A Rose At Midnight

“It’s not going to end this simply.”

“It can.”

“Armand’s already played his next move.” Daniel swallowed another sip of coffee. “I’ve been invited.”

“Invited?”

“Here. As a guest.”

“Then bid your fond regrets. If he’s playing a game, who says you have to follow his rules?”

“There’s too much at stake. I need to keep you safe. We have a daughter. Obligations.”

With one hand she grandly made the sign of the cross. “I absolve you from them all.”

“Not this time.” Both his hands tightened around the mug. “Marry me, Christiane.” His voice bore a strangely insistent urgency.

Her smile was forced. She was a fool. He would never love her. And she couldn’t help loving the boy who’d painted her dull world with rich music and vibrant passion, the boy who’d made her believe she could belong. Expectations would only lead to heartache. But to sever the ties, she had to find out how deeply they ran. In her. In him. So she reached out.

“Do you remember when I told you about the moon?” She’d let herself become vulnerable. She’d told him about her anchor in an ever-changing world. And he’d told her she didn’t have to look that far. In his eyes, in his kiss, in his lovemaking, she’d heard his unspoken promise. He’d become her anchor, her moon.

“Yes.”

“Make me believe, Daniel. Make me believe.”

AFTER CHRISTIANE left the room, Daniel dumped the bitter coffee down the sink. He hated instant. He hated having to push Christiane. But mostly, he hated how hard he’d become. He looked down at the black star sapphire ring he wore on his right hand. Just like his father.

Though the ring was a reminder his soul was tainted, he had a measure of hope for Christiane. As he’d kissed her, he’d sensed the remnants of a bond forged long ago between them, sensed it reignite. If he could fan it into life, strengthen it, then maybe he could save her from whatever twisted scheme poisoned Armand’s mind. He’d done it once when he’d given up his scholarship to buy her freedom; he could do it again.

Distractedly, he rinsed the cup and placed it in the sink. He’d spent the past nine years trying to make amends for his choices. Everyone he’d tried to protect had ended up hurt anyway— Christiane, his mother, his sister…his daughter.

With a careless swoop, he grabbed his coat, jacket and tie from the back of the chair. Five years ago his music had finally paid off and allowed him to buy his mother the art gallery she’d always wanted and help his sister set up her family practice. Which left the debt he owed Christiane and their child.

Turning off the kitchen light, he stepped into the darkened hall. The memories of his feelings for Christiane had tortured him for years. He had no desire to reexperience that agony. Not when he’d finally come to terms with his life.

He would make a good husband, take care of Christiane and their daughter, provide a safe home for them. She’d have her roots. He’d have his career. They’d both have their daughter. They could carry off this marriage with polite civility. The physical bond was enough. He’d see to that. Why complicate the whole thing with useless feelings that only got in the way?

Look what had happened the last time he’d let anything touch his heart. He’d lost everything he’d cared for. He’d found out Armand had used him to get to Christiane, that Armand had tried to kill Christiane’s mother years earlier and caused her to flee in fear, that the only way to protect Christiane from suffering her mother’s fate was to leave her behind and give up his coveted Van Cliburn scholarship.

Except that it was too easy to let down his guard around Christiane, to let her passion fuel his, to forget he’d made a bargain with the devil and that the prize was her life.

As he wound his way through the familiar corridors, he shook off the sense of dread creeping into his bones. The last time he’d walked through this house, he’d sentenced himself to hell. What would his presence here cost him this time?

At the foot of the stairs, he heard the whisper of Christiane’s voice wishing their daughter sweet dreams, the smack of lips against fingers as she blew her a kiss. With an unexpected fierceness, the memory of Christiane’s kiss ratcheted through him. One kiss had cartwheeled him back to sharing sundaes, moonlit car rides and a pile of blankets under a star-studded sky. One kiss had him wishing for a house in the woods filled with music and laughter and family.

He snapped on the light just inside the sitting room’s French door and pushed the door with enough force to close it just shy of a slam. He’d had no more time to prepare this time than the last. But now, his power and influence were equal to Armand’s. He would not cave.

