When the Splendor Falls (75 page)

“Ah,” Camilla sighed watching them together after their passionate embrace, but her smile of contentment faded when she saw her son’s split lip and swollen nose. “Ah, my sweet—” she began, hugging Gil’s lanky frame close, even though he stood two heads taller than she, but he was quick to free himself from his mother’s smothering embrace, ever-sensitive to the masculine eyes watching him, especially his father’s. He was already uneasy, feeling the guilty pangs of conscience for having lied to him. Although, since they’d never reached Riovado, he could truthfully claim that he and Leigh had gone nowhere but to the
pastor
’s camp, and his explanation of having fallen into an arroyo while trying to catch the lamb sounded reasonable enough to him—and far less harmful an explanation for everyone concerned than had he mentioned the Comanche who had attacked them. Gil eased his conscience somewhat with the thought.

“I’m all right, Mama, please—” he said, a trifle impatiently, but he was tired, and he’d had a fright, and now he felt confused. His gaze drifted back to Leigh, where only moments before she had been held in her husband’s arms and kissed and fondled so intimately. Irritably, he felt the rush of fiery heat that had flooded his face as he’d watched them together and wondered how he’d ever face them feeling what he did.

Neil was home, and Gil was experiencing both incredible happiness and jealousy by his brother’s presence.

“Oh, my darling! Your arm is bloodied. Did I hurt you?” Camilla asked, tears beginning to fall down her already tearstained cheeks.

Gil’s attitude softened somewhat and he managed to put his arm around her shoulders comfortingly, as if she’d been the one lost in the night. “Now, now, Mama, I’ll be all right. It’s just a scratch,” he protested with manly dignity, sighing as his sister came racing up to him, ready to hug him all over again.

“You were lucky there was a full moon, or you and Leigh would never have made it safely down the trail,” Nathaniel remarked, his gaze searching his son’s young face. “You certainly took a tumble,” he muttered, thinking his son had done well to get back to Royal Rivers in his condition, and without further mishap, and the lad had brought young Leigh home safely too. “You did good, boy,” Nathaniel said gruffly.

Gil swallowed the painful lump in his throat. “Thank you, sir. Only wish I hadn’t been so stupid, and careless,” he said, cursing himself for having allowed the Comanche to catch him off guard, and he felt sick all over again as he thought of what had nearly happened to them—to Leigh. But Gil Braedon had matured that day, the near tragic consequences of his carelessness giving him a deep sense of responsibility toward others—and it was something he would remember and act upon for the rest of his life.

“Accidents happen, son,” Nathaniel allowed, and generously for him, startling his son when he touched him on the shoulder.

“Tripped over my own big feet,” Gil said quickly, feeling horribly ashamed of himself, “but not until after I’d delivered Pedro’s supplies. He’s being troubled by wolves,” he told his father, hoping to change the subject. “That’s why the lamb wandered off. Pedro said he lost a couple of ewes.”

Nathaniel nodded, as if expecting as much. “We’ll go hunting tomorrow,” he said briefly. “You’d better get inside, you’re looking a bit green,” he advised, glancing at his son, then over to where his elder son now stood with his wife. He turned away, his voice carrying harshly as he began to give his orders for his men to dismount and unsaddle their horses. There would be no need for a search party tonight.

“Leigh! Leigh! Where are you?”

Leigh glanced away from Neil to see Guy coming toward her. Althea was holding onto one of his arms, while Solange held the other, their slow steps carefully guiding him along the uneven paving stones directly in front of the house, but their efforts were hindered somewhat by Noelle, trying to be helpful as she also held on to her uncle’s arm, and Steward, who was tagging along behind, his hand tugging on the back of Guy’s coattails.

“She’s over there, Guy,” Leigh heard Althea tell him.

“I’m here, Guy!” she called, handing the lamb to Neil as she hurried to her brother’s side.

“Leigh, thank goodness you’re home,” Althea said, smiling with relief, although her brown eyes narrowed as they took in her appearance, seeing more than Neil had as she stared at Leigh’s buttoned-up jacket.

“Are you all right? I thought I heard your laughter. Leigh?” Guy cried out again, never having felt so frightened as when he’d been told that she and Gil had not returned from their ride. And he hadn’t needed to see the going down of the sun to know that it was dark; he could feel the coolness in the air.

