Нора Робертс - Midnight Bayou

And yet …

The child had her son's blood in her, and therefore her own. She could despise it, but she couldn't destroy it. "Go to sleep," she said. "We'll decide what to do about you later.”

As her son carried the girl he'd raped and murdered from the room, Josephine began to set the nursery to rights again. She picked up the candle, scrubbed at the cooling wax until she could see no trace.

She replaced the fireplace poker and, using the ruin of Abby's robe, wiped up the splatters of blood. She did it all efficiently, turning her mind away from what had caused the damage to the room, keeping it firmly fixed on what needed to be done to save her son.

When she was certain all was as it should be, she unlocked the door again, left her now-sleeping grandchild alone.

In the morning, she would fire the nursemaid for dereliction of duty. She would have her out of Manet Hall before Lucian returned to find his wife missing.

The girl had brought it on herself, Josephine thought. No good ever came from trying to rise above your station in life. There was an order to things, and a reason for that order. If the girl hadn't bewitched Lucian-for surely there was some local witchery involved-she would still be alive.

The family had suffered enough scandal. The elopement. Oh, the embarrassment of it! Of having to hold your head high when your firstborn son ran off with a penniless, barefoot female who'd grown up in a shack in the swamp.

Then the sour taste of the pretense that followed. It was essential to save face, even after such a blow. And hadn't she done all that could be done to see that creature was dressed as befitted the family Manet?

Silk purses, sow's ears, she thought. What good were Paris fashions when the girl had only to open her mouth and sound of the swamp? For pity's sake, she'd been a servant.

Josephine stepped into the bedroom, shut the door at her back, and stared at the bed where her son's dead wife lay staring up at the blue silk canopy.

Now, she thought, Abigail Rouse was simply a problem to be solved.

Julian huddled in a chair, his head in his hands. "Stop screaming," he muttered. "Stop the screaming.”

Josephine marched to him, clamped her hands on his shoulders. "Do you want them to come for you?" she demanded. "Do you want to drag the family through disgrace? To be hanged like a common thief?”

"It wasn't my fault. She enticed me. Then she attacked me. Look. Look." He turned his head. "See how she clawed my face?”

"Yes." For a moment, just for a moment, Josephine wavered. The heart inside the symbol she'd become reared up in protest against the horror of the act all women fear.

Whatever she was, she'd loved Lucian. Whatever she was, she'd been raped and murdered within feet of her own child's crib.

Julian forced her, struck her, defiled her. Killed her.

Drunk and mad, he'd killed his brother's wife. God's pity.

Then she shoved it viciously aside.

The girl was dead. Her son was not.

"You bought a prostitute tonight. Don't turn away from me," she snapped. "I'm not ignorant of the things men do. Did you buy a woman?”

"Yes, Mama.”

She nodded briskly. "Then it was the whore who scratched you, should anyone have the temerity to ask. You were never in the nursery tonight." She cupped his face in her hands to keep his eyes level with hers. And her fingers dug into his cheeks as she spoke in low, clear tones. "What reason would you have to go there? You went out, for drink and women and, having your fill of both, came home and went to bed. Is that clear?”

"But, how will we explain-was "We'll have nothing to explain. I've told you what you did tonight. Repeat it.”

"I-I went into town." He licked his lips. Swallowed. "I drank, then I went to a brothel. I came home and went to bed.”

"That's right. That's right." She stroked his scored cheek. "Now we're going to pack some of her things-some clothes, some jewelry. We'll do it quickly, as she did it quickly when she decided to run off with a man she'd been seeing in secret. A man who might very well be the father of that child upstairs.”

"What man?”

Josephine let out a long sigh. He was the child of her heart, but she often despaired of his brain. "Never mind, Julian. You know nothing of it.

Here." She went to the chifforobe, chose a long black velvet cloak. "Wrap her in this. Hurry. Do it!" she said in a tone that had him getting to his feet.

His stomach pitched, and his hands trembled, but he wrapped the body in velvet as best he could while his mother stuffed things in a hatbox and a train case.

In her rush she dropped a brooch of gold wings with a small enameled watch dangling from it. The toe of her slipper struck it so that it skittered into a corner.

"We'll take her into the swamp. We'll have to go on foot, and quickly. There are some old paving bricks in the garden shed. We can weigh her down with them.”

And the gators, she thought, the gators and fish would do the rest.

"Even if she's found, it's away from here. The man she ran away with killed her." She dabbed her face with the handkerchief in the pocket of her robe, smoothed a hand over her long, gilded braid. "That's what people will believe if she's found. We need to get her away from here, away from Manet Hall. Quickly.”

She was beginning to feel a little mad herself.

There was moonlight. She told herself there was moonlight because fate understood what she was doing, and why. She could hear her son's rapid breathing, and the sounds of the night. The frogs, the insects, the night birds all merging together into one thick note.

It was the end of a century, the beginning of the new. She would rid herself of this aberration to her world and start this new century, this new era, clean and strong.

There was a chill in the air, made raw with wet. But she felt hot, almost burning hot as she trudged away from the house, laden with the bags she'd packed and weighed down. The muscles of her arms, of her legs, protested, but she marched like a soldier.

Once, just once, she thought she felt a brush against her cheek, like the breath of a ghost. The spirit of a dead girl who trailed beside her, accusing, damning, cursing her for eternity.

Fear only made her stronger.

