Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection) (7 page)

Then, as she heard her name spoken outside her room, such considerations left her.

“Your Claire is resting comfortably,” she heard a cool, languid voice say. “You haven’t asked, but I am sure you must want to know.”

“Thank you,
maman
.” It was Justin who answered in a neutral voice.

“She is a pretty child. I peeped in on her a few hours ago while she slept. One wonders what attracted her to you.” There was a destructive under current of old venom in the voice of the woman Justin had called
maman
—mother. Claire frowned in the darkness wondering why a woman would want to hurt her own child by referring in that oblique way to his appearance.

“It was my
beaux yeux
, I don’t doubt,” Justin answered, “Or my polished address.” The irony of that was lost on his mother but not on Claire.

“I am familiar with your address, my son, and I can’t agree.”

Justin did not appear to be inclined to parry that thrust. He did not speak. And after a moment the woman went on. “But come, I have been waiting all day to discover the cause of this accident. You needn’t pretend you don’t know, for I am aware that you have been holding a conclave in the quarters the best part of the afternoon. What does Sylvest have to say?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. He claims that he jumped before he could see what made the horses go wild, and that the thing happened so fast he doesn’t really know what took place.”

“And you believe that?” It was obvious that his mother did not.

“I wasn’t completely satisfied, no. I spoke to one or two of the others who know him well, one of the men he works with and his sister who helps out in the kitchen. It seems that they believe that he is afraid to speak.”

“I wonder why?” It was said with a scathing intonation.

“You think it is for fear of me? You are mistaken,” he said grimly.

“I, mistaken? I believe that you underestimate the reputation of your temper. But to return to your Claire, you have not been near her room today. I must caution you against neglecting her. Women will stand for much, but never that.”

“And you,
maman
,” he said softly, “should know well what, and how much, a woman will bear before she turns elsewhere.”

“You cannot argue that I always came second with your father, after his plantation, and after you, my son.”

“What,” he mocked, “aren’t you going to throw his mistress into my face this time?”

“Well, can you deny that he had one?” she answered stridently.

“You know I never bother to defend my father to you.”

“That poor helpless hulk? I cannot say I like you for that.”

“Ah, no,
maman
. But then you cannot say that you like me, can you?”

There was a rustle of skirts as though his mother swung violently away from him, then the sound of footsteps receding. Stillness. The curtains at the french windows swayed and a dark figure stepped into the room; Justin by the shape of his head and the width of his shoulders. He moved noiselessly over the reed matting on the floor. At the foot of the bed he halted, and lifting one clenched fist, he slammed it against the tall post that held the tester in place. But whether the emotion that caused the action was rage or despair, Claire could not have said.

At last he raised his head, and, resting it on his wrist against the bed post, stared in her direction through the darkness. By the time he seemed to be aware of where he was, Claire had shut her eyes and was trying to regulate her breathing, pretending to be asleep. The hush weighed upon her. She heard a faint sound above her and stiffened before she recognized the sliding noise of the mosquito
baire
being drawn about her bed. And seconds later she heard the click of the latch as Justin, leaving the room, closed the door behind him.

CLAIRE SAT IN bed, carefully propped up with pillows, with a negligee about her shoulders. It was one of her own, of white batiste, beautifully embroidered in pink, blue, and green by the nuns at the convent which she had attended. A Negro maid, a silent, unsmiling creature called Rachel who had been brought from the parlor to be her serving woman, was brushing her hair carefully and slowly to bring out the sheen.

Sipping a cup of
café noir
, black coffee, Claire watched broodingly as Justin, in front of the mirror, used a pair of silver-backed military brushes on his hair. Over his shoulder he was telling his valet, who was standing before the open doors of one of the great armoires, which coat to lay out for him to wear. In the other matching armoire, Claire’s own clothes reposed, rescued from the bayou and meticulously washed and pressed. Many of her things, her wedding gown, her straw bonnets, her velvet hat with its dancing plumes, had been ruined beyond repair, but she did not regret their loss and there had been enough left for her use.

At the foot of her bed was the day bed, its covers dragging onto the floor, where Justin had slept so that he would not injure her accidentally as he turned in his sleep at night. Her gaze traveled to the tray resting on the foot of her bed and littered with the crumbs from breakfast, then to Justin’s shaving water, beginning to cool in the china bowl and the linen towels crumpled beside it. For nearly a week, Claire had been a spectator to this morning ritual of breakfast—which she shared—then shaving and dressing. If she lived to be an old woman she would never become used to it.

