Her anger kindled so much heat inside her, she barely realized how hard she’d been weeping. When someone touched her shoulder, she wheeled about with a raised fist.
“Shae!” Phillip shouted. “What the Oh, Shae. Poor Jasper. Damn your father! He told me he’d been here.”
He pressed himself against her and wrapped his strong arms around her shuddering frame.
“I’m going to the law,” Shae swore. “I’m going to see that man hang.”
He stroked the back of her head with long, warm fingers. “If that’s what you want, I’ll do everything in my power to help you. But right now, we don’t have much time here. I had to turn loose the gray gelding. I’m hoping he’ll find his way home. If we don’t get out of this area soon, we aren’t getting out. Did you see those huge waves rolling as we drove here? They’re breaking almost a mile inland from the gulf.”
Shae glanced around at Claire and Lucius’s belongings, every last trace of the couple she had loved. “If we don’t put their valuables into the attic, this flood will ruin everything,” she said.
“Your friends are gone, Shae. You’ll have to let their things go, too, so we can get to higher ground. We need to get the box you wanted. And take anything else, anything small you think you want . . . but hurry.”
He pulled away from her to take a crocheted afghan off the sofa’s back. Gently, he draped it over the dead terrier; then he lifted the small bundle and placed it on the seat of a straight-backed wooden chair, where it would be out of the water.
Shae wanted to thank him for his kindness, but the words caught in her throat, and she had no time for the tears that it would take to loose them.
Instead, she glanced helplessly about the place, walking toward the master bedroom. As she moved through the house, she could hear waves beating against the floorboards of the raised cottage, churning around the supports that held up the structure. Raindrops pelted roof and windows, beating a staccato warning that seemed to say, Leave now.
“Just a minute. I want to wrap your hand,” Phillip called after her. He held some cloth strips, which he’d evidently picked up in the second bedroom.
A rush of blood warmed her cheeks as she remembered bandaging him there. And the heat and sweetness of what happened later.
She removed the half-soaked blanket from her shoulders and unwrapped the corner from her injured hand. The wound, surprisingly, was small. The skin had puckered and swollen to close over the opening on her right palm. The hole on the back of her hand looked much the same. The flow of blood had nearly stopped.
“Try to move your fingers,” Phillip told her.
“But it hurts,” Shae said.
“Try anyway.”
She did. Slowly, her hand responded. Pain arced through it in a lightning flash.
“Ow!”
“Good,” Phillip grunted. “All your fingers work. We’ll take time later to do this right.”
He bandaged her hand with gentle, yet efficient movements.
When he finished, Shae asked, “Could we take my mother’s portrait?”
“It will probably get wet, but we could try.”
She shook her head. “Let’s just slide it up into the attic. Then we’ll take the box and go.”
“Here, let me help you with that.”
He pulled the picture from the wardrobe. “I saw this earlier. She was beautiful just like her daughter.”
Shae stared into her mother’s features in an attempt to commit Glennis to memory. If water wrecked the painting, this might be the only chance she had. “I’m not her,” she said. “No matter what my aunt and father think.”
“Of course not. I doubt she ever slugged two men on the same day. I saw your handiwork this morning. That thug, Ross, had quite a bruise on his jaw, and I’m certain Ethan’s nose is on ice even as we speak.”
“Are you trying to cheer me?” She’d be damned if she could find anything amusing now.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Where’s the attic door?”
Their heads jerked up in unison as something thudded against the lower portion of the house. Neither mentioned it, but Shae quickly pointed out the attic access. They wrapped the portrait in a blanket and carried it up the narrow steps. Phillip wedged it into the highest rafters he could reach.
As he climbed down, Shae said. “You’re humoring me, aren’t you? I’ll never see her face again.”
“We don’t know that.” Even now, he seemed to need to reassure her.
