The Taking (6 page)

Read The Taking Online

Authors: Erin McCarthy

“ ‘It is half past midnight and I just returned from Mr. Tradd’s and I am exhilarated! I did as F said. I planted my left foot in front of his house and spun around nine times. I scooped up a handful of dirt where my foot had been and threw it at his front door, then ran like the wind to my landau waiting up the street. Such a thrill! I was so pleased with myself and so aroused that even though I did not have F to satisfy me in the carriage, I did so myself. Ah, to feel so alive when all I have longed for is death... it is a strange, unpleasant mystery.”’
Regan snapped the journal shut, discomfort rushing her. “We shouldn’t be reading this.” It was voyeuristic, to be speaking this woman’s thoughts out loud over cups of wine.
“She’s dead!” Chris protested. “What difference does it make?”
“I don’t know. But I feel like reading this out loud, together, is sort of like making fun of her. And she was clearly struggling through some difficult times.”
When all I have longedforis death...
not the words of a happy woman, and Regan didn’t feel right reading about her pain.
“She’s bat-shit crazy is what you mean.”
Maybe. “Struggling,” Regan repeated. “It’s like poking around in someone’s head. It makes me uncomfortable.”
“She was a rich white woman having premarital sex with a black man and dabbling in voodoo in 1878, and yet she was writing it down in a journal for anyone to find. So I don’t think you should feel guilty about reading it.”
“You think she’s talking about voodoo?”
“It sounds like it to me—spells and dirt tossing. Maybe her paramour was Haitian.”
“He could be. I can’t say I know that much about voodoo.” Regan carefully set the journal in her lap and took another sip of her drink, telling herself the heat in her cheeks was from the wine, not from the memory of the one time she’d made contact with anyone in the voodoo realm. “Did I tell you I asked Jen to find a voodoo priest for my fund-raiser?”
“Oh, really? That’s cool. Is he going to do divinations and make mojo bags or something?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t booked one yet. There was one in particular that came highly recommended and Jen is having trouble making contact with him.” That was stretching the truth. It was Regan who had suggested Felix Leblanc to Jen Dengler, their friend and Regan’s event planner.
She wasn’t sure why she had mentioned his name to Jen, but when they were planning the fund-raiser for the Save Our Cemeteries organization that Regan worked for, they had decided on a quintessential New Orleans theme. They were having zydeco and jazz music, Cajun and Creole food, Mardi Gras decorations, and a voodoo priest. Which had immediately made her think of Felix.
“Isn’t the party in two weeks? He’s probably already booked.”
“Probably.” But Regan had to try, because she wanted to see him again, if for no other reason than to tell him thank-you. It had been his asking to see her ring and her removing it, something he probably wouldn’t even remember, that had given her the courage to leave Beau. She was curious to see if Felix would intuitively know that her marriage was over.
Not that she believed he had told her anything other than vague pronouncements. She didn’t.
If she were brutally honest, she’d admit she had been attracted to him that night, and a small part of her wanted to see if that had been a weird anomaly or if she would see him again and come to the same conclusion—that he was hot, and she wanted to have sex with him. Not that she would ever act on it, but she was intrigued.
“Hit me,” she said to Chris, holding out her empty cup.
“So ...” he said, as he picked up the bottle and poured. “How are you doing? Is Beau-Beau the bastard behaving himself?”
She shrugged. “If calling me a greedy bitch is behaving, then yes.”
“How can you be greedy?” Chris refilled his own cup. “You’re the one who has all the money! What an asshole.”
“That would be accurate.” But sitting on her own balcony, of her own house, it didn’t matter nearly as much. Their divorce probably wouldn’t be final for months because of Beau’s stalling. They had been legally separated since January 1, and he had fought and been as petty as humanly possible through the whole process, but money was good for a lot of things and eventually they would get it settled. Regan had hired one of Beau’s chief rivals for her attorney, and he had gone for the jugular.
Thank God she had listened to her father and had Beau sign a prenup before their wedding.
“He wanted a lump-sum settlement for all the money he said he’d spent on me over the year of our marriage and six-month engagement. But since I paid for our condo with cash, I’m offering that to him free and clear. My lawyer says the judge can’t argue with my generosity.”
“He doesn’t even deserve that.”
She shrugged. “Maybe not. But I don’t care. I just want out.” The wine was warming her from the inside out and she had a happy little buzz going. “He sucks.”
Chris laughed. “Oh, my God, I love hearing that come out of your mouth. That’s totally worth the nine-ninety-nine this wine cost me. Why did you ever marry the putz in the first place?”
“I don’t know.” It was a question she had asked herself many times. Regan looked into her wine cup. No answers in the pink fizz. “I was twenty-eight, ready to settle down, have a family. He was charming, had a successful career, my family loved him... he treated me well when we were dating. It was just easy, I guess, and I thought I was in love with him.”
“I always knew he was an asshole.” Chris studied her over his glass. “You know if you had stayed, eventually he would have gotten physical. Mental abuse almost always turns to physical.”
Regan shuddered, both fear and relief riding up her spine. “That’s part of the reason why I left—fear of how far it would go. Though I don’t know that he would have ever gone there. It really was more just that I couldn’t be what he wanted and I was so damn tired of trying to please him. I’ve wondered a lot why he ever married me ... he really didn’t seem to like me the way I am.”
There was a pause while they both reflected, then Chris waved his hand in dismissal. “Well, you’re everything I want, and you’re an amazing friend. And thank God you did leave, because these chairs needed a home. Think of all the awesome parties we are going to throw in this house. Wait until Mardi Gras next year, we’ll blow the roof off this place.”
