Lucky’s Lady

CHAPTER 3

CHANSON DU TERRE. IF SHE LIVED TO BE A HUNdred, Serena knew she would never tire of seeing it. It gave her a feeling of security and tradition. Sheridans had lived there since winning it in a card game in 1789. She may not have chosen to live there herself, but it was her heritage.

The house stood at the end of an allee of moss-draped live oak, the broad crowns of which knitted together to form a high bower above the drive. The house was an old Creole chateau, a combination of French Provincial and West Indies in style, with a sloping roof and broad galleries surrounding it on both the upper and lower levels.

At first glance the house looked the same as it always had to Serena-graceful, welcoming, impressive without being ostentatious. Then she blinked away the golden glow of her memory and saw it exactly as it was, as if seeing it for the first time ever.

The roof was in a state of disrepair, due to heavy spring rains. Shingles were missing and a bright blue tarp had been thrown over a portion near die west dormer. The columns of the upper gallery needed paint and some of the balusters were missing from the handrail, giving the house the appearance of having a wide gap-toothed grin. The brick of the ground floor and the wooden siding of the upper story were still painted yellow, but the color had faded with age to the shade of old parchment instead of the butter-yellow of her memory.

Memory was flattering, Serena reflected; reality was like seeing a beloved relative who had passed from middle age to old age between visits.

She made her way across the broad lawn at a hurried, half-lame walk, her shoes and purse cradled against her. A screen door on the upper level of the house swung wide open and her niece and nephew burst out like racehorses from the starting gate. Six-year-old Lacey ran shrieking down the wide steps, a blur of blond ringlets and pink frills, with eight-year-old John Mason right behind her, a bullfrog clutched between his hands and a maniacal grin on his face.

«John Mason, leave your sister alone!» Shelby Sheridan-Talbot shouted, bustling out onto the gallery.

She was a fraction of an inch shorter than Serena with a softer, slightly rounder figure. Her brown eyes were a bit more exotic in shape, and her mouth seemed perpetually set in a petulant frown. Beyond those slight differences they appeared very much the same physically. Shelby looked ready to address the chamber of commerce in a bright yellow suit with a fitted jacket that flared out at the hips in the current style intended to denote femininity. The emerald silk blouse beneath the jacket sported a flamboyant candy-box bow at the throat. Serena felt like a bag lady in comparison.

«Oh, my Lord, Serena!» Shelby exclaimed dramatically. She pressed perfectly manicured hands to her cheeks, displaying a diamond ring big enough to choke a cat and a large square-cut topaz. «What on earth has happened to you? You look like you've been mugged or run over by a truck or both.»

«Gee, thanks.» Serena trudged up the steps, uncharitably wishing that she had been born an only child. Shelby 's temperament was as capricious as the weather-sunny one second and stormy the next. She tended to be silly and frivolous. Her constant theatrics were tiring in the extreme, and she had a way of saying things that was at once innocent and cuttingly shrewd and that made it exhausting to endure a conversation with her.

Serena frowned at her as she limped onto the gallery and Shelby inched back, making a moue of distaste, careful not to brush up against her.

«I'm not having a great day here, Shelby, and I don't have time to go over the gory details with you,» Serena said. «I've got to change and get going. Can you please arrange to have someone pick up my car in town? I left it down by Gauthier's.»

Shelby 's expression quickly clouded over from feigned concern to childish annoyance. «Of course, Serena. I have nothing better to do than run errands for you. My stars, you come home looking like something the cat dragged in, worrying me to a frazzle, and the first thing out of your mouth is an order. Isn't that just like you.»

Serena limped past her sister. She seriously doubted Shelby had given a single thought to her absence from the house. Shelby 's most pressing concerns in life were her children, her wardrobe, and her prominence in community affairs-which she entered not with an eye to civic duty but social status. She was as pretty and shallow as a lily pond in a Japanese garden.

Serena stepped into the house and made her way down the hall, regretting the fact that she didn't have time to take in the ambience of the home she'd grown up in. Aside from one major renovation in the early 1800s and modifications since then to install plumbing and electricity, it had remained largely unchanged over its long history. It was a treasure trove filled with heirlooms and antiques that would make a museum curators mouth water. But there was no time to appreciate the cypress-paneled walls painted a mellow gold or the faded Turkish rugs that spilled jewel-tone colors across the old wood floor. She went directly toward her old bedroom, where earlier in the day she had done nothing more than deposit her suitcases before storming off in a stubborn huff to find a guide.

