His Lovely Garden Read online

  His Lovely Garden

  Sugar Hill Series

  Book Five

  By M.L. Bullock

  Text copyright © 2018 M.L. Bullock

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Prologue – Dominick Dufresne

  Chapter One – Avery Dufresne

  Chapter Two – Arnold Lee

  Chapter Three – Mike DeLuca

  Chapter Four – Avery

  Chapter Five – Arnold Lee

  Chapter Six – Avery

  Chapter Seven – Dominick

  Chapter Eight – Arnold Lee

  Chapter Nine – Avery

  Chapter Ten – Avery

  Chapter Eleven – Mike

  Chapter Twelve – Avery

  Chapter Thirteen – Dominick

  Chapter Fourteen – Mike

  Chapter Fifteen – Avery

  Chapter Sixteen – Lucas

  Chapter Seventeen – Avery

  Chapter Eighteen – Mike

  Chapter Nineteen – Dolly Jane

  Epilogue – Dolly Jane

  In a Whispering Gallery

  That whisper takes the voice

  Of a Spirit, speaking to me,

  Close, but invisible,

  And throws me under a spell

  At the kindling vision it brings;

  And for a moment I rejoice,

  And believe in transcendent things

  That would make of this muddy earth

  A spot for the splendid birth

  Of everlasting lives,

  Whereto no night arrives;

  And this gaunt gray gallery

  A tabernacle of worth

  On this drab-aired afternoon,

  When you can barely see

  Across its hazed lacune

  If opposite aught there be

  Of fleshed humanity

  Wherewith I may commune;

  Or if the voice so near

  Be a soul’s voice floating here.

  —Thomas Hardy, 1928

  Prologue – Dominick Dufresne

  1839

  A constant, incessant tapping woke me from my stupor. I had fallen asleep in the chair beside Ophelia’s bed. I unfurled slowly, silently cursing whomever it was that disturbed my alcohol-induced slumber. For the first time in weeks, I slept without dreams. No nightmares, no unwanted images of unforgettable horrors, but my unwelcome visitor had stolen that momentary peace from me. Anger replaced my peaceful repose, and I left my sanctuary in search of the offender. Not for the first time in recent days, I walked to the front door with both a candle and a pistol in my hands.

  “Please, hurry. He may come for us,” a woman’s voice called from the other side of the door downstairs. I paused on the staircase wondering who this might be. This voice was not one I recognized. It was neither Annalee nor any of the servants. Annalee had left with her maid and my daughter Ida. Married now to Emilio Sota, Annalee lived presumably a happy life far from our cursed home, Sugar Hill. That knowledge brought a sliver of relief to my troubled mind. Annalee would love my daughter as if she were her own. So, who could this be? Not Livy. My former left-hand wife, the traitorous wench, rotted away in a New Orleans jail now.

  The tapping resumed as the woman pleaded with me. I heard her sobbing now. My last remaining servant, an old man named Lemuel who was now mute, stepped out into the foyer with a candle in his hand. He glanced up at me as if to ask if he should open the door, but I shook my head and waved him back. He retreated down the hall, and I heard his bedroom door close with a creak. I had no mind to open my home to this strange woman—until I heard the child crying.

  I could turn away this unknown woman, but a child?

  Walking down the last remaining stairs, I set my candlestick on a table and waited. I pressed my face close to the door and listened.

  “Shh now, junge,” the woman warned the child. I detected a strange accent intermingled with her broken English. Austrian, perhaps? I had heard this accent before at the Prescott Club during a night of cards and cigars with Champion, many years ago. Happier, foolish times.

  The child whimpered and said, “I want my mother,” stirring something I did not expect—sympathy, I supposed. Until this moment, I believed I had none left. Placing the gun on the table with the candlestick, I walked to the door, my shoes crunching across the gritty floor. I opened the door a slice, only wide enough to lay eyes upon this woman and her child. Perhaps this was a trap? Maybe I would open the door and Champion would shoot me dead. He had tried before.

