The Fallon Legacy, page 4
She dropped a curtsey to the jurist. “I will be ever so careful, sir. Come, Mr. Fallon.” She took a firmer grip on his arm.
“Tomorrow?” Robert said to Calhoun.
“Yes, tomorrow. I have to get back to Washington soon.”
The girl pulled him away and into the flowing pattern of dancers. He sidestepped down the floor, facing her at arms’ length, the tips of her fingers resting on his palm. Her smile was radiant. “Mon Dieu! I do believe you do not remember me.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said ruefully. They spun and began to sidestep the other way.
Her laughter was glass bells in a breeze. “That is because we have never met. You would be surprised how many men would have claimed to remember. I was testing you.”
“I’d be surprised if you knew enough men to make a judgment. You can’t be more than—what?—twenty? And do you realize you haven’t even told me your name?”
They had reached a point in the dance where she curtsied and he bowed deeply. When they straightened he realized that her face had changed. The coquetry, the fluttering foolishness was gone. “I am Lucille Gautier,” she said, and the patterns of the dance spun them apart, to opposite sides of the room.
He studied her as best he could between the moving dancers. She offered the same smile to every man who took her hand and passed to the next. No, not quite the same smile. The smile she’d given to him was warmer. Damn Moira, anyway.
Lucille flowed back to him, her eyes sparkling on his face. “May I call you Robert? I know such a great deal about you that I feel I have that right. Let me see. I know there is a dragon on your left forearm, put there by heathen Chinese. I know you have an ivory-hilted sword you took from the governor of Derna, in North Africa. I know you enjoy women, and cards, and horseracing, but not dice, or cockfighting, or bearbaiting.”
“You’ve studied me. To what purpose?”
“I did not study you at all. Do you not remember what I said in my note? Dominique You told me all about you. You really should learn to remember the contents of billets doux.”
The dance was going to separate them again. Instead, Robert took her hand and, when they reached the point where the couples separated and doubled back, they continued on off the dance floor. He procured two glasses of wine from a waiter and found a place for them against the wall.
“Why would Dominique tell you about me? And why this … well, pursuit, for lack of a better word. I’m old enough to be your father, girl, and don’t think it doesn’t hurt to say that.”
“Lá! Dom is always ready to tell a girl a story about daring deeds. About you, Robert, Dominique You is … colorful.” Her slender fingers caressed the stem of her wineglass in a vaguely disturbing way. “I like colorful men.”
Robert laughed. “That was long ago and far away. I’m a merchant, getting older and less colorful by the day.”
“Some men never get old,” she said. “I was born in New Orleans, but when my father died, my grandmother took me to Europe to live. London and Venice, Rome and Vienna, Paris and Florence. When my grandmother died I went back to New Orleans, to visit the city of my birth.” She sighed. “It was disappointing after Europe, just another provincial American town. But there was Dom. He was not provincial. And you, you are also not provincial. I found I could take passage for Europe as easily from here as from there, so here I am. To take a look at you.” She lowered her eyes, running a fingertip around the rim of her glass.
“I’m hardly a natural wonder,” he said drily. “Now that you’ve had your look, what do you intend to do?”
“I will remain in Charleston for a time. Perhaps we can have a glass of wine together from time to time.”
“I’m a married man,” he said gently. “In Europe it may be different, but in Charleston married men don’t meet with unmarried young ladies.”
“Has no woman ever told you that you are indeed a natural wonder, Robert Fallon?” Before he could speak she set down her wine and tugged him toward the dance floor, where another set was beginning. “Come, let us dance.”
He saw Moira in passing, with Mortimore, with Calhoun, even with Judge Johnson, though how she’d coaxed him onto the floor he couldn’t imagine. Charlotte seemed more interested in ratafia than in dancing, or perhaps it was in the tall young man who kept fetching it for her. A Pinckney, Robert thought, or a Simons.
