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Dark Heritage
By Kay Kelly
Rating: M | Status:
Completed | Genre: Drama | Series: None
Summary: 1991 Series. An explanation of Angelique's background.
Warnings: This story is for mature
audiences only. Do not read if you are under 16 years of age.
She slunk catlike down the
corridor, bare feet sinking soundlessly into the lush carpet. Under its
inch-deep opulence, she knew, the ancient floorboards were rotting. But
Angelique was a part of the house, guiltiest of its guilty secrets, and
it bore her weight with nary a creak of protest.
She paused at the door of her intended victim's room, heart pounding.
Opened the door on a crack, then wider... Shrouded in gloom, the
bedchamber was still instantly recognizable as a pampered woman's. The
scent of jasmine wafting through the window was all but lost in that of
expensive perfume. Jewels strewn on a vanity glittered in the pale light
of the moon.
Angelique took a deep breath and stepped inside. Her night-accustomed
eyes found a single, slim figure in the canopied bed. Breathing, soft
and regular...good. She was asleep.
Angelique approached the bed and looked down at her enemy. The hatred
festering all her life had come to a head last night. When she, huddled
in the shadows, had heard Josette beg her doting father for a special
gift. Something in Angelique had snapped, and the fear that had held her
in check was forgotten. Her own life might be past salvaging, but at
least she would have revenge.
She drew her lips back in a feral snarl, raised the carving knife above
her head, and struck.
And a hand shot up from the bed, caught her wrist in a viselike grip.
She cried out in pain as the knife clattered harmlessly to the floor.
"Sacre bleu!" The witch-woman sat up, still grasping
Angelique's arm with preternatural strength. Angelique's legs gave way
and she collapsed, sobbing, on the edge of the bed.
"You, cherie? Have you gone mad?" Delphine released her
and slipped out of bed--nude, as she had probably been when Andre DuPres
left her an hour before. Eyeing Angelique warily, she retrieved the
knife, locked it in a drawer, and hid the key in another drawer before
taking time to don a peignoir. She lit the room's one oil lamp, then
turned to frown at her attacker. "What has come over you,
child?"
Angelique forced herself to look up, into the cool hazel eyes. Delphine
seemed more puzzled than alarmed...beautiful and unruffled as ever,
ivory silk setting off her golden-bronze skin, tawny hair cascading to
her waist.
Angelique shuddered.
Defeated, despairing, and half expecting the witch to kill her, she
still tried to stifle her sobs and regain a measure of dignity. "Do
you really believe I'm so stupid that I never understood what you've
done to me?" The words tumbled out, welcome release after years of
repression. "I've hated you all my life. And I've always
understood. Your spells may have worked on Monsieur DuPres, kept him
from seeing the truth. But not me, never me!"
"What are you talking about?" Delphine seemed genuinely
confused.
"I know you're not my mother!"
"What?"
"I've always known you switched babies. Anyone with eyes should be
able to look at Josette and me, and see which of us is white. Her
complexion may be as fair as mine. But I have blond hair and blue eyes,
and her hair and eyes are as dark as those of the blacks in the
Quarter!"
Delphine threw her head back and laughed, icy tinkling laughter.
Angelique exploded in fury and lunged at her, only to be flung back on
the bed, where she lay gasping.
"You foolish child." Delphine was shaking her head. "So
you believed... But if you believed that all these years, why have you
never accused me?"
"What good would it have done?" Angelique panted. She choked
on another sob. "You had obviously bewitched Monsieur DuPres, and
everyone else. Probably killed my mother, because you couldn't deceive
her."
"Diable!" Startled, but more amused than shocked.
"I sometimes thought you had deliberately left me free to realize
the truth, to torture me."
"Oh, my poor child." Real sympathy in Delphine's voice now.
"Angelique, you are exactly what I've always said, my child by a
white father."
"Liar!"
Delphine's brow furrowed. "But if you've believed that all your
life, and kept silent, why try to kill me now?"
Angelique felt her cheeks burning. "I'm ashamed to admit...I was
stupid. I knew you had switched babies at birth, so your child would be
raised as the DuPres heiress. But I didn't realize all you had done to
me until last night."
"Last night?"
"I was hiding. Heard Josette talking to Monsieur DuPres about her
fourteenth birthday...our fourteenth birthday. He asked her what
she wanted for her birthday, and she began coaxing him to give her a
special gift."
