Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (8 page)

      
Deborah gasped in distress at her filth-encrusted stepchild; then her face brightened in a smile of welcome. The girl looked so guilty that Deborah couldn't be angry, especially when she saw Rafe's scowl as he looked at his daughter's ratty hair and disheveled appearance.

      
“Melanie, I'm so glad to see you,” Deborah said, closing the distance to hug the girl. She bent her silver-blond head to Melanie's dark one as they embraced.

      
Rafe crossed the room, and took the ugly shoe from Melanie's grubby fingers. “This is the kind of a stunt I'd expect from your brothers, not from a young lady of twenty-one.” With grudging good humor he tossed the shoe aside, hugged her, and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Ugh, what is this stuff all over you?” He sniffed. “Egg—rotten eggs!” he said incredulously, holding her at arm's length now, freeing her from Deborah's protective embrace to inspect her. “You look like an escapee from some slum riot.”

      
Melanie finally recovered her voice and her wits. “Oh, bother my clothes or a few silly eggs! What are you doing here? You never wrote you were coming for a visit. Did you bring Adam and Caleb and Lenore along?” Melanie's gold eyes were sparkling now, her initial shock fleeing as joy at seeing her parents replaced it.

      
Looking over her shoulder, Rafe saw the broadsides, picked one up, and scanned it. “This is not just a visit, young lady. We've come to take you home.”

      
“I'm afraid your grandfather's letters have been a bit more explicit about your exploits than yours have, Melanie,” Deborah remonstrated gently.

      
“Home? You mean back to Texas? To the ranch?” Her crestfallen expression was quickly masked as she replied with steel in her voice, “I have important work here, Papa, Mama. I just can't leave now.”

      
“Is that important work posting these leaflets? And does it include being pelted with garbage?” Rafe asked in a voice heavy with sarcasm.

      
“And being involved in a riot or two, not to mention having her life threatened by one Cyrus Juline, a slave catcher from Georgia,” Adam said with obvious distaste for the bounty hunter.

      
“Riot?” Deborah looked back at Melanie with concern.

      
“It was only a small riot on the Commons last month. I was out of range of the guns—”

      
“Guns?” Rafe thundered.

      
Melanie made a gesture of dismissal, as if shooting and mob violence were as commonplace for a Boston lady as attending the symphony. “Only a few men had guns, but the constabulary disarmed them before anyone was killed.”

      
“One man was shot in the shoulder and three people were badly injured by rocks thrown during the melee,” Adam added grimly.

      
“But the rock only grazed my temple. I hardly had a scratch! Considering all the Comanche raiders and renegades in Texas, I scarcely think you can consider it safer there,” she countered.

      
“But, Melanie, look at you,” Deborah chided. Ignoring the mud and garbage, she ran her hands over her daughter's hideous gray dress and looked down at the heavy high-laced shoe on Melanie's left foot. “You're dressed like an old lady, not the lovely young woman we visited here two years ago.”

      
Melanie sighed. “I should think my clothes would please you. Honestly, Mama, you of all people should realize it's not how a woman
looks
but how she
thinks
that's important.”

      
“Well I
think
you will take a bath, dress in some appropriate clothes, which your mother will select for you, and we shall continue this discussion at dinner,” her father pronounced with finality.

* * * *

      
“The letter must have followed us on the very next steamer,” Rafe said dejectedly. He sat at Adam's desk, rubbing his fingers in small, tight circles on his temples.

      
Adam was surprised to detect a few faint flecks of gray in his son-in-law's curly black hair. “You must tell Melanie. Lily was her natural mother. What will you do about Claude's estate?”

      
Rafe unfolded his long body from the chair and stood to face Adam. “I'll have to go to New Orleans and deal with my mother. The lawyers doubtless have her in tears by now. Damn that stubborn old fool, to die leaving me the whole estate just as if I'd stayed there and done as he wanted!” Rafe pounded the table in agitation.

