by Martha Hix
His wife was the key. If O’Brien married her, she meant something to him. What was it like, shoving a cane up the snake charmer’s pretty? “I’ll find out. Before it’s over, I will.”
A riverboat churned water and approached its moorage. Good. West could take leave of O’Brien’s wharf soon. It was hot out there, waiting for an accomplice.
Killing time, he rubbed his misshapen fingers and studied the activity nearby. The Edna Gal, riding low in the water, her decks packed with bananas, took on a few crewmen. Then something out of the ordinary caught West’s eye. “Damn her. I should’ve known her for a foe.”
Her hand on the forearm of Captain Burke O’Brien, Velma Harken argued up the gangplank.
“Damn her. Damn them both.”
It was time to do something about this turn of events.
No mean feat, getting an offended sleuth aboard the Edna Gal. But Burke did. He paid her handsomely from the purser’s till, and escorted her to the same cabin Susan had borrowed for the trip to New Orleans. Velma in safe hands, he debarked the freighter with information. He’d wrangled an Algiers address out of her. Better find Cinglure. Not now.
The rest of today was for Burke’s bride. He drew a mental picture of golden hair, Susan Dark-Eyes, and soft flesh waiting to be caressed and satisfied. Burke couldn’t reach the bridal chamber fast enough.
He stepped up his pace. Yet a familiar sight stopped him. Throck and Pip. He charged over to the pair and drew the first mate aside. “Dammit, man. What are you doing at the dock? Paget could show up. Get Pip away from here.”
“Ah, ye’re right. Lad said he didn’t get a close enough look at yer wharf yesterday. Champagne must of got to me.”
Throck and Pip ambled away after an excited rundown on the tour from the lad.
Burke caught sight of another familiar sight. One of his riverboats had turned her nose to dock. Crewmen walked ashore. Among them, a burly man wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat tilted low on a dark brow, a newspaper tucked beneath his armpit.
Newt Storey.
The second mate tasked with corralling Paget.
An officer under suspicion.
Burke strode toward him. They stopped, eyed each other. “Talk,” he demanded.
Storey reached for the newspaper and gave it over. “Read it and weep, boss.” His breath belled with garlic. “Or grin. Whichever way you want to take it.”
The headlines told a grizzly tale.
Carnival Master Found Bludgeoned
Uninterested in reading the particulars, Burke handed the newspaper back. “Did you do it?”
It was almost imperceptible, the negative shake to the brim of that sweat-laced sombrero. “ ’Appened July ninth.”
Burke’s had been a stupid question, asked in hopes of refuting the obvious. Paget went to hell the same night Susan begged rescue.
“Does the sheriff suspect anyone?” Burke asked.
“How ’bout everybody? ’E figures someone in the troupe did it, but the lowlifes scattered. Deserted the circus.”
“The sheriff got any names to go on?”
“None.”
“Job well done, Storey.”
“Anything for the boss man,” the second mate said snidely.
Burke began to stalk away, but turned back. Troubled over Susan, he was, but he had to get something straight. “Tell me, where were you when the Yankee Princess blew?”
Storey’s face twisted. “I was wondering ’ow long ’twould take you to ask. I’ve been in your service for ten years, and never gave no reason not to trust me. Anything goes wrong, the first one you accuse is me. The last one to get offered a captain’s post? The one knows this river like a lover—me. And who grabbed the gun you aimed at your cowardly head, up in Ohio?”
Blood left Burke’s face. “Leave Ohio out of this.”
“Fair enough. No use bring that dead idiot gel and her stillborn babe into it. I’ll keep quiet. Just like I always ’ave. Won’t tell the world you might ’ave been the father.”
Burke lowered his head. Swallowed. Don’t let Toni ruin your wedding day. As if it weren’t already. “Forget I asked.”
“Ain’t forgetting nothing. And I’ll tell you where I was when your precious maiden blew to hell. Courting my sweet’eart. She’s a seamstress at Pleasant Hill. Sewed clothes for the passengers you never bothered to introduce me to. You don’t even know I got a sweet’eart, do you? You don’t give a damn about Storey, and never will. Don’t bother to fire me this time. I’m out of your service, O’Brien. I’ve ’ad enough.”
