Blue Voodoo: A Romantic Retelling of Bluebeard (The Hidden Kingdom Series Book 2) (7 page)

A bag lying on the floor by the bed caught her eye—her bag. Without sitting up, she pointed at the bag. “If you don’t mind, I would prefer it if you would use my lotions instead of whatever you have in that basket. I assume one of my assistants packed that bag?”

“Yes.” Julien set the basket on the bed and the bowl on the small mahogany table beside it before retrieving the bag and setting it next to the basket. “How do you know what’s in it?”

“It does not take a seer. If you have that bag, you obviously stopped somewhere in the village that would have had my things, and no one but one of my assistants would have given it to you. Since you had to have made such a stop while…bringing me here, she must have known I was injured.” She shifted, wrinkling her nose at the sensation of soggy clothes against her clammy skin. “And in sore need of clean clothes. She would have packed accordingly.”

“I think there’s a fresh pair of boots as well.”

“Obviously.” Dominique smirked, despite her circumstances. “I told you, a woman packed that bag.”

“More reliable than if I had done it then, eh?”

The comment had likely been intended as a joke. But in typical male fashion, Julien had managed to send Dominique hurtling back into her little pocket of misery.
Yes, let’s joke about your reliability. What a heart-warming topic, why would we ever discuss anything else?
In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to leave. To get out of this room, this house, and go back to her own sanctuary where she could tend to her wounds in peace.

A slight shift on the bed ended that hope, pain exploding in starbursts along the heat that was the wound in her back. The skin felt raw and smarting. It needed to be cleansed before an infection set in. Dominique gritted her teeth and resigned herself to her fate.

“I’ll need to remove your clothes.”

You miserable sea dog, don’t you dare use that voice with me. Don’t you dare enjoy this—any part of this!

Barely biting back the urge to give voice to the anger threatening to bind her muscles into knots, Dominique rebutted his attempts to help her sit up and levered herself off the bed. Her muscles screamed in protest, skin sizzling as though burning oil dripped down her back. By the time she’d managed to free herself from her clothes and the soggy makeshift bandages, the pain had robbed her of her breath, and sweat soaked her forehead. Her attempt to lie back on the bed ended in a jerky collapse, adding insult to injury.

This time she laid down facing the opposite wall, away from Julien and the pillows soaked in his scent. There was a painting on the wall, and she forced herself to study it, to focus on the art and not the fact that she was lying naked on Julien Marcon’s bed.

It was a portrayal of a ship at sea, white sails billowing out under the blessing of a strong wind, waves kissing the strong hull as it cut through the water. The sunset painted in the background lit the backdrop with glorious oranges, pinks, and yellows, a small tinge of blue-violet lurking above, hinting at the darkness to come. It was a beautiful painting. And a melancholy reminder of an old dream.

In a rare show of consideration, Julien covered her lower body with a sheet, hiding her nudity as best he could. Before she could reflect too much on that compassion, he pressed a wet cloth to her skin. He went to work cleaning her wound and the surrounding skin with uncharacteristic tenderness.

“It’s a beautiful painting.”

Julien didn’t pause in his ministrations, rinsing the cloth in the bowl and continuing to work the mud and dried blood from her back. “I bought that from an old man in Meropis. He was half blind, but he painted the most breath-taking landscapes.” His voice held a smile. “Perhaps a blind man remembers the true beauty of nature better than we see it ourselves, eh?”

“Perhaps.”

Warm water trickled over her back. There was something soothing, almost hypnotic about his strokes, the way he coaxed the grime from her skin rather than scrubbing at it. Her body grew heavy, a pleasant haze falling over her mind until she drifted in that wonderful place between waking and sleep.

The burning scent of rum filled the air. A second later, a wretched sting lanced her back, seeming to drive through the wound clean out her chest. She hissed and arched her back, coming back to herself with a start.

“I’m sorry.” Julien took the rum-soaked cloth from her back. “I thought you were asleep. I’d hoped to finish this part before you woke up.”

