LEAD ME ON Julie Ortolon (mind reading books .TXT) 📖

When they finished their conversation, Scott went straight upstairs to the bedroom he was using. The place was a wreck with the bed unmade, clothes on the floor, books and papers stacked everywhere. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed before. On a shelf over the desk, he spied the book bag Allison had given him and let out a curse. He knew what had happened. The last research books he’d ordered were ones he hadn’t needed after all, so he’d forgotten about them.

Pulling the bag down, he opened it and groaned. Sure enough, there were Marguerite’s diaries. He sank to the chair and debated what to do. The quickest solution would be to call the taxi company and have one of the drivers deliver the volumes safely back into Allison’s hands. Yet the more he stared at them, the more the secrets within the pages whispered seductively to him.

How accurately had he portrayed Marguerite and Jack?

What had his distant uncle, Henri LeRoche, really been like?

And—far more important—if he could understand Allison’s anger toward his family, could he find a way around it?

Unable to resist, he thumbed through the volumes until he had them stacked in chronological order. Then he climbed into bed with his back against the headboard, his glass of wine on the nightstand, and began to read. He skimmed through the first few volumes, since the ramblings of an adolescent girl held little interest. Although some of the historical insights about New Orleans in the early 1800s piqued his interest, especially once Marguerite took to the stage. Her wealth grew apace with her fame, and—much to her amusement—men fell at her feet in droves. With no intention of becoming a rich man’s mistress, she turned them all away, until Henri came into her life.

Scott’s focus instantly sharpened as he read through weeks’ worth of entries, detailing Henri’s relentless campaign to prove his love was real, that it had nothing to do with her stage persona or the stories of her birth. What a total bastard, Scott thought, long before Marguerite realized the same. He wanted to shake the woman for not seeing the truth right from the start, but reminded himself she was still quite young at that point in her life and remarkably innocent for someone who had been raised by a prostitute. Not innocent in knowledge, but in nature. She found humor and happiness in everything around her. His heart ached knowing the painful lessons she was about to learn.

By the time Jack Kingsley was first mentioned, Henri had nearly succeeded in obliterating that innocent spirit. God, the things Marguerite had endured! Scott’s stomach rolled with anger. No wonder Nicole hadn’t fought harder to prove her legitimacy after the man’s death. She’d probably thought: “Fine, he doesn’t want to claim me, I don’t want to claim him, either.”

Scott could certainly understand that, since he’d basically done the same thing.

The more he read about Jack, though, the more the hair on his arms stood on end. The man who unfolded to him through Marguerite’s words bore more than a passing similarity to his imaginary Jack. Never in his life could he remember anyone telling him that Jack Kingsley had an illegitimate son by a barmaid. Even so, he’d put it in his book, claiming one of his characters was a descendant of Jack’s. And here it was. In Marguerite’s diary. Jack had had a son. By a barmaid.

Though Jack never married the mother, and clearly had little liking for the woman, his son had meant the world to him. Since Nicole was about the same age, Jack and Marguerite talked of their children often. Other things, too, jumped off the page. Like the fact that Kingsley hated talking about himself, rarely giving Marguerite any facts about his past.

His reluctance had caused Marguerite to doubt his love, but Scott could understand it all too well. Couldn’t she see he was ashamed of his past and felt unworthy of her? The man might have been a blockade runner, willing to face Union gunboats, but he was a coward when it came to love. How could she not see that!

Exasperated with Marguerite’s lack of perception and her inability to trust her own judgment, much less trust Jack, Scott tossed the diaries aside, determined to get some sleep since it was the middle of the night by then. Two people that stupid deserved to die apart rather than grow old together. Idiots. Total idiots. He lay awake and fumed for nearly an hour before he turned the bedside lamp back on and continued to read.

By the time color stained the eastern horizon, he felt weighed down by sorrow. Marguerite and Jack had been so close to overcoming all the obstacles that lay between them, but had let their chance at happiness slip through their fingers.

Gazing out the window, he turned the whole story over in his mind, wondering what had happened after the diaries ended. He knew Henri had concocted a story for the authorities to explain the incident: Marguerite had tripped and fallen down the stairs while trying to run away with her lover, who happened to be a Union spy. Lying bastard.

Nicole had probably known the truth but either hadn’t told anyone, or no one would listen. She’d gone on to achieve wealth and fame on her own, but had died a destitute divorcee in the cottage her father had built to banish her from Pearl Island.

But what had happened to Jack’s son?

Acting on a hunch, Scott called Paige at the tour boat office and asked her again for the name and number of the woman in Corpus Christi, the one whose father had been so enamored of Jack Kingsley’s story.

The champagne cork popped toward the ceiling amid a chorus of cheers. “Gather round, folks,” Chance called.

Allison joined the others—Rory, Adrian, Bobby, and Paige—around the kitchen island in the basement apartment. She still couldn’t believe the whole sordid business with John LeRoche