Wronged (The Cuvier Widows Book 1) (16 page)

“I was busy. I didn’t receive it until I
returned home.”

She continued her pacing, her arms crossed
across her chest, her mind working frantically to resolve the
problem she’d uncovered.

“I’m here. What’s wrong?” Louis asked
standing in the doorway twirling his hat in his hand.

“Come in and shut the door. No one else needs
to know about this,” she said with a frown.

Louis closed the door and stood in front of
it, his arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the closed
door.
It wasn't fair, Louis was so handsome, so debonair and so
much like her dead husband.

“I’m waiting,” he said impatiently. “I have a
party to attend.”

She turned on him exasperated. “I’m terribly
sorry to disturb you, but I thought you might want to consider that
we have lost over a fourth of our customers since Jean’s murder was
on the front page of every newspaper in Louisiana. Our profits are
way down and the newspaper continues to publish articles on Jean’s
immoral character. I’m so afraid we’re going to lose more business.
What are we going to do?”

“Whoa! Take it easy, before you have a case
of the vapors! Slow down and let’s take these one by one.” He
stepped into the room, crossing to where Marian stood. “Let’s start
with the simplest. Are you referring to the article just printed a
couple of days ago?”

“Yes, I think we all agree, Jean was a
bastard of the worst sort, but the man is dead and I just wish they
would quit writing about him. It’s destroying Cuvier Shipping. It
hurts my children.”

Louis shook his head. “It’s not going to end
until after there’s a trial for his murder. I’m sorry, Marian,
there’s nothing I can do to stop the press.” He took a deep breath.
“But I have a friend down at the newspaper who owes me a favor.
He’s going to write an article on how Cuvier Shipping is changing
with the times and about the new direction we’re taking toward the
twentieth century. That should help our image and bring us more
business.”

She gazed at him stunned. “So you’ve already
handled that one?”

“Yes. It should be out sometime next
week.”

Jean had kept everything to himself. She had
not been included in any of the decisions regarding the two of
them, but lived with his choices. He’d never involved her or even
kept her informed. And now Louis had not involved her in the
newspaper article.

“As for losing more customers, I sent a
letter out just this week to all of our clients saying basically
the same thing that the article will say. In the letter, I tell
them how important their business is to us.”

“Oh. That’s a good idea. How did you sign the
letter?” she asked, trying not to get upset, feeling more and more
like Jean’s ghost had invaded Louis’s body and continued to make
all the decisions, excluding her.

He gazed at her, his face looking quizzical.
“I signed them.”

“Did you include my name?” she asked.

He looked sheepish. “No.”

“Perfect,” she said, sarcasm dripping from
her voice. “Let’s not include the new partner.”

He ignored her remark, but took a step back
and walked across the room. “I looked at the financial statement
sometime last week. I’ve since taken steps to get us new business
and I feel we should recover in the next two or three months.
Eventually we’ll recapture our losses.”

For the last five hours she’d paced the floor
worrying whether they were going to survive her deceased husband’s
reputation, while Louis had already taken steps to ensure the
continuation of the company and was out having a good time. Would
including her in these decisions have been so difficult? Or just
like Jean, had he deliberately kept her in the dark regarding his
decisions?

An overriding fury gripped her as she stared
at the handsome man standing there in his evening clothes, looking
like a man on the prowl.

Just like Jean.

“I have two other questions,” she said, her
voice calm, her words precise. She glared at him, her eyes saying
what she wasn’t quite ready to say. “When you and my husband were
partners did you discuss the decisions you made regarding the
business?”

Louis took a deep breath. “Look, I made these
evaluations before I accepted you as my partner. That’s why I came
in and spoke with you about all those other matters the other day.
I was trying to remember everything that’s happened and tell you,
so you’d know.”

“Well there were several important ones you
missed. I’ve just spent the afternoon worrying about how I would
feed my family,” she said, her voice rising.

“Marian, I can help you. Let me buy the
business from you. All you have to do is say the word and I’ll buy
you out.” He stared at her. “You could put all this behind you and
concentrate on your children again.”

