Dark Masquerade (20 page)

“Because she saw him die?”

“We hope that is all.”

“You mean you, and Bernard, believe she might have been in some way responsible?”

“I’m not sure what Bernard thinks. Like Gaspard, he has always been indulgent with her. He has a quieting effect upon her when she has one of her tantrums. I confess it is hard to see how a young girl could have caused my son’s death, and yet I, at least, cannot overlook the possibility.”

As she finished speaking she glanced back over her shoulder. Loud voices raised in argument could be heard from inside the house. Exasperation crossed the old lady’s face but her depression seemed to lift as if she welcomed the change in the trend of her thoughts.

“That woman! She has not a particle of sense when it comes to handling Darcourt. To think my son rescued her from the eternal mourning of widowhood so that his two sons could have the warmth of a mother’s love. Bah! Ridiculous ninny! And stupid to boot. Anyone who would use a deadly poison like arsenic to give herself a fashionably wan complexion is an imbecile. Not that she doesn’t need something to overcome a tendency toward floridness caused by overeating, a fondness for wine, and tight lacing. It was a mistake to leave Darcourt’s allowance in her hands, almost as bad as leaving him without a part of the estate. It would have been much better to leave the allowance to Bernard. He could have been a steadying influence. As it is Alma always makes a terrible scene, but then invariably she gives Darcourt what he wants.”

A door slammed inside and footsteps came their way.

“Would you care for a cup of coffee, my boy?” Grand’mere asked as Darcourt strode out onto the gallery.

He shook his head and went to sit on the balustrade with a frown knitting his brows as he stared out over the lawn.

“Positive?” She held the pot poised over an extra cup.

Darcourt looked at them sitting at the table as if seeing them for the first time. “Oh. Yes.”

“You’re very glum,” Grand’mere commented as she poured. He smiled as he took his cup from her and blew on the coffee to cool it. “Just thinking.”

“Marvelous.” Irritation made her voice dry.

A faint color appeared under his skin, but Darcourt unbent. “I was thinking of Theresa. Someone or something has convinced Mother that she is a dangerous lunatic. She is actually afraid of her own daughter. Even Bernard seems to think that she managed to elude Denise long enough to attack Ellen night before last. I can’t believe it.”

“I’m sure that is understandable. You are her brother.”

“Even if I was not I would not believe it. We were children together. Brothers and sisters usually know one another better than anyone else, even their parents. Theresa was never vicious. She would never hurt anything, never. It bothers me to have everyone thinking that she could.”

“It is a fact that Theresa attacked Ellen in the library not so long ago.”

“Yes, we found them fighting. But was that all there was to it?”

Elizabeth would have liked to know what Darcourt had in mind, but she was too much aware of her own part in the struggle in the library to ask. He did not seem to be directly accusing her of anything, however. She kept her eyes on her sèvres china cup, running a finger along the gold band of its rim and over the smooth, apricot-colored sides.

“Darcourt! I want to talk to you.”

Alma Delacroix sailed out onto the gallery. Then she checked herself when she saw the table in the corner with Grand’mere and Elizabeth seated at it. Her eyes were black in the dead white, of her liberally maquillaged face. Above them her black brows lifted and her nostrils were flared as she tried to recover her poise and disguise her temper.

“Maman?” Darcourt said, his eyes gleaming with amusement at her predicament.

Finally Alma smiled. “I would like a word with you, mon fils,” she said in a coaxing voice.

“By all means.” He did not move.

“Alone.”

A brooding look closed over his face and his gold flecked brown eyes narrowed. Still he did not move.

“Must I remind you—”

“Ah no, Maman,” he interrupted. “I know who holds the purse strings.”

“You are being insolent!”

“Doubtless.”

“I cannot and will not abide it.” When Darcourt sat on unmoving her voice dropped to a chiding, sorrowful note and she moved to his side. “Come, my son. Let us not quarrel.”

Grand’mere, from the look on her face unable to abide the scene any longer, rose abruptly. The action shook the small table and the silver coffeepot teetered on its slender legs. Alma swooped with startling agility for such a large woman, and put a stilling hand on the ornate lid just as Elizabeth, sitting beside it, touched it.

