Day Dreamer (24 page)

The old man paused where huge wild mango trees stood grouped together. While he shouted orders and curses, the young man dragged Celine over to one of the trees and forced her up against the rough bark. She didn’t dare let herself think of the insects nesting in the decaying wood and fruit at her feet.

Celine struggled futilely against the slave’s strong hold. She tried to kick, to scratch, to bite, but could not gain purchase. His muscles were well-defined from long hours spent working the cane fields. He easily maneuvered to hold her and dodge her attempted blows.

Gunnie forced Celine’s arms wide and slipped the knotted rope over one of her wrists. She walked behind the tree, grabbed Celine’s other wrist and looped the rope over it, strapping her to the tree trunk. Pain seared Celine’s wrists and echoed through her shoulders. The rope cut into her whenever she tried to wrench her hands and arms free.

The obeah man walked around the tree, chanting. Celine felt him tug on the rope to make certain it was tight. She tried to kick him when he passed in front of her. The young man cursed her. Celine caught Gunnie’s eye as the girl hovered nearby, and tried to plead for help.

“Gunnie. Don’t do this. I’ll see that nothing happens to you if you let me go. Please. Tell them it isn’t too late. Tell them Cordero will deal harshly with them if anything happens to me. Please, Gunnie!”

Gunnie turned her back and walked away. The obeah man smiled.

Celine faced him defiantly. Rain streamed down her face, into her eyes, matting her lashes.

“You haven’t won yet,” she yelled. “I haven’t escaped the hangman’s noose to die here in the mud at your hands.”

She spat at him and had the small satisfaction of seeing him nearly fall in the mud as he lunged back.

Gunnie and the youth had disappeared, swallowed up by the forest. Helpless to free herself, Celine watched the old man hurry after them, their footsteps nearly obliterated by the pounding rain. Even the monkeys had taken shelter.

She was alone, at the mercy of the elements and the creatures of the night.

Cord straightened and pushed away from the table that he had commandeered as a desk in a small storeroom at the back of the distillery. He reached up to rub the back of his neck and stretch his aching shoulders. Near his elbow sat a tray of untouched food, long forgotten until now that his empty stomach had grumbled in protest.

He reached for a cold chicken leg and absently began gnawing on it while he looked over his father’s old accounts. Incredibly, nothing had been recorded since Auguste’s last year here. Cord caught himself staring at his father’s neat signature at the bottom of a column of figures. How different things would have been had his mother not died. He wondered what it would have been like to have been raised here.

He put down the chicken bone and rubbed his eyes. It did no good to try to imagine what might have been, a practice he had never ascribed to and wasn’t about to start now. It was bad enough he had married a woman with not only her own memories, but everyone else’s literally at her fingertips.

Cord glanced out a small window above the table. Thoughts of his tempting wife had interfered with his work all afternoon, so much so that he’d had to fight the urge to return to the house, to Celine.

The rain had begun over two hours ago. When the clouds had finally broken, spilling a deluge typical of autumn, the tension in the atmosphere had seemed to be dispelled. He wished the rain could wash away his own anxiety.

“Damn witch.”

He shook his head. Celine had crept into his thoughts countless times already today, and just as many times he had tried to put the thoughts aside, without success. Pushing back from the table, he stood and walked to the open doorway.

A small governess’ cart that must have been stored somewhere since his childhood came barreling into the mill yard, drawn by a swaybacked dapple gray nag. Foster was futilely trying to control the animal. On small bench seats facing one another, Edward and Ada clung to each other, trying without luck to stay sheltered beneath a scrap of an umbrella now decorated with only a few remnants of torn lace about the edge. It provided scant protection from the rain, and Ada and Edward were as soaked as Foster.

“What brings you all out on such a fine afternoon?” Cord called without leaving the shelter of the mill.

Foster pulled back on the reins, hollering, “Whoa there! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” His voice held no conviction, and the stubborn nag knew it.

Cord hurried across the muddy yard and grabbed the old mare’s bridle. He stood there while the three occupants of the cart all tried to talk at once.

“At first we weren’t concerned—” Ada began.

“But then it began to pour and I went lookin’,” Foster took over. “I couldn’t find ’er anywhere.”

“I insisted that ’fore any more time was lost we come ’ere straightaway and find you because somethin’ terrible might ’ave ’appened and probably did.” Edward was moaning by the time he stopped talking.

