And he could hear the whispers behind the whispers. What did he expect? Cajun trash. Likely that girl-child got started in the bayou and she passed it off as his.
Horrible, vicious lies.
The door opened. Josephine hadn't bothered with even a cursory knock. Manet Hall was hers, now and always. She entered any room at her whim.
'Lucian.”
He spun around. 'They've found her?' He'd yet to change the clothes soiled from his last search, and hope shone through the dirt on his face.
'They have not.' She closed the door at her back with a testy snap. 'Nor will they. She is gone, and is probably at this moment laughing at you with her lover.”
She could almost believe it. Soon, she thought, it would be the truth.
'She did not run away.”
'You're a fool. You were a fool to marry her, and you remain a fool.' She strode to the armoire, threw it open. 'Can't you see some of her clothes are missing? Hasn't her maid reported as much?”
All he could see was the blue ball gown with the flounces and rosettes she'd been so proud of.
'The maid is mistaken.' But his voice shook.
'You're mistaken. What of her jewelry?' Josephine pulled the leather box from the shelf, tossed the lid up. 'Where are the pearls you gave her for Christmas? The diamond bracelet you bought her when she had the child?”
'Someone stole them.”
On a sound of disgust, Josephine upended the jewelry on the bed. 'She took whatever sparkled the most. A girl of her type knows nothing but glitter. She bewitched you, caused you to embarrass your family, your name, now she has disgraced us all.”
'No.' He squeezed his eyes shut as his heart ripped to pieces. 'She wouldn't leave me. She would never leave Marie Rose.”
'However much affection she might have had for the child, I doubt either she or her lover wanted to be saddled with a baby. How do you know, Lucian, that the child is yours?”
The red rage of fury stained his cheeks. 'How can you ask such a question? How could you have lived in the same house with her for a year, and say such a thing about her?”
The doubt, Josephine thought coldly, had been planted. She would help it bloom. 'Because I did live in the same house with her, but I wasn't blinded by lust or bewitched by whatever spell she put on you. This is your fault as much as hers. If you had satisfied your appetites as other men, paid her, given her a few trinkets, we would not have this new scandal on our hands.”
'Paid her. Like a whore. Like Julian pays his women.' Lucian stepped forward, so angry his hands trembled. 'My wife is not a whore.”
'She used you,' Josephine said in a vicious whisper. 'She took your dignity, and smeared ours. She came into this house a servant, and left it with the spoils of her deception. Like a thief in the night, with her child crying behind her.”
She gripped his arms and shook. 'You tried to change what cannot be changed. You expected too much of her. She could never have been mistress of Manet Hall.' I am. 'At least she had the sense to know it. Now, she's gone. We will hold our heads up until the gossip dies down. We are Manets, and we will survive this.”
She turned away, walked to the door. 'I expect you to make yourself presentable and join the family for dinner. Our lives have been disrupted long enough.”
Alone, Lucian sat on the bed and, with the watch pin in his hand, fell to weeping.
'I gotta hand it to you, boy.' With his hands on his hips, Remy turned a circle in the kitchen. 'You made a hell of a mess here.”
'Come back in a couple weeks,' Declan called out from the adjacent dining room, where he'd set up what he thought of as his carpentry shop.
Effie lifted a corner of the drop cloth. 'The floor's going to be beautiful. It's a blank canvas,' she said as she looked around the gutted kitchen. 'He had to wipe it clean so he could paint the right picture.”
'Effie, ditch that moron and come live here with me.”
'You stop trying to make time with my girl.' Remy walked to the doorway. Declan stood at a power saw, a tool belt slung at his hips and a carpenter's pencil behind his ear. It looked to Remy as if his friend hadn't used a razor in a good three days.
And damned if the scruffy, handyman look didn't suit him.
'You got something you want me to do around here, or should we just stand around admiring how manly you look?”
'I could sure use one or two laborers.' He ran the saw through wood with a satisfying buzz and a shower of sawdust, switched it off before he glanced over. 'You really up for it?”
'Sure.' Remy slung an arm around Effie's shoulder. 'We'll work for beer.”
Four hours later, they sat on the gallery outside the freshly painted kitchen. Effie, dwarfed in the old denim shirt Declan had given her for a smock, had freckles of paint on her nose. The beer was cold and crisp, and on Declan's countertop stereo, Foghat was taking a slow ride.
As he worked his latest splinter out of his thumb, Declan decided it didn't get much better.
'What's that bush blooming out there?' He gestured toward the wreck of gardens.
'Camellia,' Effie told him. 'These gardens are a sin, Dec.”
'I know. I've got to get to them.”
'You can't get to everything. You ought to get someone out here to clean it up.”
'Big Frank and Little Frankie.' Remy took a long swallow of beer. 'They'd do the job for you. Do good work.”
'Family business?' He always trusted family businesses. 'Father and son?”
'Brother and sister.”
'A brother and sister, both named Frank?”
'Yeah. Frank X.-that's for Xavier– he's got him some ego. Named both his kids after him. I'll give you the number. You tell them Remy told you to call.”
'I'm going to go clean up.' Effie looked down at her paint-speckled hands. 'Is it all right if I wander around the house some?”
'Sweetheart.' Declan took her hand, kissed it. 'You can do anything you want.”
'Good thing I saw her first,' Remy commented as Effie went inside.
'Damn right.”
'Seems to me you got your mind on another woman, the way you keep looking toward the bayou.”
'I can't have Effie unless I kill you, so I'm courting Miss Odette as a testament to our friendship.”
'Yeah, you are.' With a laugh, Remy leaned back on his elbows. 'That Lena, she tends to stir a man up, get him thinking all kinds of interesting things.”
'You got a girl.”
'Don't mean my brain stopped working. Don't you worry, though, Effie's all I want.' He let out a long sigh of a contented man. 'Besides, Lena and me, we did our round some time back.”
'What do you mean?' Declan set his beer back down and stared at his friend. 'You and Lena. You … and Lena?”
Remy winked. 'One hot, sweaty summer. M/'ve been close to fifteen years ago. Ouch.' He leaned up to rub his heart. 'That hurts. I was about … yeah, I was seventeen, just graduated high school. That'd make her fifteen, seems to me. We spent some memorable evenings in the backseat of my old Chevy Camaro.”
He noted Declan's brooding look. 'Hey, I saw her first, too. I was in a hot trance over that girl, a good six months. Thought I'd die if I didn't have her. You know how it is at seventeen.”
'Yeah. I know how it is at thirty-one, too.”
Remy chuckled. 'Well, I mooned over her, danced around her, sniffed at her heels.
Took her to the movies, for long drives. To my senior prom. God, what a picture she was. Then one moonstruck June night, I finally got her clothes off in the back of that Camaro. It was her first time.' He shot Declan a look. 'You know, they say a woman never forgets her first. You got your work cut out for you, cher.”
