by Martha Hix
“A wretched tale.” Susan rubbed her brow, her sympathies going out to Burke. No wonder he’d reacted with such vehemence last night in the dining salon. “He’s taken total responsibility on his shoulders, when he shouldn’t.”
“He’s got a protectiveness streak. Never allows himself to fail. Failure makes him too much like his late parents.”
The subject of his begetters too much to handle, Susan considered his aunt’s conclusion. “From what you said of Miss Lawrence, she’s reckless. Feckless.”
“Add stupid and cold. And such an actress! You’d think she’d been lily water, the way she carried on about being a virgin. I knew she was creeping into Burke’s quarters once everyone else was asleep. I think she even seduced India’s brother, and him a married man just out of prison camp. Some virgin! She was running from a funny uncle.”
Susan squirmed, thinking about how she’d gone to Burke’s quarters.
Phoebe went on. “That girl didn’t deserve Burke. The lamp knew it. I trust the magic. It may pick the nearest candidate, but now that I’ve gotten acquainted with you, gal, I believe it picks the best available candidate.”
“I am not going to marry your nephew.”
Even if Susan were weakening in her determinations, which she was not, those explanations and excuses would have braced her England intent. Especially while seeing what he’d done to his poor aunt. The Memphis lady grieved for him. There might as well have been a death.
By that afternoon Susan was more determined than ever to reach New Orleans and an outward-bound ship. Her money collected, she and Pippin would sail into the sunset. Fate had other plans. The Yankee Princess remained marooned.
A pair of officers took a rowboat and set out for Fort Adams to secure the services of a master machinist. The tired crew napped during the heat of the day, as did Pippin and Phoebe. Even more unfortunately, Burke, wearing shirt-sleeves, cornered Susan in the common salon on the upper deck.
He hogged the lyre-shaped sofa, where she’d tried to read an old newspaper for something to do besides fret over madness. Funny, how such a grand room could suddenly seem so small.
Strangely, he was in a jolly mood. No more Captain Fatalistic. “Gotta admit, sweeting, you had a virgin last night. No one has ever driven me wild like that.”
Liar. “If you’re going to woo me, sir, why don’t you make yourself useful? Pump that foot pedal. It’s hot in here.”
One long leg straightened. One big boot put the fan to revolving. He simultaneously swatted a mosquito—the rain, now stopped, had brought the bugs out in droves—as it landed on a forearm. “Shall we get hitched before we reach New Orleans?”
“You are mad.”
“Aye.” He reached for Susan.
“How can you pump the fan, swat insects, and still have the hands of a squid?” She hit him with the newspaper.
“You didn’t fuss last night, for a while. You liked it.”
“I was curious, that is all.”
“That’s a start. You will be my wife, so I’m glad you won’t be indifferent. I’d hate you to study the ceiling and think of England while I’m making love to you.”
“I beg your pardon?” she said, bemused. “Oh, of course. You know my dream is to return there. But I rather imagine one wouldn’t think of Sussex during something like that.”
“Never mind. It was a Victorian joke.”
“Please don’t roll your eyes at me, sir. I am not a child, and you’re acting as if I were. Take your hand off my breast too.”
He did. “Have you got a mother?”
“She died when I was ten.”
He gave the fan a hearty push. “English nanny?”
“Don’t toy with me, sir. You got me to admit last night that I’ve been involved with the people from St. Ann Street. I’m sure you know I didn’t have a proper English rearing. If I did, I wouldn’t have run away with Orson Paget.”
“You’ve got more breeding than any English I’ve known.”
“I hail from a respectable family.” An understatement, her grandfather being the tenth Earl of Brynwaithe. “They would frown on my marrying a volatile Irishman from New Orleans.”
“I’m not Irish. I’m an American of Scots-Irish descent. And I wonder how your folks will react once they know you worship chickens and run half naked in front of a horny river salt who wants to make you an honest woman.”
She pulled up the bodice of her peasant blouse. “I hope your stitches rot.”
He grinned devilishly. “Charm me, Susie.” His palm settled on her thigh. “Show me how you do it.”