Justin moved slightly to one side, and she knew he had been watching her face in the mirror when he tossed the brushes to the top of the table and turned to face her. With a brief gesture, he dismissed her maid, then shrugged into the coat his valet held ready before dismissing him also.

“Well,
mon ange
,” he said, a glint of laughter in his eyes. “How do you like your married life so far?”

So he had noticed her embarrassment and it had amused him. It did not matter that he was always up and dressed before she awoke. He still managed to suffuse the proceedings of his toilette before her with an air of casually accepted intimacy. Or was it only in her mind? She did not know.

“Have you nothing to say?” he insisted.

“I—I have no objection,” she answered, staring into her cup of coffee so black it gave back her reflection.

“Not even to our living arrangement?” He reached out and took the coffee cup from her hand and placed it on the tray.

“It is your room,” she said stiffly, avoiding his eyes.

“Our room,” he corrected, then went on. “But tell me, how do you feel this morning?”

“Very well. I would like to get up today and go outside, now that the five days are over.”

For five days, six counting the day of her arrival that she had spent in drugged sleep, she had been confined to this one room. It was not just her injury, it was also the custom that decreed that a bride and groom must spend the first five days after their wedding in confinement together. Justin, under the circumstances, had not observed the custom strictly, but he had spent much of his time with her. Their meals were brought to them on trays, they had received no one, not even the family, after that first day. They had played backgammon, read, and sometimes she had sketched amusing little flower portraits with pen and ink, as she had been taught, while Justin worked on the plantation accounts, propping the great journals in his lap while he sat in one of the low slipper chairs made for putting on slippers, shoes, and boots, not for comfortable resting. Often they talked—skirting gingerly around anything that bordered on the personal—and in the afternoons they napped, he on the day bed and she alone on the great four poster that reminded her of a catafalque. But in the early morning and late afternoon he left her while he rode out visiting the fields, searching for a breath of air, or so he said. Claire wondered if he enjoyed the reprieve from her company as much as she enjoyed relaxing away from his. Only the doctor, a tall, middle-aged, gangling man with limp fingers and an ingratiating manner, had been allowed to disturb them. He agreed with Octavia’s diagnosis, ate an enormous supper, spent the night, and left early the next morning with his fee in his pocket.

“If you will wait until after dinner, I will carry you out onto the back gallery,” Justin answered her.

“I’m sure I can manage. I am not nearly the invalid you all make of me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of allowing you to put your feet to the floor,” he said shaking his head, a curl of amusement at the corner of his mouth. “I will give orders that you are not to move until I return.”

“Will you?” she countered. “Then I will wait until everyone’s back is turned.”

“I can see I will have to tie you to the bedposts,” he said with a mock sigh.

“You wouldn’t?”

“No? I promise you I would. Gently, of course.”

“Oh, very well,” she agreed, looking away, willing the flush on her cheeks to subside.

“Come, Claire,” he said softly, his eyes on her gold-tipped lashes. “You can’t begrudge me this small victory. These past few days have been yours.”

She raised startled eyes to his. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do. Underneath your injured ribs you must be laughing inside. You won.”

“What?”

“You agreed to ‘nothing else—’“ he quoted.

Comprehension came, and with it, confusion. There was a grain of truth in what he implied. She had welcomed the injuries of her accident, since it prevented the consummation of their marriage. But to say so would sound like a challenge she knew only too well he would answer with all speed. And yet, to deny the accusation would be to invite his embrace.

He laughed, a low sound that had a hollow ring, and reached out to lift her chin so he could look into her eyes. “Don’t panic. I am not forcing you to the wall. I find, to tell you the truth, that I have enjoyed our days together. I enjoyed your smiles that were neither afraid nor—designed to delude others into thinking you were deliriously happy. They were friendly smiles, I think, unaffected, without guile—for a change.”

Claire wished, as the quiet seconds passed that she could agree, could say that she too had enjoyed their days together, but the lie stuck in her throat. She had not enjoyed them. She had known constantly that she was only there because Justin willed it, And she had never been certain, given his reputation for ruthlessness, that he would consider a cracked rib and a few bruises a deterrent to his desires. His presence, regardless of what he was doing, made her nervous, less perhaps in the last day or two, but still she was certain she would never be able to ignore his presence as he so easily could her own.

A look of cynicism came into his eyes as she remained silent. “I am a fool. But I find I prefer a smile in your eyes to hate or fear. And so I will wait—for as long as my short patience will allow. In the meantime I would advise you to take great care. Your best protection will be in total indifference, or in a consistent expression of distaste, for I warn you, I intend to take advantage of your first moment of weakness.”

