Midnight Bayou

Abby clawed her way free. She spun, stumbled over the torn hem of her nightgown. Her hand closed over the fireplace poker. She swung wildly, ramming it hard against Julian’s shoulder.
    Howling in pain, he fell back against the hearth, and she flew toward the crib.
    She had to get the baby. To get the baby and run.
    He caught her sleeve, and she screamed again as the material ripped. Even as she reached down to snatch her daughter from the crib, he dragged her back. He struck her, slicing the back of his hand over her cheek and knocking her back into a table. A candle fell to the floor and guttered out in its own wax.
    “Bitch! Whore!”
    He was mad. She could see it now in the feral gleam in his eyes, the drunken flush on his cheeks. In that instant fear turned to terror.
    “He’ll kill you for this. My Lucian will kill you.” She tried to gain her feet, but he hit her again, using his fist this time so the pain radiated from her face, through her body. Dazed, she began to crawl toward the crib. There was blood in her mouth, sweet and warm.
    My baby. Sweet God, don’t let him hurt my baby.
    His weight was on her—and the stench of him. She bucked, called for help. The sound of the baby’s furious screams merged with hers.
    “Don’t! Don’t! You damn yourself.”
    But as he yanked up the skirt of her nightgown, she knew no amount of pleading, no amount of struggle, would stop him. He would debase her, soil her, because of who she was. Because she was Lucian’s.
    “This is what you want.” He drove himself into her, and the thrill of power spurted through him like black wine. Her face was white with fear and shock, and raw from the blows of his hands. Helpless, he thought, as he pounded out his raging envy. “This is what all of you want. Cajun whores.”
    Thrust after violent thrust, he raped her. The thrill of forcing himself into her spumed through him until his breathing turned to short bursts grunted between clenched teeth.
    She was weeping now, huge choking sobs. But screaming, too. Somehow screaming as he hammered his fury, his jealousy, his disgust into her.
    As the great clock began to chime midnight, he closed his hands around her throat. “Shut up. Damn you.” He rammed her head against the floor, squeezed harder. And still the screaming pierced his brain.
    Abby heard it, too. Dimly. The baby’s frantic criespealed through her head along with the slow, formal bongs of the midnight hour. She slapped, weak protests against the hands that cut off her air, tried to shut her body off from the unspeakable invasion.
    Help me. Mother of Jesus. Help me. Help my baby.
    Her vision dimmed. Her heels drummed wildly on the floor as she convulsed.
    The last thing she heard was her crying daughter. The last thing she thought was, Lucian.
    The door of the nursery burst open. Josephine Manet stood just inside the nursery. She summed up the scene quickly. Coldly.
    “Julian.”
    His hands still vised around Abby’s throat, he looked up. If his mother saw madness in his eyes, she chose to ignore it. With her gilt hair neatly braided for the night, her robe sternly buttoned to the neck, she stepped over, stared down.
    Abby’s eyes were wide and staring. There was a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, and bruises blooming along her cheeks.
    Dispassionately, she leaned down, laid her fingers against Abby’s throat.
    “She’s dead,” Josephine announced and moved quickly to the connecting door. She opened it, glanced into the maid’s room. Then closed it, locked it.
    She stood for a moment, her back against it, her hand at her own throat as she thought of what could come. Disgrace, ruin, scandal.
    “It was . . . an accident.” His hands began to shake as they slid away from Abby’s throat. The whiskey was whirling in his head now, clouding it. It churned in his belly, sickening it.
    He could see the marks on her skin, dark and deep and damning. “She . . . tried to seduce me, then, she attacked . . .”
    She crossed the room again, her slippers clicking on wood. Crouching down, Josephine slapped him, one hard crack of flesh on flesh. “Quiet. Be quiet and do exactly as I say. I won’t lose another son to this creature. Take her down to her bedroom. Go out through the gallery and stay there until I come.”
    “It was her fault.”
    “Yes. Now she’s paid for it. Take her down, Julian. And be quick.”
    “They’ll . . .” A single tear gathered in the corner of his eye and