The Legacy (8 page)

His finger hesitated over the send button. He should call Joe, tell the editor of
World
he’d be out of here on the first plane. It was time to move on, to put this place behind him, as he had so many places before.

Paul stood on the veranda a long time, holding the phone and telling himself to do the right thing.
The problem was, he didn’t know what that was anymore.

This place had gotten to him. Or maybe it was just a little indigestion from the gumbo and turtle soup.

P
AUL DIDN’T WANT TO
keep Marjo waiting for him this time, and he arrived at the opera house a few minutes before ten.

A minute later Marjo pulled up and got out of her little blue Honda. Immediately, he was struck by how amazing she looked, and all his well-laid plans from last night evaporated.

Her hair was down again, unfettered by her usual braid. Had she done this for him? Or because she didn’t have an elastic handy?

His male ego hoped that was the reason.

“Good morning,” he said as she approached. “You look incredible. You don’t look at all like you spent the entire night at a wake.”

“Thanks.” She smiled. “I’ve got a couple of hours until Hugh’s funeral. Are you ready to see the opera house?”

He held up his camera. “Absolutely.”

She withdrew a set of keys from her pocket, inserted one into the lock on the carved door then pushed. It opened with a creak.

Not a good sign, Paul decided, for his ancestral “treasure.”

Marjo led him inside the darkened lobby, then flicked a nearby light switch, bathing the space in a warm glow. The lobby had been used as the retail space for the antique shop and was separated from the auditorium by large double doors. Marjo opened the doors now and beckoned Paul inside, turning on another light.

A long central aisle ran between rows of velvet seats up to a spacious stage, and to either side, staircases rose to an upper level. Wall sconces and chandeliers washed the interior with gold, illuminating the pale floral wallpaper and the high windows.

“This is…incredible,” Paul said. He pointed to the private boxes bracketing the stage. “Look at the intricate woodwork.”

“Alexandre spared no expense.”

“It shows.” He raised his camera and sighted the carving, then the curve of the ceiling, the scars in the wood.

Marjo led him up the stairs and began to tell him the story as she’d promised. “This area was settled in the late 1700s. Growing up in Nova Scotia, I’m sure you know how the Acadians came to live here.”

He had heard the tale at least a hundred times at family gatherings. Heritage was an important part of life in Cape Breton, too. But Paul, who had wanted to be anywhere but in Nova Scotia, had never really
paid attention to those family stories. “Tell me anyway. I’d like to hear your version.” In her sweet, lilting voice, the details, he was sure, would be far more interesting than when he’d been five and his grandfather had been reciting family history lessons.

“The French set up colonies here, starting in the 1600s, and also in Acadia, now the Maritime provinces of Canada.”

He grinned. “Oh, yes. The Acadian history is something every schoolchild learns.”

Her hand trailed lightly along the wood railing as she climbed the narrow staircase. “Later, when Napoleon claimed Louisiana, the people who settled here were known as the French Creoles. However, in the 1750s, after the British won Acadia from the French as a prize for settling a war, the British marched in and claimed Acadia for themselves. They told the Acadians to either swear allegiance to the British crown or face forcible eviction.”

“Many ended up shipped out on boats and forced into indentured servitude in places like the West Indies,” Paul said.

Marjo nodded. “
Le grand dérangement
was a horrible time in our history. Many came to Louisiana, settling in this area. Lafayette became the unofficial capital, because more French settled there than anywhere else.” They had reached the top of the staircase. “Alexandre Valois was a French Creole and the grandson of wealthy parents, who had a distant bloodline to the French
monarchy. The Valois family started out with an indigo plantation—”

“But switched to sugarcane,” Paul interjected. “Because someone in the family had been successful with it.”

Marjo nodded. “Alexandre’s mother. So, you do know some of this story?”

“Some. Although my family is descended from Amelie, not Alexandre, my sister did some research into both family lines on her computer.”

“Well, stop me if I repeat anything,” she said.

“No, please, go on. It sounds so much better coming from you than my relatives. And, I admit, I never really listened much to these stories.”

“In those days, marriages were often still arranged, particularly to enhance the family wealth and protect the Creole heritage, which was seen as more pure than that of the Acadians, who’d settled here nearly a century earlier. Alexandre’s family wanted him to marry a wealthy second cousin, a fellow Creole.” She paused by a painting hung on the wall, a severe portrait of an older couple and their young, twenty-something son. “Here they are,” she said. “It’s one of the only portraits we have left of the Valois family.”

