Tears of Gold (54 page)

“But he doesn’t need anything,” Damaris piped in as she quickly swallowed a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “He’s rich! Paddy says Nicholas has thousands and thousands of dollars, and whenever Paddy asks, Nicholas will give him as many five-dollar gold pieces as he wants,” Damaris informed the startled party. Paddy turned a bright red as he felt Nicholas’s eyes on his down-bent head.

“This is true?” Celeste asked faintly, her eyes widening with astonishment.

“For the most part it is,” Nicholas admitted.

“
C’est incroyable.
I cannot believe such a thing. How?” she demanded, incredulous doubt still evident on her face.

“I’ve been in California. You have heard that gold was discovered out there. Well, Karl Svengaard—you remember him, don’t you?—” Nicholas asked with remembered amusement of his family’s disapproval of the Swede, “—and I were fortunate to find some of it.”

“Mon Dieu,
le grand blond?
The American who stood so tall? You and he found gold? Much of it?” Celeste asked, her frail voice trembling.

“Enough to make my life comfortable for quite a while. So you see, there is no need to worry that I have returned home to demand money from you.”

Etienne propped his chin in his hands, his elbows on the table in defiance of the rigid code of manners he believed in, as he allowed his amazement to show on his face. “You struck it rich?” he demanded with all of the excitement a child would have shown. “That is simply amazing. I am astounded. I have heard many tales from California, but never have I actually met anyone who found gold.”

“My papa found one piece of gold and we were rich,” Paddy told the silent group proudly.

“This is true?” Etienne asked doubtfully.

“Yes, Brendan found a piece of gold worth close to fifty thousand dollars,” Mara backed up Paddy’s story.

“Mon Dieu,” Etienne mumbled as he took a deep sip of wine. “I just did not believe it was possible that those stories could be true.” He glanced over at Nicholas. “And you, Nicholas, you found such a chunk of gold?”

Nicholas shook his head regretfully. “Only the very lucky ever find chunks of gold worth that much, and even those men had probably spent months, maybe years up in the High Sierra looking for such a find. It didn’t come as easily as it sounds. The Swede and I worked several streams for months at a time before we had even half that amount saved up, and we were luckier than others,” Nicholas told them.

Celeste stared. Nicholas was still arrogantly handsome, and charming when he chose to be, but beyond that he was not the same. There was a hardness to the man that had not been there before, and yet there was also a dependability about him as well as a gentle strength that he had not possessed when he’d been the rakish, young dilettante son of Philippe de Montaigne-Chantale. He had become far better a man in the years spent away from Beaumarais than he would ever have been had he never left. Pampered and privileged, he would have grown into manhood never having to find the strength of will that’d helped him to survive beyond the secure surroundings of his Creole upbringing.

Nicholas’s reticence could not stem the flow of questions from his family, and so the rest of the meal was devoured along with stories of California that Nicole, and especially Damaris, listened to avidly, their eyes alight with excitement as they heard of a strange world beyond the wide Mississippi, a world completely different from Europe and the rest of America, or any other place they had ever read about in their schoolbooks.

Mara sipped her wine, her own memories of California still too painful for her to comfortably participate in reminiscences. She was almost relieved to notice Paddy’s nodding head as he slumped down in his chair.

“If you’ll excuse me, I think I should see my nephew to bed,” she interrupted and got to her feet.

“Mon Dieu, I had no idea how late it grows,” Celeste fretted. “You must think our manners quite deplorable, mademoiselle. Nicole, Damaris, it is time you retired as well.”

“Oh, Mama, please,” Damaris protested even as she struggled to keep her eyes open, “it is so interesting. Let us stay up a little while longer, non? Please…”

“There will be other times, little one,” Nicholas told her as he pushed back his chair, his attitude unrelenting despite the entreaty in her wide eyes. “Do as your mama says.”

Mara moved close to Nicholas as she guided Paddy from the room. As she passed by him, she felt his hand on her arm. He said softly, “Celeste and I have matters to discuss. You will find all you need to be comfortable in your room. If not, then do not hesitate to ring for a maid,” he told her.

It sounded like a dismissal and so she responded coolly, “I shall be quite comfortable, thank you.” With a curt nod she made her way from the room.

