Kasey Michaels - The Return of the Prodigal

Lisette leaned forward, frowning, hoping her shock didn’t show on her face. “What…what on earth is that? It…it looks like a fang . A huge, ugly brown fang.”

“The tooth of the alligator,” Loringa explained, moving her hand, setting the tooth on the end of the chain to swinging lazily in the air. “Fed by all of my most powerful ingredients saved from the islands, soaked in feuilles trois paroles in the mavoungou bottle, used to make the broth, you understand, the migan . This is my gift to you, this gad , this protection from the bad loa . But you will still need your wits about you at all times. Odette worships the bad loa .”

“And you expect me to wear that monstrosity around my neck? How could I hide it from Rian Becket?”

“Keep it with you. Find a way,” Loringa ordered, pushing the necklace on Lisette.

She grabbed the thing gingerly by its chain, quickly laid it on the bed. To touch the tooth itself, she felt sure, would be to have it burn her palm. Be calm, stay calm , she warned herself. Don’t let Loringa see . “Only if you tell me again about my mother. Tell me, while I finish packing up my things for my daring escape from my lascivious employer.”

Loringa sighed, returned to her chair.

“The story does not change with the telling. It was good, for many years between your papa and Geoffrey Baskin. They were partners, friends. The Letters of Marque, the adventures, a share in the booty allowed us by the Crown. Not pirates, not buccaneers, child. Privateers. All of the adventure, your father would say, winking at me, but all within the law. They would both return to England one day, rich men, as others had done before them.”

“And then Papa sailed to New Orleans,” Lisette said, at last slipping the gad into the pocket of her cloak.

“A blessed day, a cursed day. He met your maman , your sweet maman , and brought her back to the islands with him as his wife. And Geoffrey Baskin saw her, broke the Lord’s Commandment, coveted her.”

“And, wanting her, he betrayed Papa .”

“Your papa wished to leave the islands, but Geoffrey was not ready to go, to end it. He was always greedy, and he had turned to the blood thirst. More, he always wanted more. He wanted your maman . Even as she nursed you at her breast, he wanted her. I saw it, I felt it, I tried to warn your papa , but he trusted his good friend, Geoffrey Baskin.”

Lisette nodded. What she and Loringa spoke of was a story, a tragedy, but it was also Lisette’s history. “ Papa trusted him when he said he wanted only one last voyage, one last adventure together, one with more bounty in it than either of them would ever need. But he had already betrayed Papa , lied to him, and when Papa sailed into the middle of what was supposed to be a group of unarmed merchant ships, it was to find that he was outmanned, outnumbered. And worse, he’d been tricked into attacking English ships. He lost almost everything, but he survived.”

“Only to return to his island home to find your maman dead. Everyone dead. A slaughter that left no man, woman or child alive. Even the animals—nothing breathed on our island. And all the booty, all your papa would take to England to begin a new life, now in the bowels of his partner’s ships. I watched from the trees, keeping you silent in my arms, while Geoffrey Baskin raped your mother for refusing him, for spitting in his face, for cutting him with the knife she had hidden beneath her skirts. Twice he raped her, on the sand, in front of everyone, and then he turned her over to his men. In my dreams, I still hear Marguerite’s screams. I could do nothing, child, Odette’s evil paralyzing me. It was all I could do to pray, invoke the good loa to keep you shielded from her eyes, for your papa would need you in his sorrow.”

Lisette blinked back tears for the mother she’d never known. “I thank you for that, Loringa. I know we have our differences, but I thank you for that. I only wish Papa could have kept me with him.”

“To live like him, branded a pirate, forced to flee the hangman? The nuns kept you safe, and your papa hunted Geoffrey Baskin and his traitorous crew, seeking vengeance. But it was not to be. He learned that Baskin and both his ships, overburdened by the weight of so much treasure, had floundered in a storm, that God had meted out His own justice. How your father hated God for taking his revenge from him. I despaired of your papa then, that he would destroy himself, but there was still you, his Marguerite’s child, and he would rebuild, find another way to fortune.”

“Helping Bonaparte, taking sides against the England that would have sentenced him to hang if they’d found him,” Lisette said, glancing at the clock on the mantel, knowing it was time she went to Rian Becket, led him away on a moonlit path of lies. “The same England he wanted to return to two years ago and longs to return to now, to live in the open at last. He says I’m to have a Season, but that is probably impossible now, after what I’ve done. But I don’t care.”

“A discussion for another day. Your papa , he always has his reasons, and he has always planned to return to England, no longer a fugitive, with or without you, foolish girl. But now this Becket, this man Odette protects, this man who could know Geoffrey Baskin? I am right, I know I am, and your father will at last get his revenge.”

“As will I,” Lisette said fervently as Loringa once more pushed herself up from the chair and left the bedchamber without another word.

Lisette sat down on the edge of the bed, her eyes dry now, her resolve strengthened. Geoffrey Baskin and his crew of murderers had taken her mother from her, had nearly destroyed her father, had stolen so many years of her life. Nothing she did now, to help her papa find this man, would be too much for her. Nothing.

Especially now.

How much did she believe in Loringa and her Voodoo? That was a question she didn’t want to ask herself, didn’t want to answer. Just as she was now going to keep a secret from the woman, and from her papa, who wouldn’t allow her to leave here tonight if she told him what she now knew for certain.

Lisette sighed, got up from the bed, and opened the bottom drawer of the bureau, extracting the small velvet pouch she’d hidden there along with Rian Becket’s other few possessions she’d taken from him that first night he had been brought to the manor house. His belt buckle, his gold epaulets, the coins she’d found in his bloodied purse. She plucked at the strings until the pouch opened, and then dumped its contents on the bedspread.

She reached into the pocket of her cloak, at last giving in to her excitement, her fear; her hands trembling, her breathing ragged, painful.

And laid the gad’s twin beside it…

WHEN THE DOOR to his bedchamber finally opened some ten minutes after two o’clock in the morning, Rian was there to grab Lisette by the elbow and pull her quickly into the room, shutting the door behind her.

“You’re late,” he told her once he’d kissed her roughly, released her. “I was about to come hunting you.”

Lisette put up her hand, stroked his cheek. “Such impatience. I had to wait until the house was quiet. Cook was fussing about in the kitchens, demanding my help as she prepares vegetables for the Comte ’s return. Word was sent ahead. He arrives as early as tomorrow, so we have almost left it too late. You feel feverish. Are you certain you can walk to the place where I have decided to rent the coach? It is a distance of at least two miles across the fields.”