My Immortal (2 page)

As Damien du Bourg stood in the Liverpool Museum, iPod at his ears, and stared at
The Punishment of Lust
by Segantini, he knew he had to have that painting.

The dreamy, muted colors of the canvas showed the regret, the pain, the hopelessness that Damien knew as intimately as himself. It was his lust that had killed Marie, and his lust that had lured Marissabelle, yet they had taken the punishment for his sins.

Like the two women drifting in the empty landscape in front of him, he too was wrapped in shroudlike, clingy bonds of pain, suspended in nothingness for eternity.

“Excuse me,” he said to the female security guard who had been discreetly trailing him.

“Yes?” She crossed her arms over her ample chest and eyed him suspiciously. Not an attractive woman, she looked like life had given her a reason to distrust, and he was sorry for that, sorry that she too knew pain.

“Do you know where I can buy a print of this painting?”

“The gift shop might have it.” Her shoulders relaxed a fraction. “Do you know where the gift shop is?”

Damien smiled, knowing the effect it would have. “No. Perhaps you could point me in the right direction?”

“I guess I can walk you over there.”

“
Merci
. Thank you, I appreciate it.”

She gave an unexpected smile in return, and a plain face became almost pretty. It was a rationalization on his part, that random acts of sexual kindness could make up for what he had done, but it was the only way he could live with himself, and he had a long life to live.

Damien readjusted his plans for the evening to include the suspicious security guard and her Rubenesque body.

“Oh, Lizzie.” Marley gave an exasperated laugh and reread her sister’s e-mail three times. It was hard to pinpoint what was the most ridiculous thing about it. There was the juvenile enthusiasm for a man she’d just met. And overuse of the word
like
.

But maybe more absurd than anything Lizzie could ever write was that Marley felt an unpleasant, swelling jealousy, an envy for her sister’s carefree selfishness. Intellectually, Marley was appalled by the reckless lifestyle Lizzie lived. But at the same time she resented the ease with which Lizzie leaped into new situations, relationships. Marley didn’t want to be Lizzie—she was too stable and cautious to willingly jump on a train wreck—but she wanted a piece of Lizzie’s exuberance. Marley wanted to be the one who made a mess, just once, and then walked away and let someone else do the cleaning up.

She wouldn’t, of course.

But she couldn’t hide from her growing sense of discontent, as spending the summer on a retreat at the Benedictine convent had proved. It had been an attempt to escape the needs and wants that swirled around her, pecking away at her emotions, leaving her worried and dissatisfied, but her strategy had completely failed. Her desires clamored even louder for attention. There was literally no peace, no retreat from her problems, her fears about her family, and her loneliness, so she was going home.

“Bad news from home?” Sister Margaret asked.

She glanced over at Margaret, who was charting her family’s genealogy on the other computer in the lounge. Marley was leaving the convent the next day on a mid-morning flight, but she had asked permission to check her e-mail and to let her family know she was returning home earlier than expected.

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“You sighed.”

“Did I?” Marley stared at Lizzie’s smiley faces, perky and bouncing, just like Lizzie. “My sister, Elizabeth, she’s ‘in love.’” Marley made quote marks in the air. “But she just met this guy, and there is no mention whatsoever of my nephew, her two-year-old son. She’s left him with my cousin again while she’s off with this guy. I worry about her.”

Marley hadn’t spoken to any of her family in over two months, since she’d arrived at the convent, which had been a painful attempt to distance herself from their problems, to stop trying to play savior for everyone. It had been the hardest thing she’d ever done, and now she felt doubt, guilt rising up from that well of worry her family always filled. The e-mail from Lizzie was dated mid-June and it was already late August. Marley had spent the entire summer in prayer and reflection, and by the end of her time at the convent had realized her ache to be a mother was coloring all her thoughts, all her actions, driving her unhappiness.

It had led her to the decision to adopt a child and become a single mother.

What had Lizzie spent the summer doing?

Marley was almost afraid to ask.

Especially when she replied to Elizabeth and her e-mail immediately bounced back.

Her sister’s account had been closed.

Marley frowned and opened the attachment.