After tucking Paddy into bed, his eyes closing almost as soon as his head touched the pillow, Mara was standing on the gallery, staring into the dark depths of the tangled mass of oak branches above the drive to Beaumarais. Mara wrapped her arms around the smooth silk of her robe and shivered. There was a strange sense of decay about the house. Mara breathed deeply as she tried to shake off the melancholy mood that had seemed to grip her since setting foot inside the hallowed halls of Beaumarais. She laughed softly, for it was probably just the rich, moist soil of the swamp with its thick undergrowth that gave her this feeling of death. She glanced down to see pale light streaming out from what must be the drawing room or study. Apparently Nicholas was still cloistered with Celeste.

Mara sighed, feeling oddly dispirited as she returned to her bedchamber, her body shaking with cold. She quickly flung off her wrapper and climbed beneath the warm quilt. It was to be the first night in a long time that she slept without Nicholas’s warm body beside her, and she wondered if it would be the first of many to come.

Chapter 13

Mara turned over lazily, stifling a yawn as she snuggled deeper under the quilted silk covers. The rattling of china sounded just beyond the door, and then there was a hesitant knock and the appearance of a young maid with a tray.

“’Mornin’, mademoiselle. I’m Belle, and if there’s anything you need, just call me,” she spoke quietly, smiling shyly as she put the tray on the table beside the bed and quickly found Mara’s bed jacket, helping her into it as Mara struggled to prop herself up against the pillows. She looked slightly startled as she noticed Mara’s bare shoulders.

Mara smiled wryly with the realization that, by noon, the whole household would be aware that Master Nicholas’s lady friend slept without a nightdress.

“Thank you, Belle,” Mara said as the young girl placed the tray across her lap and stood back to await any further instructions. “Do you know if my nephew and maid are up yet?” Mara inquired as she took a tentative sip of the steaming coffee.

“Master Paddy is out playing with the young Miss Damaris, and that maid of yours, well,” Belle continued in a grievous tone of voice as she shook her kerchiefed head, “she was in here giving me orders last evening when I was turning down your bed. Telling me how
she
liked your things folded and put away. I reckon she thinks I was raised in the fields or something,” she said with an injured sniff.

Mara smiled, her eyes mirroring amusement as she tried to picture the diminutive Irishwoman issuing orders to this tall, slender girl. “You’ll have to forgive Jamie her bossiness, but she has cared for my family for so long that she is very proprietary about my things,” Mara soothed.

Belle put her hands on her narrow hips and shrugged, a smile lurking in her dark eyes. “She reminds me a lot of ol’ Mama Marie out in the kitchens, never letting a body touch nothing without her eagle eye watching every move. Lord, but it’s worth your skin to even go in there. Now, when you’re ready to bathe just pull the bell and I’ll be comin’ up with some hot water, mademoiselle.” She was about to leave when Mara choked, turning pale as she tried to keep down the little food she had eaten so far. Belle quickly reached for the washbasin and held it beneath Mara’s head.

“Oh, no,” Mara moaned as she leaned back against the support of the pillows and waited for the nauseous feeling to pass. She smiled thankfully as she felt the cool compress Belle held against her brow. “I’ll be all right now. It just came on me so sudden,” Mara said in puzzlement.

Belle nodded wisely. “It’s a real shame, but that’s the way it is with some womenfolk when they start to grow big with child.”

Mara felt another wave of nausea rise inside her. Her worst fears, ones she had not even dared to contemplate, couldn’t be ignored any longer.

She was carrying Nicholas’s child. She had suspected as much last month but had kept hoping that nothing was wrong. No longer could she ignore the tenderness of her breasts or the growing heaviness between her hips. Mara continued to stare numbly at Belle until the young girl began to move uncomfortably under the golden-eyed stare.

“I want your word that you will not mention this to anyone in this house. Do you understand, Belle, that no one must know about my condition,” Mara told her. “Promise.”

Belle’s brow cleared. “I can keep a secret, mademoiselle, even if others I know can’t,” she assured Mara. “You can trust Belle.”

After Belle had left the room, taking the now-unappetizing tray of food with her, Mara sighed in relief and lay back against the pillows, her arms folded across her breasts.

Nicholas’s child. He had gotten her with child, and suddenly Mara felt a deep resentment flare inside her. Why should she have to be the one to suffer for the pleasures they had shared? Why was she now to be branded, as if being punished for wrongdoing? By next month—her third month of pregnancy, she calculated—she would begin to “grow big with child” as Belle had so descriptively put it, and then everyone would know.