Cord stepped up to the side of the vehicle. He held out his hand to Ada. “Come in out of the rain.”

“We can’t. Cordero, you must come with us right now. We can’t lose another moment,” she said, her jowls quivering as fast as her lips.

With a feeling that bordered on dread, he read the panic and distress that their soaked clothing and plastered hair and the blinding rain had kept him from seeing until now. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

“What’s going on?” He was already nearly soaked through himself.

Ada reached out for his hand and clung to it. Her urgency and desperation quickly communicated itself to him.

“It’s Celine—” Ada said before she promptly burst into heart-wrenching sobs.

“She’s missing,” Foster told him.

Edward shook his head woefully. “Been hours since we seen ’er in the garden and now we can’t find her anywhere. Miss Celine’s gone missing.”

Seventeen

“W
hat in the hell do you mean she’s
missing
?”

Cord’s thoughts raced back to the night before, to Celine and Collin Ray and the scene he had witnessed. Ray had taken Celine’s refusal badly. Had the man been desperate enough to return and take her against her will?

Or had Celine played him false? She’d had enough time to mull over Ray’s proposal and to stew about the revelation of his visit to the whorehouse in Baytowne. Perhaps, Cord reasoned, she had decided to take Ray up on his offer and had found someone willing to take her to town.

“We ain’t seen her since she went out to oversee work on the garden,” Foster shouted over the pouring rain.

“I went to look for her myself,” Ada cried as she clung to the umbrella handle, “but she was nowhere near the house. I can’t find Gunnie either.”

“When
exactly
did any of you see Celine last?” Cord demanded.

“After breakfast,” Edward said.

“Just before dinner when I went to see if she was coming in from the garden to join Miss Ada,” Foster recalled. “She said there was a bit more she wanted to do and then she’d be in. When she didn’t come in, I thought she got carried away with ’er work, so I set aside a covered plate.”

Ada erupted again. “But she never came in, you see, even after it started to rain. Oh, my poor, poor Celine!”

There was no controlling Ada; Cord didn’t even try. Realizing that the four of them were standing in the downpour like idiots, he came to a decision.

“All of you go back to the house. She may have returned by now. If you wait much longer, the road will be impassable. I’ll get Bobo and the dogs and go back to the garden and start from there.”

Cord did not wait to see them off. He ran back to the distillery, where Bobo was supervising a crew in coating rum barrels with wax to keep the rum white while it aged. When he approached the overseer, Bobo gave Cord his full attention.

“My wife is missing.” It was all Cord had to say.

Bobo dropped the bellows he was using to stoke the fire below the wax pot and nodded. He pointed to two of the men.

“Good trackers,” he explained. “Goat hunters.”

“Get the hounds, too.” Cord had already started out of the mill. The men dropped what they were doing and hurried after him.

* * *

It was nearly dark. The fetid sweet smell of rotted mangoes and guava was cloying without the cover of rain. Celine, soaked to the skin, shivered uncontrollably as the evening breeze eddied through the snarled branches above her.

Without the rain, mosquitoes swarmed her exposed skin, mercilessly stinging, retreating, then stinging again. Her bound hands allowed her no way to protect herself. At sunset, a chorus of bullfrogs had begun, and their scolding had soon reached a maddening din. She wanted to scream, but feared that once she started, she would not stop.

Battling to retain her sanity, Celine worked against the bonds that held her imprisoned. She felt the warm dampness of her blood on her hands. Convinced no one would ever find her this deep in the swamp, she struggled, trying to get loose and make her way out. She made a vow to not stop fighting until she had lost every drop of blood.

Had anyone at the house even missed her yet? She had not returned to the house for the midday meal. Surely Foster or Edward would have noticed if Ada had not.

And what of Cord? How long would it be before he realized she was missing? Would he care?

She closed her eyes against the darkness that crept through the swamp like a fog, threatening to steal any hope of rescue. She lifted her face to the dark heavens, opened her eyes and strained to catch sight of even one star through the jungle boughs. Desperately, she searched for one point of light, something to hold onto, some hope. She found none.

So this was her punishment for killing Jean Perot, she suddenly thought.

She had escaped the hangman’s noose, and now God had taken his own revenge. Celine shook her head, fighting off the twisted logic. She had killed in self-defense, not out of anger or evil. Would God still choose to punish her?

Perhaps she should not have tempted fate, should have stayed in New Orleans, turned herself in to the police—

But then she would never have met Cordero. Never have married him or come to St. Stephen. Never have made love with him …

Would she take it all back now, even if she could?

