Magnolia Nights

by Martha Hix

“Agreed.” Gently she bit down on his thumb. “I saw you, and I was threatened. You were a rake.”

  “Still am.”

  “I was ignorant, but I wanted your kisses—probably more.”

  “I gave up my quest for Marian upon laying eyes on you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me!”

  “Maybe I should’ve.”

  “You were threatening my family,” she said.

  “You were threatening my sanity.”

  “None of that matters.” She slid closer to him. “But I’m glad I stole that pin. It gave you an excuse to badger me.”

  “Whoa, m’amoureuse. I would’ve found an excuse.”

  “You really were a scoundrel.”

  “Still am.” He bent his head to hers, brushing her lips with his tongue. “Admit it—you like a scoundrel.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  There were a couple of points he had to get out of the way. He brought her hand to his groin. “But I’m not guilty of giving this to Evelyn—I know you must be wondering. Nor am I guilty of doing the same with Aimée Thérèse—not since I was seventeen, anyway. You’re the only woman I’ve wanted, or needed, since that night in the St. Charles.”

  A full smile lifted her cheeks. “I’m happy for that.”

  “Enough about the past. Let’s concentrate on now.” He eased away. “Have you ever taken a twilight walk in the surf?” he asked, hoping she hadn’t. As he had been the first man to make love to her, he wanted to be the first to introduce her to this experience.

  “No, never,” she whispered.

  “Then there’s no time like the present. Come on, sweet angel, we’re going swimming!”

  Woodley jumped across his lap and onto the beach without further ado, running for the water’s edge, and Paul took hold of Emma’s waist. He pulled her forward, and slid her body over his growing heat. Bending his head, he nuzzled her ear. And felt her shiver. Her arms wound around his back. Her breasts were flattened against his chest as he claimed her honeyed lips. This was home, this was what he wanted and needed and ached for. This was Emma.

  His hands, as well as hers, moved quickly to dispense with clothing. Naked. They were both nude—the way they were meant to be. Nothing between them.

  He stepped back to drink in her loveliness. “All these months we’ve been apart I thought I remembered every detail of your body, but seeing you now . . . You’re more beautiful than I imagined. So blonde. So well formed. Your figure’s so smooth and sleek. No scars. No sags. Yet I’d love you however you came to me.”

  “That goes for you, too. For always.”

  On the sand, with the ocean’s roar in their ears, he took her in his arms and buried his face in a cloud of blond hair. Their lovemaking was sweet and tender, wrought by the affirmation of eternal love.

  Holding Emma in his arms, Paul savored the afterglow. Despite their pledges to one another in the past, he realized their basic problems hadn’t been alleviated. Nonetheless, he prayed their differences would never again separate them.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Viewed through the eyes of a woman in love, Galveston was a wonderful place. Uncivilized perhaps, and a town where grandeur was a foreign term, yet Emma gained a whole new appreciation of its charm. The climate lacked Louisiana’s oppressive heat and rag-wringing humidity. People, rugged and jovial, drank grog by the gallons. They ate johnnycakes by the stacks, seafood by the bushel. The beach was for running barefoot . . . and for making love. Most of all, this was the Texas Paul loved.

  And Emma was determined to live there! That in mind, she had enlisted Anthaline’s assistance in finding a house. Now, standing in the yard of the only one available for purchase, Emma gave it an uncritical eye. It wasn’t a mansion like Feuille de Chêne, but it was cozy. A few flowers here and there would do wonders, and a fence would keep Woodley in and the roaming pigs out. Mostly, this was a place to put down the roots Emma craved.

  Inhaling the sea breeze, she laced her fingers with Paul’s big ones. “Do you like the house?”

  “It’s a shack on stilts. Don’t look at me like that!” He turned her into his arms to kiss the top of her blond tresses. “It’s nice. But we have a home in Louisiana.”

  “Paul, aren’t you going to sell the plantation? The year’s up now.”

  “No, I’m not going to part with it. I won’t take your home away from you.”

  She should have been ecstatic. He was willing to sacrifice his goal for her comfort. “Anywhere you are is my home.”

