Dark Masquerade (27 page)

He reached over and took the glass from her nerveless fingers and set it behind him on the desk.

“I am sorry for what happened tonight, sorry that it could have taken place on property belonging to me. I wish I could have foreseen and prevented it.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“No. It wasn’t,” he took her up abruptly. “If you had not tried to run away from me it would never have happened!”

“I was not running away from you,” Elizabeth protested.

“Weren’t you?” His smile was grim. “I owe you another apology for the manner in which I treated you this afternoon. It was not realistic to expect you to be completely honest with me. Nor was it my place to mete out punishment for my disappointment.”

“Don’t. Please. I should be apologizing to you. I should never have come here as I did. I wouldn’t have, except that I wanted Joseph to have his heritage, to grow up as part of his father’s tradition, and because I couldn’t keep him as well as you would be able to do. It wasn’t the money. Truly it wasn’t. I’m sorry. I will try to make it up to you, all of you, if you will allow me to stay. Not as Felix’s widow, of course, but as Joseph’s aunt.”

“That is impossible.” Bernard turned away from her, fidgeting with the cigar box on the desk.

After lowering her pride enough to make the appeal she had sworn she would never make, his harsh refusal sent tears crowding into her throat. They were not simply tears of disappointment or even of regret for the loss of Joseph. There was some deeper feeling hidden behind them, a feeling she would not analyze, not now. She could hardly speak as she asked, “Why?”

“It would be intolerable.”

Slow to forgive? She had been wrong. He would never forgive her.

“I—I understand.”

He swung around, his eyes narrowed. “No. I don’t think you do. It would be intolerable—it has been intolerable to have you constantly near, and yet never be able to speak to you as a man, never be able to touch you because of that shroud of widow’s weeds you wear. I could not smile at you or even make you laugh as I wanted to, out of respect for my dead brother. No, I will not tolerate that again. Joseph’s aunt? I swear by all I hold most dear that the only way you will stay in this house is as my wife. If you will not do that then you can go!”

“Your wife!” Her green eyes, glittering with unshed tears, were wide. “But what of Celestine?”

“What of her?”

“She expects to marry you.”

“Celestine will be leaving us in the morning. It seems she was not at all pleased with the way she was treated this afternoon, or with the way her information was received. As for marrying her, I told her as politely as I was able that I did not care to have an informer as my wife.”

“What did she say?” Elizabeth allowed a small smile to reach her eyes.

“A great deal, but the pertinent thing was to accuse me of preferring an imposter.”

A thought struck Elizabeth as she remembered the sly things that Darcourt had said, the poison that he had given her so much more effectively in words than he had managed to do in lemonade. She said uncertainly, “Not for the money—?”

“What money?” Bernard looked genuinely puzzled.

“That Felix—”

“My darling idiot. Since you were never Felix’s wife you are not entitled to the money and it goes back into Joseph’s estate whether I marry you or not, but I certainly have no intention of marrying you for a paltry sum like that.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth blushed. “I was forgetting. I have grown so used to thinking of it as mine.”

At that he laughed and drew her into his arms. “Then will you listen while I tell you I love you? And will you believe me?”

“I’m not sure. You have acted at times as if you hated me.”

“Love often masquerades as hate,” he told her softly, “but I will enjoy convincing you that I speak the truth.”

At last she raised her head from his shoulder.

“What will we tell them, all those people who have heard of me through the plantation grapevine as Ellen, Felix’s widow?”

“We will introduce you to them as Elizabeth, my wife.” His mouth took on a bitter twist. “The events of this day will provide gossip for the parish for a long time to come. I will wager anything you wish that in the gossip over Darcourt’s death, and then our approaching marriage, no one will notice a change of name.” Then he smiled down at her again as if dismissing all thoughts of that nature. “If they should notice they will either think you were christened with several names, as they were, or that they must have heard it wrong. It doesn’t matter very much to me what they think.”

“And if someone should question me about it?”

“Smile and look innocent as you so well know how to do.”

“Suppose they ask you?”

“They won’t,” he said, and looking at his face that could be so forbidding, Elizabeth knew that he spoke nothing but the truth.

He smiled, looking down at her, and the smile erased the sternness, touched his eyes with tenderness, and softened the hard lines of his lips that he lowered to hers, expecting her surrender.

There are many things more important to a woman’s heart than winning a battle of wills. He was not disappointed.

Since publishing her first book at age twenty-seven,
New York Times
bestselling and award-winning author Jennifer Blake has gone on to write over sixty-five historical and contemporary novels in multiple genres. She brings the story-telling power and seductive passion of the South to her stories, reflecting her eighth-generation Louisiana heritage. Jennifer lives with her husband in northern Louisiana.

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