River Magic

by Martha Hix

  Phoebe had spoken to India, but both Connor and the object of the question whipped their faces to her. “Aunt Phoebe, that is an unkind thing to ask.”

  “It is a wig. I’m quite bald.”

  India, bald? Connor scanned her face and saw amusement. She’d been playing along, didn’t believe that magic-lamp malarkey. Just playing along! He exhaled in relief.

  “You have lovely hands, Miss Marshall,” Phoebe commented.

  That she did. Despite his bruising—not to mention his all-around aggravation—Connor felt a stir, imagining what all those piano-player hands could do to a man.

  Phoebe wasn’t finished. “Those are youthful hands.”

  “I’ve taken good care of them.”

  “No offense, but one can’t preserve everything. Aren’t you a wee past the childbearing years to think of marriage?”

  India clinked her tongue. “Isn’t it a heck of a turn when a woman can’t find her dream man until she’s sixty?”

  “It’s never too late,” Tessa said brightly, then caught herself. “Never mind. Forget I said that.”

  “Don’t fret.” India then looked straight at Phoebe. “I should imagine we’ll focus on raising pups instead of babies. I favor dalmatians.” Eyes of India ink settled on Connor, making him fear she might not be gaming. “Do you like puppy dogs, Major? What about babies? We could adopt a foundling.”

  “Well, uh, sure. No! I don’t like dogs. Or kids.” Both were lies, elicited from a defensive heart.

  “You don’t want children?” Phoebe asked, agog.

  Children? Trouble was, Connor suddenly had a mental image of a passel of young O’Briens. Good grief. Surely that crazed magic wasn’t rubbing off on him!

  “Enough! I’ll have no children. I’ll take no wife. The Civil War rages, and it’s coming to Rock Island. India, Roscoe Lawrence has ordered me to—”

  “It is good you and I stepped in, my lady.” Jinnings sighed. “I have never before seen a man so in need of a wife.”

  “Silence!” Connor shot to his feet; his stinging testicles protested the sudden move. “India, there’s no problem with the tracks leading from Washington. Lawrence will be here by day after tomorrow.”

  “Uh, oh.”

  He next addressed Jinnings. “Send a telegram. On the double. Tell Burke: Damn the ice—Connor needs help.”

  “You”—he drew India to her feet—“are under arrest.”

  Fourteen

  “I hate you for this.”

  “It could be worse.”

  India seethed at Connor and the nonchalant shrug that hallmarked his yanking her from the Lawrence quarters—his bug-eyed family as witness. It gave a stark reminder of his attitude toward her. Or lack thereof. She’d be no church mouse about it.

  “How worse?” she raged. “If I’d been dragged naked through the streets of Rock Island, the citizenry pelting me with rotten tomatoes? It was bad enough, your hauling me from the island like so much refuse, now you’ve placed me under house arrest and locked me up for hours in this awful hotel room.”

  He took his cocked hat from beneath an arm and tossed it atop the bed. “The Gowen is Rock Island town’s finest lodge.”

  “Cheapest, you mean. Lord, has a finer gentleman ever lived?” she bemoaned, eyes lifting toward the stained ceiling.

  Her gaze lowered. She glared at the sight of Connor, standing in full uniform, impeccably dressed as usual, by the battered hotel bureau. She took in the bulbous nose and blackened eyes, and hoped they hurt as much as whatever was ailing his privates.

  “Someday you’ll thank me for this,” he announced.

  Just exactly what were his plans for her? He hinted escape, yet her arrest proved in the interest of the Federal government. Her teeth would rot before she’d beg mercy.

  He, meanwhile, perused the food tray the innkeeper’s wife delivered a few minutes earlier. “Your supper’s getting cold. Eat. You need your strength.”

  Never had she had less of an appetite for anything beyond argument. “Such a hero! Every woman’s dream. I suppose you want thanks for not locking me up in a jail cell, too.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Mark my words, the natives of Illinois will take the waters of the Pontchartrain before I’ll thank you for anything.”

  “You ought to. After your talk of foundlings and puppies, you ought to beg my forgiveness for stirring my aunties up.”

