Triumph in Arms (24 page)

“A scarred husband would have been better than a murdered one, given the gossip,” he said in understanding. “But your husband saved his hide at your expense. He allowed you to be whispered about as a murderess, to become a social outcast, and did nothing to stop it.”

“I’m sure he thought I deserved it, that what happened was my fault for leaving his bed and his home in the first place—it’s how he would have placed the blame. If he had to live in isolation, he probably felt it only fair that I do the same.”

“Until I came along.”

“Yes, until then.” She paused. “Where will you go now? What will you do?”

It was a good question. He felt completely unsettled, unable to go forward, unwilling to go back to the Passage de la Bourse and endless days of teaching young fools the art of sword play. “I may sign on for Mexico. A good, straightforward fight doesn’t sound too bad for a change.”

She met his eyes, and he thought her fingers turned white at the ends where she gripped her hands together. “You’ll be going to war,” she said in flat acceptance.

“Fighting is what I do best, after all.”

She opened her lips as if to protest, to give him an alternative, to ask him not to go. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. Watching her, he was
swamped by memories of the taste of those lips, of the feel of her skin against his, the glory of her tight, moist heat surrounding him, taking him deep inside her. And he wanted her, wanted her daughter and the rest of her family, wanted River’s Edge and all that had almost been his with a fierce ache that made his head pound and his heart feel boiled in acid. He wanted, passionately, all the things he could not have.

So he took the little he might be allowed, sweeping her against him and setting his mouth to hers, a taste for eternity. Then he put her from him and walked away.

It was a damn good thing the black whinnied when he saw him coming, or he might have walked all the way to New Orleans.

G
one.

Christien was gone, riding away down the drive. He had left her life as abruptly as he had entered it. She should be glad, should be overjoyed that she need not be married against her will, Reine told herself. She should feel nothing except relief that River’s Edge was returned to her father and everything was as it had been before. Yes, literally everything since she was once more a widow—this time, a true widow.

Christien had used her. He had made his outrageous proposal for one purpose only, to draw Theodore from hiding and make him proclaim himself still her husband. What she felt, her fears and feeling of being trapped in unwanted obligation, had meant nothing and less than nothing. All that mattered was that Theodore should pay for his crime against Vinot’s young daughter.

The ruse had worked. Justice had been served up on a silver platter, and now it was done.

Christien was going to war. In that strictly male milieu he would be in his element, at risk of having to kill or be killed. Either way, he was unlikely to return.

Why could she not be glad? Why should she feel this painful emptiness, as if he had taken a part of her with him?

Christien was gone.

She had been suspicious in the beginning about how he had gained ownership of River’s Edge. In time she had been lulled into false security caused by the idea there was something personal in it. She had thought, more fool her, that he might have become enamored after their few moments of close contact outside the theater that night. She had imagined that something about her and Marguerite had appealed to him on some deep level of which he was hardly aware, so he had been compelled to claim them as his ready-made family. Apparently, she had been wrong.

And yet he had made love to her. He had taken that advantage. Well, or she had given it to him. The caresses, the feelings, the whispers of fervent appreciation had meant nothing. What lived in her memory as an unforgettable experience had been no more than a brief pleasure to him. How strange that it should be so, that he could banish all emotion from the act of love, turning it into a physical coupling no more meaningful than taking a drink when thirsty.

It was quite otherwise for her.

She had grown used to having him in the house, to the security of thinking him somewhere about the place during the day or just down the hall at night. She had become accustomed to thinking of him as her future husband, had begun to anticipate with secret joy the long days of making love without let or hindrance.
She had thought more often than was comfortable of exploring all the myriad ways to stoke desire, tending it until it became a consuming flame.

It wasn’t going to happen. Christien was gone.

She was a widow this time in truth, with the most graphic proof of the death of her husband. The funeral mass had been held followed by a quiet burial. The funeral meats had been eaten, such as they were being the remains of the abortive wedding feast, and everyone, everyone except her close family, was gone. She was finally alone.

She would be a solitary widow for all the days and weeks of her life, the years she had no idea how to fill.

She would survive, of course. Women had done it before her and would do it when she was gone. It was what they did.

Christien had cheated in order to acquire her home. She had half suspected it in the beginning, thought it an indication of how important being at River’s Edge had been to him, how determined he had been to make a place for himself. She had been right in the main, though wrong in the details. Yet he had fit so well into all their lives, Marguerite’s and Paul’s, her father’s and even her mother’s. Yes, and hers. Dear heaven, but how he had fit into her life, her future, her bed and her body.

