Philippe moved four chairs closer to Rhona, and after they all had drinks in hand, they sat down to talk. “You have the floor, my dear,” Philippe said.
“Well…” she pondered for a moment. “Why are you here now? Why not several years ago?”
Rick took a fortifying sip of whisky before he answered. “Our friend Billie bought a topaz brooch at an estate sale a few days ago.”
“An estate sale?” Rhona seemed stunned as if her mind struggled to accept another surprise. “Our…estate?”
A small ping in the center of his chest reminded Rick of his mom and how he’d talked to her when she was sick. He gentled his voice. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rhona’s eyes glistened. “I knew our executor would sell our furniture and art, but the thought of strangers picking through my personal property upsets me greatly.”
Philippe hurried around to the other side of the chaise lounge, sat beside her, and pulled her into his arms. “I left instructions that all our personal property—books, notes, letters, photographs, designs, computers—were to be boxed up and stored for twenty-five years before disposal.”
She sniffed. “Why would you do that?”
“Because if we died during our travels, I didn’t want strangers rummaging through my notes and books or your designs. We might not be able to reclaim our furniture and paintings, or even the house, but we’ll have what’s most important.”
Her entire body sighed in his arms. “Thank you, darling.” She tugged a handkerchief from the bottom of her sleeve and wiped her eyes. Then she turned back to Rick. “Tell me about your friend Billie and what happened to her.”
“She disappeared from her hotel room in New Orleans,” Rick said.
“Since I have a friend on the police force, Roy Landry, I called him to see what he could tell us,” Pete offered.
“We know Roy well,” Philippe said.
“Roy mentioned he knew you. He said the police found a topaz brooch on the floor of your bedroom, and they found what looked like the same brooch on the floor of Billie’s hotel room. In all our experiences with the brooches,” Rick said, “no one has been abandoned permanently—at least as far as we know—except for you two and Billie.”
“Brooches?” Rhona turned in her husband’s arms but continued to lean on him. “How many are you talking about?”
Rick recrossed his legs, shifting uncomfortably. He had avoided the question when Philippe asked earlier. Should he answer it now? If he wanted to establish an honest relationship with the Fontenots, he should tell them the truth. “No one outside the MacKlenna Clan knows the answer to that question. But because you’re also travelers, and holders of the secret, I’ll tell you. With the acquisition of the topaz, we have eight—ruby, sapphire, emerald, amethyst, diamond, amber, and pearl.”
“And they all open and have the chant engraved on the inside of the stone?” Philippe asked.
“We don’t know what chant is engraved on the topaz since we haven’t had time to study it, but we know the properties are different, or you and Billie wouldn’t have tossed it across the room,” Rick said.
“I wish I could tell you what it said, but I don’t remember,” Rhona said. “I had just finished speaking the words when this fog appeared. Philippe entered the room, saw what was happening, and took the brooch away from me.”
“Then it got too hot, so I threw it across the room,” Philippe said.
“I shouldn’t have opened it,” she said.
“You’re not the first person who has pried a stone open and been monumentally surprised,” Rick said.
“Where did they come from?” she asked. “Who made them?”
“The stones came from trading with the Vikings,” Pete said, “and the Caledonians made the brooches from a black rock that fell from the sky. At least that’s what James MacKlenna told my wife in 1789.”
“The seven brooches we have were given to a family member or were the property of a family member at the time of his or her death,” Rick said. “Where’d yours come from?”
“My father’s brother and his wife are from Inverness, and we went to the funeral when my uncle passed away,” Rhona said. “His wife gave me the brooch, saying the Baird family had owned it for generations. Since she had no children, my aunt gave the brooch to me. I left it sitting in a drawer for over a year, and then one day I took it out of the box…and here we are.” She sipped her cocktail. “But how’d you know where to look for us?”
“From our experience, the brooches take unsuspecting travelers to a place where they have a connection. Because of your interest in the Battle of New Orleans, we thought you might be here, but we didn’t know for sure. We did a deep dive into your lives and found a common thread tying you two with Billie.”
Her head tilted. “What thread?”
“The Battle of New Orleans,” Philippe said. “We’ll ask at the Adjutant-General’s office if she’s been in to register. If she hasn’t, we’ll have to assume she’s not here and might be at one of the surrounding plantations. Rick and Pete are going to start searching tomorrow.”
“You should ask Marguerite,” she said. “Every woman from here to Charleston makes it to her shop at least once in a lifetime.”
“We did,” Philippe said. “Pete’s wife, Sophia, came here with him, and she met Marquerite Bonnard in Paris before the revolution, and brought her to America.”
Rhona gasped. “Sophia Orsini, the artist? How marvelous! Marguerite has told me all about her and her involvement with Thomas Jefferson.” She glanced at Pete. “So she didn’t drown. She went home to you. How romantic. Does Marguerite know where your wife is from?”
“Sophia never told her,” Pete said.
“Remy,” Rick said, “why don’t you stay with Rhona while Pete and I go with Philippe to the Adjutant-General’s office? Then we’ll come back and pick you up to have dinner at Marguerite’s.”
“I hope you’ll stay with us,” Rhona said.
