Magnolia Nights

by Martha Hix

  Rising up, Paul set his feet on the floor. “Emma, it’s getting late.” He lowered his head as if he were dizzy. “You’ll be missed at Magnolia Hall.”

  She realized he was hoping to get rid of her or offering her a chance to restore her torn pride. But run she wouldn’t.

  “Until your fever breaks you’re stuck with me. I sent word I had a patient to attend to.”

  “Patient?” he asked, bemusement in his tone. “You told me you aren’t a nurse.”

  She held her proud head high. “I’m studying to be a doctor.”

  “And a good one you’ll be.”

  Don’t flatter me with your tongue, hold me in your arms! she wanted to rail at him. Instead, she turned from him, walked to the fireplace and lifted the kettle from its hook. “I only know one physician here in New Orleans. I sent word to him that he was needed, but he had an emergency at Charity Hospital. Too many Carnival injuries, you see. If you’d like, though, I’ll find another doctor.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Paul replied, the timbre of his voice heavy and low. “You’re all I need, Emma.”

  How dare he entice her with belated charm? Did he think to mark her for a fool anew? She forced casualness into her tone. “It doesn’t worry you that a female is tending your wounds?”

  “It’s unusual, but it doesn’t bother me.” He grinned. “Matter of fact, Madame Docteur, I like the idea. I’ve been told you have ambitions, but I never dreamed you had such a calling in mind.”

  “Well, I do.” At least Paul was on her side on one score. At any other time that might have pleased Emma. She poured another cup of herbal tea. “You’d better drink this. You mustn’t allow your body to go without fluids.”

  The air was tense between them.

  “Emma, I have to get back to the ship.”

  “Why?”

  “Duty. There’s unrest out there. There’ll be a mutiny unless someone appeases those men.”

  “You may be right”—she shook a finger at him—“but you can’t be the one to help them.”

  “Have to. I’d lay down my life for the Texas Navy.”

  “No doubt. Valor is a weakness men are heir to.”

  “And for that I have no apology,” he said. “Haven’t you ever loved something or someone enough to sacrifice yourself?”

  Hadn’t she just done that? Still angry at his rejection, she went for a nerve. “If you’re referring to your love for anything connected with Texas, please don’t expect me to commiserate. Why anyone would love a frontier nation peopled by the misfits of society is beyond me.”

  “Yes, it is beyond you.” He lurched to his feet, but swayed as he put one foot in front of the other. “Got to go.”

  “You’ll kill yourself if you do. Need I remind you of your fever? And your back looks like a side of beef hanging in a butcher’s window.”

  “Praise me no more with your fishwife’s compliments.”

  “Forgive me for sounding like a physician,” she said, drawing out the last word for emphasis, “but I forbid you to leave. It’s three o’clock in the morning! Give yourself until daybreak, at least. With any luck your fever will break, and you’ll then have the strength to tend to your duties. You are weak, you know. You told me so yourself.”

  “I knew I’d eat those words,” he muttered.

  “So be it.” Emma wished to change his mind about going to the ship . . . and about making love to her. She pointed to the bed. “Get back there.”

  In spite of his convictions a trace of a grin curled the corners of his mouth. “And what about you? Fevers take a while to break.”

  “I’m staying. I told you that.”

  “Then take the bed,” he offered. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  Nonplused by his complete change from predator to lamb, she felt . . . Felt what? Disappointment. While she was innocent of certain aspects of intimacy, she perceived that he had desired her. So what if he took her virginity? She was offering it, and—by darn!—he was going to get it.

  “Thank you for your generous offer, my good man, but I’ll not hear of it. That bed is big enough for both of us.” She combed her fingers through her hair, and moistened her lips. Her voice was low, teasing and enticing, as she said, “I intend to make you suffer for not making love to me. From here on out, you’re going to be lured and tempted and tantalized to the nth degree.”

  “What did I hear you say?”

  “You is disgusting, purely disgusting.” Cleopatra hitched her nose toward the ceiling of Paul’s hotel room. “I figured you was up to no good when you didn’t show your face by the time Miss Marian came home. But I waited—yes, ma’am—just in case you hadn’t been lying about Dr. Boulogne.”

