The Seven Sapphires of Mardi Gras (37 page)

Now, as I ran, I recalled Lydia’s frightened eyes as she had emerged from the shadows of the trees. Again, I saw the ominous form in the swirling dark garment crouch back as if in hiding. At the time, I thought I had caught Lydia exchanging passionate kisses with a lover there in the darkness.

But now I realized my mistake. Her pale face, her terrified eyes—he had been threatening her! What I had taken to be a lover’s embrace had instead been some kind of struggle. A vision of Nicholas’s dark cloak billowing out around him as we danced filled my heart with sinking dread. For suddenly I realized that the man in the shadows with Lydia had not been Ian at all, nor had it been some anonymous lover. It had been Nicholas!

Not the Nicholas I knew, but the “other” Nicholas, a lunatic all twisted and deranged. A madman who had murdered his wife and now was intent upon killing her child! Now I knew beyond a doubt that it was Nicholas that Lydia was afraid might hurt Christine. It had been Nicholas all along.

Chapter Twenty-six

The sky overhead trembled, threatening rain as I hurried to the spot where I had last seen Nathan and Christine. Anxiously, I searched for some sign of them. But the clearing in the tangled woods was empty.

I stood motionless, wondering which way to go. And then I heard the laughter bursting from behind a nearby cluster of trees. As I drew closer, the first sight that met my eyes was Nathan’s red-painted face. He was leaning back, sprawled against a giant cypress log, bottle in hand. In hopeful expectation, I scanned the nearby area. But there was no sign of Christine. Troubled, I approached him.

Nathan looked up at me with eyes so bloodshot they all but matched the crimson hue of his paint-smeared cheeks. Passing the bottle over to the grinning skeleton who waited nearby, he remarked, “Well, if it isn’t the lady!” A foolish grin spread across his face. “Back for another kiss, my sweet?”

Anxiously, I looked around me. But he and the skeleton drank alone. Christine was nowhere in sight. “Where is she?” I demanded, ignoring his bold manner. “Where is Christine?”

“Christine?” The urgency in my voice appeared to sober him momentarily. He sat up a little, struggling to focus his red-rimmed eyes upon my face.

“Yes. Where is she?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Last time I saw her, she was over there!” He made a lazy gesture back toward the clearing, “Talking to some fellow. Nice fella, he was. Gave me this bottle of cognac.” He tapped the neck of the glass bottle, which the skeleton had returned to his eager hands. “Went off to have a little taste with my friend.” He lifted his shoulders again. “When I came back, they were gone.” He eyed me unsteadily. “Just like a woman, yes?”

The grinning skeleton laughed. Aghast, I cried out, “You mean you just let Christine wander off with a total stranger?”

“I didn’t let her,” he protested. “You know the girl! She has a mind of her own.”

“But you promised me you’d look after her,” I scolded, struggling to keep my temper under control.

“A man can only take so much.” I saw a fleeting trace of pain in his eyes that the strong spirits had not quite drowned. “Christine be damned! So now she’s off with a stranger and what do I care?” After a moment, he added, “She’ll come back to me soon enough. She always does!”

The admonishing words I had meant to say died upon my lips. It was obvious that the two of them had engaged in a lover’s quarrel and then parted. Nathan was not aware that Christine might be in serious danger. We had to find her! Trying to keep the rising panic from my voice, I demanded, “Nathan, do you know where they might have gone?”

He shrugged again, feigning nonchalance. “Christine wanted to dance. They must have gone back to the masquerade.”

“No, Nathan. I just came from there. I didn’t see them.” Anxiously, I added, “This fellow she went off with—do you know him?”

He shook his head. His eyes still carried a spark of defiance. “It doesn’t matter who he is. She only wants to make me jealous, you know.”

“Then what did he look like? Please! It’s important. You must describe him for me!”

“Can’t,” he replied with a shrug. As the befuddled grin on
his red-dusted face grew wider, I knew that the liqueur was once again taking its toll upon his senses.

“You must try!”

“Oh, I would if I could,” he replied amiably. “Dressed all in black, he was. Like some fancy robber baron. An’ he was wearing a mask.”

“The mask,” I said, my throat constricting. “Was it a black silk mask?”

“No, not that.” He laughed, his white teeth pearly against the crimson of his painted face. “Terrible thing it was. Like death hisself!” he said, and the skeleton nodded in confirmation.