She kissed him softly, sadly, for she feared this house, the house where they had first loved, would soon be washed away. Though only last night she’d felt they held the secret to forever, soon the only remnants of their joining might be a jumble of wave-beaten timbers. Closing her eyes against the awful vision, she pulled away from him.
“I was just thinking about us,” he said, as if he’d sensed her thoughts. “I hope you won’t be sorry. You’re father had a point. I’m not exactly known as a success. I hope I won’t be just another bad memory from yesterday.”
She forced a smile. “Maybe I have higher standards for success than he does. You’re worth a hundred men of Ethan’s sort. If I had to repeat everything I’ve gone through these last few days, I would, knowing that you’d love me at the end. Don’t forget that; I won’t. Right now, it’s all I’m holding onto.”
“I’m not certain I deserve you, but I love you all the more for it.”
“Deserve?” She shook her head, confused. “Love’s not about deserving, is it? Come on. We just need this.” She gestured toward the box of jewelry.
He scooped it up and preceded her into the kitchen.
When Shae took her next step, her foot splashed into water. Already, it had made its way this far.
The two of them stepped through the kitchen and out the back door, into the driving rain, then looked to the spot where Phillip had secured the horses. And stopped, aghast, on the back step, when they saw the animals, the carriage, and their chance of escape had disappeared.
“Damnation!” Phillip swore, his neck craning back and forth.
“Where would they go? Would someone steal them?”
He shook his head. “They bolted for home, I’m sure of it. I was certain I’d secured them well enough. I never should have left them.”
“Come back in. Let’s think about this where it’s dry.” Shae backed through the doorway, and Phillip followed, still cursing his own stupidity.
“Blaming yourself isn’t going to get us out of this,” she told him. “I’m the one who insisted we come here in the first place.”
“I’m going out to look for them. They can’t have gotten far with the brake on.”
“I’m coming with you.”
He shook his head. “Wait here. That water could sweep you off your feet.”
She put the box down on the kitchen table. “You might love me, but that doesn’t make you responsible to make my choices. I canand will decide for myself. I’m coming out, too. You may need my help and it’s not as if I can get much wetter.”
“We don’t have time to argue about this.”
She brushed past him through the door. “Good. I’m glad you see it my way.”
She barely heard him swear over the sounds of wind and rain. He could curse her all he wanted, but she’d allowed her father to order her about too long to repeat the same mistakes with Phillip. If he truly wanted her, he’d find out soon enough that she wasn’t just transferring her stewardship from one man to another.
Before Phillip could stop her, she climbed down into the waist-high water swirling through the latticework that curtained the raised cottage’s supports. A murky eddy billowed the folds of her lower dress and nearly pulled her off her feet at once. Determined not to prove Phillip correct, she grabbed the lowest part of the step’s railing and steadied herself. She peered through the torrents and looked around for something else that she might grab.
The shed that had housed her velocipede had disappeared,
she realized. Not a single trace of it remained.
With far less caution, Phillip slogged past her in the direction of the alley. He was halfway there when Shae saw several thick timbers wheeling toward him in the current.
“Phillip!” The wind snatched her screamed warning and flung it uselessly away.
As if he felt it nonetheless, he turned toward her. His eyes widened a fraction of a second before the debris spun and then swung harmlessly past him. His face paled with the near miss, but still, he turned from her and continued.
It might be best if she went to the front porch in case the team had somehow lumbered to the street. Yet Shae found it almost impossible to tear her eyes from Phillip, to keep herself from scanning those gray, swirling waters for more dangerous debris. But at last she realized that even if she saw death rushing toward him, she could do nothing from this distance except watch helplessly. Only then did she force herself to turn and run back through the house.
Her feet cut through tiny wavelets that washed across both the linoleum and carpet. With each step, pain jolted through the new wound in her hand, the half-healed one in her foot. She thought, implausibly, of Christ, his hands and feet both pierced by sinners’ nails. And yet He saved mankind, she wondered. He had not been moved, as she had, to destroy.
