Passion's Mistral (20 page)

face like a choirboy.”

“Well, at least you weren’t molested by a member of the clergy,” she said, picking up on the choirboy

comment but at Henri’s raised eyebrow, she put a hand to her mouth. “Really?”

“Good old Father Jacques. May he be roasting o’er a slow pit in the hottest part of hell.” He drew in a

long breath then released it. “I jumped from the frying pan directly into the fire when I hid on that ship but

I didn’t know—have any idea about the flames of hell until I hopped a freight train in South Carolina.” He

looked off in the distance. “There were a couple of hobos who nearly killed me that night then tossed me

off the train into a ditch.” He shrugged again. “I would have died if Padilla hadn’t come along.”

“Padilla?” Silkie questioned.

“He was connected, as they say,” Henri explained. “Imagine my surprise when this big, burly Italian man

picks me up outta the ditch and takes me home with him. Took good care of me. Never once laid a hand

to me that wasn’t a gentle touch. He became the father I never really had. I became the son he’d lost to

the Vietnam War. Despite what he was—and believe me, a boy of fifteen being cosseted by an honest to

goodness American wiseguy was absolute heaven to me—I was in awe of him. He introduced me to

people in his line of work—contacts that have come in very handy on occasion—and he taught me things

I never would have learned otherwise.”

“Such as?”

“How to track a man,” Henri said, turning to look here in the eye. “How to kill an enemy with the least

noise. The correct way to hold a blade, a garrote, a nine millimeter, a Molotov cocktail, and make the

best use of each one.”

“You’ve killed a man, too,” Silkie said, shivering despite the calm look on Henri’s face.

“Men,” he corrected. “I’ve killed several men. Every one deserved it. Most were pedophiles and one

bled to death in the bayou after losing a couple of portions of his anatomy.”

Silkie ran her hands up and down her arms. “Did you do any of that protecting Patrick?”

“Some of it,” he answered. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him. I’d give my life if he asked me to.

He’s the only person I’ve ever loved.”

“Yet you took him to a known madam,” she accused. “Why her?”

“I did security work for her,” Henri stated. “That and a little petty larceny on the side wasn’t a bad living

for a nineteen-year-old French transplant.” He chuckled. “She didn’t have to worry about me sampling

her girls. I wasn’t interested.”

“But she had boys, too,” Silkie said.

Once more that fatalistic Gallic shrug shifted his brawny shoulders. “Well, those she didn’t worry about if

they were for male trade. I just couldn’t touch those earmarked for the female trade.” He sighed. “Like a

certain handsome ex-English muffin we know.”

“You’ve been together ever since the day you found him.”

“That we have. He was a very scrawny, shy and terribly down-beaten twelve-year-old.”

“Why didn’t you stay with Padilla?” she asked, curious.

That Gallic shrug showed itself again. “We had a falling out over a certain matter best left unmentioned,”

Henri said. “It was a private matter between him and me.”

“Oh,” Silkie said.

“You’re more curious about the muffin than me, though, aren’t you?” he teased.

She nodded, blushing.

“So what else do you want to know?”

“How old was he when she took his virginity?” Silkie wanted to know.

Henri’s grin was almost sinister. “Old enough to want what she was offering,” he answered.

“Did he have a choice?”

Henri held his hands out in the typical French fashion. “One does what one must,” he replied. “Yes, he

felt obligated to her for helping to save his life, for the clothes on his back and the food in his belly. He

also knew she would not make him pleasure other women if he didn’t want to.”

“And how old was he when he decided he wanted to share his expertise with other women?” she

mumbled.

“I believe he was seventeen,” Henri told her.

“She’d been teaching him since he was how old?”

The Frenchman clucked his tongue. “Fourteen, fifteen. I don’t remember.”

“Oh, my God,” Silkie groaned. “That is disgusting.”

“What is disgusting about being taught the correct way to make love?” Henri inquired. “How to please

your partner as well as yourself? How to keep from getting a girl pregnant?” He leered sternly at his

guest. “She taught him many important life lessons, Silkie, not just the art of seduction.”