“Thank you, you were both very quick,” Grand’mere said before she walked away with slow dignity. In a moment they could hear her giving orders in the hall to have the breakfast dishes cleared away.

“Now what ailed her?” Darcourt asked.

“Old age,” Alma answered viciously.

“Don’t depend on it.” A look Elizabeth could not understand passed between Darcourt and his mother.

“I will leave you also, if you will excuse me,” she said, rising to her feet. Neither Darcourt nor his mother answered her, probably because they were too intent on themselves. But as she walked away she could feel them staring after her. As soon as she was out of their sight, she heard Alma’s haranguing voice begin.

Despite the bright sunlight outside, the hall was dim. The wide windows at the far end beckoned, and having nothing else to do she walked toward them and stood looking out.

There was no gallery at the back of the house. The windows looked down on the garden with larkspur and daisies and early roses in full bloom. Beyond the garden the ground sloped to the bayou, its banks overgrown with wild azalea and willows genuflecting to their reflections in the water. Elizabeth did not see the beauty. She was thinking of Theresa.

Apparently the girl had never said why she had attacked Elizabeth, had never mentioned that she had seen Elizabeth going through Bernard’s desk. Did she remember? Or did she think no one would believe her? Whatever the reason, in some strange manner the fact made Elizabeth feel guilty, as if she had taken advantage of Theresa’s weakness. And hadn’t she? Since Theresa’s visit to her room the night before she had stayed in Elizabeth’s mind, with her shadowed eyes, her pathetic dignity. She could not shake the idea that she was in part responsible for Theresa’s disturbance and her confinement. She could not help thinking that Theresa would have been better if she had never come.

Deep inside her chest ironic laughter bubbled. If she had never come … she wished she had never come, not in deceit, not as Ellen, Joseph’s mother. The weight of her deception grew daily heavier. At times she felt an almost unbearable compulsion to confess, to tell them who she really was. Added to her old fear that they would guess she was a fraud was a new one: that one day she would blurt out the truth. It was funny.

Fleetingly she thought back to the day in the woods when Bernard had come upon her under the dogwood tree and told her that he was Joseph’s legal guardian. That feeling of being in a trap she had experienced had increased a dozen times over, and so had that impression that there was a certain justice in what was happening to her. She could not escape the knowledge that she had no one to blame but herself.

After a while she heard Darcourt and his mother come into the hall from the front gallery. Alma went to her room and Darcourt continued on to descend the stairs. Elizabeth half turned toward them, but they did not seem to notice her there at the end of the hall. When Darcourt’s footsteps had ceased and the front door slammed behind him, Elizabeth walked down the hall toward her own room, wondering what she could do with herself. Grand’mere had given her a piece of embroidery to do to pass the long, idle hours, but the prospect of returning to it did not have much appeal.

The two doors nearest her on the left were open. One was to the schoolroom, which had beyond it the small bedroom that had been allocated to Denise. Connected to the schoolroom by a common door was the old nursery where Theresa slept. As she passed the second of the doors Elizabeth heard a small sound. She stopped, listening, but she did not have to hear it clearly to know what it was.

It was Theresa. She was crying.

Elizabeth stood immobile, listening. Two maids in blue dresses, white aprons and white tignons, mounted the stairs and looked back at her curiously before going on out to clear the table on the gallery. Behind them came a small Negro errand boy of about ten who eyed her out of the corners of enormous eyes before he took his seat on the long hall bench and tucked his bare feet under it. He had taken a piece of grubby string from his pocket and begun to play cat’s cradle before Elizabeth moved on down the hall past him.

Callie, as watchful as a setting hen, looked up at Elizabeth as she opened the door. She had pulled her chair to the window for light while she hemmed a new supply of diapers for Joseph. The baby lay on the floor picking at one of the pieced squares of the quilt that served him as a pallet.

He had squirmed and turned so that his long white dress was twisted under him. Elizabeth knelt beside him and straightened it out, pulling it down over his feet and spreading it out like a fan, tickling him a little, rolling him back and forth in play. He laughed and reached for her with his closed hands, wanting to be picked up. Her hem contracted with the pain of love arid fear, the fear that harm might come to him. She picked him up, hugging him to her.