  “Oh, get gone. Go see the old biddies!”

  If she never saw the O’Brien women and Uncle Omar’s double again, all the better. The threesome, still unaware of India’s true age, according to Connor, were ensconced in another part of the hotel. What part? India didn’t give a fig. She’d played the “magic lamp” game all wrong, had made a fool of herself by yapping about wanting to wed Connor . . . when he had as much interest in her as he did in taking up the veil.

  So much for give and take.

  She flounced over to the iron hotel bed, plopped down, and yanked off her hairpiece. “If you say one word about my hair being flat, I’ll throw this wig at you.”

  “I’m shaking in my boots.” He had the audacity to emit a mirthless laugh. “India, about that magic business, tell me for certain you were joking.”

  “You really are trying, what with your avid interest in getting shut of me. But, Connor, darn it, were you so furious over a silly joke that you felt the need to arrest me?”

  “Had to. Good sense demands you stay put until Burke can rescue you. So, I’d appreciate your making the best of it.”

  Rescue? He meant to let her get away, and for that she would have hugged him, if not for his pompous declarations translating to: get gone.

  “I don’t need rescue,” she said. “I am a capable adult. I got into Illinois, I can get out. But why should I do it alone? Send for Zeke. I want Zeke. He’ll be my hero.”

  Connor strode to the tray of supper, lifted the linen covering, then replied, “He fought for your honor last night. He’s the one who beat me up.”

  Determined not to howl at the idea of elderly David going after Goliath, she said breezily, “Always the hero, Zeke.”

  “Not anymore. Doot Smith caught us kissing yesterday, and bent Pays’s ear about it. Pays has lined up against you.”

  Great. Marvelous. Wonderful. Yet . . . India ached for disappointing the old darling. As she deliberated the mess in her wake, most of her anger and frustration melted into gloom. Most of all, she ached for Matt. He would pay for her actions.

  Would that he could escape! Thankfully, she’d loosened his wrist shackles. Maybe he could undo the rest. Sure. Right. How? With what?

  Her arms crossing under her breasts, she had to fight not to roll into a ball of pain. Matt, probably lost. Honoré and wee Stonewall, their loved one gone. The rest of the family maybe never again to see the last Marshall son.

  India went to the second-story window, raised it. From the distance, voices of Confederates lifted in song drifted in. Unseeing eyes looked down on the street. From somewhere seeming far away, she heard a racket above the masculine singers.

  A horse and wagon passed by. She slammed the window, but the noise echoed in her head, for the equine clip-clop and the creak of wheels recalled another day, another time. When the hearse carried Winny to the cemetery.

  I can’t let my last brother die because of me!

  Where was hope? Who could give it? She whirled around. “I must see Antoinette.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I asked.” I need to beg her to use that pinkie for Matt’s good. “Please, please fetch her.”

  “Forget her. Last I saw, she was at the hospital with Pays and Smith. If you think to appeal to her, think again. I heard her say, ’I suspected Miss Marshall a fraud.’ She once saw a black hair beneath your wig.”

  “Great.”

  “By the way, you smudged your powder when you draped across the sofa. You tend to give yourself away at times.”

  Doing things the right way had never
been her talent. Again, India melted onto the edge of the mattress. “I’m in a pickle, aren’t I?”

  “We were expecting trouble.” Connor exhaled. “I may be able to staunch some of it. I told Smith you and I weren’t kissing, that I was getting soot out of your eye. I don’t believe Pays will go so far as to implicate you as my sweetheart.”

  “Sweetheart? Huh! We’ve never been anything but adversaries.” Don’t fish for feelings that aren’t there. “Anyhow, don’t use blandishments. I hate the lies of them.”

  “Fair enough.” Pouring water from the pitcher, Connor drank a glassful. “Pays won’t implicate us as involved.”

  “He’s too much of a gentleman for that.”

  For a moment Connor said nothing, then, “That old codger worshiped you. He cried when Opal Lawrence told him you’re no member of the Sanitary Commission.”

  Poor, sweet Zeke. “Who, or what, does he think I am?”

