Blessed Assurance (43 page)

Though she spoke no word, he sensed her understanding. A flicker of warmth flared in his heart. If he spoke to her of Marie and Lenore, she would understand, not judge him. The fox-trot ended. Shaken, he couldn't pull himself together or release her. Slipping out of his embrace, she linked her arm in his. “We're going to get refreshments. We need them.”

He let her direct his steps to a love seat beside a lush potted palm, where they sipped tangy punch. Slowly, he surfaced. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I've been under a great deal of pressure.”

She nodded. “Me too.”

This brought all his grievances to a quick boil again. His lips straightened into a line. “How did you persuade my father to represent Delman?”

“I had nothing to do with it. Don't you think you should discuss that with your father anyway?”

“I can't. We are representing the opposing sides in a murder case.”

“I think I heard that,” she said with a flippant lift in her voice.

“You've had quite an effect on my family. You've inspired my sister to become a nurse—of all things.”

She smiled thinly. “When you were seventeen, did your mother tell you to get married and outline what you should do for the rest of your life?”

“Of course not—”

“Then why don't you think your sister has a right to her own decisions, her own life?”

“It's not the same. She is a woman.”

“Yes, she's a woman. And she deserves the same freedom as you.”

He glared at her.

She sipped her punch. “Your sister has depths you haven't even begun to comprehend. I think that must be the way between older and younger siblings. When I left for France, my brother was just a boy. I came home and found him on the threshold of manhood. I didn't know how to talk to him.” She sighed.

Again, her mood touched a similar wound deep inside him. Since the war, he'd felt separated from his family, even as he sat among them. Still, he resisted her. “Your brother starting high school is natural, but Belle may fail to make a good match because she won't make as big a splash at Carnival as mother intended.” He ignored Meg's attempt to speak. “And my father's health will suffer because of his taking Delman's case.”

For an instant, Meg contemplated slapping him for his stubbornness. Had he learned no wisdom in France? Then she decided on a better punishment.

His impetuous words flowed on, “And your friend will—”

“Oh, Gabriel! The things you say!” she teased. She let a deliciously outrageous laugh ripple out of her. Then she kissed him on his parted lips.

He wanted to kill her. She read it from his expression. To keep others from reading it also, she kept her face just in front of his. “If you keep spewing nonsense, I'll only behave more shockingly.”

He seethed visibly. “No southern lady would behave as you have.”

“If being a lady means behaving as though I agree with all the nonsense you spout, I don't want to be one. You are quite sure you know exactly the lives your sister and father should lead. But you wouldn't,
haven't,
submitted to anyone telling you what life
you
should lead, have you?”

“The cases are not the same,” he bit out.

“Oh?” She gave him a scathing glance. “I suppose you've never heard—‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?'”

He scowled at her.

“Don't worry. Dulcine is on her way to rescue you from this no
torious Yankee. I wonder if she will deign to kiss lips I've kissed. Oh, dear. I may have ruined all your chances.” She sprang up to greet Dulcine and her escort who eyed Meg uncertainly. “Dulcine! Thank you for bringing me another dance partner.” She took the startled gentlemen's arm and sauntered off with him in tow.

Fuming, Gabe stood.

“Gabriel,” Dulcine's voice had lost its usual liquid charm, “it's time you took me to the buffet.”

Then something caught his eye. A uniformed police officer entering the ballroom approached his father. “Dulcine, I'm sorry. I must see what's happened.”

“Of course.” Worry in her voice, Dulcine released his arm.

He slid between the dancers to reach his father across the room. “Father, what is it?” Gabe murmured, aware all eyes must be on them.

“Gabe, an attempt has been made on my client's life.”

Gabe stared at his father in disbelief.

“Get Miss Wagstaff.” His father glanced at the officer. “All three of us will come down—”

“Rooney said that wasn't neces—”

Gabe cut him off, “We're coming.”