Lucille was aware of her own beauty. As she moved with him across the floor, floating to his touch like down on the air, laying her hand on his wrist, stroking his cheek with a laugh, so quickly he almost wasn’t certain he had been touched, he realized that her movements, while graceful and discreet, consciously showed off the curve of her breasts, seeming large for her slimness, a slender arm and delicate wrist, her tiny waist above the womanly swell of her hips. Fully clothed and fully decorous, she was as tantalizing as another woman would have been naked and abandoned.
“Robert?” Moira’s touch on his arm made him start. He had been standing against the wall, he realized, waiting for Lucille Gautier to finish dancing with some young buck so he could lead her out again. “Are you all right? You seem preoccupied.”
“I’m fine.” He managed a laugh. “You know I’m not much for parties.” He saw that Charlotte was behind her.
“Are you two ready to go? Finished with your young Pinckney, Charlotte?”
“Simons, Uncle Robert,” she said shyly. “Peter Simons.” A flush rose in her pale cheeks. “And he’s not mine. He’s just … brought me ratafia.”
Moira eyed her shrewdly. “He’ll do quite nicely, dear. And I didn’t notice him taking ratafia to anyone else.” Charlotte’s flush deepened, and Moira smiled. “It’s all right, child. I won’t be embarrassing you anymore. Yes, Robert, we’re ready to go.”
They gathered wraps and cloaks, and made their good-byes to the Alyards while their coach was being brought round. The horses’ breath made white plumes in the night, and their hooves had a chill ring on the cobblestones. Robert settled back next to Moira. Charlotte sat across from them.
“Who was she?” Moira asked quietly.
“She?” Robert said. “Who?”
“The young girl you danced with eight times.” She flicked a glance at Charlotte and dropped her voice still lower. “The one who walked like she had no clothes on. Who is she?”
“I suppose you mean Lucille Gautier,” he said. “I suppose I did dance with her two or three times.”
“Eight times.”
“For God’s sake,” he growled, “you’re always after me for not dancing. Tonight I danced.”
She retreated into an angry silence—more for Charlotte’s sake, he was sure, that anything else—and he sighed for the long night. God, but everything was mounting up. Lopes. The business. Edward. Now this. Lucille Gautier, he decided firmly, was one problem he would do without.
5
Moira counted the knives in the ornate knife-box one more time, then locked it with one of the keys at her belt. Robert objected to the box, but after the slave revolt in Camden six years earlier she put every knife in the house in it. None came out without her knowing who had it and when it would be returned. Their servants might be free blacks, but she would take no chances. Hadn’t an entire village of runaways been found near Georgetown only six months earlier? There were reports free blacks had sold them food and clothing.
She began her morning rounds of the house in a good mood. Albert was overseeing two of the younger maids polishing silver. Not the best silver—that was entrusted only to him—but the everyday. Another maid was waxing the sweeping staircase that arced down into the entry hall, while the last was helping the housekeeper turn bedding.
In the kitchen—a brick building separated from the main house for fire protection—she frowned at the sight of Chloe beating batter in a bowl, the half-healed scar pink on the brown of her face. Edward had been good for two weeks since that. She was half hoping it had frightened him enough to straighten him out, and half afraid it would. He was a child of evil, no matter how angelic he could look when he wanted to, and his very presence made her stomach twist. That the things he did were caused by the taint on him, she had no doubt, but she couldn’t find it in herself to forget it, or forgive him for it, because he reminded her of Robert’s part in that taint. Were he suddenly to seem just another boy, no more destructive or violent than the next, Robert would never be forced to send him away. Her morning’s good mood was abruptly gone.
“All you gals line up!” came a shouted growl from outside, and Hannah, the cook, banged through the door, her fat cheeks gleaming like oiled coal. She waved a wooden spoon in one ham-sized hand. It wasn’t used for stirring, but as a symbol of authority, and to smack the bottoms of kitchen maids who caught her displeasure. Chloe and the other two kitchen maids scurried to put down what they were working on and form a line, big eyes mesmerized by the waving spoon.
“Ma’am,” Hannah said to Moira, dropping as much of a curtsey as her bulk would allow. “I gots to get these here gals straight. Every last dried apple we got done walk off. And I going to find out who done it.” The last was delivered with a savage swipe of the spoon that brought low moans from the maids.