What would Nicholas do, Mara wondered. How would he react to the news that she was carrying his child? No, Mara decided with firm resolution, Nicholas must never know. She wouldn’t let him find out. It would be the final humiliation. He might even pity her, and that she could never bear, not from Nicholas. And what if out of some perverted sense of decency and honor he offered her marriage? Could she accept him under such circumstances, Mara shook her head sadly, knowing that Nicholas would never do anything so quixotic.

Oh, Brendan, me love, what am I going to do? Mara thought desperately, wishing she could turn to him for advice and see that devilish smile light up his face as he set about making plans. If only she weren’t stranded on this plantation.

A short while later Mara descended the stairs, looking as if she had nothing more to worry about than the weather. She paused briefly before the mirror in the entrance hall and stared at her figure, fearing that her condition might be evident, but her waist was still narrowly enclosed inside the pale green foulard silk of her morning dress. A lacy fichu crossed over her breasts and effectively covered the tightness she was beginning to feel as the material of her gown stretched across the increasing fullness. Mara straightened the lace edging her bell sleeves and, smoothing a deep wave of dark hair back from her forehead, turned toward the parlor.

“Mademoiselle O’Flynn,” Celeste greeted her. “I thought I heard someone come down the stairs. Won’t you please join me? I was having a cup of tea while I try to get Jean-Louis to take a nap,” she explained as she rocked the blanketed bundle held closely in her arms. Mara could just barely see the top of a dark head.

“Thank you, madame,” Mara accepted, thinking a cup of tea would taste good since she hadn’t had much breakfast. She was also rather curious about the almost startling change of appearance in Nicholas’s stepmother. It seemed as if overnight she had undergone a transformation from the nervous and harassed woman Mara had first met into the relaxed and quite friendly hostess who was now waiting for her.

“Please, you will call me Celeste,” she invited as she indicated a chair near the tea table. “I know tea is usually an English drink, but when I was expecting mon petit Jean-Louis, tea and toast were all I could eat in the mornings,” she said as she beamed down at the small head snuggled against her breast. “Please, mademoiselle, you will pour.”

Mara filled two cups with the fragrant brew and sat listening to Celeste speaking proudly of her only son. Mara eyed her curiously, wondering if the sight of her son always caused her to chatter nonsensically to strangers. Yet, perhaps there was something else. She seemed almost to be waiting for something to happen. There was a sudden stillness when she thought she heard something from the drive in front of the house, and then a faint excitement, or anxiety which Mara could see in her eyes, led her to believe that Celeste was awaiting the arrival of someone important.

“I am afraid Nicholas left early this morning to look over the property, but he will no doubt return soon,” Celeste said suddenly, as if Mara were waiting for an explanation.

“I see,” Mara answered, feeling oddly relieved. She couldn’t face Nicholas yet and be relaxed. “I suppose he would be very interested in seeing the plantation again after so great a time.”

“Oh, yes, he is most interested. But it is good that he looks now, for soon we will be having more rain and it will be difficult to get around. The river will most likely flood its banks again, and with Beaumarais so close to the river, we always suffer a little flooding.”

Mara looked at her in concern. “Is that very often?”

Celeste sighed, nodding regretfully. “Every year, it would seem, although some years it is worse than others. A few years ago it was especially bad and the river flooded the ground floor with so much water and mud that everything was ruined. I thought Beaumarais would never be the same. There was so much damage, and I loathed the snakes that found their way in as well,” Celeste told Mara with a delicate shiver. “Mon Dieu, but the sight of them swimming through my parlor was enough to nearly cause me to lose Jean-Louis. We were afraid that we would have to have extensive repairs made to the foundation, for the river current cut right into it, but it was filled back in and rebuilt in places, and
voilà
, it is as good as new. Beaumarais will probably be here longer than the old sycamore in the swamp,” she said with a small chuckle.

“You don’t fear the flooding?” Mara asked doubtfully.

“Yes, I fear it, but it is something you grow used to after a while,” Celeste said practically. “When I first arrived from Charleston and came out here to Beaumarais, I was frightened to death of the swamp and that mighty river so close. I would have nightmares about it all swallowing me up. I think one must be born here to ever feel at home. The rest of us will always be intruders.”

Mara shivered, for she had experienced the same feeling about Beaumarais.

“Belle told me that my nephew, Paddy, had come down earlier?” Mara sought to change the subject.

