Iron Lace Part 38

"No!"

"Do you dream of me? Of what we could have had? Or did your father destroy that, too?"

"Don't, Rafe."

"Answer me."

The dreams had been so deeply hidden that she hadn't admitted to them. Now she knew they had been with her since the night of the fire. Once she had believed in love and in herself. She had dared to reach for happiness, and still did, when she slept. But in her waking hours she had reached for little but revenge. She had struggled to regain everything she had lost, everything except the one thing she really wanted.

She couldn't tell him; she would never be free if she said the words out loud. "Now I know everything. Be content with that." She tried to turn away, but he clamped his hand on her shoulder.

"Content? Can you imagine I feel anything like contentment? I don't care if you understand me. I want you to look at me and see exactly what I am. I'm a better man than the one you married, a better man than your father. I'm the man who could have made you happy."

"You killed my father!"

"No! Greed killed him. And he took you down with him, Aurore. There's nothing left of the woman I loved. Nothing!"

Her cheeks were wet with tears. "How could it have come to this? Love Love's a poor word for what I felt for you. You were all the things I'd never even dared to hope for. When you betrayed me, all those things died. If there's nothing left of the woman you loved, that's why."

He touched her cheek. Not gently, but as if he needed a test to see if her tears were real. She thought his hands trembled. "Don't shut your eyes. Look at me. What do you see? The man you loved? Or the man who betrayed you? A man, or a man whose blood is tainted?"

"Can it matter?"

"It matters!"

"I see Rafe Cantrelle, a man I've loved and a man I've hated. A man who is what he is despite and because of his heritage. A man."

"Do you see a man who still wants you?"

She saw desire in his eyes then, desire as new as this night and as old as their first meeting. An answering flicker stirred within her; she turned away to hide it. "No."

He put his hand on her shoulder. "I see a woman who's learned to lie."

She could feel each of his fingers through her blouse, drawing her toward him. "I'm going back now. Let me go."

"I don't think so."

"You won't force me."

"If you see that much, then try looking into yourself. Tell me what's there."

"Nothing! You left me nothing!"

"I left you my heart."

She faced him. She saw that he meant it, and that he hated himself for it. She saw how he had tried to protect himself and how he had failed. She saw ten years of h.e.l.l, but, most terrible of all, she couldn't tell if the h.e.l.l was his, or a reflection of her own. "No..."

He dropped his hand. "Our lives have led us here. If you're strong enough to challenge fate, run away now."

She couldn't run away. In despair, she realized that she couldn't move.

He cradled her face in his hands and held it still. His lips were warm and searching, and as he drank her tears she knew there would be no force. She wouldn't run; she wouldn't submit. She would consent; she would rejoice, as if ten years and terrible betrayal had never separated them.

His taste, his scent, the texture of his skin, all were unbearably familiar. He moved his fingers through her hair, not to possess or punish, but to savor the feel of it. She was exhausted from struggle; there was nothing left inside her to summon a voice of reason. The only realities were his lips on hers, his fingers releasing the b.u.t.tons on her dress, his hands against her skin, her heart beating faster.

The years faded away, and she was a young woman in her beloved's arms. Rafe had taught her what little she knew of love, and she had never forgotten it. Everything that had happened since seemed a blasphemy, and his body was redemption. There was no cruelty in his hands, no punishment in his lips. As he took, he returned pleasure until she was heavy with it.

"This will change your life," he whispered.

She remembered their night on the Dowager, Dowager, and her response. "Dear G.o.d, I hope so." And it was true. She wanted nothing so much as change. She wanted to be the woman who had believed in love. She wanted to forget the lies, the deceptions, the secrets, of the past ten years. She wanted him. She wanted to be reborn. and her response. "Dear G.o.d, I hope so." And it was true. She wanted nothing so much as change. She wanted to be the woman who had believed in love. She wanted to forget the lies, the deceptions, the secrets, of the past ten years. She wanted him. She wanted to be reborn.

His flesh was warm, and the breeze from the Gulf was cool against her naked skin. He pulled her into a hidden place beside a dune, where the sand was as soft as clouds against her back. In a voice hoa.r.s.e with emotion, he told her that he loved her, and she knew it was true, just as she knew that he hated himself because it was a weakness.

There was nothing to say in return. Her body warmed to his as if it had been frozen in time. As he entered her, she knew that she had never stopped loving him, and that she never would. They were doomed to love each other.

They were doomed.

"Look at me. Be sure you know who I am."

At the height of pa.s.sion she opened her eyes and stared into his. She knew who he was. She saw his torment, his struggles, the boy, the man. The man who would haunt her dreams forever. "I know." She wrapped her arms and legs around him. She wanted to swallow him, to keep him inside her forever, to never relinquish a moment of their coming together. "I know!"

He spilled his seed inside her as she found her own pleasure.

Afterward, they lay without touching. Shadows moved between them, visions of moments that had pa.s.sed and moments still to come. Tears choked her, and she didn't know which of them she wanted to cry for first.

"Will you tell me about Nicolette?" she asked at last. "Or will you still punish me?"

He turned to her. "Nicolette is her mother's daughter. In the end, it was impossible to resist loving her, no matter how dangerous it was."

She gave a small, choked cry. He gathered her close and held her tightly against him. "You gave her to me when she was an infant, but the day I saw you in Audubon Park was the day you made her mine."

"Then you're a real father to her?"

"I try."

"Tell me about her. Please?"

He told her the little things, and the big. She listened avidly.

In too short a time, he had finished. "She'd rather sing than talk, and usually does. She exasperated every music teacher I found until Clarence Valentine took her under his wing. She knows the words to any song after she's heard it once. She sings for me every night before she goes to bed. Sometimes, hours later, when I go upstairs to my room, I still hear her humming."