  “He doesn’t know what to think. But after he got through crying, he said he was through with you.”

  She tried to block the image of an aggrieved Zeke. What had seemed a simple enough ploy, getting in to the prison and getting information, had taken on terrible repercussions. She prayed everything would turn out fine for each innocent victim.

  Forcing sense and sensibility, she said, “We have no guarantee Zeke won’t tell Colonel Lawrence about our ... our whatever you call it.”

  “Don’t borrow trouble.”

  “Sure. Right. I’ll simply put it out of my head.” She paused. “Connor, did anyone say anything about me being young?”

  “Who the devil would tell them? Me? Use your head.”

  She used it to stick her tongue out. “You! I hate your superiority. I hate the way you sashay around with that saber lashed to your waist. I hate you, period.”

  One hand firmly on the saber hilt, Connor took a bite of beef stew, chewing slowly. “I don’t hate you. Even if you get me court-martialed, I won’t hate you.”

  “Who gives a mouse’s behind what you—?”

  “Rat’s ass,” Connor corrected as he abandoned the ordered supper. “The expression is ’Who gives a rat’s ass?’ ”

  “Who gives a rat’s ass about you!” She collected his hat, along with her glasses and wig, and tossed the lot with all her might. The items fell impotently on the worn-out rug.

  Untying his sash, then laying the saber aside, Connor strode to the bed. “About me and you—”

  “There is no me and you.” Why couldn’t he smell like a dead fish? Why did the mixture of so very alluring male and bay rum have to beat at her, as it had during the ride from the island to here? “That was a show, back at the mansion.”

  If ever there were a show, it was now, for she ached all over for the love affair that never stood a chance. “It was a joke on my part,” she threw out, “nothing more.”

  “You had me worried.”

  “Anyhow, I told you last night not to jump to conclusions where I’m concerned.” There was no stopping her lies. “I wouldn’t have you if you were the last man on earth.”

  A flash of something—hurt?—marked his swollen hazel eyes. “Then why did you play along with my aunts?”

  “For sport.” India tossed her head. The pins loosened, and her coil of hair cascaded to a shivering shoulder. “What fun it was, baiting your deranged family.”

  “You were unkind to play with them.”

  She reached for the pillow, made a ball of it, then threw herself and the pillow down across the coverlet. A button at her bodice popped, flew. Being disheveled was her last concern.

  “They weren’t kind to me. I might’ve been week-old fish.”

  “Put yourself in their place. How would you have acted?”

  “Stop trying to make me feel bad!”

  Again, he exhaled, this time quite loudly. He started to turn, but stopped. After a few long moments, he stepped closer, bracing his hands across India’s hips and leaning over her. Indecision in his expression, he fought some nameless battle.

  “I don’t want to humiliate you.” His gaze softened. “I want to help. Help you get back to your family, safe and sound.”

  Her heart constricted. Why couldn’t he want more? Why couldn’t that silly wish for magic be strong enough to work? Why didn’t he just pull her into his arms!

  And then a miracle happened. His was a whisper when he said, “I have my needs, as well,” and stretched out beside her to pull her into those arms. “Don’t make me try to explain this.”

  Pressing her to the length of him, he let his fingers roam her bottom. Her hand went around his shoulder. The seductive power of his scent couldn’t compare to the power of his being.

  The outside world, along with the doubts and insecurities in her heart, subsided, for Connor brushed his lips across hers. Maybe he wasn’t a lost cause.

  With a groan he deepened the kiss and gave her hope. Against her breast, his heart beat wildly, her own meeting that cadence. Sweetly, rhythmically, he nudged his tongue against hers—until she met his probing caress with the same ardency.

  His hands knew all the right places to find, to stroke with just the right amount of pressure. Mindless desire swept through her. In the fog of her wits, she knew he was doing an expert job at freeing the last of her bodice buttons. Connor’s head lowered. His lips kissed a trail down her throat, pausing at her collarbone, moving on to her chemise-cloaked breast.

  At that same moment he gathered her skirts up, he smoothed a palm along stockinged legs that had never known a man’s touch, save for his own. “So soft,” he murmured. “Like silk.”