      
The law firm of Beaurivage and LeBlanc's neat letterhead lay on the study table, as did another letter from the same packet, written in the bold, clear script of Rafe's brother-in-law, Caleb Armstrong. A late summer yellow fever epidemic had claimed both Claude Flamenco and Lily Duval Bertin.

      
“I’ll have to talk to Caleb about the estate. Hell, Adam, I don't want it! I told my father when I left New Orleans that he still had a daughter. He should have left his wealth to my sister and her husband as well as to his wife. I wanted no part of it or the hold it would have on me.”

      
“You can never undo family ties, son. Maybe you and your mother can reconcile your differences now,” Adam said.

      
Rafe gave a snort of disgust. “She and the rest of my illustrious Beaurivage and Flamenco cousins still refuse to admit Lenore and Caleb are alive, much less part of the family. When my sister eloped with an American, they disowned her forever.”

      
“Yet your father willed you and your children everything, although you married an American.”

      
“It's an old Creole tradition. Men can be forgiven any excess; women, none,” he replied in disgust.

      
Adam half smiled. “Sounds like some of Deborah's ideas have been rubbing off on you over the years.” He walked over to the desk and placed a hand on Rafe's shoulder. “You'll have to go to New Orleans not only for your mother, but to deal with the attorneys, son. Your sister doesn't need the Flamenco fortune, but your mother must be provided for.”

      
Rafe's shoulders slumped. “If only I didn't have to drag Melanie into this.”

      
“You have to tell her, son,” Adam said gently.

* * * *

      
“Why should I care if she's dead?” Melanie stood in the center of her bedroom with her hands on her hips. “She never loved me. She let
Grandmère
and Aunt Thérèse raise me—then you and Deborah. Deborah's my real mother, the one who loves me. Lily Duval never did!” Melanie's golden eyes were filled with pain. Her tiny body vibrated with fiercely restrained anguish.

      
Rafe understood her hurt. Lily had never accepted her firstborn child after the second one, a boy, died in an epidemic. Melanie reminded him of Lily in physical appearance, the high cheekbones and smooth olive skin with just a hint of copper in the complexion, the big eyes and long silky wealth of ebony hair. Yet anyone admiring the beautiful young woman would see the obvious resemblance to his own French-Spanish Creole ancestry and never suspect her Cherokee or African bloodlines.

      
“Lily's husband, Charles Bertin, died last year in a duel, Melanie. The attorneys say she left everything to you now. There may be some mementos, something you might want to keep. I'll understand if you decide not to visit the house on Rampart Street, but we do have to visit your Aunt Lenore and Uncle Caleb and settle your Grandfather Flamenco's estate.”

      
“Then home to Texas?” She smiled bravely though tears ran in rivulets down her cheeks as she slid into her father's waiting arms. “I'll think about what to do with her things,” she murmured hesitantly.

      
“Talk it over with your mother,” Rafe replied gently.

* * * *

Everything is exactly as I remembered,
Deborah thought to herself as she numbly unpacked in their old quarters, the private apartment across the courtyard connecting to the Flamencos' New Orleans house. Despite the high ceilings, the late fall humidity was oppressive. Oh, for the dry air of north Texas. She sighed.

      
“You hate it here, too, don't you?” Melanie, looking small and forlorn, stood in the doorway to her parents' large bedroom. She had just left her own room at the end of the hall.

      
“I have little good to remember that isn't overshadowed by pain, that's true,” Deborah said, a haunted note in her voice.

      
“At least,
Grandmère
Celine is willing to admit you by the front door. If she had her way, I'd be sleeping downstairs with her slaves,” Melanie said bitterly.

      
Deborah walked over and drew her daughter by the hand to the large four-poster bed. As they sat down, Deborah reassured her. “She won't have her way, because your father owns this house now and what he decrees stands. You are his child, just as Adam and Caleb and Norrie are, and equally loved.”

      
“Oh, Mama, you are such a special person!” Melanie threw her arms around Deborah's neck.