Paul studied it, seeking…he wasn’t sure what, in their painted eyes. Like many portraits of that day, the Valois family wasn’t smiling, but in Alexandre’s countenance, Paul detected a rebellious streak. It was the way his lips curved a little more on one side
than the other, and in the glint in his eye. “But Alexandre wanted someone else.” He turned to Marjo. When she gave him a questioning look, he went on. “I read my Shakespeare in college. It wouldn’t be a good story if it didn’t have some element of tragedy, now would it? Besides,” Paul said, gesturing to Alexandre’s portrait, “he looks like a man who wouldn’t want to be told what to do.”

She laughed again. “That part’s true.”

Paul studied the portrait again, then he lifted his camera and snapped an image. “Did he marry her?”

“Amelie was an Acadian, so to Alexandre’s parents, she didn’t have the true blood they wanted for their son, nor the royal connection. Ironically, her parents felt the same about him. Both sets of parents were interested in protecting the bloodline, so they couldn’t see the love Alexandre and Amelie had for each other. But the couple ran off and got married anyway. Their parents grudgingly accepted the marriage, and for quite a while, Alexandre and Amelie were happy. But when she couldn’t have children, Amelie grew more and more despondent about the one thing missing from their perfect life.”

Paul thought of that and how it mimicked his own childhood.

“What happened next?” Paul asked.

“Alexandre was concerned about his wife,” Marjo said, leading him along the upper level. Below, he saw the stage, the worn, ripped seats, the space that had once been beautiful. “Alexandre realized that
because she was so devastated about her inability to have a child, she had stopped singing. Amelie was a gifted singer.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Like someone else I know?”

Marjo ignored his comment, but her cheeks flushed. “Alexandre built the opera house as a gift for his wife to inspire her to sing again. He wrote in his letters how her voice could charm angels and how her singing had captured his heart when they met. To inspire her, he paid Adelina Patti, a famous opera singer, to stop here during her tour of Louisiana and give a performance during the 1860 to 1861 season.”

“Wow. She was quite famous in her day, from what I’ve heard. I have an aunt who loved opera.”

“It was quite the coup for the opera house. Alexandre also hired a music teacher from New Orleans to help retrain Amelie’s voice. Soon she was giving concerts in this very opera house, along with other local musicians and traveling groups. Of course, the whole thing was an embarrassment to Alexandre’s parents.”

Paul quirked a grin. “Not something the wife of their son should be doing.”

“Still, it worked out wonderfully and the opera house was very successful for several years.” Marjo pointed across the balcony at the gilded boxes on either side of the stage that Paul had noticed earlier. Narrow staircases led up to these private seats.
“Those were built for Alexandre’s parents, who wouldn’t deign to sit with the common folk,” Marjo said, affecting a suitably upper-crust attitude. “Not that it mattered. Josephine Valois rarely attended any of Amelie’s performances, and when she did, she made such a drama of it that it seemed the queen herself had descended on the opera house.”

Paul pulled the strobe flash from his backpack, attached it to the Nikon then took a photo of the small gilded chairs on the private balconies. For just a second as he looked through his viewfinder, he could actually see Josephine Valois, regal and prim, showing no emotion while she watched her daughter-in-law perform.

“My family never talked about this,” Paul said. “My father traveled a lot, and worked out of province. When he was home, he was sleeping. My mother…was distant. I don’t even know if they knew these stories. If they did, they never shared them.”

He shrugged. A lump had formed in his throat and he swallowed it away. Paul had dealt with this, and despite it all, he and Faye had turned out all right. He looked around the auditorium, so silent now. “What happened to Alexandre?”

“The Civil War.” Marjo took in a breath, her eyes filling with a sadness. “Alexandre believed in fighting for his beloved Indigo, so he enlisted, much to the heartbreak of his wife. With Alexandre gone, Amelie couldn’t stop the Union soldiers from taking over the plantation house for barracks and the opera
house as a military hospital. They moved into the cottage, La Petite Maison, with Charles’s mistress and her child. If you’d thought Josephine was embarrassed by the opera house, this was even more humiliating. I don’t think she ever forgave Amelie, as if one woman could have prevented an army from changing their lives or the war that ate up nearly all their wealth.”

