Jade Star - Catherine Coulter [41]
“Her name is Juliana,” DuPres said, distaste plain on his face.
“Fine. In any case, I’ve come to speak to you about your younger daughter. She told me that you intend to send her to Canada.”
“Yes, that’s right. I will not abide her presence here any longer than I must. She is a blight on her family. My sister will take her in hand.”
“May I ask why you consider her a blight?” Saint asked calmly, too calmly.
“Come, Dr. Morris,” DuPres said, his hands shaking with disgust, “I have no doubt that you, along with many others, have enjoyed my daughter’s body. I will abide no harlot in my house.”
“Didn’t you listen to her? Didn’t you hear what she had to say? None of it was her fault, and, I might add, she is still a virgin. She is the furthest thing from a harlot. She is pure and innocent.”
And she’s been hurt, God, hurt so much.
“Dr. Morris, I understand that many men, once they’ve taken a woman, don’t wish to be bothered with her anymore, you included, evidently. I am her father, more’s the pity, and I shall do what I believe best. Now, Sir, you will excuse me.”
Saint wanted to hit him, but he remembered John Bleecher’s bloody face and moans of pain. He remembered how he’d sworn never to hit another who had not his strength. He stared a moment at Jules’s father, wishing he could fathom the way the man’s mind worked, but he couldn’t, of course. He also realized that there was nothing more he could say. He knew now what he had to do. He knew he had absolutely no choice in the matter. He said nothing more, merely turned and strode out of the man’s study and his house.
Etienne DePres stood quietly for a long time, staring at nothing in particular, his mind working furiously. He had absolutely no doubt, just as he’d said, that Saint Morris had debauched his daughter. And Juliana, with her grandmother’s wild blood . . . well, he knew her for what she was, had known since she was a little girl what she would turn out to be. And now, he thought, nodding at himself in approval, he knew what he would do. He sat down at his desk and began to write.
10
Saint quietly slipped into the back of the Waine’e Church. It was cool inside, for the building was of stone. It could seat nearly three thousand Hawaiians, most of them packed together on the floor. There were calabash spittoons for the tobacco-chewing chiefs and ships’ masters on the far side of the huge room. This Sunday morning, however, there were only about three hundred souls waiting to hear the Lord’s words. Saint thought cynically that the souls gathered were so few because Dwight Baldwin, who normally preached at the Waine’e, was across the island ministering to a dying woman, leaving Etienne DuPres to exhort the flock.
He spotted Jules with her family at the front of the church, her face, beneath her plain bonnet, pale and set. He sat back, crossed his arms over his chest, and prepared himself to be bored.
But he wasn’t. He was enraged.
After two hymns were sung, Reverend DuPres walked to his pulpit, read from the Scriptures, and spoke briefly and generally of the sins of the flesh. Nothing new in that, of course. It was one of Reverend DuPres’s favorite sermons. Then he paused a moment, and Saint could have sworn that he smiled.
“It is difficult,” Reverend DuPres said, his voice rising and filling the large room, “for a man of God to be cursed with an offspring who has no moral responsibility, despite all the pious teachings she’s received, despite the model of a virtuous mother and father.” He paused a moment, aware of the gasps of surprise, aware that he had everyone’s attention. Saint tensed. No, he thought, DuPres won’t, he wouldn’t, not to his own daughter!
“As most of you know, particularly those of you who know my family well, we believed my younger daughter dead. Just as that virtuous woman Kanola is indeed dead, and with our Savior in heaven. The difference between these two women is obvious. The one chose death rather than submit to the wanton evil of the flesh. The other chose to debauch herself,