Gabe, with Meg Wagstaff at his side, pushed his father's wheelchair down the stark stone hallway to the jail infirmary. Leaving the Jupiter Ball where laughter and music reigned for this dark,
sad place…At the doorway, he let the lady, as out of place in her black evening gown as he was in a tux, precede him into the cell-like room. The family chauffeur waited outside, hat in hand. The smell of pine cleaner overpowered the room and made Gabe queasy. Rooney leaned negligently against the rear wall. The doctor blocked Gabe's view of the patient, who lay in the middle cot.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe watched Miss Wagstaff. She'd frozen just inside the door, staring at what she could see of Del beyond the doctor.

Gabe moved closer to see for himself. Delman was his responsibility and he'd failed to keep him safe.

Meg approached the doctor. “May I see him please?”

“Meg?” Delman's thin voice whispered.

The doctor stepped back. Meg took Del's black hand in hers. “How did it happen?”

“Jumped me,” Del muttered.

Meg looked up at the physician. “What have you done?”

“I sewed up his shoulder. He lost blood and he'll be laid up for a week or two.”

Gabe's sense of responsibility weighed him down even more. “Where is his cellmate?”

“Delman knocked him unconscious,” the doctor continued. “Fortunately, the guard heard the fracas. He separated them and confiscated the homemade knife.”

Meg looked faint. “How did he get into jail with a knife?”

Rooney scowled. “Who knows? These people knife each other. They don't know any better—”

In a flash, Meg faced him.
“Who are you?”

Rooney smirked. “I'm Rooney. Deputy to the chief police.”

“You?” The unbelieving tone she used made Rooney flush. He took a step toward her. Gabe moved to step between them. With a look, he warned Rooney back.

The lady stepped to Gabe's side, her hands balled into fists. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Mr. Rooney. My parents have a com
bined fortune of nearly fifteen million dollars. If anything further happens to Del, my family will turn all that loose on you.”

Rooney gave her an ugly look. “Don't threaten me—”

“Rooney!” Father called out. “Don't think this wheelchair makes a difference. The only part of me that is crippled is my legs.”

Gabe glared at Rooney and recalled that his first impression of Rooney had been never to turn his back to the man.

Father rolled closer to Rooney. “Don't think just because I've been out of commission for a few years that I can't shake things up. You know my contacts reach to the state house and all the way to Washington, D.C.”

Rooney opened his mouth, then shut it.

Father fixed the man with a hard stare. “Now this is what I am going to do to insure my client's safety. After tonight in the infirmary, I want him moved to a cell by himself and I'll be hiring an around-the-clock, private guard—”

“You can't do that!” Rooney shouted.

Father held up his hand. In an ominously quiet voice, he warned, “Rooney, you know I can.”

Relief trickled through Gabe. He'd rarely witnessed his father wield his influence to such an extent. Had Rooney forgotten what a stickler his father was about his clients, their rights and protection?

Rooney's jaw worked, but he said nothing.

“Now show me to the nearest phone.” Father turned the chair himself. “Son, please stay with Miss Wagstaff while I contact the man I want to stay the night with Del.”

Gabe nodded. He didn't want this case tainted further. Rooney barrelled out, cursing softly. Father and the doctor departed.

Gabe withdrew nearer the door. Meg drew closer to Del, then stroked his cheek. “Oh, Del…” Her voice trembled with tears. “If I could only take you home…” A sob stopped her voice.

“I'll…be—”

“No, you won't be all right.” She dropped to her knees, her ele
gant gown pooling on the stone floor. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She bent her head and laid it on the cot beside Del's. “I can't stand to see you here…like this.”

The woman's grief and tenderness toward the colored man jarred Gabe. It spoke of an intimacy he'd never seen between a young white woman and a young black man.

With effort, Delman lifted his hand and patted her shoulder. “Meg, Meggie, don't cry.”

Then Gabe recognized the tone in Delman's voice, the same he'd use to comfort Belle. Miss Wagstaff had said she'd been raised by Delman's grandmother. Evidently, they had grown up relating as closely as brother and sister, a situation that shouldn't have been allowed to continue. The distance between the races, between them, should have increased as they grew into adults.

