Midnight Confessions by Candice Proctor

Author:Candice Proctor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307416063
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Papère and I used to go out to the lake crabbing and shrimping together all the time,” said Dominic in that boastful tone young males tend to use when they’re trying to impress a rival. “He knows lots of things you don’t know, about the bayous and the swamps and all the animals and plants that live there.”

The major held his big cavalry mount to an easy trot beside the shay on the smooth shell road. “Papère?” he said, ducking his head as if hiding a smile.

“Mon grand-père,” explained Dominic with a condescending, sideways glance that said clearly, You don’t know? “It was Papère who taught me to drive. Maman said I was too young, but Papère says we de Beauvaises are born sportsmen.” There was a pause, filled with the steady tattoo of the horses’ hooves and the jingle of the harness, before Dominic added, his voice suddenly going flat and tight, “Of course, he can’t do much anymore. He needs Baptiste to help him now wherever he goes.”

Listening to him, Emmanuelle felt a swelling of emotion close her throat. Up until last May, Jean-Lambert de Beauvais had been a vital, energetic man with boundless energy and a long, quick stride and cheery bright eyes that belied his seventy-something years. Even after her marriage to Philippe had soured, she and Jean-Lambert had managed to maintain an easy friendship, spending long hours together fishing for bass on the bayous of Beau Lac, or attending performances at the French Opera House. Then word had reached New Orleans that the old man’s only surviving son had died in a hail of Yankee bullets on the Bayou Crevé, and Jean-Lambert had aged twenty years in one night.

“If it wasn’t for his leg,” Dominic was saying, “he’d be out there shooting Yankees right now.”

“Dominic,” whispered Emmanuelle with a warning frown, but the man on the horse only laughed, one hand coming up to catch the brim of his black felt hat as a breeze hit them, warm and heavy with steamy moisture from last night’s rain. He had a new hat, she noticed, its twin ostrich feathers fluttering rakishly as his gelding cavorted in playful impatience. Then he glanced sideways at her, his eyes flashing with a smile as quick and bright and dangerous as the lightning that had shattered the sky last night, the night she almost gave herself to him, and she looked away.

They were passing through the outer faubourgs now, the houses here more scattered, with long stretches of whitewashed picket fences disappearing beneath tangles of hydrangeas and honeysuckle and altheas growing green and rampant in the moist heat. She could feel the sun warm on her shoulders, but the motion of the cart stirred up a breeze that brought with it a sweet measure of coolness and tugged at the brim of her black straw hat, so that she took it off and held it in her lap. Closing her eyes against the brightness of the sun, she lifted her face to the sky.

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