«Going, did you say?» Shelby questioned suddenly, as if Serena's words had only just managed to penetrate through her sense of indignation. She rushed to catch up, plucking at the sleeve of Serena's rumpled jacket like a child trying to catch its mother's attention. «Going where?»

«To see Gifford.»

«You can't go now!» Shelby whined in dramatic alarm, following Serena into her room. She positioned herself well within her sister's range of vision and put on her most distressed expression, wringing her hands for added effect. «You simply can't go now! Why, you only just arrived! We haven't had a chance to chat or anything! I haven't had a chance to tell you a thing about our new house or about how well the children are doing in school or how I may very well be named Businesswoman of the Year by the chamber of commerce. You simply can't go now!»

Serena ignored the dictate and began undressing, tossing her ruined clothes into a pile on the floor. She frowned at the suitcase on the bed, knowing there was nothing in it suitable for a swamp. She might have grown up dogging Gifford's heels around the cane fields, but the woman she had become in Charleston had no call to wear jeans or rubber knee-boots.

«And Odille is making a leg of lamb for supper,» Shelby went on. She moved around the room in quick, nervous motions, flitting from place to place like a butterfly, lighting only long enough to straighten a lace doily or fuss with the arrangement of cut flowers in the china pitcher on the carved cherry dresser. «You can't know the battle I had to wage to get her to do it. Honestly, that woman is as churlish as the day is long. She has defied me at every turn since Mason and I moved in. And she frightens the children, you know. They think she's some land of a witch. I don't doubt but what she told them she'd put a spell on them. She's just that way. I don't understand why Gifford keeps her on.»

«He enjoys fighting with her, I imagine,» Serena said, smiling as she thought of the cantankerous Odille facing off with the equally cantankerous Gifford.

Odille Fontenot was as homely and hardworking as a mule, a tall rack of bones with the hide of a much smaller person stretched tautly over them. Her skin was as black as pitch, her eyes a fierce shade of turquoise that burned as bright as gas jets with the force of her personality. She was dour and superstitious and full of sass. She had taken over as housekeeper after Serena and Shelby had gone and Mae, the woman who had helped raise them, had retired. Odille was probably well into her sixties by now, but no one could tell by looking at her and no one dared ask.

Serena opened her suitcase and pulled out a pair of white crop-legged cotton slacks and a knit top with wide red and white stripes. A quick glance in the beveled mirror above the dresser confirmed her suspicions that her hair was coming down, but there was no time to fuss with it.

«Besides,» she said, her voice muffled as she pulled her top on over her head, «Odille's brother is Gifford's best friend.»

Shelby abruptly stopped rearranging knickknacks on the dresser and looked sharply at her sister's reflection in the mirror. «Did you say you're going after Gifford? You're going out into the swamp?»

Serena zipped her slacks, meeting Shelby's gaze evenly. «Isn't that what you told me to do?» she said with deceptive calm.

Shelby's cheeks flushed beneath her perfect makeup, and she glanced away, suddenly uncomfortable. «I guess I didn't think you'd really do it. I mean, for heaven's sake, Serena, you going out into the swamp!»

«What did you think I'd do, Shelby? Nothing? Did you think I'd just ignore the problem?»

Shelby turned and faced her then, her mood changing yet again. «Ignore it the way I have, you mean?» She narrowed her eyes and pinched her mouth into a sour knot. «Well, I'm sorry, Serena, if I don't live up to your standards, but I have many other responsibilities. If Gifford wants to go live in the middle of some godforsaken, snake-infested swamp, I can't just drop everything and go after him.»

«Well, you won't have to,» Serena said tiredly. «Because I'm going.»

«Yes.» Shelby flitted to the French doors that opened onto the gallery. She drew a length of sheer drape through her fingers, then twirled away, tossing her head. «Won't Giff be tickled to see how you've overcome your fears.»

Serena gave her twin a long, level look brimming with anger and hurt, but she made no comment. She refused to. She had never once discussed with Shelby her fear of the swamp or how she had acquired it. The topic had tacitly been declared off-limits years earlier, a dangerous no-man's land that Shelby danced along the edge of when she was feeling spiteful.

Serena wasn't even certain her sister realized how potentially volatile the subject was. It wasn't that Shelby was stupid; it was just that she magnified the importance of things that pertained directly to herself and tended to minimize all else.

Stepping into a pair of red canvas espadrilles, Serena snapped her suitcase shut with a decisive click. She had no time to analyze her sister's psyche even if she had wanted to. She had a boat to catch.

«I'm leaving now,» she said softly, still struggling to control her temper. «I don't know when I'll be back. Knowing Gifford, this could take a day or two.»

