Forever (4 page)

‘I'll never forgive you for this, Bradley Hampton! Never! Never!
Never
!' She was gasping for breath, her eyes feral in their fury.

He stared down at her, his face ashen. He had been patient long enough. ‘Who is he?' he demanded harshly. ‘Who the devil
is
he?'

‘Beauregard Clay!'
She spat the name, stooping down to retrieve the ruined book.
‘And he loves me, and he'd kill you if he knew what you had done!'
Sobs rose in her throat. Clutching the book fiercely, she swung away from him, running blindly across the rain-lashed square.

Bradley watched her, his mouth a tight line of pain. Beau Clay. He should have known. Frowning fiercely, he retraced his steps. There were plenty of other girls in New Orleans. He slammed into a phone booth and dialled Mae Jefferson's number.

Augusta was shaking by the time she reached her car. Bradley Hampton had spoiled her entire day. For months she had kept herself as untouched as a nun. All for Beau. Now, on the very eve that her waiting would be over, Bradley Hampton had kissed her with indecent thoroughness and in the middle of Jackson Square.

And her father's birthday present was ruined.

‘Damn Bradley Hampton,' she said, crashing through the gears, driving at a speed that was illegal. ‘Damn him, damn him, damn him!'

She spent the rest of the day in her room. The book, once it had dried out, had proved to be not so ruined after all. She had written prettily in it and wrapped it with care. Her father was having friends round for a game of cards in the evening. She need make no excuse for avoiding his company. She remained alone all through the long afternoon. Her score of dolls stared steadfastly at her. She rearranged them, adjusting a skirt here, a bow there. They all had old china faces and soft bodies. Each one was older than herself: legacies from her grandmother and her mother. The mother she had never known.

When the sunlight began to change to a soft glow, she bathed in deeply scented water and dressed for the coming ritual in the long, rose-pink gown her Cousin Tina had given her as a present after Tina's last Parisian trip.

Eden arrived first and raised delicate eyebrows. ‘My, my, we are taking it seriously, aren't we?'

Gussie's pansy-dark eyes held hers with such intensity that Eden's smile faded.

‘It
is
serious, Eden Alexander. If you don't think so, you'd best leave right now.'

‘Apologies, apologies,' Eden said, falling on to the lace-covered bed. ‘I wonder if Mae is going to go ahead and bind Bradley Hampton to her forever? I shouldn't think he'll be very pleased if she did.'

‘I'm not,' Mae said, entering the room nervously. ‘And I don't think Gussie should bind Beau to her either.'

‘It's only a game,' Eden said lazily, careful that Gussie did not hear her. She sighed and opened a packet of cigarettes. Goddammit. It wasn't as if it would work. It would take more than a chewed-up piece of paper to make a man like Beau Clay take notice of seventeen-year-old Augusta Lafayette. Mae was taking the whole thing too seriously.

Gussie was glad Mae had changed her mind about joining her in the ritual. She wanted to do it alone: without Mae or anyone else taking part. Tonight was special. It was going to alter her whole life. Tonight Beauregard Clay would be hers – forever.

‘What do we do now?' Eden asked as the sun sank in a blood-red haze. A strange calm seemed to have settled over Gussie.

‘We wait just a little longer. Until it's quite dark.'

Even Eden began to grow nervous as the shadows in the room lengthened and the velvet of dusk turned into the darkness of night. Just when she was about to make her excuses and leave, Gussie rose from the bed and very slowly, almost regally, lit the candles in the candelabras at either side of her dressing-table mirror.

‘Oh my,' Mae whispered fretfully, twisting her handkerchief in her hand. ‘I wish I'd never suggested this! What if …'

‘Shshsh!'
Eden said, gazing wonderingly at the almost ethereal expression on Gussie's face.

Mae shushed, watching unhappily as Gussie sat on her dressing-table stool and began to brush her hair in long rhythmic strokes until it flowed down her back like a web of silk.

Even Eden was subdued. Gussie no longer looked like the girl she knew. She looked almost spectral.

There was a concerted intake of breath as Gussie picked up the silver fountain pen inscribed with her mother's initials and in a strong, firm hand, and without a moment's hesitation, wrote boldly YALC DRAGERUAEB.

‘No!' Mae whispered. ‘Oh please, no!'