“No! I don’t want to sell,” she said curtly.
“I want to be included. You weren’t going to tell me these things,
just like you didn’t tell me about Jean’s other women!” The room
grew silent. Marian stared at Louis. For several moments silence
filled the room as he looked at her, shocked by her outburst.

“I didn’t tell you about the statement
because at the time I hadn’t accepted you as my partner.” He shoved
his hands down in the pockets of his tuxedo. “And I didn’t know
that Jean married those women. I knew he cheated on his wife, but I
didn’t know you at the time and frankly his affairs were none of my
business.”

Marian felt the tears swell behind her eyes
and knew she couldn’t break down and cry. Not now. Not while Louis
stood there watching her.

She turned away from him and walked to the
window. “I’d like you to leave now.”

Her request was calm and cool and perfectly
under control, but she didn’t know how long she could remain this
way.

Out of the comer of her eye, she saw him take
a step toward her and then stop. He stood, uncertain, and then he
turned to go, but when he reached the door, he paused with his back
to her.

“I’m sorry about Jean, Marian. What he did to
you and the other women wasn’t right. You deserved to be treated
much better.” He opened the door and paused for a moment. “I’m
sorry I didn’t tell you about the financial statement. It didn’t
occur to me. I’ll try harder.”

She heard the door click behind him and she
burst into sobs. He reminded her so much of Jean. His lack of
communicating, his way with women, even the way he laughed
sometimes. But thank God, he wasn’t Jean. For Jean would never have
apologized.

Yet the apology almost made it worse, because
somehow it made her like him even more. And she didn’t want to be
attracted to another man. Not now. Not ever. And especially not her
business partner.

M
arian stood before
the townhouse door, feeling foolish. She shouldn’t have come. What
if the woman wouldn’t speak with her? What if the blonde just
wanted her to go away?

Marian took a deep breath and raised her
hand, forcing herself to knock on the door. The argument with Louis
had forced her to realize that the questions revolving in her head
since Jean’s death would not disappear until she spoke with one of
the women Jean married, maybe both. She needed answers to these
questions or go crazy wondering.

A servant opened the door. “Yes?”

“Could I speak with Mrs... could I speak with
Nicole?” Marian asked. “Tell her it’s Marian Cuvier.” The servant’s
face went ashen.

“Please wait in the parlor while I see if
she’s accepting visitors,” the servant said ushering Marian into
the house.

He took her into a small room off the
entryway of the town house and shut the door. A few minutes later,
the door slowly opened and a very pale Nicole walked in. For a
moment, the two women stared at one another, their gazes locked as
they took measure of each other.

“I ... I need to talk with you,” Marian
said.

“Please sit,” she invited.

Marian glanced around at the small sitting
room where a loveseat and two chairs were placed in front of a
fireplace.

“I’ll order us coffee,” Nicole said stepping
into a room off the sitting area.

Marian sat in one of the chairs and glanced
at a copy of a Rembrandt painting, which graced a wall over the
small fireplace.

Nicole stepped back into the room, her long
skirt flowing gracefully behind her. Her manners were elegant and
ladylike as she sat on the loveseat across from Marian.

Her blue eyes gazed at Marian with a gentle
regard. “How can I help you, Mrs...”

“Please, Marian.”

Nicole smiled warily. “Sorry, it just feels
so awkward.”

“I understand. I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed
you by coming to your home.”

“Oh, no. But I would suggest that when you
leave, you take the back way and be cautious. There’s at least one
pesky reporter who continues to hound me. There’s no need to give
them any more gossip.”

“Yes, we’re still having problems with
reporters ourselves,” Marian acknowledged.

The room grew silent with only the sounds
from the street filtering through an open window that looked out
onto a courtyard. A bird trilled a song celebrating the warm
sunshine, an odd contrast to the chilled atmosphere in the room.
Marian gazed at the young woman, noticing the dark shadows beneath
her eyes, her complexion pale, and she wondered if she were
ill.