The Punishment of Lust
looked good on his wall. Damien’s first instinct had been to frame the print in stark, sleek black, to mirror the austere nature of the painting, the bleak landscape. But then he had decided it was a better visual reminder to surround the image in a rich, gilded, ornate frame that echoed the France of his youth, the days when he had romped at court with Louis and Marie. Not his Marie, but the king’s Marie.

It was that early life which had brought him here, to now.

He hung it in his private room, the refurbished former
pigeonnier
, so that it could remind him of who and what he was.

The woman on his sofa moaned in distress at his distraction, and he shifted his gaze from the painting, refocusing attention back on her as he slid his tongue smoothly between her hot, wet thighs.

As if he could ever forget what he was, what he had stupidly asked for, what he was chained to for eternity.

There was no forgetting, and there was no escape.

Mme. Damien du Bourg
River Road, St. James Parish
Louisiana

Father Francis Montelier

Sacred Heart Church

Lyons, France

November 19, 1790

Dear Father Montelier,

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been nineteen months since my last confession.

I understand, Father, that my confession here is irregular and that it may not be within your power to grant a sacrament via the post. But I hope that given my family’s longstanding relationship with you, and the personal affection I had for you as a child under your holy tutelage, you will
approach my confession with a measure of understanding for the circumstances I find myself in. There is no priest here at Rosa de Montana, and my husband does not permit me to travel the distance to the local parish, so as such, I am alone with neither counsel nor religious influence.

However, neither loneliness nor lack of guidance can excuse nor explain the things I have done, and I ask you and God for forgiveness. My egregious sins are as follows:

Taking unseemly pleasure in marital relations.

Willingness to overlook my husband’s improprieties.

Envy of those improprieties and their beauty.

Self-loathing for my lack of control.

Interference with the purpose and sanctity of marriage.

Sin is rampant here in Louisiana, vice wrapping around us as oppressively as the heat, but that is no excuse for my unspeakable actions, and I ask very humbly that, in whatever way is possible, you grant me a measure of comfort and cleanliness, with your forgiveness from a loving God.

I am yours most sincerely,

Marie Evangeline Theresa Bouvier du Bourg

Marley watched out the window as the taxi turned into a deeply rutted drive, nearly consumed by low-hanging branches and lush foliage.

“Are you sure this is it?” It looked abandoned, and there was no sign, no address marker. Just thick, oppressive trees that formed a heavy canopy, blocking out the relentless sun.

“Sure it is,” the driver told her, dark eyes glancing at her in the rearview mirror. “Everyone here ’bouts knows Rosa de Montana. Lots of people coming and going all the time.”

“Why?” This didn’t look the kind of place anyone would be eager to just dash off to on a regular basis. They were miles from anything resembling civilization, and Marley thought most funeral homes were cheerier than this isolated entryway. The two dilapidated posts on either side of the drive screamed
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
,
Amityville Horror
,
The Seventh Sign
.

“Parties.”

“Parties? Like cocktail parties?” Maybe Damien du Bourg was the Jay Gatsby of the bayou.

Her driver gave a little laugh and smiled at her over his shoulder. He was in his fifties, his hair a bristly gray, and he wore an ear bud for his cell phone. “Not exactly. Word is they’re more like sex parties.”

“Sex parties?” Marley adjusted her canvas summer purse on her lap and contemplated the concept. “What do people do at sex parties?”

Okay, so that came out wrong. Of course she
knew
that sex had to be involved, somehow, but she was having a little trouble visualizing exactly how these things played out in a crowd. It seemed to defy logic that a large gathering could dissolve into intimate hedonistic sexual gratification. Were there hors d’oeuvres? Alcohol? Did they start off mingling over dinner, cocktails…and then what? Someone rang a bell? Were there rules? Who did you hook up with? Was it
in front
of other people?

Yeah. She had a hard time visualizing it.

The driver gave a real hearty belly laugh, the guffaws cutting in and out each time the taxi hit a rut in the pitted driveway. “Sweetie, you sure you want to go on up there?”

“I have to. My sister is there.” She hoped, anyway. No one knew where Lizzie was, and Marley was more than a little worried, fear starting to replace her earlier irritation.