“Who could sleep through that?” She winced, holding perfectly still, trying not to agitate the injury further. Something tickled at the back of her mind and she realized she no longer felt the itch of dried mud on the back of her legs. Trying not to draw attention to herself, she slid her hand to touch her leg beneath the blanket. The back of her body had been wiped clean.

“As I said, I thought you were sleeping.”

Her hand closed into a fist. “So you thought you’d have a look.”

The rum-soaked cloth pressed to her wound again, not so gentle this time. “I didn’t flip you over to clean the other side, if that makes you feel any better.”

Dominique breathed through the pain as the slosh of liquid against the sides of a glass bottle warned of a fresh trickle of alcohol. The air stuttered in her lungs as searing heat licked at her back.

“The wounds are not deep,” Julien noted. “Mostly superficial. Parlangua must have tried to stop.”

An image of Parlangua lunging for Julien, black claws sliding through his flesh like a fish diving into the sea, reared its ugly head and Dominique squeezed her eyes shut as if she could block out the memory. Her heartbeat pounded like a drum in her ears, reminding her of the adrenaline that had burned through her veins as she’d watched blood pour down Julien’s arms.

“Why are you telling people we are to be engaged?” She half-shouted the words, in too much of a hurry to distract herself from her own thoughts.

Julien set the bottle of rum down on the table beside the bed, the glass thudding against the wood. Dominique forced her eyes back to the painting, trying to distract herself as she waited for his coarse hands to apply the healing ointment.

Glass clinked together. “There are a few bottles in this bag. Which is the healing ointment?”

“Is there a green bottle marked with a serpent curled around a staff?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the one.”

The scent of lady’s mantle perfumed the air, pushing back the scent of swamp water. Contrary to the rough texture she’d expected, Julien’s fingers felt soft under the slick, oily film of the healing ointment. Body heat burned her through the skin-warmed substance and she gritted her teeth against the tactile memories. Memories of his hands on her skin under very different circumstances.

“I meant to speak with you about the engagement.”

Julien’s voice startled her, a blessed distraction from her current thoughts.

“Did you?”

The sarcasm tasted good on her lips, eased her spirits with its familiarity and stabbed like a sharpened pitchfork against the gooey memories trying to envelop her. Julien chuckled, and the sound only fed her annoyance, helped chase back the unwanted emotions of the past.

“Hear me out. I think if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll agree it would be a beneficial arrangement for both of us.”

What little part of Dominique’s inner youth still existed shed a tear at his choice of words. Arrangement. Beneficial. How…logical.

“You’ve done very well for yourself here, Dominique. I’ve been in town for less than a day, and already I’ve heard about the great voodoo queen who commands the respect of every man, woman, and child in a fifty mile radius—and farther. If my men’s reports of the tavern owners are to be trusted, I believe you have also carried on your parents’ liquor trade?”

“As much as I appreciate your unending praise, I fail to see what
my
success has to do with your marriage proposal?” Dominique craned a look over her shoulder, slanting a meaningful glance at his still hands.

Julien followed her gaze and resumed applying the ointment. “I am the best rumrunner in the five kingdoms. I could double your business—quadruple it even.”

“The best rumrunner in the five kingdoms,” Dominique mused. “Yes, I remember that boast.”

“It wasn’t a boast,
chere
, and you know it.” Julien’s voice remained light, edged with amusement and more than his fair share of confidence. “There is no ship faster than mine, there is no captain who knows the sea better—the nooks and crannies of the inlets, the caves waiting to hide a ship. No one knows more islands with nothing but animals to witness who comes and goes.”

He increased the pressure of his fingertips, massaging the ointment around the wounds as well. It hurt and felt good at the same time, a foil of their history.

“
Chere
, I could bring you wines so fine they would make you weep at the first caress on your tongue. Liquors so strong the very scent of them would send your people into a dreamland to shake hands with the
loa
themselves.”

“You always were so disparaging of my faith.” Dominique flexed her fingernails into her palms. “I’ll ask you again, and this will be the last time. Give the
loa
the respect they are due.”