Delman rumbled, “Mr. St. Clair knows what he's doing.”

Meg wiped her moist cheek with her hand.

“Now,” Delman continued, “Meg, I want you to do what Mr. St. Clair says. He knows this city. We don't.”

“I will, Del.”

The woman's easy acceptance of Delman's instructions aggravated Gabe. Why couldn't she heed him when he tried to talk sense into her?

“How is Cecy's pregnancy going?” Delman asked in a comforting tone.

“She's on bed rest, but the doctor is still hopeful she'll deliver safely.”

“I wish…I wish I could see them again.”

The tone Delman used told Gabe clearly that the man thought he wouldn't see them again in this life.

“You will.” Meg smoothed the covers around Delman's shoulders. “It won't be long and we'll be away from this dreadful place.”

Gabe's father reentered the room. “Will you drive Miss Wagstaff home, son?”

“No! I—” she objected, rising.

Father held up a hand to halt her. “I'm staying to give definite instructions to the man I have called. Del will be quite safe with me and my man until then.”

“Meg,” Del murmured, obviously reminding her of her promise.

She bent to kiss his forehead, then stood.

Shocked, Gabe said, stiffening, “I'll take Miss Wagstaff to her hotel, then return to help you.”

Father shook his head. “No, I'll manage. I want Miss Wagstaff safely in her hotel.”

“Certainly.” Gabe stepped forward. “Come, Miss Wagstaff.”

She made one final adjustment to Delman's blankets.

Turning the situation over in his mind, Gabe led her to his car and drove away. Gabe didn't know what to say to this woman, now reclining like a sleek cat on the car seat. At first glance, her backless evening gown appeared to be what had drawn men to her. But if Meg Wagstaff had worn a drab dowdy gown, she'd still have garnered admirers. No one would call her beautiful or even pretty. The only term that came close was “striking.” Her attraction wasn't in her features. So much of Meg Wagstaff lay beneath the surface, a vibrant personality wrapped in an elegant form. This was her allure.

And it wasn't the first time he'd experienced this in a woman. Lenore had been the first. He recalled that awful dawn when he'd become aware of Lenore in her nursing uniform beside his cot. In that moment of acute awareness, the force of her personality had overwhelmed him, drawing him to her once and forever.

At the memory, Gabe's pulse quickened. A peculiar mix of discontent and awareness keyed him up. Moonlight illuminated dozens of the glossy beads on her gown. Meg turned toward him, her pale skin glowing against the night. She'd teased him with a kiss earlier. What would her lips taste of now?

But the image of her stroking the black man's cheek had burned itself on to his brain. It bothered him. Why? Was it just the crossing of the color line or more personal? Had he wished it had been his cheek?

Meg broke the silence. “That Rooney isn't to be trusted.” Gabe longed to disagree, but words of denial caught in his throat.

“I see.” Her tone pronounced her understanding of Gabe's dilemma. “Doesn't it strike you as ominous that Del was attacked?”

“These things happen,” he said tightly.

“Especially around a man like Rooney.”

Gabe didn't want to be separated from this woman—just why this was so eluded him. And he knew his destination, a spot he'd become familiar with while a student at Tulane. “I can't go back to the ball. But I don't want to go home.”

Meg instantly agreed with him. Tears still so close and her nerves jumped in her hollow stomach…Facing all the fashionable people was unthinkable. Going back to her solitary hotel room to watch the hours inch by till morning…She covered her burning eyes with her hands. “Where did you want to go?”

“Alice's. It's a little café on Tchoupitoulas Street.”

Exhausted, she simply spoke her thoughts, “I haven't eaten all day. I still don't have an appetite, but I can't go back to the hotel.”

Meg watched the light from the full moon flicker over St. Clair's somber face. Gabriel St. Clair possessed that born-to-privilege arrogance that never failed to irritate her. She'd grown up in a mansion on Nob Hill but when she was thirteen, she had picked melons with migrant workers in preparation for her first article in her father's muckraking journal. All her life, she had moved in two separate worlds, San Francisco society and the regular world where people weren't born with silver spoons in their
houses,
much less their mouths.