She slung the strap of her carryall over her shoulder and hefted the suitcase off the bed. Without so much as glancing in Shelby's direction, she left the room and headed for the front door.

«Serena, wait!» Shelby called, her voice ringing with contrition as she hurried down the hall.

«I can't wait. Lucky gave me ten minutes and I have no doubt hell leave without me just to prove his point if I'm not there on time.»

«Lucky?» Shelby's step faltered as she repeated the name. «Lucky who?»

«Lucky Doucet,» Serena said, bumping the screen door open with her hip. «He's taking me out to Giff s.»

Shelby's face fell and paled dramatically, but Serena wasn't looking.

«Good heavens, Serena,» she said breathlessly, scurrying out onto the gallery. «You can't go off with him. Do you have any idea what people say about him?'

«I can well imagine.»

«Mercy,» Shelby fretted, patting her bosom with one hand and fanning herself with the other, as if she might swoon like a belle of old. «I don't know how his poor mother can hold her head up in public. And she's just the dearest woman you'd ever care to meet. His younger siblings are perfectly nice with college degrees and I don't know what all, but that-that- Lucky… Good heavens, he's nothing but trouble. He's been living like an animal out in the swamp ever since he got out of the army. Folks say he's half crazy.»

«They may be right,» Serena conceded, remembering Lucky's own words to that effect. «But he was the only person I could find to take me.»

«Well, I don't think you should go with him. Who knows what he might do or say?'

Serena sighed heavily. «Shelby, one of us has to go talk to Gifford. You're not willing and Lucky Doucet is the only person able to take me.»

Shelby pouted, plumping her lower lip out and batting her lashes. «Well, I just don't think you should, that's all.»

«Your protest has been duly noted. Now, I'm off. Give my apologies to Odille.»

«Be careful.»

Serena paused on the last step at her sister's hesitant admonishment. It was one of the rare shows of concern from her twin that always made her do a double take. Shelby was for the most part completely self-absorbed. She could be silly and frivolous, petty and downright cruel on occasion. Then every once in a while she would suddenly come forth with a small slice of affection, concern, love, offering it like a jewel. The gestures were both touching and unsettling.

«I will be,» Serena said quietly.

She crossed the lawn at a hobbling half run once again, suitcase banging against her leg, foot throbbing from the sliver she had yet to remove. She set her sights on the landing and worked unsuccessfully to force Shelby from her mind.

All their lives people had remarked to them how special, how close they must feel being twins, what a unique bond they must share. Serena had always taken the comments with sardonic amusement. She and Shelby had never been close. Aside from their looks, they were as different as summer and winter. By Shelby's decree, they had been rivals from birth. Shelby had always seemed to resent Serena for being born at the same time, as if Serena had done so purposely to steal Shelby's glory. In her attempts to avoid rivalry, Serena had drifted further away from her sister, cultivating separate interests and separate dreams, creating an even wider gap between them.

Serena had always regretted the fact that they weren't close. Being the twin of a virtual stranger seemed much lonelier than being an only child. But they were too different, existing on separate planes that never quite seemed to intersect. They shared no telepathy. Sometimes it was almost as if they didn't even speak the same language. The only thing that seemed to bind them was blood and heritage and Chanson du Terre.

The elements of their relationship were complex. As a psychologist, Serena might have found it fascinating-had it been someone else's relationship, had she been able to look at it with cool objectivity. But she was too close to the subject; there were too many painful memories binding all the facets together like vines, and she was too afraid of what she might find if she ever did tear all the clinging creepers away, afraid the core might be as shriveled and dead as a sapling that had been smothered by the growth around it. And then what would happen? She would have to let go of the hope she still harbored in a corner of her heart. It was easier for them both to simply leave it alone.

As she neared the landing, her niece and nephew came running from the bank, screaming as if the devil were chasing them. They ran past her without slowing down, flying toward the safety of the house and their mother. Lucky stood on the dock smoking a cigarette, one hip cocked and a nasty smile tugging at a corner of his mouth. Serena scowled at him.

«Can't you go ten minutes without terrorizing someone?»

«Your ten minutes were up five minutes ago. You're just lucky I didn't leave without you.»

«That's a matter of opinion,» she grumbled. «What did you say to them? You ought to be ashamed, trying to give little children nightmares.»

Lucky rolled his eyes and tossed the butt of his cigarette into the bayou. «Those two are nightmares.»

«I wouldn't say that within Shelby's earshot if I were you.»

