Masquerade (15 page)

Without waiting for Cole to confirm it, Remy walked over to see for herself. She stared in surprise at the somewhat dashing figure in oil, dressed in a black frock coat and a silver brocade vest. His hair, far from being silver, was a deep, dark shade of red, cut fairly short, just covering the top of his ears and parted slightly off-center —the only hint of anything even slightly tamed about him. His eyes gleamed with laughter, and a smile lifted the corners of his mustache and creased his deeply tanned cheeks. The whole impression was one of a strong, vigorous man who relished challenge regardless of the odds.

"Who's the man in the portrait? Is this painting one of yours?" The instant the words were out, Remy turned with a start, paling slightly. "I've asked you that before, haven't I?" He nodded that she had, then waited, as if to see what else she remembered. But it was all blank after that. "What did you tell me when I asked?"

"It's a portrait of the company's founder. I found it buried under a hundred years of dust in one of the company's warehouses along the waterfront."

She took another look at the painting. "How strange. He doesn't look like a Jardin at all."

"That's because he isn't a Jardin," Cole stated.

"What? That's impossible. A Jardin has always been the owner of the Crescent Line."

"Not always. Certainly not in the beginning. That man—Brodie Donovan—started the Crescent Line."

"Donovan." Inwardly she wanted to reject everything Cole said, certain that he had to be wrong. But she couldn't remember. Was he right? Was this another piece of information about her family trapped behind that wall of blankness?

"By rights, Remy," Cole went on, "your name should be Donovan, not Jardin."

"What are you talking about?" she demanded, thoroughly confused.

He started to answer, then glanced at the connecting door to the outer office and paused for a fraction of an instant, smiling without warmth. "Maybe you should ask your uncle to explain."

Remy swung toward the door that had been left open. Marc Jardin stood with one foot inside the office, his dark eyes narrowed at the portrait, his mouth compressed in a tight line of displeasure. Then the look was gone, wiped away without a trace, a bland smile in its place.

"This is a surprise, Remy." He walked across the rug to her.

"Uncle Marc. Good morning." She was certain he'd overheard the statements—the assertions— Cole had just made about their family, yet he seemed to be deliberately ignoring them. Why? Did his silence mean they were true? Or was Brodie Donovan a subject he didn't wish to discuss in front of Cole? Some little voice inside her head said,
Family secrets should stay just that.
She obeyed the dictum and followed his lead, explaining instead, "I went for a walk this morning and . . . this is where I ended up."

"What brings you to the office so early, Marc?" Cole inquired with a faintly aloof indifference. "At this hour you're usually huddled with your buddies at the coffee shop of the Hotel Pontchartrain, aren't you?"

"Usually," her uncle admitted. "But with the meeting this morning—"

"There is a meeting scheduled for this morning. But what does that have to do with you?" There was a forbidding coldness in Cole's expression, which seemed to cause the temperature in the room to drop several degrees.

"I felt I should be here," Marc Jardin replied, his smile becoming a little forced around the edges.

"Why?"

A redness began to creep up her uncle's neck. "Why?" He laughed, a little self-consciously. "I am an officer of the company, Cole, as well as a director and major stockholder."

"So you are," Cole agreed. "But I think you've forgotten that
I
do the talking for the company now. And your presence isn't required."

"I see," her uncle murmured, a stiffness—a rigidity—in his expression and his stance.

Realizing there was no way he could make the graceful exit that his pride desired, Remy spoke up quickly. "If you aren't needed here, could I persuade you to give me a ride home, Uncle Marc?"

He turned, a flicker of gratitude showing in his dark eyes. "It would be my pleasure, Remy." He offered her his arm in mock courtliness. Remy took it and walked out of the office at his side.

