Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series) (17 page)

“Yes.” Naima nodded. “He often spoke of her.”

Phillip had pretty much washed her hands of Lisette following an unfortunate stillbirth of what would have been their first child together. When she had become pregnant with Tristan—Arnaud’s child—Michel had welcomed Lisette to the South Lake Tahoe compound instead of casting her out of the clan. In furious retaliation for this, Phillip had disassociated himself completely from his father and the rest of the family.

“Do you think he realized?” Augustus asked, and when she looked his way, puzzled, he added, “Aaron Davenant. Do you think he realized when he attacked Tristan that he was, in fact, trying to murder his own nephew? Lisette was his sister
, you know.”

Naima’s foot nearly slipped off the gas pedal in surprise. “What?”

She’d known Lisette was a Davenant, but no more than this. Lisette had never spoken of her birth family, or her life before joining the Morin clan, and Naima had never asked her. Given the enormous size of the Brethren clans—especially in the early part of the nineteenth century—she’d always assumed Lisette had been a cousin of Aaron’s, once or twice removed along the way.

The corner of Augustus’ mouth hooked in a wr
y little smile. “She was Lamar’s eldest daughter, betrothed to Phillip by decree of the Tomes shortly after I shot and killed his son Victor in a duel. I think the Elders hoped it would mend the wounds that duel had cleaved among the clans, but instead it only worsened them.”

The smile faltered, then faded. “
Michel was my second, and refused to provide Victor medical care personally upon the dueling field so that he could instead tend to me. Lamar promised he’d get revenge against Michel for that unintended insult. ‘A brother for a brother, a son for a son,’ that’s what he swore—a son from Michel, because he walked away…”

“And a brother from Mason, because Mason couldn’t save Victor’s life,” she murmured, not bothering to mention that she’d been present
when Lamar had first issued this deranged vow.

“Yes.” Augustus nodded once. He was quiet for a long moment, content to fiddle with the control buttons beside his seat, adjusting the angle of
the reclining back more comfortably. “You know Michel was Tristan’s father.”

Now her foot
did
slide off the gas; Naima tromped on the brakes, and the Escalade skidded to a halt. “What?” she exclaimed, with a bark of hoarse laughter. “Bullshit! He was not.”

“Why else would Jean-Luc Davenant have targeted Tristan in Las Vegas?” Augustus countered pointedly.

A brother for a brother, a son for a son.
Lamar’s venom-filled voice echoed in Naima’s mind.
That’s what I mean to claim from you, Morin. There will be your recompense for the wrongs you’ve committed, you and your boy. A brother for a brother, a son for a son. I’ll see one of each claimed, and by Christ, I will not rest until I do.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed, stunned.

“Michel loved Lisette very much,” Augustus said, his voice low and sorrowful. Again he turned his head, letting his eyes travel sadly beyond the tinted glass of his window. “Burying her was the hardest thing I think he ever had to do. I take some comfort now in knowing he’s again in her company—where he so dearly yearned to be.”

***

Lisette.

Dr. Coleman had told Aaron that triggers for his lost memories would come unexpectedly, and it sure didn’t come any more so than lying on his back in the rear hatch of the SUV, listening to Augustus and Naima.

He’d known his sister, of course, at least by name. Even though he’d lived separately from the Davenant clan for most of his life after his accident—and continued to do so even now—he’d been acquainted with the names of all his siblings. He had no memories of Lisette that he could recount, because she’d been married and out of their father’s house by the time he’d fallen and struck his head. But Julian had mentioned her from time to time, usually if he’d been knocking back the tequila too hard, and always with a wistful sort of fondness in his voice and on his face.

“She was beautiful, Az,” he’d told Aaron once. “An angel in spirit and form. She loved you—God, Az, you think I dote on you? You should have seen Lisette. She had you spoiled practically rotten
, a fat little duckling who followed her everywhere. You were her darling, and you stuck to her like a shadow.”

