The Magnolia Duchess

by Beth White

  Then he heard an uneven thumping noise approaching from the main deck, followed by a booming, irascible old voice. “Get your hands off me, you miserable swab! I can still climb a ladder! Where is he?”

  Charlie’s smile grew. He knew that voice.

  “Come down here, boy, and give your old grandfather a hand up on deck! Not you! Get away from me, I said!”

  Charlie laughed. “There’s the problem of manacles, Grandfa. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  The magnificent white head of Admiral Lord William Riverton, Earl of St. Clair and senior member of the Lords Commissioner of the Admiralty, appeared above the ladder. “Manacles? What in the name of Jupiter are you doing in manacles? Someone set him free at once, before I have the lot of you swinging from the mizzen.”

  Charlie was set free with all haste, and he ran to extend a hand to his grandfather and assist him in a rather comical ascent to the quarterdeck. But nobody was laughing as the bent but still tall and commanding admiral pulled Charlie into a warm and conspicuously nonregulation embrace.

  “Grandfa, your timing is, as usual, above reproach,” Charlie said over the lump in his throat.

  “So I see.” Grandfa let him go and thumped him on the ear.

  “Ow! What’s that for?”

  “For failure to write to me after that nonsensical request for resignation from the navy.”

  “Then you did get it? Am I released?”

  “Yes, though it pains me for a grandson of mine to turn into a landlubber when he’s still in his twenties. And an American! Do you really want to become a Yankee?”

  “Grandfa, you’ll have to meet her. Then you’ll see why.”

  The admiral rolled his hazel-and-blue-splotched eyes. “I might have known there would be a female involved. Where is she?”

  Charlie hesitated. “She’s in Mobile, just up the bay from here. Unfortunately, Admiral Cochrane has orders to attack any day now.”

  “Admiral Cochrane will be lucky if he avoids being cashiered for his sloppy management of official papers. Lost them indeed! In any case, there will be no attack on Mobile or any other American city now. The treaty has been signed and will be ratified by Congress any day.”

  “Then—then you can meet her tonight!” Giddy with joy and relief, Charlie threw his arms about his startled grandfather. “We have to go at once!”

  “Yes, yes,” Grandfa said, patting his back. “After I have put a flea in Cochrane’s ear, we’ll head right over. And you might do something about that sunburn, my boy. I don’t know any young lady who wants a suitor with a tomato for a nose.”

  MARCH 5, 1815

  NAVY COVE

  The beach that morning was warm and bright under fluffy, scudding clouds and a sun that woke diamonds in the cove at a distance. Fiona waited on the bluff, smiling as she fingered the letter from Sullivan she’d been carrying in her pocket for the last week. The day would be perfect if he could be here, but at least he was safe and well off the coast of North Carolina, doing what he was born to do—sail the seas with a salty wind in his hair and the deck of a ship beneath his feet.

  She looked down at her family gathered for her wedding, gabbling like a flock of seagulls. Charlie, dressed in a new coat of blue superfine with buff breeches and new boots, stood beside the pastor, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze. He had dressed in the barn, of all things, because he wanted to “come upon her in all her glory,” as he put it. She’d told him he’d better not appear at his wedding with manure on his boots.

  She smoothed her dress, a gauzy new white confection that Maddy had created for her. It was indeed glorious. Maddy was Mrs. Palomo now, so deliriously in love that she would make a dress free for anybody who asked. Fiona had asked before she could change her mind.

  Charlie’s grandfather would come from the house to walk her down the steps to the beach at any minute. She found the old admiral infinitely less intimidating than when she was a child, with his eyes like Charlie’s and his gruff, teasing tone when he spoke to the visiting Lanier children.

  How could a person be this happy? Surely she was going to explode into a million pieces and scatter to the winds. When Charlie and Lord St. Clair drove up in a hired gig in Aunt Giselle’s carriageway that evening two weeks ago, she had been sitting on the front porch watching Elijah play with his bilboquet. Over and over, toss the ball, land it in the cup, toss again. But it was something to do to pass the days until she could go home to Navy Cove, and Maddy had been grateful to have someone take her squirmy little boy off her hands so that she could finish her wedding dress.