“I’m surprised she shared him at all,” Silkie said, “if her reaction to me is any indication of how she feels

about him belonging to her.”

“Ah, but there is possession and there is obsession!” Henri stated, the index finger of his right hand held

aloft. “She thought she possessed him mind, body and soul and when she discovered she did not, that he

wanted someone closer to his own age—I believe she was twenty-five when she took him the first time.

By the time his eye began roaming, she was in her thirties and beginning to feel the fear that comes with

that age.”

“He found someone in whom he was interested,” Silkie said, “and Celeste felt threatened.”

“Threatened is not the word to describe how she reacted,” Henri said with a snort. “She was terrified he

would leave her. The possession had turned to obsession. She would have done anything to keep him

with her.”

Silkie frowned. “What did she do?”

Henri uncrossed his legs and stood up. He walked to his well-stocked bar and turned to ask if she

wanted something.

“Maybe later,” Silkie said, sensing something bad was about to be revealed.

When he had poured himself a healthy measure of cognac, he returned to his chair, sat down and took a

sip of the potent brew before taking a deep breath, releasing in and continuing his tale.

“He turned twenty-one on November third,” he remembered. “We all gave him little presents because

not a one of us did not like the young man Celeste had named Julian St. John.” He grinned. “Julian after a

character in an American film about a gigolo and St. John after an actress she believed she resembled.”

“What did you give him?”

“A bottle of his favorite cologne,” Henri replied, “which, believe me, was not cheap!”

“What did Celeste give him?”

“A Mercedes convertible,” Henri said. “Black with tan leather upholstery.” He took a sip of the cognac.

“But it was what Franchine gave him that caused all the trouble.”

“Franchine?”

“One of Celeste’s girls,” Henri explained. “A very beautiful octoroon from Metairie. Ah, she was

breathtaking. A bit shy but an expert in the ways of love.” He shook his head. “Had my affections not

leaned in a different direction, I might well have sampled that lovely’s wares, believe me.”

“I take it she and Julian became lovers,” Silkie said, a bit of jealousy making her squirm in her chair.

“That was her gift to him,” Henri agreed. “Before that, she was only sent to very important businessmen,

older men who—though they were very kind and generous to her—were never handsome and virile as

was Julian.”

“So she was as eager for a young lover as he was,” Silkie wanted clarified.

“I think so.”

“What happened when Celeste found out?”

“All hell broke loose,” Henri answered with a grimace. He finished off his cognac and sat with the glass

balanced on his knee. “She found them together and I thought she would tear Franchine apart with her

bare hands. As it was, she had one of her bodyguards drag the naked girl out of Julian’s bed and out of

his life forever.”

“She had the girl killed?” Silkie gasped.

Henri shook his head. “That would have been far better than the revenge Celeste exacted on that poor

girl.” He held Silkie’s gaze. “She sold her to a pig of an Arab who was always snooping around for girls

to take back to the Middle East. No reputable madam or pimp would do business with the filthy bugger

but for this once, Celeste made an exception.”

“I can only imagine what utter depravity that must have resulted in,” Silke said quietly.

“Julian was punished, too,” Henri continued, his face puckered with misery. “I leave it to your imagination

what evil she had done to him.”

Silkie’s eyes widened. “She let Clive Bellington know where he was!”

Henri nodded.

“Does he know?” Silkie asked. “Does Patrick know it was her who was responsible for his uncle finding

him?”

“He knows, but since he believes Celeste helped save him from a death sentence by secreting him out of

the country and to the Cay when Julian stabbed Bellington’s hired killer, he accepted his punishment and

let it go.”

“You saved Patrick’s life then, too,” Silkie said, though something Henri had revealed puzzled her.

“He would have died had I not gotten him to Celeste’s physician. As it was, he lost a kidney.”

“And wound up here.”

“It is paradise, is it not?” Henri asked. He waved his hand before him. “Warm, tropical breezes,

turquoise water, lush beaches. What better place to have a nudist colony? One catering to the very rich

and bored?”

