Forbidden Fruit

Hope gazed down at the newborn, nestled in the bassinet beside her bed. Despair and disappointment, so bitter they burned her tongue, roiled inside her. She had prayed for a boy. She had done the rosary, she had done penance. She had been so certain her prayers would be answered that she had refused to consider names for a girl.

Her prayers had not been answered; she had been cursed instead.

She had given birth to a daughter, not a son. Just as her mother and grandmother had, just as every Pierron woman had for as many generations back as she could recall.

Hope drew a deep breath, bile rising like a poison inside her. She hadn’t escaped the Pierron legacy, after all. She had managed to believe, to convince herself for a while, that she had. In the eight years that had passed since she’d walked away from the house on River Road, she had brought each of her plans to fruition: she had left behind her mother and the stigma of being the whore’s daughter; she had married Philip St. Germaine III, a wealthy man, a man from an impeccable and prominent family; she was now one of New Orleans’s premier matrons.

But today she saw that although she had left her past behind, she hadn’t escaped it. The Pierron curse had followed her.

The baby girl was already a beauty, with light skin, vivid blue eyes and velvety dark hair. As with all the Pierron women, this one would possess the ability to bewitch and enslave men; she, too, would have the great, ugly darkness inside her. The ugliness that would chain her to a life of sin and an afterlife of eternal damnation.

Hope shuddered. For didn’t she, too, have The Darkness inside her? Didn’t it sometimes burst free, despite how hard she fought to keep it locked way?

Philip entered the room, his face wreathed in a beatific smile, his arms laden with a huge bouquet of pink roses. “My darling. She’s beautiful. Perfect.” The florist’s paper crackled as he laid the bouquet on the bed. He bent and pressed a kiss to Hope’s forehead, careful not to disturb his sleeping child. “I’m so proud of you.”

Hope turned her face away, afraid he would see her true feelings, afraid he would see the depth of her despair and revulsion.

He sat on the edge of the bed. “What is it? Hope, darling…” He turned her face to his. He searched her expression, his own concerned. “I know you wanted a son for me. But it doesn’t matter. Our little one is the most perfect child ever born.”

Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked against them. Still, one slipped past her guard and rolled down her cheek.

“Oh, love, don’t cry.” He drew her against his chest. “It really doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? Besides, we’ll have other children. Many more.”

The pain inside her grew almost unbearable. Hope knew what her husband did not: there would be no more children for them. She, like her ancestors, would be unable to carry another child to term. That was a part of the curse, the Pierron women were allowed only one child, always a daughter. To that daughter they would pass The House and the legacy of sin.

Hope curled her fingers into the soft, fine fabric of his jacket. She longed to share her thoughts with him, but knew he would be shocked, horrified, to learn the truth about his perfect wife. And now, his perfect daughter, too.

He could never know. She swallowed hard and pressed her face to his shoulder, breathing in the scent of the rain that lingered on his jacket, preferring it to the cloying atmosphere of the room. No one could ever know.

“I just wish,” she whispered, working to achieve just the right mixture of grief and wistfulness in her tone, “that my parents could have lived to see her. It’s so unfair. Sometimes it hurts so much, I…I almost can’t bear it.”

“I know, my darling.” For several moments, he cradled her against his chest, then eased her away, his lips lifting into a small smile. “I have something for you.” From his jacket pocket he drew out a jeweler’s box. Stamped on the lid of the midnight-blue leather case was the name of New Orleans’s finest jeweler.

With trembling fingers, Hope opened the box. Inside, nestled on the white velvet, lay a strand of perfectly matched pearls. “Oh, Philip.” She took out the necklace and brought it to her cheek. The pearls were cool and smooth against her skin. “They’re exquisite.”

His lips lifted, and he shifted his gaze to the baby, who had begun to stir. “They’ll be hers one day. I thought it appropriate.”

Hope’s pleasure in the gift vanished, and she replaced the necklace in its box. He adored his daughter already, Hope thought, following his gaze. He had been bewitched, snared by The Darkness. And the fool didn’t even know it.

“She’s caused a sensation in the nursery,” he continued, not tearing his gaze from the bassinet. “Nurses from all the floors have heard about her, about her beauty, and have come to see her. She’s caused a traffic jam at the viewing window.” He turned back to his wife, covering her hand with his, curving his fingers reassuringly around hers. “I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

The baby stirred and whimpered, then began to cry. Hope shrank back against the pillows, knowing what was expected of her but unable to bear the thought of holding the child to her breast.

