“I would have moved the ship.”
“That’s why I couldn’t warn you.”
He didn’t turn to look at her. “I haven’t known you long, mon Capitaine, but I know if you had wanted to tell me, you would have. Instead, you chose to betray me.”
Flashes of everything she’d experienced since she first met him played through her mind on a funky loop, and she wasn’t going to take it anymore.
“You’re full of shit, Jean Lafitte! This isn’t about you or me. It’s about America and her future. And sometimes those who love her and fight for her have to make decisions and sacrifices. So I made a fucking decision, and you had to sacrifice, and I’m sorry about that.”
Tears bit at the backs of her eyes. “I’ve had it. I was almost raped twice. I witnessed a cold-blooded murder. I’ve spent days in the swamp. I’ve been dirty and sweaty and hungry. I fought in a nighttime battle, and I killed people who shouldn’t have died. Enough. I’m going home. And in case you misunderstand the word home, I’m going to my home in the twenty-first century. I’m tired of guns and fighting and stubborn men.”
She whirled and jogged back toward the house, but she didn’t get far before his stomping footsteps crunching sugar cane stalks told her he was coming after her. She didn’t slow down until he hooked his hand in the bend of her elbow and gently brought her back around to face him.
He let several seconds lapse as he gazed at her. Finally, he said softly, “Ne t’en va pas, Wilhelmina. I’ll listen and try to understand. But please don’t go.”
The look in his eyes nearly broke her heart, and he held onto her elbow—probably making sure she didn’t vanish—while they walked back toward the house.
“Tell me why,” he said.
“The British believed the only thing standing between them and taking New Orleans was the Carolina. Pakenham believed that if they could destroy the ship, he could win. If he couldn’t destroy the ship, he might have to withdraw and attack the city from another direction.”
“We can defend against any place the British come ashore. It wasn’t worth destroying a ship. If General Pakenham had decided to withdraw, it would take nearly a week to paddle ten thousand men back through my swamp. He’d lose half his men.”
“That’s part of the problem, Jean, and what I struggled with. If the battle isn’t fought over there on Chalmette Plantation on January 8, 1815, then history will have changed, and America could lose. I chose a certain victory against a potential loss.”
“Pakenham is too close to New Orleans now. He won’t retreat from an army of irregulars. You should have told me. You don’t have experience fighting battles here. I do. I understand Pakenham.”
“I’m an Army Ranger, Jean. I graduated from West Point Military Academy, where I learned battle strategies, tactics, and military history. You can’t be sure of what Pakenham would do.” She looked him straight in the eye, and he held the stare for a beat.
“You didn’t trust me to do the right thing?”
“It wasn’t a matter of trust, Jean. If I told you the British were going to destroy the Carolina, you would naturally have wanted to warn Dominique, even knowing the consequences. I wanted to spare you the agony of indecision and the guilt over losing some of your men.”
“Don’t ever try to spare me anything, mon Capitaine.” He let go of her. “I know you’ll leave after the battle. The thought of that is like a knife through my gut. I don’t want you to go.”
He spoke in a low, vibrating tone that coincided with him settling his gaze on her mouth. She didn’t step back, but her breath caught and held in a most unsettling way. It was moments like this in books and movies and real-life that usually ended in a kiss. But it wasn’t right for them on so many levels.
Instead, she reached out and hugged him. He wrapped his arms around her. And a tear trickled down his cheek and fell on hers. They stayed there just holding each other for longer than they should, but neither one wanted to let go.
Finally, she dropped her arms and stepped back.
He wiped away the tear on her face with the pad of his thumb, and they smiled at each other, but their smiles didn’t show their teeth. Their expressions were merely small, olive-branch smiles to bring their relationship back off the plank and onto solid ground.
He looked at her with one eye. “If we had begun differently, would this be ending the same way?”
She arched her brow. “Do you think you could have seduced me?”
He let out a rumble of a laugh, and it seemed to vibrate up through the soles of her boots. “I would have, Wilhelmina. And you would have screamed my name when you came in my arms.”
