three days on this room.' And nights, he thought. 'I think this color will make the room seem cooler than a patterned paper, and I like the way it looks with the trim.”
'You're a regular Bob Vila and Martha Stewart combined. What do you tackle next?”
'The library. Still some details to deal with in here, and the kitchen, but the library's on the slate for next week. After that, I'm hoping to move outside for a while. Give me a couple of those aspirin.”
'Sure.' Remy handed over the pills and the water. 'You got work problems or female problems?”
'A little of both. Come out on the back gallery, take a look at what the Franks have done with the rear gardens.”
'Heard you escorted our Lena around in a big, white limo a few nights ago,' Remy said as they walked toward the back of the house. 'Classy stuff.”
'I'm a classy guy.' He handed the water back to Remy and opened the French doors of the dining room.
'You got romancing her in mind, that's a good start.”
'I've got more than that in mind,' Declan said as Remy tipped back the bottle. 'I'm going to marry her.”
Water spewed out as Remy choked.
'Pretty good spit take,' Declan commented. 'Keep the bottle.”
'Jesus, Dec. Jesus Christ, you and Lena are getting married?”
'I'd like to have the wedding here, in the fall. September maybe.' He scanned his gallery, his gardens. He wondered what kind of bird it was that was currently singing its lungs out. 'The place won't be finished, but that'd be part of the charm. Of course, if it takes me longer to pin her down, we could do it next spring.”
'That's some fast work.”
'Not really. It's just a matter of keeping at it.' He smiled now as he studied Remy's baffled face. 'Oh, you don't mean the house. Lena. I haven't asked her yet. She'd just say no. Look out there, bulbs coming up. Daffodils, tulips, calla lilies, the Franks tell me. Buried under all those weeds and vines, maybe blooming under it for years. That's something.”
'Dec, I think you need something stronger than Tylenol.”
'I'm not crazy. I'm in love with her. I'm starting to think I was in love with her before I even met her. That's why there was never anyone else who really mattered. Not like this. Because she was here, and I just hadn't found her yet.”
'Maybe I need something stronger.”
'Bourbon's in the kitchen. Ice is in the cooler. New frig is due to come in tomorrow.”
'I'm fixing us both a drink.”
'Make mine short and weak,' Dec told him absently. 'I've got work to do yet today.”
Remy brought back two glasses and took a long sip of his as he studied Declan's face. 'Declan, I love you like a brother.”
'I know you do.”
'So, I'm going to talk to you like I would a brother-if I had one instead of being plagued with sisters.”
'You think I've lost my mind.”
'No. In some situations, hell, in most situations, a man thinks with his dick. By the time that thought process works all the way to his head, he usually sees that situation more clearly.”
'I appreciate you explaining that to me, Dad.”
Remy only shook his head and paced up and down the gallery. 'Lena's a very sexy woman.”
'No argument there.”
'She just sort of exudes those pheromones or whatever the hell they are the way other women do the perfume they splash on to get a man stirred up. She stirs you up just by breathing.' 'You're trying to tell me I'm infatuated, or in the heavy wave of first lust.”
'Exactly.' Remy laid a supportive hand on Declan's shoulder. 'Not a man alive would blame you for it. Add to that, son, you've had a rough few months on the relationship train, and knowing the way you cart guilt around like it was your personal treasure chest, I don't imagine you've been clearing your pipes regular since you broke it off with Jennifer.”
'Jessica, you asshole.' Amused, touched, Declan leaned back on the baluster. 'It's not infatuation. I thought it was, with a good dose of that lust tossed in. But that's not it. It's not a matter of clogged pipes, and I'm not thinking with my dick. It's my heart.”
'Oh, brother.' Remy took another good gulp of whiskey. 'Dec, you haven't been down here a full month yet.”
'People are always saying something like that, as if time is a factor.' And because the critical part of his brain had said the same thing, he was irritated to hear the sentiment from his closest friend. 'What, is there a law somewhere that states you can't fall in love until a reasonable, rational period of time has passed during which the parties will socialize, communicate and, if possible, engage in sexual intercourse in order to assure compatibility? If there is, and it worked, explain the divorce rate.”
'A couple of lawyers stand here debating the subject, we'll be here till next Tuesday.”
'Then let me say this. I've never felt like this before, never in my life. I didn't think I could. I figured something inside me just didn't work the way it was supposed to.”
'Well, for Christ's sake, Dec.”
'I couldn't love Jessica.' The guilt slid back into his voice. 'I just couldn't, and I tried to. I damn near settled for affection, respect and mutual backgrounds because I thought it was all I'd get, or be able to give. But it's not. I've never felt like this, Remy,' he said again. 'And I like it.”
'If you want Lena, then I want her for you. The thing is, Dec, no matter how you feel, it doesn't guarantee she's going to feel the same.”
'Maybe she'll break my heart, but feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.' He'd been telling himself that, repeatedly, since he'd realized he was in love with her. 'One way or the other, I've got to try.”
He swirled the whiskey he'd yet to drink. 'She doesn't know what to make of me,' Declan murmured. 'It's going to be fun letting her find out.”
That night, he heard weeping. A man's raw and broken sobs. Declan tossed in sleep, weighed down with the grief, unable to stop it, unable to give or seek comfort.
Even when silence came, the sorrow stayed.
Bayou Rouse
March 1900
He didn't know why he came here, to stare at the water while thick green shadows spread around him, as night gathered to eat away at the day.
But he came, time and again, to wander through the marsh as if he would somehow come upon her, strolling along the curve of the river where the swamp flowers blossomed.
She would smile at him, hold out her hand.
And everything would be right again.
Nothing would ever be right again.
He was afraid he was going mad, that grief was darkening his mind as night darkened the day. How else could he explain how he could hear her whispering to him in the night? What could he do but shut off the sound of her, the pain of her?
He watched a blue heron rise from the reeds like a ghost, beautiful, pure, perfect, to skim over the tea- colored water and glide into the trees. Away from him. Always away from him.
She was gone. His Abby had winged away from him, like the ghost bird. Everyone said it. His family, his friends. He'd heard the servants whispering about it. How Abigail Rouse had run off with some no-account and left her husband and bastard baby daughter behind.
Though he continued to look in New Orleans, in Baton Rouge, in Lafayette, though he continued to haunt the bayou like a ghost himself, in the loneliest hours of the night, he believed it.
