Day Dreamer (16 page)

“Cordero Moreau.”

“Cordero!” The woman’s eyes instantly flooded with tears.

With surprising agility, Ada Dunstain nearly flew down the steps and ran over to Cord. She threw her arms around him, pinning his to his sides. He was helpless to do anything more than stare at the top of her head as Ada pressed her cheek against his chest and held on tight.

“Cordero, I’m your aunt Ada. Do your recall your mother ever speaking of me?” She pulled back, his greater height forcing her to crane her neck to look up at him.

He was so stunned by this cherub-cheeked woman’s clinging to him with so much unabashed adoration that he was rendered speechless. When she finally released him, Foster and Edward caught her eye.

“Why, if it isn’t Arnold and Lang,” she said, using their surnames. “The last time I saw you was the day Father sent you two off to live with Alyce here on St. Stephen.”

Edward and Foster smiled in acknowledgment of her recognition and told her how pleased they were to see her.

“How long have you been here, Aunt Ada?” Cord asked.

“Why, I don’t know. Nearly eleven years, I suppose.”

“Eleven
years
?” Cord glanced over at Celine. His wife was watching Ada Dunstain with as much curiosity as he.

“And who is this exquisite young woman?” Ada asked turning toward Celine.

“This is Celine … my wife.” Cord glanced over at Celine as he introduced her. She seemed almost relieved by Ada’s appearance. “You said you’ve been here eleven years, Aunt Ada …,” he remarked.

“I see there is a lot to explain. If you’ll bring your things in before it starts to rain, I’ll have Gunnie set out a cold buffet and we can talk.”

Ada whirled around and started up the stairs, the hem of her full skirt carefully gathered in her hands, the lacy hem of her petticoat showing beneath. She nearly tripped on the top wooden step, which was swollen and crumbling with dry rot, but she caught herself in time.

With a laugh, Ada paused on the veranda and called out over her shoulder, “This old place needs a bit more care than I’ve been able to give it.” She looked at Celine again and then smiled. “Cordero’s wife. Alyce will be so pleased.” She instantly sobered, as if she had said too much, and hurried inside before anyone could question her.

“Do you think she meant your mother?” Celine asked Cord.

“My mother is dead.”

Standing here in this place where his mother had loved and laughed and filled his young life with so much joy, Cord found it excruciating to say the words aloud.

“I’m sure she said Alyce
will
be so pleased …,” Celine said softly.

“I’m not so certain that woman isn’t more than a bit addlepated.”

“Always was,” Foster told them as he started toward the steps with a piece of luggage.

“Good to have a
nice
surprise, for a change,” Edward added as he followed Foster into the house.

Cord glanced down at Celine. There was no putting it off any longer. Sooner or later he would have to go into the house. Aunt Ada was waiting. Celine needed to get out of the heat. He held out his arm for her before he realized what he had done. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, she let him lead her up the dilapidated steps.

There was no going back now. He had come home.

Situated on the crest of the hill, the house was constructed so that every room faced the turquoise sea. Inside, the wall coverings were faded and water-stained where rain, driven by tropical storms, had seeped in around the window frames. The furnishings were in need of upholstery, the drapes fit for the rag bag. Edward was so upset that Foster had sent him to his room. But Celine easily imagined the place as it could be with a little hard work.

Ada had insisted they go directly to the dining room, where the housekeeper had gathered together a ratoon supper. Celine thought the array of leftovers—named for the ratoon sugarcane cuttings left in the fields to sprout again—was both interesting and exotic. The sideboard was piled with an assortment of cold vegetable dishes and a platter of sliced ham. There were bowls of golden-orange sliced papaws, sweet pineapples, melons and juicy mangoes. The silver serving pieces were tarnished and salt-pitted, the surface of the sideboard scarred with signs of age and long use without care.

The legs of the dining table and sideboard were standing in small dishes of water. When Celine asked Ada why, the woman shrugged and explained quite offhandedly, “A necessary precaution, dear. The centipedes are quite poisonous. The water keeps them from climbing up the table legs. We have them under the bed legs, too.” Celine shivered and tried not to think of climbing into bed and finding a poisonous many-legged creature between the sheets.