“Respect.” Julien snorted. “You can live your life as you like,
chere
, but I want no part of your god or his messengers. Never trust a creature with no body of their own.” His hands trembled as if he’d shuddered. “Parasites possessing people, prancing about in their skin. I will never understand why you tolerate it—welcome it, even.”

“No respect,” Dominique repeated.

Julien leaned in so he could see her face, taunting her with the strong line of his jaw, handsome despite the blue beard. “You remind me of your mother, you know. She was all about respect as I recall.”

Mother
. Yes, her mother had been all about respect—a fact that had set Dominique’s teeth on end, considering her mother’s refusal to adhere to the code of the priestess, her insistence on doing what she pleased despite what it did to her reputation. The reputation that had gotten her killed. She set her jaw, ferociously blinking back the telltale burn of tears.
He will not see me cry.

The pressure on her wounds vanished.

“Dominique?” A touch of uncertainty stole the bravado from his face. “Your mother…?”

“Dead.” She picked at the sheets with one carefully filed fingernail. “And my father. They left for Ville au Camp to help with the chaos caused by an earthquake. Their ship…” She stopped, swallowed as silently as she could. “They never arrived.”

Julien leaned down, but she hid her face behind the fall of her spiraling curls. She peered through the ringlets to the painting of the ship at sea. It seemed like such a mockery now, the opposite of the fate that had claimed her parents out on the water. Dying in the dark, far from their home. Bodies lost to the sea, without a proper burial.

“
Chere
.”

Julien brushed her hair back from her face. There’d been a time she would have welcomed his sympathy, would have cried on his shoulder and been grateful for the comfort.

But that time had passed.

 “It was no accident. Their ship was tampered with, I know it.” She fisted the sheets beneath her, a familiar anger rushing to fill her with its heat, to offer the reassurance of the only embrace she’d had in those horrible, black days after she’d gotten the news. “They feared her too much. Feared her because she was a
bokor
.”

“A
bokor
?”

“You’re surprised?” Dominique laughed, a short, humorless sound. “I thought everyone knew. They certainly loved to talk about it—some of them still love to talk about it. Talk about how I might turn out to be just like her.”

“I didn’t know.” He resumed caring for her wounds, movements slow and sure, comforting in their rhythm.

“I’m not a
bokor
.” Dominique turned, studying his face, searching for the judgment she saw everywhere else. She may have to take it from her community, but she would
not
take it from him. “I’m not. Nor will I ever be. I am a priestess. I serve the
loa
only with good intentions.”

“I believe you. Though you should know, it matters little to me. As I told you, I have never been one to put stock in theories of good versus evil. The world is full of grey, and those who realize that, who accept it and acknowledge that sometimes life gets messy, will be better suited to the tasks they are called to do.”

“How nice for you that you can believe that, that you can live that way. I suppose when you’ve got the fastest ship and a thousand hiding places—and no attachments holding you anywhere—it’s easy to do as you please. You can simply bolt before you have to deal with the consequences. Before you have to face up to the stares of other people, before you have to see the judgment on their faces, the pity in their eyes…”

Dominique trailed off. Heat suffused her cheeks, not just temper anymore, but embarrassment. Somewhere along the line, she’d lost the plot, forgotten what she was talking about. Two pains had become one.

“Why do I get the feeling we aren’t talking about being a
bokor
anymore?” Julien’s voice was soft, non-judgmental.

“What we are talking about,” Dominique ground out, “is the fact that not all of us have the luxury of escaping the consequences of poor choices. I live here. These are my people. I have to look them in the eye, I have to stand before them as the priestess of this community.” She slid her arms up and rested her head on them, her body feeling heavier now as though a lead weight had been laid over her shoulders. “There was a time I dreamed of leaving this place. A time when nothing sounded so wonderful as a life of freedom, a life of moving from one place to another, never settling down, never…” She snapped her mouth shut, too late to bite back the words she hadn’t meant to share.

“But I left you behind.”

“Best thing you could have done.” She stared at the wall, refusing to look at Julien or that blasted painting. “Those dreams of leaving with you, sharing a life at sea with a handsome pirate—they were the fantasies of a foolish girl. What I have now is real.”