The baby’s cries, at first small, pitiable mewls, became shrill, angry demands.

Philip frowned, obviously confused. “Hope, darling…she’s hungry. You have to feed her.”

Hope shook her head, cringing deeper into the pillows. To her horror, her breasts, engorged and aching, began leaking milk. The baby’s face grew red as the fury of her wails increased. Her features contorted into something ugly and terrifying. Something Hope recognized from her nightmares.

The Darkness. Dear God, it was strong in this child.

Philip tightened his fingers over Hope’s. “Darling…she needs you. You must feed her.”

When Hope didn’t move, Philip scooped up his daughter. He rocked her awkwardly, but her cries didn’t diminish. He held the child out to Hope. “You must.”

Hope looked wildly about the room, desperate for a way to escape. Everywhere she looked, she saw The Darkness, everything reminded her what a fool she had been.

She hadn’t escaped the Pierron legacy. She never would.

Trapped, she thought, a frantic hopelessness beating inside her. She was trapped. Just as she had been all those years ago.

“I can’t,” she said, hearing the hysteria in her own voice. “I won’t.”

“Darling—”

“Mrs. St. Germaine?” The nurse rushed in. “What’s wrong?”

“She won’t feed her,” Philip said, turning to the nurse. “She won’t take her from me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Mrs. St. Germaine,” the nurse said crisply, her voice brooking no disobedience. “Your daughter is hungry. You must feed her. She will stop crying the minute—”

“No!” Hope drew the blanket to her chin, her fingers curled so tightly into the fabric that they went numb, panic pumping through her until she shook with it. “I can’t.” She turned to her husband, tears slipping down her cheeks. “Please, Philip, don’t make me do this. I can’t do it. I won’t.”

He stared at her as if she had sprouted horns. “Hope? What’s wrong? Sweetheart, this is our child, our baby. She needs you.”

“You don’t understand…you don—” The last caught on a sob and she turned her face to the pillows. “Go…away. Please, just leave me alone.”

Chapter 2

Philip August St. Germaine III had an idyllic life, one of those existences so untroubled that others commented enviously on it. He had the right family, all the right and best things; he was healthy, athletic and handsome enough. He had sailed through school, in part because of native intelligence, but more because of the charm he had acquired through breeding.

In truth, Philip had never had to work for anything, not for grades or girls or a living. Everything had been handed to him not only on a sterling platter—the St. Charles being the crown jewel on that platter of glittering gems—but with an adoring smile. For Philip, the years flowed effortlessly one into the other.

Far from being bothered by his lack of effort in shaping his own life, he accepted it all graciously, as his due and his wonderful lot in life. He did feel for those poor souls who struggled and suffered, and he never forgot to give—and give plentifully—to the Church, both in thanks for his bounty and as a sort of insurance policy against guilt.

Frankly, until thirty-six hours ago, Philip August St. Germaine III had thought, with justifiable arrogance, that nothing ugly or unhappy could ever touch him.

Now, as he stood at the maternity ward’s nursery window and watched a stranger feed his baby, his beautiful, perfect daughter, that same arrogance mocked him. Now, he felt as if his idyllic life was crumbling around him.

The last day and a half had been like a nightmare from which he couldn’t awaken. The wife he adored, usually sweet-tempered and genteel, had become a person he didn’t recognize. A person who frightened him.

He brought a hand to his head, heavy and aching from stress and lack of sleep. It wasn’t only that she had cursed at him, spitting out words he would have sworn she didn’t, and couldn’t, know. It was more than the fact that she had told him she hated him when he had tried insisting they pick out a name for their child.

No. It was the way she had looked at him, an almost maniacal light burning in her eyes, that frightened him. Because when she’d looked at him that way, he had felt, deep down in his gut, that the life he had known was gone forever.

Philip jammed his hands deep into his trouser pockets and gazed at his daughter, sucking greedily on a bottle of formula. She was the image of her mother already. He couldn’t understand how Hope could look at her with such horror, how she could recoil from touching her. He pressed the heels of his hands to his burning eyes. When she looked at their precious daughter, what did she see that he didn’t?

If only he could understand, if only he could crawl inside his wife’s head, maybe he would be able to help her. And then, maybe, his world would stop rocking around him.