She drew in her breath, sharply, but before she could turn her head he dropped a kiss upon her parted lips. Then he got to his feet and, picking up his hat from the table beside the bed, stepped through the open french window out onto the gallery. She was so bemused she did not hear him walk away.

Rousing herself from her reverie, Claire picked up the small silver bell from the table beside her bed and rang for Rachel. She knew her maid would be waiting not far away. As she gave the order for her bath to be prepared, she heard a louder bell. It was one of several hanging on the small enclosed gallery, or loggia, in the back. Her room, she had discovered, was off by itself at the rear of the house, flanked on either side by galleries. According to Justin, the house was of the French planter style perfected in the West Indies. It was built in a great square of nine rooms, three wide and three deep, surrounded on three sides by galleries to shade and protect the house from the sun and rain. Built up on tall, massive brick pillars in the manner known as a raised basement, its lower floor was used for storage only, since in the spring it was subject to flooding from the bayou that looped and curved around the plantation. The raised basement gave the house the look of two stories, a look enhanced by the hipped roof pierced by dormers. The main floor was the only one used by the family, and was reached by sweeping staircases, front and back, leading from the ground to the second floor.

In the center front of the house, directly before the stairs, was the salon which opened by high, wide double doors into the dining room, which in turn gave onto the back loggia. On each side of these rooms ran the bedrooms, each opening out onto the gallery and often into the rooms next to them, so that during the hottest weather the entire house could be thrown open to the free circulation of the slightest breeze.

Claire’s room, at the back of the house, had a greater privacy than most. Though it had access to the side gallery, there was none to the back loggia and the one other door which gave into Octavia’s bedroom was fixed with a large and efficient silver-plated lock.

In her own room, there was a bell pull that rang one of the different toned bells outside. Justin used it often to summon his valet or for a servant to bring a meal, a hot bath, or simply a boy to carry messages for him. But since the pull was located beside the fireplace, Claire could not reach it from where she lay. The bell that had rung, she thought, was for the personal maid of Justin’s mother. Helene, the mistress of the house, must be about to rise.

In the days that she had lain in bed she had come to recognize the different bell notes and the members of the family to whose rooms they were connected. Sounds had a way of echoing through the house. She had learned that Justin’s mother was a demanding mistress, constantly requiring something. She had learned, too, that across the back loggia from her own room was the room of Justin’s father who was an invalid—though the servants were slow to answer his bell, perhaps because it was rung not by him but by his manservant. She knew that there was another woman in the house, Berthe Leroux, Justin’s aunt. Claire suspected that Berthe was the widow of Justin’s uncle, the man he had killed. But Justin had not told her anything of the matter.

Berthe Leroux seemed to be a woman of modest requirements, for her bell seldom rang, though apparently she too had her own maid, a shuffling older woman given to muttering beneath her breath. And there was also Berthe’s son, Justin’s cousin, who had the room beyond Octavia’s; a pleasant enough man from what she could tell. He laughed often, sang in his bath, and woke in an ill-humor, for his voice was perfectly audible as he castigated his valet in colorful language in the morning hours. But though Helene might be mistress of the house in name, Claire had decided that it was Octavia who stood at the center of it. It was she who planned the menus, supervised the maids, spoke to the gardeners and often stepped out on the gallery to meet Justin when he returned from the fields. There they would talk for a time about the crops in the home fields, the kitchen gardens, the orchards of peach, pear, and bushy figs and the animals that must be cared for to provide the bounty that came to the table. And though Octavia, it seemed, should have used her bell often with her many activities, it almost never rang. Claire knew, because of the closeness of their rooms, that the older woman had little use for a maid, that she bathed and dressed herself, did her own hair, and was much more likely to go in search of the servant she wanted than to set her bell to clamoring.

As she bathed, Claire considered the people who lived in the house with a rising interest. At last, today, she would meet them instead of lying in her bed listening, trying to visualize what they looked like and how they would accept her. Now that the five days were over she would be able to receive visitors as well as be able to leave her room herself. Would Justin’s family resent her? It seemed likely, for none of them had thought it convenient to attend her wedding and of them all, only Justin’s father had been really unable to come to New Orleans. A wedding celebration was an occasion that few Creoles cared to miss in the ordinary way, but these people had ignored the marriage of the man who was in actuality the head of the house and the master of the plantation, even if he was not so in fact. Why else would they have done that unless they disapproved of the woman he had chosen as his bride?