Emerald Ecstasy (27 page)

Philippe realized her plan. “Don't run for it,
chérie.
I'm faster than you and have no qualms about shooting you in the back.”

“This is crazy. The authorities shall try you for murder.”

“But I'll be vindicated, Lianne, when everyone learns of your affair with my sister's husband.” He wasn't so crazy that he didn't have a sensible plan in mind.

Lianne knew that if she didn't try to fight him, she was destined to die. So, she took a deep breath as Philippe advanced toward her and kicked hard at his groin. This brought him down and she managed to get a hold on the pistol, but he was very strong. He yanked up her arm. She managed to keep a grip on the butt. When Philippe brought his arm down, she pushed violently at him and fell backward. Immediately she released the gun, but as he fell, so did the gun and it discharged into his temple.

The sound deafened her. She saw him, staring glassy-eyed at her and knew he was dead. Huge sobs racked her body. What was she to do? Send for the authorities? Get Daniel? She decided she needed him, and turned to flee from the house when the front door opened. Raoul de Lovis stood there, surveying the situation.

In truth he hadn't expected such a mess, but as he walked into the room, Lianne noticed he didn't seem the least disturbed.

He shook his head in mock dismay. “Such an idiot was Philippe.”

For the first time Lianne felt a sense of relief to see Raoul. He'd help her. “Please send for the authorities and for Daniel.”

She stood in the center of the room and he noticed she trembled with fear. A situation which should have dashed all of Raoul's hopes to possess her might be turned to his advantage. Always the businessman, the entrepreneur, he knew a good deal when he saw one.

“Don't fear, Lianne. The proper persons shall be sent for.” He looked at Philippe's body but left the pistol on the floor. He walked to a sideboard and poured Lianne a large glass of wine. Lianne shook so violently that she didn't notice he had lifted the front of his large ring and shook a white powder into the liquid. He swirled the liquid with a finger and handed it to her. “Drink. You look ready to faint.”

She was so shaken by the sight of Philippe that she quickly downed the wine and sat on the sofa. Large tears gathered in her eyes. “I—I never expected any of this—I never wanted to harm him…”

Her voice drifted off. “I'm frightened. I want Daniel.” She began to cry and Raoul sat beside her.

She looked at Raoul and suddenly she felt odd, almost as if she were watching herself and the scene from a great distance. Reaching out for Raoul, she had the strangest sensation that she was slipping into a dark pit. “Raoul…get Daniel…get…” And then she sank into the darkness.

Dead. Lianne was dead.

Daniel still couldn't accept it. Each morning upon waking he expected to see her, or when he heard Désirée playing in her room, he thought Lianne would be with her. But she wasn't.

Never had he known such emptiness. She had been buried in the Marchand plot in the St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans a month past. The authorities had called it a murder-suicide. Philippe had shot Lianne, then himself. Daniel didn't know how it could have happened. He blamed himself for allowing Lianne out of his sight.

De Lovis had discovered the bodies at Philippe's town house and called in the authorities. When Daniel learned of the tragedy, he had demanded to see her body, but Raoul had given strict instructions that no one was to see either Philippe or Lianne. As head of the Marchand family, he had sole power over the proceedings. Right after the funeral, he left for Mexico where he owned a silver mine.

Now as night gave way to morning and the bedroom reeked of whiskey, Daniel worked furiously at the painting of Lianne and Désirée he had started once, but never finished. The urge to complete it was strong. He needed to see Lianne's face again and gaze at the clear emerald eyes.

When his mother entered the bedroom, she sighed. Ever since his return to Green Meadows with his daughter and Maria, Daniel had been driven to paint. He looked a sight in paint-smeared clothes. Daniel had eaten little since Lianne's death, but drank a great deal. This worried Dera. After all he had a child to live for.

She opened the drapes. “Shouldn't you stop now, Daniel, and come down for breakfast? I've asked Doctor Markham to join us today.”

“No,” he answered abruptly. “I've got to finish this.”

“You've been working on it for weeks. Please rest.”

“Leave me alone!”

Dera knew better than to press him, so she left him.

After working far into the afternoon, Daniel laid down his brush and took a long swig from the whiskey bottle. The painting was done.

He brought the canvas to the window and examined it. The colors blended together in a lushness which was Lianne. Her beautiful face framed by the russet hair gazed in peace at him, and Désirée's head met with hers in a loving gesture. But the eyes held desire and a promise of love and totally captured him in their green gaze.

This was the way he'd always remember her. Loving, at peace, and his.

As he hung the painting above the fireplace in his room, tears streamed down his cheeks. He had found her and lost her again, but in this place of honor, she was his. Forever.

The early morning light glowed pure, like a translucent pearl, and slowly filtered into the room. Lianne slipped from her side of the bed, careful not to disturb the other occupant. She padded softly to the covered porch and stopped inside an archway which led to the garden. Even now the brilliant new blooms of the bougainvillea graced the new morning with their red flowers. She contemplated the prismatic sky which hung suspended over the Mexican countryside.

As she watched, the night sky faded and became almost white, then suffused to a dusty copper, shot with the fiery flash of an opal. Never in her life had she seen a sky turn so many colors before the sun finally turned it to a bright blue. To the east, her gaze strayed to the mountains, standing tall and strong against the morning sky. On the western side was tawny green countryside in fold after fold of deep ravines and valleys.

And then what? She didn't know. She'd never seen anything of Mexico other than this panoramic view and possessed very little knowledge of the workings of the hacienda. Around her, the help didn't speak, only nodded respectfully and obeyed her orders. However, once she had gone into the mine but turned away in horror at the pitiful conditions of the men. Many of them were Indians, their bodies so poorly covered in rags, they appeared to wear nothing. And children, no older than twelve, worked there, too, carrying heavy loads on their small shoulders. But she was warned not to question or interfere. And she hadn't.