  But the sight of Charlie leaping out of that carriage, tearing up the sidewalk toward her . . . even now she could hardly put into words the utter rightness of being scooped into his arms and kissed breathless. Holding his warm, living, breathing face between her hands, kissing his scarred eyebrow and sunburnt nose, whispering the words she’d held in for days and days.

  There had come a rescuer, someone whose very name struck fear into Charlie’s enemies. Fiona would never get over her gratitude to the old man who traveled across an ocean to ensure his grandson’s freedom.

  She turned now, hearing the admiral thumping along the path, his cane making a ragged rhythm out of his halting steps. When he reached her and paused, panting a little, she took his arm. Perhaps she supported him, perhaps he supported her. She smiled at him. They supported each other.

  He winked. “Ready, young lady?”

  “I am.”

  Together they descended the steps her father and Léon had built into the bluff long ago, when she was a child. They were worn from years of beach-going Lanier children, and God willing, they’d soon be more worn with her and Charlie’s children.

  The pastor from the church in Mobile had made the trip down to perform the ceremony, a little puzzled and outdone that she didn’t want to get married in the sanctuary. But Charlie had first come back into her life on the beach, and they both wanted to begin their family there as well. So a few yards from the waves sloshing onto the sand, Reverend Edwards waited patiently beside the groom.

  As Charlie watched her approach, his eyes were bright and rested, his magnificent smile something that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

  She was going to be his wife. They would get to sleep together and eat together, ride horses and tease one another and pray together whenever they wanted. Oh, God was good.

  When she reached him, Admiral St. Clair patted her hand and kissed her cheek, and gave her to Charlie. He took her hand, the signet ring on his finger pressing into hers.

  “I, Charlie, take thee, Fiona . . .”

  Reader Note

  The Magnolia Duchess was originally conceived more than fifteen years ago as a novella featuring a British naval officer who washes up on the beach at Mobile Point near the end of the War of 1812 and falls in love with a “local girl”—the daughter of a retired American senator . . . or something. The idea never got much farther than that before another project took precedence, and the “Little Mermaid” story got stuck in the “Work On Later” file. When I decided to pull it out as a perfect fit for the Gulf Coast Lanier family series, I realized a) it was going to require much more research than I’d anticipated and b) it was going to be much longer and more complex than a novella.

  I knew from preliminary research that, near the end of the War of 1812, the British had made two attempts to capture the city of Mobile, and that there was a huge battle in New Orleans over Christmas of 1814, but I had not planned to take the story to New Orleans—too complicated, too much grisly “war stuff.” Then I got hold of Winston Groom’s wonderfully entertaining nonfiction book Patriotic Fire: Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite at the Battle of New Orleans.

  What? Pirates? Buckskin-clad Tennessee militia? Duels? French Creole aristocrats? Indians? Stuffy professional British officers?

  Yes, please.

  The more I followed up plot details, the more interesting and complex the whole thing became. As Fion
a Lanier and Charlie Kincaid took on life and began to breathe, they bumped up against such real-life American heroes as Major General Andrew Jackson, Brigadier General John Coffee, and Major William Lawrence. Civilians like Louisiana Governor William Claiborne took the stage, along with Creole playboy Bernard de Marigny and his wife Anna, and of course the suave, crafty Jean Laffite and his retinue of Baratarian pirates. Because the battle action near the end of the book takes place on the sugar plantation Conseil, Louisiana militia commander Major General Jacques Villeré and his colorful family took roles in my story, as well as (offstage) the controversial Major General James Wilkinson. On the British side, Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, General John Lambert, and Major Sir Harry Smith became important secondary characters. I based their action and dialogue on military reports and diaries, as collected in a variety of sources, my primary reference being The U.S. Army in the War of 1812: An Operational and Command Study by Robert S. Quimby.

  One of my favorite characters in this story, Desi Palomo, is based on real-life interpreter Simon Favre, whom some sources claim to be an ancestor of football star Brett Favre. In mid-1813, Simon Favre was apparently involved in negotiating treaties with Choctaw chief Pushmataha after the Indian wars, then landed in New Orleans in time to assist General Jackson as an interpreter for the French Creole citizenry. Desi’s actions are purely my fabrication, but such gifted diplomats and interpreters clearly played an important role during this turbulent era.

