Savannah Scarlett

by Becky Lee Weyrich

  Her complaint made him grin, but he dared not let her hear his amusement. “You don’t have any idea where you are?”

  “No.” He heard that little-girl pout in her voice now, the same wheedling tone she had used to get her way with him since he was ten—the kid from south of Gaston Street who delivered the evening paper—and she was eight—the gifted, beautiful, justly spoiled only child of one of the Garden City’s first families. “I haven’t the faintest. Bolt, will you come get me?”

  “I can’t, honey, not till you tell me the name of the place.” He made an effort to be gentle with her, coaxing. He could tell from the sharp edge in her voice that she was in a fragile state. “Isn’t there a matchbook somewhere in the room?”

  “It’s a goddamn non-smoking room!” she exploded. “Can you imagine such a thing? Why, in Europe…”

  “Honey, you’re not in Europe any longer,” he reminded her gently. “Check the bathroom. Maybe the name’s on the towels or the wrappers on the bars of soap.”

  Mary Scarlett uttered a martyred sigh, then Bolton heard the receiver clatter against a hard surface. He waited in silence until she came back after several minutes. She spat out the name of the chain motel as if it tasted nasty in her mouth.

  “Okay. You sit tight, Mary Scarlett. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Hurry, Bolt! I want to see you.”

  “I will, darlin’.”

  He replaced the receiver before he said, still staring at the phone and imagining her never-to-be-forgotten face framed in silky, smoky hair as black as Bonaventure Cemetery at midnight, “I want to see you, too, Mary Scarlett. I really, truly do.”

  But, God, how he dreaded it!

  Mary Scarlett Miguel, née Lamar, clung to the receiver for a few moments after Bolton Conrad hung up. It gave her some measure of security, thinking how his voice had been so near only seconds ago. Finally, she replaced it gently, then gripped her arms to try to stop shivering. It was going to be a hot day. The chill she felt came from inside, down deep in her heart somewhere. She had never thought she would be able to face Bolt again, not after what she did to him. Allen was different. He had never loved her for who she was, but for what she represented. Only after all these years had she come to understand the truth about the two men who had wanted to marry her. Knowing the truth would make facing Bolt that much harder.

  “Stop it, Mary Scarlett!” she said loudly, angrily. “You’ve got to get hold of yourself.”

  Her sudden outburst drained away the last of her strength. She felt almost sick, she was so tired. Even though she had sent the notice of her return to the Savannah paper as insurance to keep herself from backing out on her plans to come home, she hadn’t thought to make advance airline reservations. Consequently, she’d had to do some country-hopping to get back to the States. She had been traveling for three days, sleeping in airports, hardly eating the whole way.

  Maybe simple fatigue was the reason she was seeing things. Like the soldiers in the cemetery. The last army she knew of that had occupied that space was Sherman’s troops when they’d made their infamous March to the Sea. Her family had always taken a lot of pride in the knowledge that one of their ancestors was involved in saving Savannah from that Yankee general’s torches. She tried to remember the story exactly, but her brain was too numb to function. She let it go for the moment. There were more important matters to sort out in her mind.

  Crossing her long, ivory silk-sheathed legs, Mary Scarlett stroked a leaping orange flame from her gold lighter. After a moment, the slender tip of her Spanish cigarette glowed. Inhaling deeply, she held the smoke inside for several seconds, closing her eyes, savoring the deep acrid bum before she breathed it out in fine twin streams through flared nostrils.

  “Jesus! How did it come to this?” With the back of her wrist, she blotted sudden tears that squeezed from the corners of her eyes.

  She meant, of course, her unexpected return to Savannah—more unexpected to Mary Scarlett herself than to anyone else. If she was going to come back eventually anyway, why hadn’t she returned after her father, Big Dick Lamar, disappeared so mysteriously six years ago? If not then, why hadn’t she come after her mother—the fragile, elegant, terrified Amelia Lucy Robillard Lamar—had accidentally killed herself? While trying to kill the pain of her guilt and loneliness with peach brandy and Valium, she had taken a false, drunken step that sent her careening over a balcony railing “carved by the master slave craftsman Cupidon back in 1852 from one solid piece of mahogany from the Indies,” as the guidebooks all stated.

