Midnight Flame (12 page)

Tony practically choked on the brandy. “The woman is mad! Let her starve before I offer her an apology for anything.”

“Monsieur, I fear you have done her an injustice.” Zelie wiped her perspiring palms on the front of her apron. “She knows her kidnapping is related to your uncle’s death.”

All color drained from Tony’s tanned face. “Does she know I’m behind it?”

Shaking her head, Zelie assured him that his captive had no idea he was involved. “However, monsieur, she is not a stupid woman; she may realize this fact very soon. She told me to tell you that she is not Lavinia Delaney but her cousin Laurel, I think she said her name was. She said you have made a grave mistake.”

Tony tightened his hand around the brandy snifter. Laurel Delaney? Was it possible he had kidnapped the wrong woman? The thought of such a mistake momentarily caused a wave of alarm to course through his veins. But such a wanton couldn’t be Laurel Delaney. A woman like Laurel Delaney, reputed to be an elegant if a somewhat cold woman, would be unable to make his passion flare. Not a lofty ice queen as his investigation into Lavinia Delaney’s relative had shown. He preferred a willing, flesh-and-blood woman in his arms—someone who responded to his kisses, his embraces.

A smile quirked around his lips. That Lavinia was such a woman, and he would congratulate her the next time they met on how easily lies rose to those luscious, strawberry-tinted lips. No, he convinced himself, he had kidnapped the right woman. He waved a tanned hand at Zelie.

“She is lying to you. You mustn’t believe anything this woman says. She killed my uncle, and I know you wish to see this woman punished.”

Zelie nodded slowly, but her old hands trembled. “You told me this Lavinia Delaney was cruel and dangerous, monsieur. You said she had hurt Auguste, and for that I will not forgive her. I took care of your Uncle Auguste when he was a little boy and loved him dearly. But this woman I saw today has no evil within her. She is frightened, and I think she means to starve herself. You must go to her, monsieur.”

So, Tony thought, Lavinia had deceived old Zelie. How crafty she was to enlist Zelie on her side. Well, he wasn’t an old woman with a soft heart. He would make Lavinia Delaney sorry she had ever met Auguste St. Julian.

“Don’t worry about her,” he spoke softly. “She’ll eat when she gets hungry enough. Just keep bringing her food.”

Zelie started to say something else but apparently thought better of it.
“Oui,
monsieur,” she said and shuffled from the room.

The brandy slid like silk down Tony’s throat, and that drink was quickly followed by two more until he felt sufficiently calm. Taking a deep breath; he turned away from the sideboard and stalked out the house to the barn where he gruffly ordered his horse saddled. Within minutes he was flying down Grand Prairie Road, not at all certain where he was headed until he noticed the cottage of Gaston Mornay.

Reining his horse in, he hesitated, overcome by a momentary qualm of guilt that he had kidnapped the wrong woman. Could it be that he had unwittingly kidnapped Laurel Delaney and not the treacherous Lavinia? Tony shook himself and decided he must learn the truth. The only person who could provide that truth now was Gincie.

After Tony had been solicitously handed a cup of coffee with chicory by Lillie Mornay and had conversed at length with Gaston about the disappearance of another cattle the night before, he and Gincie were left alone. Tony suddenly felt ill at ease with the woman but hid his discomfiture by lounging in a cane-backed chair as he slowly sipped the steaming brew.

“You’re looking much better,” Tony noted and smiled approvingly. Gincie’s cheeks had a healthy glow about them, her eyes shone like onyx stars in her lined but happy face. She flashed her sparkling teeth at him.

“I sho’ do feel better, sir. Doctor Mornay’s been takin’ real good care of me, and Lillie is as kind and good as they come.” A slight frown, however, crept across her brow, and she fiddled with the tiny bow on her white nightdress. “But I’d feel a lot more at peace if I had seen my baby before she left for San Antonio today. I thought she’d have told me goodbye, but I guess she was in a fuss to be gone. Her uncle’s been ailing, you know.”

“I didn’t know that,” Tony muttered, raising his eyebrows in an answering frown. “However, I did see Miss Malone when she boarded the coach the other day. Strange that she went on ahead without your mistress.”

Gincie lifted her head from the pillow propped behind her, and devilment danced in her eyes. She gave a chuckle and waved her hand in the air in amusement. “That Miss Lavinia is somethin’, I tell you that. Since Miss Laurel is gone now, I guess she wouldn’t mind if I told you the truth about what those two girls did.”

“What truth is that?” Tony’s face turned ashen, somehow knowing what Gincie was about to impart. He nonchalantly took a sip of coffee but found it tasteless and was unable to swallow.

Gincie laughed lightly, eager to tell someone about the Delaney cousins and their charade. Tony listened, and by the time she had finished recounting how Miss Lavinia had thrown a temper tantrum on the steamboat because she was forced to look dowdy and unattractive, and how Miss Laurel was the one to remind her that she had better act the part of a lady’s companion or she would have nothing else to do with Lavinia’s problem, Tony hid his quaking hands in the pockets of his frock coat.

“That Miss Lavinia with her flamin’ hair can’t hide her looks if she wanted to, but I always did think my baby was the prettiest. Don’t you think so, Mr. Duvalier?”

Tony barely heard Gincie’s question, his mind was still registering the fact that the woman he had sequestered in the bayou wasn’t Lavinia Delaney at all. He glanced up to see a perplexed Gincie.

“Don’t you think my baby is the prettiest lady you ever did see?” Gincie asked again to be certain Tony had heard her.

“Yes,” he answered in a rush. “She is the most beautiful woman in the world.” And he meant it.

Pleased, Gincie grinned.

“I told Miss Laurel you were the man for her.”

Standing up abruptly, Tony scraped his chair against the floor. He appeared disoriented, as if his mind were a thousand miles away. Lillie appeared and inquired if something was wrong.