“You’ve seen snakes handled. I’ve seen—You’re a New Orleanian, you know. Remove your hand. Pippin might walk in.”
“Now that you mention the lad, you haven’t scolded him for confiding in me, I trust.”
“Never. You’re the one who should be scolded. You lowered yourself to trickery.”
He settled back against the sofa, still pumping the fan. “I don’t see what’s so important about making some limey sissy out of him. He’s bright. I think he’d make an excellent Mississippi River man.”
How dare he want a hand in Pippin’s upbringing! “How long do you think he’d survive on this dratted river? Do you, in your skewed mind, think Orson Paget will allow us to do as we pleased?”
“At least we don’t have to untangle you legally from that bilge water. If he’s still alive, that is.”
Bilge water. Susan chewed a laugh. Bilge water did describe Orson. “He’s alive. And you, sir, should wipe that smirk off your face. Orson is not only vicious, he’s vindictive. You don’t have a hundred set of eyes. You couldn’t watch us every moment. He’ll want revenge for that night in Natchez.”
“I have hundreds of eyes. Costs me a fortune every month to pay wages. If it takes the entirety of my company to spy on Paget, so be it.”
“I think you ought to leave me to this newspaper.”
“Loosen your corset strings. They’re getting to you.”
She didn’t wear a corset, obviously, but his meaning came through clearly. Accept and be happy about some skewed future with an insane and ferocious man trying to stay away from the bottle. And still in love with the woman who’d driven him to it.
She’d boarded this steamboat looking for a savior, but everything had turned around. Burke sought atonement for his failure with Antoinette Lawrence, Susan as the instrument.
For a halfpence, Toni could have him. Actually, Susan would pay to be rid of him. To the last of her twenty dollars.
She scooted to the sofa’s far side to clutch a horsehair arm. “What makes you think I would want you? You scare me.”
“I apologized for the neck remark. You’ll learn I’m more bark than bite. Like my aunt tried to tell you.”
“Your aunt. Another reason I don’t like you. If you aren’t good to her, how could you be good to me?”
He gave up fanning duties. Stretching toward her and extending a long and muscular leg behind him on the sofa, he got much too close for comfort. “She doesn’t suck my teat.”
Susan blushed. “Papa Legba! ”
“Hush that mumbo-jumbo. Just trust the magic, pretty Susan. It’ll make you a believer.”
The creak of sofa fittings being disturbed as he blockaded any avenue of escape were like fingernails on a blackboard.
“Burke, you believe in magic, and I believe in it too. Fair enough. But you needn’t give in. Get the lamp. Make your own wish. Amend your destiny any way you see fit.”
“As I said last night, I refuse to do unto others as I’ve been done upon.”
“You shan’t be doing me an injustice if you cease this madness. Were I to have a go at that silly lantern, you can be sure I wouldn’t scoff at it.”
“Would you now? And what would you ask for? A taste of this without the benefit of matrimony?” His fingers slipped to her ribs and up her spine; he traced his tongue to her eyelid.
A shiver beset her. It wasn’t from attraction, not
this time. He had her plain frightened. Burke was the very thing she ran from: quixotic temperaments.
With the crook of a finger he tipped her chin up. “Have you noticed something about me?”
“That is a leading question.”
“All right. I’ll say it. ‘Burke, we’ve sat here for an hour and you haven’t once asked my last name.’ ” He cocked his head. “Who are you, Susie Black-Eyes? What is your surname?”
She started to say Black-Eyes simply to nettle him, but didn’t. Why shouldn’t he know the truth? Perhaps it would shut him up. “It’s Seymour. I am Susan Seymour, late of New Orleans. You know my father, Horace Seymour.”
A sound rose from Burke’s throat, irony mixing with the incredible circumstance of magic. “This must be a joke. Horace Seymour is your father? I would’ve never suspected.”
At last he gave a moment of peace; he rested against the sofa to examine this latest development. He presented a breath-arresting profile. Susan could have appreciated the manly planes of his well-arranged face. He usually looked at her, full face, his attention never wavering. She simply appreciated that he’d quit breathing down her neck.