So Lizzie was unreliable. So she had run off before and always resurfaced. But never had she cut herself off from her family for over eight weeks. It was too long, and the only place Marley could think to look for Lizzie was here, at the plantation house she had mentioned in her last e-mail.

“She know you’re going to visit?”

“No.” But Lizzie would be glad to see her. Her sister was always glad to see her, even when she pouted and told Marley she was a fun-sucker, ruining all Lizzie’s good times.

It was true. She was a fun-sucker. She couldn’t help it. Someone had to be rational, even if it was boring.

They slowed to a crawl, the taxi turning into the circular drive that abutted the impressive mansion. It had definitely seen better days. The once white paint had softened to a dirty gray and flaked aggressively in all directions. The shutters clung to the house precariously, like novice mountain climbers with white knuckles, knowing if they relaxed just a little, they’d be down on the ground.

“She ain’t much to look at,” the driver said.

“No. But it’s still gorgeous.” It was massive, its long galleries sweeping left and right from the front door, a grand reminder of the days when conversation was an art, the French owned New Orleans, and sugar was the road to riches.

In the closed chill of the car, the air-conditioning blasting next to her shoulder, Marley was puzzled. This type of crumbling house, with the past struggling to remain in the present, the musty whispers of history wafting out from it, was Marley’s brand of pleasure, not Lizzie’s.

Marley loved history, the past, anything vintage or antique. A progressive Jesuit priest in college had told Marley that history and religion were the most effective means of avoiding the present, and she suspected that was true. She had certainly used both as a means to that end from time to time, though she felt no guilt for it. Every day she was firmly grounded in reality as an urban teacher and designated Sane Person in her dysfunctional family and was entitled to an occasional respite. She found that escape in antiques, and in old houses, with the stories they breathed, and how they sparked her normally dormant imagination.

On the opposite end of the spectrum sat her sister. Old made Lizzie itch. She wanted new, shiny, clean, the next big excitement, the latest and the coolest. This wasn’t the kind of place her sister would enjoy staying in, yet Lizzie had claimed she was here.

Marley had spent the last three days trying to track down her sister, with no luck. None of Lizzie’s friends knew where she was, her cell had been disconnected, and her last landlord had evicted her in June. Doing Internet research on this plantation and Damien du Bourg had revealed only that he did in fact own the property and that it was a Louisiana historic landmark, but closed to the public since it was privately owned. The house had been in the du Bourg family since its construction in the late eighteenth century, and that was the extent of what she’d been able to determine.

There had been no way to know if Lizzie was here, so Marley had hopped on a plane to find out for herself.

She handed the driver fifty dollars. “Can you wait for twenty minutes or so? I just want to make sure someone is here before you leave.”

It didn’t look teeming with activity. The whole house gave the feeling of having been abandoned.

“Sure. You okay going up there by yourself? I can park and walk you up.” The driver suddenly looked worried, his head leaning toward her paternally.

“No, thanks. I’m fine.” Maybe. She forced a smile. “I’m the well-adjusted sister. I’m just going to go in there and haul her out.” She’d done it before. Marley had never had Lizzie’s looks or her confidence, but when it came to protecting her sister, she would do whatever it took, and she doubted anything Lizzie did could shock her.

“You do that then.” He nodded in approval. “This isn’t the place for a nice girl like you, you know what I’m saying?”

What bothered her was knowing that Lizzie wasn’t a nice girl, hadn’t been one in a long time, and that she couldn’t fix her sister any more than she had been able to fix her mother. So she just smiled at the well-meaning driver. “I know, thanks.”

Marley opened the door and felt the heat hit her, heavy and invasive, filling her lungs and pricking her skin. The porch gave low moans of protest as she climbed the steep steps, her sandals making slap, slap sounds as the rubber hit the wood. Worried but optimistic, she knocked and waited. Knocked again. Waited some more. Peeped in the window and saw nothing but shadowy hulks of furniture.

Walking to the end of the porch, she leaned over, trying to see more of the property. How the heck her sister had ended up in such an obscure corner of Louisiana was a total mystery to her, and she would have doubted it was even true if it hadn’t been for the letter Lizzie had attached to her e-mail. It had been a letter from one Marie du Bourg, a resident of Rosa de Montana, and a confession to her priest two hundred years earlier.

