Masquerade (28 page)

He paused a moment to let his eyes adjust to the deeply shadowed interior, then looked around. It was a bedroom, the set of silver brushes and combs on the rosewood vanity table telling him it was a woman's bedroom. He heard the happy coo of laughter again, coming from a corner of the room. He spotted the tall crib, draped in lacy mosquito netting. There was movement behind it, a waving of arms.

The last few steps to the crib seemed long. Almost hesitantly, Brodie lifted the netting to look at the baby inside, conscious of the quick beating of his heart and the tightness in his throat.

A baby, sitting up by himself, looked back at him with wide, startled eyes. His hair was dark and thick, with a telltale glint of red showing in it. He scowled at Brodie as if expressing his annoyance at being surprised, then grabbed at the silk hem of a blanket and flailed the air with it.

Brodie hooked the netting over the bar, freeing his hands so he could trail a finger over that smooth cheek. "It's a fine-looking lad you are, Jean-Luc." As he drew his hand away, the little boy grabbed for it, squealing with delight when he caught hold of it. As the child tried to pull himself upright, Brodie could feel the straining of his small muscles, and he smiled. "You're a bit young to be standing, aren't you?"

But he reached under the boy's arms and set him on his bootied feet. Then, having gone that far, he picked him up—a little awkwardly, his hand momentarily tangling with the long linen gown the baby wore before he managed to smooth it over his long, chubby legs.

"Somebody should tell your mother you look like a girl in this thing," Brodie murmured, receiving another scowl in reply. "As hefty as you are, there's no doubt you're a boy."

The scowl faded into a look of fascination as Jean-Luc stared at Brodie's mouth and chin, his hand coming up to investigate, little fingers curling onto his lower lip. Brodie caught at his hand and freed his lip from the boy's fingers, then chucked him under the chin with his own little fist. Jean-Luc gurgled a laugh, breaking into a wide smile. Brodie wanted to laugh too, but the pleasure he felt was too deep, too intense; it choked him instead. Just for an instant, he hugged the boy to him and pressed his lips against his temple, breathing in the baby-cleanness of him.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he had the sensation of being watched. He looked over his shoulder at the door to the hall. Adrienne stood inside it, dressed in black, just as she'd been the last time he'd seen her, at the cemetery. The color suited her, bringing out the darkness of her hair and eyes and the luminous whiteness of her skin.

For a long moment, words wouldn't come to him. He had the feeling she'd been standing there for some time. He turned slightly, and her gaze went from him to the baby in his arms, then back to his face.

"I wanted to see my son."

She said not a word, her expression remaining serenely composed, yet there was a shiny brightness to her eyes, the shiny brightness of tears— happy tears, proud tears. Her look eliminated any vestige of doubt that the child was his.

A jagged bolt of lightning flashed from the dark clouds, lighting up the late-afternoon sky. It was followed immediately by an explosive crash of thunder that shook the glass panes in the French doors. Jean-Luc whimpered, his lower lip jutting out in an uncertain quiver. With the second clap of thunder his whimper became a full-blown wail, and he stiffened in Brodie's arms and turned, stretching out needing hands to his mother. When Adrienne came over, Brodie reluctantly surrendered him to her, watching those small arms cling to her and listening to the shusshing croon of her voice.

The wind and the rain came next, driving across the gallery and sweeping through the open doors. Brodie knew he should leave, but he continued to stand there, gazing at the two of them, a thousand
if-only's
going through his mind, his heart twisting with each of them.

"Adrienne?" Footsteps and the rustle of layers of silk swishing together came from the hall. "Is that Jean-Luc crying? What is wrong?"

Adrienne took a step toward the hall door, calling, "The storm has frightened him, Tante ZeeZee." She looked back at Brodie, her eyes begging him to go.

He hesitated, then reached out and stroked Jean-Luc's silken hair and let his fingers run lightly over her hand as it cupped the back of the boy's head, feeling the softness, the warmth, of her skin. Suddenly he didn't trust himself to stay. He turned abruptly and went out the way he'd come.