  “Please, sir. Are you Dominick Dufresne? I have come to see Dominick Dufresne.” In the darkness, the woman’s features were not clear, but I could make out an oval-shaped face fringed with tight brown curls. She clutched a child’s hand, but his face was pressed against her skirts. “My name is Madlen, and this boy is Devon Dufresne.”

  “Devon Dufresne?”

  Quite agitated now, she whispered, “Your brother’s son. Please, let us in, Mr. Dufresne. Your brother is…he is ill, and it would not be good for him to find us here.”

  “No one comes inside Sugar Hill. This place is cursed. Go back to my brother.”

  The boy sobbed and buried his face deeper in Madlen’s black skirts. She clutched him close as she slung her hood back and said angrily, “If you send this boy back to his father, you might as well kill him yourself. He is your blood, your own blood. Gott helfe ihm.” When that did not move me, she added in an apologetic voice, “Have mercy, sir. Please. We have nowhere else to go, and I suspect his mother is no longer able to care for him.”

  Those words did not shock me as she might have intended, but if this boy was truly a Dufresne, I could not allow him to wander about the streets of Belle Fontaine as a homeless urchin. My mother would never have done such a thing, and although I never knew my father, I believed he would have also been gracious. At any rate, I knew my brother to be a black-hearted bastard, a murdering rapist who would stop at nothing to fulfill his lusts.

  “You may come inside, but only as far as the front room. And only for a little while.”

  Madlen’s lips tightened, but she did not argue with me. As I opened the door, she hurried past me and shoved the boy inside first. She cast a worried eye behind her, but there was no one there. I stared into the darkness too, hoping I would see Champion lurking in the shadows of the live oaks. For a moment, I believed I saw a shadow, but it was nothing. Nothing at all.

  Yes, coward. Come out and face me. You spawn of hell! Face me!

  He did not appear, and I heard nothing, no evidence to suggest that Champion watched us or waited nearby. I joined the pair and shut the door behind us. The sound was empty, like the closing of a mausoleum. Yes, this unhappy place would be my tomb. Madlen’s eyes went to my gun, and she tucked the boy behind her. I waved them to two dusty wooden chairs that the servants had used when expecting guests in long-ago days, back when people wanted to come to Sugar Hill.

  “You say this boy is my nephew, but who are you?” I took a seat but kept my eye on the door too.

  “I am his governess, Madlen Auer. I have not been with the family long, only six weeks. I tell you, sir, we cannot remain in that house another day; there is danger there of a kind I can barely explain. And the boy’s father is not well. He talks to himself and drinks all day. Sometimes he is rough with the child and calls him by your name. I think he has lost his senses.”

  “He is mad,” I agreed. My eyes fell on the boy. He had light hair, like his mother’s, I had seen Champion’s wife a handful of times, always from a distance except for at Ophelia’s birthday ball. But those eyes were certainly much like Champion’s, dark and brooding. Devon turned away from me and buried his face in Madlen’s skirts again. “How old ar
e you?” I asked him. “Certainly too old to hide in a lady’s skirts.” My voice sounded strange and broken; I had become unaccustomed to speaking to the living. I spoke to ghosts all the time. Was I mad too, then?

  With a nervous tremor in her lips, she patted the boy on his shoulder. “Your uncle is speaking to you, Devon. Tell him how old you are.”

  With a sullen expression, he held up four fingers. What irony! While my sister endured the shame of Champion’s assault, our “brother” married and had a son? Why should I feel anything for his son? I had not made up my mind what to do yet when Madlen hurried on.

  “His mother is missing, and I fear the worst. Mr. Dufresne is gone much of the time and is drunk when he returns home. He has proven to be a violent and unpredictable man.”

  “This is no surprise to me, Miss Auer, but I wonder why you would come to me. I am the least likely person to care about Champion Dufresne or his son.”

  Madlen licked her dry lips. Had they walked here from Thorn Hill? They must have, for I saw no carriage, no horse. The proper thing to do would be to offer some water, but I was not much of a proper man as of late.

  She continued undaunted, “Please do not send us back, for I fear there is something worse in that house than your brother.”

  “Tell me,” I insisted, “what do you mean?”

