Page 11 of Tanglewood Legacy (The Three Sisters 3)
Her kind didn’t “court” the way earth-dwellers did, but if they’d been in Darnuith and Pierre were a wizard, she would have gone out with him enthusiastically. Yes, she would have enjoyed that. He interested her, and his presence evoked an intense and immediate attraction she’d never experienced before.
But her sisters would never allow it here. Medea had made it perfectly clear that their greatest priority was discretion. They couldn’t trust these people, and Isis was well aware that what she’d done for Medea, bringing her back from the dead, she could never do again. They could not afford to risk attracting the wrong kind of attention here. She knew this, but still, she grieved for herself, for the experiences she sensed she was missing, for what might have been.
Up ahead, through the moss-draped cypress trees, a swamp came into view. She was in the farthest corner of their property, a place they hadn’t spent much time yet. An alligator wound its way across the murky depths. She approached the bank, fascinated by the creature’s graceful movements, her wand gripped in her hand, ready to transport her out of harm’s way should the creature attack.
She was still watching the six-foot-long reptile when the base of her neck started to tingle and she caught a whiff of sulfur on the air. Death. She sensed it nearby as certainly as if she were in the underworld.
Isis spun, searching for the source, as shadows stirred around her, roused by her sudden apprehension. She could find nothing unusual about the swamp. Nothing dead in the area around her. But still, the magic inside her continued on high alert. What was she missing?
Tingling with apprehension, she tipped her head back and looked straight up. What she saw in the tree above her sent her leaping back, clutching her chest. A dead man, blanched white as if he’d been drained of blood, draped over a branch above her head. His pallid arms dangled toward her. Isis couldn’t see his face, but that forearm was eerily familiar, and it was branded with the fleur-de-lis.
ChapterSeven
Pierre strode into the governor’s office with a roll of parchment under his arm. On it was his updated architectural drawing for a new prison. To be sure, Pierre knew nothing about prisons and had never had any desire to direct the building of one, but this was the job Étienne needed him to do, and he’d agreed to do it.
The governor’s private home neighbored his own, but Étienne did business out of a well-proportioned administrative barracks two blocks west. The door had been propped open to allow a breeze to pass through the place and out the back windows. It was a shady respite from the sweltering heat, and Pierre hurried inside. He stopped short when he noticed the governor was not alone.
“Ah, Monsieur Baron, have you met Madame Delphine Laurent?” The governor pointed a hand at the woman sitting in the chair across the desk from him. “Madame, this is Pierre Baron, engineer and architect of the parish.”
“Laurent still seems strange to my ears. It’s been only days since I went by Devereaux.” Delphine blotted her eyes with a handkerchief and turned to face Pierre. Her hair, shiny and a deep, rich brown, almost black, was curled and piled atop her head in a style the women of the area often saved for more formal occasions. Her skin was milky white and silky smooth, unusual for this part of the world. He’d never met her before, which meant she must have arrived recently. He immediately wondered if she’d met Isis.
Pierre bowed at the waist. “Enchante, Madame Laurent, and congratulations on your recent marriage. I hope I have not interrupted.”
She dabbed her handkerchief in the corner of each eye, although Pierre didn’t notice any tears necessitating the motion. Her powder seemed to be firmly in place as she said, “Oh, but I’m afraid you have. You see, my husband has gone missing. He didn’t come home last night. I fear the worst.”
Étienne sighed. “I was just explaining to Delphine that the, er, culture here is different from in France, and many new husbands spend time away from their wives until they become accustomed to the marital relationship.” The governor coughed into his hand as if the lie burned his throat.
The truth was that this parish was a den of debauchery and that her husband had likely spent the night drinking and whoring and would return to her when he got hungry for a home-cooked meal or needed a sock mended. A good number of men in la Nouvelle-Orléans were former prisoners, hardened and depraved. If Pierre’s memory served, Monsieur Laurent was just such a man.
Immediately, his heart went out to the woman, but then he noticed something…odd. Although her expression was grim, Pierre couldn’t help but observe that her spine remained straight, her shoulders back as if to try to make the most of her figure in the lightweight dress she wore. And her frown, though pronounced, had not dulled the light in her bright amber eyes. Such an unusual pale shade of brown, those eyes, almost yellow. Her grief had not dulled her beauty in the slightest. Then again, could he expect that a woman who had wed only days ago would be any more distraught over a missing husband—a man who was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger?
Pierre gave her a sympathetic look. “I am sure, wherever your husband is, he regrets not being in the company of such a lovely bride.”
A shallow smile graced her lips, and her gaze sought out his. “I see now how you came to be in your position, Monsieur Baron. You have quite the imagination.”
They were interrupted when a young man in uniform rushed in, face pale and hands trembling. “Sir, you must come. There’s a… A man was found in the river. A dead man.”
After a quick exchange of glances, Pierre accompanied the governor, as did Madame Laurent, into a waiting carriage that took them to the bank of the Mississippi. Pierre wondered at the wisdom of bringing Delphine along. If the man was her missing husband, would she dissolve into hysterics? But across from him, Delphine seemed utterly cool and collected. She didn’t sweat, he observed, although the carriage was quite hot. Now that he studied her, he found her almost statuesque in appearance and wondered if the day’s events had stunned her into the stony expression. She hadn’t even blinked in several seconds.
He was relieved when they arrived, and she stepped gracefully down from her seat, even if her face did retain its impassive expression. He fixed his eyes on the crowd that had gathered near the river. Why should he feel the need to examine Madame Laurent? Surely there was no common way of reacting to such events.
Pierre halted his line of thinking altogether when he saw the body washed upon the shore. The surgeon and coroner, Alexandre Viel, was already there, frowning and shaking his head. When he saw the governor, he approached them, sparing a curt nod for Delphine.
“Washed up this morning,” Viel said. “We’re having trouble identifying him. The body has been completely drained of blood.”
Delphine strode forward, the hem of her pale gray dress sweeping the rocky shore. Viel and the young soldier called out warnings, insisting that she not approach the body, but she did so anyway. To Pierre’s astonishment, she dug the toe of her shoe into the corpse’s shoulder and rolled the body over, until the bloated face stared up at her.
Pierre raised a hand to his mouth, surprised that Delphine had no reaction to the ghastly sight near her feet. The dead man’s neck sported two puncture wounds as if he’d been bitten by a massive snake, and his skin adhered tightly to the bones.
“It is my husband,” Delphine said coolly, then pressed her handkerchief to the corner of her eye again. “This is Guillaume Laurent.”
She turned on her heel and strode back toward the carriage with her handkerchief held to her face. Pierre took another look at the dead man. His arm had flopped to the side when Delphine had rolled him over, and a fleur-de-lis tattoo marred his forearm. A former prisoner, then. Pierre wondered what kind of trouble the man had got himself into.
“What animal drains a body of its blood but leaves the flesh?” Étienne frowned. “Unless Viel shows me evidence the man was attacked by a swarm of leeches following such a bite, I suspect Guillaume was murdered before being thrown into the river.”
“But who would murder a man in such a strange way? And why?” Pierre asked.
Étienne’s gray eyes turned hard as ice. “Most certainly the Indians. We’ve had issues with them resisting the civilization we bring here. I think the savages are sending us a message.”
