The Warlock's Daughter

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Originally
published by Avon Books

Copyright © 1994 by Patricia Maxwell

Second edition by Steel Magnolia Press, 2011

~ CHAPTER 1 ~

Carita
Grey was not afraid of ghosts or goblins or any other creature of darkness, real or imagined. That was why she was always given the evening errands, such as taking the vicious boxer dog belonging to the widowed aunt with whom she lived for his walk before bedtime or going for the doctor when there was illness in the house. It was why she was out tonight, collecting the flower vase left behind after the decoration of the cemetery for All Saints' Day. It was also the reason she failed to retreat when she saw the stranger sitting on the raised family tomb.

The gentleman was not particularly threatening. He was, in fact, immensely polite, rising to his feet with lithe grace, sweeping off his high silk hat, executing his bow with all the polish of a courtier before a queen. Nor was there anything to distress her in the way he looked: his handsome features and tall, broad form were too pleasing, if anything. Still, there was something about him as he stood there in the light of the rising moon with the white marble sepulchers of New Orleans' City of the
Dead
gleaming around him that set alarm bells clanging in her mind. That was even before he spoke.

“What kept you,
chère
?” he said. “I've been waiting for hours.”

Carita
felt the rich tone of his voice, with its shading of familiarity and wry humor, vibrate deep inside her. It set off a rush of fierce longing that expanded, crowding out thought, heating her heart, weighting her lower body while her mind swam with the euphoric intoxication. The sensation was like nothing she had ever known, a consuming flame of purest concupiscence. Startled, unbelieving, she was defenseless against it.

The man's rigorously sculpted features softened. He transferred his hat to the same hand which held his cane, then reached out to her. As he moved forward, his long cape billowed to expose the red silk lining inside the dark folds. It made him look, for an instant, like a hawk swooping down on its prey.

“No!” she said on a quick gasp. Shuddering at the effort, she stepped backward beyond any possibility of physical contact.

He stopped and let his hand drop to his side. A waiting stillness settled over him while he regarded her with distracted care, as if listening to her panicked breathing, absorbing her reluctance. Beyond the brick and wrought iron cemetery fence, a carriage rattled past at a slow pace and faded into the night.

As quiet closed in on them once more, he said simply, “Why?”

“You—you must be mistaken in who I am, sir.” She clasped her hands tightly together at her waist under the slits of her short velvet cloak.

His mouth, sensual in its chiseled curves, exquisitely tender in the tucked corners, curved in amusement. He said, “Oh, I don't believe so.”

“Well, I certainly don't know you! And if you will permit me to pass, I have to retrieve—”

“
Renfrey
.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name.
You did not know it.”

The tenderness of his voice was like a caress.
Carita
did her best to ignore it. With great firmness, she said, “Yes, well, but your saying so can hardly be called an acceptable introduction, can it? As I was saying, there is a vase behind you left by my Aunt
Berthe
that I must—”

“It’s worthless. I wouldn't trouble myself over it.” The words were judicious and dismissive. He paused,
then
said in intent demand, “How are you called?”

“
Carita
.
It's odd, I know, but was an endearment my father used, so had special meaning to my mother before—” She halted, amazed at herself for saying so much when she had meant to say nothing at all.

“Before she died?” he finished gently. “I was reading the engraving on her tomb, I think, just now.”

Carita
looked beyond him to where a bouquet of wilting chrysanthemums and wild ageratum tied with black ribbon streamers lay on the couch-like foundation of the family resting place. There were roses there, also—a huge mass of late fall blooms. How fresh they looked, as if just cut. She didn't remember her aunt bringing them. Who had?

She gave the man before her an inquiring frown. At that moment, a
luna
moth of enormous size fluttered from the ranks of tombs. Pale gold, ethereal, it drifted about their heads,
then
settled on
Renfrey's
broad, black-clad shoulder like a gentle, moon-dusted ghost.

And abruptly
Carita's
every sense was exquisitely alive.

How delightful the night was; she had hardly noticed before. Moonlight glinting on the dark and shiny leaves of the evergreen magnolia just beyond where they stood gave them the look of black crystal. The marble mausoleums and memorials that surrounded them were smoothly graceful and touched with peace, while the planes and angles of their shadows were velvet-edged and inviting.

