Dark Masquerade by Jennifer Blake Page B

claimed. Who else had as good a reason for taking the documents that would identify her as Ellen? He had left her in the library abruptly, and he had been near the stairs when she had left the library. Was it possible that he had just put Joseph down and descended the stairs when he heard her leaving the library and had quickly stepped out of sight until he could appear from the back of the hall to make it look as if he had come from the outside?
    In a dazed comprehension she let her suspicions go a step further. What would become of the money left in Bernard’s care if anything should happen to her? It appeared that he would have the unhampered use of it in that case. And if something happened to Joseph also? Bernard would be a direct beneficiary as the child’s next of kin!
    A cold fear struck at her heart. If she was right then menace lay in wait for her in the house beneath the shade of the oaks. She was involved in a battle of nerve and wit, one from which there could be no withdrawal; one in which defeat was unthinkable. And Bernard was the enemy.
    Bernard.
    It occurred to her that his kind of Creole darkness was associated not only with priests, but with pirates. Those who take what they want without respect for the rules of warfare. Those who leave no survivors to bear witness.
    A crackling sound in the underbrush behind the pavilion pierced her abstraction. She jumped to her feet, alarmed more by her thoughts than by the noise. It came again, nearer this time, and then it took on the measured rustle of hurried footsteps. A figure appeared, moving through the trees, looking neither left nor right. It was a woman hurrying along with a rolling crouch, a shawl drawn over her head.
    Where was she going? Where had she been? As far as Elizabeth knew there was nothing in that direction from the house except miles of virgin forest. Was she going to the big house? She seemed to be.
    It was only after her shambling shape had vanished from sight among the trees that recognition came to Elizabeth. It had been the woman who complained of migraines, the one who looked as though she would not dream of stirring beyond the walls of the house. It had been Darcourt’s mother, Madame Alma Delacroix.

5

    Elizabeth lay in bed with her hands clasped behind her head, staring up into the darkness of the canopy above her. The mosquito netting enclosed her like a misty prison. Through it she could see occasional lightning flashes, dim, but growing slowly brighter. The storm had been building all the afternoon and evening. The wind sweeping in the window billowed the netting, so that it rose and fell around her. She reached for the sheet to cover her bare arms.
    She was not sleepy. It had been a long time since she had heard a sound from the rooms on either side of her own, or from the rest of the house. She had come upstairs early. She had felt totally unable to sit quietly in Bernard’s presence while her suspicions of him sang like a dirge in her head. She had played with Joseph a little while, but the sight of the puffy cut on his lip had driven all thought of sleep from her mind.
    The night before, tiredness had been like a draught of laudanum sending her into dreamless slumber, but tonight her nerves were stretched taut. Sleep was impossible.
    The sound of a horse came from outside on the drive, a door slammed below, and then she heard a servant taking the mount away to the barn. Darcourt, probably, she told herself. He had been missing from the supper table. From the remarks about his absence she gathered that there was nothing unusual in that. A while later she heard his footsteps in the hall as he went up to bed.
    She had missed Darcourt, his laughing comments and the light of encouragement and conspiracy in his eyes. It would not do, however, to become too fond of him. There could be no future in it. But the time she had spent in the front parlor after supper had dragged amazingly.
    Grand’mere had played at embroidery with a