“Perhaps that won’t be necessary,” Moira said. “I’m sure these girls will tell us what they know. Won’t you?”
“Don’t know nothing about no apples, ma’am,” Chloe said, not taking her eyes off Hannah’s spoon. The stout girl next to her only shook her head, and the third, tall slender Iris, stared straight at the floor, mumbling.
“What was that, Iris?” Moira said. “I didn’t hear.”
“Ma’am,” Hannah said, “you go on up to the big house. I bring this Iris girl up in a little bit, and she say everything she know.”
Iris threw one terrified look at the massive cook and spoke out loudly. “I doesn’t know nothing ’bout no apple. I just seed young mast’ Edward going down there three, four time is all.”
“Master Edward ain’t take no three bushel apple,” Hannah said ominously. “You, Iris girl, and the rest of you, get on to the storeroom. I find out about them apple.”
Moira clapped her hands as the kitchen maids began sniffling. “All of you be quiet. Hannah, I want to talk to Edward before you do anything. If I find he has nothing to do with this …” She felt sick at the shining reprieve in the kitchen maids’ faces. For all she knew, one of them had stolen the apples. She could barely admit to herself that she wanted it to be Edward.
“Ma’am,” said Hannah, “what that boy goin’ to do with so many apple? These girl, they—”
“No, Hannah. No.” She couldn’t say any more.
She rushed back to the main house. In the front drawing room she collapsed on a sofa. Stealing dried apples, even three bushels of them, was a small thing compared to the commotion he usually raised. But it would be a sign that he hadn’t changed. God, it was horrible. She wanted him gone so badly that she wanted him to break things, to hurt people. She just wanted him out of her house.
Albert coughed diffidently in the doorway. She didn’t raise her head. “Yes, Albert? What is it?”
“There’s a note, ma’am,” he said hesitantly. “For you. It was brought by a street urchin, ma’am. One of those boys in dirty rags who hangs around the docks.”
“And it’s for me, Albert?”
“Yes, ma’am. He said distinctly, for Mrs. Robert Fallon, ma’am.”
Taking the paper, neither expensive nor cheap, she broke the large lump of blue wax sealing it. She read the first few lines.
“You may go, Albert. I don’t want to be disturbed for a time.” She was astonished at her control, at the calmness of her voice.
When he was gone she opened the note again. The letters were made from straight lines, as if the writer had used a ruler to disguise the hand.
TEN YEARS AGO MOIRA FALLON AND CATHERINE FALLON HOLTZ MURDERED JUSTIN FOURRIER. THEY THREW HIS BODY IN THE RIVER DURING A HURRICANE. SOMEONE SAW IT. IF MOIRA FALLON IS WILLING TO TALK, SHE SHOULD GO TO THE FISH MARKET AT THREE O’CLOCK AND BUY THREE GROUPER.
She crumpled the paper savagely. No one could have seen the killing. Not murder, she thought. Self-defense. The memory of the night still brought nightmares. She had stepped into the drawing room to find Catherine, naked, held at gunpoint by a Justin Fourrier who had left the bounds of sanity. Moira was to have been next.
It had been she who had wielded the heavy silver candlestick that had crushed his skull. God, his blood had been so red. She’d wept, but it had been she who’d stiffened Catherine’s backbone when she discovered Fourrier was dead and panic had her by the throat. Charleston thought Fourrier a respectable man. At best discovery meant the destruction of their reputations, a smearing of the Fallon name. There were always more than enough who would make their own stories to fit the innuendo. She had pleaded, bullied, driven Catherine to help her fetch a mule from the stable, while a hurricane beat at Charleston’s rooftops, to help her take the body to the docks.
Justin Fourrier’s corpse had been disposed of by tides and the harbor sharks. But a blackmailer soon appeared. Jasper Trask, an oily slaver. He had been watching their house that night, watching Fourrier for his own purposes, but he was quick to see where his profit lay. The nightmare hadn’t ended until Trask died at the hands of a confederate later that year.
