’t know that Aurore kept track of Rafe’s activities. But even though she had a new house and a baby, Nicolette was constantly on her mind. She had found Lettie Sue, who kept house at the Magnolia Palace, and she paid her well to bring back information about everything that went on there.

Lettie Sue was desperately poor, and much too astute to be a perfect source. Aurore knew she couldn’t show more than a passing interest in news about Nicolette, or Lettie Sue might deduce why she cared.

She risked a question now. “Trouble? What do you mean?”

“Does what she wants. Goes here. Goes there. Found her hiding under a tablecloth in the parlor last week, just so she could listen to Professor Clarence play his music. Mr. Rafe’s locked her in her room every night since.”

Aurore didn’t dare reply. She stared at Hugh, willing herself not to show any emotion. “Anything else of interest?”

“What you want to know all this for, Miss Gerritsen?”

In the months that Lettie Sue had been reporting to her, Aurore had waited for this question. Lettie Sue wasn’t looking directly at her, since any white woman would consider that insubordinate, but there had been a challenge in her tone.

“I won’t lie,” Aurore said. “I want the district closed down, and so do a lot of other women in New Orleans. It will close. It’s just a matter of time. You might as well make as much money answering questions as you can now.”

“What’s finding out about Mr. Rafe got to do with closing down the district?”

“The more we know about what happens inside the houses, the sooner we’ll get our wish.”

“Mr. Rafe wouldn’t like it, he knew you was asking questions.”

Aurore understood Lettie Sue, and wished she could tell her so. She knew what it was like to have to measure every step toward security and every mile away from it. “No. And he’d like it less if he knew you’d answered my questions. I’ll be sure he knows it was you, Lettie Sue, if it ever comes to that.”

“Nic’lette don’t have a mama. I tell you that?”

“You did. Some time ago.”

“Always wondered what happened to her mama.”

Aurore’s voice didn’t waver. “You have to ask? A woman’s lucky to survive a year in a house like that.”

“You close down the district, I ain’t got no place to work.”

“I’ll find you work when that happens, but I don’t help anybody I can’t trust.”

“You can trust me.”

Aurore’s friends, the young New Orleans matrons who served on committees with her and chattered gaily in the call-out sections of the best carnival balls, would have said that Lettie Sue was like all blacks who didn’t have a large enough dose of civilizing white blood, that her Christian exterior barely hid the African heart of a voodoo priestess. But Aurore understood what made Lettie Sue the woman she was, and she knew how closely she was bound to her. Under their thin veneers, they were sisters.

“You’d better go now. We’ve talked long enough.” Aurore grasped the carriage and began to push. “If you have anything to tell me again, you know how to reach me.”

“Yes’m.”

Aurore pushed the carriage down the path that wandered through Audubon Park. She came here often. The park, once the site of a sugar plantation, had always served the city well, and it served Aurore better. Under the massive live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, she could escape the scrutiny of her husband and the servants he paid to keep watch over her.

She had nearly reached the lagoon where she would rest before she dared a look behind her. Lettie Sue had vanished.

While Hugh slept on, she spread a quilt in the dappled sunshine beside the lagoon. Ducks filed past, and a crow just as large cawed to her from the low-hanging branch of a tree before it flew away. Far in the distance, from the direction of
the zoo, she thought she could hear the trumpeting of an elephant. Henry disapproved of her taking Hugh there, but she had, twice, and would continue to. She wanted her son to learn everything about the world except what sadness it could hold.

She stripped off her gloves. The April sun was warm against her bare arms, and she removed her hat to let it warm her face. She sat on the blanket, covering her white-stockinged legs with her skirts, and thought about everything Lettie Sue had said.

She hadn’t seen her daughter, not even from a distance, since her marriage to Henry. She was carefully watched, and going to Basin Street would enrage him. Despite her threats, Aurore knew that if Henry thought her sins were serious enough, he would punish her by hurting Nicolette. She had to content herself with Lettie Sue’s information, as scant as it was. At least she knew that Nicolette was alive and still in New Orleans.

It wasn’t enough. Everything that Lettie Sue had reported churned through her mind. Nicolette was a troublesome child, so much trouble that her father had to return home each night to supervise her.

Aurore could imagine the lively, spirited child she had so briefly held on her lap alone in a locked room. Nicolette’s spirit could be destroyed by isolation, if it hadn’t already been destroyed by proximity to the evils of Basin Street. Which was worse, her daughter alone and frightened, or her daughter in the clutches of the men who frequented the Magnolia Palace? Men like Aurore’s own husband.

Alone in the sunshine, she gave in to the tears that Henry never saw her cry. She had thought the birth of another child would fill the empty space inside her. How could she have fooled herself? How could she not have realized that having
Hugh would only expand the wound? That watching him grow, watching every sweet, indescribably perfect thing her son did, would remind her that she had lost these years with her daughter and would lose all the years to come?

Her cheeks were still wet when he awoke. He didn’t fuss. He always announced he was awake with laughter. He was only five months old, and he had probably been conceived during the horror of her wedding night. But she was closer to him than she had ever been to another human being. When he was out of her sight, she felt as if part of her were missing.

She lifted him from the pram and smiled through her tears. “Mama’s dearest,” she said softly. “Did you have a good nap?”