  Mary Scarlett knew the answer even as she asked herself the question. In her heart and soul she had never really left Savannah. Her marriage to Raul had held her prisoner in an alien land. Only her husband’s sudden death had released her to return to Savannah.

  She wore mourning white. Black was for grieving widows, women who had wept at their husbands’ deaths and wailed at their funerals. Wives who hadn’t prayed to be free from the horrors of a mad, violent, passionate marriage that kept itself afloat on a vast sea of gin and an endless river of lies.

  Raul and their love-hate relationship had been her only reality for the past seven years. Now it all seemed like a dream—hot afternoons in the plaza de toros in Barcelona, the smell of blood in the sand, the roar of cheers, the roar of death, the drunken roar of gin inside her head. The flash of the blazing sun off Raul’s traje de luces, his “suit of lights.” His dazzling smile, his graceful, manly moves. How she had hated it … and him, at times. But there had been other occasions when her passion for her dark-souled Spaniard had known no bounds.

  In order to bear those bloody afternoons of the corrida, Mary Scarlett had played a game of her own invention. As she watched her great torero in the ring, she had pretended she could see beneath the silk and sequins, see that beautiful, naked body under his suit of lights. She would visualize the two of them in bed, making their own wild brand of love, so that she didn’t have to watch the swords tear the flesh of the bulls or see the flash of blood-lust in her lover’s black eyes—the same look she sometimes saw when he came to her bed.

  A shiver ran through her. She stubbed out the cigarette in the little gold ashtray from her purse. After brushing a stray ash from her slim white skirt, she rose and went to the window. From the second floor she could see only patches of light through the drifting curtain of Spanish moss that cloaked the huge oak outside. It was early, just after nine, but already a few cars moved lazily along behind the first tour buses of the day. A horse clopped by, pulling a bright red buggy stuffed with gaping, camera-snapping tourists. She frowned as another midnight memory flashed through her mind.

  This vehicle wasn’t the same as the one she’d seen only a few hours ago. Or had she really seen it—that closed, death-draped carriage drawn by four black-plumed horses? And those strange people in their old-fashioned clothes— who could they have been? Where had they come from? Had she imagined it all or did Savannah have another face that it showed only in the deepest, darkest hours of the night? Was the old city welcoming her home or warning her away?

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she scoffed, trying to shake off such grim thoughts. Savannah had always been a place of mystery and magic, spirits and superstitions. But even this witching old city couldn’t keep a secret like that.

  “I must have imagined it all,” she murmured. “It’s the strain of the trip. I’ll be okay once Bolton gets here. He’s always known how to calm me down.” She sighed. “I should have married him.”

  Her own words shocked her. Never before had she been brave enough to admit the truth to herself—the truth of the fact that she’d made a mistake by running away from the only man who might have made her happy. Maybe she was stronger now than she had thought.

  She allowed herself a smile. “This could be a breakthrough,” she whispered. She might even dare now to let herself think about all that had happened.

  “But not right this minute,” she wa
rned. “Not until I’ve seen Bolt again. God! What if he’s married?”

  A knock at the door spun her around. She ran to open it.

  “Are you married?” she demanded before even saying hello.

  Instantly, she saw the shock in his deep-set eyes. Shock at her question and shock at the color of her hair. He had never seen her as a blonde. No one here had.

  Bolton Conrad—taller by a foot than Mary Scarlett, tanned, tough, with just a hint of silver at his dark temples to add distinction—lifted his naked left hand for her to see. Then he cupped her cheek.

  “As you may remember, darlin’, I considered it once. Once was enough.” His voice was husky with emotion.

  She clutched his hand and kissed it—rained kisses all over his knuckles, his palm, his wrist, breathing in the clean, ocean-fresh fragrance of his aftershave, the well-remembered musk of the man himself.

  “Thank God, Bolt! Thank God!”

