Bayou Bride Page 11

  More useless fancies. What difference did it make what Marie thought? With the language barrier between them, the housekeeper could never stand as an ally with Sherry against her employer even if she wanted to.

  Returning to the front gallery after breakfast, Sherry discovered Jules working down around the dock, mowing and clearing the high grass from beneath the lakeside pilings. He looked up as she descended the front steps, and from then on, throughout the day, she was aware of his watchful surveillance. When she walked through the tropical gardens he found it necessary to prune the hibiscus. When she continued around the back he felt the need of a cold drink from the kitchen. She was tempted from sheer exasperation to dive headlong into the wooded swamp area surrounding the house if for no other reason than to see what he would do. She resisted the urge, however. It was not Jules’ fault. He was only Lucien's instrument.

  But as she strolled on, completing the circle of the house, she caught sight of something she had not noticed before. Set back from the bayou's edge, partially screened by the trees, was a small building. Since she had nothing else to do, and curiosity was strong, she walked toward it.

  Tightly built, painted white with a gray roof, it was even tinier than she had first thought. Its double doors, almost like a doll's garage, sported a large, shiny new lock.

  Standing on tiptoe, she peered through the building's one small window. The interior was dark but she could just make out a rack on which hung boat seats, life jackets, and ski belts. An outboard motor hulked in one corner, fastened to a sturdy stand, while cane poles were fitted into a holder along the length of one wall. Bait cages and boxes filled a wheelbarrow, and near the doors stood a collection of gardening tools.

  Her face was grim as she turned to the door to inspect the shining new lock. There was no question of carelessness, however, and she rattled the bit of brass with a derisive smile before she turned away. It was an unnecessary precaution. What good was that motor to her? She doubted very much that she could lift it to carry it from the boat house to the dock, even if the boats to use it on had not been chained to a tree. Of course it was possible that she might have secreted one of the sharpened hoes about her person and attacked Marie and Jules with it, or at least threatened to decapitate them if they didn't carry her to civilization!

  No, she was not that near to going berserk. Though on second thought she was not sure that it wouldn't come to that.

  She returned to the house. To escape the feeling of being under constant observation, she sought the cool seclusion of the living room. Her gaze passed over the couch. Marie had already cleaned this morning. No dented cushions, no empty coffee cups were left as reminders of the evening before. Regardless, the events that had taken place were vivid in Sherry's mind. With a shake of her head to banish the unwelcome memories, she moved away.

  She wandered moodily around the room, touching the slub texture of the green, antique silk drapes, running her fingers along the hard, glasslike polish of the secretary. In one drawer of it she found stationery, heavy parchment embossed with a trio of initials so intricately intertwined it was nearly impossible to tell what they were, though she suspected the monogram belonged to Lucien and Paul's mother. Nothing else of interest met her questing gaze, only rubber bands, paper clips, and pens that would no longer write. Foiled again, she mused. She could not even send a note in a bottle bobbing along the bayou.

  She knew she was prying, but she didn't care. Lucien did not deserve to have his privacy left inviolate. Besides, she told herself, self-preservation, not curiosity, dictated her actions. Anything she could learn about him might be of use as protection.

  The bibelot cabinet was an intriguing piece of furniture and she stood for some time, with her fingers touching the glass looking at the many beautiful objects it contained. There were three deep drawers in the bottom of the cabinet. Sliding the top one open, she discovered a number of extra antiques that could be brought out to vary the items on display. To assert herself and to mark her presence, she chose a piece of scrimshaw on a block of ebony, a walrus tusk carefully etched with a clipper ship under a cloud of bellied sails. She set it in place on one of the lighted shelves, removing an uninspired coral Buddha and banishing it to the drawer. The substitution might have been childish, still it was oddly satisfying.