Nathan’s face contorted into a grimace. “Looked like something that came out of a grave. All pale and ghostly except for those evil eyes and that ugly, twisted mouth. Blood-red, it was, and fixed into the most hideous smile. Never thought I’d be throwed over for such an ugly bird.” Nathan was grinning foolishly at the recollection, but I felt a numbing coldness chilling me to the marrow. There was no doubt about it. He was describing the voodoo mask!

“Christine must have known who he was.” Nathan’s words were becoming confused. “Or else she wouldn’t have gone with him, would she?”

“We must find her!” I pleaded with Nathan.

Tugging him to his feet, I demanded, “You must show me where you last saw them!” A cry of protest died upon his lips as I took the bottle from his hand and tossed it toward the skeleton.

“There’s really nothing to worry about,” he insisted. “They couldn’t have gone far.”

Nathan stumbled along beside me with maddening slowness, swaying on unsteady feet. He was an absurd and ridiculous figure in his devil’s costume, his painted face glowing like a crimson moon in the darkness. I cursed myself for ever having left Christine with him. But there was no time to worry about that now. Somewhere out here, Christine was alone in the darkness with a man who meant to do her harm. A sickness crept into my soul at the thought. Nicholas—the man whom I loved.

If anything happened to Christine tonight, then I was to blame. I should have shown the incriminating entries in Raymond Dereux’s journal to someone before it was too late. But instead, I had destroyed the journal to protect Nicholas. And now my silence had put Christine in danger.

And tonight I had not even listened to Christine when she had tried to tell me that someone or something here at the masquerade had frightened her. Instead, I brushed aside her talk as fanciful imaginings and had left her alone with this simple-minded oaf who stumbled along beside me now. Bribed with a bottle of cognac, he had let Christine go off with a stranger while he drank himself half out of his senses.

We had reached the edge of the clearing and now stood on the threshold of darkness. Nathan stopped. He pointed a finger into that ominous darkness. “Over there,” he said, indicating a thicket of dense trees swaying over the brackish water of the swamp. Heavy Spanish moss hung ghostlike from their branches, making eerie, mirrored reflections in the glassy, opaque depths. “I last saw them there, near the water’s edge.”

He took a step into the darkness. I hesitated, remembering the unpleasantness of our earlier encounter. Could this be some kind of trick he was playing to lure me out there alone? I was not too anxious to be wandering about the swamps with this drunken young man. I cast a glance into the unwelcoming marsh. But more fearful was the thought of searching for Christine alone!

“They were here, near these big cypress stumps when I left them,” he said. Taking a step ahead of me, he stood peering into the murky water below. Then he gasped, a terrible sound, strangled and half-human in the stillness.

“Nathan!” I cried out in sudden alarm. My heart threatened to stop in my chest as I watched him sway above the water. “What is it?” For a moment I was afraid that he would lose his balance. But then he steadied himself against one of the sturdy cypress trunks. His eyes, glowing in his painted face, reflected sudden horror as he continued to stare down at the sluggish gurgle of swamp.

“Do you see it? My God, do you see it?”

“Nathan, what’s wrong?”

I came up beside him in the darkness, wary of a trick, but his horror seemed genuine. Then I saw it, too! My heart hammered in my chest, making beads of sweat break out along my forehead. Lightly skimming the water from where it was caught by the low branch of a tree was a length of blue velvet ribbon.

“She’s drowned!” he moaned. He sank down upon the nearby cypress log, covering his face with his hands, and for all my pleading would not be persuaded to raise his head.

“Just like Ophelia, she’s drowned, and it’s all my fault! I should never have let her out of my sight. But I couldn’t stop her!” He turned pitiful eyes upon me. “I tried!”

“Nathan,” I said, struggling desperately to remain calm. Speaking to him slowly, as if he were a small child, I comforted, “We don’t know that she’s drowned. Perhaps she’s only lost her ribbon. Come, let’s search for her.”

But he would not budge from the cypress stump. “I loved that girl! Oh, how much I love her!” I stood listening to his broken, drunken sobs, watching his shoulders heave in misery.

I looked down to where the blue ribbon still bobbed upon the surface of the water. I did not believe that Christine had drowned. But Nathan, in his confused state, would never be convinced. I peered down to where he still sat slumped, semiconscious, upon the log. The bottle of cognac had stolen his reason. But there was no time for him to sober. If Christine was still alive, and I had every reason to believe that she was, then I would have to continue my search for her alone!

