Page 98 of Frankly, My Dear

Uh oh!

At first Selene thought, even hoped, it might be Victor. No such luck!

James had returned.

And by the sounds of his colorful epithets resounding throughout the house, someone was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

“Are you all insane? Ah, I know who is responsible. Where is Selene? I’ll kill the witch,” she heard him yell. Then, he pounded up the back steps, looking for her.

An old sixties’ tune kept flicking through her head—“James is back and there’s gonna be trouble…”

Yep, my brain is definitely splintering off into rock ’n roll cyberspace.

An hour later, James had gotten all the information he could out of the sobbing Fleur. She’d admitted being sent by Victor to put poison in James’s liquor in the library and in his bedchamber, although she claimed, unbelievably, that this was the first trip she’d made to Bayou Noir. Someone else must have played the part of the ghost. Fleur did say that his cowardly brother had given up on physical assault by the “ghost,” for the time being, and had decided to try a new tactic—poison.

James couldn’t blame the pitiful placée, however. Fleur was in no position to disobey her master, no matter her objections to his evil plots.

Still, Fleur obviously hid some secret that she feared to divulge. Her terrified, doe-like eyes had darted about the room evasively, avoiding his scrutiny, but she’d refused to say more.

In the end, James sent for Fergus, ordering him to take Fleur to a hiding place they’d used in the past, both for her safekeeping from Victor who would surely seek her out and to interrogate her further in the morning.

Now, James lined the rest of the guilty parties up in the kitchen like recalcitrant children—Selene, his mother, Iris, and Rufus. Blossom declined to obey his orders, grumbling about the puddles of water they were all making on her clean kitchen floor. Instead, she set a huge pot of coffee to boil and laid some food on the table, her answer to any problem being a full stomach.

Blood roared furiously in James’s head, and he feared he might do bodily harm to any one of them for their foolishness. Selene, more than any, should know better than to place his mother, Blossom, and two slaves in such danger. Instead, she kept licking her delicious lips, her eyes darting involuntarily to the table where Blossom had placed a plate of beignets. He would have laughed if he weren’t so angry.

His mother remained oddly quiet, shivering in her sodden clothes. Her eyes had flashed defiantly when he’d questioned her about her participation in this outlandish scheme, but she’d clamped her lips shut stubbornly.

“Iris, I want you to dry my mother off and put her to bed in one of the guest rooms. I don’t want her sleeping in the garçonnière tonight with Victor possibly lurking about. Rufus, you go out and help the guards. I will talk to both of you tomorrow about your part in this scheme. Surely you know that I cannot abide slaves who work against me.”

They both hung their heads contritely, but Selene’s chin whipped up with outrage. “Against you! Why, you lout, they were trying to help you.”

Everyone’s mouths dropped open in amazement at her temerity in rebuking him, except for his mother, whose blue eyes twinkled with appreciation. James gritted his teeth. How could Selene presume to question his orders?

He grabbed Selene by the upper arm and pulled her from the room, not wanting to chastise her in front of the others. Or kiss her silly, in relief over her safety. Mon Dieu, she could have been killed tonight, he thought as delayed shock set in.

“Don’t you dare punish Rufus and Iris for helping your mother…I mean, me,” Selene snapped at him the moment the library door was closed.

His voice rose in surprise. “My mother is at the bottom of this brainless plot?”

Her face flushed guiltily at having inadvertently revealed the truth. “No,” she lied, “it was all my idea. And it wasn’t a brainless plot. The plan would have worked if you hadn’t come home before you were supposed to. Actually, it did work since the ‘ghost’ is now in custody. So there! Why did you come home early anyhow?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I had my own plan for capturing Fleur and my brother…which you hampered with your actions tonight, by the way.”

He started to pour himself a drink, then decided that would be a fatal mistake in light of the powder Fleur had put in it. Opening the gallery door to the cool night air—the storm had abated to a slow drizzle—he walked out onto the gallery and poured the decanter’s contents over the railing.

When he returned to the library, he saw Selene wiping up the excess powder with the edge of her damp gown. “I wouldn’t want Etienne, or even Dreadful, to go near this poison,” she explained, shivering with cold.

Lord, she looked like a drowned rat. Her wet hair clung to her face in thick clumps, rivulets still running down her cheeks to her neck and a puddle forming on the wood floor at her feet. Her loose gown hugged her slim body, delineating her magnificent breasts and the smooth curve of her hips, even her excessively long legs.

His eyes feasted on her, and then he gulped, especially when her hazelnut eyes welled with tears and she gazed back at him needfully. He knew she’d been through an ordeal that night and that she wanted him to take her into his arms for comfort.

Instead, he took a key from his desk and opened a cabinet that held several unopened bottles of liquor. He poured two tumblers of bourbon and handed one to her. “Drink,” he ordered, “before you shiver your skin off.”

Her eyes glittered with resistance at his harsh tone, but then she sank down into a chair before the desk, holding the glass in both hands as she sipped. “Where did you take Fleur?”

He refused to tell her.

She made a tsk-ing sound of rebuke. “Will she be safe?”