  On the wall near the cabinet hung a trio of miniatures, a man, a woman, and a sailing ship done in time-faded pastels. The man, though dressed in the style of more than a hundred and fifty years ago, had the unmistakable look of a Villeré. Was this the ancestor who had founded the family fortunes with his skill on the high seas? If so, the woman must be the girl he had captured and made his wife. In the way of most old portraits, it was difficult to tell much about her, though her hair appeared to have been golden brown, and it seemed there was strength and a touch of humor in the gentle curves of her mouth.

  What had she thought, what had she felt when she was carried away by her corsair? At least there could have been little doubt of his purpose. Frowning, Sherry turned away.

  Here was the door to Lucien's bedroom. She paused, catching her lip between her teeth before she opened the panel and stepped inside.

  The bed had been freshly made, its covers stretched taut without a wrinkle—much less the impression of his body upon it.

  On the wall beside the bed was a book cabinet with the television and the stereo he had mentioned. An assortment of records stood on the edge beside the stereo, classical, mood music, a few male and female vocalists. The books were evenly divided between leisure reading, the adventures and mysteries suitable to a weekend retreat, and business publications having to do with his varied interest. She chose a couple of the mysteries and, tucking them into the crook of her arm, turned toward the door. With one hand on the knob, she swung back. There was nothing in the neat emptiness of the room to indicate what kind of man Lucien was. It revealed little of his personality, and less of the mental processes which might have led him to kidnap a woman, take her away into the bayou country, and leave her there.

  She sat reading through the day, stopping only for lunch. The book was a refuge, a tranquilizer for her strained nerves, a palliative for her thoughts. It was such a successful one she hardly noticed the afternoon shower that blew up in a matter of minutes, and was just as quickly gone. The hours passed with a slow pace at first, but then as the sun started to sink down the sky they took wing. Her fears began to revive. Taking her novel, she moved out onto the gallery. Now and then she would glance up, listening, staring down the narrow waterway before the house. Would Lucien return, or would she be left alone in the house as night fell? She had never been afraid of the dark before, but this was different, this isolated old house surrounded by the inhospitable wetlands. She was not certain which she dreaded more, Lucien's return, or his failure to come.

  The sun burned a red-hot path across the water of the lake in a last flare of heat before it sank down behind the dark silhouetted forms of the trees. From below the horizon it sent flares of orange and pink spreading across the sky. The dying light streaked a low-lying cloud bank of blue-gray with a tracery of gold before turning the water before her to liquid opaline.

  By that time, Sherry had finished her second book and thrown it aside to watch the last hurrah of the setting sun.

  The sound of the boat was a distant hum at first. It grew louder, impinging upon her consciousness, destroying the aura of contentment that the beauty and silence had drawn around her.

  Her nerves tightened like coiled springs, her fingers clenched on the arms of her chair, and she stared at the point beyond the trees where the boat would first come into view. Then it was there, its sound tearing across the tranquility, its movements shattering the surface of the water, breaking it into a thousand ripples.

  The moment she was sure it was Lucien's boat she slipped from her chair and moved quietly, covered by the gathering dusk under the overhanging roof, into the salon. Inside, she moved to the window and pushed aside the drapes
to watch as he brought the boat smoothly into the dock, Jules appeared as if conjured out of the dimness to fasten the mooring lines, then Lucien leaped ashore. He stayed to speak a few words with Jules, his eyes scanning the house, before he moved with purposeful steps up the incline.

  Sherry dropped the fold of the curtain and stood back, her hands clutching her arms.

  And then, in that last few seconds before he reached the house, she took stock of her action. Was she that afraid of him? It was very well to tell herself that she did not wish to appear eager to greet him, but her retreat had all the marks of cowardice. What had she gained? If he wanted to find her, this was the first place he would look. It would be far worse for him to find her cowering in the darkness than to have him think her anxious to see him.

  With disdain for her lack of composure, she squared her shoulders and moved toward the door, passing through it as Lucien reached the top of the steps.