When he left the shelter of the
porte cochère,
closing the gate behind him, he paused, oblivious to the sheeting rain. He remembered the sensation of holding the baby in his arms, the little fingers pulling at his lip, the softness of him, the strength of him. A son. He had a son. He walked down the street smiling, tears mingling with the rain that streamed down his face.

 

 

 

 

19

 

 

The carriage rolled across Canal Street and entered the brash and raw American section of the city. Emil Jardin sat stiffly erect on the tufted leather rear seat, his gaze fixed on some distant point, not designing to glance around him. Usually his eyes had a flat, dead look to them, coming alive only when Brodie Donovan was mentioned. They were alive now.

His gloved hands adjusted their grip on his silver-handled cane. "This attorney, this—" He lifted a hand to gesture, searching for a name.

"Horace Tate," Emil Jardin's ever-precise, ever-fastidious secretary, Simon Varnier, supplied the name.

"Oui,
Tate." His hand returned to its resting place atop the cane, which he carried more out of habit than out of necessity. In his youth Emil Jardin had carried a
colchemarde
—a sword cane. Everyone had, back then. Although he was too old and too slow for such a weapon now, he liked the reassuring feel of a cane in his hand. It was his gavel, tapping the floor for attention; his pointer, directing that attention where he wanted it to be; his rod, administering sharp raps of reprimand; and his scepter. He took strength from it. "This Tate, he told you nothing about this information he claims to have on Donovan?"

"He said he had information on the Crescent Line, not Donovan," Simon corrected, with his customary insistence on exactness. "Information he was certain would be of enormous interest to you. He refused to tell me what it was. In fact, he was most adamant that he would speak to no one but you."

"What of this warning he issued?"

"Warning
is my word. M'sieu Tate
strongly advised
that you make no further move against the Crescent Line until you had spoken with him. He indicated that you may wish to take a different course of action once his information is in your hands."

"What could this mean, I wonder?" Emil Jardin murmured, his gray eyebrows drawing together to form a thick, solid line.

Simon Varnier took him literally and responded with his own speculation. "We know Donovan has been trying to sell three of his ships. Perhaps he has found a buyer for them. Or perhaps he has obtained financing from some unknown source. If he has, then it would not be wise to demand payment at this time for the notes you hold."

"What do you know of this Tate?"

"Very little. He landed in New Orleans on the first of March, barely a month ago. He says he is from St. Louis, but he arrived not by riverboat, but on one of Donovan's ships that had stopped in Boston. I suspect that is how he came to know about Donovan's situation."

"But how did he discover my interest in him?"

"He refused to disclose his source."

"He will disclose it to me before this goes further." He didn't like the idea that someone new to the city had learned so quickly that he was the force behind the move to crush Brodie Donovan —to crush him slowly, to make him suffer, to make him feel the pain, the grief, the humiliation and shame that he, Emil, knew. The man had destroyed lives—his, Dominique's, and Adrienne's. It was only right that he be destroyed, and only fair that a Jardin be the instrument of his destruction.

As the carriage slowed, Emil Jardin lifted his head and took note of his surroundings, looking down the prominent length of his patrician nose at the string of hastily constructed clapboard buildings. On only two other occasions in his life had he found sufficiently strong reason to venture into the
Yanqui
section. Both times he'd sworn that nothing would induce him to repeat the experience of being in the midst of those jostling, crude, loud-talking
Americains,
always hurrying, always demanding, always greedy.

"If this attorney was so anxious to share his information, why could he not have come to the Vieux Carré?" Emil grumbled when the carriage rolled to a stop in front of one of the clapboard buildings splashed with whitewash. "Why was it necessary for us to come to
this
place to meet with him?"

"I explained that," Simon Varnier said patiently. "Horace Tate is a cripple. A childhood injury left him without the use of his right leg. He has great difficulty getting in and out of a carriage, and he could not have walked the distance from his office to yours."

"I cannot think what information this man could have to give us that would be of any value." But he had to find out, and he stepped down from the carriage.