“I’m not a screamer.”
His face instantly changed into a cocky, lopsided grin that was irresistibly appealing. “Oh, but you would have been with me.”
She chuckled as she took his arm and nestled up next to him. They fell into a thoughtful silence as they returned to the mansion.
With each replay in her mind of what just happened, the scintillation intensified. And she wondered if, in the future, when her mind and body recovered from all she’d experienced, would she regret missing out on the kiss Jean wanted to give her? Time would tell. In the meantime, there was a war to win.
Rick was leaning against the railing at the bottom of the steps. The stubble on his roguishly handsome face was at risk of becoming a full-fledged beard at any moment. When she reached him, he arched an eyebrow. “I’m glad it worked out okay for you.”
She gazed up at Jean. “He was a tough sell, but I think he forgives me.”
“Wilhelmina, I don’t forgive your lie of omission, but I accept your reasons for doing so. And I would have agreed with you.” He tapped his finger against the wide brim of his black hat with its silly plume and climbed the steps. “Mr. O’Grady, I wish you better luck.”
Penny watched Jean climb the steps, as did Rick, and she couldn’t read anything in Jean’s body language except confidence and a bit of arrogance. So what the hell did he mean by wishing Rick luck? He had no interest in her.
“Looks like your confession wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be.”
She plopped down on the bottom step, stretched her legs out, crossed her ankles, and looked at him from his mussed hair to his beat-up boots. “I offered myself up as the fatted calf, but instead of slaughtering me, he considered kissing me.”
“Yeah, I saw that.” He scratched his whiskers. “I would have bet on Lafitte.”
She backhanded Rick on his uninjured leg. “You think I’m that easy?”
“Hell, no, Penny Lafitte. But I’ve seen MacKlenna women read those romance novels with swashbuckling pirates on the covers. I figured women must like being seduced by bad boys.”
She flashed her eyebrow. “Well, I’m not one of them.”
He grinned. “Good to know. But if you do mess with him in the next ten days, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
She buried her head in her hands. “I’m not sure I’ve known what I was doing since I landed in the swamp three weeks ago.”
“Just so you know, I don’t think Jean Lafitte would even consider going to the future with you, and I don’t believe you’d want to spend the rest of your life with a pirate.”
“He’s not a pirate. He’s a privateer. And I don’t plan to stay here. But it does make me wonder if anyone has ever done it.”
“You don’t have to wonder about that. I’ll tell you. Kit MacKlenna went back to 1852 to search for her birth parents, fell in love, married, had a family, and started Montgomery Winery. She stayed until 1881 when she returned for health reasons.”
“So Kit had a brooch that would take her whenever she wanted to come and go?”
“The ruby brooch always worked. The rest of them—”
“How many are there? Sophia mentioned someone having a sapphire.”
“With your topaz, we have eight: ruby, sapphire, emerald, amethyst, diamond, amber, and pearl.”
“What? You have my topaz. How’
d you get it?”
Rick glanced off, scratched his jaw again. “I didn’t mean to bring up the subject of your brooch, because this is going to piss you off. But your Dad sold it to me for fifty thousand dollars.”
“Hell. No!” She jumped to her feet, her heart rate skyrocketing, and she paced in a circle. Then stopped and glared at Rick. “You paid… That… What? I don’t believe it. Fifty? No. Can’t be true. My dad?” All the pieces jumbled up in a massive logjam. She took a deep breath and blew it out. Then paced in another circle.
When her heart rate drifted down toward her normal range, she said, “Okay, start at the beginning and tell me how this went down.” But before she could listen to him, she had a couple more things to say. “You know, this pisses me off! I’m getting every dollar back, even if that bitch has spent it on new boobs. They’re mine! How long has it been?”
“You disappeared on Saturday, and we left three days later.”
“But I’ve been here for weeks.”
“Each brooch has special properties. The diamond brooch allows travelers to go and stay for weeks, but when they come home, they’ve only been gone for a couple of minutes. David and Kenzie won’t even have time for a quickie before we arrive home again.”