“What happened?” Althea asked, still worried about Leigh, even though her sister appeared to have returned to Royal Rivers safely.

“We had trouble chasing a lamb. Unfortunately, Gil slipped down the steep bank of an
arroyo
and hurt himself,” Leigh said, amazed at how facilely she seemed able to lie.

“Oh, no. Is he badly hurt?” Althea asked, searching for Camilla in the crowd, knowing she’d be close by her son.

“A lamb? Can I see it? Can I?” Steward demanded, his dark curls tumbling into disorder as he hopped up and down on chubby legs and peeked from behind his mother’s back at the wide expanse of torch-lit yard that loomed like a frightening chasm before his small figure.

“I would like to see it too, but only after we have heard how Gil is,” Noelle remarked in a far more civilized manner, her dark eyes reproving as she stared at her ill-mannered brother.

“I think he’ll be all right. He’ll have to have his arm tended to, and he may have broken his nose,” Leigh said, thinking Gil actually looked even worse than it sounded.

“You will excuse me then? I should go see him, but just to make certain Camilla doesn’t embarrass him too much. She does like to baby him so. She does not wish him to grow up, especially since—well,” Solange said, having no need to complete her statement, for they all knew how Camilla hovered over Gil since losing Justin. Leaving them, Solange hurried across the yard to join the group around her nephew, stopping first for just an instant to pat the lamb and say something to Neil, leaving him grinning as she left him still holding the lamb.

“Leigh? You do know that Neil has returned?” Althea asked softly.

“Yes.”

“Mama! Mama! When can we see the lamb?” Steward asked, jerking impatiently on her skirt to get her attention, for it was getting close to his bedtime and he was becoming grumpy.

“Did you manage to rescue it?” Althea asked, resisting the urge to smack a fat little rear end.

“Can’t you guess?” Leigh replied, gesturing to her jacket, which Althea had been too polite to comment about. “It’s right over there,” Leigh said, taking a great deal of pleasure in pointing in the direction of a tall figure.

Althea nearly made an unladylike guffaw as she caught sight of Neil Braedon standing with the bundle of wool in his arms. “Oh, dear, we’d better rescue him,” Althea said, schooling her features into a polite smile as she took a trying-to-maintain-her-ladylike-decorum Noelle and a giggling Steward each by the hand and led them forward.

“Thank God you’re back, Leigh,” Guy was saying when he heard a squeal behind him and took the precaution of stepping aside as Jolie barreled along the path, her long, thin arms outstretched to hug Leigh. Stephen, although more circumspect in his welcome, was just as relieved to see Leigh’s slender figure standing on the path and he contented himself with a fatherly pat on her shoulder.

“I told him I heard thunder! My big toe! Hmmmph! Thought his eyes were goin’ to pop from his head when he sees Mister Neil come ridin’ in bold as brass,” Jolie said, her yellow eyes not missing anything about Leigh’s appearance, and her lips tightened accordingly. “Goin’ to have to talk with Mister Gil for keepin’ my lil’ honey out so late. An’ you’re goin’ to tell Jolie just what happened once I get you cleaned up. Lord help us, what’ve you been doin’?” she demanded, sniffing loudly. “Can’t let you outa my sight for a minute, worse than your papa when it comes to gettin’ into trouble. Reminds me of that afternoon he comes staggerin’ up to the house smellin’ like that ol’ hound of Guy’s that liked to roll in cow dung and would come trottin’ back up to the house with the biggest grin on his fool’s face I’ve ever seen,” she said, grabbing hold of Leigh’s shoulder and pulling her along with her toward the house. “We’re goin’ to get you cleaned up right away, honey,” she vowed.

Leigh met Stephen’s understanding gaze as he hurried to the door to hold it open. Leigh managed to glance back, seeing Althea in earnest conversation with Neil, while Noelle, down on her knees in the dust, and Steward, his rump placed firmly on the ground, petted the lamb.

Suddenly Leigh remembered Guy, standing by himself just off the path, and she called back to him, warning him not to move until she reached him.