Gone, gone, gone…

At a small noise from the direction of the house, she turned to see her mother emerging onto the gallery with her father carefully supporting her. He seated her in one of the wicker chairs and she smiled up at him
as he moved to take the one next to her. She glanced around then with a look of childlike wonder on her face.

It was the first time her mother had been out of the house that Reine could remember since before she had attacked Theodore. That was other than to travel to New Orleans or to make the short trek to the chapel as she had for the wedding. Reine had taken it as a sign of illness that she lacked the strength or energy. It had never occurred to her that her mother might have been afraid. Now that Theodore was dead, however, here she was.

“Well,” she called out as she made her way toward where her parents sat, “this is an occasion!”

Her mother lifted a shoulder in a most Gallic gesture, considering that was not her heritage, giving her a tremulous smile. “I was suddenly weary of being shut away.”

“Oh,
Maman,
did you really think Theodore was outside here somewhere?”

“I couldn’t be satisfied in my mind that he was dead. He reeled like a drunkard when he left the bedchamber but was able to walk and scream curses at me. I couldn’t imagine what happened to him.”

“You were right to wonder,” Reine answered, leaning to kiss her mother’s soft cheek. “He would have sent word or at least come back as soon as his cuts were well if not for fear of Vinot.”

“He was truly terrified of him, I do believe that,” her father said in corroboration. “Even before that poor girl died in childbirth, he was fascinated by the
exploits of the Brotherhood, was always collecting stories about the nighttime deeds of the sword masters, particularly the Nighthawk.”

“But where is Monsieur Lenoir?” her mother said, gazing around with her brows drawn together in puzzlement. “I thought I saw him with you a moment ago.”

“He was saying his farewells. It seems he has to leave us.”

“Not permanently, I hope.”

Reine exchanged a quick look with her father, who wore a frown on his cherubic face. “I fear so,” she answered. “It seems he gained title to River’s Edge by dishonorable means so felt compelled to rectify the error.”

“Nonsense,” her father said with a snort. “I had every intention that he should have the place, did my all to make it so.”

“Papa!” she exclaimed. “You mean he didn’t cheat you at the card table?”

“But yes, though he was a veritable amateur at it,
ma chère.
I could have stopped him at any time, and without the least scandal. All it would have taken was a small sleight of hand of my own.”

“But to give away everything, Maurice,” his wife said in protest.

“No such thing. I saw how he looked at Reine that night in front of the opera house. You were not there, my love, and I was too far away to be of use, but never have I seen such stunned and hopeless yearning on a man’s face. He was needed at River’s Edge, for I’d grown weary of Kingsley’s tricks but had no aptitude
for growing sugar and no love of it, either. To lead Lenoir toward the proper result required a certain cunning, I will allow, but I did not do too badly,
hein?
”

“It really was your suggestion that he propose marriage,” Reine said in dazed acceptance.

“No, no, I only allowed him to see the benefits so he conceived the idea himself. It was child’s play when permitting him his heart’s desire.”

“I believe you were mistaken, Papa. Christien—Monsieur Lenoir—merely required a means of enticing Theodore out into the open.”

“I don’t say that wasn’t part of it, but he could have accomplished the same thing by merely courting you. Oh, no,
chère.
He meant to have you.”

This was no time to mince words. Besides, she hadn’t the patience for it. “What stopped him?”

Her father glanced at her mother with a roguish look in his eyes. Matching amusement rose in her mother’s face. Reine, hearing the echo of her own words, thought of Christien’s methods of ensuring that she guard her tongue and felt a hot flush burn its way to her hairline. Still, she refused to back down.

“I think, perhaps,” her mother answered in her light voice, “that it was a species of gallantry. He feared that to marry you out of hand so soon after the fiasco of the wedding and Theodore’s death would make you notorious indeed. And naturally he could not remain here indefinitely without it.”

“But you and Papa would have been here for respectability. He would have been no different from any other houseguest.”

“Except that everyone knows already that he won the place at cards, had made his proposal and was accepted. Only consider what the gossips might have made of it if he had simply stayed on afterward. They would have been certain the two of you were living in sin, and…well.”

They probably would have been, so her mother thought. It was likely she was correct.

“You don’t think he was simply glad to quit River’s Edge after everything that happened?” Reine had to ask it. Too much depended on the answer to allow uncertainty.

“It troubled him, I believe. He’s not an unfeeling devil, after all, unlike some we could name. But neither is he the kind of man who runs away from a sticky situation. At least, not without the best of reasons.”