She could smell the delicious scent of the roses on her mother's tomb, and from some nearby garden sweet olive drenched the air with its honeyed seduction. She identified the mustiness of decay on the withering seed pods of the magnolia, caught the dry herbal mustiness of the lantana where it grew against a headstone. The scents of parched grass and old bones hovered near.

In the mausoleum just over there, a mouse scuffled, making a nest. At the wrought iron fence, a stray cat, gray with night, weaved in and out between the palings; he had not yet detected the mouse.

The wind on her face had currents of coolness and warmth, of spice and sweetness, as if some portions of it had traveled from the snow-capped Andes while others had last drifted through nutmeg groves or over the heated sugar cane fields of a Caribbean isle. The brush of it against her skin was a languid, inciting caress. The breeze sighed through the row of cedars not far away and clattered in the magnolia leaves. It tinkled a wind chime left hanging in a distant marble tomb's doorway, and the faint, minor sound was like the passing of a soul.

A wisp of pale
hair,
turned platinum-and-gilt by moonlight, loosened from her chignon and blew around her face in shining filaments. As
Carita
caught it back with one hand, holding it, she wondered if her eyes were as night-black as those of the man who watched her.

“Your mother,” he said softly, “how did she die?”

“How?” she answered almost at random in her distraction. “She was killed by an excess of loving.”

“You mean she met death in childbirth?” He tilted his head as he waited for her answer. At the movement, the great
luna
moth lifted from his cape and meandered into the darkness. Without its soft presence, they were incredibly alone.

“So many do, don't
they
?” she answered. “They are here,
lying
all around us so quiet and still, many with the tiny babe at their side or enclosed within their bones.
But no.
My mother was loved too well. Her heart could not sustain it; it just—stopped.”

“Is there such a thing as too much love?”

Renfrey's
words had the sound of quiet contemplation. Hearing it,
Carita's
tingling senses expanded still further. It seemed, as she looked into the fathomless depths of his gaze, that she knew him. She had intimate knowledge of his body: the powerful bands of muscle that encased it, the strong skeleton beneath, the heart that beat so fiercely inside. And knowing him, she ached for his touch as she might for food after an eternity of fasting.

On a quick-drawn breath, she said, “My Aunt
Berthe
, my mother's older sister, certainly thinks so. She claims my mother was too frail in body and spirit for physical closeness. She says my father knew it would be so, must have guessed in the beginning that his passions were too strong, his needs too demanding. Therefore he killed her.”

“And you believe it?”

She faced him squarely. “I have no reason to doubt it.”

He was silent while the blowing hem of his cape brushed the diamond-glitter of dust from his boots. He set the ferrule of his cane on the toe of one and rested both hands on the silver handle. At last he said, “She must have been a woman of uncommon beauty.”

“They say so; I never knew her.” She heard the regret in her own voice, something else she had never noted before.

“I expect you are her image.”

The flush that rose at the compliment was painful in its intensity. Her vanity, however, was untouched. “My aunt says not, though the resemblance is there. I am more like my father, which is unforgivable. I have his strength.”

“You would, of course,” he said, and smiled to himself.

Carita
watched him, and she wondered. But no, it was unlikely that he could know anything of her situation. He was only a chance-met stranger, and perhaps an accomplished trifler with the female sex. He might be—was without doubt—good at reading the desires of a woman's heart. But that was all.

Or was it? The warmth of his smile seemed for her alone; the look in his eyes caressed her. She was encompassed, held prisoner, by the sheer male force emanating from him. With these things was something more that was like mystic recognition.
And possibly the handiwork of fate.

“What of your mother?” he asked, delicately probing. “Did she regret the loving?”

It was a personal question, like his personal comments. She should not answer, should not stay to exchange another word. Yet the compulsion was strong. She said, “There is nothing to show that she did. My aunt regrets it enough for both of them.”

“And has accomplished her revenge against your father by transferring it to you?”

A frown drew her brows together. “Why should you think so?”

“She has made the memory of your mother bitter with regret and turned you, with her claims, into the daughter of a murderer. Encouraging you to despise your father, she has taught you to disavow the part of yourself that is like him.”

“Not—intentionally.”

“No? But you can't deny she has proved her lack of concern for your well-being. After all, she has sent you here alone, without a chaperone, on All Hallows’ Eve, the one night in the year when anything can happen.”