"Here." She stopped and peered out over the water. "Lay her down.”

Julian obeyed, then rose quickly, turned his back, covered his face with his hands. "I can't do this. Mama, I can't. I'm sick. Sick.”

He tumbled toward the water, retching, weeping.

Useless boy, she thought, mildly annoyed. Men could never handle a crisis. It took a woman, the cold blood and clear mind of a female.

Josephine opened the cloak, laid bricks over the body. Sweat began to pour down her face, but she approached the grisly task as she would any other. With ruthless efficiency. She took the rope out of the hatbox, carefully tied hanks around the cloaked body, top, bottom, middle. Using another, she looped the line through the handles of the luggage, knotted it tight.

She glanced over now to see Julian watching her, his face white as bone. "You'll have to help. I can't get her into the water alone. She's too heavy now.”

"I was drunk.”

"That's correct, Julian. You were drunk. Now you're sober enough to deal with the consequences. Help me get her into the water.”

He felt his legs buckle and give with each step, like a puppet's. The body slid into the water almost soundlessly. There was a quiet plop, a kind of gurgle, then it was gone. Ripples spread on the surface, shimmered in the moonlight, then smoothed away again.

"She's out of our lives," Josephine stated calmly. "Soon, she'll be like those ripples. Like she never was. See that you clean your boots thoroughly, Julian. Don't give them to a servant.”

She slid her arm through his, smiled, though her smile was just a little wild. "We need to get back, get some rest. Tomorrow's a very busy day.”

His mother was right-as always. Declan Fitzgerald stared through the mud– splattered windshield into the driving winter rain and was glad she wasn't there to gloat.

Not that Colleen Sullivan Fitzgerald ever stooped to a gloat. She merely raised one perfect eyebrow into one perfect arch and let her silence do the gloating for her.

She'd told him, very succinctly, when he'd stopped by before driving out of Boston, that he'd lost his mind. And would rue the day. Yes, he was pretty sure she'd said "rue the day.”

He hadn't sunk as low as ruing-yet-but studying the jungle of weeds, the sagging galleries, the peeling paint and broken gutters of the old plantation house, he was no longer confident of his mental health.

What had made him think he could restore this rambling old derelict into its former splendor? Or, more to the point, that he should? For God's sake, he was a lawyer, a Fitzgerald of the Boston Fitzgeralds, and more tuned to swinging a nine-iron than a hammer.

Rehabbing a town house in his spare time over a two-year period was a far cry from relocating to New Orleans and pretending he was a contractor.

Had the place looked this bad the last time he'd been down here? Could it have? Of course that was five, no, six years before. Certainly it couldn't have looked this bad the first time he'd seen it. He'd been twenty and spending a crazed Mardi Gras interlude with his college roommate. Eleven years, he thought, dragging his fingers through his dark blond hair.

The old Manet Hall had been a niggling germ in his brain for eleven years. As obsessions went, it was longer than most relationships. Certainly longer than any of his own.

Now the house was his, for better or for worse. He already had a feeling there was going to be plenty of worse.

His eyes, as gray, and at the moment as bleak, as the rain, scanned the structure. The graceful twin arches of the double stairs leading to the second– floor gallery had charmed him on that long-ago February. And all those tall arched windows, the whimsy of the belvedere on the roof, the elegance of the white columns and strangely ornate iron balusters. The fanciful mix of Italianate and Greek Revival had all seemed so incredibly lush and Old World and southern.

Even then he'd felt displaced, in a way he'd never been able to explain, in New England.

The house had pulled him, in some deep chamber. Like a hook through memory, he thought now. He'd been able to visualize the interior even before he and Remy had broken in to ramble through it.

Or the gallon or two of beer they'd sucked down had caused him to think he could.

A drunk boy barely out of his teens couldn't be trusted. And neither, Declan admitted ruefully, could a stone-sober thirty-one-year– old man.

The minute Remy had mentioned that Manet Hall was on the block again, he'd put in a bid. Sight unseen, or unseen for more than half a decade. He'd had to have it. As if he'd been waiting all his life to call it his own.

He could deem the price reasonable if he didn't consider what he'd have to pour into it to make it habitable. So he wouldn't consider it-just now.

It was his, whether he was crazy or whether he was right. No matter what, he'd turned in his briefcase for a tool belt. That alone lightened his mood.

He pulled out his cell phone-you could take the lawyer out of Boston, but … Still studying the house, he put in a call to Remy Payne.

He went through a secretary, and imagined Remy sitting at a desk cluttered with files and briefs. It made him smile, a quick, crooked grin that shifted the planes and angles of his face, hollowed the cheeks, softened the sometimes– grim line of his mouth.

Yes, he thought, life could be worse. He could be the one at the desk.

"Well, hey, Dec." Remy's lazy drawl streamed into the packed Mercedes SUV like a mist over a slow-moving river. "Where are you, boy?”

"I'm sitting in my car looking at this white elephant I was crazy enough to buy. Why the hell didn't you talk me out of it or have me committed?”

"You're here? Son of a bitch! I didn't think you'd make it until tomorrow.”

"Got antsy." He rubbed his chin; heard the scratch of stubble. "Drove through most of last night and got an early start again this morning. Remy? What was I thinking?”

"Damned if I know. Listen, you give me a couple hours to clear some business, and I'll drive out. Bring us some libation. We'll toast that rattrap and catch up.”