  He hadn’t meant to do it, but he could no more keep from kissing those perfect, pouting lips than he could stop breathing.

  Mary Scarlett melted into his arms. More than anything in the world, she needed to be kissed by Bolton Conrad right now—the way he had kissed her a long, long time ago. Sweet and soft and with so much tenderness that she didn’t have to ask herself if she still cared for him. Locked in an embrace, their very souls touching, she trembled in his arms from the onslaught of warm memories and old sensations flooding her heart.

  After several minutes, Bolton pulled away. He stared down into the dewy glow of her jewel-blue eyes. “Mary Scarlett? Are you propositioning me?” he teased gently.

  She shook her head, still clinging to his big, warm hands. “No. I just couldn’t stand the thought of you married to some other woman. I know it’s selfish of me, Bolt, but in my mind you’ll belong to me forever. I’ve always been that way about my most treasured possessions. And you’re definitely one of them,” she added in a soft purr.

  That pretty well summed it up. His smile faded along with his hopes. Mary Scarlett had never really loved him the way he loved her. She had simply possessed him—mind, body, soul, and heart. She had thought of him the way she’d thought of her Austin Healy or her mink coat or the antique mirror she and Granny Boo had always treasured so.

  “I reckon you’ve just put me in my place, honey. I guess I know for sure now why you came back.”

  “Bolt? What do you mean?” She stared at him, her smile fading. She didn’t yet understand why she’d returned to Savannah. So how could he know?

  “The house on Bull Street,” he answered matter-of-factly. “It’s time for you to make up your mind what you plan to do with it. Didn’t you come back to see Miss Lucy’s lawyers? If you don’t claim it and move in within the next two months, the place will go to the Telfair Academy. It will be the newest museum house on the tours.”

  “Oh. The house.” She hadn’t lost her soft Geechee accent, pronouncing the word “hoose” in time-honored Savannah style.

  “You mean you didn’t know? I was sure your mama’s lawyers had contacted you.”

  “If they did, the letter probably arrived after I left. I’ve been traveling for a couple of months, trying to work up the nerve to come back here, I guess.”

  “Well, this is a real stroke of luck. You got home in the nick of time.”

  “Did I?” she asked distractedly.

  “Are you saying you don’t want the old house? Mary Scarlett, I know the place holds a lot of bad memories for you, but you shouldn’t rush your decision. If nothing else, keeping it would be a sound financial move. If you decide you don’t want it, you can sell it later. There are people from all over begging to buy these antebellum houses and restore them. You could make enough to live comfortably for years.”

  “You mean sell it to a stranger? Never!” she snapped.

  “Then what are you going to do, honey?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been so long.”

  “It needs some work, I’m sure. No one’s lived in it since your mother passed on. But everything’s still there.” He looked away, not wanting to say what he was about to, but knowing he couldn’t stop the words from coming. “Everything, Mary Scarlett. Even your wedding dress.”

  “And my mirror?”

  Bolt nodded. “That, too, I suppose. Your mother wrote specific instructions that nothing was to be touched until you came home. She left enough money to pay the taxes for a few years. I guess she figured you’d have to come back eventually. She wanted you to have the place, Mary Scarlett. It’s part of your heritage.”

  Mary Scarlett ran trembling fingers through the thick waves of her silver-blond hair. “I can’t think about that right now.”

  “Do you want me to call Miss Lucy’s lawyer and tell him you’re back?”

  “Would you?” she begged. “Lawyers always make me nervous.”

  He chuckled at that.

  “Oh, I don’t mean you, Bolt. Let’s just get my things and get the hell out of this awful, depressing place.”

  Bolt gathered up her two pastel tapestry bags. “You’re traveling mighty light,” he commented.

  “All the rest is being shipped. Once I decided to leave, I was in too much of a hurry to bring everything along.”

  He looked at her oddly. “Then you’re planning to stay for good?”

  “Of course,” she answered, hurrying ahead of him into the hallway. “Where else would I go?”

  Again the bullfighter came to mind. “You’re alone, Mary Scarlett?”