He dropped his coat, jacket and tie onto the plum-upholstered, spindly-legged chair by the door. Having Christiane here was more complicated than he’d expected. He could have dealt with hate. Indifference—even better.

But she’d asked him for the moon.

He choked out a rough bark. The one thing she wanted from him was the only thing he couldn’t give her. For both their sakes. His control over the darkness was precarious at best. If he let her into his heart, they were both doomed.

He poured himself generous fingers of scotch from Armand’s finest stock, then slumped into the chair next to the gaping maw of the hearth. Leaning his head back, he propped his feet on the kidney-shaped coffee table.

“To you, old man.” He raised his glass to the glacial chill of the empty room. “And to your defeat.”

But there was no satisfaction in the promise, only the sure knowledge of inevitable death. The liquor he swallowed didn’t warm him. Nothing would. Not until he discovered Armand’s plans and knew how to keep Christiane safe.

An insistent cacophony jangled in the back of his mind, proving that chaos was only a step away. He closed his eyes and let the notes flow through his brain. They arranged and rearranged themselves into a familiar pattern. He sighed as he recognized the melody. Music had dragged him from the black edge of hell twice. Could it manage the feat a third time?

Unable to resist, he went to the piano and let his fingers dance over the keys.

“Maybe tonight…”

For years the melancholic notes had tormented him. Taunting him when he was tired and his defenses were down. Letting the piece run its course was the only way to get rid of it. Tonight he added a few notes, but still the end wouldn’t come.

Like this melody that wouldn’t finish itself, Christiane was unfinished business.

He’d tried letting her go. Now he would try hanging on to her.

Tumbling the piano bench backwards, he stood. With a stiff motion, he reached for his glass and drained the rest of the scotch, taking pleasure in the liquor’s caustic burn down his throat. Again he raised this glass to the cold room. “One more time—without feeling.”

Chapter Three

Christi needed a few moments to orient herself when she woke up the next morning. As the room focused around her, she remembered where she was and sighed. Daniel’s apparition last night had ruined her joy at finding her mother’s family.

Strong light filtered through the open moiré draperies, but the house was deathly silent and a slow dread snaked its way from her stomach to her throat. The last thing she wanted to do today was face Daniel again or confess a truth she’d hidden for much too long to her daughter. Both would cost her what little balance she had left in her life.

She reached for her watch on the night table. “Eight-fifteen! Ugh.”

She let herself flop back onto the bed. After last night, she could use a couple more hours of sleep. Given her scrambled state of mind, she was surprised she’d slept at all.

Her gaze wandered over the room. But it wasn’t the carved walnut furniture, the Aubusson rug or the cream lace coverlet that caught her eye. It was her grandmother’s portrait near the rocking chair in the corner. Catherine Langelier. Armand had told Christi that the silver brush set on the dresser was Catherine’s. And if she closed her eyes, Christi swore she could smell the trace of her grandmother’s rose-scented perfume lingering on the lace runner on the vanity.

She let her imagination roam until a weathered woman formed out of the mists of her musings. She sat at the vanity, wearing an old-fashioned white satin robe that was rich, yet demure. A delicate gold chain draped the creases of her neck, the pendant hidden beneath the neckline of her gown. A blue jar of cold cream stood next to a gold-cased lipstick and a fancy bottle of perfume. Light refracted into a rainbow as it passed through the bottle’s long, prism-shaped top. The woman sat stroking her long white hair with the silver brush. And in a trick of reverie, it seemed to Christi as if the woman looked straight at her through the mirror and smiled.

Christi shook her head. The image faded away. “I must be more tired than I thought. Damn you Daniel for showing up at the wrong place at the wrong time and screwing up my life again.” But the last part wasn’t fair. If she didn’t have feelings for him, she could have gone on as if nothing had happened between them.

Masks. She’d kept too many of them in her makeup bag over the years. It was time to strip them off and find out who she really was and what she was really made of. That would mean taking risks. Would Rosane hate her when she found out the truth about her father? Was there any chance they could all breach those nine years and become a real family? Was marriage to Daniel, even on his terms, such a bad thing?

Her job as the public relations manager of a small cable television station in Fort Worth had trained her to make decisions on the spot and stick by them. But there she wore her public mask; she could keep an objective distance. Now her decision would alter her life permanently. And the last thing she wanted was to lose more than she already had.

