Property(42)

My aunt gave me a long look. “She will be trying to get on,” she said. “ ‘Will probably make her way to New Orleans, may pass as a free negro, fifty-dollar additional reward on proof to conviction of any person who may harbor her.’ ”

“Won’t that last bit just encourage Mr. Roget to send her out of town?”

“She won’t stay with him,” my aunt replied. “That would be too obvious.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” I said, feeling thoroughly bored and aggravated by the whole business. My shoulder felt as though a hot iron were pressed against it and my head ached. “Is it time for my medicine yet?”

My aunt put the page aside and came to my bed. “My poor dear,” she said. “Are you in great pain?”

“I am,” I said.

She poured out a spoonful of the sleeping tincture. “Take this,” she said, “and rest a bit. I’ll go down and speak with Charles. He has brought his own driver over from Chatterly to serve as overseer here until you are well enough to decide what you want to do.”

I swallowed the medicine. “I know what I want to do,” I said. “I want to sell it all, everything and everyone.”

“We’ll talk about it when you are strong again,” my aunt said, soothing me as she might a sickly child.

My head seemed to droop forward like a flower broken on its stalk. “I fear I will never be strong again,” I said.



DR. LANDRY VISITED regularly to change the dressing on my shoulder and bring me news of the world. One morning he removed the bandages from my cheek and pulled the last stitches from my lip. “The redness will fade,” he said, when I requested the looking glass. “That gash in your cheek was so crooked it was the devil to sew.”

I gazed at my reflection. “Now this is pitiful,” I said, pressing the swollen ridge that divided my lower lip. In truth it was not so bad as I had feared.

“A beautiful woman is rendered more beautiful by a scar,” Dr. Landry opined. “It reminds a man of what suffering she has endured. In your case, we are all awed by your courage.”

“The courage to run away and hide?”

“Many a woman would not have had it.”

I wondered if this were true. I remembered my state that night as one of general terror, punctuated by a few moments of clarity when I knew what to do. If that was courage, what good was it? Sarah, who had been terrified, was the one to ride away unharmed, and my husband, who even I could not deny had been brave, was dead. I was not so hypocritical as to be disturbed by the grim satisfaction I felt whenever that last fact surfaced in my consciousness. He was dead. He would be receiving no more reports. I smiled wanly at my altered reflection. It is worth it, I thought, handing the mirror back to Dr. Landry. “My husband saved my life,” I said honestly enough. The good doctor laid his hand upon my own and expressed again his deep sympathy for my loss.

Later, with his assistance, I was able to go downstairs for the first time. My aunt had put everything in order, but there was ample evidence of violence. The spyglass was dismantled and lay in pieces on the carpet, there were the gashes in the dining table, a curtain down, a mirror shattered so that only glass splinters remained in the frame. In my husband’s office there were shot holes in the wall just inside the door. “He fired and missed,” I observed to the doctor. “Then somehow he got out alive, but he left his second pistol behind.”

“Unspeakable,” Dr. Landry said. A weakness in my legs caused me to lean hard upon his arm, and he led me to the chair, where I sank down gratefully. We heard a sound in the hall, a door slammed, there were quick footsteps coming toward us. Of course, I thought. I would not get off with just a few scars, a useless arm. My husband would have his revenge upon me, and he would have it every day for the rest of my life. Dr. Landry looked out the door, his brow furrowed as a low whine began. He stepped aside, allowing the creature to pass into the room.

Delphine had cleaned him up and dressed him in short pants and a loose linen shirt half tucked in at the back. His face was still swollen, the bruise had faded to yellow. He came to my chair and began patting my knee, babbling nonsense with the confidence and intensity of a lawyer making an irresistible argument. I looked over his head at Dr. Landry, who covered his beard with his hand and shook his head slowly. “The heir apparent,” I said, and then, as if he understood me, Walter turned to the doctor and gave a shout of what sounded like joy.



I HAVE NEVER liked my husband’s brother, Charles Gaudet. He’s an arrogant man, boorish and supercilious, like my husband, only worse because he has been successful. He is the youngest of three brothers and the richest of all. Since my husband’s murder, he has taken to strolling around this property as if he owned it, addressing me in solicitous tones, as if I were addled and must have every word repeated. As soon as I was well enough to receive a visitor, he was at the door, eager to get at my husband’s books to see what chance he had of being repaid the money he was fool enough to loan his brother.