Tonight St. Clair had revealed something she hadn't thought possible. “I've heard you were in France?”

“Why talk about France? It's over and war stories bore people.”

Like Del, Gabriel had served, suffered in France. Not even a hero like Sergeant York could return from the Great War without dragging sacks of pain along home. Did that explain why Gabe was so adverse to change? Had so much altered inside him, that the outside world must stay the same or his world might careen out of
control? She'd experienced that feeling three times in her life: her mother's death, the 1906 earthquake, and the day…Her mind stuttered on this thought. The third shattering loss still throbbed too fresh, too raw.

She glanced at St. Clair. A question to ask him popped into her mind. Would she, could she ask it?

He parked the car on the narrow street across from a brightly lit café. Inside, the restaurant was long and narrow with rough brown-red brick walls on two sides, and a counter with round, red-leather-covered stools. The other wall had a half-dozen booths. The café's cozy atmosphere smoothed Meg's frayed nerves. St. Clair led her to a booth at the rear. “Shall I help you with your wrap?”

Inwardly, she grinned at his proper tone. His disapproval of her backless gown made him hesitate to “expose” her here. “You may help me off with it, then drape it over my shoulders.” Then they sat down opposite each other in the oak-paneled, high-backed booth. A tall, slender black woman came up with menus.

“Alice's biscuits and red-eye gravy is excellent,” Gabe suggested.

The thought of red-eye gravy nearly wiped out Meg's already-touchy appetite. “I think I might be able to eat some dry toast and poached eggs.”

“You should eat more.”

“I lost my appetite in France.”

He grunted and ordered biscuits and gravy.

What are you hiding, Gabriel St. Clair? Or who?

Holding the warm, white china mug in her hands made Meg realize how chilled she had become by the cold. Looking up, she found her companion gazing at her. She grinned. “After earlier events, I didn't expect that you and I would be breaking bread together tonight.” As soon as the words escaped her mouth, she regretted them. “Sorry. Can you think of a neutral topic?”

“What you are interested in?”

“I'm interested in buying a car.”

In the act of lifting his coffee cup to his lips, he paused. “A car?”

She grinned. “Is this another touchy subject?”

“No.” He sipped his coffee. “You might try Abbott Automobile on Baronne Street. They advertise that they are the oldest automobile dealer in the South.”

“Thank you.”
A straightforward answer from St. Clair. Progress.

He frowned. “There is one thing tonight I wish you hadn't said.”

“What's that?” Would he say something to spoil their truce?

“The part about your parents' wealth. Was it true?”

She nodded. “What's your concern?”

“Possibility of kidnapping. That amount of wealth is…unusual here. Many people have genteel fortunes in New Orleans—”

“Like your family?”

“Like my family,” he agreed. “But fifteen million dollars plus the fact you don't have any family ties here might make you a prized target.”

“I wasn't really thinking just then,” she admitted. “Rooney is a bully and I wanted to intimidate him. I suppose subconsciously I chose my family's wealth as the biggest club I could shake in his face.”

“I don't think…I don't know…” his voice petered out. “I'm tired.”

For the first time, she noticed the gray shadows under his eyes.
Do you sleep at night, Gabriel? Or do you dream of the whine of falling shells?
If she asked the question she longed to, would he answer?

The waitress brought St. Clair his biscuits and gravy and Meg's dry toast and poached eggs. The white plate with the yellow yolks with firm whites and golden toast looked like an advertisement in a magazine. Meg sighed deeply. “Just what my stomach ordered. Thank you.” A pleasant hum of voices and clinking of china filled the air around her. Meg felt as though her stomach had earlier collapsed in on itself and now began to expand.

Swallowing a bite of toast, she relaxed against the cool, high back of the booth. Her eyes drank in St. Clair; their booth became an island of peace. The simple food satisfied her, a sensation she hadn't experienced for months. But finally at her nod, he rose, helped her into her wrap again. She wondered how it would feel to have Gabriel St. Clair's arms around her for more than a fox-trot.