  “I see a man, and he—it—pretends to be Mr. Dufresne, but then it is not him. He appears in my room and sometimes in the nursery.” Madlen tugged at her dress collar as if she wanted to pull it as tight as possible. As if she remembered something she wished to forget. An unholy handling, perhaps. How could she know about that? My sister used to cry to my mother and tell similar stories.

  “Why is this my concern, miss?” I leaned back in my red velvet chair and watched the candle flicker in the breeze. The foyer smelled dirty; it suggested a layer of filth much deeper than a bit of grit and grime, much more than an unswept floor or two.

  “I would speak to you further but not with the child present. He has been through enough with his mother missing and a madman for a father.”

  “That is unfortunate, but the child should know what a rotten bastard his father has become, what a truly black-hearted villain he is.”

  Madlen put her hands on Devon’s shoulders. She was undoubtedly thinking that this was a mistake, that she should not have come here at all. She would be correct.

  “You care nothing for your own flesh and blood? Nothing for an innocent child? Then you are both mad. It is true, what they say.” She rose from her chair, her eyes wet with tears, her voice broken.

  “And what is that, Miss Auer? What do they say about me?”

  “That the Dufresnes are cursed! That a demon stalks this family, and that your mother made a deal with the devil.”

  If she believed her words would shock me, she was mistaken. I knew better than anyone living, except perhaps Annalee, how cursed we were. But it was not my mother’s fault. That this strange woman would believe such a thing stirred up a perverse pleasure within me.

  As they say, misery loves company. And oh, I was a miserable one.

  “Take this boy back to his father and leave Thorn Hill behind, Miss Auer. Leave Belle Fontaine while you still can, for what they say is true.” I rose from my chair now too. “There are demons. And they are here at Sugar Hill, and also at Thorn Hill, and they will find this boy.”

  As if the heavens or the pits of hell agreed with me, heavy fists banged on my front door. Madlen screamed, and the boy ran away from the sound. I waved them back and grabbed my gun.

  Let this be our final exchange, brother!

  As soon as Madlen and Devon disappeared from sight, I reached for the doorknob and raised my gun.

  Let this be the end! Brother or no, you will die tonight, Champion Dufresne!

  Chapter One – Avery Dufresne

  Present Day

  My fingers furiously tapped the desk in my office at Thorn Hill, and Reed sighed as if I were the class dunce and he the all-knowing, wise professor. Yes, he was being patient with me. Again. And it was the kind of patience one displayed when dealing with someone who was too stupid to understand a rudimentary concept like one plus one equals two. But this problem wasn’t quite as simple as that. I couldn’t believe he was challenging me on so important a subject. We’d only been married for two weeks, and we were already disagreeing on a major issue. This did not bode well for our future.

  Our friend Jessica Chesterfield had disappeared; she’d vanished in front of two hundred people at the Starlight Ball and had not returned. From what Summer relayed to us, Jessica had become obsessed with Dominick Dufresne, a relative of mine from the 19th century. She claimed to have met him, and that she loved him. Convinced that she needed to shield Dominick from certain disaster, Jessica had sought a way back. As strange as that was, she believed every bit of it, and we’d found her shocking video testifying to that truth.

  I want to be with Dominick. I’m going to find a way.

  Yes, I believed in ghosts. I believed in many things, but going back in time? Whatever happened to my friend, I had to get to the truth. Maybe it was the reporter in me, and maybe it was just because I was Vertie’s granddaughter. I didn’t know what was driving me, but I had to try. The cops sure didn’t seem to care, and Jessica deserved to be found.

  “We owe her this, Reed. Jessica saved me. If she hadn’t come to Thorn Hill, if she hadn’t intervened, I don’t know where I would be. And she only came to Alabama for our wedding. Don’t you think we should turn over every rock?”

  Reed smiled patiently, and it grated on my nerves. “Yes, I believe in turning over every rock, but this one? Inviting paranormal investigators back to Sugar Hill doesn’t feel like the wisest course of action. We have not had good experiences with that type of interaction, Avery. In case you forgot.”