A steady, refreshing, salt-scented breeze blew in off the sea. It lightened Celine’s spirit and renewed her vigor. While she ate in silence, she was able to watch Cord deal with his aunt.

Although Ada kept up a steady stream of rambling conversation that seemed to have no point to it at all, Cord appeared to relax more and more the longer he lingered at the dining table. His gaze often wandered to the long windows, which opened onto a view of the aquamarine water.

“Aunt Ada?” Cord interrupted his aunt in the middle of a long, convoluted recitation of a concoction of cornmeal, okra and seasoning.

Ada blinked as if someone had just shaken her awake. “Why, yes, Cordero. What is it, dear?”

“Tell me about Dunstain Place.”

“Where would you like me to start?”

“What was it like when you arrived? I thought my father’s manager was still in charge of the place.”

Ada carefully wiped her mouth with her napkin before she answered. “A horrible man, I must say. He and I didn’t agree on anything. In fact, I don’t think I was here three days before I fired him.”

Ada shifted so that she could address Gunnie, a slender black woman who had come into the room to clear the empty platters from the sideboard. The woman was rail-thin, her hair cropped close to her head. Her clothing was plain, well-worn navy blue Osnaburg that looked able to withstand hard labor.

“Was it three days, Gunnie? Or did he last a little longer?” Ada asked.

“Tree days only.” Her head high, her arms full of plates, Gunnie left the room without acknowledging anyone except Ada.

“That’s what I thought. His name was Philpot, I think, and he was a terrible taskmaster. Very intolerant, Cordero. You would have been appalled at the way he ran things, I’m sure.”

“What happened after he left?”

“Why, nothing, dear.”

Cord cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “You hired someone to replace him?”

“No …”

“With no overseer, who sees to the slaves, who runs the plantation?”

Ada blinked her wide blue eyes. Her brow puckered in a slight frown. She shook her head, a gesture which set her second chin quivering. “A few of them ran off. It was so long ago, it’s hard to recall how many exactly, but not many. I suppose you would say I am in charge, but Bobo helps.”

“Bobo?”

“Yes. He seemed the most capable. Came to me and told me not to worry, that he would help to keep things running smoothly. I never had any reason to doubt him.”

“And the others?” Cord crossed his arms over his chest, took a long, deep breath and sighed.

“They still live in the village down below the mill.”

Celine watched and listened as Cord questioned his aunt. She could see him straining to hold his temper. This innocent, somewhat vague woman seemed to have single-handedly ruined a once thriving sugar plantation.

“What do you live on, Aunt?”

“Oh, I have a very small inheritance from the Dunstain estate. Don’t ever think I have spent the sugar money, dear. Your father’s solicitor still handles that, but he is away just now. Gone to England, I think. His wife’s family—”

“You’re still growing sugar?” Cord effectively cut her off, the only way to get Ada’s attention.

Ada frowned. “Why, of course we grow sugar. Dunstain Place is a sugar plantation, isn’t it?”

“But we heard in Baytowne—”

“Posh.” She waved away the notion. “What do they know? I don’t have anything to do with anyone down there.”

“Are you saying you’ve been running this place alone and that it’s still producing sugar?” Unable to hide his impatience any longer, Cord shoved away from the table and stalked over to the open windows, where he stood staring out to sea. Celine knew him well enough to know that he was at the end of his rope.

When Ada glanced over in a silent appeal for help, Celine was forced to come to the gentle woman’s aid.

“I’m sure your aunt did what she thought best …”

Cord turned his attention to Celine.

“My aunt fired the manager. She hasn’t hired another in all these years. You expect me to believe that she arrived from England—a maiden lady—with the capability of running a sugar plantation? Can you honestly tell me you believe that? You’ve seen the state of this house and the grounds.”

“It’s true that I never married …,” Ada said softly, apologetically, twisting her napkin in her hands.

Celine stood up and walked around the table until she stood behind Ada’s chair. “Don’t you think a woman is capable of running a plantation as well as a man?”

“Do you?” he countered.

Celine crossed her arms and raised her chin a notch. “Of course I do.”

Ada tried to appeal to Cord. “Please. I don’t want to be the cause of an argument between you two …”

“We don’t need you to provide cause,” Cord assured her without taking his eyes off Celine. “My wife and I find enough to argue about on our own.”