Now it seemed it hadn’t ended at all. But who? And why so cautious? Trask’s cronies would not have waited so long.
A deafening shriek echoed down the hall, followed closely by the sound of china smashing. Immediately a babble arose, maids’ voices overlapping one another, and in the midst Edward’s voice, protesting. Moira rushed out.
At the back of the entry hall, Albert knelt amid shards of crockery, carefully feeling the arm of a maid who lay moaning. The other maids stood in a knot, rags held to their noses, all talking and none listening. A heavy, stomach-wrenching smell hung in the air.
“What in the name of heaven?” she gasped.
“Chamberpots, ma’am,” the butler said, rising. “I told the girl not to bring down more than one at a time, but she had three when …” He gestured helplessly.
Edward stuck his head out from behind one of the maids, and Moira started. His entire face was red. Rouge, she realized. Her rouge.
“Ma’am,” Albert said, “I believe Patience’s arm is broken.”
“Oh, my God,” she sighed. “Edward—”
“I didn’t mean to hurt her, Auntie,” he broke in. “I was just playing red Indians.” He waved a massive hunting knife.
The knife was too much. It was all too much. She couldn’t cope with this boy, not him and a blackmailer, too. She snatched the knife, and it was all she could do not to shake it at him. He took a wary step back from her anyway.
“You never mean to do anything, do you?” she spat. “But someone always gets hurt, don’t they? And you smile your smile and no one knows you for the little monster you are. You’ll kill someone one fine day, and what will you do then? Smile? Say you didn’t mean it?”
“What’s going on here?” Robert called from the front door.
She whirled on him, stopping him in his tracks with the glitter in her eye. She shook the knife in the air as if it were bloody evidence. “He’s broken Patience’s arm! He’s smashed chamberpots all over the rug! Good Turkey carpet that we’ll never get clean! The smell will be in here for weeks! He’s smeared my rouge all over his face, stolen apples, run through the house waving his great knife. It’s a wonder no one was stabbed. I’ll not wait till he murders us in our beds, Robert Fallon. Do you hear me? I want him out of this house. I want him out! Out!”
His face was as icy as the harbor wind. “I thought I had come to sit quietly with my wife before dinner. The foundry with all the furnaces going is more peaceful than this. I will not be shouted at in my own house. Good day, madam.” He bowed stiffly and as quickly as that was gone, the slam of the door behind him ringing down the hall.
Moira took an involuntary step after him, protest and plea half formed on her lips. She had to tell him about the blackmail. She needed him. The hunting knife dropped unnoticed to the carpet.
“Get a doctor for Patience,” she ordered dully. As she spoke she walked slowly toward the drawing room, not looking at them. “Clean up this mess as best as you can, and do something about the smell. Take Master Edward up to his bedroom and get him clean. He’ll be remaining there except for lessons until further notice. Oh, yes. I’ll need someone to go with me to the fish market. I want to be there by three o’clock.”
“The fish market, ma’am?” Albert was plainly surprised. “The best fish go early, ma’am. There won’t be much left but—”
Moira shut the drawing-room door behind her, cutting him off. Then she began to cry.
6
Robert stormed out of the house in a cold rage. A chill breeze and the gray damp of the just-finished rain suited him well. He walked the cobblestones unheeding of the splashes of passing coaches and wagons.
What did she think she was doing, shouting at him like that, waving a knife like a madwoman, issuing commands? Did she think he’d get rid of the boy if she shouted loud enough, if the boy broke enough dishes or ruined enough rugs?
A ragged urchin, pale face obscured by dirt, darted from a protected corner in split boots that were too big anyway. He wore mittens worn through on the palms, and carried a small tray of roasted walnuts. He couldn’t have been more than ten.
Robert took a twisted paper of nuts and pressed five dollars into the boy’s hand. The urchin stared at the gold piece as if wondering what it was. “I ain’t … I mean, sir, well, they’re a penny,” he mumbled.
Robert tucked the spill of nuts into his coat pocket. “Keep it.”
The boy’s eyes widened, and suddenly he began to run. “Thanks, mister,” he called over his shoulder.
