He took her to a small clearing at the edge of another stream. The clearing was framed with hackberry and magnolia trees, the magnolias scenting the air with the heavy perfume of their last few blossoms. The opposite bank of the stream was dotted with white-topped daisy fleabane and black-eyed susans. Silhouetted against the rising sun were a doe and twin fawns that had come to drink.
Lucky stood Serena down in front of him, keeping her within the shelter of his arms. He pointed to a raft of water hyacinth that stretched from bank to bank.
«That stuff can choke a bayou to death,» he said softly. «One plant can produce sixty-five thousand others in a single season. It blocks the light from getting to the plants beneath it and they die. The phytoplankton the fish feed on goes, and so go the fish. The pond weeds the ducks feed on die and the ducks leave. Man introduced that plant here by accident.»
He turned slightly and pointed to a stand of cattails along the far bank where the head of an animal that resembled a beaver was visible between the reeds. «There's a nut'ra. They were brought to Lou'siana in the thirties for breeding experiments. Some got away. Now there's so many down in the marshes, they're eatin' the place up. They chew the grass down to nothin' in places where the oil companies won't let trappers in. Without the grass roots to hold it together, the marsh soil breaks up and washes away, and saltwater leaches in from the Gulf and poisons everything. Man brought the nut'ra here.
«You look at this place and think it's a world away from anywhere,» he said. «But right here are two examples of man's intrusion. The swamp might seem an unforgiving, indestructable place, but it's a delicate place of checks and balances. Man could destroy it in the blink of an eye.»
«Why are you showing me this?' Serena asked, looking up at him over her shoulder.
«I just wanted you to understand before you go back to deal with Shelby and Talbot and Tristar. It's not just Chanson du Terre ridin' on this, angel, and it's not just your relationship with your sister or Gifford. It's a whole ecosystem,» he said, staring out at the wilderness as if he felt the need to memorize every aspect of it before it was too late. «This swamp is dying already a little bit at a time. Silting up from the big channels that were built to keep the Mississippi from flooding farm land that never should have been farm land to begin with. Tristar has plans to dig their own navigation channel. That'll bring in more silt, Le bon Dieu only knows what they'll dump out here where nobody can see. They have a rap sheet of environmental crimes as long as your arm.»
Serena listened carefully, taking in not only his words but the sentiment behind them. This wasn't Lucky the erstwhile poacher talking, it wasn't Lucky the tough guy. This was Etienne, the student of biology, the boy who had grown up on these bayous, learning their secrets. «You love this place, don't you?»
Lucky said nothing for a long moment. This swamp was his home, his salvation, the solitude that had helped him heal when he'd been clinging to the ragged edge of sanity. The silence grew heavy; weighed down with the importance of his answer.
«Oui» he said at last. «I know you hate it, but this place is my life.»
His admission touched Serena in the most tender corner of her heart, and she felt a dangerous rise of emotion pressing against the backs of her eyes. This was the first part of his inner self Lucky had shared with her willingly, candidly.
No matter how foolish her brain told her it was, her heart embraced this small piece of hope greedily. She turned in Lucky's arms and hugged him, wanting something she didn't dare name and feeling in that moment that she would do anything to save this place, no matter how much she feared it, just to be able to give something to Lucky that went deeper than desire.
CHAPTER 11
«CAN'T YOU DO SOMETHING, MASON?»
Shelby paced the width of the small study her husband had taken for his own use when they had moved temporarily into Chanson du Terre. It was a dark cubbyhole of paneled walls and wood floor, filled with masculine leather furniture and shelves of musty books. Portraits of stem men from the last century stared down disapprovingly from the walls. Shelby ignored them, crossing her arms tightly beneath her breasts as she paced and listened to the click of her heels in the silence.
Mason looked up distractedly from the papers on the desk, shoving his glasses up on his nose. There was a bland, slightly vacuous look in his eyes as he took in Shelby in her new red and black suit. «I'm not sure what it is you want me to do, darlin.'»
Shelby bore down on him, her dark eyes flaming with impatience. She braced her hands against the desk, her fingers newly manicured and decked with a garnet and diamond ring. «You heard what Burke had to say. He thinks we should have Gifford declared incompetent.»
«Now, Shelby,» Mason said, smiling benignly. He abandoned the papers he'd been going over and folded his hands neatly on top of them. «I have explained to you before why that won't work. In the first place, how would that look if I had my wife's grandfather declared incompetent so I might profit from the sale of his estate? That wouldn't do, sweetheart. The voters frown on that sort of thing. Secondly, Serena would never agree to it.»
«Serena.» Shelby spat out her sister's name like a curse as she pulled back from the desk to resume her pacing. «Blast her. Why did she have to come back just when things were looking so good for us? She's going to ruin everything for me. She always does.»
Mason tut-tutted at her from behind his smile. «Have a little faith, sugar plum. Serena may very well see reason when she hears the whole story.»
«She'll side with Gifford,» Shelby snapped, smoothing a stray hair back toward her neat French twist. «I'm sure he's been filling her head with nonsense. And who knows what that Lucky Doucet has been telling her.»
«Why should he be telling her anything? She only hired him to take her out to Gifford's.»
«Well…» she stalled, dodging her husbands vaguely curious stare. «Well… because he's crazy, that's why.»
Mason shook his head. «You're getting all riled up for nothing.»
«One of us had better get riled up. If we don't raise some cash soon, we're going to be in trouble, Mason. You need funding for your campaign and we have to close on the new house soon.»
«It would help if you could get the old one sold.»
Shelby stopped in her tracks, pressing a hand to her heart and looking wounded, as if her husbands suggestion had been a stake driven into her. «I am trying to sell the house, Mason. It isn't my fault the Loughton s financing fell through at the last minute. It isn't my fault the market is soft right now.»
«I know it isn't your fault, pet,» Mason hurried to assure her. «Of course it's not. I was just wishing out loud, that's all.»
He did the rest of his wishing in silence as he thought of the credit card Shelby had run to its limit even before she'd bought this new ensemble. He had a terrible sinking feeling the red leather pumps were exorbitantly expensive, but he said nothing. Previous suggestions for Shelby to curb her spending habits had been met with hysteria.
«I'll tell you what I wish,» Shelby muttered, putting on her most effective pout. «I wish I were an only child and that Gifford would come to his senses. That's what I wish.»
«You worry too much, peach,» Mason said. «Things will work out. You'll see. They always do.»
There was a sharp rap at the door, and Odille Fontenot slipped into the room. Her bony frame was painfully erect, her light eyes and thin mouth fierce and disapproving, as always. Her hair was a distressed ball of salt-and-pepper frizz around her head. She wore a cotton housedress in a bright flowered print that was subdued somehow by her general aura of gloom. It hung shapelessly from shoulders as sharp and thin as a wire hanger.