With One Look (22 page)

"Spare me the list," Victor interrupted quickly. "Believe me, I'm acutely aware of her charms, of which"—his voice lowered—"the sum of the parts is less than the whole, especially in the case of Jade Terese."

"Well now, that's just my point. It's plain as day she's in love with you. And little wonder, too, after what's happened. She's in a dream, all smiles, nervous and excited, asking us one question after another about you while you were off."

Victor glanced up, letting his expression speak for him.

"What's the problem, Vic?"

"I don't want it," he said, softly, seriously. "Let me rephrase that: I won't have it."

Enlightenment slowly dawned on Murray and momentarily, he felt taken aback. "Because she's blind."

"Yes," Victor said after a pause. "I wish I could say it doesn't bother me but it does," he said gravely. "Of course, I'll take care of her throughout this ordeal, until we find this man and as long as she needs me afterwards. Yet, the more I think of it, the more I know it won't work. I'm not sure I even want a wife; I know I don't want a blind wife." He added softly, "No matter how much I might come to love her."

"I don't get it. I don't see how it matters. One hardly knows she's blind unless she's making her way somewhere new—and even then ... why, I'm always forgetting it—"

Victor's eyes narrowed as he agreed with a nod. "It's amazing how she manages to deceive people into forgetting such a thing—quite a theatrical trick." His tone rose with anger as he expanded. "Today when we were walking, I forgot. The way she'd look out over the land pretending she actually saw it, the way she returned her glance to me when I spoke. I forgot until she tripped over a log, after she lay flat on the ground. And God," he added, "there are bruises all over that beautiful body of hers...."

Murray stirred the fire with a stick. "She does her best. I think she does a hell of a job making up for it."

Victor shook his head, pushing his plate away distractedly. "She doesn't compensate; she can't make up for it. I don't care how bright she is. How much worse this whole thing is because she can't see. I'll be damned if I'll spend the rest of my life waiting to hear about the next accident I couldn't protect her from: a fall down a flight of stairs, or a man getting into my bed because she thought it was me, or a child, my child, being hurt by something those lovely eyes didn't see." He shook his head. "No thank you, I don't want it."

On the heels of a thoughtful pause Murray said: "One doesn't always get what one wants." Victor suddenly grinned as he rolled on his back to gaze at the stars beyond the trees.

"You're right, of course, and unless I find a way to keep my hands off her, it will be too late. So far"—he laughed,—"I have been only too unsuccessful, and now, after today—" He shook his head, stopping himself from even thinking of what happened.... "Well, I didn't last a day with her, not one bloody day."

"You are in trouble." Murray smiled. Time would tell. It was an old story, as ancient as the very earth itself: few beings were capable of resisting what obviously had sprung between Vic and the lovely lass, and Lord knew how many months she'd have to be with him....

"Vic," he said, switching subjects after a moment, "I've been thinking. I think you ought to question her, real gentle like, about what she does remember—"

"Yes. I was thinking the same."

Jade and Mercedes slipped out from the tent, trying to stop their excited laughter, both wrapped in blankets. Mercedes gathered soap and clothes and then took Jade by the arm, heading for the lake. Victor watched them run off through the gray light of predawn and then got up.

Coffee, he needed coffee.

They were unaware that Victor watched from the shoreline. Against the soft colors of early dawn, the two young women looked like erotic nymphs playing in the water, figments of the imagination. Victor smiled to himself, amused by the unexpectedly innocent and sensual scene. He watched as Jade swam out, under and around, while Mercedes, far more timid with water, remained waist deep, laughing at her friend.

He stopped smiling when they emerged from the water and Jade began sliding a bar of soap over her skin. He turned full around. To say the least, voyeurism—passive participation—was decidedly against his nature. He forced himself to endure such torment from necessity: while Jade swam like a fish, and she was certainly safer in the water than out, Mercedes couldn't swim, and should she slip or fall under, Jade could not provide any assistance.

The two young women had already slipped back into the water when Murray and Sebastian joined him, thankfully bringing a hot cup of coffee.