As luck would have it, her relief didn’t last.
He poised over her again, hovering like the lunatic he was. “So, you are Seymour’s angel run off with the devil.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Heard it from his assistant. Beeton.” Burke ran the pad of a forefinger over her nose. “Never figured Miss Susan Seymour for a voodooess who bakes and sews. What are you, twenty-one? How come we never met?”
“I don’t know. Probably because I wasn’t allowed at the laboratory. Unless Father was away. Beeton occasionally let me watch over his shoulder as he manned the beakers and retorts.”
“If I had a daughter, I’d teach her the river.”
She had no wish to discuss his future descendants. “Have you seen my father lately?”
“Saw him once in a while, before I left town.”
“How is he?” A dull ache compressed her heart. “Why am I asking you? He’s the same as always. Busy with his experiments.”
“His laboratory does seem to keep him occupied.”
Growing up, she’d tried desperately for attention. In England, though, it hadn’t mattered. She’d had Mama then. They had family. Susan had fully expected to take her place in society, and lead the normal life of a matron, complete with a gentle or noble husband and a flock of youngsters.
After Mama’s death, though, Father had unceremoniously packed burners and boxes for New Orleans. In Louisiana she reached a coming-out age during a war that turned the city upside down. Never once had Susan attended a ball or even a tea. She’d grown up with snakes and cauldrons and amulets.
“Susan, do you think Seymour will open his purse to you?”
“I have my own money. He is merely the trustee of it. I came into a trust on my last birthday,” she said, not feeling nearly as calm as her words. “I intend to collect it, then be on my way.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. Seymour’s carrying a grudge. Says he sent your money back to England.”
She froze. He couldn’t. That overstepped his authority. “He wouldn’t confide in you. You’re a customer, not a friend.”
“You think he’d display dynamite to just anyone?”
Mama Loa! Under agreement with the Swedish inventor, Father was neither to sell nor demonstrate the explosive for a period of time. It had been the big secret of the laboratory. Then again, she’d been gone since October.
Dynamite was beside the point. Horace Seymour had taken Burke into his confidence. The money might truly be in England.
Suddenly, she craved comfort. Whereas fear had driven her from Burke, need presently sent her to him. He was mad as a March hare, yet he still exuded stability that could and would give comfort. Oh, how this man had her confused!
She pressed her cheek to his shirt, inhaling his scent, trying not to picture her father setting her valise on the doorstep, his parting words: “You’ve chosen that blister on the heel of humanity over me. Be gone with you.” He’d returned to his laboratory, shutting the door soundly.
A tear spilled onto Burke’s finger.
“Don’t cry, Susan. I can’t stand to see a woman cry.” He took the tear onto his fingertip, then laid his hand along her cheek. “Please don’t cry.”
She tried to stop without success.
“Susan, we’re a helluva pair.”
Ten
The Yankee Princess got under way on the afternoon of July fifteenth. The trip went without incident. Or so it seemed to Susan by the evening of the sixteenth. She’d pleaded headaches, avoiding more confrontations with Burke, the only trips out of her stateroom’s confines to visit his aunt.
Rueful Phoebe. Optimistic Phoebe. “Things will turn out for y’all.” She nodded once to confirm her claim. “I have to believe something good will come out of this trip for Burke.”
“I’m not that good.” Susan knew a way to turn the lady off. Sitting on the bed in Phoebe’s imposed prison, she leaned toward the redhead in an armchair close by. “I may be a miss, but I have a checkered past.” Exaggerating, she said, “I am a pagan, and dance naked with snakes.”
“Horse feathers.” Phoebe wiggled on the chair, and her bawdy side surfaced. “I’d like to dance naked with a snake. Make that Throck and his snake.”
Mama Loa! Susan had never imagined this spinster with an erotic thought. “Is he inclined to let you?”
“We’ve got plans for midnight. Right here in this room. Gal, I could use some advice. What am I supposed to do? Should I be naked when he shows up? Let him undress me? Am I supposed to do anything to him?”