“I don’t accept that.”
“Too bad.” Storey tipped his hat and lumbered away.
He’d come back, Burke reckoned. Might be better if he didn’t. Storey played on guilt too often, never letting him forget Ohio.
Right now Burke had bigger problems. He left the wooden wharf, climbed the levee, hurried toward rue Royale. He wanted the truth about just how hard Susan had struck her ringmaster.
At the corner of Canal and Royale he had second thoughts. She couldn’t have done it. Not Susan. Not Black-eyed Susan. Not his bride, who was so very frightened of violence.
How do you know? You weren’t there.
Shit. He needed a drink.
It wasn’t a drink that Burke O’Brien swallowed as he meandered the streets of New Orleans. It was the bitter bile of reality. Susan had admitted clubbing Paget.
Dusk fell. Night descended. Burke could bend rules to his heart’s content, but could he save Susan from her crime?
Nonetheless, he’d vowed to stand in front of her no matter what. And he would. He loved her. But this could well be their undoing.
Should he confront her about it?
No.
Why tell her of Paget’s death? Likely, she knew it.
Burke had gone to 21 rue Royale a troubled man. Yet the magic of Susan had dispelled his gloom, Paget never being mentioned. Theirs had been one helluva wedding night.
What would the rest of their marriage be like?
Nineteen
His silences were quite annoying.
They had been married a week, yet Susan had made no gains in Burke’s loving adoration. If not for their frequent visits to the huge walnut bed with headboard that rose to the ceiling, she would have been ignored.
Yet he’d done a strange thing, had sent an artist by that morning. She would ask about the comely young woman, but Fabienne Laure could wait.
“Whatever is the matter with you?” she asked her husband as he’d shaved and dressed after a teatime of lovemaking.
Burke fastened a ruffled shirt-sleeve. “Pip will be back soon. He’ll want to know why you’re abed, tousled.”
An excuse. It would be near dinnertime before Pippin and Keep Smile returned from the battlefield where Colonel Jackson had bested the British, including Susan’s own grandfather.
She settled back on the pillows, the musk of coupling and a hint of heliotrope present in the linens. “This is your first time to take dinner at home since our marriage.” She’d cooked several wasted meals. “You’ve been gone every night until midnight.” She studied his closed face. “Where do you go?”
“You’re barely a wife. Don’t add fish to it.”
Patience, she ordered herself. “I think I’ve a right to know where my husband spends his evenings.”
“I walk the levee.”
What part of his life did he refuse to share? Did he figure her unworthy to know it? He didn’t marry you for love or trust.
Burke shrugged into a brocade vest. “I hear you’ve been pressing your nose to the windowpane at Seymour Pyrotechnics & Inventions. You said your piece at Seymour Hall. It’s up to your father to make the next move.”
“You’re privy to me, yet I know nothing of you. Unfair.”
“I vowed to shield you from harm.” He cast a sharp glance. “It’s my duty to know your whereabouts. And to advise you in sensible paths. Let Seymour come to you.”
“You’re right, of c
ourse.” It had been hurtful, having Father send Beeton to the door to shoo her away.
Glancing without vanity into the mirror above his bureau, Burke took a bristled brush to thick hair, combing it straight from his brow. “By the way, I’ve invited Joshua Tate to join us for dinner.”
“Oh, dear. The representative from Lloyds of London.”
A guest, their first as a couple. Being hostess tonight had as much appeal as suffering silences, yet now that she thought about it, her husband hadn’t ignored her. He may have been away, but he’d been watchful. She felt somewhat better.
She would make him proud. “I must look my best.”
“That eager to meet a perfect English gentleman?”
His spiked tone pierced her. He had no call to make innuendos. Perhaps a bit of goading might serve him right. “Quite eager. But, darling, do address him as Sir. Noblemen of his station are addressed as such.”
“You’d know.” Burke approached the bed and glared down. “Don’t make a fool of me over Sir Joshua. I won’t have it. There’ll be no cuckoldry in this household.”