      
“Remember the first time you called me Mama?” Deborah asked softly. “You were twelve years old, such a proud, fiercely independent, and lovely little girl. I used every wile I knew to win you over, and it was worth it. Don't let the old hatreds here touch you, dear heart.”

      
“I won't,” Melanie replied with a catch in her voice. “But when I think of how my G
randmère
Marie loved me and how this one hates me...”

      
“As soon as we get legal matters straightened out, we'll go home,” Deborah soothed.

      
“Do—do you think Aunt Lenore and Uncle Caleb will like me? I mean, they've lived here all their lives.”

      
Deborah smiled confidently. “Lenore is much more like your father than like your grandmother. She and I were best friends when I lived here. That's why your baby sister is named for her. In fact, I helped Lenore and Caleb elope and scandalized the whole family.”

      
“Including your papa,” Rafe added from the door, remembering the bitter fight he and Deborah had had the night she disguised herself in Lenore’s costume while his sister and her American slipped away from the masked ball and were secretly married.

      
Pain and guilt for the way he had treated Deborah were etched on his face as he came into the room. “Perhaps, we should have stayed at Lenore and Caleb's house, and to hell with
Maman's
hysterics,” he said darkly.

      
Deborah rose and went over to embrace him, her body transmitting a warmth and love that erased all the old hurts. “No, we can stay for the few days it will take to settle matters. We'll see the Armstrongs and their brood tonight.” Turning to Melanie, she said, “And I warn you, if you think two little brothers have been a trial, wait until you see all your cousins—Thad, Michael, Rafael, Burton, oh, yes, and one poor little girl as an afterthought!”

      
“The one named for you?” Melanie asked Deborah.

      
As her mother nodded, her father added with a grin, “And they all have red hair.”

      
“Does Uncle Caleb have red hair?” Melanie asked innocently.

      
“If he didn't, your aunt would be in pretty big trouble by now,” Rafe answered, and they all three laughed, breaking the tension and holding the past at bay.

      
They spent a delightful but exhausting evening with the Armstrong clan. Rafe's sister and brother-in-law and their children welcomed Melanie warmly, accepting the child of Rafe's mistress as openly as they accepted Deborah's natural children.

      
When they returned to the Flamenco house, Melanie was glad to sink into the soft bed in the room down the hall from her parents. Her five-year-old sister, Norrie, was already asleep next to her, and their brothers, Adam and Caleb, were doubtless drifting off next door; but Melanie lay awake ruminating.

      
Ever since she had come to live with her father and Deborah in Texas, she had been loved unconditionally, just as her grandmother and aunt had loved her back in St. Louis before their deaths. For the past four years, her Grandfather Adam had loved her in Boston. But after meeting
Grandmère
Celine and sensing the animosity radiating from the old woman, Melanie felt like an outcast.

      
Melanie had been born in this city, only a few miles distant, in a small white house on Rampart Street, a house she now legally owned.
That's really it. It isn't the color bar in New Orleans or the dislike of a grandmother I never knew. Even my being illegitimate isn't the real hurt. It's Mère.
Melanie lay very still as the thoughts washed over her in a tidal wave of fresh pain, like a newly opened wound, long suppurating and now freshly lanced. Willing herself not to cry and awaken her little sister, Melanie vowed to visit Lily Duval's house on the morrow.

* * * *

      
“Are you certain you want to do this?” Deborah asked as the carriage pulled up in front of the small white house.

      
“Are you certain you do?” Melanie countered, remembering the painful confrontation between Deborah and Lily that she had witnessed all those years ago.

      
“Let's go,” Deborah replied as she gave Melanie’ s hand a squeeze.

      
The house was much as her little girl's eyes had remembered it, expensively decorated and cluttered with too many pieces of doll-like furniture. Porcelain figurines and a silver tea service sat on delicately lacquered French provincial table-tops. Heavy brocade draperies were drawn against the sun. Despite the shade from several tall willows outside, the place was stifling with the musky aromas of perfume and death.