“Nigh onto all his life,” Wint responded. “His pappy and me, we run many a broadhorn on Old Muddy and even over on the Ohio. And ’fore that, we run traps in the Louisiana bayous. His pappy and me, we go back a long ways.”
“Is he a pirate?” The question escaped Delta’s lips before she realized it had formed in her mind. Involuntarily her eyes flew to Brett’s. The stunned expression on his face echoed her own.
But the old man slapped his knee and hee-hawed. He spat again off the side of the steps, unhooking a thumb long enough to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand before clutching his suspenders as before. “A pirate, you ask? A pirate? Lordy, sweet lady, ain’t we all?”
“A pirate?” Brett demanded after they were well out of earshot of the cabin. “God’s bones! What century do you live in?”
She caught her breath at his oath—and at the question he posed. Lately she’d begun to wonder the same thing. She considered responding that the answer depended on whether he meant in the daytime or at night.
Clutching the reins in sweaty palms, she glanced at him. He didn’t belong here in the daylight. He belonged to the night, to her dreams—his strong body, which she knew as well as she knew her own, his tender lips, the intense way he had of looking into her soul, even the way he cupped her breasts in his palms, the longings he stirred, the passions he enkindled. His favorite oath. All these belonged to her dreams.
He didn’t belong in the daylight. He didn’t belong in 1879. Did she?
They rode in silence and after a while her thoughts settled down. Finally as they neared Cairo she decided he deserved an explanation. “Have you ever heard of Calico Jack?”
“The pirate?”
She nodded.
“Sure, I’ve heard of Calico Jack. What about him?”
“He was one of my ancestors.”
A quizzical expression narrowed Brett’s brows. After a moment, he retorted, “Congratulations. Everyone has at least one black sheep in the family. Glad to know you’re no different.”
“You look like him.”
“I look like him? How do you know such a thing?” Desperately she tore her eyes away and concentrated on the ruts in the road. She started to tell him about the dreams, then and there. She needed to tell him. “Descriptions,” she finally mumbled. “Descriptions passed down through the family.”
“Descriptions?” he echoed. “You’re comparing me to descriptions of a man who’s been dead more than a hundred years?”
She swallowed the lump in her throat, wishing she hadn’t started this conversation. He would think her demented, witless. With great effort, she shrugged and tried to laugh it off.
“They call you a pirate.”
In one ferocious movement he reached for her reins and jerked both their horses to a halt. “Who calls me a pirate?”
She stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Who, dammit?”
Her mind raced vacantly. Once more she had aroused his anger. This time she knew why, or supposed she did. No outlaw wanted to be found out. Suddenly her head became so jumbled with the present and the past she didn’t know who she was, where she was.
“God’s bones, Delta, are you stark, raving mad?”
Tears glazed her eyes. She fought to keep them back, but they rolled down her cheeks anyway. All she could think was that now she had driven him away. He thought her mad. Now she would have him only in her dreams.
Before she realized it, however, he was leaning across the space between them, kissing her lips. Gently, soundly, then hungrily.
She responded with the fervor of one who has recognized the value of something only after she thought it lost. This was not a dream. This was reality—Brett’s lips, wet and hot against her skin.
Yet it was also a part of her dreams, something she had experienced for months. The taste of him, the feel of him, the heart-wrenching love for him.
Was he a pirate? Yes, he was a pirate. Her pirate. She loved him and she feared him. But she feared losing him more than she feared anything else in the world except losing her sanity. She kissed him with renewed vigor.
Releasing her hold on the reins, she lifted her hands to his face. With trembling fingers she explored his familiar jawline, felt his day-old stubble of beard, traced the weathered lines at the corners of his eyes, the arch of his eyebrows, the cleft between his eyes.
When he drew their lips apart, she moved her fingers between them, tracing the outline of the precisely sculpted lips. The familiar sculpted lips.
“Delta, Delta,” he whispered against her skin. “What kind of spell have you cast over me? You’re like one of my mother’s potions.” He kissed her again, then added, “But I can’t decide whether you’re white magic or black.”