Paul’s camera hung from the shoulder strap, unused. He stood there in the auditorium, wrapped in the story and Marjo’s soft, heartfelt delivery. He wanted to know more, to hear that it had ended well, because these people were becoming as real as the carved railing sloping down the aisle. “Did Alexandre come home from the war?” As he asked the question, a distant memory told him there was no happy ending to this story.

Marjo shook her head. “He died in a Yankee prison camp, from a fever, or maybe just exhaustion. In their grief, Alexandre’s family cut Amelie off, blaming her infertility for the loss of their son, their bloodline. Amelie’s brothers died, her sister lost her husband, too, and I think all of them lost their spirit.”

“How tragic. So much loss in one family.”

“It was too much for her. To be so young and to lose the love of her life. Though she owned the opera house, which Alexandre had left to her, Amelie couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. It was no longer her dream, not without her beloved Alexandre. She sold the plantation house, but couldn’t part with the
opera house, even though she needed the money. So she returned to Nova Scotia, where her family had gone after the war wiped them out financially.”

“And eventually that led to me and my sister, a few generations later.”

“Not a bad bloodline after all, huh?” Marjo said, giving him a smile. She led him back along the balcony toward the staircase. “Amelie would return from time to time to visit Alexandre’s grave behind St. Timothy’s, to see the opera house and wander the grounds, as if she could connect with him by being here. People said they always knew when Amelie had been here because they’d find a single camellia on the stage the next morning.”

“Your favorite flower.”

“My mother’s, actually,” Marjo said, her voice so quiet, Paul had to strain to hear her. “She heard the stories about Alexandre and Amelie, and planted camellias all around our little house, ordering varieties from around the world. She was quite the romantic.”

“And you inherited that trait?” Paul grinned.

She laughed. “I’m as far from a romantic as you can get. I just like the way camellias look.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, leaving it at that. He suspected Marjo, who had fought long and hard to be sure Alexandre and Amelie’s story wasn’t forgotten, was more of a romantic than she realized. “Did Amelie ever remarry?”

“No.” Marjo let out a sigh, then took his hand and led him further along the balcony, past the staircase,
to another portrait. This one was of a woman alone. She had that same secret smile that Paul had seen on Luc’s face and Alain’s. Clearly, this beautiful woman was Amelie Valois.

“It was so tragic,” Marjo said. “From the painting we have of her—” she indicated the portrait in front of them “—and from her letters, it was clear she was a beautiful woman, inside and out. But losing Alexandre broke her heart. When she died, she asked to be buried beside him. They’re together now, in the Valois vault in the cemetery behind St. Timothy’s Church.”

“She
is
beautiful,” he agreed. As he looked at the portrait, into Amelie’s blue eyes, eyes that had been passed down for generations, a deep sadness filled him. For Alexandre, for Amelie, for the children they’d never had.

He shook his head. He wasn’t a sentimental guy. These were people he’d never met before, people who had loved each other a hundred and fifty years ago. Being upset because some long-ago aunt had been widowed young was crazy.

Paul followed Marjo down the stairs and back to the lobby. “And to keep the opera house in the family, Amelie’s will decreed that the opera house was to be passed down to the firstborn niece or nephew in each generation.” That’s where he came in.

Marjo nodded. “Amelie wanted to make sure the opera house stayed within her family, so it went first
to her sister’s son, then to his brother’s daughter…and then, eventually, to you. The remains of Amelie’s estate were used to pay for the taxes and some upkeep.”

“Until my uncle squandered it on bad stocks.”

“Well, he must have cared about the opera house because he came down here to see it. From what Hugh told me, your uncle was very interested in the history of the place and actually thought of living here.”

“How did you pay for the upkeep after he stopped sending the inheritance money?”

“For a time, the opera house became an antique shop. It didn’t make a lot of money, but it kept up with some of the bills. The business end was handled by a lawyer in New Orleans.”

Paul arched a brow and looked around the place. “Antique shop?”

“Yes, in the lobby area. Earlier this year, it was relocated to Maude Picard’s cottage. It’s owned by Alain’s wife, Sophie, and Hugh’s niece, Amelia, runs it.”