Both women were watching him now. Ada’s eyes were filled with unshed tears. Celine’s flared with anger. The two of them were driving him insane, but in vastly different ways. Ada’s vague answers and her admission that she had been running Dunstain Place alone raised his ire, but the last hour in Celine’s constant presence had raised more than that. He was aware of every move she made, every time she looked his way. He was constantly aroused by her. She was driving him mad.

When he’d walked into the dining room she had already been seated at the table, and he’d caught her licking sweet mango juice off her lips. She had paused to look up at him and had smiled in greeting. He’d tried scowling very hard, which put an end to that.

She’d taken the time to change into the low-necked coral gown she had worn aboard ship. Her breasts should have paled in comparison to the whore Bonnie’s, but although Celine’s were not overly large, there was something ultimately more seductive about the tantalizing glimpse of the ripe firmness of her silken skin. It would have been difficult not to notice the way her skin glistened or the way her midnight hair clung in curling wisps around her damp hairline.

Each time Celine shifted in her chair, he was aware of it. Each time she leaned forward to reach for her wineglass and gave him another view of her cleavage, he imagined what it would be like to bury his face in her breasts. He watched her slender hands move, watched her fingers grasp the wine stem. Each time she ran her tongue over her lips or touched her napkin to them, he felt a quickening in his loins and was forced to look away.

Each and every time he looked at Celine he wanted her. He felt like an idiot. He wanted his own wife so badly that he was hard pressed not to leap over the table and take her amid the mangoes.

He wanted to take her in his arms, to make her cry out with the same need she so unwittingly compelled him to feel. He wanted her over him, beneath him, around him. He ached for her. He wanted her with the fiercest need he had ever felt for another living soul. His need scared the holy hell out of him.

“I have to get out of here,” he said to no one in particular as he shoved his hand through his hair and pulled at the collar of his shirt. He was nearly choking with frustration.

Ada was near tears again. “I’m sorry, Cordero. I fired Philpot so long ago. I truly meant to hire another manager.”

“I’m sorry too, Aunt. I’m not angry with you.” He felt guilty as hell about the anxious, apologetic look on Ada’s face, but he couldn’t think past escape, even if Celine would probably see it as another attempt to run from his feelings.

And this time she’d be right
, he realized. But as far as he was concerned, she could think whatever she wanted.

He stalked out of the room, unaware that Celine had followed him until he was nearly through the huge, open beamed sitting room at the front of the house where a portrait of his mother still hung above the fireplace mantel. She grabbed his arm just as he was about to step out onto the veranda.

“Cord, how can you upset her like that and simply storm off?”

He stared pointedly at her hand, where she had gathered a fistful of shirtsleeve and was holding tight. She let go.

“You hurt that dear lady for no reason,” Celine said.

“I asked a few questions and stated my opinion. If she chose to be hurt by that, it’s her prerogative.”

“It’s too bad no one ever taught you that what you give comes back to you, Cordero.”

“Is it really that simple for you, Celine?”

“Yes, because I believe it. It could be for you, too, if you would ever let yourself feel anything but anger.”

He started off again.

“Where are you going?” she wanted to know.

“What do you care as long as I’m not pressing you for favors you are not willing to grant?”

His question had the desired effect. Her anger was immediately replaced with shock.

She was standing too close. He picked up the floral scent of her hair. He saw every facet of her eyes and became incapable of moving toward her or away. He felt threatened, as if he were hovering on a precipice where one step in either direction would send him to his doom.

But threats of doom had never set well with him.

Cord reached out with lightning swiftness. Before he could change his mind he slipped one hand around the back of her neck and his other arm around her waist. He pulled her up against him, hard and fast, and covered her lips with his.

The feel of her in his arms, the taste of her sweet lips rocked him and stoked his need. He felt shock and surprise reverberate through her, followed by a weak attempt to hold him at bay. He continued to press her, forced her to open up to him. He slipped his tongue between her teeth and heard her moan, whether in stifled protest or pleasurable surprise he could not tell. He delved deep, teasing her with his tongue. She tasted of mango and honey and the promise of a sweetness he had never savored. His hand cupped one of her breasts, his fingers traced the swell of bosom above the low neckline of her gown. He heard her gasp, felt her press her breast against his palm.