  Some readers may be confused by geographical nomenclature in the story. For example, New Orleans was by 1814 part of the state of Louisiana and thus under American jurisdiction—though it remained very French in culture. In 1803 wily Napoleon Bonaparte had played a fast one by installing his brother as the king of Spain and using him to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase for the United States. This included Mobile as part of the Mississippi Territory (Alabama Territory didn’t split off until 1817, and it became a state in December of 1819). Nearby Pensacola was still in West Florida and therefore Spanish until the British showed up in 1814. However, I might add that all that information is open to debate, depending on which country/state/city’s archives and maps one consults.

  One of the most fascinating aspects of that brief time period is the fact that the Battle of New Orleans, as decisive an American victory as it was, was actually fought after the Treaty of Ghent, which officially brought the conflict to an end in December 1814. The War of 1812 was unpopular with New Englanders in particular because it disrupted their European trade, and by the summer of 1814, many Americans were ready to give up. Communication in those days was slow, and news of the treaty didn’t reach all parts of the United States until early March of 1815—so the news that General Jackson and his ragtag army had defeated the renowned British navy was a huge American morale-booster. It also kept the British from claiming important Gulf Coast ports in postwar settlements.

  For those of my readers who have followed the Gulf Coast Chronicles from its beginning in The Pelican Bride through The Creole Princess to The Magnolia Duchess, you may be interested in a Lanier family tree that can be found on my website at www.bethwhite.net. There are also some maps that may be helpful to envisioning locations in early Mobile and New Orleans. Further adventures of the Lanier, Kincaid, and Gonzales families can be found in my earlier books and novellas, so I hope you’ll check out other titles listed on the website and have fun with my Gulf Coast family saga.

  Warm wishes for happy reading,

  Beth White

  Mobile, Alabama

  April 2016

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank my husband, Scott, for his encouragement and his patience with my serial procrastination. I do not deserve him. And my buddy Tammy, who regularly talks me down off the ledge. And my agent, Chip MacGregor, who stays in touch when I get too far out in la-la land. And my Revell editors, Lonnie Hull Dupont and Barb Barnes, who keep me straight and encourage excellence.

  Those are the usual suspects. But this particular book wouldn’t have happened without the “horse expertise” of my cousin Dina Hawkins (it isn’t lost on me that cousins figure largely in this story) and a bright young lady named Emily Shirley. I appreciate my son Ryan’s willingness to brainstorm when I got stuck and to read the gun scenes for accuracy. Also, I’m deeply grateful for my sister Robin Burgin’s eleventh-hour plot rescue. You are the romance-novel queen, and you rock the known universe. Now you four can read the whole thing without all the typos!

  This last paragraph acknowledges two Jeffs who probably never thought they’d have anything to do with such a “girly-covered” book. Jeff Knighton, my former comrade-in-arms at LeFlore High School—art teacher extraordinaire and man of God—loaned me a book that he loved, Winston Groom’s Patriotic Fire. I kept it way longer than I meant to, but I promise I’ll give it back. Also, Jeff Gold’s enthusiasm for historical reenactments provided invaluable resources, including some great videos and pictures of military costumes and action from the War of 1812.

  Oh, one more thing. All you people who consistently ask how it’s going, when the next book is coming, how you can pray for me . . . You’ll never know how encouraging that is. Thank you more than I can say!

  Beth White’s day job is teaching music at an inner-city high school in historic Mobile, Alabama. A native Mississippian, she is a pastor’s wife, mother of two, and grandmother of two—so far. Her hobbies include playing flute and penny whistle and painting, but her real passion is writing historical romance with a Southern drawl. Her novels have won the American Christian Fiction Writer’s Carol Award, the RT Book Club Reviewers Choice Award, and the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award. Visit www.bethwhite.net for more information.

  Books by Beth White

  GULF COAST CHRONICLES

  The Pelican Bride

  The Creole Princess

  The Magnolia Duchess

  BethWhite.net

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