  “You aren’t soft.” Her words coursed with passion. “You’re—”

  “Hush.” His coursed just as ardently. “For once, just hush.”

  How could she talk, now that he was kissing her like this? Protest! the reasonable part of her wits shouted. It was wrong, allowing him to toy with her heart, with her body, with her soul, yet he, hawk of war, was her heart’s desire, at least for this moment caught in heaven. She quelled the voice of reason.

  A groan of passion on his lips, he murmured, “Indy,” then affixed those lips to her suddenly puckered nipple. One hand on her jaw, fingers combing into her hair, he suckled with impassioned significance. The cotton material of her chemise felt as wet as the area between her legs—oh, how she thrilled in both sensations. And as if she were the most delicate in all womankind, he continued to command the treasure found, laving it long after she cried out in pleasure.

  Finally, he paused to look into her eyes. “My God, you are passionate.”

  She, passionate? It was he! “We seem suited in bed.”

  “In bed, it’s true.” He nudged his erection against her leg. The movement caused him to wince in pain, yet he didn’t cease his ravishment. His skillful fingers parted her split drawers and found the thatch of moist hair covering a place that drew a feminine shudder of delight when he massaged it.

  She strained against the pressure of his touch, her nails digging into his shoulders. His name, she cried, over and again.

  “Oh, Indy, my precious,” he moaned and once again kissed her mouth. “I hurt for you.”

  No doubt he meant his physical discomfort in the aftermath of taking a beating, but hurt finally brought India to her senses. She had hurt enough people.

  Pushing him away, she scooted across the bed. “Stop.”

  “No.”

  He tried to brush hair from her temple; she prevented it. “No more, Connor. No more.”

  “Let’s make the best of these moments. They fade fast.”

  “Yes.” She rolled to her feet, straightened her clothes. Unable to look at Connor, she turned from him. “If we’d gone on, a baby could have started. Granny Mabel says women are susceptible at certain times of the month. And I can’t be certain this wasn’t one of those nights.”

  “A child is a complication we don’t need.”

  “How very true. How very practical. We shouldn’t complicate our lus
t.” Yet she wouldn’t allow a possible child to be reduced to nothing more than a pest. “I won’t let an innocent babe die on the gallows with me.”

  “You won’t die, Indy. I won’t let you.”

  At least he didn’t rank her with pests. “I can’t leave my brother here, not with Lawrence knowing about me.”

  “He won’t link you to Marshall.”

  “We can’t be certain of that.” She yearned to turn and look Connor in the eye, but if he disillusioned her, India couldn’t trust herself to see it. “Will you help Matt, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Yes? Her heart turned over. That he would do anything counter to the Union flag both amazed and thrilled her.

  She whirled around. “How? How will you aid him?”

  “It’ll be best if you don’t ask too many questions.”

  She would trust Connor on this. But his sacrifice, no matter how it turned out, would live forever in her heart.

  India’s smile of trust radiating to him, Connor retied his sash of profession. He’d rather throw off his clothes, haul her back into bed, then do or say anything to quash her disgust for the unsuitable bachelor who was Major Connor O’Brien.

  Not a good idea.

  “Let’s talk,” he said tersely, unwilling to show how close he was to begging for more of India. “Get rid of the disguise.”

  “I have no other clothes.” Glancing at the empty buttonhole, she swept a hand over her skirts. “I can’t stay in these.”

  “I’ll collect what you need.” At her nod of assent, he continued. “Be ready to move on the morrow. Burke should be here by afternoon. He’ll take you home.”

  “What about Natchez?”

  Although he’d asked for no questions, he knew India wouldn’t be satisfied without some peace of mind. “Matt Marshall will go free. Tonight.” Had he made yet another mistake, promising to save the man? Probably. But save him, Connor would. “You’ll have your wish. I will pardon him.”

  She wilted on the bed’s edge, relieved.

  Were his plans for the love of India? Never had he been in love, and couldn’t define it for the life of him, but the compulsion to cater to her obsessions was a battle he had no will or wish to fight.