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.
«You ought to wait to be invited in, Odille,» Shelby said defensively, not certain what the housekeeper might have overheard. «Your manners are atrocious. If you worked for me, I'd fire you for insolence.»
Odille sniffed indignantly. «Me, I don' work for you. Day I work for you, day I lose my mind.»
Shelby puffed herself up like an offended pigeon. «Of all the impertinence!»
«Was there something you needed to tell us, Odille?» Mason intervened tactfully.
Odille's narrow eyes shifted from Mason to Shelby and back. «Miz 'Rena home,» she announced ominously, then turned and stalked out without waiting to be dismissed.
Serena appeared a moment later. She'd left her bags by the door and gone directly in search of her sister, intending to clear up a few things immediately.
«Shelby, Mason, I think we need to have a talk,» she said as she stepped into the library.
«Serena!» Shelby gushed with a great show of worry. She rushed forward, wringing her bejeweled hands. «Are you all right? We were just worried sick about you! Anything might have happened to you out in the swamp with that madman!» Her gaze flicked over Serena's shoulder. «Did Gifford return with you?»
«No, he didn't.»
Mason came around from behind the desk, moving with the grace of breeding, a smile of welcome beaming across his face like the sun. He was attractive in the mild, unassuming way of all the Talbot's. He wore a rumpled blue oxford shirt and an air of good-natured distraction that had an immediate calming effect on Serena. She managed a smile as he reached for her.
«Serena, darlin,' it's so good to see you,» he said, giving her a brotherly hug, then standing her back at arm's length to get a good look at her. «I'm sorry I wasn't here to greet you the other day. I'm afraid my practice is a taskmaster. And then Shelby informed me you'd gone off on your own after Gifford.» He shook his head in reproach. «I must say, you had us concerned.»
«The situation with Gifford seemed to demand immediate attention.»
«Gifford. Yes.» He nodded, arranging his features into an appropriately grave expression as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his tan chinos. «Well, Shelby tells me she didn't get a chance to explain things adequately before you rushed off.»
«As I recall,» Serena said dryly, giving her sister a pointed look, «Shelby made no attempt to explain.»
Shelby summoned up the same wounded look she'd bestowed on her husband earlier and directed it at her sister. «That's simply not true, Serena! I practically begged you to stay so we could chat!»
«You told me you didn't know why Gifford had gone into the swamp.»
Mason stepped in to arbitrate like a born diplomat. «I think what Shelby meant was that we're all a little baffled as to why Gifford left instead of staying here and dealing with the situation in his usual straightforward manner. Things are in a bit of a tangle, as you may have gathered.»