She couldn't speak. This was what she had wanted for her daughter, but the picture tortured her. She had sacrificed this: contented evenings, the warm arms of the only man she had ever loved, a daughter she could never replace.

"She asks about her mother more often now," he said. "Next time I'll tell her that her mother loved her. That she wanted her very much and watches over her still."

"Please."

He stroked her hair. "We haven't been given a second chance."

"This...tonight...will only make things harder for us."

He turned so that she could see his face. "I'm going to leave New Orleans."

"No..."

"I'm going to take Nicolette and go. I'll start a new life, and so will you."

"Rafe, you can't leave. Not now."

"Especially now."

Even as she protested again, she knew he was right. Their lives were so terribly entwined that disaster was inevitable. She couldn't leave Hugh; she couldn't live openly with Rafe. There was no place where together they could keep Nicolette safe from hatred and prejudice, no place safe from Henry's reach.

"Will I know where you are?"

"No. Your husband's a dangerous man. What would he do to you if he discovered you no longer hate me?"

"I just need to know where you'll be. I just need to be able to picture you there."

"Don't picture me. Forget I exist. We've nearly destroyed each other already. You have to be completely free of me or I will destroy you, and you me."

"Why did it have to come to this?"

"Because neither one of us was pure enough to challenge fate and win." He brushed her hair off her cheek. "Have you forgiven me for everything I've done?"

"Have you forgiven me?"

They stared into each other's eyes and knew that neither would ever really forget the pain endured at the other's hands. It was as much their legacy as the love that had brought them to this place and time.

"You'll be gone, but you'll still be in my life." She kissed him, but her lips trembled. "I'll always wonder where you are. I'll think about Nicolette until the day my heart stops beating. I've always prayed I'd catch another glimpse of her. Every time I turn a corner, I hope that by some chance she'll be there. Now I'll never see her again." Her voice caught.

"It would just be harder for you if you did."

"No! I'd have a memory of her, a real memory. Rafe, can I see her before you go? Talk to her? Hear her sing? Just once?"

"It's too dangerous."

"We could be careful. Please! It's all I'll ask."

"I don't know."

She knew she had to be content with that. She touched his face, memorizing all the planes and angles, the textures of his skin. "Remember I loved you. Wherever you go, remember that. I can give you that to keep."

He kissed her, and no more words were exchanged. Their bodies said what their lips could not. When he was gone, she dressed in the shadows. It was almost morning before she returned to the cottage and packed to go home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

She was not to tell Nicolette who she really was.

Aurore folded the letter from Rafe and gazed around the room, searching for a hiding place. After the letter arrived that morning, she had slipped it under her mattress. Her bedroom was decorated sparingly with cypress furniture made by Louisiana artisans of the early nineteenth century. But none of the sleek inlaid armoires or cabinets was a safe place for secrets.

A small fire burned on the hearth to steal the chill from the November air. As the United States celebrated the end of the war, the deadly Spanish influenza had arrived. Aurore kept the house warm, just as she diligently kept Hugh out of crowds and away from Henry, who went to the riverfront every day. Epidemics of old had often arrived on foreign ships; Aurore was frightened that the flu might, too.

Silently she repeated the contents of the letter. On Friday, Rafe and Nicolette would wait for her in an apartment above a shop he owned in the Vieux Carre. The old woman to whom he rented it would be away, and she had agreed to let Rafe use it. Aurore was not to tell Nicolette who she was.

How could Rafe believe that she would ever have the courage?

She went to the fireplace, where she had known since receiving the letter that she would have to consign it. She didn't want to burn it. Even now she could see Rafe's handwriting, a bold scrawl that was so like the man. They had created a child together, yet she had nothing of him.

Nothing was left but ashes on the hearth when she heard the door open behind her. Without turning, she recognized the footsteps crossing the room. She rubbed her hands together as if she had been warming them. "We left supper for you, Henry. Sally roasted a hen, and there are potato croquettes and turnip tops, I think."

She turned before he could reach her. She could protect herself best if she knew what to expect. "I'm sorry I ate without you. Would you like me to come sit with you?"

"Such an accommodating woman."

"I try to be." She smiled the cool, inscrutable smile she saved just for him. She saw that he had been drinking, though it might not have been apparent to anyone else. He had a large capacity for whiskey, which usually seemed to intensify his mood. But she had never blamed any of Henry's failings on alcohol.

"Who else do you accommodate, Rory?"

"What do you mean?"

"Who else?"

She searched for an answer. "I try to please Hugh, but not spoil him. I try to be as pleasant as possible in business dealings...."

"And Rafe Cantrelle? Do you accommodate him, too?"

She was careful not to show her alarm. She lowered her voice. "Please. That was a long time ago...before we were married. Are you going to punish me forever for something that happened before we met?"

He moved so swiftly she didn't have time to retreat. He wrapped his fingers around her neck, the heel of his hand pressed tightly against her throat. "Then let's talk about Grand Isle."

She tried to get away but couldn't. He held her while she struggled. "Let go of me!" she gasped.

He pressed his hand against her throat until she could barely breathe. She struggled more, but the harder she tried to get away from him, the harder he pressed. Finally she made herself go limp, and he relaxed his hand until air rushed back into her lungs.

"Tell me about Grand Isle."

She took a deep breath, then another. The room spun. "There's nothing to tell. I went there for the dedication of the church. I...I gave a donation in my mother's name after she died. As a memorial. That's all."

"You didn't tell me."

"I didn't want you to be angry. It was my money, but I thought you might disapprove."