A slight smile curved Gussie's lips. With cool deliberation she put the piece of paper into her mouth and swallowed.

The room erupted around her.

‘Upon my life, she's done it!' Eden shouted, leaping from the bed and seizing Augusta's hand. ‘Do you think you feel any different? Has it worked?'

Gussie remained seated, staring into the candle-lit mirror, her eyes incandescent.

‘I'm sure I felt a cold wind blow through the room when she put the paper in her mouth,' Mae said with a shiver.

Eden hooted with laughter. ‘You're scared of your own shadow, Mae.

‘Let's have some wine and celebrate.' Eden held a bottle of Chablis triumphantly aloft. ‘It's not very chilled, but who cares? Come on, Gussie. Have a drink. You deserve it. Weren't you scared? Not even for a second?'

‘
I
was scared all the time,' Mae confessed. ‘I didn't dare look into that mirror. Did you see anything in the mirror, Gussie?'

The wine splashed into hastily gathered glasses.

‘To Augusta Lafavette,' Eden cried, standing in the centre of Augusta's vast bed and holding her glass high in a toast. ‘The girl Beau Clay will love forever!'

‘To Gussie!'

Glasses clinked and the colour gradually returned to Mae's cheeks.

‘I guess it was all right after all,' she said with a giggle of relief. ‘Nothing dreadful happened, did it?'

‘It will if we don't leave this very minute,' Eden said, a new inflection in her voice. ‘It's five to twelve. If I'm out after midnight again this week my father's going to put some of his threats into action.'

‘Mine too,' Mae said, scrambling from the bed.

‘Bye, Gussie. It's been fun.'

‘Bye.'

‘Bye.'

Gussie stood at the head of the stairs, watching them hurry down towards the door where Louis, the Black butler, waited to close it behind her guests. A sliver of light showed beneath the card room door, indicating that her father's card game was still in progress.

With suppressed giggles the girls disappeared into the darkness and towards their cars. Louis closed the door and shook his head in silent reproof.

Augusta let out a deep sigh and turned once more to her candle-lit room. She had done it! She had done it and she knew it had worked. She clapped her hands and whirled joyously around the bed.

The face in the candle-lit mirror had not been hers. It had been Beau's: dark and lean, with mocking eyes, his mouth crooked in the merest hint of a smile.

‘Soon, dear love,' she whispered feverishly to herself, pressing her face against the freezing cold of the window pane, staring out into the darkness. ‘Soon!'

Somewhere out there was Beau, his heart no longer his own, but hers. She sighed ecstatically. In the next few days New Orleans was going to be rocked on its heels. The notorious Beau Clay would be tamed at last. And by little Gussie Lafayette.

Humming softly to herself, feeling like a bride on her wedding night, she stepped free of her dress and slipped naked between the lace-edged silk sheets. ‘Beau Clay,' she murmured, drifting off to sleep. ‘Beau Clay … Beau Clay … Beau …'

Raucous laughter filled the richly ornate room. The house was one that slept by day and came into its own at night. Way beyond the shacks on the outskirts of the city, it was a house unknown to decent people. A house visited only by the disreputable and dissolute. Once it had been the gracious home of a plantation owner. Cypress swamps flanked it on one side, the broad sweep of the Mississippi on the other. It was known to those who frequented it as simply ‘The Château'. Two storeys high, embraced on all sides by balconies and Doric columns, it had been built by its original owner with lavish expense and pride. Now the heavy drapes at the tall French casement windows were seldom drawn back. The high-ceilinged rooms were no longer the scenes of elegance and refined entertainment. While the marble mantles and crystal chandeliers remained, the overall effect of the crimson velvet sofas and faded tapestries was one of uncaring shabbiness. Cigarette and cigar ash was dropped indiscriminately, the sweet smell of marijuana and not potpourri pervaded the mirrored rooms.

Outside it was hardly visible from the road. Dense oaks shielded it from view. Riverwards, what had once been carefully tended gardens ran wild with tropical vegetation and a tangle of orange and lemon trees. The Château was as unapproachable as its occupants could wish.