“Are you feeling any better?” she asked,
hoping they would warm to one another, before she asked the
personal questions she needed answered. The stilted atmosphere
made it even harder to ask for the information she sought. “You
haven’t fainted again, have you?”

“I’m better,” Nicole said. “I’m going home in
the next few days and I think that will help me more than
anything.”

A lengthy silence ensued as the two women sat
there, Marian not knowing how to bring up the delicate subject.

She cleared her throat. “I guess you’re
wondering why I came here today.”

Nicole looked up and nodded. “Yes.”

“I—I need to speak with you about Jean,” she
said blurting the words out, uncertain even now if she should talk
with Nicole about her dead husband. But who else could understand
her fears and her concerns about what Jean had done? “You seemed to
care for him a great deal.”

“I loved Jean. He made me happy,” the woman
said, her gaze unwavering as she stared at Marian as if daring her
to dispute the statement.

Marian stood and began to pace the floor.
“I’m sorry this is so difficult. Most people would question my
sanity for asking you, a woman he married, but I thought that maybe
you could help me. There’s no one else.” Marian wrung her hands as
she paced the floor. “I feel so betrayed. Not because I loved Jean.
My marriage to Jean had been over for a long time, but because— my
life with Jean could have been better.”

Nicole watched Marian and her eyes filled
with distrust. “I too feel betrayed.”

“My marriage didn’t turn out like I expected.
It was not what I dreamed of as a young woman.” Marian sighed and
walked to the window, gazing out at the beautiful courtyard, not
really seeing anything. “I can’t help but wonder what went wrong.
What did I do to make him seek other women?”

“Marian, you and I both know that men don’t
need a reason to seek out other women. It’s accepted for them to
have a mistress,” she said. Nicole folded her hands in her lap.
“Tell me, if you didn’t love Jean, why did you marry him?”

Marian sank back down in her chair and took a
deep breath. “My father knew Jean’s father and arranged my
marriage. I was barely nineteen on the day we wed.”

The maid knocked and entered carrying in a
tray with a small coffeepot and two china cups, and carefully set
it on the small table in the center of the room. Nicole poured
Marian a cup and handed it to her. The china pattern had delicate
pink roses painted on the side with the rim outlined in gold.

When they both settled back, Marian
continued. “Shortly after we married, we moved to New Orleans where
Jean took over Cuvier Shipping from his father. I soon became
pregnant with Philip and while our life together held no passionate
love, I assumed we were happy. Not long after our second child,
Renee, was born, I noticed a change in Jean.”

She sipped from the cup. “He lost interest in
our children, in me, and remained home for only short periods of
time. He stopped coming to my bed and when I tried to confront him,
he avoided my questions or refused to tell me why he no longer
wanted me. I begged him at least to spend some time with the
children. They needed him. He never would tell me why he no longer
came to my bed.” Marian took a deep breath. “I soon realized there
must be another woman.”

She glanced at Nicole. “I don’t know what I
did that drove him from my bed to yours. I don’t know why he
couldn’t love me, but he didn’t. You said you didn’t know he was
married, but did he ever tell you anything that could help me
understand what happened to our marriage?”

Nicole sat there, her cup and saucer balanced
in her hand, staring at Marian, her face showing no expression yet
her eyes were brimming with tears. She took a deep breath. “Marian,
he never said anything about you. I didn’t even know you existed
until that morning we all met at the hotel room.”

“I know. I came here hoping that something
you could tell me could help me to comprehend what happened. I just
want to know why.”

Nicole sat her cup down, put her head in her
hands, resting her elbows on her knees. A tear trickled down her
cheek and she quickly wiped it away. “I’m not even sure anymore
that I knew the real Jean. How can I help you when my own life with
Jean appears to be a lie? I thought we were happy. I thought he
loved me, but he married Layla.”

Marian resisted the urge to move to the young
woman and comfort her. “I’m sorry to upset you. I’ve dwelled on
this for weeks and I needed to speak with someone who could help me
to understand what I did that drove him away. I thought you might
know.”