  “Until Santa Anna gets it through his thick skull that Texas belongs to Texans, my home is at sea.” Paul squeezed her shoulders. “And Louisiana is where you need to be, not in a frame shack here in Galveston.”

  “It’s not a shack, and”—she turned to get another look at the house—“I’m going to have it put in tiptop shape. Since it’s on the Strand, it’ll make a wonderful location for my office.”

  “Oh, Emma . . .” He wanted to make her happy, craved having her at his side, but he quailed to think about involving her in war. He stepped back, flattening his palm on a weather-beaten hitching post. “I want you to go back to Louisiana. With the Centralist Army moving overland, you aren’t safe here.”

  “We’re over two hundred miles from the territory Santa Anna wants.”

  “And less than a mile from the coast he’ll invade if we don’t stop him.”

  “Why do I get the feeling this is the prelude to, ‘Emma, I’m leaving Galveston’?”

  “Ah, the intuition of my woman . . . !” He stepped forward to cup her chin. “General Peraza’s in Campeche. I’m sailing there tomorrow. I’ve got to renew our alliance. Santa Anna’s ready to attack. The Yucatecans first, us second. Mark my words.”

  A frisson of fear ran the length of her spine, but she had to be brave. “Paul, I know the Navy needs money. I have quite a bit left from my dowry. Take it.”

  “No. This is Texas’s battle, not yours.”

  “It’s for my Texas. This is my home now, and I want you to take the money.”

  Paul chuckled inwardly at the irony of using Rankin Oliver’s money to protect the Lone Star republic from the aggressors who had battened his wealth. “I refuse.”

  Nothing she’d said had changed his mind. She quit arguing. “While you’re gone I’ll take care of matters at Feuille de Chêne—find a buyer, close my practice.”

  “And free the slaves.”

  “Of course.”

  “Yoo-hoo!”

  Both Paul and Emma turned to the booming voice of Anthaline Lightfoot. Walking up the sand-packed street, the bearlike woman held Woodley under one arm and waved a greeting with the other. The dog’s tail thumped against her hip as he barked a greeting.

  Paul leaned over to whisper in Emma’s ear. “And while I’m gone you’ll have him to warm your feet at night.”

  His words were drowned by Woodley’s enthusiastic barks.

  “Hush, you scalawag.” Anthaline touched the dog’s nose with her fingertip, and he nipped it playfully. “And as for the two of you, are you going to buy the house?”

  “Yes,” Emma replied, turning to her husband. “I’m going back to Louisiana for a while, but this is our home. Our future.”

  His eyes held love and a trace of uncertainty. “Yes, wife, our future,” he said as if he wondered just what fate had in store for them.

  Five days later and with night as cover, Paul skirted the Virgin Vixen around the Centralist Navy blockade of Campeche bay. He dropped anchor line in a protected cove away from the town, then dressed in black and rowed the dinghy to shore.

  Into the walled city—past shacks, haciendas, and the Cathedral of La Concepción—he stole, slipping through the streets and making for the fort. Two sentinels stood watch at the stone fortress. Luckily, one of the men recognized Paul as friend not foe, and he opened the creaking wooden gate and led him through the arched courtyard to Colonel Martin Peraza of the Yucatecan Army.

  “Word has it General Bar
ragan’s army is bombarding the coast at Telchac,” Paul said.

  “Sí. And General Ampudia’s men are advancing on this city. Commodore Marin’s navy supports them . . . you saw his ships in our harbor.” Peraza, a man of medium height and dark complexion, rested his right elbow on the palm of his left hand, and paced back and forth across the Spartan command room. “I must be frank with you. I fear the end is near.”

  “Don’t give up now,” Paul said. “Their armies are divided. If we can keep them that way, they won’t win.”

  “Ah, mi amigo, that is wishful thinking.”

  “No. It’s planning. Commodore Moore and I want you to know that we are willing to drive off the navy that supports those foot soldiers. We’ve done it before, and we will again. Your peninsula and my Republic both have a vested interest in keeping the Centralists in their own bays.”

  “Your president doesn’t agree.”