As soon as Christi flipped back the blankets, the room’s frigid air assaulted her. She’d seen signs of central heat, but for some reason, the warm air didn’t seem to reach this part of the stone house. She rubbed her arms and reached into the suitcase on the bench at the foot of the bed for a sweater.

Rosane should be up by now.

Christi peeked through the door across the hall.

“Rosie?”

There was no answer. The bed was neatly made. There were no signs of her daughter anywhere.

“No!” The “what ifs” galloped through her mind like a car without brakes. What if Daniel was still here? What if he’d taken Rosane? What if he’d told her who he was before Christi had a chance to prepare her?

“Calm down. She’s perfectly all right. Daniel promised you a week.” But the image of Daniel’s determined face came flashing back into her mind. His demand wasn’t a whim, but a wish he fully intended to fulfill.

Feet bare and with only her blue flannel nightgown and red sweater on, she rushed down the stairs. “Rosane! Rosie, where are you?”

Christi jerked to a halt at the bottom of the stairs. A childish giggle warbled from the kitchen. Like a hound on a scent, she followed the sound. And when she reached the kitchen, she didn’t know what to make of what she saw.

Rosane, already dressed in a purple sweatshirt and jeans, heaped spoonfuls of Cap’n Crunch into her mouth and giggled. Her daughter who rarely smiled was giggling with glee. One of Christi’s hands instinctively reached for her stomach; the other covered her mouth.

The gray eyes behind those long lashes were like her own. The rich golden brown hair spilling over her shoulders was like her mother’s. The long artistic fingers curled around the spoon were Daniel’s legacy. Christi saw the past in her daughter. A past that wound down for generations. Generations she knew nothing about. Daniel was wrong, staying here was right.

Armand entertained Rosane by making a dollar coin appear and disappear from midair. Marguerite, roly-poly like the plastic people Rosane used to play with as a toddler, puttered at the counter. From all indications, the woman seemed to live in the kitchen. Christi hadn’t seen her anywhere else. Daniel, she noted with relief, was nowhere in sight.

The kitchen’s warmth contrasted keenly with the coldness of the rest of the house. The table of whitewashed pine and the six matching chairs with their red gingham cushions provided a homey atmosphere out of character with the stiff, formal furnishings in the rest of the house. In daylight, she could almost convince herself her conversation with Daniel was just a bad dream.

Rosane tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and squinted at Armand. “Hey! How come you’re squeaking?”

Armand lifted his arms and opened his eyes wide in innocence. The spreading warmth of his smile softened the harsh angles of his thin face. The pleasure, when Rosane squealed with delight as he pulled a kitten from his jacket, was genuine. Daniel was wrong. Armand had no evil motives. Rosane forgot about the forbidden sugared cereal and lavished love on the squirming gray kitten.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Rosane asked, leaning back from a cheek cleaning by the kitten’s sandpaper tongue.

Armand lifted the kitten’s tail. “I believe it is a girl.”

“Can I keep her?”

“She is especially for you.”

Rosane let out a jubilant shriek and hugged the kitten to her chest.

“What are you going to name her?” Armand lifted his coffee cup and his sister filled it for him.

Rosane’s face scrunched in concentration. “Something French. How do you say smoke?”

“Fumée.”

“Few-may.” As the kitten’s rough tongue scraped her nose, Rosane giggled again. “It’s a good name. She looks like a puff of smoke, don’t you think? Fumée. I like that.”

A pang of envy knocked around Christi’s chest at the ease with which Armand had made Rosane feel at home and at his ability to wrest smiles out of her. Not the devil, she thought, a magician.

“Armand, pas à la table,” Marguerite chided. Her round glasses magnified her black eyes, making them the most prominent feature on her moon face. “The child has to eat.”

“Let her have some fun.”

“She is not yours to spoil,” she said in French.

“It is no worse than all the junk you are stuffing her with.”

Marguerite waved his retort away with a dimpled hand. “Non, it’s not the same.”

Armand leaned back in his chair and gazed at Rosane with adoration. “She’s perfect, n’est ce pas?”