That, she supposed, as she passed the tiny bundle that made up poor Jasper, was what made Him a deity and her only a flawed woman. For she still wished to obliterate her father’s cruelty, to drown it with the inexorable fury of wind-hurled floodwaters.
Stepping onto the front porch, she stared across the street, where a neighbor’s small barn leaned and then collapsed as easily as summer daydreams. Pieces of it, carried by the water, broke up against the steps at the gray house’s side entrance, then punched holes in the woodwork that hid the pier and beam supports.
Her heart sank at the thought of climbing down into the maelstrom, yet still, she forced herself to plunge into waves that tried to smash her against the porch.
She struggled against the rushing water. Even in the troughs, it now reached past her waist. As each wave rolled past her, she was forced to hop up and swim a few strokes to keep her head above the water. Her progress after fifteen minutes could be measured only in feet and exhaustion.
She grabbed hold of the prickly limbs of a salt cedar and craned her neck to look up and down the street. But she’d made so little progress, her vantage was little better than it had been up on the porch. She saw nothing of the horses, nor any sign of a swamped carriage.
A wave unexpectedly broke over her head. The branch tore from her grasp. She plunged backward and spun like jetsam underwater, with no clear idea of which direction might lead her to air. Something hard and heavy struck her chin, and she slammed into what she thought was collapsing latticework beneath the porch.
Grabbing it with her wounded hand, Shae fought the rush of water, fought the way it tried to drag her beneath the house, where she would certainly be drowned. Finally, her head broke the water’s surface, and she coughed and sputtered. The insult of salt water in her lungs made a struggle of refilling them with air, yet at last she managed. With strength inspired by panic, she managed to pull herself onto the porch steps and then mount them awkwardly.
On the porch, violent spasms overtook her, and she vomited clear water. Then she crawled, exhausted, into the house. She tried to shut the front door against the water’s incursion, but a combination of its strength and some shift that had warped the doorframe kept her from succeeding. Conceding defeat, she stumbled toward the back door to see how Phillip fared.
She stepped out onto the top step and stared in the direction he had gone. Like the horses and the carriage, Phillip, too, had disappeared. Not even his head was visible above the swirling water. Even over the sounds of wind and rain, she thought she heard, as well as felt, her heart pounding in terror. Had the current taken him and swept him out with it? Had the water sucked him under, or had debris struck him down?
Spots swarmed in her vision, like a mass of fat, black flies. Her knees buckled, and only her tight grasp on the railing prevented her from falling off into the churning waters.
A large chunk of latticework broke free of the house and was immediately churned under, into the floodwaters.
Just as Phillip must have been. Her stomach heaved, and she would have vomited again if she’d had anything inside it. The little house groaned, as if in sympathy, and she wondered how long before it broke up, like the barn she’d seen.
Why in God’s name had she made him bring her here? For what? A dead dog and her mother’s tainted jewelry? A portrait that soon would spin among the debris in the gulf? None of it had been worth the cost of Phillip’s life. None of it worth the man she loved, the man she’d come to think of as her future.
She saw the horse’s head first, appearing from behind a fringe of oleanders. Half-staggering and half-swimming toward her, it was followed by a second animal. Peering closer, she could see Phillip was riding on the first horse and leading the second sorrel of the team. Her head spun with relief, and, inexplicably, her knees again threatened to unhinge.
The carriage was nowhere in evidence, and Shae guessed he’d had to abandon it. Before he could reach her, Shae darted inside to retrieve the wooden box. She wanted something, at least, to show for this ill-considered side trip; it would also serve as evidence against her father.
Phillip had to climb down from his own mount to help her onto the second horse. She hooked her good hand into the harness and wrapped her legs tight about the sorrel’s ribs. She was long past caring that her skirt had hitched up high enough to reveal her legs to the knee. She couldn’t care less if she had to ride naked to get to higher ground.
Phillip didn’t attempt to speak to her as he climbed back aboard his own mount. Even if he’d tried, she doubted she would hear him. For the wind had risen to a howl, making missiles of the chunks torn from nearby rooftops.