  “It is, as usual, a point of money. Sam Houston issued Exchequer notes to support our fleet, but unfortunately he didn’t release the cash.” Paul grimaced. “To his way of thinking, Texas cannot afford another war. We are, as you know, a bankrupt nation. Houston hangs on to the idea that diplomacy not salvos will bring peace.”

  “Then he is a fool.” Peraza folded into his chair. “My fellow Yucatecans were foolish, too, to trust Santa Anna’s peace initiatives. If he had wanted peace, he’d have sent emissaries not armies to this peninsula.”

  “Exactly.” Paul leaned over the desk. “Moore and I want to help you . . . and help ourselves. I hope you can appreciate our predicament. We need money. You have money. Give us sufficient funds to outfit our fleet, and we will chase the Moctezuma and the Guadalupe out of these waters. Then your army has a fighting chance at winning.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “Twenty thousand U.S. dollars now, and our usual monthly stipend thereafter.”

  “All right,” Peraza said. “The money is yours.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  They exchanged salutes, and Paul turned on his heel. The future had never looked brighter. It was time to return to New Orleans to oversee the provisioning and manning of the fleet, what was left of it—time to return to Emma.

  “Don’t be hasty, Captain Rousseau. I give you the money with stipulations. You must stay here in Campeche for a while. Governor Barbachano and I need your advice on dealing with the Centralist Navy. I will send the Aguila to your commodore, and he can see to manning your ships. Is that agreeable?”

  Paul nodded. Emma would have to wait.

  Emma was proud of all that had been accomplished at Feuille de Chêne. The new owner was on pins and needles to take possession. Sugar cane grew high and stout. And the big house, plus all the surrounding buildings, sparkled from elbow grease and new paint. But she missed Cleopatra and Ben, who had returned to New Orleans. More than anything, she missed Paul.

  Her medical practice was winding down, with the exception of one patient. In her office, she collected the paraphernalia necessary to ease Simon Dyer’s discomfort. The man, who looked to be seventy but was in his fifties, was lying on the examining couch. He was a rack of bones; his face was gray and sunken; his chest heaved for breath.

  She had fashioned a cone from a metal cup, had attached a short length of tubing to it and a valved bottle of sulfurous ether. Placing the cone over his mouth, she released a small amount of the rarified fumes. Within moments the tenseness of his body eased. Breathing easier herself, Emma closed the valve and stepped back.

  Simon giggled. “Magic, gal. You’re magic.”

  “I’ve been accused of working magic.”

  “Ah, gal,” he said, throwing his arms wide, “’tis a wonder you are. If I were young and didn’t have this consumption, I’d steal you from Étienne’s boy.”

  Étienne’s boy? “I thought you told me you didn’t know my husband. Apparently you knew his father.”

  Drunkenly Simon swayed to his feet. “Course I know ’em. Know ’em both. Was Étienne’s friend. Was his second in the duel that killed him.”

  Emma’s pulse raced. “Then you can attest there was no foul play involved in his death?”

  “Give me another whiff of that rotten-egg concoction of yours,” Simon demanded, his chest rattling, as he lay back, “and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  She replaced the cone, then took it away. “As you were saying . . .”

  “I’m a dying man, so I’ve got nothing to lose.” He laughed. “Oh, there was foul play all right. Your uncle blackmailed me into being part of his evil scheme. Threatened to tell my wife and the world about me. Couldn’t let that happen, so I went along with his plan. Fixed the firing pin. Étienne took aim at Rankin, but his trigger finger got nothing.”

  Emma shuddered and closed her eyes. Paul had been right! She recalled the slurs that had been made against his father, and she ached to right the wrongs of the past, to soothe her husband.

  A wash of cold reality froze in her veins. To do those things would implicate Uncle Rankin! What should she do? She was caught between the two men she loved beyond reason.

  “Hate Rankin Oliver,” Simon was saying. “Used me all these years. Made a puppet out of a man. Hate him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Simon curled back his lip. “I fixed him up with that woman in Sisal. His mistress. He liked her, maybe loved her, and he never liked anybody. I went to her hacienda and took a club to her head, that I did! Just afore I did I told her, ‘’Tis a greeting from your lover. He sent me to kill you.’”