"It seems our ladies are providing some morning's entertainment," Sebastian observed with a grin. "While you might be content to merely watch," he accused Victor, "I am not. I've always preferred helping women bathe." With that, Sebastian's black breeches dropped to the ground and both men chuckled as he ran to the water, naked except for a wide-brimmed black Spanish hat.

Victor chuckled as Jade ducked under and cried, "Sebastian! I'm naked!"

Sebastian laughed at this too, and spread his arms. "What an alarming coincidence!"

Victor chuckled and shook his head, turning away with a new appreciation for a single word, temptation.

Later, as they were preparing to leave, Victor came and knelt beside her. She reached a hand to touch his face. He lightly kissed her fingertips. "Are you staring at me?" she asked.

"I'm always staring at you," he said, smiling. "As a matter of fact, I was hoping you would ride with me, so I don't have to stretch my neck quite so much in the process."

She laughed as he guided her to the horse. He mounted first before bending over to lift her up. She fit easily in the saddle between his arms and they were off. A conversation sprang up between them as they rode along. She began asking him about his shipbuilding business, about his new flatboats specifically. He was surprised, not just by her interest but by how much she knew about it. It seems his father had been telling her all about the discovery and its progress. He described the ship and its first journey up-river to Natchez—making a whole three miles an hour. How it had made three successful trips before the boiler blew up. He was making three more.

"Your father says it's a miracle that will revolutionize the world."

He chuckled. "If not the world, then trade along the Mississippi. That is if the new ones perform as well as the old one," he said as he stopped the horse to remove his shirt.

Alarm changed her face; she lowered her eyes. "Victor," she interrupted him to whisper apprehensively. "Please, I don't think ... I mean we shouldn't—"

"We shouldn't what?"

She blushed, "You know ..." "Know what?"

He was making her come out and say the words. "I don't want to make love again." "You don't? Then why are you thinking about it so much?"

"I wasn't ... well, I was, but ... I—" She grew flustered, more so as his laughter sounded. "Are you, I mean, were you taking me—"

'To ravish you?" he interrupted. "I wasn't planning on it, but if we keep talking about it much longer, my plans will definitely change. As a matter of fact, there's a lovely glen to our side

—"

"No! No!" she said quickly. "I won't mention it again! My lips are sealed."

The morning dawned bright and beautiful again. Victor kept his horse just ahead of the carriage, and they continued talking easily, which was his intention. She had to be relaxed and comfortable before he questioned her about her parents' deaths. The conversation shifted and flowed effortlessly as they rode along, though each subject became the backdrop for wild

flirtations, teasing and laughter. They had ridden a good distance before Victor finally asked, "Tell me, that lovely melody you sang for everyone yesterday, were you thinking of your mother and father when you sang it?"

"Yes."

"I imagine you still miss them very much."

Jade turned her head against him, felt a gloved hand lift from the reins to gently brush through her hair. "It's been five years," she began so softly he barely heard her over

the horse's trot. "People say that one's heart heals with the passage of time, but it's not been true for me. Sometimes, when I think of them, I miss them so much ... I'll start crying right in the middle of something—mass or prayers, during chorus or even school. And it feels as if I'll never

be able to stop."

Victor stopped the horse, drawing him up tight as he pulled her to him, his tenderness always plain. "They must have been very special."

"Yes, they were."

"Jade, I want to ask you about their deaths." "Their ... deaths?"

"Yes. Do you remember anything unpleasant happening before they died? Something that upset your parents?"

"Well ... no." The question seemed to surprise her. "Not really. My parents were very much in love. They hardly ever fought and those few times they did, it was always over my father's slaves. That's how my mother referred to them," she explained, "as my father's slaves. Being English, she was naturally disturbed by the idea that we owned slaves. 'People!' she'd say. 'Philip, how can you own people? Has no one in America read his Bible lately?' Then she'd quote every relevant passage. Oh, yes." Jade laughed lightly as she remembered the fierceness of her mother's arguments. "And my father used to tease that all of England was little more than a breeding ground for eccentrics and fanatics, that he had had no idea my mother was so... intemperate and opinionated when he married her. He'd say that she'd charge hell with a bucket of water. It got to where no one ever brought up the subject of slaves in front of her."