Susan couldn’t help but laugh. “Phoebe, I’m trying to turn you off, yet you seek my advice. To be honest, I’m not that skilled in bed matters. Orson wasn’t an imaginative man, and the one month we spent in lustful pursuit, he couldn’t’ve cared less if I’d been dressed or not. He was terribly disappointing.”
Phoebe dropped her jaws onto fists. “I hope Throck won’t disappoint.”
“My intent wasn’t to depress you, dear Phoebe. I know it’s different with some men, and Throck seems a lively sort.” Standing, Susan went to the worried figure and took a shaking hand. “I could tell you something I’ve eavesdropped upon.”
Gray eyes brightened. “Do tell.”
Without mentioning a pertinent name or bonfire, or the specifics of a stolen moment in a particular captain’s quarters, Susan told how it might be, ending with, “Romps may be quite glorious.”
“Holy lance! I intend to find out.” Phoebe patted faded orange hair, fell to giggles, then sobered. “How can I be excited for Throck and sad about Burke at the same time?”
“I’m sorry for the way he’s done you. So sorry.”
“Thank you, Susan. You’re a good gal.” Phoebe smiled. “Will you promise me something? No matter what happens, can we be friends?”
“Absolutely.” A pause. “Friend, are you sure you won’t give me a shot at that lamp?”
Phoebe shook her head. “I’ve pushed it, offering Burke a chance. The genie says his power will go only so far.”
“Burke doesn’t want any wishes. Let me—”
“I’m gonna give him another chance. When I leave tomorrow, that lamp will be waiting in his quarters.”
At least that gave Susan hope he’d have second thoughts. “I must be going, Phoebe. Have fun tonight, chum.”
Susan kissed the lady’s forehead before proceeding to the outer deck. By gaslight she caught sight of a boy running toward her, and when he approached, the flush in his cheeks.
“The cap’n just showed me the most wonnnderrrrful sight, Momma. The constellation Cancer! And Jiminy. And Virgin. Gosh, it was great! And he even let ole Snooky in on it. Snooky got to roam the top deck. Can you beat that?”
“Don’t get too attached to the captain.”
“Sometimes, Momma, you are no fun.”<
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“We’re going to have a world of fun in England. And you are going to learn many wonderful things.”
“The cap’n says I won’t like it. It’s cold and wet and the people slurp tea and bow down to some lady what thinks she’s better than ever’body else. It just ain’t American!”
Susan steered Pippin toward his cabin. “Time for peepy-byes.”
“I ain’t sleepy. I could run a race, I’m so happy.” Lacing his fingers with hers, he skipped toward his quarters, swinging their arms as they went. “You oughta get the cap’n to show you all that constellation stuff too, Momma. He’s real nice. And he never gets tired of questions, not like Orson did. I like ole Captain O’Brien.”
It was good, Pippin’s change of heart. But enough was enough. “Pippin, we—”
“I’ll be happy as a pig in a poke once he’s my dad!”
She said resolutely, “He is not going to be your dad.”
“The cap’n told me you’d say that. He said for me to smile, and wait and see what happens. Do you think he’ll be happy, goin’ with us to England?”
“He’s not going to England.”
Perplexed, Pippin asked, “How’s that gonna work? How can we go to England without him?”
Blast the man! He’d chided her for steering the youth on a crooked course, yet he used Pippin for his own gain. Susan, that is not true. He was being a fine friend to a boy who’d never known male kindliness. That Burke had taken a young mind off Orson couldn’t be argued. If there was any approach certain to break down her resistance to Burke O’Brien, it would be through Pippin. And he knew it.
Of this she was more than certain.
Blast the man.
Today they would reach St. Francisville. The sun rose, its rays streaming into Phoebe O’Brien’s stateroom. She lazed in bed with Throck, both naked as blue jays, cuddling and kissing. She did dread reaching the Pleasant Hill wharf, but that wasn’t important just then. The previous night turned out to be a spinster’s dream, thanks to a peach of a man and a few suggestions from Susan.