  He stopped as he saw her. The expression on his face was lost in the dimness, but she could see his arrogant stance, his air of a freebooter surveying his prize. She stiffened.

  "So you came back,” she said in her coldest voice.

  "Did you think I would not? If you really expected me to go away and forget about you, you must have a poor idea of your powers to fascinate."

  "Are you fascinated?” She had thought to sound contemptuous, but even to her own ears the query had a ring of curiosity.

  "As a lion-tamer entering a cage. I never know what trick you will try next."

  "And you are sure you are a match for them all?” His jibe lent her voice a sharper edge.

  "I have been, so far. But come,” he said moving toward her. “You haven't said hello."

  As he crossed the short space between them, she saw a watchful light in his eyes coupled with a look of intent appraisal, almost as though he were seeing her for the first time. Then he caught her shoulders.

  At the last moment she turned her head away, avoiding his lips. Her face like stone, she stared over his shoulder.

  "My dear Sherry,” he said, his voice low, and yet carrying an undercurrent of steel. “Listen carefully to what I have to say. What I will tolerate in the morning, while you are flushed and rosy with sleep, is a very different thing from what I will take after a hard day. Don't turn from me with that look of long suffering or I refuse to be responsible for the consequences!” And while she stared at him with a feeling of suffocation closing her throat, he tipped her chin and kissed her slowly, with a lingering enjoyment, though whether it was of the taste of her lips, or of the lesson she could not tell.

  He released her as a soft step came near them on the gallery. Drawing Sherry into the curve of his arm, he turned to greet Marie as she came toward them with a tray of drinks.

  He talked to the housekeeper in comfortable amiability as he accepted a tall, frosty glass. With a wave of his hand, he indicated that he wished Sherry to join him, relaxing in the chairs on the gallery. She did so with an odd sense of pain around her heart. As the liquid syllables flowed about her, she took her glass and stared out at the twilight, listening instead to the cicadas in the trees and the croak of the bullfrogs down by the lake.

  Noticing her withdrawal, Lucien turned to her after a moment. “Marie says she is surprised and delighted that I returned so quickly. I'm sure those are your sentiments also."

  It was a moment before she spoke and then she would not look at him. “Considering that it took us half the night to get here when we came, and that you have done it twice in one day and, I suppose, taken care of your business as well, I think I can agree that I am surprised."

  "You think I took the long way before?"

  "It crossed my mind."

  "You wrong me. It is a slower trip by night along the bayou when you cannot see farther than your light will reach. Then, today I had no passenger, and didn't have to dawdle along so she could get her beauty sleep."

  He was laughing at her again, satisfied that he had proven his point a few minutes earlier.

  He thanked Marie with a nod of dismissal. As the woman turned to go, he made a quick request that even Sherry recognized from the tone as an order to hurry dinner.

  When the woman had gone Sherry turned her face away, making no effort to ease the silence. She felt sullen. She realized that she was sulking, but he brought out the worst in her. Moreover, sulking was one of the few ways she had of retaliating. He could force his attentions upon her but he could not force her to respond or to show enthusiasm for his company.

  He did not appear to notice her attitude. He lounged, totally relaxed, in his chair, staring out through the trees with unseeing eyes, a faraway look on his face. Not a word passed between them as the darkness slowly thickened.

  "The mosquitoes are gathering for dinner,” he told her, straightening at last. “And I for one am just as hungry as they are. I had breakfast here, I know, but I don't remember having lunch at all."

  A cool shower was refreshing. After dusting with a scented bath powder and slipping into her underclothes, Sherry stood before the armoire, considering what to wear. The idea of dressing formally again was abhorrent. It crossed her mind to make herself as inconspicuous and unattractive as possible and yet, like her retreat into the salon this evening, that course seemed cowardly.