They had stopped on the outskirts of town with the sun sinking behind them. Gradually she became aware of the calliope and realized it must have been playing for some time. Brett brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes, kissed her again, then handed her the reins.
“We shouldn’t be seen returning together,” he told her. “I’d hate to spoil my reputation as a gentleman with Mama Rachael. She might take you off the boat at Memphis, too.”
For the first time in hours Delta thought of the showboat, of the real world. She smiled. “You probably have already fallen from her graces. You missed her ti’ game.”
All the while she returned the horse to the livery and retraced her steps to the Mississippi Princess, she felt Brett’s eyes on her, but she didn’t turn around. She knew he would keep his distance. A warm, secure feeling encased her like a cocoon, knowing he was close at hand. And that warmth, she decided, was further proof that she was losing her sanity. No sane person would feel warm and secure in the arms of an outlaw.
At the docks she discovered that the calliope had already drawn a crowd. The cast of the Princess Players put the finishing touches on the set for the evening’s performance. Nat looked up when she approached.
“Where’s that outlaw?” he demanded. “I thought he intended to see you back to town.”
“I didn’t need his help,” she retorted.
“You were gone a mighty long time.”
She tried to sidestep him, but his next words stopped her.
“It makes a man wonder what went on.”
“I’m glad you didn’t say gentleman,” she retaliated, “because a gentleman would never make such a speculation.” She brushed past him, only to turn at the foot of the gangplank, her wrath growing. “Don’t ever follow me again, Nat.”
“I wasn’t following you.”
“You weren’t here helping me, either,” Zanna called, “else we’d have this set erected by now. Get back to work.”
In the end Delta pled exhaustion and had supper sent to her cabin. Mama Rachael was in such a stew over preparations the Humphrieses and Menefees had made to celebrate this, her last night on board, that she spent little time trying to change Delta’s mind.
“Don’t wait up for me, child. Get some rest. Three days in Memphis will keep you on the run.”
Delta’s exhaustion wasn’t physical, of course, but she didn’t tell Mama Rachael that. After this afternoon her feelings for Brett had become so jumbled that she knew she must try to sort them out before they met again.
While she waited for Orville to bring her meal, she wrote the piece on the Great Through Mail and began the article on Wint Felton, old outlaw, old friend. He’d had nice things to say about Brett, but old friends stuck up for old friends’ sons. So what was she to believe?
Later, dressing for bed, she focused, detail by detail, on Brett Reall the man, trying to separate him from the pirate in her dream. Brett the man might be a threat, but he was alive and real and she could deal with him.
She would deal with him. First, of course, she must learn whether he was indeed an outlaw. And she must learn this before she allowed their relationship to go one step—or one kiss—further. She couldn’t fall in love with an outlaw.
Why, a g
ambler would be bad enough. She tried to visualize the reaction of her family to such news, but found the prospect too depressing. As Mama Rachael had expressed, the isolated world of the showboat allowed a person to engage in activities that would not be tolerated in proper mainland society—such as ladies gambling in public.
Such as her announcing to her family that she had fallen in love with a gambler. Or an outlaw.
One of her brothers had been a Texas Ranger, for heaven’s sake. And her cousin Cameron was with the Pinkertons. The others were all upstanding citizens. No, before one more dinner date, one more kiss, one more intimate glance, she must learn the truth about Brett Reall.
Everyone doubles, the showboat saying went. Did that include the gambler? And if so, what was his double? A modern, nineteenth-century outlaw—or the eighteenth-century pirate in her dreams?
From outside her stateroom she heard the opening skit of the evening’s performance begin. In her mind’s eye she pictured Albert and Zanna and Frankie and Iona and Nat and Elyse.
She left one lamp burning so Mama Rachael could find her way around when she returned and climbed into bed. Once she settled down and tried to get her brain to do likewise, however, the gentle rocking of the showboat at its mooring became even more noticeable, and the noises from outside louder.
