Free Wedding Favors by Sheri Whitefeather

doesn’t mind looking nice on the inside.”
    “A fickle thing, admittedly. Would you like to see the rest?”
    “Yes, please.”
    Each room was more beautiful than the last. Not new and shiny, but glowing with venerable age and impeccable taste; even the slight fraying at the edges lent an air of worldly contentedness.
    On the third floor, he pushed open a set of carved wooden doors and walked in. He turned back to her and spread his hands. “My rooms,” he said simply.
    Even if he hadn’t said it, she would have known. She stepped into a luxurious sitting room furnished in rich, masculine leathers and blues and greens. The rugs were deep Orientals, as at the maison. There was a fireplace, bookshelves, and beautiful paintings of local unique landscapes.
    She walked up to one. It was a moody painting of an outdoor maze. The hedges that made up the living puzzle were verdant green and clipped in a wild, unkempt style that belied the exact precision of the intricate pathways. In the middle, a woman in a flowing white gown waited for her lover, who was in the midst of the tangle of paths, hopelessly lost.
    “Wow,” she said. “This is beautiful. And very ...”
    “Disturbing?”
    She smiled at him. “Yeah. Kind of. But the maze is, well, amazing. I love it. Is it a real place?” She’d told him on the drive up that she was a landscape architect. He had also surprised the hell out of her by opening up about his life and his hopes and even some of his most personal aspirations. Treves Duchesne was a complicated, thoughtful man.
    “I’ve always wanted to do one.” She made a face. “Not a lot of demand for them, unfortunately. Mazes are a particular interest of mine, professionally, I mean.”
    “Hell, you definitely have the job, then.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Look,” he said and led her over to the French doors.
    The mullioned glass door led to a covered gallery overlooking a vast, sloping meadow that ended at the reedy shore of a shallow bayou. “That was once a thriving branch of the Mississippi,” he said at the direction of her gaze. “When the water disappeared, my family wasn’t affected, but the planters who depended on the river for their livelihoods were bankrupted.”
    “What happened?”
    His smile wasn’t pretty. “Politics happened. What else?”
    For some reason, she felt compelled to go to him. She put her arms around his neck. “Thank goodness for Chez Duchesne.”
    He smiled down at her, skimming his fingers down the slippery fabric of her bridesmaid dress, shaping her waist and hips with his palms. “Yeah,” he said, his black eyes darkening. “But this is what I really wanted to show you.” He pointed to an area of dense shrubs growing to the side of the meadow, bearing the faint, ghostly outlines of what obviously used to be a maze.
    “It’s the maze in the painting!” she exclaimed.
    “Yeah,” he said, putting his arms around her again. “The couple in the painting, that was my grand-père et grand-mère. She’s the one who designed the maze, as a kind of living symbolism of their convoluted love story. You see, Grand-mère’s parents, they didn’t approve of Grand-père. She came from one of those Mayflower type Northern families. In those days, Chez Duchesne was still a real bordello, and his reputation wasn’t any better than it had to be, if you know what I mean.”
    “Sort of like you?” Tessa murmured with a smile.
    “Very funny, fille. If I’m so bad, what are you doing here with me?”
    She brushed a kiss over his lips. “Oh, I’m here because you’re so bad.”
    “Is that so?” His hands traveled slowly down her sides. “You like your men bad, do you?”
    “I like you bad,” she whispered.
    “In that case,” he said, “I have more to show you.”
    “More?”
    “Rooms in the house.”
    “Hmm. Let me take a wild guess.” They both knew what was about to happen. There was no reason to be coy. She pressed closer. “Your