If only she knew where she was, if only she could escape. She nearly laughed at the impossibility as she stood in the garden, among the lush flowering colors, the twisting vines which converged around the thick pink arches of the hacienda. Trapped. She was trapped in a cage of incredible beauty and she wasn't happy.

She sensed the man behind her before she felt his hands on her shoulders. He pushed her head back onto his chest.

“Enjoying the dawn,
querida?”

“I have little else to enjoy, Raoul. Have you just awakened or have I been scrutinized by you from the bed like an insect?”

He laughed and turned her to him. In the morning light her hair matched the coppery sky shot through with gold. But the eyes were another matter entirely. So bewitching with their catlike slant and so filled with hatred that he couldn't help but be amused. A sense of remorse momentarily overtook him each time he thought about the terrified green eyes after he'd drugged her. But she was his now, his to do with as he wished. He had bribed the coroner to declare her dead, which wasn't a hard feat to accomplish. The hard part had been keeping her semi-drugged until they arrived in Pachuca, their destination. If anyone inquired about her condition, he had told them Lianne was his wife and gravely ill. But it had worked. She didn't know where she was or how she had gotten there. However, he had other interests besides the silver mine. Mexico City was his home and he was tired of traversing the distance between it and the countryside the last six months, tired of wondering if Lianne would try and escape him. He had to believe that she wouldn't flee, even if he gave her her freedom, that she was frightened enough to think he'd carry out his threat against her. She still stiffened whenever he touched her, but soon, very soon, she'd yield herself willingly to him.

“I always watch you, my dove. Your beauty is a treat for my senses. But I think it's time to show you off to the world. Would you like to live in Mexico City with me?”

Speech eluded Lianne. Was this Raoul de Lovis, the same man who had drugged her and kidnapped her and kept her sequestered in his hacienda? Was this the man who declared that if she ran away, he'd find her and turn her over to the authorities in Louisiana as Philippe's murderer? Could he be trying to trick her? She didn't know, could never tell with Raoul.

“You don't want to go?” he asked her.

Lianne quickly nodded before he had time to change his mind. “Yes, I do. But I thought you had a wife and daughter there. How will you introduce me to society? Won't your wife mind?”

Raoul shrugged his broad shoulders, draped with a red and gold robe. “Elena has been most accommodating about my mistresses. However, I think you may bother her more than the others.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I've never wanted a woman as much or had a mistress longer than a few months. I tire easily of women,
querida
. Of you, I shall never tire.”

Raoul smiled as he said this, and Lianne knew that many other women would be honored to be in her place. She was the mistress, though a reluctant one, of a very powerful man. But the jewels, the clothes and furs he heaped upon her did nothing to alleviate her sorrow or her love for Daniel. There were two things Raoul could never take from her, her love for Daniel and her memories.

“I'll go to Mexico City with you, Raoul.”

“Will you be a good girl?” He turned her face half to his and traced a finger across her jawbone. He had never been cruel to her or beaten her as she had expected when the drugs first wore off and she found herself here. Even when he took her to bed and she didn't respond in the way he had hoped, he hadn't harmed her. She knew she could never leave him. There was nowhere to go, and she didn't doubt that he'd arrange her arrest for Philippe's death though she was innocent. Who would believe her word over the word of Raoul de Lovis?

“I will be good,” she said like an obedient child.

“Bueno.”

He scooped her up in his arms, the thin material of her gown riding high above her thighs and carried her from the garden and through the arches to the bedroom. He deposited her in the center of the bed and threw off his robe, then his hands swept her gown away.

Lianne's pale porcelain beauty awaited his touch, and he fell upon her. His lips, tongue, and hands moved across her body in a vain attempt to inflame her, to make her feel as he did. She lay like a board beneath him, and this outraged him.

“
Puta
!” he hissed from between his teeth. His face was red and the patch looked blacker, but she wouldn't respond to him. He could force her to submit to him, but he couldn't make her enjoy his caress, his kiss. She wouldn't. Not as long as she lived and love for Daniel still blossomed in her heart.

“I may be your whore, Raoul, but I'll never love you.”

“Then I'll have your body,
querida
, and make do with that.” He straddled her and took her with a fierce expression on his face. His strokes were short and violent, and when he shuddered atop her, she felt nothing but a gladness that he had finished.

He looked at her. “I believe that if you allowed yourself to put aside your bitterness, you would enjoy it when I touch you, when I enter you.” His finger curled around a strand of hair. “I am a good lover.”

“I shall never crave your touch,” she spat.

“Ah, never say never,
querida
.” He kissed her and laughed, then stood up. “I'll order your bags packed. By afternoon we'll be on our way to Mexico City.”

The splendor and beauty of Mexico City awed Lianne. As they neared the plaza, the cathedral came into view and appeared massive in size. They drove past a broad arcade where merchants displayed their wares for the bustling humanity, then Raoul pointed out the Palace of Viceroys.

“We shall dine with Miguel Jose de Azanza at the palace,
querida
. This shall mark your entrance into society as my official mistress.”

“You seem to find a great deal of pleasure in the idea of flaunting me before your friends and the viceroy.”

Raoul rested his hands on the top of his cane. “You should have stayed in Pachuca if you prefer seclusion to freedom.”

His remark quieted her instantly. Lianne didn't know how much freedom Raoul actually intended for her, but she was hungry for any diversion and she decided she'd not ruin her chances by irritating him. So, she sank against the Chinese flowered silk cushions and the gold upholstery and gave herself up to the delicious, heady sense of freedom.