“Diable, Armand! She is just a child,” Marguerite insisted, jamming a strand of gray hair back into its tight bun.

“She looks like Caro, don’t you think? Only she is much stronger. You can tell by the way she carries herself and the depth in those eyes.”

Marguerite harrumphed and slammed shut the refrigerator door. She filled a saucer with milk and set it next to Rosane’s cereal bowl. She wiped her hands on the pristine white apron cinched over her plain, out-of-date black dress. In broken English, she said, “Maybe Fumée have hunger.”

Rosane set the kitten down. It lapped contentedly at the milk. “She does. Look at her go!”

“Do you like the flavor of maple?” A conspiratorial smile animated Marguerite’s starched face.

It was as if they were trying to outdo each other to gain Rosane’s affection. A smile sneaked up on Christi. Family wanting to fit together, wanting to be liked. There’s no evil in that.

“I love it!” Rosane stroked the kitten as if it were made of glass. “Mom always buys the real thing even though it’s more expensive. It’s much better than that fake syrup stuff.”

“Try this.” Marguerite placed two pieces of toast before Rosane. They oozed with a spread the pale sand of maple sugar. “I think you not have Map-O-Spread at Texas.”

Rosane took a healthy bite and nodded her approval. “This is good. Mom never lets me have sugar stuff for breakfast. Except for pancakes on Sunday sometimes.”

Christi pressed her fingers tighter against her lip to silence her laughter. She’d gone from junk food queen to Mother Earth while she carried Rosane. The transformation had done wonders for her until her parents’ death. Then all the old feelings of rootless-ness returned with a punch, and with them, her stomach troubles. Had Rosane felt deprived? Guilt spiked an unwelcome wave of acid in her gut. Sometimes the creature she’d borne seemed so foreign to her.

Christi shook her head, pasted on her famous all’s-right smile and marched into the kitchen.

“Well, you’re cheerful this morning.” Christi kissed the top of Rosane’s head and ran her fingers through the soft strands of her daughter’s hair.

“Look, Mom! Look what Armand gave me!” Rosane lifted the kitten up for inspection. “Can I keep her? Can I?”

How could she refuse Rosane anything when she looked so happy? “She can be yours while we’re here.”

“Oh, goodie!” Rosane rubbed her nose against the kitten’s. “Did you hear that, Fumée? I get to keep you.” She squeezed the kitten to her chest before turning the creature over on her lap to scratch the soft belly. The kitten nipped at the wiggly fingers, and Rosane giggled at their game.

Christi glanced at Marguerite, then at Armand. The kitchen’s temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. Was it her imagination or had the starched lines and stony expression reappeared on Marguerite’s face?

“You slept well last night?” Smiling at her, Armand pushed away his cup of coffee. His slow gracious charm put her at ease as it had since she’d arrived two days ago.

“Yes, thank you.”

“What can I make you for breakfast?” Marguerite asked in her halting English. Her gaze inspected Christi’s attire and her frown disapproved.

“That’s all right, you don’t have to serve me. I’ll help myself.”

“I do not permit anyone to disturb my kitchen.”

Then the coffee mess Daniel left last night must have tickled her pink this morning. “In that case, I’ll have some tea.” The odor of fresh-brewed coffee permeated the kitchen. Christi longed for a cup, but didn’t think her stomach could handle it this morning.

“Orange Pekoe or menthe?”

“Mint is fine.”

After she put the kettle on, Marguerite turned back to Christi. “What you like to eat?”

“Just toast, please.” Christi didn’t think she could manage anything else and the answer of “nothing” seemed unacceptable, judging from the disapproving scowl Marguerite leveled at her.

“That is all?”

Christi nodded. Acid lapped in her stomach. With a hand, she massaged her stormy stomach. “I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me at the party last night.” She attempted a smile. “Thank you for keeping an eye on Rosane. I appreciate your kindness.”

Marguerite harrumphed and returned to the stove.

Rosane slunk out of her chair to play on the floor with the kitten. She teased Fumée with a lock of her hair and the kitten batted at it with its paws.

Armand pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket, lit it with a monogrammed gold lighter and puffed deeply. A moment later, a rheumy cough rattled in his chest. The stink of the smoke did nothing to improve Christi’s appetite.