“We thought that would be too much commotion,” Rick said.
“I’d like to stay here,” Remy said, “at least for tonight so that I can monitor Rhona’s illness.”
“That’s very sweet.” Rhona smiled at Remy. “If you’d rather stay with your companions, I understand.”
“It’s no problem,” he said. “I want to make detailed notes about your disease so I can give the nurse your history as soon as we get you to the hospital.”
Rhona laughed softly, but her vivid brown eyes—the color of a café au lait—were awash with tears. “We’re really going home, aren’t we, Philippe?”
“Yes, dear, we’re finally going home.”
To Rick, Rhona’s entire body seemed to bloom with hope, as if a unique tonic had infused her with a grand sense of well-being.
“I feel like Dorothy about to click my heels and say the magic words, ‘There’s no place like home.’”
“Well,” Rick said, “There’s no doubt about it. We have to find you a pair of ruby red shoes.”
27
New Orleans (1814)—Billie
Billie groaned. What the hell happened to her head?
I got whacked.
Ow! Yep, I sure did. Damn, that hurts.
She touched the base of her skull. There was an egg-sized knot there, but, unlike some things, size didn’t matter. She could get a concussion without ever hitting her head. A direct hit to the body sent the force of the impact from neck to brain, where it then bumped around inside the skull.
She knew all about it. When she played soccer in high school and at West Point, she’d taken her share of hits and suffered two or three concussions. She didn’t have one now, though. She wasn’t confused, sick, or dizzy. She just had a monster headache, and that pissed her off.
Hadn’t she gone through enough trauma for one week?
Okay, what’s the last thing I remember?
Standing on the bank of the Mississippi looking at New Orleans—except it wasn’t the Crescent City. There were no lights,
no cars, no bridges, no jazz, no twenty-first century. Nothing.
Then how’d she get here, in this nondescript room with a single burning candle, rocking chair, dresser, window, and the bed she was in?
The furniture was in good condition, and the walls were a light color, as were the breezy cotton curtains. The bed was lumpy but not uncomfortable, and the sheets and blanket—she sniffed—smelled fresh and sanitized by the sun.
Sheets, blanket, bed.
Her hand roamed over her chest, belly, to her legs, confirming she was fully dressed. She wiggled her toes, but no boots. She threw back the covers and made a move to sit with a single destination in mind. The window. What was beyond the curtains? What would she be able to see from the window? Probably not much, but even in the dark, she should be able to get a sense of her surroundings.
“Mon Capitaine, être immobile.”
She jerked her head. Damn. Big mistake.
Lafitte sat in the corner of the room, lounging in a Windsor chair with one leg flung over the arm, a goblet in his hand. She pointed her index finger at him and imagined pulling the trigger. Bang! Bang! You’re dead!
“You lied,” she said.
“About what?” he asked calmly, with that bottom-of-the-canyon voice that made her shiver.
“You promised you’d never hurt me again.”
“You promised you’d do as I asked.”
“Tit for tat? Great. But I got screwed. I have a monster headache. What do you have?”
He shifted in his seat, then stood and moved across the room. Seemingly as an afterthought, he pulled the rocking chair close to the bed. “For what it’s worth”—he settled onto the chair’s cushioned seat—“I didn’t hit you, but I am responsible for the actions of my men.”
“You’re a bastard.”
“So I’ve been told,” he said, his expression mildly amused.
“You sound proud of that.”
He set his glass down on the table with a heavy sigh, then rested his hands on his knees, lightly tapping his long fingers to a steady beat, or maybe just playing invisible guitar strings. She couldn’t tell which and really didn’t care.
“I’m not proud of much in my life.”
A sharp needle pricked her heart. “That’s a shame.”
His confession magnified his smoldering dark eyes and tousled, nearly-black hair. It was the first time she’d ever seen his hair hanging loose around his shoulders, and it didn’t soften his appearance at all. Instead, his long hair made him look like a swashbuckling pirate on the cover of a romance novel, with his shirt open to the waist, flashing his rippling chest muscles and taut abs. She could easily imagine him standing on the deck of the Pride, hands on his hips, surveying the sea, his hair blowing in the wind.
That image had no business sticking in her mind. Not when she was so mad at him. She blinked it away. It didn’t work. It was too delicious to forget, and it pinged right back. She tried again, changing the subject, hoping that would do it.
“What year is it? Not what year you think it is, but the real year.”
“1814.”
“Jesus. I did fall down a rabbit hole?” She had to brace herself to keep from reeling, although she’d much rather yank the covers over her head and hide from Lafitte and his surreal world. “It’s 1814, and I’m in New Orleans. That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Yes.”
“Either I’m crazy, or you are.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“I’m not either.”
But if she wasn’t crazy, what did that make her? A time traveler? She couldn’t wrap her brain around the concept. “My home is in the—”
“Twenty-first century. I know.”
“And you don’t think that’s crazy?”
The floorboards squeaked as the rocker rails moved smoothly back and forth. “I’ve lived most of my life on the sea and have seen things no one would believe. Just because a person doesn’t believe in the impossible doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“I thought sailors were naturally superstitious.”