He studied her intensely. "Anything else? Anything else that upset them? I'm thinking of a specific incident before their deaths?"

Upset them. A distant memory emerged of her mother falling into her father's arms crying over and over. "Voodoo. My mother became very upset about the voodoo practices among the slaves." She shook her head. "I suppose voodoo makes most people uncomfortable. You should hear Monsieur Deubler go on about it, and your own father gets very worked up when the veneration of the saints crosses that magical line from Catholicism to something else. We have had many arguments about it," she told him. "I've never understood why everyone becomes so concerned about it.. Why does it matter if a person gets a headache cure from a penny at Mary's feet or a clump of hair from the tail of a white horse?"

This was close. "Were your slaves practicing voodoo?"

The questioned spurred a memory. "Yes ... some." The memory spun through her mind with a hot wave of panic. Cara, the upstairs maid, was making her parents' bed. "Fetch the pillowcases in the linen closet, cherie, no?"

She had opened the drawer. They lay on the crisp white sheets. Two dolls made of black wax. The smaller doll wore a piece of cloth taken from her old green riding habit. 'Twas a special one her father had given her on her tenth birthday and it had finally been discarded when the material could not be let out anymore. There was no face on the doll. The eyes, the terrible eyes, were hideous dark holes. A long strand of her hair stuck out of the head. The larger one wore a piece of her mother's old gowns, a pastel cloth with pretty green and blue flowers on it. Her mother had given it to the church's charity drive just last week. This doll had a clump of her mother's hair stuck in its head. At first, she had thought they were fantastic, like toys, and she reached for them—

"I am too hot, I think—" She looked away, as if searching for an exit. "Perhaps you should set me back to the carriage—"

"Jade, were you remembering something unpleasant?" She nodded, looking quite pale suddenly.

"What? I want to know."

She shook her head as if to rid herself of the memory. "I remember finding two wax dolls in a closet once—and how it upset my mother, that's all. One wore a piece of my old riding habit and the other wore cloth from a dress of my mother's." Her thin dark brows crossed with consternation. She hadn't thought of it since... since before the accident...

Her heart started pounding. Lord, 'twas so hot.... "Jade, what do you remember about the fire?"

For a long moment, she didn't answer and he thought she might not have heard the question. "Nothing," she whispered quickly. "I don’t remember anything." She pulled away from him, fanning her face. "My, but already the day's hot. You better put me down now."

Victor watched her curiously, not knowing how far to push. "Jade, does it bother you to talk about it?"

"No… well, yes. Yes, it does, I—" She bit her lip and a pained expression came over her face. "No one's ever asked me about it before. I mean, I've never spoken to anyone about it. I guess my seizures, and ... and I just never think about it—it was so terrible."

"Jade, what do you remember before the fire? That day—"

"Nothing." She shook her head. "I don't know. I... we were going to a music festival in the afternoon. I was out riding in the early morning and I came home and—"

"Yes?"

Jade seemed to drift off and Victor asked again what happened. "I ... I don't know!" Vague images danced quickly through her mind: a splattered fish, three ravens lifting from the empty stables, the unusual quiet as she raced into the house.

She drew breath hard and fast, her head spinning.

They were a good deal behind the carriage now and Victor had stopped the horse. He had to know. "Did you see your mother?"

"I don't know, I don't know! I woke up and I was in a bedroom at the Taylours' plantation, our neighbors. Mother Francesca was there and she was telling me. I... I don't know. I ... I—" She held her head; her words came in sudden gasps. "She said my parents died in the fire but I didn't believe her! I couldn't see, and all I knew was, oh God, if I could just be with my mother, if I could just touch my mother, I could see—" She stopped, her temples pounded, she couldn't breathe. "I can't talk, I—"

A memory submerged, faded quickly into darkness, then whirled and whirled, suddenly bursting! She heard Victor's voice thundering above her, becoming that voice, Mother Francesca's voice! Mother Francesca calling out to her!