It was no way to show love or receive it, but she wouldn’t allow such insult. “If I didn’t spend my evenings waiting to give myself in total abandon to an absent husband, I wouldn’t dream of . . . England.”
Burke bent down, his hands framing her face, his bared teeth hovering below her nose. “Part of the reason I can’t be home knocking your head against the headboard is because you knocked the daylights out of Paget.”
Confused, she said, “What? I told you what happened.”
“You said he was alive when you left him. Was he?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
He gave her head two small shakes. “Did you kill him, Susan?”
Her eyes widened. “Is he dead?”
“Aye. As of July ninth.”
Shock drained her veins. Orson dead? “I stunned him is all.”
“That’s not what I heard from Newt Storey.” Burke’s teeth ground together. “Paget is in a grave.”
She shivered. “Can you, do you, trust this man Storey? It might be some sort of bizarre tale. He could be lying.”
“He had a newspaper. I read the headlines.”
Needing to sort through the events of July ninth, Susan closed her eyes. Hell had returned. She’d thought it would be in human form rather than that of Perfect Duffant. Stop it. No more hoodoo. Yet the urge to fly to the lady of St. Ann and beg for good luck was a powerful demand within her.
She opened her eyes to the safety of 21 rue Royale and the glowering visage of a husband who doubted her.
Go to St. Ann, she must. You’ll not do that, Susan. You promised. And if you can’t win him on your own, then you don’t deserve him.
Pushing up from the pillows, she braced herself on elbows. Somehow she had to remove the glower from Burke’s face. “Orson was not dead, nor was he on the brink of death, when we escaped.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No!”
Yet ugly doubts reared. What if Orson had died from her blow? Couldn’t be true. She hadn’t hit him half as hard as he had hit her, many times. “Any of a dozen people in the troupe could have assaulted him. Several of his lenders could have done it. Nobody loved Orson Paget.”
“Susan, you make excuses.”
He took her wrists, yet she had no fear of Burke. Quick to anger, yes, he was, but when Burke held her roughly, she relied on his honor.
“You’ve lied in the past, wife. Want a recount?”
“If it will make you feel better, by all means, do it.”
He tightened his hold. “Does your body lie when I make love to you? Do you close your eyes . . . and think of England?”
“Don’t be utterly ridiculous. You know I have a grand passion for you.” Her eyes caressed his mouth and lower. “I think of the first time I saw you. And the first time I tasted you. And I want more. I have a heat for you.”
“New Orleans woman, that’s what you are,” he said huskily. “You don’t belong in Victoria’s England.”
She found it erotic, the tension arcing between them, then and now. It drove her mad with desire. Her lips tingled to be kissed, and to kiss his naked chest. She parted those lips, inviting . . . Yet it would be an abomination to make love with an argument unsettled. “I never promised perfection, and meant what I said about Orson. I do not believe—it would take much to convince me—of my responsibility in his demise. He was stunned, but came out of it. The last I saw, he cursed as I got into the stranger’s hackney.”
“What stranger?”
“A ruddy man. He’d come to the traveling show to collect a gambling debt from Orson. I begged him to help me get away.”
Burke let go his hold and sat back. “Describe him.”
“Quite spare in build. Wore eyeglasses. Carried a cane. His hand was hideously deformed. Why is he important?”
“Was his name Rufus West?”
“I don’t have any earthly idea.” Susan reached to cross arms about her husband’s taut back. “I never asked.”
“Tell me everything he said.”
“I can’t recall. I was upset.” She studied her husband’s expression. How quickly he’d lost interest in Orson! “How do you know this man?”
“He used to work for me.” Scowling, Burke angled over her. “If you ever see him again, keep well away. And find me immediately. He’s evil.”
“If not for him, I mightn’t have gotten away that night.”
“He didn’t do you a favor, Susan. He brought you to me for a purpose, to drive me crazy. He knew the birthday curse.”
“You’re not mad.”