Still, she could not get the sound of Theresa’s crying out of her head. She remembered that first day at Oak Shade when she had surprised Theresa outside her room. The girl had asked about the baby then. What was it she had said? “It might die, babies do, sometimes.” Yet, she had been happy when Elizabeth had asked her if she would like to see Joseph. Bernard had appeared then and she had not come in. Theresa had never seen him.

Unless it was when she carried him to the head of the stairs and left him.

A chill ran along her nerves at the thought, and her half-formed impulse to take Joseph to see Theresa suffered a check. It seemed mad, a crazy thing to do, a terrible risk, also. But in some intuitive manner she knew it was right. Before she could change her mind she stood up with the baby in her arms and started toward the door.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” she said in answer to Callie’s questioning expression.

She knocked firmly on the door of Theresa’s room. She heard approaching footsteps, and then Denise stood in the half-open door.

“What is it?” the Frenchwoman asked. Her voice contained the slight note of insolence that she always used when speaking to Elizabeth alone.

“I would like to see Theresa,” Elizabeth replied evenly.

“I cannot allow that.”

“Oh? Have you been ordered to keep out all visitors?”

Denise shrugged, and moved back to let Elizabeth enter. Theresa was sitting on the bed.

“Theresa?” Elizabeth came into the room.

Theresa did not answer, but there was a flicker of interest in her tear-drowned eyes.

“You came to see me last night, so Joseph and I have come to see you today.”

Theresa sat up. “Joseph, the baby?”

“Yes, of course.” Elizabeth tried to smile as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She stepped forward and put the baby on the bed beside Theresa. Joseph protested at being put down, and an anxious look crossed Theresa’s face, but though it was difficult, Elizabeth turned her back on him and went to the window.

She threw back the drapes, letting light flood into the room. Dust flew into the air, motes of it turning slowly in the bright sunlight and settled slowly onto the thick scum already on the furniture. Theresa blinked like an owl in the sudden light and drew back, putting up a hand to shield her eyes.

“Come,” Elizabeth said, holding out her hand after she had picked up Joseph. “We will go into the schoolroom where it is more pleasant.”

Theresa blinked rapidly, staring at the hand Elizabeth offered.

“Don’t you want to play with Joseph?”

“He—he will cry.” Her eyes were on Joseph, who had stopped fretting the moment Elizabeth picked him up.

“No he won’t. I’ll show you how to hold him.”

“Truly? You will let me hold him?”

“I promise.”

To Elizabeth’s dismay, tears welled again into Theresa’s eyes, but she placed her thin, wiry hand into Elizabeth’s and slid down from the four-poster bed.

Denise stood back from the door, watching, a grim expression about her mouth.

Elizabeth looked at her, her green eyes cold. “We will use the schoolroom for now. Will you please see that Theresa’s room is thoroughly cleaned? Thoroughly. Change the bed linen. Sweep the rug, dust the furniture, the drapes, the window sills, the bed hangings. Everything. Then have them prepare a bath.”

Denise did not move. Her heavy dark brows met over her nose as she frowned.

“You do not have to do my bidding, that is true,” Elizabeth said slowly, “but you would be well advised to do it. I am persuaded that Grand’mere would not be pleased with the state of this room, even if it is a prison.”

“You have taken so much on yourself, why, I see no reason that you cannot take the ordering of the room upon yourself also,” Denise said jerkily.

“I am not responsible. You are.” Elizabeth walked to the door and opened it. Then she stood waiting.

Denise wanted to refuse. The struggle moved across her face, pride vying with caution, as she tried to decide if Elizabeth had more influence with Grand’mere than she. Caution won, but the malevolent look she threw at Elizabeth before she went out the door was that much more intense because of the defeat of her pride.

The time passed quickly. Toward the end of the visit Theresa was persuaded to hold Joseph in her arms. She stared down at the baby and slowly, carefully, she smiled. It was the first genuine smile Elizabeth had seen on her lips in a long time.

Theresa examined the baby’s fingers, toes, and ears, marveling at his fingernails, and eyelashes like a new mother. Once she looked up at Elizabeth and opened her mouth as if to say something, but then she shut her lips tightly and dropped her head.