Glad he had lightened the mood again, Regan grinned. “I would kind of like to keep the roof. But a party would be fun.” Sinking back in her chair, legs stretched out, she sighed in contentment. “If I wind up old and alone in this massive house, will you take pity on me and move in with me?”
“Only if the football team is here too.”
“Deal.”
She raised her cup to his and they bumped them together, wine sloshing out and splashing their fingers. Regan laughed. “I’m loving life right this minute.”
It was the first time in a long, long while she could say that and mean it.
“I wish to go for a drive,” Camille told one of her footmen as she came down the stairs, gloves in hand. “Have the landau brought around immediately.”
There was a pause, the footman glancing toward the clock hanging over the rosewood table in the foyer. “Miss?”
Camille’s temper flared. Everyone always telling her what to do, how to live. There was no one left on this earth who had the right to an opinion as to how she behaved, and she hoped the servants, the ladies in society, would all choke on their disapproval.
She glared at the footman from the bottom step. “Are you now feigning a hearing impediment? You heard me, you insolent laze-about. Yes, I am well aware of the hour, and you will do as you are told without opinion or hesitation.”
He was already stammering an apology and scrambling to do her bidding, which gave her great satisfaction. She had been stripped of all of her loved ones, but she had been left with the cloak of copious wealth, and she did appreciate the security it provided, the power within her own household. But because of her sex, having money also brought the burden of society’s rigid rules, and the fawning attention of men seeking to claim both her hand and her fortune.
The thought of marriage was abhorrent.
A husband would seize her assets, control her spending, and dictate how her time was spent.
Most of all, a husband would forbid her from seeing Felix, and she was not going to give up that peculiar pleasure—no, necessity—for anyone.
The voodoo practitioner had shown her how to awaken the delicious desires of her ripe body, and he was taking her through the labyrinth of magic, down the dark road that blurred the lines of this world and the next, where at the end she would have her family once again with her.
Strolling across the marble floor to head outside for her ride, Camille tossed her gloves on the Louis XIV chair that resided next to the front door. It was hot as Hades outside and she had suddenly realized there was absolutely no reason to follow convention when she was on a mission to rid herself of an unwanted suitor at nearly midnight. Why suffer through damp palms when there was no one to see her? Besides, she would soil the gloves when she threw dirt at the door.
Mr. Tradd wanted both her hand and her fortune, and she was no longer inclined to give him either, so she was going to conduct her very first spell—a ritual to rid herself of his bothersome presence in her life.
Her parents had wanted her to marry him, but he was two things she could no longer tolerate at this point in her life—he was both boring and bereft of money.
It was time to make the stuffy social climber disappear. The thought of doing so made her smile in satisfaction as she went out the front door and took the hand of her footman to step up into the landau. His eyes widened at the contact with her bare skin, and feeling more than a little wicked, Camille drew her fingers across the length of his palm before releasing him.
Desire replaced the shock in his eyes, and she gave him a saucy smile before turning to look out onto Royal Street. Perhaps after she had given her virginity to Felix, she would play with the footman. He was quite attractive, and displayed a rather impressive figure beneath his coat. There would be no disapproval from him for her behavior if she were on her knees before him, she could virtually guarantee. She laughed aloud, shifting on the seat against the sudden rush of arousal.
“Mr. Tradd’s residence,” she told her coachman, who had the good sense to neither protest nor hesitate.
Her suitor lived in a well-appointed house in the American district uptown, giving every appearance of having ample funds, but Camille knew it was a façade. He was using the last of his ready cash to let the house, and within months he would be solely reliant on his income as a banker to survive, hence his desperate desire to marry her. Camille found it amusing that a banker had no money, but not amusing enough to bind herself to him in marriage.
As far as she was concerned, he should have had the good sense not to lose all his money gambling.
When they pulled up to the crossroad of his street and the main thoroughfare, Camille ordered her coachman to stop. “I’m going for a quick stroll,” she said. “I shall return momentarily.”
“Miss, I don’t think that you should go alone.”
But she ignored him, vaulting down with no assistance, and set off at a quick pace along the street, her linen gown swirling around her legs, her skin dewy from the humidity. She had chosen to wear dancing slippers instead of boots so that she could remove them in front of Mr. Tradd’s, and she did just that as she approached the lawn in front of his residence. The street had gaslights, which allowed her to see, yet weren’t strong enough to alert any neighbors to her presence should they glance outside.
The door of his Greek Revival home was red, which made her laugh. It was the color said to ward off evil spirits, but it would not prevent her from infusing his household with her magic. Of course, she knew she wasn’t evil, just determined. But perhaps the magic was evil. It was of no importance to her as long as her goal was achieved. She would fling the very flames of Hell at his house if it would rid her of his presence. She padded across the dry lawn, slippers in hand, toes unaccustomed to the feel of the hard ground. Since the rainstorms of early July, when the fevers had come, the summer had been dry, which would suit her purposes.
Throwing her arms out, she tipped her head back and did a slow pirouette, resting all her weight on her left foot as she completed a full rotation.
Nine, eight. She stared up at the wide-open sky, thick, dark clouds rolling in as she chanted softly, “Mr. Tradd, Mr. Tradd.”
Seven, six. Warm air rushed over her face as she spun faster, commanding, “Be gone, be gone.”

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