Midnight Bayou

assure compatibility? If there is, and it worked, explain the divorce rate.”
    “A couple of lawyers stand here debating the subject, we’ll be here till next Tuesday.”
    “Then let me say this. I’ve never felt like this before, never in my life. I didn’t think I could. I figured something inside me just didn’t work the way it was supposed to.”
    “Well, for Christ’s sake, Dec.”
    “I couldn’t love Jessica.” The guilt slid back into his voice. “I just couldn’t, and I tried to. I damn near settled for affection, respect and mutual backgrounds because I thought it was all I’d get, or be able to give. But it’s not. I’ve never felt like this, Remy,” he said again. “And I like it.”
    “If you want Lena, then I want her for you. The thing is, Dec, no matter how you feel, it doesn’t guarantee she’s going to feel the same.”
    “Maybe she’ll break my heart, but feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.” He’d been telling himself that, repeatedly, since he’d realized he was in love with her. “One way or the other, I’ve got to try.”
    He swirled the whiskey he’d yet to drink. “She doesn’t know what to make of me,” Declan murmured. “It’s going to be fun letting her find out.”
    T hat night, he heard weeping. A man’s raw and broken sobs. Declan tossed in sleep, weighed down with the grief, unable to stop it, unable to give or seek comfort.
    Even when silence came, the sorrow stayed.

10
    Bayou Rouse
    March 1900
    H e didn’t know why he came here, to stare at the water while thick green shadows spread around him, as night gathered to eat away at the day.
    But he came, time and again, to wander through the marsh as if he would somehow come upon her, strolling along the curve of the river where the swamp flowers blossomed.
    She would smile at him, hold out her hand.
    And everything would be right again.
    Nothing would ever be right again.
    He was afraid he was going mad, that grief was darkening his mind as night darkened the day. How else could he explain how he could hear her whispering to him in the night? What could he do but shut off the sound of her, the pain of her?
    He watched a blue heron rise from the reeds like a ghost, beautiful, pure, perfect, to skim over thetea-colored water and glide into the trees. Away from him. Always away from him.
    She was gone. His Abby had winged away from him, like the ghost bird. Everyone said it. His family, his friends. He’d heard the servants whispering about it. How Abigail Rouse had run off with some no-account and left her husband and bastard baby daughter behind.
    Though he continued to look in New Orleans, in Baton Rouge, in Lafayette, though he continued to haunt the bayou like a ghost himself, in the loneliest hours of the night, he believed it.
    She’d left him and the child.
    Now he was leaving, in all but body. He walked through each day like a man in a trance. And God help him, he could not be a father to the child, that image of Abigail he secretly, shamefully doubted carried his blood. Just looking at her brought him unspeakable sorrow.
    He no longer went up to the nursery. He hated himself for it, but even the act of climbing the stairs to the third floor was like drowning in a sea of despair.
    They said the child wasn’t his.
    No. In the dimming light of dusk, with the night coming alive around him, Lucian covered his face with his hands. No, he could not, would not believe that of her. They had made the child together, in love, in trust, in desire.
    If even that was a lie . . .
    He lowered his hands, stepped toward the water. It would be warm, as her smile had been warm. Soft, as her skin had been soft. Even now the color was deepening and was almost the color of her eyes.
    “Lucian!”
    He froze, on the slippery edge.
    Abby. She was rushing toward him, pushing throughthe fronds of a willow, with her hair spilling over her shoulders in midnight curls. His heart, deadened with grief, woke in one wild leap.
    Then the last shimmer of sunlight fell over her face, and he died again.
    Claudine gripped his hands. Fear made her fingers cold. She’d seen what had been in his eyes, and it had been his death.
    “She would never want this. She would never want you to damn your soul by taking your life.”
    “She left me.”
    “No. No, that isn’t true. They lie to you. They lie, Lucian. She loved you. She loved you and Marie Rose above all things.”
    “Then where is she?”