Counterfeit Lady Read online

  Whatever was said of Gerard, he pulled his weight at the mill. His hand-kissing manners and his thick, rich accent brought as much business as Nicole’s low prices. An extraordinary number of young women came with their fathers to have their grain ground. Gerard treated them all like French aristocrats, young or old, fat or thin, ugly or pretty. The women simpered and giggled as he took their arms and led them around the mill. He never took them out of sight of their fathers.

  Only once did Nicole have a glimpse of Gerard’s thoughts. A particularly plain young woman was rolling her eyes in delight as Gerard kissed her palm and murmured in French over it. By a trick of the wind, Nicole happened to hear what he said. Although he was smiling, he was calling the woman a piece of pig’s offal. Nicole shuddered and walked away; she didn’t want to hear any more.

  She straightened her back and looked across the river. She hadn’t seen Clay since he’d told her Bianca was pregnant. In a way, it seemed ages ago, yet at the same time it seemed like minutes. There wasn’t a night she didn’t think of him, long for him. Her body betrayed her often, and many times she wanted to ask him to meet her in the clearing. She didn’t care about her pride or her higher ideals. She only wanted him, strong and hot against her skin.

  She shook her head to clear her vision. It was better not to dwell on the past or to remind herself of what was not. She had a good life now, with people she loved around her. She had no right to be lonely or thankless.

  She stared at the Armstrong plantation. Even from this distance, she could see that it wasn’t being cared for. Last year’s crops had been allowed to die in the fields. It had hurt her to see it, but there was nothing she could do. Isaac had kept her informed of what was happening. Most of the paid servants had left long ago. The indentures of some servants had been sold, along with nearly all of the slaves. Only a handful of people remained.

  This spring, some of the bottomland had been planted, but that was all. The upper fields lay bare, with only rotting stems in them. Isaac said Clay didn’t care and Bianca was selling anything she could find to pay for her clothes and the constant redecorating of the house. Isaac said the only person on the plantation who had any work to do was the cook.

  “Not much to look at, is it?”

  She whirled to see Isaac standing beside her. He was looking across the river. In the months since the kidnapping, Isaac and she had become very close. There was a bond between them forged by shared tragedy. The people who worked for her she had always felt belonged to Clay, even Janie to an extent. It was only Isaac with whom she felt this special bond. And Isaac often looked at Nicole as if he’d die for her.

  “He could make it if these crops are good, and so far the weather has been perfect,” she said.

  “I can’t see Clay getting up the strength even to harvest the tobacco, much less take it to market.”

  “That’s absurd. No one is a harder worker than Clayton Armstrong.”

  “Was,” Isaac said. “I know he used to be, but now all he works at is lifting a bottle to his mouth. And what if he did work? That wife of his has spent more than four plantations could afford. Every time I take the twins over there, there’s a bill collector hounding Clay. If he lets this crop rot in the fields, he’ll lose everything. The law will put the place up for auction.”

  Nicole turned away. She didn’t want to hear any more. “I think there’s some paperwork I need to do. Did the Morrisons bring that extra barley you asked for?”

  “This morning,” he said, following her. He took a deep breath and wished again, for the thousandth time, that she’d relax a little, if not for her own sake, then for his. He wished Wesley would visit, but Travis had gone to England and Wes had his own plantation to run. No one else could get Nicole to stop working even for minutes.

  Gerard leaned against a tree and watched Isaac follow Nicole back to the mill. He often wondered what went on between those two. They spent many hours together. In the last year, Gerard had met hundreds of people, and most of them had been willing to tell him anything he wanted to know. He knew Nicole was a passionate woman. He’d heard from a hundred people how she’d acted at the Backes’s party. She’d acted like that, like a common street woman, in front of all those people, yet she’d slapped him when he touched her.

  There wasn’t a day when he didn’t remember the way she’d slapped him, the way she’d looked at him as if he were something from under a rock. He knew why she’d refused him. She thought she was better than him. After all, she was one of the Courtalains, whose history was intertwined with French kings and queens. And who was he? A cobbler’s son. He thought she’d accept him when she found out he was related to her, but she hadn’t. To her, he was a cobbler’s son, and no matter what he did, he’d never change in her eyes.

  Gerard thought of what he’d had to do in the last year. She’d made him prostitute himself for those crude American women. They were coarse things, uneducated, and could speak only the flat American language. He loved to watch their eyes as he said hideous things to them in French. They were too stupid to know what he said.

  Then, at night, Nicole teased him, played with him until he was past endurance. Only a curtain separated his room from hers. He’d lie in bed in the darkness, Adele snoring beside him, and listen to her undress. He knew the different sound of each garment. He knew when she stood nude, in that instant before she slipped her nightgown over her head. He imagined her golden body, imagined opening his arms and her sliding into them. Then he’d show her! He’d make her regret ever having slapped him.

  He moved away from the tree. Someday he’d make her regret thinking she was better than him. He imagined everything he’d do to her. He’d make her crawl and beg. Yes! She was a passionate woman, but he’d never touch her unless she came to him on her knees. He’d show her that a cobbler’s son was as good as any of her snobbish French relatives.

  He moved through the trees and away from the mill. The place made him sick. All of them together, laughing and talking—about him, no doubt. Once he’d overheard two men talking about “the little Frenchy.” He’d grabbed a rock then but had thought better of it. There were other ways to repay them, ways that wouldn’t hurt either of them. Later that fall, both men had lost tobacco barns full of their crops. One of the men had gone bankrupt.

  Gerard smiled in remembrance. As he walked along the ridge, a movement across the river caught his eye. It was someone, a large woman on horseback. He stopped and stared for a moment. Over the last year, he’d seen less and less activity over there. He’d never been particularly curious about Nicole’s relationship with Armstrong. He knew she’d once been married to him and had acted like his whore at the Backes’s party. So many times, Gerard had imagined Nicole acting that way with him. When she’d gotten the annulment so soon after he arrived, Gerard had been pleased. He knew she was telling him who she wanted. It had thrilled him, thinking she’d gotten the annulment so she could marry Gerard. He’d waited a while, then let her know that she’d be welcome in his bed.

  He clamped his teeth together in memory. She was a tease, making promises one moment, then acting as if he’d insulted her the next.

  As he watched, the woman across the river raised her whip and slapped the horse smartly on the rump. The horse jumped, then lowered its head and gave a violent shudder. The woman went flying through the air and landed on her backside in a storm of dust and pebbles.

  Gerard hesitated for a second, then began to run toward the wharf. He had no idea of his intentions, but he knew he must get to the woman.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked when he reached her.

  Bianca sat quietly on the ground, her whole body aching from the fall and from being on that cursed horse. She took a piece of dirt from her mouth and looked at it in disgust. She gave a jump of surprise when she saw Gerard. It had been so long since she’d seen a gentleman, and she recognized the French fashions immediately. He wore a green cloth coat with velvet collar and cuffs. His shirt was of white silk, the