“Tell Gaston to take good care of Gincie,” he muttered, then turned his attention to the woman on the bed and absently patted her head. “I have a feeling you’ll see your Laurel very soon.” Then he was gone and viciously spurred his stallion down the road in the direction of the bayou before either woman could say another word.

Sweat poured from Tony’s brow and down his face, but he felt cold, dreadfully cold. His fingers felt so chilled he could barely hold the reins. The pounding of the stallion’s hoofs upon the road beat a wild cadence in Tony’s brain—Laurel Delaney, Laurel Delaney, Laurel Delaney.

He had kidnapped the wrong woman!

By the time he entered the forest and could see the cabin through the trees, he had cursed himself a hundredfold. He should have made inquiries into Lavinia Delaney’s appearance, should have asked the investigator, Henri Maurice, the color of Lavinia’s hair. Then again, if, as Maurice had told him, the woman was always veiled during her trysts with his uncle, the man wouldn’t have been aware of such a fact. Gincie had said Lavinia had flaming hair, and his prisoner was a brunette, a most enchanting and beautiful brunette, who caused his blood to stir with her innocent kisses.

“Damn!” His curse hung upon the air like the Spanish moss on the nearby trees. The woman in the cabin was an innocent. He was worldly enough to have sensed this, and he had, but he had been so caught up in his stupid plan for revenge that he had purposely blinded himself to her inexperience, thinking it only a ruse to ease his conscience.

He had much to make amends -to Laurel Delaney. Just before reaching the cabin, he halted. He couldn’t simply rush in and drag her from the cabin, though he ached to do so, and ensconce her at Petit Coteau. She would know immediately that he was her kidnapper, and her scorn and hatred would be more than he could bear.

Why this was so, he couldn’t fathom. He had never felt protective toward a woman before and had never cared what a woman thought about his callous behavior once their affair was over. But Laurel was different, he reminded himself. She was a lady and a woman of impeccable character, though she did have the reputation of being an ice queen. Tony knew better, but right now he couldn’t dwell on Laurel’s passion. He must release her from her prison. But again—how? He didn’t want her to discover he was the one who had locked her in and thereby lose his chance of making it up to her.

The stallion pawed at the soft earth, eager to move onward. Instead, Tony turned the horse away from the cabin and headed out of the forest. A plan was forming in his mind, and if everything fell into place, he would have his chance to make up to Laurel for his transgression against her. And maybe, just maybe, she would fall in love with him in the process. This thought startled him and pleased him at the same time. He would like nothing better than to have Laurel Delaney’s love. In fact, if he were a different type of man and not so jaded in affairs of the heart, he could love her, too.

Shafts of late afternoon sunlight wove gold and orange highlights resembling a brilliant tapestry into the silver ripples of the shallow bayou. A slight cool breeze soughed through the upper reaches of the cypress trees and gently ruffled the Spanish moss that hung from the branches like an old man’s beard. From where Tony stood on the opposite shoreline from the cabin, he noticed a streak of black slithering across the watery expanse. A moccasin and a potentially dangerous snake. For the first time in a long time, Tony offered up a small prayer that no harm would befall Laurel when she crossed the bayou. If anything happened to her, it would be his fault, and he would be unable to live with himself.

From his vantage point behind a clump of underbrush, he watched as Zelie was paddled across the swamp by Emmanuel. In her lap she held a basket filled with freshly fried chicken and homemade grits—something he had decided that a hungry Laurel would be unable to resist. From Zelie’s tightly drawn mouth, he reasoned that Zelie’s disapproval of the whole affair came from the fact that she thought he should be the one to enter the cabin and free Laurel Delaney, not use the ruse of delivering a hot meal and forgetting to lock the cabin door.

Tony felt as much of a coward at that moment as Zelie must have thought him. But he couldn’t risk Laurel’s discovery that he had been the one to kidnap her. If she learned the truth, the hard-headed miss wouldn’t deign to glance in his direction except with icy scorn in her eyes, and he wanted her gaze to be filled with desire and love for him. No, this was the only way to free her, he decided, and to achieve her love.

The plan seemed simple, too simple, a part of him thought, but he had no alternative. Just moments before he had ordered Zelie not to speak to Laurel, to leave the basket on the table, and to conveniently forget to sheath the latch on the door. Knowing Laurel had tried to escape earlier in the day, Tony had no doubt that she would try the door again and escape after Zelie and Emmanuel had paddled away. Then once she had waded across the water to the opposite shoreline and had trekked through the wilderness for a short time, he would suddenly appear and rescue her. Of course, she would probably ask questions, but he had all the answers. He would simply tell her that his driver had arrived at Petit Coteau, relating the details of the kidnapping. Because of the delicacy of the situation, Tony, himself, had started a private search. After all, her reputation was at stake.

A smile slanted his mouth, and his dark eyes danced, their amber flecks lighting up like beacons to think of how grateful Laurel would be. To imagine the sweet kiss she would bestow upon him, a kiss that would erupt into hot ecstasy, promising a night of smoldering passion, caused a burning ache in his loins. God, he wanted her with a fierceness he had never experienced for any woman. Was it her innocence? he wondered. Or the fact that he now realized she would never experience desire for any man but himself? Whatever the reason, he would enjoy tutoring her in the art of lovemaking.

Now if only things worked out as he had planned.

A distance away he heard the two horses that he had brought with him whinny lowly. As soon as Zelie and Emmanuel had paddled across the swamp, they would find the horses and ride to Petit Coteau where the buggy waited to take them into Vermillionville. Tony couldn’t afford to let Laurel discover the two servants at the plantation, so he had ordered them to go to the town house, something for which Zelie didn’t care but which Emmanuel took in his stride.