“You’ve helped him run it.”

“I do whatever my friend does not want to do or dirty his hands in. I look after him and always will. It is

his best interests that concern me, Miss Trevor. I will always be there for him should he have need of

me.”

“And having him here didn’t bother Celeste? Being apart from him like this?”

“Oh, it bothered her,” Henri said. “But she, too, was paying a price for what she’d been a party to. In

her way, it was her penance having him so far away.”

Silkie felt as though a light had gone in her head. “She hadn’t counted on Bellington trying to kill Julian,

had she?”

“No,” Henri replied. “And had that bastard not run like the coward he was, she would have sent

someone to cut his throat. He was on a plane back to England with a contingent of bodyguards

surrounding him at all times before she had a chance to have him killed.”

“He went back to England only after he gave his statement to the police, though. Right?” Silkie asked.

Henri shifted in his chair. “Not exactly.”

Silkie stared at her companion for a long time, neither of them speaking. When she finally broke the

silence, her heart was trip hammering in her chest.

“Did the man he stabbed die?”

Henri looked up. “Oh, he died, but it wasn’t at Julian’s hands,” he told her.

“You?”

Henri shrugged. “Do you think either Celeste or I would have let the bastard live after nearly killing the

man we loved?”

Silkie drew in a long, shaky breath then her shoulders slumped as she exhaled. “It’s not that he can’t go

back to the States, it’s that you can’t so you won’t allow him to.”

“He has always been safer here,” Henri defended his actions. “Against Bellington and Celeste! One

would have him killed, the other would make his life hell. Here, he is his own master and—”

“But he’s also a prisoner,” Silkie stated.

“A much-loved and well-cared-for prisoner,” Henri said with a twist of his lips.

Silkie folded her arms over her chest. “You need to tell him, Henri.”

Shock widened the eyes of the Frenchman. “Oh, but I could never do that!” he gasped. “He must never

know!”

“Then why tell me if you don’t want him to find out?”

Anger briefly tightened the rugged face of Henri Bouvier. He ran his hand through his perfect haircut,

mussing the thick salt-and-pepper hair. “He loves you,” he said as though that would explain everything.

“He loves you, too,” Silkie said softly.

“Yes, but not in the way I would like him to,” Henri grated.

“Perhaps not, and though I understand why you have kept him in the dark all these years, you know in

your heart he should be told the truth.”

Henri got up and began pacing. He stopped at the porthole and looked out across the waves. “If he goes

back to the States, I would not put it past Celeste to make him a prisoner of a different sort.” He looked

back at Silkie. “You have no idea how vengeful that woman can be.”

“Considering what she did to that girl Franchine, I can imagine.”

“He has not only left her for you,” Henri went on, “he has forbidden her to come to the Cay. He has, in

essence, cut himself off completely from her. She has not taken that insult well and I fear for him. I fear

for you, as well.”

“We’ll take it one step at a time,” Silkie said, standing. “If you don’t want to tell him he’s not the killer he

thinks he is, I’ll do it. Either way, he should be able to tell his mother that he can come to visit her in the

States.”

Henri winced. “Not until Celeste is in her grave, he can’t,” he said forcefully.

Pierce Umsted was in agony. His back bore long gouges where Celeste’s fingernails had dug unmercifully

into his flesh. Not that this was the first time he had borne the brunt of her anger over something Julian St.

John had either done or not done. Pierce was accustomed to being the whipping boy for the master of

Mistral Cay.

“Get the crew back onboard,” Celeste snapped as she spritzed perfume on her neck and chest. “I want

to be back in New Orleans by sunset.”

“We’re not going to try taking his mother when the yacht comes back?”

“Not yet,” Celeste replied. “Let’s give him a few months of thinking himself the happiest man on Earth

before I bring the sky falling down on his cheating head.”

Shifting his shoulders against the pain, Pierce asked if she was going to allow Julian to marry the Trevor