Free Out of the Dark by Jennifer Blake

she would be close to him, near his side, forever. Everything would be changed; she would have a position, a new name. She would be free of her stepmother’s dominion.
    Free. That was a strange way of thinking about this marriage when just minutes before she had considered it a trap.
    “Well?” he said, moving away toward the table where her wine glass stood. He picked it up, and, returning to her side, held it out to her. His gaze steady, faintly demanding, he said, “Shall we drink to our betrothal after all?”
    She met his eyes, her own dark and still and filled with cogent decision. She was breathing fast, each intake of air lifting her breasts against the bodice of her old gown as if she were in a desperate race. She studied his face as if the answers she found there could mean the difference between life and death.
    Abruptly, she gave a nod. Her fingers trembled as she reached out to take the glass from his hands. So did her lips as she tried to smile. Still, her voice did not falter as she said quietly, “Yes, to us.”
    Touching the wine to her lips, she drank it down.

 
    In a few short hours it would be her wedding day.
    Anne-Marie stood on the veranda staring into the dark and trying to make herself believe it. It seemed impossible.
    Had she really agreed to be married? Could she force herself to stand composed and still beside Lucien Roquelaire while she was united with him for a lifetime?
    The very idea made her feel panicky and ill with nerves. She could not think how she had come to agree; it was almost as if she had been under a spell. Perhaps he was a dark angel, after all—a   being come down among them who could control people and animals and force them to his will.
    That did not, of course, explain why he wanted her. She was no clearer in her mind about that point than she had been on the day two short weeks ago when they had become betrothed. She had thought it mere physical desire, yet he had made no attempt to take advantage of his privileges as her husband-to-be. It was puzzling; she had not expected him to be so punctilious.
    Where had the time gone? The days had seemed to rush past like the wind, turning from morning into evening between one breath and the next. Somehow, she kept expecting that something would happen—that Lucien would change his mind or her father would suddenly discover the marriage was a mistake. Nothing did.
    She had hardly seen Lucien, in all truth. There had been so much to do on such short notice: seeing the priest, writing out the invitations, planning and organizing the preparation of food and drink, ordering the wedding cake and special nougat confections to be shipped upriver by steamboat to arrive with the New Orleans guests, begging flowers from neighbors to supplement their own. Then there had been appointments with the local dressmaker for the necessary fittings for her wedding gown.
    Her stepmother had offered her own wedding dress for Anne-Marie’s use—a billowing, too-large creation of widow’s lavender satin with gigot sleeves. Anne-Marie had refused it outright and resisted all efforts at persuasion. She would wear her own mother’s gown. Of soft silk mousseline sewn with seed pearls and diamante, it was a gown of simple design that had yellowed over the years to a shade of amber only a little lighter than the cravat Lucien had worn to the Picard’s ball.
    How marvelous it had been, achieving that point over her stepmother’s opposition. It had made her think that she should have enforced her will more strongly before. She had been able to do it now, she knew, only because it no longer mattered if her stepmother was angry or her father upset by quarreling. Their displeasure could not disturb her since she would soon be leaving her childhood home for that of her husband, one that would become her own.
    Yet how was it possible, after so many years of being kept close and chided for every small breach of conduct, that she would have leave tomorrow to