“I’m flying straight to New York when I get back.”
“My jet is in New Orleans. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“I’ll take you up on that offer, but would you mind going with me? You can keep me from strangling her.”
“What about your dad?”
“He’s spineless. No, I’m going to deal with her. I don’t care about that money. I just don’t want her to have it.”
“We’ll get it back.” Rick gestured toward the steps. “Come on. The general has called a staff meeting that starts in”—he pushed up his sleeve and checked his wristwatch—“two minutes. We’ll deal with your stepmother when we get back. Don’t let her get to you right now.”
She frowned in exasperation. “Okay, but you know, I’d love to see that bitch try to deal with Jean Lafitte.”
Rick gave her a light sock on the shoulder. “You seem to have it all figured out.”
“If you only knew. Come on. Let’s go plan a battle.”
He held up his hand to stop her, raising his broad shoulders. “Wait a minute. You’ve alluded to something happening when you arrived here, and we’ve all noticed your fading bruises. If you want to talk to someone when you get back, Kenzie would be the best person. You probably don’t know she was captured and tortured by the British secret service. I don’t even know everything that happened, but it was bad. And whatever you tell her will stay between you two.”
“She’s never mentioned it, and I can understand why. I’ll keep her in mind.”
“But if you need a male perspective, I’ll listen to anything you want to tell me. You already know I wear my heart on my sleeve. You can blow your nose on it all you want.”
She stood on tiptoes and kissed his scraggly cheek. “I’d never do that to you, O’Grady, unless we were running together, and your sleeve was all I had. Or, if you got me drunk. Then I’d probably spill my beans and take all the hugs you wanted to give me.”
“Sweetheart, if I got you drunk, and you spilled your beans, we wouldn’t stop with hugging.”
“Jesus Christ! Two men have propositioned me in less than thirty minutes. I’m off my game. It used to be four.”
Rick shook his head. “Are you sure you’re Billie Malone?”
That stopped her cold and sucked the breath out of her as if she’d fallen flat on her back. “Shit, O’Grady. I stopped being Billie Malone when I landed in that goddamn swamp.”
Jean appeared at the top of the steps. “The general is ready to start the staff meeting.”
“We’re coming,” she said.
When she reached the top step, he asked, “Are you okay?”
She kissed Jean’s cheek, too, just to spread the love around. “Couldn’t be better.”
44
New Orleans (1815)—Rick
Rick sat at the Fontenots’ pianoforte playing a little jazz, losing himself in the music. The instrument was a Viennese-style piano made in the late eighteen hundreds with a wood frame, two strings per note, and leather-covered hammers. And the keyboard coloring was the opposite of modern-day pianos—the natural keys black and accidental keys white. Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas on a similar instrument.
What would Mozart think of jazz?
The piano was a beautiful instrument. They would have to find a way to take it home with them. Rhona had other pieces, a King Louis XV armoire, writing desk, and a sideboard that he would also encourage her to take. Surely Philippe could find a wagon.
Philippe brought a glass of whisky over and set it in a silver coaster. “I made you a double. You look like you have a big problem on your mind tonight.”
Rick played a little Gershwin, “I’ve Got Rhythm,” and threw in a few subtle substitutions, creating a sense of motion while extending the dominant chords. “I’m ready to go home, and I’m not looking forward to this battle.” He switched to “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and played as fast as he could, wishing it could speed up time and get this over with. Not the music. The adventure.
Why the shit are we calling this an adventure? It’s more like a visit to hell.
He switched to “Donna Lee,” to see how well he could transfer his repertoire to a keyboard with reversed black and white keys.
“After what happened to you in the first battle, you shouldn’t go back for another round,” Philippe said. “We don’t have to stay here.”
Rick stopped playing and sipped from his whisky glass. “I can’t not do it. If that makes any sense.” He spun around on the bench and looked at Philippe. “I haven’t stopped thinking about the young men I killed. They shouldn’t have died.”