  “Yes!” she answered, without explanation.

  Bolton wanted to ask why she was alone, but he didn’t. He would hear the whole story when Mary Scarlett got ready to tell all. She was never one to be rushed.

  They didn’t have far to go. Bolton decided the best place to take her for the time being was to his bachelor apartment in the old cotton warehouse overlooking River Street. Only minutes later, they were on Factor’s Walk at his front door.

  The instant they reached the old ballast stone building, an odd dizziness overcame Mary Scarlett. She had felt this same way when she saw the fires in the cemetery and the black-draped coach hours before. She balked short of the doorway. “Why are we coming here? He knows about this place. He’ll find us. I don’t want to see anyone. Especially not him!”

  Bolton turned and stared at her. Her face looked flushed and her eyes glassy. Her voice belonged to a stranger. “There’s no one else here, Mary Scarlett. What’s going on?”

  She blinked at him, her eyes wide and unfocused, her lips pressed in a tight line of genuine fear. “You live here?” she whispered at length.

  He nodded. “Yes, I live here. All these old warehouses and cotton factors’ offices have been made over into apartments, artists’ studios, and shops. I think you’ll like my place.”

  She hesitated, still looking doubtful. “You’re sure this isn’t a trick? He’s not hiding inside, waiting to catch us together?”

  “I don’t know who you mean, but there’s no one in my apartment. We’ll be alone, just you and I.”

  Her expression changed suddenly. Her color returned to normal; her sapphire eyes sparkled in the morning sun. “Slow poke!” she said with a laugh. “I’m getting absolutely faint standing out here in the heat. Why don’t you go ahead and unlock the door?”

  Thoroughly puzzled by her odd behavior, Bolton did just that. A short time later, they were comfortably seated in his living room, sipping mimosas and watching a cruise ship pass by on the Savannah River. Mary Scarlett seemed herself again and was obviously enchanted by his masculine bachelor abode, with its earth tone decor to match the river view.

  “What did you do with our house?” she wanted to know, referring to the palatial new old-style lowcountry mansion that he had designed and built for them to live in after they were married.

  “Sold it.”

  “Our beautiful house?”

  “Had to,” he said in a clipped tone. �
��The place was haunted.”

  “It was brand new!”

  “But your ghost was in every room, Mary Scarlett. I could never have lived there alone.”

  She smiled at him. “That’s sweet, Bolt darlin’.”

  Her comment galled him. There was nothing sweet about it. It was damn sad! If she hadn’t run off, that place would be their home now, with babies in the nursery, dogs in the yard, and azaleas bursting into brilliant bloom while Cherokee roses climbed the picket fence.

  “This place is more you,” she went on in a chatty tone. “All the nautical antiques, the river view, the old ballast stone walls. Wasn’t one of your ancestors a sea captain?”

  “A sailor, but not by choice. He got shanghaied in Liverpool, so the story goes.”

  “Still, the sea is your family heritage. You paint seascapes, river scenes. Yes, this place definitely suits you, Bolt.”

  “It’s smaller than you like, as I remember.” Without coming right out and asking, he needed to find out if she meant to stay with him indefinitely. He wasn’t married, but lately he had been seeing someone. Someone he knew Mary Scarlett wouldn’t approve of. Not that she would have approved of his seeing any other woman.

  As if she were reading his most secret thoughts, she asked, “Do you ever run into Kathleen Rutherford?”

  He nodded, immediately on guard. “It’s O’Shea now. She married Jimbo. Remember him?”

  Mary Scarlett twirled her crystal glass, her eyes lit with little-girl delight. “Do I ever! He used to have the worst crush on me in high school. Followed me around like a sad-eyed hound pup. But I was madly in love with Allen Overman at the time. I can’t believe Kathleen actually married Jimbo. I guess they have about a dozen kids by now. She was always such a homemaker-type and he came from that huge family. Lace-curtain Irish, you know. My mama used to say Jimbo’s mama had more younguns than she had sense.”

  “No children. In fact, they’re no longer married.”