The last sounds she heard before drifting off to sleep were the shotgun blasts from The Saga of Judge Noah Peak. She visualized Albert aiming at Nat’s retreating form, while a terrified Elyse huddled beneath the makeshift bar.
Amid shouts and cannon blasts, the crew of the Kingston boarded the English vessel with little trouble. It was only after most of the thirty or so pirates touched foot to plank that Anne Bonny realized what had happened. From the corner of her eye as she battled with cutlass in hand, she watched the English captain aim a pistol at Calico Jack’s temple. At the same moment a multitude of soldiers scurried from below decks, making their victory fade as quickly as a sail could collapse in a slack wind. Before she could reach for the pistol in her belt, someone grasped her from behind, and after a struggle, the king’s soldier succeeded in manacling her hands behind her back.
“Damn your scurvy hide!” she cried, only to be rewarded with a filthy rag stuffed in her mouth.
Behind the captain, aiding him Anne now realized, she saw their latest impressment, Ned Youngblood, a talented young man she and Jack had welcomed aboard with open arms.
A talented man indeed who turned out to be the king’s own. Betrayed by the hand they had fed, the life they had spared, she thought bitterly. Led into a trap which had been set with care.
And no time was to be lost she discovered, watching in horror as the soldiers led Jack toward the bow where a plank awaited. She struggled and kicked with such ferocity that, although her ankles were shackled, she was nevertheless afforded a front row view of the proceedings.
The captain of the vessel stood beside the plank, as swelled with pride as a sick boar, Anne thought, her heart bursting at his words.
“With the authority invested in me by the king, I carry out the sentence prescribed by law. For piracy on the high seas I condemn you to death, Jack Rackham, known to all as Calico Jack.”
Jack stood on the plank, tall, straight, defiant. His eyes found Anne’s and softened for an instant. Then his lusty laugh pierced the stillness.
“God’s bones! It’s been a hell of a ride!” He turned and briskly strode the length of the plank.
Tears sprang to Anne’s eyes and she thought fiercely of the love they had shared, of the babe in her womb. She had not told him about the babe. The board slapped against the rail, resounding through Anne’s brain; water splashed against the ship, the noises intermingling with the distant cry of a babe.
Delta and Mama Rachael stood at the rail after breakfast watching deckhands lower the gangplank to the dock in Memphis. The Humphrieses and Menefees crowded around, wishing Mama Rachael well, saying that they would see her on the return trip.
The ever-present gang of eager-eyed boys was joined on the docks below by a growing crowd of townspeople. Delta searched for her cousin, Cameron Jarrett.
A steady hand grasped her elbow.
“Have you been to Memphis before?” Brett questioned at her shoulder.
As eager as the boys on the docks below, she looked toward him, then glanced quickly away. The sight of his lips made her queasy, revealing a stark truth—her night of contemplation had not erased the sensual longings this man stirred inside her.
To add to her dilemma, remnants of her latest nightmare nagged at her brain. Brett Reall was not Calico Jack Rackham from her dreams, she told herself for the hundredth time. Yet, he resembled the pirate in so many ways.
It was her imagination, she countered. Her desperate attempt to interpret the disturbing nightmares—and to explain her disturbing fascination with this man standing beside her.
“I could show you around,” he offered. “Of course, it’s been some time since I was here. Ten years. Likely things have changed. But I’ll wager some things never change.”
Some things never change. Like what? she wondered. Why did her brain play havoc with her senses when she was around him? He excited her as no man ever had. Yet he frightened her, too.
And the nightmare—
“Delta!”
She looked over the rail, spied the waving hat.
“Cameron,” she called, glad to have found a reason for refusing Brett’s offer. Sorry, too.
Mama Rachael offered her hand to Brett. “Thank you for the ti’ games, M’sieur Reall. Perhaps on the return trip.”
“Certainly, madame.” He brushed the back of her hand with his lips.
As in a trance the old woman moved toward the gangplank. Delta followed, her heart in her throat.
Brett fell in step beside her. “You didn’t mention you had a beau in every port.”