 

 

 

 

11

 

 

Ensconced in the passenger seat of her uncle's gray Mercedes, Remy listened to the soothing sound of his voice as he drove along St. Charles Avenue, en route to her home. As he had from the moment they'd left Cole's office, Marc Jardin talked about his son and daughters and their children, telling her about the recent parades and festivities his grandchildren had attended and recounting amusing incidents concerning their reactions to them. Remy smiled at the appropriate times, but her attention drifted, her glance straying out the window to observe the morning brightness along the avenue—seeing it now without the darkness that had shadowed it the night before and without the swirling fog that had layered it in the early dawn hours of this morning.

Reminders of the current Carnival season were visible all along the popular parade route, brightly colored beads—the "throws" from the floats— winking at her from the branches of the majestic oaks lining the street, and plastic cups—the ever-popular "go-cups" that held revelers' favorite spirits—lying almost hidden beneath the azalea bushes planted the length of the neutral ground, their tightly budded blooms nearing the day when the median strip would burst into its pink glory.

And here and there Remy caught a glimpse of the official Rex flag of the elite Carnival club flying in front of a stately home in the Garden district, safe behind elaborate wrought-iron fences and guarded by towering magnolias. Seeing the insignias, she recalled that by tradition, only former rulers of Mardi Gras—the ex-Rexes and their queens—were allowed the privilege of displaying the purple, green, and gold flags in front of their homes. Purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power, of course.

But the trappings of Carnival made her wonder all the more why Marc Jardin was deliberately steering their conversation away from any discussion of what had transpired in Cole's office. Why wasn't he telling her who Brodie Donovan was? She remembered the way he'd glared at the portrait, and she was certain he'd overheard Cole assert that this Donovan man had founded the Crescent Line. Yet he'd said nothing about it, and given her no opening to ask him. By the same token, she hadn't forced the issue. Why was she reluctant to question him?

The opportunity to correct her self-imposed silence was lost as her uncle announced, "Here we are," and swung the Mercedes between two narrow wrought-iron columns, the scrolled gates of the mansion's former carriage entrance standing open to admit them. "It must be good to be home again after the ordeal you've been through."

"If you had said that to me two days ago, in Nice, I probably would have agreed with you," Remy replied as he parked the car in front of the old carriage house, which had been converted into a four-car garage. "Now I have a feeling that the ordeal has barely begun."

Saying nothing to that, he let a silence fall between them, a silence that seemed even more pronounced after the stream of banal conversation he'd maintained during the drive here, and it convinced Remy that her statement might be more accurate than she'd realized.

When they walked into the mansion through a side entrance, she was immediately greeted by an array of tantalizing aromas. Her uncle paused and inhaled deeply in exaggerated appreciation. "Smells like that Nattie has been baking up a storm already this morning."

"It's about time you got back here." At the end of the hall stood a tall, spare black woman, wearing a businesslike white apron tied firmly around a black uniform. Her hair was cut close to her head at the sides, then allowed to pouf in a mass of pepper-gray curls on top of her head, a cut that was both stylish and practical and that showed her high cheekbones to their best advantage. Her dark eyes narrowed on Remy. "It seems to me that knock on your head took away more than your memory. It took some good sense along with it— going off for a walk before it gets light."

"You must be Nattie." Remy walked toward the woman, waiting for the sight to spark some memory.

"Considering I'm the only black woman in this house, I don't see how you could mistake me for anyone else."

Remy laughed in surprise. "Are you always this blunt?"

"If I am, I got it from you." The quickness of her retort led Remy to believe this conversation might be typical of past exchanges.

"Where's—" Marc began.

"Mr. Frazier and Miss Sibylle's in the solarium having their morning coffee," Nattie interrupted, anticipating his question.

"I'll let them know you're home," he said to Remy, then set off, striding briskly toward the white-wood-and-glass room.

"They did find the note I left, didn't they?" Remy wondered, belatedly.

"I found it," Nattie replied, "when they had me take a tray of morning coffee up to your room. Right away your momma started worrying that if you'd lost your memory, how were you going to know where you lived to find your way back?"

"I promise you I could have."

"Try convincing her of that," Nattie countered, shaking her head in a gesture of exasperation.