But where to start? I took a few steps into the bleak, moss-shrouded darkness that surrounded me. Following the course of the swamp, I walked until Nathan and the cypress log joined into one blurred image far behind.

Alone, the eerie sensation of being trapped in some endless nightmare returned to haunt me. “Christine!” I cried out. “Christine!” My trembling voice seemed harsh and piercing as it disappeared into the hushed, green solitude
on either side of the path.

What had Nicholas done with her? Had he taken her to the house? Up ahead, the jagged, imposing outline of Evangeline loomed against the unsettled sky. Shivering, I remembered the evil laughter I had heard in the darkness near the bridge earlier. A lunatic’s laughter.

The old wooden bridge across the water creaked and moaned like a lost soul as I called Christine’s name over and over until my voice grew hoarse. I cried out her name once more. And then I heard the sound directly behind me.

I spun around quickly, straining my eyes in the darkness to see if Nathan had moved. I thought I could still see his vague shape there upon the log where I had left him. Fear twisted hard knots into my chest and stomach. If he hadn’t moved, then that meant someone was out here with me!

Fearfully, I cast a glance at the dark tree-shadows near the bridge. I caught the faintest rustle of movement. The dark branches parted, and I stood hypnotized by the sight of a shining black boot. I moved my trembling gaze upward toward the swirl of dark cloak. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the image filtered back into darkness.

Horror filled my heart as memories of my nightmare, then the reality of being pursued through the woods, penetrated my mind. I took a faltering step backward, then another until I felt the splintered wooden railing of the bridge against my back.

Step by step, I inched my way across the bridge, then slipped down the vine-gnarled path below that led to the water. The swamp was shallow here, the water black and sluggish. The reedy smell of damp foliage mingled with the odor of rich black earth as I crouched low, hidden in the shelter of the wet, feathery vines.

My shoes sank into the boggy mud as I crouched near the host of grotesquely twisted cypress knees that snagged the water line. Breathless, I listened to the sound of heavy black boots rocking the fragile bridge, piercing the thick, vine-clad solitude like peals of thunder.

For what seemed an eternity, I remained motionless, not daring to move a muscle. Then, slowly, I straightened my
cramped arms and legs. Cautiously, I stepped from the shelter of the thick weeds, then climbed my way back up the path toward the bridge. The rickety wooden structure stretched dark and empty before me. Whoever had crossed the bridge was gone.

From across the wooden planking, the broken hull of Evangeline rose, bleak and empty. Had Nicholas gone back inside? Or was he still out here somewhere, watching, waiting?

The eerie sensation that I was not alone made me stiffen. It was as if I could feel some dark presence closing in on me. My shoulder blades tensed as I became aware of a slight sound directly behind me. Slowly, I started to spin around. And then I felt a cold hand touch my arm.

Droplets of water splattered my dress as icy fingers, a hand from the grave, reached out to grasp my shoulder. Stifling a scream, I turned to face Christine.

For one startled moment, I stood speechless, staring at her muddy, torn dress, her dripping hair. She was soaked and shivering. Elica’s dress clung wetly to her skin. A bruise, dark and purplish, stood out against her pale throat. The skin above her eye was split and a trickle of blood mingled with the water that spilled from her damp hair down her forehead.

“Christine,” I cried out in a terrified whisper. “Who did this to you? Was it Nicholas?”

But she could not speak. A choked sound came from her throat, followed by a dry sob. I held her close, feeling her body tremble with cold and fear as she blurted out, “He tried to kill me, Louise. He held my head under—I couldn’t breathe. Somehow, I struggled away from him. We have to get out of here!”

“Christine, please calm down!”

“He wasn’t himself at all! I told him that he was hurting me and he just laughed!”

The sudden snap of a twig made her eyes grow wild with fear. “It’s him!” she cried, clinging to me. “Don’t let him come near me!”

Across the bridge, a figure in black stood waiting. The
ghostly silhouette of Evangeline framed his tall, dark form. Moonlight fell upon the folds of the swirling black cape as he moved forward. Pale-yellow light glanced eerily off of the cruel, fixed features of the obstruction that shielded his face from view. He was wearing the voodoo mask.