Burke grinned at that. “Hallelujah. You don’t think I’m insane. But I am.” He caressed her hip. “For the want of you.”
“Husband, do you believe me about Orson?”
“Aye.”
Pleased, she crooked her finger. “Then come to me.”
Bringing her nude form and stroking her flesh, he whispered, “With pleasure.”
His mouth slanted over hers. She tore buttons from his shirt. Her pelvis nudged against his groin; his growing heat caused her to catch her breath. Yet reason demanded she get out of this bed, dress, and make ready for the guest. She wouldn’t. If anything, she wanted her husband now more than ever.
She nudged her hands between them, worrying the buttons of his britches and finding him swollen and ready. He shoved her back against the soft pillows. Two of his fingers delved beneath the crop of hair at the juncture of her thigh, two more gave wooing to one of the nipples that begged attention. A rush of excitement became a fierce heat within her even before his teeth nipped her throat, his lips sipping and staying.
“How can you do it so many times in a row?” she wanted to know as he reached for one of those funny little sheaths that he kept in a tin and called raincoats.
He smiled down at her, and her heart turned over with emotion as he murmured, “It’s magic, wife. Pure magic.”
It was a good while later that he put on fresh clothes and she put on any at all.
As he slipped out of bed, she admitted, “You are truly magic, husband. I know you’re sorry for that lamp business, but . . .” I love you. “We shall have a lovely half year.”
He stroked her arm and chuckled. “Maybe I ought to write Aunt Tess a thank-you note. It’s about time I forgave her.”
“That would be nice.”
Burke wanted some of that smooth-sailing Velma had talked about; he was halfway there already. Susan didn’t murder Paget. There had been honesty in her eyes, her mannerisms, her voice.
Now, as Zinnia dressed her hair for dinner, the servant stepped back to admire her handiwork. “You look right pretty.”
“You do.” Burke went the dressing table, bent to look at his wife’s reflection in the mirror, and kissed her earlobe, saying, “More than pretty. Beautiful.”
“That she is, Mr. Burke. That she is.” Zinnia, known for speaking her mind
, smiled and studied the woman wearing a jonquil-yellow gown of satin. “ ’Cept for that big ugly hickey on her neck. Mr. Burke, you done branded our girl.”
Susan blushed, her fingers going to the area above her collarbone. “I—I should put some powder or something on this. Or change into something with a high neckline. I can’t let Sir Joshua or Pippin see me like this.”
“Pippin won’t know what it is.” Certainly he’d seen worse. Burke laid fingers over hers and soldered his gaze to dark eyes looking back at him in the mirror. “And Sir Joshua—”
“Will know you done had your supper,” Zinnia finished, rolling her eyes.
“Shut up, Zinn. That wasn’t what I meant to say at all.” But he did like the idea of fencing his claim. “No powder, Susan.” He stroked her thumb with his. “It’s no disgrace for a husband to leave a mark on his wife at certain times. If it were, every babe would come into the world hiding his eyes.”
“You sure got a cuckoo way of looking at things. Then you do what you wanna, whenever.” Zinnia sucked her teeth. “Keep Smile do something like that to me, I’d bring my knee up and kick his nuts.”
Burke flinched at the mere thought.
“Just do it quick, ’fore he gets second thoughts,” Zinnia instructed Susan.
Not about to let Miss Sass get the upper hand, nor the uppercut, Burke snuggled his cheek against his wife’s. “Does my love mark shame you?”
“No. You are my husband. In the eyes of . . . this parish and state.”
That was good enough for Burke for now. “Say, Zinnia, think she’d look even better in these?” He reached into his pocket, withdrawing a pair of pearl and topaz earrings that he’d bought in St. Francisville as a wedding gift. Now seemed an appropriate time to give them to Susan. “Reckon she would?”
Both women oohed and aahed over the gift. Burke grinned as Susan screwed them to her ears and murmured sincerely, “I shall treasure them always.”
Preoccupied though he’d been the last few days, and even though he ought to keep an eye on expenses, he enjoyed outfitting her in clothes and baubles. Susan may have come from money, but no one had ever made her feel special.