  “I didn’t say anything about Dr. Boulogne. I sent word I had a patient.”

  “Patient? Hmmph. That’s what I’m trying to be—patient! But you, missy, would try the patience of a saint.” Cleo pursed her mouth. “Laying up in bed with that man—the very idea!”

  That had been true, but Cleopatra had not caught them together. Emma crossed to the window and pulled back the drapery. The first light of dawn had begun to ribbon the sky. Where was Paul? Probably on board the San Antonio. While she was dozing, he had slipped out of the room. A doze was all it had been. She had spent a tortured night lying next to him. He had barely moved a muscle, and he certainly hadn’t touched her. But oh, how she had wanted him to.

  If there was anything to be thankful for, it was that Paul’s fever had broken. Which was not much consolation.

  “Well, ain’t you got anything to say for yourself?” Cleopatra pressed.

  “I wasn’t ‘laying up in the bed with that man.’” Not in the real sense of the phrase.

  “Hmmph.” Cleopatra huffed over to the place in question and pounded her forefinger on the sheet. “I got eyes, missy, and you was laying up right here, bigger than Richmond.” She drew back from the smears of blood that streaked the top portion of Paul’s side of the bed. “That man done compromised my baby.”

  “Cleo!” Emma laughed. “It’s not what you think. And if you’d paused to consider, you’d have realized it would’ve taken acrobatics for me to put that blood there. We’d have to have been standing on our heads. Hmm”—she patted a forefinger against her lips—“that’s an interesting concept.”

  “You hush, missy.” The mammy drew herself up to her full height of four ten. “I don’t know where you get talk like that, but I guess it be from those nasty medical books. The Lord knows I never taught you such filthy mindedness!” Cleopatra stomped back across the room and leveled a glare at Emma. “But don’t you fall to thinking I’m addlepated. I know about man-and-woman ways, and I also know what can, and can’t, be done on a mattress.”

  Emma feigned shock. “Are you saying you aren’t as pure as the driven snow?”

  “That be my business.” A flush heightened Cleopatra’s mahogany cheeks. “And don’t you be switching the subject on me.” She motioned behind her, indicating the bed. “That one gonna marry you. I’m gonna see to it!”

  “Oh? If the ‘one’ you’re referring to happens to be an inanimate object commonly known as a place for sleeping, you’ll have a difficult time getting it to sign the marriage registry. Four legs, but no fingers. Sorry, Cleo.” Smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt, Emma swept past the fuming mammy. “Now leave me be. I need to brush my hair.”

  Amazingly, Cleopatra said no more.

  Emma searched for a hairbrush. None was atop the furnishings. She checked drawers, fruitlessly. Surely Paul had a means for combing hair. Her eyes stopped on the sea chest. “I doubt there’s one in there,” she said, more to herself than to Cleopatra. But she was curious as to the contents.

  “I be staying outta that if I was you. Didn’t that brooch teach you nothing?”

  “Thank you, dear conscience.” Irresistible curiosity got the best of her, and Emma tried the lock. It was fastened. “Loan me a hairpin, please.”

  Scowling, Cleopatra
reached under her tignon and pulled a sturdy pin from her hair. “Guess you learned lock-picking somewhere, too.”

  “Actually I don’t know the first thing about it, Cleo. But I can’t go out in public with my hair mussed.”

  “’Cause people’d know what you been doing.” Cleopatra shook her head, and her next words were laced with uncharacteristic dejection. “Where did I go wrong? I always wanted you to be a nice lady like your mama, but . . .”

  Emma, feeling guilty for causing her mammy’s depression, took Cleo’s thin hand and squeezed gently. Cleopatra had been more than a nursemaid, much more. She was the sister Emma could depend on, the mother she had sometimes needed, the friend who could be relied upon . . . and an occasional partner in antics. In short, Emma loved her.

  “Don’t blame yourself for my behavior. I failed you; you didn’t fail me.” She pressed a kiss to Cleopatra’s cheek. “I wish I could be the proper lady you want me to be. But lately . . . lately I no longer know what’s proper and right.”

  “Time’s a woman be thinking like that, she be in love with her man.”

  “I fear you’re right.”