Aaron had held no memories of her
that were his own, however. He’d never known what she looked like, this sister he’d once apparently followed so adoringly. But all at once, as he lay beneath the heavy shroud of blankets swathed over his head, it hit him like an electrical shock; he jerked reflexively, uttering a soft gasp as within his mind he saw her clearly.

A warm summer’s day, and she had me into the wooded fields beyond the perimeter of our family yard, where the great house was no longer visible to us for the distance and the trees, and where the grass was so high, she could part it with her hands as she blazed a trail through it—and I could drop to my knees and be fully enveloped, invisible within it.

They had been near the spring house, a place where the rolling fields and forested meadows dropped abruptly off at a steep, cragged angle. At the bottom, a stone hut had been build—the family’s spring house—and from beneath its foundation flowed a babbling, meandering brook.

He and Lisette had been
playing hide-and-seek. He remembered her beautiful golden blonde hair alight in the bright afternoon sunshine; it had worked loose from her carefully bundled plaits in long tendrils that flapped around her face in the light, insistent breeze.

He remembered her skin, porcelain pale with sun-kissed cheeks, and her eyes, enormous and blue like his own. When she laughed, her grin would stretch wide, her mouth open, and the sound was like music.

“Where are you, little rabbit?” she called out as she bent over and cut back and forth through the thick grass, sweeping it with her outstretched hands. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

H
unkered down and out of sight in the grass, he’d giggled, but remembered now—the sudden clamor of hoof-beats, the snorting and snuffling of a winded horse, and the jangling of tack as a rider had approached.

Father.
Aaron risked a peek out over the swaying tips of blanched grass and saw Lamar approaching them, his large dappled gelding sweat-glossed and whipped to a fierce cantor.

“Hoah, there,” he heard Lamar call out to the steed as he drew it to a skittering halt. For a long moment, there was silence, and Aaron lay pressed against the dirt.

“Who are you, girl?” Lamar asked Lisette. With a grunt, he swung his leg around and dismounted, his muddied riding boots settling heavily against the ground beneath him. It was before his accident, then, Aaron realized in retrospect, the one which had crippled his stride and ruined his spine.

Lamar pulled off one of his gloves and patted the gelding’s gleaming hide with his bare palm as he regarded Lisette, brows narrowed against the sun’s glare. “Answer me, girl.”

Lisette had dropped a curtsey, pinning her eyes to her toes. “I…I’m Lisette, sir. Your daughter.”

By that point, several of Lamar’s brothers still lived with them, along with all of their offspring, so it was not so unusual or insulting for Lamar not to recognize one of his own
offspring on sight—especially a daughter, with whom he seldom had little, if any, interaction.

“One of mine?” he asked, and when she nodded, he asked somewhat dubiously, “Who is your mother?”

“Annette, sir,” she replied, her voice little more than a shy mumble as he strode toward her.

Lamar
carried a riding crop in hand, and she flinched visibly when he caught her beneath the chin with it, forcing her to lift her eyes to meet his own. “Well,” he said with a
harrumph
. “So you are. Who’s out here with you?”

He swept his gaze across the grass and among the trees
. Aaron flattened himself against the ground, his heart pounding, his breath hitching with bright terror.

“No one, sir,” Lisette said quickly. “I…I was
going to look for juniper down by the spring house.”

“
Does your mother know you’re out here?”

“No, sir,” Lisette said, shaking her head.

“Does
anyone?”
Lamar demanded sharply, and her shoulders hunched.

“No, sir.”

His brows narrowed and his mouth turned down in a stern scowl. “Stupid girl,” he admonished. “Anything could happen to you and none of us would be aware. This farm is crawling with Negroes—damn dirty slaves. Any one of them would give his right eye for the chance to plow between your thighs. And there are still rumors of savages about.” Reaching out, he pinched a wayward strand of her yellow hair between his forefinger and thumb, giving it a slight, speculative twist. “They favor the fair-headed for their scalp collections, you know.”

Obviously, Lisette hadn’t known this. She trembled where she stood and tears swam in her eyes.
“I…I’m sorry, sir.”