  She chose at last a sundress in a soft apricot and white cotton. It was casual and feminine at the same time, modern and yet old-fashioned. Her hair she left free, brushing it back away from her face to hang in loose waves down her back. She used makeup carefully, touching an apricot gel to her cheeks as well as her lips. Hesitating over her jewelry case, she decided at last on a pair of gypsy bangle bracelets, her gold chain, and wide hoop earrings of burnished gold. If to call attention to herself was courageous, she told herself with a wry smile, then this was courage with a vengeance. Shaking her hair back with a defiant gesture, she left the room, making her way to the dining room.

  A grape had fallen from the centerpiece of heaped fruit on the table and she leaned over the chairs to remove it from the white perfection of the cloth. She heard a step behind her and then a strong arm came around her waist and she found herself pinned against Lucien's hard, muscular frame.

  "You look like a peach, cool, delicious, and good enough to eat,” he murmured. And, carefully brushing her hair aside, he kissed the nape of her neck, then nipped the tender skin between his teeth. A cry of surprise broke from her lips and she twisted around. He released her, but only so he could drop a swift kiss on her parted lips as she swung to face him.

  His eyes were alive with laughter. He too seemed refreshed. He wore a yellow sports shirt open at the neck with trim brown slacks, and his hair was sleeked to his head, still wet from his shower. She realized how very handsome he was, especially in this mood, and she found her own mouth curving into a smile as she met his bright gaze.

  An instant later she drew away from him, aware suddenly of how near she was to forgetting her antagonism. Could her defenses be breached by a playful joke and a grin? She did not like to think so.

  9

  The dinner Marie served to them was good, but it lacked the flair of that prepared the evening before. In a way Sherry was grateful for the plainer fare, the jambalaya rich with sausage, oysters, shrimp, tomatoes, and herbs; the home-baked loaves of French bread, the garden fresh vegetables, and the plain dessert of fruit and cheese. It made the occasion less important, and therefore easier.

  Lucien was in a mellow mood. Sitting at the head of the table with her on his right, he played the relaxed host, encouraging her to talk about her job. He listened keenly as she spoke of the operations of the St. Louis office. His interest extended to her afterwork hours also, and she found herself telling him of some of the excursions she and Paul had made, of picnics in the country and water-skiing on the Mississippi, of dinners and plays they had enjoyed. It appeared he was making an effort to get to know her, to understand her relationship with his brother. At the same time, there was a personal e
lement in his interrogation which Sherry found disturbing.

  Replete with good food, they pushed back their plates. He leaned to offer her the cheese board, and she shook her head.

  "I couldn't. If I stay here much longer with nothing to do but eat, I'll be as round as a barrel."

  "Perish the thought,” he said, “though it looks to me as if you have a long way to go.” Smiling, he reached out to lift her arm by hooking a finger through her wide bangle bracelet. “You see, too large."

  Suddenly he went still as he saw the bruises that marred the soft flesh under her wrist. With a gentle finger he traced their extent. Though he caused her no pain, she flinched, afraid that he might.

  "Chérie," he said, his voice serious, without humor or sarcasm. “Believe me when I say I am sorry for these. I did not mean to hurt you. If I had known—but I did not. Though I have never brought a woman here before, there have been a few who have made it plain they would not object to spending time here in luxury with me. I thought once you were here, once you saw there would be no chance for you with my brother, you would settle down and enjoy your stay. I misjudged you; this I freely admit. It does not change the basic problem, however. You are here, and I still believe it is for the best. That being the case, would it be so difficult for you to consider yourself my guest for the next few days?"

  "Yes!” She had to interrupt that beguiling voice. “It is impossible. I refuse to be coaxed into doing what you want. What's the difference in being your guest or your prisoner, if I'm not free to leave? Because you made a mistake, am I supposed to forgive you and become a willing hostage?"

  An arrested look appeared in his eyes, as though he found her answer disturbing. She thought he was going to make another appeal, but the impulse faded. Still, she could have sworn he hesitated, uncertain how to proceed, before a hard mask of determination closed over his face.