«There are far worse things I could say to that one,» he said, almost under his breath.

Serena gave him a curious look. His expression had gone cold and closed. He had slammed a door shut, but she felt compelled to push at it anyway. «You know my sister?» she asked. It seemed as unlikely as… as herself going into the swamp with him.

Lucky didn't answer. His relationship with Shelby Sheridan had never been shared with anyone, not brother or stranger or priest. He certainly had no intention of sharing the story with Shelby's twin. It had happened in another lifetime, in another place. He preferred to leave the wound scarred over, if not healed. There was no way on earth he was going to tear it open for this woman. In addition to the sin of being Shelby's sister, she was a psychologist. The last thing he needed was some college girl digging around in his psyche.

He turned his attention to the luggage she carried and the stylish outfit she wore. «Where do you think we're goin', chere? Club Med?»

Serena gave him one of her haughty ice-princess looks. «For your information, Mr. Doucet, my wardrobe doesn't hold an extensive collection of army fatigues and waders. You may find this hard to believe, but I don't particularly care to spend my free time in the swamp.»

«Oh, I don't find that hard to believe a-tall. I'm sure you're far too busy givin' dinner parties and goin' to concerts to even think of a place such as the swamp.»

«Why should I think of it? It doesn't require anything from me. It simply is.»

Not for long. Not if your sister has anything to say about it. The thoughts passed instantly through Lucky s head, but he didn't speak them aloud. He was as involved as he intended to get, ferrying Serena out to Gifford's cabin and doing the odd reconnaissance job. It wasn't up to him to save the swamp. It couldn't be. Dieu, he had his hands full just trying to save himself.

What would be the point in arguing with Serena anyway? She was a slick, sophisticated city dweller who obviously had no affinity for the area she had grown up in. What would she care if Tristar Chemicals furthered the ruination of a delicate ecosystem man had been bent on destroying for years? For all he knew she was well aware of the situation and was going out to Giff's only to badger him into selling his land. She was her sister's twin, after all. How could he expect anything better of her than deceit and treachery?

He looked at her now in her prissy little designer sportswear outfit. She was a woman born to money, used to fine things. It stood to reason she would want more. That was the way of women of her class-see to the comfort and luxury of number one and to hell with the rest of the world. She wouldn't listen to him. He was just a means to an end… again.

«Get in the boat,» he said with a growl, his temper rising like a tide inside him.

She took another step toward him, her chin lifting to a stubborn angle. «You know, Mr. Doucet, we would get along a whole lot better if you would stop bossing me around.»

Lucky all but closed the gap between them, leaning over her, trying to intimidate her with his size and the aura of his temper. «I don't want to get along with you. Is that clear enough, Miz Sheridan?»

«Like crystal.»

She tilted her head back to meet his furious gaze, refusing to back away from him. It didn't seem to matter to his eyes that she was everything he needed to stay away from. It didn't matter to his hormones that she represented more trouble than he could afford to handle. For an instant, as he leaned close and the scent of her perfume lured him closer still, desire flared hot and bright inside him and burned away all common sense.

His gaze drifted over the elegant line of her cheek and jaw, the perfect angel's-wing curve of her brows, the delicate pink bow of her mouth. He wanted to kiss her, taste her, plunge his tongue into her mouth. It was crazy.

Crazy.

A shudder went through him and he tore his gaze from her. He turned away from her abruptly, jerking her suitcase from her grasp and climbing down into the pirogue with it. He settled the bag on the flat floor of the boat, up in the bow with the rest of his cargo, and moved back toward the stern, taking up the push-pole. His hands were shaking.

Sweet heaven, he thought, gripping the pole and looking away as Serena eased herself into the boat; the sooner he got her to Gifford's, the better. He didn't need this kind of torment in his life. All he wanted was to be left in peace.

Peace, a derisive voice sneered inside his head, what was that? A dream. Something he was continually longing for that seemed forever beyond his reach. Something Serena Sheridan seemed to hold effortlessly, he thought, taking in the air of calm she wore like a queen s cloak as she settled herself primly on the seat of his pirogue. He couldn't help but envy her that. But if she were a cold, unfeeling bitch like her sister, why wouldn't she feel peace? Nothing would penetrate her armor of selfishness. She would be safe from caring and pain.

He heaved a sigh as he poled the boat away from the dock and steered it around, pointing the bow upstream, away from civilization and toward his home, his heartland-the cypress swamp of Bayou Noir. He focused on the wilderness that had been his salvation, never turning his head to catch the bright flash of yellow on the gallery of Chanson du Terre.