But Guy didn’t hear her; in fact, he hadn’t been listening to anything around him for some time, so mesmerized had he been by the flickering torches, the reddish glow burning into his head like fiery brands. But he could see the flickering shadows, and the flaming color shooting like fireworks, although no image came into sharp focus yet, everything remaining shrouded in a haze.

But Guy knew a sense of hope, and laughed, turning to grasp hold of Leigh’s arm, only she wasn’t there and he missed his grab, his arms flailing in the air as he nearly overbalanced and stumbled across the path like the sightless fool he was.

“Lys? Lys? Where are you?” he cried out in panic.

Leigh called out a warning, but too late as Guy fell to his knees. Lys Helene, who’d been watching from across the yard, and had started to run at the first cry of her name, had almost reached him when he fell.

Leigh was just a step behind Stephen and would have reached him in another second, but then she stopped, waiting as she looked toward the yard, for it had not been her name that Guy had called out.

“Lys Helene?” Guy called out again, feeling that ancient fear of darkness spreading through him, and he wanted her by his side.

Lys Helene was stepping onto the path when Stephen held out his hand, helping Guy to his feet.

But to Leigh’s surprise, Lys Helene just stood watching them for a moment, never coming closer. And Guy never knew she had come in answer to his cry for help, or that she stood so close by. And with a last look, to make certain he had not injured himself, she turned away without ever saying a word.

With Guy now safely in tow, Stephen followed them back inside the house. Just within the doorway, the Misses Simone and Clarice, the St. Amand sisters, stood, their parchment fine faces full of concern, lace-edged hankies pressed against their trembling lips as they stared wide-eyed at Jolie.

“Are the children safe?” they asked in unison, echoing the phrase they’d heard their grandmother ask a thousand times during the years following their family’s flight from their burning home during the slave uprising in Santo Domingo.

Jolie loosed her grip on Leigh just long enough to take hold of the fretful misses and guide them back into the great hall, sitting them down on the silk-cushioned sofa, where they could usually be found sitting with their needlepoint, which even Jolie had to admit was superb—but then the Misses Simone and Clarice were convent-bred.

“She said there was danger today,” Simone said in a quavering little voice.

“Yes, just like in Santo Domingo, when our house was burned,” Clarice replied with a delicate shiver, for although they and their only brother had been young children at the time, they could still remember the fear of the adults around them, and over the years the stories had become of nightmarish proportions as with their grandfather’s murder and the bloody massacre on their plantation; their grandmother’s terrifying escape through the jungle with them bundled up and carried by a couple of house slaves who’d remained loyal; and, finally, their own parents’ tragic separation while fleeing from the island.

“Well, there’s no uprisin’ here,” Jolie told them, knowing exactly what was going on inside their heads as she handed them their neat little baskets of sewing.

“Oh, dear me, such a tragedy,” Simone whispered.

“Yes, the bodies of
Oncle
Georges and
Oncle
Gilbert were never found, the murderers cut them up into so many pieces,” Clarice elaborated.

“Our
maman
thought our poor
père
was dead too. We did not see him again until we were about ten and Pierre was eight.”

“You were ten, I was twelve, and Pierre was seven and a half.”

“Yes, and then to find
Papa
living in France,” Clarice sighed, beginning to stitch a flower on a piece of fine linen.

“I still do not know why
Maman
was so displeased. I thought she would have been so happy to find him alive. Even
Grand-mère
was upset. Do you remember what
Maman
said, Clarice?”

“Yes, she was so angry her voice carried all over the house, and she never raised her voice, did she, Simone?”

“No, never!”

“And what was it she said? Ah, yes, ‘thinking I have grieved for such a scoundrel for so many years while you’ve been safe in France, living with that—’ what was the word, dear?” Clarice asked gently, selecting another strand of delicately hued silk and trying to match it.

“A
putain
.”

Stephen’s eyes grew round, for his father, Jean Jacques, had used the uncomplimentary term once when describing a lady who had been trying to break up Colonel Leigh’s marriage to the lovely Miss Louise, and it was not a nice word, and certainly not a word nice ladies should be using.

“Ah, yes,
putain
, that was the word. And then she called
Papa
a
bâtard
and told him she never wished to see him again.”

Jolie’s mouth dropped open, for even she knew what that fancy French-sounding word meant in English.

“And we never did,” Simone said as casually as if discussing the weather.