“I have a present for you, too.”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary—”

Armand reached behind him to the sideboard and picked up a thick album sheathed in burgundy leather. “I have found the photo album I told you about yesterday.”

“You did!” Christi had never seen a picture of her mother as a child. And her mother had categorically refused to speak of her past. All of Christi’s questions had remained unanswered, brushed aside like pesky fruit flies. As she scooted her chair closer to the table, anticipation warmed her.

A gold L was embossed on the cover. As he turned to the first page, the leather creaked. She wrinkled her nose at the scent of dust and history that rose into the air like fairy powder. He glided the album across the table until it rested between them. She wrapped her feet around the chair’s legs and leaned in for a closer look.

“This is your grandmother, Catherine, and her husband, Henri.” Armand seemed as eager to share the album’s contents as she was to view them. “Henri died young—only a few years after your mother was born. Marguerite and I came to live with Catherine and Caroline soon after when our own parents were killed in a train accident.”

“How awful!”

Although she could not mistake Catherine for Caroline, Christi noticed the strong resemblance between her grandmother and her mother, between her mother and herself. A quick glance at Rosane showed her the resemblance was passed on. Alike, yet so different.

Even the flicker of the imagined woman sitting at the vanity bore a certain likeness to the women in the album’s pages. Had her tired mind invented a distant relative? With a shake of her head, Christi scattered the question and concentrated on Armand’s stories.

“This one,” he said, laughing easily as he pointed to a picture of her mother in a gauzy summer dress and a floppy hat, both soaked and dripping, “was taken after Caro insisted she could row the boat all by herself. She was very bossy even as a ten-year-old. The canoe tipped over as she got in and she fell into the lake.”

Some things didn’t change. Her mother had disguised an iron will with a soft voice. “And you were waiting with a camera?”

“Of course. I showed this photo to all her potential boyfriends. Until she took one of me in a rather ungraceful position after I had fallen while sledding.”

As Armand told her stories of his youth, Marguerite placed a plate of scrambled eggs and ham next to her brother. He ignored it.

A vignette fell before Christi of places and people that were part of her, yet alien—a picnic with Catherine holding a young Caroline on her lap, Armand and Marguerite stood behind them, hamming it up for the camera. Birthday parties. Graduations. Vacations. Family together, sharing, feasting, laughing.

She drank in every detail. Each new glimpse into her mother’s world clicked a missing piece in the puzzle of her past into place. And with each space filled came a growing sense of a form wanting to finish itself.

Daniel was wrong. Armand didn’t want to take anything from her. He wanted to give her what should have been hers all along.

Rosane climbed on Christi’s knee for a while, commenting on the funny outfits in the pictures, but soon returned to the floor with her kitten.

As Armand closed the cover of the album, Christi sighed and sank contentedly against the back of her chair. “Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure.”

Leaving the album before her, he shook out a newspaper and puffed on a fresh cigarette. A moment later, the newspaper convulsed in time to a coughing fit.

Christi fingered the album’s leather, loathe to sever her connection with her missing past.

Armand crumpled the newspaper beside his ignored plate of food. “Has your mother ever told you of the legend of Rose Latulippe?”

“No, she believed fairy tales were too violent for children.”

“Pity.” Armand took out a handkerchief and coughed into it. “It is such an interesting story about a young girl who danced with the devil on Mardi Gras.” He returned the handkerchief to his pocket. “Did you know that legends have a basis in fact?”

“I’ve heard that.” With slow movements of her index finger, Christi traced the gold L on the cover.

“One of your names is Rose, is it not?”

“Y-yes.” Her finger hesitated on the downward curve of the L.

Armand’s gaze drifted to Rosane who tested the kitten’s pouncing skills with a piece of string. “Did you have a strong impulse to name her Rose?”

How could he know such a thing?

“And her father, was he not a handsome stranger?”

She gasped, snapping her finger from the album. “No, of course not.” The quick denial was for Rosane’s benefit.

Christi had woven her memories of Daniel into a mantle of fantasy for her daughter. She’d worn that same fantasy as comfort against the pain his disappearance had caused.