She began to wonder if, even with the horses, they would survive their journey toward a safe haven, or if such a place yet existed on this sunken strip of land.
*
“Where in heaven’s name do you think you’re going in this weather?” Alberta’s slippers made a shuffling noise on the wood floor of the entry.
King turned up the collar of his jacket, a useless gesture against the onslaught he must face. “To find my daughter. I’m going to find Payton. He might have taken her to his home.”
She placed a restraining arm upon his shoulder. “You can’t mean to go out in this. The streets are flooding, and the only sound horse we have is upstairs chewing the moss stuffing out of Mary Shae’s mattress.”
He shrugged off his sister’s hand. “At least she’s quiet now. I thought she’d kick me through a wall when I tried to drag her downstairs.”
“Don’t go out there, King. This storm”
“ Mary Shae’s out in this weather. I’m going to fetch her home.”
Alberta shook her head. “She’s found herself a young man. Let him take care of her.”
“Do you think I’ll have my daughter wed to Phillip Payton? The man’s being blackballed from here to New Orleans for inciting Negroes to demand more. No. Mary’s ruined her only chance to marry honorably. She needn’t sour my business as well. She’ll stay here and work with me, as always.” He pulled an umbrella from a wooden stand and thwacked it like a club into his palm. “And if that agitator gets in my way, I’ll show him how we Yanks deal with men who trifle with young girls.”
“Bad blood and weak flesh. She’s no more innocent in this than Glennis. Leave her be, King. Leave it be this time. If he marries her, she won’t stir up more trouble. But she won’t ever be content to go back to that room.” Alberta’s gaze flicked to the stairwell. “Or to whatever Delilah sees fit to leave us of it.”
“We’ll see about that, Sister. You mark my words, I’m not coming back without my Mary Shae.” As if to underscore the point, he slammed the door on his way out.
*
Justine tried to keep her face a mask, but she knew she hadn’t yet spent time enough with people to learn to hide her feelings. As people moved in and out of the small room, she flinched at each strange voice, looked away from every curious gaze. With no place to retreat, she fought a vicious battle with her shyness, one she was powerless to win.
Withdrawing into silence was her last resort. But even there, she wasn’t safe for long.
A small, gnarled hand grasped hers firmly. She looked up in surprise into the eyes of the old nun, she of the delicate eyeglasses.
“I need you to help.” The skin around her brown eyes was creased, but her gaze was sharp with a natural authority.
Justine heard her own blood whooshing in her ears. Why couldn’t she at least be left alone? “No, I can’t. I I need my cane to get around.”
The old woman’s grip tightened. “I’m seventy-five years old, and I have bad corns, rheumatism in my knuckles, and bouts of constipation. With the Lord’s help, the two of us might make up one good nurse. And that’s what’s needed now, girl. You come with Sister Josephine, and I’ll set you right to work.”
Justine glanced helplessly at Lydia, who looked as pleased as Mr. Carroll’s Cheshire cat. And then, because there seemed nothing else to do, she grabbed her cane and followed the diminutive taskmistress into the crowded hall.
*
Phillip turned to peer at Shae, and a wave swept off his hat. It floated only yards before it sank. At the moment he found that inconvenience far less troubling than Shae’s pallor or the dazed way she was clinging to the mare.
The horses struggled past the point of exhaustion through waves that sometimes lifted them off of their feet. He could feel his own mount shaking with weariness. When a nearby stable groaned and then collapsed, she lacked the spirit to even start at the huge crash. Surely, the poor beast was close to breaking down, and Shae’s mount’s condition appeared little better.
Debris washed through the water: planks from houses, shattered hulls of boats, and telegraph poles that cut through the water like huge battering rams. The air was little safer, for a hail of tree limbs and timbers charged the howling winds with the promise of swift death. They had to get to shelter quickly before they both were killed.
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