  Emma was horrified by this confession of murder. “What . . . what were the two of you doing in the Yucatán?”

  “Selling guns and ammunition to the Centralists. Ha-ha! Rankin didn’t have a part of it, not really. ’Twas me who was making a profit, but I made it look like he was to blame. He was trying to catch me at my own game. Using himself as a decoy, letting the woman think he was involved. After she died, he wanted to stop the shipment, but it was too late. Too late. I had the papers she was going to turn over to Paul. Papers that had Rankin’s handwriting all over them.”

  “Those papers implicated my uncle as the guilty party in the arms sale?”

  “Oh yes. Implicated him good. Real good. Never thought I could trick him, but I did. Got him to sign a stack of legitimate papers—I’d stuck the agreement between them, you see. Made sure he was in a hurry, so he didn’t have time to read them all.” Hatred, deep and evil, was reflected from the depths of Simon’s soul into his eyes. “Then he couldn’t stop me. The weapons and powder reached the Mexs. Ha-ha! Old patriotic Rankin—his only good quality, I might add—stands to be blamed for supplying arms to the people who will crush their way across this land.”

  Stunned into silence, Emma’s hand went to her lips. She tried to sort through Simon Dyer’s confession. Uncle Rankin was guilty of blackmailing this man into helping murder Étienne Rousseau. And apparently he had used Simon in the ensuing years, until his accomplice had had enough of it. Her uncle had suspected Dyer of selling arms to the Centralists, had gone along with the plan in order to trap him. A woman had died as a result, and the Centralists had received the shipment of arms. None of that said much for Rankin Oliver’s character.

  Nevertheless she loved her uncle and he returned that love. His crimes didn’t diminish those facts.

  What about Paul? He had been right all along about his father, and he deserved to know the truth. She must tell him!

  All of a sudden a warning bell pealed in her brain. Her father’s office flashed into her thoughts. Behind his desk was a tapestry stitched by Emma’s mother, a reminder of those things symbolizing the physician: the caduceus, a staff with two entwined serpents and two wings at the top; and the Hippocratic oath.

  As a girl Emma had read the latter over and over, committing each word to memory, and when Dr. Boulogne had signed her certification, she had raised her right hand and recited that solemn pledge.

  And now the last passage preyed
on her conscience. “. . . Whatsoever things I see or hear concerning the life of men, in my attendance on the sick or even apart therefrom, which ought not to be noised abroad, I will keep silence thereon, counting such things to be as sacred secrets.”

  That oath would keep Emma from telling Paul, from telling anyone. An ethical doctor could not under any circumstances relay a confidence uttered by a patient.

  Caught between the two men she loved plus a code of honor, Emma was tied to the past. A past that needed to be cleared for future happiness. As long as Uncle Rankin’s misdeeds went unknown, there would forever be a gap between her and her husband.

  “Gotta go.” Simon swayed to his feet again. “Feel better now.”

  On knees weakened from ill health and induced intoxication, he made for the door. Twice he stumbled on the stairs leading down from the office, but Emma bolstered him.

  The cool night air was sobering. Simon’s gnarled hand went to his forehead. My God, what had he done!

  He mounted his gelding and rode away. Far away.

  Emma didn’t know what to do or which way to turn. Her uncle was to sail to Feuille de Chêne at the crack of dawn the next day. She had to find some way to get at the truth.

  She used their mutual enjoyment of a morning ride as an excuse to get Uncle Rankin alone. Astride a chestnut mare she followed his bay as he rode past the slave quarters and into the marshy woods adjacent to the plantation.

  “Wait up, Uncle!” she called through the thicket. “We need to talk.”

  He glanced backward, pulled in on the reins, and dismounted. He walked toward her. “What’s on yer mind, Emmie?”

  As he helped her from the sidesaddle, she said, “How do you feel about Santa Anna’s campaign against the Yucatecans?”

  His fingers stiffened momentarily, but he called up nonchalance. “Not much of anything.”

  “Even if it affects me?”

  “Why would it affect ye?”

  “I’m married to a Texan. I’m a Texan myself . . . now. If Santa Anna conquers Texas, I’ll be in danger.”