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"About what?" Desmond clenched his fists, struggling to keep his temper. They'd only just repaired their friendship. Another fight might drive his half-brother away for good.
"About Olivia."
Desmond froze, Philippe's words catching him by surprise. Philippe stepped back, nodding, certain now that he had Desmond's attention.
"What about Olivia?" Desmond asked.
"How long were you married?"
"Five years." Desmond didn't like the self-satisfied smirk on Philippe's face, especially since Philippe had argued against Desmond's first marriage, too. What sort of underhanded trick was he trying to pull?
"Five years. And in five years of marriage, did you ever tell her you were cursed?"
"No."
"You didn't only not tell her. You went out of your way to conceal the fact. You disguised your needs. You explained away your reluctance to go out in the sun."
Desmond nodded impatiently. He knew all that. But he'd had his reasons. Then Philippe sprung his attack.
"You let her die."
"No!" Desmond surged forward, forcing Philippe to backpedal. Then the thread of guilt felt by all survivors knotted around his heart and stopped him cold. Had he really done everything he could for Olivia? If he hadn't pressured her for a family, she wouldn't have been pregnant when she discovered her disease. Taking the treatments earlier might have saved her life. She'd refused to risk Gillian's life to save her own. How much had his outdated views, forged in the 1800s, influenced her choice?
He'd never know. They'd made the choices they believed in at the time. Once he'd found out about her illness, he'd done everything he could to save her. Everything she'd let him do. He had.
Desmond felt behind him for the desk, and sagged against it, speaking to himself as much as to Philippe. "It wasn't like that. By the time we found out she was dying, her disease was too advanced. I couldn't have saved her. I couldn't. Telling her at that point would have been cruel."
"You don't know that. Cursing her might have saved her. You weren't willing to take the chance. And why? Because on some level, you agree with me. You know what happens when a woman finds out that she's married to a freak of nature. And you preferred that she be in love with you and die, rather than have her hate you and live."
"No! Damn it, Philippe, I loved her!" If cursing her could have saved her, he would have offered to do it, no matter how repellent he found the idea. But it couldn't. He'd researched her form of leukemia enough to be sure of that. The cursed agents in her blood would have been killing off sickly cells as quickly as the diseased agents killed off the healthy ones. Not only that, but both agents worked to transform cells whenever possible. She'd have been reduced to a cellular-level battlefield. And like a battlefield in a nuclear war, it didn't matter which side eventually claimed victory. The field was destroyed.
That assumed the curse could even be transferred. Philippe had spent years trying to reconstruct his grandmother's magic. They knew the words of the curse, but without the rest of it, the sacrifices and invocations, they'd be guessing. The results would be completely unpredictable.
"I did everything I could, Philippe. You know I did." Desmond's anger burned with a white heat that blistered away any other considerations, as he finally said what he should have said a hundred years ago. "My father's lust and cowardice made you an orphaned bastard. As his only surviving heir, I had everything you didn't. But don't you think I'd have given up the plantation in an instant if it meant my brothers would come home from the war? That I would have sold all the jewelry if it could stop my sister from going to New Orleans that summer? That I would have willingly worked twenty hour days in the fields if it kept my mother from stepping in front of that coach?"
Desmond advanced on his half-brother, driving him across the room until he backed into the bookshelves. First editions tumbled to the floor at his feet.
"You're not the only one who lost someone you loved, Philippe. I will not continue to pay for my father's sins. He was your father, too. Bear your own guilt."
Philippe's eyes widened at the magnitude of his attack's backfire. But the genie had escaped, and nothing Philippe said or did could ever bottle it again.
"Des— "
"I'm through listening to you. Find Rebecca's car. Return it to the airport."
Philippe stayed silent for a long minute. When he finally spoke, his voice was laced with bitterness. "Yes, master. Whatever you say. Is there anything else this most lowly, humble servant can do for you?"
"You've done enough."
"Yes, master. At once. I live to serve you." Philippe stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Desmond waited to hear the front door close before sinking down in the chair behind his desk and burying his face in his hands.
Was that it, then? One hundred and fifty years of friendship, gone, as if it had never happened?
Desmond rubbed his throbbing temples. He remembered the night Philippe came to the plantation, demanding to see Edouard Lacroix. Then his son, Etienne. His wife. When Desmond burst out, "They are dead. They are all dead, except for me," Philippe had stared into his eyes and answered, "Then you shall pay your father's debt."
Desmond sighed. He hadn't understood. He'd listened in horror as Philippe explained the curse, then tried to pay him off, tried to bribe the Voodoo gods. Philippe had laughed bitterly. "I suffered my whole life, and still I was cursed to feel my sons' deaths and watch my wife try to kill me. You've had everything. You could not begin to pay enough."
But Desmond had done what he could. He'd opened his home to Philippe, and they had become friends. Now he'd repaid Philippe's unswerving friendship over the years by turning on him. Philippe only wanted to protect him from suffering a betrayal similar to his own. Why had Desmond reacted so strongly? Philippe had given the same basic argument against marrying Olivia. What was it about Rebecca that made Desmond so unreasonable?