“When inexplicable events happen, superstitions provide explanations. Your situation is different.”
“Seriously? If there was ever an inexplicable event, it’s my situation.”
He did that one-eye thing that—damn it—she was beginning to find endearing. “I heard a story about an extraordinary painter and warrior, beautiful and courageous, who moved to America and later drowned. But the person who told the story didn’t believe it and was sure the painter was from a different time and returned to her world. I’ve never forgotten the story.”
“I wouldn’t either.”
“If I had told you that you were a warrior from another time, would you have believed me?”
“No.”
“Yet the evidence has been all around you, and you disbelieved your own eyes.”
“Lyin’ eyes,” she said. “What can I tell you? I applied a logical explanation to an inexplicable event. I chose to believe I’d fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in a colony of crazy people pretending to be pirates.”
“I didn’t have a choice to believe or not believe. I had evidence—the objects in your bag, the card with your likeness on it, your fighting skills, and the fact that you escaped the meanest man I’ve ever known.”
She took a ragged, deep breath. “Let’s not go there.”
His eyebrows eased up, and then he lowered his lids, his eyes hidden long enough that she wanted them back on her. He needed to understand how much he’d hurt her. How much the other men had hurt her too: the colonel, the terrorist, the ex-husband, the ogre, and her father. It sounded like a damn action figures collection or characters in a nightmare game of Clue. Anger boiled through her, not only at the men who had screwed her—literally and figuratively—but also at the brooch, for abandoning her in the past.
Lafitte lifted his chin and took a breath. “I never asked what happened. Did he—?”
“He groped me, bit me, but I didn’t give him time to rape me. That’s why he came back. He was determined to take what I denied him.”
“When the men brought you to me, I saw a woman in a man’s clothing who was spying on Barataria. I believed Governor Claiborne sent you. Then I looked through your bag and found the card. But by then, I couldn’t stop what was happening. My men would have seen my interference as a sign of weakness, and I would have lost their respect.”
That comment sent her over the edge, and the muscles in her back and shoulders pinched into tight knots. “Gee, how nice that your men’s respect was more important than your men gang-raping me.”
“My men can turn on me”—he snapped his fingers—“as quick as that.” He stood and looped the room at a thoughtful pace, his hands clasped behind his back.
For a moment, she slumped in the semidarkness, listening to him, to his breathing, to the cracks in his stiff joints when he moved about the room. They matched the creaking and popping of the cypress-framed building.
In a grave tone, he said, “If I’d lost the respect of my men, they would have shot me, and then proceeded to torture, rape, and kill you.”
The wind moaned around the corner of the building, whispering through invisible cracks and seams, just as the truth had whispered to her from the very beginning. But she ignored it, refusing to believe she’d traveled through a time warp. It would have completely shattered her confidence and made it impossible to do what she needed to do.
“We both survived,” she said on a sigh. “You retained the respect of your men, and soon you’ll have a chance to redeem yourself and become the hero of New Orleans.”
“I never set out to be a hero.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll never be one in my eyes.”
He flinched as if she’d thrown a heavy object and whacked him square in the head, and yet he returned her glare with a gentle gaze, mouth curved up in an almost lazy smile. She glanced away to avoid catching a foot in his seductive trap.
“
You knew this wasn’t the city I was expecting to find. You could have warned me.”
“How? What should I have said that you would have believed?”
“I don’t know, but you could have tried. Maybe something like… ‘The city has changed a bit since you saw it last.’ Something. Anything. Instead of setting me up.”
The feather mattress shifted as he lowered to the edge of the bed. “You wouldn’t have believed me.”
Shit, man. Did he have to bring up memories of dad’s confession? “You wouldn’t have believed I could still love your mother and love someone else as well.”
She rammed her fists into Lafitte’s chest with the force of her escalating anger—years of pent-up rage and hurt—grunting, “Damn you! You could have tried!” She whaled into him, throwing one power punch after another. “Bastard! Fucking bastard!”
Lafitte was in perfect range to take her shots, a quick one-two-three. He didn’t budge or defend himself. She threw another combo, one-two-three. And one more jab-cross as tears burned her eyelids. The impact of each punch carried the unexpected sound of defeat, and while she embraced the high of the hit and the adrenaline surge, she craved more than the outburst could ever provide.
“Bastard.” She threw another jab followed by a power shot. After a half dozen more and a groan from Lafitte, she dropped her purpling knuckles and fell back against the headboard. “You could have tried.”
“I knew the truth would hurt, and I couldn’t stand the thought of hurting you again.”
He pulled her into his arms. His fingers traced the ladder of her spine, and the hairs on her skin reacted, standing upright in the wake of his touch. The steady beat of his heart quickened against her cheek, and her heart lurched in a ramshackle rhythm. She quickly pulled out of his embrace and didn’t realize tears were streaming down her cheeks until he handed her a handkerchief.
Here she was, doing an ugly-cry in front of him. And that had never happened in front of any man—not even her father.
She dabbed at her eyes with a corner of the linen square. “It’s really 1814?” she asked in a scratchy voice.
The Topaz Brooch Page 32