“Yes. Yes, I expect you’re quite right,” she said in distraction. Gallant, indeed, and to the last, she thought. She might have known.

She had no use for gallantry, as she had told him more than once. She did not have to accept it, nor would she.

“
Maman,
as you are so recovered, do you feel you could be happy having Christien in the house on a permanent basis?”

“Why should I not,
ma chère?
”

“You called him an angel of death and seemed to fear him so.”

“Ah, yes, sometimes things are not clear to me. If Monsieur Lenoir was an angel of death, it was not I he was after, but Theodore. You will forgive me, I know,
if I say that was quite acceptable. And now, now it is over.”

“Darling
Maman,
” Reine said, swooping down to give her another swift kiss where she sat, “you are a wise woman.”

“As are you, my daughter, as are you.”

Reine didn’t hear. She was already whirling away toward the house, calling to a stable boy to saddle her mare as she went.

She rode like a storm wind, with the veil on her hat streaming out behind her and her long habit skirt rippling back along the mare’s flank. Her heartbeat kept pace, pounding with the same hard rhythm as the hoofbeats. She tried to think what she would do and where she would go to find Christien if he reached town ahead of her, but came to no conclusion. She would have to decide that when she got there. In the meantime, she set her face forward and refused to think that her
maman
and papa might be wrong and she on a fool’s errand.

Less than a mile out of New Orleans, she caught sight of a tall, familiar horseman riding toward her. Gladness sang in her heart even before she was certain of his identity. Drawing her mare to a walk, she eased along as she waited for Christien to come up to her. They met finally under the cool dusk of a huge live oak that sheltered the crushed-oyster-shell road.

“What is it?” he asked in gruff concern, pulling up as he drew abreast of her. “Has something happened at River’s Edge?”

“Something more, you mean?” Her smile had a
wry edge. “Not this time. I meant to overtake you before you reached town, but here you are coming back. Did you leave something behind?”

His features relaxed though his dark eyes remained keen as he searched her face. “You might say so. Or I could admit I turned around because I have no place to go. The war in Mexico is over.”

“You mean it’s ended?” she asked, trying to assimilate the abrupt announcement. “Just like that, after all these years?”

“So I was told by a man I met on the road. Mexico City has fallen to General Scott and his army. The government has conceded defeat. It’s only a matter of time before a peace treaty is signed.”

“There’s no need for your sword, then.”

He shook his head. “I’m not quite ready to beat it into a plowshare, but I thought…” He stopped, looked away.

“What?”

He made a quick gesture of defeat. “I thought Paul might have use of a fencing partner.”

“No doubt,” she said. “He aspires to be your equal one day.”

“I promised Marguerite I would keep her safe from the
loup-garou,
and though one has gone forever, who can say? There may be others about someplace.”

“Indeed,” Reine said with difficulty caused by the knot of tearful joy in her throat.

He met her gaze an instant, his own shadowed with the faintest stirring of something that might have been hope. “Your mother called me a dark angel. It
seemed necessary to make certain she knows I mean her no harm.”

“By odd chance, she came to that conclusion on her own just this evening.” He could be so formidable with a sword in his hand and the prospect of death in front of him. It was touching beyond measure that her family’s approval meant so much to him.

“It occurred to me your father might fall back into his old habits if I’m not there.” He paused, took a deep breath. “And it would not suit me at all if he should lose River’s Edge to another man who might be delighted to take you with it.”

“Now, there you need have no qualms,” she said with deliberation. “I would never agree to such a thing again.”

He gave a brief nod, gathered his reins as he looked away. “I suspected it, but had to be sure.”

“So you might. I object to having such base advantage taken of me or being married only out of guilt and convenience. Oh, yes, and as a goad to bring a dead man back to life.”

“Don’t,” he said with the same grating sound in his voice as the shells that crunched under their horses’ restive hooves. “It wasn’t like that. I wanted you as I’ve never wanted anything in my life. I held you in my arms that night in New Orleans and felt I had found all I had lost—home and family and a love so strong nothing could change it, nothing stop it. I vowed to do whatever I must to protect you and Marguerite from Vinot’s plans, but also swore to do whatever it took to have and keep you, if I had to sell my soul to the devil
for the chance. And I nearly did. I cheated, lied, used the tenets of the Brotherhood for my own ends, played on an old man’s grief and became a hunter of men in that goal. I lost my one chance because I couldn’t see that I had become all the things you most despised.”