  “Me right? Must have wax in my ears!” Cleopatra exclaimed, her old self returning. “I ain’t been right in weeks, according to you.” She put her hands on what would have been the curve of her hips, provided she had some angles. “Well, baby, let’s get that chest opened so you can get to brushing that hair. Won’t have that man of yours coming back and thinking I raised a slovenly gal!”

  Cleopatra sank to her knees in front of the chest, her deft fingers picking the lock in the blink of an eye. The heavy lid creaked open, and the scent of cedar burst forth.

  Emma took the top tray onto her lap. It held a small velvet pouch, which she felt no compunction about opening. An emerald ring surrounded by diamonds winked up at her. She replaced it. There were also letters from a New Orleans bank, a sextant, a spyglass, brass buttons, several coins. And a gold watch; its inscription was in French, but Emma believed it had belonged to Étienne Rousseau.

  “Take a look at this,” Cleopatra implored, holding out a miniature portrait.

  Emma absorbed the woman’s exquisite features. She had black hair and eyes, a lean face, and a bearing that resembled Paul’s. “She must be his mother. Angélique, I think she was called.”

  Suddenly contrite for invading Paul’s privacy, Emma returned the items to their rightful places. “Funny, what a person’s possessions say about him. A rank stranger would know Paul is a man of the sea . . . and that he loved his parents dearly.”

  “That’s true, but you ain’t found a hairbrush yet.”

  “Also true.” Remorse forgotten, Emma dug into the chest. A pair of cropped breeches and neatly folded shirts were stacked in it. She moved those aside, and spreading her fingers to the left, hit a metal object. What is it? she wondered. It feels like a . . . Surely it isn’t the . . . Her fingers closed around the object. Shirts flying, she pulled the brooch from the trunk. It was the same piece of jewelry, minus one diamond, that she had taken from Paul Rousseau’s room!

  “How . . . What is going on?” she said aloud, the much-needed brush now forgotten. “Drat him! He tricked me!” She threw the hated pin on top of the now wrinkled shirts. “He won’t get away with this, Cleo. Lieutenant Rousseau is going to answer to me!”

  “Tee hee,” Cleopatra chortled.

  “I’ll need a boat to row me out to his ship,” Emma thought aloud as she gathered her medical supplies and dropped them into the black satchel. “Maybe Uncle Rankin has one at the factor-house wharf.”

  “You ain’t ducking me this time, missy! I’m going with you.”

  “As you wish.”

  The mammy patted her tignon and got ready for action. “I’m gonna hear those firecrackers go poppity-pop!”

  Chapter Ten

  Calling himself forty kinds of a fool for leaving Emma alone and untouched in his hotel room, Paul reached the levee guarding the city of New Orleans from the silt-lined Mississippi River. He was on a course for the San Antonio’s longboat, tied up at the wharf now six streets away. He had to get back to duty, and away from desire. Though his flesh bore testimony to the injustices of ineffectual command, he was first and foremost a lieutenant in service to the Republic of Texas.

  Yet he ached for Emma. There was no cure for it, save for man’s oldest method of declaring superiority over women—sex. Which he had renounced the night before. Honor be damned! If he had the night to do over . . .

  Paul told himself not to think of her, but it was impossible. He wanted to make love to her. The shirt and coat of his tight-fitting naval uniform rubbed the wounds on his back, but the pain he felt for Emma overshadowed his physical discomfort.

  He turned the corner from Common Street. Yet each step he took, in a northwesterly direction, was haunted by the memory of the previous evening. Memories of her. Emma caring for him with her healer’s hands and heart; Emma with her lovely hair falling around her shoulders, and with breasts eager for his lips; Emma yielding to him. Why, for once in his life, had he been gallant? Could it be that he was falling in love with her? Absolutely not.

  He stopped at the longboat’s usual mooring, which was the Oliver Factor House wharf. Where was the boat? Shading his eyes, he looked both ways across the river, but didn’t sight the longboat. For a second he considered borrowing the Oliver skiff but dismissed the notion.

  “Been waiting for ya to show your mug.” Henry Packert stepped in front of Paul. There was a wicked gleam to his lone eye. “Got word on them crates.”

  “Later,” Paul said, brushing past the pirate. “I’m headed for my ship.”