Whether it was real or fiction was almost irrelevant. Why had Lizzie attached it to her e-mail, with no explanation? And the plaintive yet polite tone of the letter had disturbed Marley, had her rereading the words several times. She sensed Marie’s agitation, but she didn’t know why Lizzie would have wanted her to read it. Bottom line, why had Lizzie been here and how had she gotten that letter in the first place?

“Hey,” the driver called to her, the passenger window down as he looked up at her.

“Yeah?” She didn’t want to leave, but she couldn’t see anything but weeds and, soldiered behind the trees, a row of tiny wooden buildings slowly deflating with age.

“There’s a man coming round the other side of the house. He came out of the
pigeonnier
.”

Marley didn’t really know what a
pigeonnier
was, but she was relieved that at least there was someone on the property. She started back across the porch, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. She was sweating from the heat and from her nerves, and she was sorry she’d worn jeans. A loose skirt or shorts would have been a better choice in this climate.

When she reached the top of the stairs, she spotted him. The man coming from the other side of the property walked with strong, graceful strides, his MP3 player dangling around his neck, like he’d just pulled it from his ears. He was tall, he was broad-shouldered, he was gorgeous. Even from a distance it was easy to tell he was a complete hottie, which was irritating. Marley didn’t do well around hotties. Normally articulate, in the presence of male physical perfection she tended to make strange gurgling sounds and blush like a Victorian virgin.

Six-year-olds she worked wonders with. Men baffled her.

“Damn,” Marley muttered. He was almost at the bottom of the steps and there was no way for her to run down them quickly and meet him before he noticed her. Acutely aware that this was not her best angle, she started down the stairs anyway, walking slowly so nothing on her body would jiggle. It was a futile attempt. She was a bit—okay, a lot—curvier than Hollywood standards dictated, and from down there, her thighs probably rivaled the porch columns for width.

“Hi,” he said as he stopped and smiled up at her, hands going into the pockets of his jeans. “Can I help you?”

It was a brilliant smile, full of charm and wit and promise, and Marley sucked in a breath before responding. With total clarity, she saw the appeal of Rosa de Montana to Lizzie if this was Damien du Bourg.

“Hi.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and moved faster down the steps. Good-looking or not, he might know where her sister was, and that was more relevant than his broad shoulders and her body defects. “My name is Marley Turner and I’m looking for my sister Elizabeth Turner. She goes by the nickname Lizzie and I got an e-mail from her saying she was here.”

The smile quieted, the charm cooled, and he casually shrugged, looking unconcerned. “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that name. And there is no one here at the moment except for me. I’m Damien du Bourg, the owner of this relic.”

“It’s beautiful,” she told him, meaning it sincerely, digging into her handbag.

“I’m glad you think so.”

She got out the last picture of Lizzie she had, from the previous spring when they had taken a four-day jaunt to Cancun, her gift to Lizzie for her twenty-fourth birthday. It showed Lizzie at her best, wearing a tiny yellow bikini, belly button ring flashing, her blond hair loose and flowing over her shoulders. She was smiling, her arm around Marley. It was truly regrettable that the one picture of Lizzie that Marley had to show around also had herself in it wearing a bathing suit, but at least she was holding Lizzie’s son, Sebastian, who blocked most of her stomach and thighs from view. That tankini had been a serious error in judgment.

“This is Lizzie…do you recognize her?” It didn’t surprise her that Damien du Bourg hadn’t reacted to Lizzie’s name. It was just like her sister to fall in love with a man she didn’t even know. Sometimes Marley thought Lizzie was like a perpetual thirteen-year-old.

He took the picture, studied it, glanced up at Marley with curious eyes. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t. But she might have come to one of my parties. I entertain frequently. Which night was she here?”

“I think in June.” Marley swallowed her disappointment, a sick churning suddenly starting in her gut. God, Lizzie really was missing. She hasn’t realized how much she had been counting on arriving here and discovering Lizzie, oversexed and perky as usual, happy to see her.