The image of Cordero’s eyes came to her, those wounded eyes that had so often sought hers and then shied away, unwilling to reveal any emotion. She wanted to give him back his laughter, make him believe in living, in love. By offering him love, she had hoped to heal his wounded heart. But she had not even begun to come close.

She cried out at the injustice of it.

Chills shook her. Cord’s bloody jacket was lying somewhere in the mud at her feet. Was he already dead? Had the obeah man brought down his revenge on all of them?

She itched all over. Countless mosquitoes plagued her. She was going mad from stings that she could not scratch. Then, just when she thought things could not get worse, she suddenly felt the horrifying tickle of a hundred spidery legs on her thigh.

In a flash of memory, she saw the glass coasters filled with water beneath the furniture legs.

“
A necessary precaution, dear. The centipedes are quite poisonous
.”

She began flailing and kicking, but the creature continued to climb her thigh.

She jerked again. A piercing, excruciating pain near her groin forced Celine to double over. When she lunged forward and strained at the rope, the movement tightened the bonds on her wrists. Intense pain radiated up each arm, but it was nothing compared to the burning injection of venomous poison the centipede released.

A scream tore its way out of her throat. Just as she had feared, she did not stop screaming until everything went black.

Trailing mud, Cord paced the stone floor of the kitchen, pounding back and forth, giving vent to anger stoked by fear and frustration. For three hours, he and Bobo, the trackers and a pack of worthless hounds had scoured the fields and forest near the house. The rain had wiped out any sign of a trail.

Thoroughly frustrated, Cord had given up the search long enough to talk to the others, sending Bobo to question the slaves at the same time.

Ada was near collapse but holding up far better than Cord had expected. Ever calm, Foster had advised both Ada and Edward to take seats at the worktable in the center of the kitchen. Lying forgotten on the table’s wooden surface were the makings of supper—cold ham, salt fish, a basket of fruit, some sliced pineapple.

Howard Wells, a silent but concerned observer of the proceedings, reached out for a pineapple slice and began to nibble on it.

“Try to get ahold of yourself, Edward Lang,” Foster snapped.

Edward had buried his face in the crook of his arm on the table. His shoulders heaved with sobs.

“She’s lost to us now. There’s no telling what ’appened to ’er. Whoever carried ’er away probably done ’er in by now. Poor little miss. It ain’t fair. Just when she an’ Cordero were startin’ to make sompin’ of—”

Suddenly he stopped and raised his head to see if Cord had been listening. He earned a dark glance to add to his misery.

“This ain’t the time to give out with that kind o’ talk,” Foster warned. “No need upsettin’ everybody more than necessary.”

“But this is
so
upsetting. What happened to her?” Ada wailed.

“Maybe that high-and-mighty gent wot was ’ere last night decided not to take no for an answer,” Edward suddenly hiccuped a heartfelt but dramatic sob.

“What’s he saying? What does he mean?” Ada asked, drying her tears with the hem of her gray gown.

Foster comforted the woman with a pat on the back, then shot a warning glance at Edward, silencing him.

“Celine has a good head on her shoulders,” Wells interjected. “I’m sure wherever she is, if indeed she is a captive of that unscrupulous Collin Ray, she is plotting an escape.”

“Shut up. All of you. Please just shut up.” They were driving Cord mad. He couldn’t think—not that he dared let his thoughts flow in the sorry direction theirs had taken.

His attention was drawn to the sound of voices outside the open door.

Forced to stoop to enter the kitchen door, Bobo shoved a lanky young male in ahead of him. With one meaty hand around the back of the boy’s neck, he thrust the youth at Cord. The quaking boy kept his gaze focused on the stone floor at his feet.

Bobo did not let go of the youth. “Obeah man took de mistress. He went missin’ a few hours now. Nobody talkin’ ’bout him, but dey say dis one be wid obeah man ’fore he go.”

Cord walked over to the boy and stood so close that the tip of his heavy riding boots was a fraction of an inch from the slave’s muddy, bare toes.

“What’s your name?” Cord demanded.

“Philip.” The boy’s thin shoulders turned in on themselves.

“Tell us what you know, Philip, and I want the truth. I’ll know if you are lying.”

The young slave remained mute.

“I said talk.” Cord stifled the urge to beat the truth out of him.

“I kin make him talk,” Bobo promised.