  “Planning on swimming? There ain’t a dinghy in sight.” Packert hooked a thumb toward Oliver’s small boat. “’Cept that one.”

  Paul grimaced. “Never mind.”

  This part of town was very quiet. Though it usually teemed with beggars, bitches, and boatsmen, most of these were probably sleeping off the effects of Fat Tuesday. Until the longboat returned to its station, Paul was stranded ashore. “All right, Packert, let’s hear it.”

  “Oughtn’t to tell ya, seeing’s how ya shamed me in front of me woman the other day, but I guess I will. You came to me rescue a couple o’ times out in the Gulf, and I ain’t one to forget good turns.” Crooking a thumb toward Rankin Oliver’s cotton warehouse, the hulking pirate sidled closer to Paul. “Got something to show ya. Follow me.”

  It didn’t take much for Paul to guess what was in store. Earlier Packert had gained entrance to the frame building, so he led Paul to a high-silled window. The old pirate’s face turned florid as he struggled to climb upward. In spite of his injuries, Paul easily swung himself through the opening. The light was dim, for the warehouse was large and its big freight doors were fastened. That one window near the front provided the only illumination. Packert lit a lantern. Amid the cotton bales piled high on the floor were twelve wooden boxes, each marked COPPER PIPING—OLIVER SUGAR MILL, HAVANA. Paul’s suspicion was confirmed. The contraband ordnance for Mexico had arrived.

  “They was off-loaded late last night,” Packert said. “Guess Oliver figured nobody’d pay no nevermind, since the whole town was celebrating.”

  “You’re probably right.” Paul walked closer to inspect the outside of a crate. “Have you opened any of them?” he asked doubtfully. From the looks of the boxes, they hadn’t been touched. “Let’s make certain they contain gunpowder and weapons; then I’ll go for the police.”

  “Police? No use bringing them into this,” the older man protested. “We can take care of the matter ourselves.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Packert chuckled, a mirthless little sound. “We’ll torch ’em good and proper. This whole place’ll blow to kingdom come.”

  “No! Think straight, Packert. If you set this warehouse afire, you’ll be guilty of arson.”

  “Not if I don’t get caught. And consider this, me ol’ friend: the explosion will be evidence
in itself. It’ll put Rankin Oliver behind bars, that it will.”

  “There’s no need for fire.” Going against the law to avenge Étienne Rousseau’s death was not Paul’s intention. He could have done that years ago! And an explosion might set off a chain of fires. “Let’s get this crate open.”

  “All right,” Packert finally grumbled. “There’s sense to it.”

  A nearby shelf held an assortment of tools, crowbars among them. Wishing for his usual strength, Paul took one and handed another to Packert. He wedged the flat end of the bar under the lid. Suddenly he heard the other man move behind him. “Wha—”

  With a swiftness belying his girth, Henry Packert swung the steel bar in a wide arc. The blow caught Paul on the shoulder, in the uppermost lash wound. Stunned by the pain, Paul fell and grabbed his back.

  The aged corsair used the moment to his own advantage. He threw the lantern atop the bale closest to the crates. Running forward, he shoved his weight against the side door. It gave.

  He turned to Paul. “Didn’t mean to hurt ya, but I couldn’t see going to the calaboose boys. Rankin’d find a way to get outta trouble.”

  He was gone.

  Realizing it had been futile to try to reason with an unreasonable man, Paul struggled to his feet and got out of his jacket. He beat at the flames with the coat, acrid smoke filling his lungs. But the fire raged. There was no stopping it!

  Still holding his jacket, Paul raced for the door Henry had forced open. Outside and well away from the building, he turned, chest heaving, and raced onto the levee. The skiff was gone. Shielding his eyes with a soot-blackened hand, Paul peered to the right, then the left. He caught sight of Packert rowing downstream, fast and furious.

  He rubbed away the perspiration threatening his vision. “Damn!”

  With no time to think, he threw his coat over his forearm, then sprinted down the embankment and alongside the factor house. Just as he cleared its corner, he halted in his tracks. Emma Oliver and her mammy stood not ten feet from him. Both women were like wooden statues, but Paul saw the horror, and anger, in their eyes.