“Pretty little flower, are you not?”
Lamar remarked softly, letting his gaze travel slowly from her face toward the burgeoning swell of her bosom, then down, following the line of her skirt. “How old are you, girl?”

“
Fourteen, sir.”

“
Not a flower at all, then, but a blossom,” he murmured, seeming momentarily distracted. Then his expression hardened again and he frowned all the more. “Stupid girl,” he snapped again. “Niggers and savages alike…any of them and all…they’d love to lay their hands—and other parts besides—on you.”

She didn’t reply, but Aaron could see humiliated flush
blooming brightly in her cheeks.

“Here, now,” Lamar said,
his tone softening as he stepped closer to her. “Look at me now. Up, up, up with those eyes—there’s a girl.” With a kindly smile, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You’re a beautiful lamb, Lisette. I only speak sharply because I mean to protect what’s mine.”

Lisette smiled clumsily, and sniffled a bit. “Thank you, sir,” she said,
stiffening uncomfortably as Lamar kissed her again, this time on the cheek.

“
And you
are,
you know, child,” Lamar murmured, draping his hands against her shoulders. When he kissed her again on the opposite cheek—closer to the corner of her mouth, in fact, from the looks of things—she shuddered.

“Mine.”
He moved to let his lips brush hers, his hands sliding down the front of her bodice to cup the outward swells of her breasts.

Lisette recoiled, stumbling back in the grass. “Please don’t…!” she hiccupped.

Lamar seized her roughly by the crook of the elbow, and when she again tried to shy away, he struck her, swinging his hand wide and hitting the side of her face. He whipped his hand around the opposite way and slapped her again, then repeated this over and over, at least a dozen times, until Lisette’s nose and mouth were bloody, her knees were buckling, and she sobbed helplessly, piteously.

Lamar said nothing else, and neither did she.
He shoved her down into the grass, and as Aaron watched, stricken and horrified, he squatted alongside her, jerking open the front ties of his breeches.

Lisette’s hands
came up from the grass, pawing at him in feeble protest as he leaned over her. Aaron could hear her mewling; after Lamar struck her several more times, her hands drooped back toward the ground, and her muffled cries ceased. Aaron could hear his father breathing heavily, nearly panting, and the sound of Lisette weeping.

When at last it was over, Aaron looked out over the tops of the windswept grass and watched as Lamar staggered to his feet. His shirt tails had pulled loose of his breeches, and he shoved them back into place. His wig had fallen askew, and he straightened this as well before refastening his fly.

“Get your ass back home,” he growled at his daughter, striding over to where his gelding had wandered off to graze closer to the steep embankment leading down to the spring house—and less than five feet away from Aaron’s hiding place in the grass. “I want to know where
to find it lest I have want or need of it again.”

Hooking his foot in the stirrup, and seizing hold of the reins at the horse’s withers, Lamar swung himself back into the saddle. It was at about this time that the gelding lifted its head, perhaps annoyed that it had been disturbed, especially since it had just discovered a thick growth of sweet clover hidden among the tall grass. As it looked up, the horse caught sight of Aaron
and frighted. Its nostrils flared; its lips drew back as it bared its teeth against the restraint of the bit, and with a sharp whinny, it began to stomp its hooves, dancing anxiously backward.

“Whoa!
” Lamar didn’t Aaron among the weeds. He said it again, jerking the reins hard and forcing the horse’s chin toward its shoulder—
“Whoa,
I say!”—and then the gelding reared, its front hooves flailing in the air.

Lamar uttered a startled yelp as he fell from his saddle. He landed on his back, hitting the ground hard, and then
pitched, ass over elbows, down the embankment. In its backpedaling, the gelding had drawn too close to the drop-off’s edge, and its back hooves slid in the loose soil and pebbles. With a screech, it, too, toppled off the hill. Aaron heard the sickening, moist crunch of bones breaking—first its legs and then its neck—and his father’s shriek as the heavy beast plowed over him.