'No, none of them loved me. Wanted me. Desired me, but that's the easy part. You can be careless with wants. And I'll tell you the truth.
Sometimes, most times, I enjoyed that carelessness. Not just the sex, but the dance. The game. Whatever you want to call that courtship that's no courtship at all. When the music stops, or the game's over, there might be some bumps and bruises, but nobody's really hurt.”
'But this isn't a game between the two of us.”
'I've already hurt you.”
'Bumps and bruises so far, Lena.' He stopped, face-to-face with her. 'Bumps and bruises.”
'When you look at me, what are you seeing? Someone, something else from before. You can't run the living on the dead.”
'I see you clear enough. But I see something else in both of us that shouldn't be ignored or forgotten. Maybe something that needs to be put right before we can move on.”
He reached in his pocket, pulled out Lucian's watch. 'I gave this to you once before, about a hundred years ago. It's time you had it back.”
Her fingers chilled at the idea of holding it. 'If this is true, don't you see it all ended in grief and death and tragedy? We can't change what was. Why risk bringing it on again?”
'Because we have to. Because we're stronger this time.' He opened her hand, put the watch into her palm, closed her fingers over it. 'Because if we don't set it right, it never really ends.”
'All right.' She slipped the watch into the pocket of the short jacket she'd put on. Then she unpinned the watch on her dress. 'I gave this to you once before. Take it back.”
When he took it, held it, the clock that had once stood inside the Hall began to bong.
'Midnight,' he said with perfect calm. 'It'll strike twelve times.' And he looked down at the face of the enameled watch he held. 'Midnight,' he repeated, showing it to her. 'Look at yours.”
Her fingers weren't so steady when she pulled it out. 'Jesus,' she breathed when she saw both hands straight up. 'Why?”
'We're going to find out. I have to go inside.' He looked up, toward the third floor. 'I have to go up to the nursery. The baby …”
Even as he spoke, they heard the fretful cries.
'Let's just go. Declan, let's just get in the car and drive away from here.'
But he was already moving inside. 'The baby's crying. She's hungry. She needs me. Lucian's parents are sleeping. I always go upstairs early when he's not home. I hate sitting with them in the parlor after dinner. I can feel the way she dislikes me.”
His voice had changed, Lena realized as she followed him. There was a Cajun cadence to it. 'Declan.”
'Claudine will walk her, or change her, but my pretty Rosie needs her mama. I don't like having her up on the third floor,' he said as he hurried down the corridor. 'But Madame Josephine always gets her way. Not always,' he corrected, and there was a smile in his voice now. 'If she always did, I'd be alligator bait 'stead of married to Lucian. He'll be home tomorrow. I miss him so.”
As he started up the stairs, his gait slowed, and Lena heard the rapid pace of his breath. 'I have to go up.' It was his own voice now, with fear at the edges. 'I have to go in. I have to see.”
Gathering all her courage, Lena took his hand. 'We'll go in together.”
His hand shook. The cold that permeated into the air speared into the bone. Nausea rolled through his belly, rose up his throat. Clamping down against it, he shoved the door open.
He stumbled, and even as Lena tried to catch him, fell to his knees.
'He comes in. He's drunk. I don't want him coming up here, but he won't go away. Everyone says, they say how he looks just like Lucian, but they don't see his eyes. I have to make him go away, away from my baby. I wish Claudine hadn't gone off to meet Jasper. I don't like being alone up here with Julian. He scares me, but I don't want him to see it.”
His eyes were glazed, glassy smoke in a face that had gone pale as death. 'Declan, oh God, Declan, come back.' She squeezed his hand until she felt bone rub against bone.
'When he grabs at me, I get away.' His voice was breathless now. He still knelt, a rangy man with sun- streaked hair, wearing a tuxedo with the tie dangling loose. A man with a woman's memories, a woman's terror storming inside him.
'But I can't leave my baby. I get the poker from the fireplace. I'll kill him if I have to. I'll kill him if he touches me or my baby. Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
As her knees seemed to melt away, Lena sank to the floor beside him, tried to wrap her arms around him.
'He's stronger than me. I scream and I scream, but nobody comes to help me. He's drunk and he's crazy. He's crazy and he's drunk. He knocks me down, and he rips at my clothes. I can't get away. My baby's crying, but I can't get to her. I can't stop him.”
'Oh.' Shaking, Lena tried to hold him, rock him. 'No. No, no, no.”
'He rapes me.' Fire burned in the center of him. Pain, the pain, and the fear. Oh God, the fear. 'I call for help. I call for you, but you're not here.”
His voice tore with tears. 'You don't come. I need you.”
'Don't, don't, don't.' It was all she could say as she clung to him.
'He hurts me, but I fight him. I try to stop him, but he won't stop. I'm so scared, I'm so scared, but even then I know he's not doing this because he wants me. It's because he hates you.”
He turned his head, those storm-gray eyes drenched. 'He hates you. And because I'm yours, he has to break me. The way he broke your toys when you were children. I beg him to stop, but he won't. He tries to make me stop screaming, but I can't stop. I can't. His hands are around my throat.”
It doubled him over, that hideous pressure, that shocking loss of air. 'I can't breathe. I can't breathe. My baby's crying for me, and I can't breathe. He kills me. While my baby's crying in her crib. Our baby. While he's still inside me. He breaks me like a toy that belongs to his brother.”
He lifted his head, looked at her now. And when he spoke, his voice was so full of grief she wondered they both didn't die of it. 'You didn't come. I called, but you didn't come.”
'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”
'She came.' Declan got rockily to his feet. 'She came, and she saw what he had done to me. She looked down at me like I was a mess that had to be cleaned up before the neighbors came to call.”
His eyes were dry now, and narrowed at the slamming of doors on the second floor. 'Her house, her sons, and I was the bayou slut who'd trespassed. I watched her look down on me. It was like a dream, that watching. I saw her tell him to carry me out, down to the bedroom, while she cleaned up the blood, and the candle wax, and the broken crockery. He took my body out the gallery, but I watched her, watched her go over to my sweet baby, and I heard her mind wonder if it would be best just to smother the child. She considered it, and I believe if she'd tried, there was enough of me left that I could have struck her down like a lightning bolt.”
He walked back to the door. 'She thought I was weak, but she was wrong. They could kill me, but they couldn't end me.”
'Declan, that's enough.”
'No, not yet.' He walked down the steps, down the hall, opened the door to Abigail's bedroom. 'He laid me on the bed in here. And he wept. Not for me, but for himself. What would happen to him? His hand had defiled me, and killed me, but he thought only of himself. And does still. For he's in this house, he and Josephine. Walking and waiting in their little hell.”
He crossed over to the wall where the armoire had been, opened the door of it in his mind. 'They took some of my clothes. I had the gown in here for the ball. I was so proud of it. I wanted to be beautiful for you. Make you proud of me. She dropped my watch, but didn't notice. She had Julian wrap me up, and they carried me out, with the suitcase full of my things. They got old bricks to weigh me down, and they carried me away.
'It was hard. Even though there was moonlight, even though it was cool, it was a hard walk carting all of that. Julian got sick, but she brooked no nonsense. They would say I ran off with another man. They would let the gossip spread that my baby was a bastard, fawned off on you as your own. She told Julian how it would be as they put the bricks over me, as they tied the cloak around me with rope, as they pushed me into the bayou.”
He looked back at her. 'You believed them.”