The boy started trembling more violently. He glanced up at Cord, then over at the hulking giant beside him. He chose the coward’s way out. “Obeah man took de woman to the swamp. Say she bad magic. Gotta stop. Me an’ Gunnie go wid him. Gunnie, she run off to the hills wid obeah man. Dey lef’ me here and not comin’ back, I tink—”

Cord reached for the half-naked boy. His hands tightened on the slave’s sweaty skin. Already trembling, his eyes wide with fear, the youth whimpered.

“Don’ kill me,” he begged, writhing beneath Cord’s hands.

“Believe me, I’m tempted, but I need you to lead me to my wife. Do that and we’ll see about letting you live.”

“Too dark.” The boy’s fear of the swamp at night was greater than any fear he had of Cord. He tried to squirm out of his hold.

Bobo swatted the boy on the head.

“Take him and don’t let him out of your sight. Get the trackers and the dogs. We’re not coming back without her,” Cord told Bobo.

He wanted hot coffee and a change of clothes, but opted for only coffee. Foster, who knew Cord’s wishes before he could voice them, handed him a steaming cup. Grateful, Cord nodded and deeply inhaled the rich aromatic brew. It was laced with brandy.

“Thank you, Foster,” he said softly. “You’ve always been too good to me.”

Taken aback by Cord’s unexpected words of appreciation, Foster cleared his throat and looked away.

“Aunt Ada, see that Celine’s room is ready and that there is plenty of hot water. I’m sure she’ll want nothing more than to bathe and get into clean sheets,” Cord told her, refusing to imagine any other outcome but Celine’s safe return.

Ada nodded, pulled herself together and with newfound purpose bustled out of the room. Howard Wells started after her, then paused in the doorway.

“I’ll select some reading material for her,” he volunteered.

“I’ll go see about some lavender to sprinkle on the linens,” Edward sniffed. His eyes were red-rimmed, his complexion blotched. He walked out of the room, shoulders sagging, steps measured.

Only Foster remained. He watched Cord swallow the last of the coffee.

“You’ll find her, sir, and bring ’er ’ome safe.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“The two of you were meant to be together, else Miss Celine would never have come to you. Sometimes no matter how we try to fight it, fate wills things another way.”

“Things could go another way tonight,” Cord said, fighting to shrug off the heaviness around his heart, wishing he could call back every harsh thing he had ever said to Celine, hoping it wasn’t too late. Wishing they could start over.

“You’ll find her, sir,” Foster said again.

Cord could not let himself consider the alternative.

He choked down fear with every step. Holding his pitch torch aloft, hacking at the jungle with a lethally sharp cane knife, Cord followed Bobo, Philip and the dogs. The trackers had refused to go any farther once the search had led them into the maze of swampland.

At the first mention of the swamp, alarm had jolted Cord. As a child he had been lost once in a swamp, and even though the experience had lasted for no more than two hours, and it had been daylight, it was an ordeal he would not wish on anyone. He hoped Celine’s usual pluck held firm and that she believed he would find her.

Then he realized how absurd that hope was. When had he ever given her a reason to believe in him?

He had so carefully cultivated his isolation, spent so much time rigorously guarding his heart, convincing everyone, including Celine, that he cared about nothing and no one, it wouldn’t have surprised him if she held out no hope at all of anyone ever finding her.

As he raised the pitch torch higher, he began to shake. This was no time for his knees to buckle, he told himself as he crashed through the dense undergrowth.

The air was close and dank with the smell of rotted fruit and all manner of decay. In the inky darkness, the insects were unrelenting. Cord tried to speculate on how much protection Celine’s clothing might afford her. He had not even seen her since he had so coldly bid her good night the evening before, so he had no notion of what she might have on.

There was a shout from Bobo, and a moment later the hounds sent up earsplitting howls. In his haste, Cord nearly tripped and fell headlong into the muck. They had paused in an almost undetectable clearing in the swamp. Illuminated by the glow of torchlight, bound to the trunk of a wild mango tree with her arms extended, Celine slumped forward. Her head hung down nearly to her waist. The ends of her long hair trailed in watery mud so deep her feet and shoes were buried.

Bobo was hesitant to approach her. Cord handed his torch to the man and waded over to Celine. His hands shook as he reached for her, searching for some sign of life.

His fingers connected with her skin. She was as cold as death, clammy. He pressed his fingertips gently against her throat and found a weak, thready pulse. A surge of relief almost brought him to his knees.