He cooed at the sight of her, batting his hands against her nose and mouth as if he were asking her to smile. Already he could make noises that sounded as if he were calling her.

She had refused to find a wet nurse for him. She wanted her son to be nourished on her milk, and although Henry had threatened her, she had stood firm. She had agreed to let Cleo watch over him when she couldn’t be there. But she, and she alone, fed him. Surprisingly, Henry had given in, although he delighted in keeping her from Hugh when it was feeding time. He was not pleased with their son. Hugh’s good nature seemed to prove that the child had none of the spunk a son should evidence.

Aurore changed him, then settled back on the quilt to nurse him. No one was about, except a Negro nurse with two small children several hundred yards away. She was well hidden by trees and shrubbery, and she threw a shawl over her shoulders and wrapped Hugh in its folds for modesty. As his tiny lips began to pull at her breast, she shut her eyes and willed herself to believe that, someday, loving this child would grow to be enough.

Somewhere in the distance, Rafe heard the trumpeting of an elephant. He took two dollars from his pocket. “Don’t bother coming to work tomorrow. Duchess doesn’t want spies working for her.” He handed the money to Lettie Sue. “That’s what you’re owed. And don’t look for a job anywhere else on Basin Street. You won’t find one.”

“I never told that lady nothing that mattered,” Lettie Sue said. She didn’t look down. She stared straight in his eyes. “I was just makin’ a little money. Don’t get paid enough for what I do. I can’t feed my children meat no more, just beans and rice. And they git tired of beans.”

“You should have come to me if you needed more money.”

Lettie Sue gave a harsh laugh. “Why? So’s you could work me twice as hard and give me half as much? You think you’re something, Mr. Rafe. Struttin’ ’round this town like you owned it. But you’re the same as me, not one drop better, even if your skin’s whiter. You don’t remember what it’s like to be poor. Somebody oughta beat you good and make you remember!”

He started around her, but she grabbed his arm. “No, you’re not the same as me,” she said. “You’re not half so good. I take care of my children, give ’em whatever I can. I take ’em to church and send ’em to school, and at night, Mr. Rafe, I put them in bed and listen to their prayers. You treat that little girl of yours like she was the devil. Well, she ain’t no devil. She’s a little girl, same as mine, and someday, when my children remember me and feel sad ’cause I’m dead, Nic’lette won’t feel nothing about you. She won’t even remember what you looked like!” She dropped his arm, then she wiped her fingers on her apron.

He walked on, but he heard her spit on the path behind him.

He had followed Lettie Sue to the park. This morning she had gone to the duchess with one more in a long series of trumped-up excuses to leave the house, and he had become suspicious. Aurore had not come near the Magnolia Palace in the past year, at least, not to his knowledge. But he doubted she had given up watching over the daughter she hadn’t wanted to keep. Now he knew for sure that Aurore had been using Lettie Sue to gather information. Aurore was here, in this park with her new baby, a child whose skin was white enough to suit her.

He hadn’t come to confront her. He did that in his dreams, angry, violent dreams in which he forced her to listen as he detailed Lucien’s sins. Revenge was a strange thing. He had thought that seeing the Gulf Coast empire burn would give him victory over his hatred of Lucien. Then he had thought that taking Nicolette would give him victory over Aurore. Instead, in his dreams he raged and swore, and for what? Understanding? Did it still matter that Aurore learn why he had acted as he had?

Aurore was married now, to a man despised by all those Gulf Coast employed. Rafe had heard stories about Henry Gerritsen, both from men he had known when he worked on the river and from the women who worked at Magnolia Palace. The duchess claimed that when Henry Gerritsen visited he paid well, but not a woman wanted him in her bed. He was cruel, but never quite cruel enough to bar from the house. He was too powerful to trifle with, and a friend to those who were even more so.

Aurore had chosen to marry someone like her father, more transparent perhaps, but with the same soulless disregard for others. If Rafe had forced her into this marriage, then his revenge had been even more complete.

And yet still he dreamed of her.

He walked in the direction he had seen her go. He wanted her to know that she had no listening ear at the Magnolia Palace now, that Nicolette no longer wore her locket or even remembered that one had been given to her. He yearned to see Aurore in defeat one more time. Perhaps then the dreams would stop.

He found her in a sheltered grotto where she sat on a blanket, holding her baby in her arms. She was the very picture of young motherhood, dressed in the softest lilac, with lace ribbons woven into her collar. The intervening years seemed to have left no mark; if anything, she was more beautiful. He stood silently and watched her for a long time before she looked up.

He saw her cheeks flush with color. She didn’t hurry to cover herself more thoroughly with the shawl; she didn’t straighten her dress to hide her ankles. She stared at him, and her gaze never wavered. “So,” she said finally. “You know.”

“Lettie Sue no longer works at the Palace.”

“There are better jobs than keeping house for thieves and whores.”

“I suppose she’ll find out if that’s true.”

“I’ll find her a place with one of my friends.”

“A legitimate whore? A useless creature who gets on her back for her husband twice a week and does her Catholic duty?”

“The word is wife—one you’re probably not familiar with.”

He leaned against a tree and folded his arms. “My daughter no longer has your little gift.”

She looked down at her son. “I know.”