Despite the familiar way the black woman spoke to her, Remy noticed that she hadn't once asked her where she'd gone or why she'd left or what she'd done. She remembered that Cole had said she regarded Nattie as practically one of the family, but obviously not to the extent that she felt she had to account to the woman for her comings and goings—and it was equally obvious that Nattie didn't expect her to.

Suddenly Nattie reached up and curved a pink-palmed hand against Remy's cheek. "I'm glad you're home. I was worried about you," she declared, a little too brusquely, then quickly drew away her hand. "I don't know why I'm standing around here talking to you when I've got work to do. Go tell your momma and papa breakfast will be on the table in twenty minutes. And ask Mr. Marc if he'll be staying."

"I will," Remy promised, but Nattie hadn't waited for a response as she started for the kitchen.

Smiling, Remy turned and moved off in the direction her uncle had taken earlier. Without Nattie's presence to distract her, she found her thoughts immediately swinging back to replay the morning's events—with Cole and with her uncle. As she approached the sun-filled solarium, she heard voices and automatically slowed her steps.

"It never occurred to me that Buchanan would shut you out of the meeting," came her father's voice, its muttering tone underscored with both irritation and worry. "This complicates things."

"That's a mild way of putting it," her uncle replied. "Now we'll have to look for some other way to find out what this so-called proof is that the insurance company claims to have. Until we know that, we can't be sure which will be the best way to proceed."

"Why don't you arrange to meet privately with the representatives from the insurance company —somewhere away from the office?" The suggestion came from Gabe. "Use the meeting as a means to express the family's concern about their allegations."

"However valid that reason is, at this stage, Gabe, I don't think it would be wise," Marc Jardin stated. "It could suggest to them that we think there might be some truth to their charges. We could lose a valuable negotiating edge that way."

"Truthfully," her father inserted, "I'm more concerned that the insurance company may carry out its threat to make this whole business about the
Dragon
public. A scandal like that would be extremely damaging."

"I wouldn't worry about that, Dad. You can bet the insurance company wants to avoid that as much as we do. But Marc's right. Before we can take any action, we have to find out what kind of case they have—if any."

"And Buchanan knows it," her father muttered. "That man is so damned cunning."

Remy used the pulsebeat of silence that followed to cross the last few feet to the solarium's open glass doors.

"Good morning." She felt the layer of tension in the room, a tension not betrayed in the smiles of its occupants—her father seated in a cushioned rattan chair, her mother at the serving cart stirring cream into a coffee cup, Gabe at the many-paned windows leaning a shoulder against the white framework, and her uncle, Marc Jardin, standing in the room's center, as if he'd halted in the act of pacing the room. "I'm supposed to inform you that breakfast will be on the table in twenty minutes—and to ask if you'll be joining us, Uncle Marc."

For an instant Remy was struck by the realization that although she recognized who each of them was, she didn't recognize any of them. They were family, yet they were still strangers—people she didn't remember. That was true even of Gabe and her mother. The childhood memories she'd recalled about her brother didn't tell her any more about the man he'd become than the fleeting image she'd remembered of her mother in the rose garden told her about what kind of woman she was. Unconsciously Remy tilted her chin a little higher and mentally tried to shake off the disturbing thoughts.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to stay for breakfast this morning—as much as I would like to indulge in some of Nattie's delicious blueberry muffins. I need to get back to the office." Marc Jardin set his cup and saucer on the serving cart.

Remy spoke up quickly to forestall his departure. "Before I came in, I overheard you talking —something about some allegations the insurance company is making against the shipping line? What's that all about?" As she glanced at each of them, she caught the quick looks they exchanged. "Is it something I'm not supposed to know about?"

"It doesn't matter if you know, Remy," her uncle declared, his smile gentle in its reproof. "They're simply taking issue with a claim we've made. You know how insurance companies are. You pay their outrageous premiums, and then when you file a major claim on a policy, they go through all the fine print to find a way to avoid paying up. Which is precisely what they're doing in this case."