“Ah, yes, he went off with Damaris. Not that I think they will be gone long when she discovers—” she paused as she listened attentively to certain unmistakable sounds of anger issuing from the front of the house. “Yes, Damaris is most displeased,” she predicted correctly as the little redhead flew into the room, an expression of outraged anger on her small face.

“Mama! He is on Sorcier, Mama! He took my horse. He’s riding Sorcier! How dare he do this,” she cried almost incoherently as she stamped her foot in frustrated rage.

Paddy had followed her more quietly into the room and now stood silently watching his new-found friend, his dark eyes round as he listened to her tirade against Nicholas.

“I gave him permission to ride Sorcier, and as you well know, Damaris, he is not your horse. Your papa bought him for himself, and it is only because no one else cares to ride him that you have come to believe him yours. You know your papa would never have allowed you anywhere near him if he were still alive.”

“But I am the only one who can ride him,” Damaris protested volubly. “He likes no one
but
me.”

“Exactly,” Celeste responded. “He is an evil horse. He is uncontrollable and dangerous. You know I have been of a mind to sell him for many months now. In fact, if Nicholas wants him, which I doubt, then I will sell that devil horse to him.”

“No! No, you mustn’t. I won’t let you,” Damaris cried as tears began to fall unchecked from her eyes. “I hope he throws Nicholas! He has no right, no right at all to take my horse. Oh, I wish he had never returned!” she cried as she ran from the room and out of the house. A second later they heard the front door slam loudly.

“My pardon, mademoiselle, her behavior is inexcusable,” Celeste said angrily, her mouth tight with displeasure. “She is completely without sense sometimes, and I seem to have very little control over her. She has always been a stubborn little troublemaker. If only she were more like my Nicole, who would never dream of carrying on so over a horse and spends most of her time worrying over what color hair ribbon to wear each day.”

Mara smiled slightly, thinking that if it came to a choice, she personally rather liked the little firebrand the best.

“Paddy,” Mara said quickly, stopping him as he would have followed Damaris from the room. “I think you’d best let her alone. Why don’t you get your soldiers and set them up somewhere?” she suggested. With a disappointed look Paddy nodded. Excusing himself, he left the room, an intent expression already forming on his face as he planned his military maneuvers.

“Nicholas told me that you are the little one’s only family now that his papa has died,” Celeste spoke gently as she looked down at her own son’s dark head. “It is good that you care for him, mademoiselle,” Celeste told her with a look of approval. “Nicholas also tells me that you were left stranded in San Francisco and that he offered to escort you as far as New Orleans. It is a pity you did not arrive in the spring. Then your nephew would have had a far quicker recovery under our warm sunshine. But I think it wise you did not continue immediately on your long voyage back to London.” Celeste paused as she stared at Mara’s face. “Perhaps you might wish to stay in…non, I will not interfere. Forgive me, mademoiselle,” she apologized. “It is none of my business.”

Mara frowned slightly, thinking Nicholas must have neglected to inform Celeste that she was an actress. Celeste would hardly have been chatting so amiably over the tea table with her had she known. Mara was grateful for Nicholas’s thoughtfulness in protecting her reputation. On the other hand, Nicholas would not have jeopardized his position at Beaumarais by introducing her as an actress. They would have automatically assumed her to be Nicholas’s mistress. Presented to them as a young woman trying to care for her orphaned nephew, she had been given respect and hospitality. How strange a world it is, Mara thought ironically. Once she would indeed have deserved that respect, and yet, now Nicholas was her lover, and—

“Mademoiselle,” Celeste spoke suddenly, “was that a carriage? I thought I heard one arrive.”

“Would you like me to look?” Mara offered as she stood up and walked over to the long French windows facing the drive.

Mara watched as the carriage Celeste had heard came to a halt in front of the wide steps leading up to Beaumarais. It was an elegant barouche with the collapsible top down and a liveried coachman sitting smartly on the driver’s seat, his gloved hands easily controlling the team of spirited bays hitched to the harness.

A young footman hopped down and quickly opened the carriage door for the solitary woman sitting inside. Wearing a fine, merino wool bodice jacket and matching skirt of palest blue with a fur stole draped over her shoulders, the woman stepped down from the carriage. Mara could just barely make out her features behind the wisp of veil that concealed the side of her face and decorated the dark blue velvet bonnet that didn’t completely cover the paleness of her blond head.