Philippe clasped Rick’s shoulder. “No young men should die in any battle.”
Rick emptied the glass and held it out for a refill. “I won’t chug the next one.”
Philippe chuckled. “I don’t believe it, but I’ll make you one anyway. You’re not driving, are you?”
“Ha. Ha,” Rick said. “So is everybody coming tonight?”
“Marguerite got a stomach virus this morning. She’s feeling better, but she’s staying home, and Dominique Youx is still moving cannons to the canal. But Pete and Sophia, Jean Lafitte and Penny, Remy, you, and Rhona and I will enjoy a delicious dinner. I hope you don’t mind Mr. Lafitte attending,” Philippe said.
“Why should I?”
“No reason that I could think of, but Rhona was playing matchmaker earlier and thought she’d noticed a spark between you and Penny.”
Rick turned back around and played “Autumn Leaves” while Philippe refilled his glass. If Billie was showing up tonight, Rick might prefer Lafitte stayed home, but since it was the Penny version coming to dinner, it didn’t matter to Rick what Lafitte did.
“Trust me. There is no spark. I like her, but that’s it, and that’s as far as it goes for her too.” Rick finished the song and sat still for a moment, his fingers on the keyboard. “I can’t quite figure out who she is.”
Philippe put his forearm on the piano and leaned on it. “What do you mean? She looks and acts like Penny Lafitte.”
“Yeah, I know. But that’s not who I met several years ago. That Billie is very professional and polished, always elegantly dressed. I knew she was a former Army Ranger, but she’d put that part of her life behind her. Then when I met Penny, I couldn’t merge the two women in my mind.”
“Which one do you like better?”
Rick laughed. “Are you kidding? I could never be romantically involved with a vulgar, blue-haired woman.”
“But isn’t she playing the role for safety reasons?”
“That’s what she says, but I think she likes being Penny better than she likes being Billie Malone. She can bust balls as Penny, but Billie has to be ladylike and polite.”
“Once she gets back home—”
“Unless she figures out who she is, she’ll never be happy in Napa again.”
“Maybe she’ll need some help getting there.”
Rick shook his head. “A good therapist might be able to help.” He was still dwelling on that dichotomy that was Wilhelmina Penelope Malone when a quick knock on the door was followed by, “Rhona, Philippe. We’re here.”
Philippe crossed the room to meet Penny as she and Lafitte entered.
If Rick hadn’t already been sitting, he would have fallen on his ass. He immediately started playing a jazz version of “Over the Rainbow,” so he wouldn’t have to look at her.
“I love that song.” Penny breezed up to the piano and Rick continued playing, but gazed at her, not the keyboard. She lifted her eyebrows in a jerky motion and her eyes opened wide to stare back at him. Then she lowered her eyelids, tilted her head down, and looked away as if the eye contact was too intense.
He wasn’t sure why he thought that. Most of the time he found her difficult to read. But when her gaze dropped, he was even more confused.
Blue-haired Penny wore an ankle-length, unbuttoned coat of forest green and gold, a square-cut pink waistcoat that buttoned beneath her breasts, a short satin puff cream tie that stopped right below the dip in her neck, gold breeches, shiny black boots that rose to just below her knees, and a black hat with a huge purple plume. Instead of a shirt, she wore a corset so tight her breasts spilled out far enough that he could almost see—and definitely imagine—her nipples.
She was dressed for a circus, Halloween, a horror movie, or a pervert’s wet dream.
The Billie Malone Rick knew wouldn’t be caught dead in that getup. What the hell had happened to her?
Penny kissed his cheek. “How’s my hero tonight?”
Damn! She smells like the winery’s olive groves, the sea, and the Mediterranean sun.
Her scent and proximity sent blood rushing to his dick. He cleared his throat to get her attention and tapped the other side of his face, craving her closeness and another whiff of her. She kissed his other cheek, and her mouth was hot and wet, and if he put his tongue inside, it would be so receptive and so fucking sexy.
The Topaz Brooch Page 50
