I Married the Don for the Debt, and My Husband Walked In Alive novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: A Guest at My Wedding

The Don lets the dead man walk out the front door, and on her wedding night she tells him to make it quiet.

Nobody in the hall breathed.

Julien looked down at the glass, at the ring lying in the bottom of it.

Then he laughed, a short helpless sound, and set the glass on a table.

"Okay," he said. "I deserve that."

"You deserve a lot more," I said.

"I ran because of him." He nodded toward Rafe without looking at him. "He would have put me in the lake for real, Camille. I couldn't send word. I couldn't call, I couldn't write, I just had to be dead."

His boots were dry.

I noticed it and set it aside.

A man who had been in Lake Pontchartrain, or in any water, in the last month would not have dry boots, and the leather was not even scuffed.

There was a paper wristband on his left wrist, the kind a marina gives you for a day pass.

It said GULFPORT in blue letters.

I did not put it together yet.

I was too angry to put anything together.

"Eight months," I said. "I stood in that church."

"I know, baby."

"Don't call me that."

Behind me a chair scraped.

Rafe had walked to the nearest table, and he put one hand flat on the white cloth.

He was not loud, and he did not need to be.

"Mr. Beaumont," he said. "A drowned man doesn't have a wife. My wife is standing in front of you, and you're at my wedding as my guest."

Julien's smile went thin.

"I'm still her husband."

"You are a man with a very expensive marker, which my wife paid at four o'clock this afternoon in front of a priest. Your debt is closed." Rafe's voice stayed even. "Finish your drink, and leave by the front door. Sal will walk you to the street."

"And if I don't?"

"Then you'll be rude at my wedding, and I'll let you."

The big man by the bar stepped forward, grey buzz cut, a coat that did not close over his chest.

That was Sal, who had driven me to the church.

Julien looked around the hall for help.

Two hundred members of the Bayou Rose Society looked back at him, the same people who had paid dues to bury him.

He picked up the glass, fished out my ring with two fingers, and put it in his pocket.

"This is mine," he said.

"It was," I said.

He left through the front doors with Sal at his shoulder.

The band leader coughed and the trumpet began again, thin and uncertain.

Nobody danced.

Odette had still not stood.

I walked to her table and she lifted her face to me, white gloves folded on the strap of her bag.

"Sit down, Camille," she said.

"Mama Odette, did you know?"

"Sit down. You're making a scene in front of the whole Society."

Her eyes were perfectly dry.

I should have thought about that.

I thought about nothing, because Rafe's hand came around my elbow and said, "We're going home."

His car was black and quiet, and Sal drove us out along Bayou St. John with the wipers going.

Rafe did not speak until his front door shut behind us.

The house was raised off the ground, with a long gallery and tall shutters, and the front hall smelled of cedar and old books.

"Three things," he said. "I'll say them once, and I won't write them down."

I stood against the wall with my veil in my hand.

"One. A year, then you walk away with your bakery, the house on Ursulines Avenue and your name, whatever you decide. Two. The east bedroom is yours, and the door unlocks from your side. Three. Nobody in this house or my club touches you, or says your husband's name to your face to hurt you."

"Which husband?"

"Both," Rafe said. "Neither one has a claim tonight."

He took off his jacket and hung it on a hook.

His shirt was white and his forearms were bare to the elbow, and his gold ring caught the hall lamp.

I watched him, and something in my chest that had been clenched since the doorway came loose.

"Come here," I said.

He crossed the hall in three steps.

I took his face in my hands and kissed him, hard, and my veil fell on the floor.

He kissed me back, hungry, and he had plainly waited longer than four hours.

His hand slid into my hair and the pins came out one at a time, and my curls fell down my back.

He walked me backward until my shoulders met the wall.

"Tell me what you want," Rafe said against my mouth.

"Make it quiet."

"Make what quiet?" he asked.

"My head. All of it. Please."

He looked at me for a long breath.

Then he knelt, and gathered the heavy lace of my skirt in both fists, and pushed it up to my hips.

I put a hand on his shoulder.

He kept his shirt on and his belt buckled.

He slid his palm up the inside of my thigh and found me through my underwear, and his thumb pressed once, slow, right where I was already wet.

I made a sound I did not know I could make.

"Look at me," he said. "There. Good girl."

His fingers pulled the lace aside.

He slid two inside me and curled them, and my head hit the wall.

"Rafe."

"That's it. You're so wet for me, cher. Listen to that."

I could hear it, and my face burned and I did not care.

His thumb circled my clit, steady, unhurried, while his fingers moved deep in me.

"I want it to be a long time before you think of anyone else's name tonight."

"Don't stop," I said.

"I'm not going anywhere."

My thighs began to shake.

He watched my face the whole time, his dark eyes steady, and the way he watched me undid me more than his hand.

"Come for me," he said. "Let me see it."

I came with my fist against my mouth and his name stuck in my throat.

It went on a long time.

He held me up with his free arm around my hips until the last shudder passed.

When I could stand he drew his fingers out and licked two of them clean, slowly, looking up at me.

I reached for his belt.

He caught my wrist, gently, and stopped me.

"Not tonight."

"You're hard," I said. "I can see you."

"I am." He stood and smoothed my skirt down. "And when you want me, Mrs. Beaumont, you'll come to me sober and say it in plain words. I'll make you say it twice."

"In your dreams."

"Every night since that Mass."

He kissed my forehead and walked me up the stairs to the east bedroom.

The bed was turned down, and a lamp was lit.

I lay on top of the covers in my wedding dress and stared at the ceiling.

At two in the morning my phone buzzed on the nightstand with a number I did not know.

I'm alive because of you. Levee at Algiers Point, six a.m. Tell nobody. J.

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