Delphine frowned. "You've always been jealous, resented her having
pretty things you can't have. It never drove you to attempt murder
before. What was different about this?"
"She didn't ask for some 'pretty thing.' She asked him to give
her...me! As a birthday present! So she could give me my
freedom." She laughed bitterly. "He said no."
Delphine's eyes had widened in horror. "Angelique, are you saying
you had never known you're a slave?"
"That's right."
"Mon Dieu! My poor child. Surely, you must have understood
that I'm a slave?"
"Yes. But I was foolish enough to think my color made a difference.
That no one would consider a white person a slave."
"Angelique, you are not a 'white person.'
"Don't start in again about your not being my daughter. You are.
But aside from that, you knew Andre thought of you as my daughter. On
this island, one drop of non-white blood is enough to make you a
slave."
She gave a rueful sigh. "I suppose I should have had a long talk
with you before now. Told you the whole truth. But...under the
circumstances, I expected you to realize it on your own. I've been
waiting for years for you to give me a sign you knew. I never dreamed
you'd go off on such a wrong tack, imagining I had switched babies.
"And I didn't think your legal status as a slave would concern you.
Under the circumstances."
Angelique stared incredulously. "You thought I wouldn't mind being
a slave?"
"No, of course I don't mean that!" Delphine snapped. "I
thought that in light of who you are--who you really are--you'd
find a way to obtain your freedom. That it would be easy for you.
"I have a great deal to tell you, Angelique. First, do you know why
I laughed when you accused me of having switched babies? Because I had
thought of doing just that. To give my child, you, the advantages
Josette has! I didn't do it, because my powers enabled me to foresee I
couldn't get away with it.
"As it turned out, Josette bears a striking resemblance to her
mother. A white woman who came from France. Josette inherited her dark
hair and eyes from her, and everyone old enough to remember Marie DuPres
can see it."
"Oh," Angelique said in a small voice.
"As for you, you are indeed my child by a white man. Andre DuPres
himself." As Angelique looked up, startled, Delphine lifted a hand
to silence her. "Before you ask...yes, he knows. That makes no
difference in your status."
Angelique moaned.
"There's more to the story." Delphine stood ramrod-straight,
staring into the distance. "I am Andre's slave, and his concubine.
But I'm also his half-sister. He's known that, too, all his life."
Angelique gave a strangled gasp.
"You see, mon petite, ever since they came to Martinique a
century and a half ago, the DuPres men have engaged in
certain...forbidden practices.
"They bought African slaves to harvest their sugar. Pressed the
lightest-skinned into duty as house slaves.
"And then, the masters forced the most beautiful women--'most
beautiful' by European standards--to become their concubines. They
married Frenchwomen to beget legitimate children. But in every
generation, they also fathered slave daughters who were forced to mate
with their legitimate sons."
"No, no," Angelique whispered.
"I'm Andre's half-sister. But my mother was also half-sister to
Andre's father. And her mother before her, half-sister to his
father." She looked directly at Angelique for the first time, eyes
glowing with a mixture of hatred and something like pride. "Do you
understand, now, why those slave daughters became lighter-skinned and
more European-looking with every generation?"
"Wh-what about sons?"
She shrugged. "An embarrassment to their fathers, and--ah--a
needless temptation for those French wives, ne c'est pas?
Depending on their color, or the father's whim, they might be sold to
another plantation, given their freedom and sent to sea, or simply
killed."
Angelique rose and stumbled to the window for air. Found only dank mist
drifting in from the forest, heavy with cloying jasmine scent that
threatened to choke her. Her mind conjured up a picture of the forest,
carpeted with rotting vegetation. Decay outside the house, as far as
imagination could stretch, to match the decay within.
She turned back to her mother.
Delphine was still speaking. "I've always believed the DuPres
men--in the beginning, at least--had a long-range purpose in what they
did. Come here. I have something to show you."
Angelique followed reluctantly as Delphine, carrying the oil lamp, led
the way to a corner closet.
"The founder of the family on Martinique," she said softly,
"was Antoine DuPres. Legend has it he left France to escape
prosecution as a warlock. He's rumored to have been a black magician,
monstrously evil. But who knows, really?
"Look upon him, my child."
She flung open the closet door. And Angelique found herself staring at a
portrait of a slim, handsome man in seventeenth-century dress. Ruthless
blue eyes looked out from a pale, heart-shaped face framed by ash-blond
hair.
In all but sex and costume, he was a twin of herself.
The End
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