She laughed, looking at him again. Again the sight of his face caused her stomach to flutter. She wished Cameron hadn’t shown up. For a while, at least.
“I don’t. He’s a cousin.”
“Kissing cousin, perchance?”
She laughed. “Come, I’ll introduce you. He’s with the Pinkertons.”
The moment the words left her mouth the nightmare returned with full force. A Pinkerton, a king’s man, what the difference? And why did she persist in thinking Brett was involved in something sinister? Why did she believe everything she heard and add to it the impact of her nightmares? Why hadn’t she been able to talk some sense into herself overnight? Like Ginny often said, she really should be writing fiction rather than fact.
When she turned to invite Brett to spend the day with them he had disappeared into the crowd.
Chapter Seven
For the next two days Cameron escorted Delta around Memphis, showing her sites and introducing her to interview subjects. All the while, half her brain and all her heart remained locked as in mortal combat over her dilemma with Brett Reall.
Was he an outlaw? Was he not? And if not, why had he disappeared the moment she mentioned the Pinkertons? Was he even at this hour conducting clandestine meetings with former outlaws in Memphis?
Being with the Pinkertons, Cameron could surely discover answers to these questions in a minute. Cameron might even recognize Brett on sight. But dare she ask him? Dare she even mention Brett’s name?
Mama Rachael soon took that concern out of Delta’s hands. Cameron had picked them up and driven them directly to the home of Mama Rachael’s friend, Maud Wadkins.
Like other ports on the Mississippi Princess’s itinerary, Memphis still suffered from the ravages of war. And even more recently from the yellow fever epidemics that had decimated the population, shrinking the number of inhabitants by three-quarters in the last few years.
“State of Tennessee even revoked our city charter this year,” Cameron had told them. “Of course we still call it Memphis, but to the outside world, Memphis doesn’t exist. Captain Kaney’s helped us out by bringing th
e showboat to town for three days. Maybe that’ll prove to folks that Memphis is on its way back.”
Tall and lanky, like her brothers, Cousin Cameron had greeted Delta and Mama Rachael with bear hugs, after which he hefted Mama Rachael’s trunk into the back of the hack he had driven to the waterfront.
“Where’s your valise?” he questioned Delta. “Aren’t you staying with the Widow Wadkins while the boat’s in town?”
She tore her attention from the decks of the showboat, which she had searched in vain for a glimpse of Brett. “No,” she answered Cameron, “I promised Zanna I would sell tickets for the performances.”
Cameron helped the ladies onto the wagon seat, first Mama Rachael, then Delta. His hand lingered on Delta’s arm. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if you don’t get more beautiful ever’ time I see you. It’s a cryin’ shame to be blood-kin to the prettiest girl in the country.”
She laughed. After he positioned himself in the driver’s seat and took up the reins, she leaned across Mama Rachael to tease him. “You can’t use me as grounds for remaining single, Cameron. If you don’t hurry and find yourself a girl, I’ll be forced to find one for you.”
“Go ahead,” he laughed, flicking the reins over the draft horse’s back. “I’m not too proud to accept your help. But from what I hear, you could use a little prodding yourself. Word is you’ve turned down ever’ male within spittin’ distance of St. Louis.”
Mama Rachael adjusted her parasol. “She’s too finicky. Why, you should have seen her outrunning that fine young gentleman on the boat.”
“A fine young gentleman on the boat? This sounds interesting,” Cameron teased, his eyes twinkling. “Tell me more.”
Delta felt her face turn crimson. “Mama Rachael’s the one who thinks he’s a fine young gentleman. Let her tell you about him.”
“Well,” Mama Rachael began, “his name is M’sieur Reall. Brett Reall. He’s a most handsome man. He dresses well and has the loveliest manners I’ve ever seen on any man, gambler or not.”
“Gambler?” Cameron’s teasing died at the word, and Delta held her breath for the lecture she was sure would follow. “You’ve picked out a gambler for Delta?”
Sunrise Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Three Page 11
