Free Day Dreamer by Jill Marie Landis

toying with the heavy bag of gold, bouncing it up and down on his open palm. He said to Henre, “We need to be on our way. Is there anything else?”
    Henre picked up a document and handed it to him.
    “Since you were incapable of this last night, you’ll need to sign the marriage certificate. It has already been witnessed by Father Perez and the twins.”
    “How convenient,” Cord said.
    Henre set a bottle of ink near the edge of the desk. Cordero paused as he dipped a quill in the ink pot. He leaned close to Celine.
    “This is your last chance to back out,” he offered.
    She was tempted, but could think of no easier avenue of escape from Louisiana. Her palms felt cold and clammy. She was still uncomfortably full from breakfast. She swallowed, took a deep breath and shook her head.
    “I won’t change my mind.”
    “I can’t be sure of what we’ll find on St. Stephen. In a few months I could be virtually penniless,” he said softly.
    It was the first hint of compassion she had seen in him. She wondered what it had cost him to admit the truth, especially in front of his grandfather.
    “I will sign,” she said.
    Cordero signed the certificate first, then handed the pen to Celine. She quickly scrawled a signature across the bottom of the parchment. She hoped that if anyone ever tried to decipher the letters of her true name, it would be long after they had sailed.
    She held her breath until Henre blotted the signatures without looking at them and then rolled the parchment and slipped a blood red ribbon around it.
    “The carriage is waiting.” Cordero took firm hold of her arm above the elbow and began to usher her out of the library.
    Celine drew up short a few feet outside the door, and Cord paused to look down at her, a question in his eyes. Before she spoke, she shook off his hand.
    “He is family. This might be the last time you ever see him.” She thought of Persa and the abrupt, senseless act of brutality that tore them apart forever without even the chance to say good-bye. “Won’t you at least bid him farewell?”
    When she looked up, she saw a flash of hatred in her husband’s eyes that made her want to flinch and draw away. Sober, he was no man to be toyed with. It suddenly occurred to her that deserting him might not be as easy as she had first reckoned.
    Cordero looked at the library door. His eyes narrowed and his full lips thinned to a hard line.
    “The only thing I would like to tell him is to go straight to hell.”
    The carriage ride back to New Orleans was nothing like her journey to the plantation. They traveled in two conveyances, Foster and Edward and the baggage in one, she and Cordero in the other. The dark ominous weather of the previous night had given way to smiling blue skies and sunshine. Celine noted that the weather did little to brighten Cordero’s mood.
    They rode in silence, careful not to touch, seated opposite each other like wary adversaries. Cordero was preoccupied, staring out at the passing landscape. Celine tried to control her anxiety over their brief return to the city. She would not feel safe until they had set sail.
    “Why did you do it?” she asked him, trying to focus on anything but the possibility of her arrest.
    He started, looking hesitant to answer, even wary.
    “Why did I do what?”
    “Agree to this marriage. Was it for the dowry?”
    “No.” There was a flash of pain in his arresting eyes. He looked away.
    “Then why?”
    “I owed someone a great debt. And you, Jemma?”
    “I am not Jemma O’Hurley.”
    He sat forward, concentrating on a wagon loaded down with vegetables that they had overtaken and were now passing. “You’re not Jemma O’Hurley. You expect me to believe that?”
    “Yes, because it’s true. I was at the cathedral last night praying for a way out of New Orleans when she came rushing up to me. She wanted out of the marriage, wanted to be a nun, not a wife, and persuaded me to take her place in the carriage. I did so hoping