Horace Tate's office was as spare and inelegant as the building's exterior. A collection of worn law books occupied crude shelves of bare, rough wood, and more sat in a trunk waiting to be unpacked. There were scratches and gouges in the oak panels of the large kneehole desk that dominated the room. Emil Jardin walked straight to it, looking neither to the left nor to the right, his gaze fastened on the man behind it—though he seemed hardly a man, with his dusting of freckles and thatch of hay-colored hair. His quick smile had the eagerness and innocence of a boy's. He reminded Emil of a young man who had barely reached his majority, coming to the city fresh from the river bottoms, whose view of the world had been obscured by the back end of a mule pulling a plow—an impression reinforced by the ill-fitting suit and poorly tied cravat he wore.

"Mr. Varnier, it's good to see you again," he greeted them, speaking in English with a thick country drawl. "And you must be Mr. Jardin. Forgive me if I don't get up, but this leg of mine makes it mighty awkward." Emil observed the limp and crooked sprawl of the attorney's right leg under the desk, and the pair of sturdy canes propped against the plaster wall behind his chair. "Have a seat." Horace Tate waved a hand in the direction of the three chairs crowded in a semicircle in front of his desk.

Emil ignored the chairs and the invitation, choosing to stand, certain, now that he'd seen Horace Tate, that their meeting would be an extremely brief one. "Let us not waste time, M'sieu Tate."

"I agree." The voice came from somewhere behind him to his left. Emil turned and stiffened in shock.

Brodie calmly met his thunderstruck look and raked his thumb-nail over the lucifer, then held the flame to the tip of his cigar. "Surprised?" he queried between puffs.

Purpling, Emil Jardin swung back to the attorney. "What is the meaning of this? It is an insult. An outrage." He stamped the floor with his cane. "Come, Simon. We are leaving."

He turned and flashed a look at Brodie, as if expecting him to try to stop him. Brodie merely shrugged his indifference. "You can stay or go. It doesn't matter to me. But you might want to take a look at the documents Mr. Tate has for you. They could make for some interesting read-ing.

Emil glared at Brodie for a long moment, then thrust a hand at his assistant. "Let me see these documents."

Horace Tate silently passed them to Simon Varnier, who gave them to Emil Jardin as Brodie wandered over to the far side of the desk. "Pull out a chair for him, Simon. I think he'll want to sit down."

Emil had barely got past the first paragraph when his hand began to tremble and the color drained from his face. "What is this?" He sank into the chair Simon had pulled out for him.

"Exactly what it says," Brodie replied. "You seem so anxious to destroy the Crescent Line, I thought you might like to know I don't own it anymore."

His fingers curled into the papers, crumpling their edges. "You cannot do this!"

"It's done—all legally signed, sealed, registered, and recorded," Brodie waved the cigar at the papers. "You don't have to let them stop you, though. You can still go through with your plans to ruin the Crescent Line. Of course, it will be interesting to see how you'll go about demanding payment on those notes from your own great-grandson. But I forgot. You refer to Jean-Luc as your ward, don't you? Then as his legal guardian, you should know that he's now the owner of a shipping company and a house. If you'll read further, you'll see I've named Mr. Tate here, Father Malone, and Adrienne as the administrators of his properties until my son turns twenty-one."

"How—" Emil choked off the rest of the question.

"How did I find out Jean-Luc was my son? It was a good job you did of muffling my sources of information, but you failed to silence all of them."

"You cannot prove this."

"I can't prove it, not legally. But he is my son. I know it and you know it." Brodie moved to the corner of the desk, dropping his air of coolness and seeking the confrontation he'd arranged.

Emil Jardin rose from his chair and hurled the documents down on the desk. "I will see you in your grave for this."

"Maybe you will. But my death—whether by your hand or by God's—won't change the one thing that matters: Jean-Luc is my son. He may carry the Jardin name, but he has Donovan blood."

On that note Emil Jardin stalked from the room, his cane pounding the hardwood floor with each stride.

The honking of a car's horn somewhere outside jarred Remy into the present. "Then Brodie gave the Crescent Line to his natural son," she murmured. "Emil Jardin didn't steal it from him."

"It wasn't for lack of trying," Nattie declared as she pushed off the armrest of the stuffed chair.

"And Brodie? What happened to him?"

"He died in August of that same year."