Beauregard Clay laid down his hand of cards and tipped his chair back on two legs against a gold flock-papered wall, surveying the man opposite him through half-closed eyes. His opponent was an out-of-towner, a Northerner who had already lost twenty thousand dollars in the game that had started only hours earlier. Von Laussat and Shenton Ross, Beau's shadows, sat tensely, well aware that even at this stage, if he lost, Beau could not make true his debt. Judge Clay had issued orders to the bank that no more of Beau's cheques were to be honoured. As the money Beau habitually drew was deposited by the Judge, the bank had nervously acceded to his request. Beau had been indifferent.

The stakes on the table went up by another five thousand dollars. Idly Beau scanned his hand and topped two pairs with a flush.

A girl whose beauty showed her mixed ancestry entered, hips swinging, from a distant smoke-filled room, a bottle of bourbon and a glass in her hand. Beau stretched out a free hand and the Northerner frowned, studying his cards with tense scrutiny. The girl gave a throaty laugh and sat easily on Beau's lap, one arm around his neck, the other pouring bourbon into the glass. Beau drank deeply, aware that the Northerner was carefully calculating the amount of alcohol he consumed. Beau's mouth curved in the semblance of a smile. If the Northerner was hoping that the bourbon would cloud his judgement, he was hoping in vain.

Another hand went down to Beau, and Von and Shenton exchanged triumphant glances. With Beau holding the cards, gambling was a cinch.

By eleven-thirty the Northerner knew the game was lost beyond recovery. Grinding his cigar into the onyx ashtray, he accused Beau of cheating. In three hours he had lost fifty thousand dollars. Beau shrugged nonchalantly, pointing out that the stakes had not been of his calling.

‘Bastard! Cardsharp!' the Northerner yelled, sweeping the cards from the table, the inch of liquor remaining in the bottle gurgling to the floor.

With the sigh of a man facing the boring inevitable, Beau pushed the girl unceremoniously from his knee.

‘Thieving son-of-a-bitch!'

The table went crashing as the mottle-faced Northerner sprang to his feet and lunged at Beau.

Von folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall. He liked to see Beau in action. It was poetry in motion. No matter how beaten and bloody his victim, Beau always emerged unscathed, his expression as confident as ever, his breathing prefectly in control, his clothing barely disarranged. Moving adroitly he side-stepped the vicious punch intended for his face, seized hold of a shoulder carried forward by its own momentum, steadied it and then smashed a clenched fist into a helplessly waiting jaw. The sound of bone against bone made Von wince. The Northerner was on his knees, blood pouring from the follow-up blow Beau had delivered to his nose. Through the mask of blood Von judged that it was broken. He watched with grudging admiration as the man struggled to his feet, arms flailing wildly in Beau's direction.

An expression of distaste flicked across Beau's face. He had no desire to bloody his silk shirt or exquisitely tailored tuxedo. With a swift blow to the stomach he rendered the Northerner senseless. Contemptuously kicking the inert body with the toe of his shoe, he left Von and Shenton to crawl on the floor, scooping up the confetti of one hundred dollar bills, and with an arm around the girl's waist, strolled negligently into a lavishly furnished bedroom.

He stretched out on the bed, his arms locked behind his head, his shirt open to the waist, displaying a mass of tightly curling hair and gold chains.

The girl took her time. She knew Beau's mood and she knew that he was in no hurry. Tonight was going to be good for her as well as for him. With the provocativeness of a professional artist she began to undress, her honey-gold skin glowing satin-soft in the lamplight. Beau watched her with appreciative eyes. It was no wonder the clubs paid her a thousand dollars a week for a ten-minute-a-night spot.

The bed was tented and canopied, mosquito netting looped loosely against the bedposts. Her breasts teased him through their restraining wisp of black lace. His sex throbbed and his eyes darkened. The three-times married, twenty-seven-year-old socialite he had dated in the afternoon had thought herself devastatingly experienced. If he had wanted, Beau could have told her she still had a lot to learn.

Deep in the cypress swamps an owl hooted and there came the screech of a taloned rabbit. He glanced at his watch. It was five to midnight. Afterwards there would be a game of cards until dawn and then he would fly his Cessna to La Jolla and the stunning Californian who had graced the centre spread in last month's
Playboy
.

The girl twirled, discarding the wisp of lace. Beau eased himself up on one elbow, about to reach out for her and then stopped. A pain shot up his arm and into his chest and for one shattering moment he thought he was experiencing a heart attack. He gasped and the girl halted, her fingers hooked into the top of her panties.