  “I haven’t forgotten anything. What do you suggest we do, then? Nothing?”

  Now it was Reed’s turn to get angry. “That’s not what I said at all, and you know it.”

  “I’m not sure I do know it. Give me another suggestion, Reed. We’ve got cops and detectives up the ying-yang and nothing to show for it. Not a single clue except that video and the eyewitness testimony of about two hundred people. She vanished. She disappeared. In our ballroom!” He didn’t answer me. “Jessica’s parents deserve to know what happened to her, Reed.”

  My husband sank back in the light brown leather chair, looking deflated. He’d given up. I knew that about him. I could read his tells. “Fine, Avery. You do what you want, like you’re going to anyway. But don’t blame me if they stir something up.”

  I looked him squarely in the eye and said, “That spirit is gone, Reed, and he can’t come back.”

  “Don’t sound so disappointed, Avery.” With that, he stalked out of my office. He knew I couldn’t chase him, not with this cast on my leg. What exactly was he insinuating? That I wanted Ambrose to return? I glanced down at the ring I inherited from my great-aunt. This little heirloom had tied all the matrones to Ambrose, to the Lovely Man, and it had once been a powerful item. The ring slipped off my finger easily now, and I sighed as I slid it back on. Once upon a time, the ring had been immovable, at least until the wearer was near death.

  The Lovely Man’s power was no more. Whatever magic tied us together had been broken.

  And to my utter horror, I knew Reed was right, although I would never admit that to another living soul. Especially not him. Even after everything—Jamie’s suicide, Summer’s departure from Sugar Hill, the death of Handsome Cheever and now Jessica’s disappearance—the loss of Ambrose saddened me. But why? I had everything a woman could want. A handsome husband, great wealth. I owned not one but two old historic homes and led a large, tight-knit family with a fine old name.

  I hated myself for this strange sadness. Ambrose Dufresne, my ancestor, had stolen so much from us. How could I miss that murderous ghost?

  You’re sick in the head, Avery. That’s how.

&nb
sp; I shook away the image of his dark hair falling across his warm eyes, the sight of his red lips curled up in a smile. This strange feeling was further proof that we needed help.

  I picked up the phone and called Mike DeLuca, Jessica’s former boss at My Haunted Plantation. He’d taken her disappearance hard and had wanted to investigate Sugar Hill for clues from the beginning, but the board of trustees had not been willing to grant him permission. But I didn’t give a damn now. I had veto power. I was the matrone, the leader of our large, demanding family, and this was my decision to make. The only person who could truly overrule me was Summer, and she’d left for Georgia soon after Jessica disappeared.

  “Mike? This is Avery Dufresne. I’ve decided to allow you access to investigate Sugar Hill. When can you get started?”

  “I can be there in the morning, Avery. Thank you.” He sounded stunned to hear from me.

  “One condition, though.” I chewed my lip. “I want to be in on the investigation.”

  Mike paused and then said, “I don’t know, Avery. Didn’t you break your leg?”

  I rubbed the cast. “Yes, but I can still get around. I have a chair and crutches.”

  “That might not be a good idea, what with your sensitivity and all. You know, with the ring and the…”

  “Stop hedging. You sound like Reed. Look, I want to find Jessica too. I want to help. I know that I have some sort of weird energy. Maybe you can use it. I want to try. I have to.”

  Mike sighed, and I tried not to think about how much he really did sound like Reed just now. Was I getting on everyone’s nerves or what? Too bad. I was still the matrone, and Sugar Hill was my property. “I guess we could use your help, Avery, but in a limited way. I’m not willing to put you at risk, not if there’s something funky going on down there.”

  “I understand. Thanks, Mike. Call me when you make it into town. Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” He hung up, apparently eager to pack and get on the road. I chewed my bottom lip and slid the wheelchair out from under the desk. I wasn’t a pro at navigating this thing, but I would rather die than ask Reed to help me right now. I mumbled to myself thinking about how I would handle the fight that was coming. I had no illusions about this. Reed was a lawyer, and he wasn’t going to fold up like a cheap suit. I wished to God he’d see reason.