“Of course,” she cut in, the innocent words sounding like a lurid curse. “I should have realized. Mary Scarlett’s all alone, isn’t she? So naturally you have a duty to perform.” Kathleen returned quickly to her computer, presenting her back to Bolt. “Don’t worry about me. I can find my way to Allen’s alone.”
“Please, Katie…”
The phone on the desk rang. Kathleen grabbed the receiver as if it were a lifeline.
“Thanks again, Katie,” Bolt said.
She waved without turning.
He left.
Something happened while Mary Scarlett was in the royal blue tiled shower. At first the hot spray felt wonderful and relaxing. She closed her eyes, letting the jets sting her face. But suddenly the water turned icy cold. The shock made her dizzy. Blindly, she fought her way out through the paisley shower curtain and grabbed a towel. But still the frigid water pelted her.
Before she wiped her face and opened her eyes, she sensed a change in the atmosphere. Naked only an instant ago, she now felt a heavy, coarse garment clothing her damp body. The plush bathroom carpet had vanished along with the fragrances of lavender talc and sun-dried towels. Wherever she was now, the place reeked of tar, mildewed straw, and mice.
Gone was Bolton’s recently refurbished apartment. She stood in the middle of a dim, musty warehouse, filled with baled cotton and casks of rice. Rain drummed on the closed shutters at the windows. She pushed one open a crack to look out. Beyond the sill she could see the river, but now a forest of tall sailing ships rode at anchor where earlier she and Bolt had watched a coastal cruise ship pass by. Below, River Street was cluttered with filth and debris, teeming with black workers loading and unloading ships. Mule teams strained to move their heavy loads through the mud. Dusky women with baskets balanced on their heads cried out their wares in the guttural Geechee patios.
Mary Scarlett shrank back from the window, fearful that someone might see her, but having no sense of the source of her fear. Her sudden turn caused her long skirt to swirl. The fabric caught on the tine of a pitchfork. It crashed to the flow with a loud thud.
“Lisbet? Is that you?” A man’s voice drifted down to her from the room above where she saw a ladder leading up.
Mary Scarlett moved farther into the shadows, tying to hide herself. Yet the familiar male voice with its thick Irish brogue sent a thrill of excitement through her.
When he called again, something moved her to answer. “Sean? I’m here.” Her voice quivered with anticipation as she spoke his name. Slowly, carefully, she began climbing the rough ladder.
Even before she saw him, she could picture him in her mind. She knew that Sean Mahone was a tall, raw-boned Irishman with twinkling shamrock eyes and hair as wild and red as any sunset over the marsh.
A moment later she was up the ladder and in the loft. Sean stood across the room near the window. He was carving something into a blue-black stone in the wall. When he turned to her, his whole countenance beamed with happiness. He approached her hesitantly, but there was no hesitation once they were in each other’s arms. His mouth came down on hers in a hot, insistent kiss.
Her heart sang at the taste of him. Yet the fear of discovery would give her no peace.
“Sean darling, I can only stay a moment.”
“Come see how I’ve immortalized our love.”
He led her to the far wall. There in the smooth stone he had fashioned a rough heart. Inside he had carved their entwined initials.
“Oh, Sean!” She clung to him, tears brimming in her eyes. “If only our love could last as long as this stone. But, alas…”
“You’ve not told them then?” There was no mistaking the disappointment in his voice, the sadness in his deep-green eyes.
She looked away, tears spilling over her lashes. “I couldn’t,” she admitted. “I had to sneak away from the house to meet you. Papa would have…”
“Papa would have what?” he demanded when her words trailed off. Then without giving her time to answer, he rushed on, “You must tell him that Sean Mahone wishes the lovely hand of Elisabeth Lamar in holy wedlock.”
“Mahone and Lamar,” she murmured hopelessly. She knew the truth of their situation all too well.
Even though a new decade approached—the 1860s—most business establishments in Savannah, her father’s included, held to the policy that “Irish Need Not Apply.” When they could find work, it was of the lowest, dirtiest sort. Yet Sean, her wonderful, dear, loving Sean, thought he had only to ask for the hand of the daughter of one of the town’s founding Anglican families and she would instantly be his. Her papa wouldn’t allow an Irishman in his back door. There was no way on earth he would invite Sean Mahone into his front door and into his family.
“We haven’t a prayer,” she whispered. “We mustn’t meet again, Sean. It’s hopeless.”
“Nothing’s hopeless where love is concerned, Lisbet. I’d fight the devil himself to have you, darlin’.”
“The devil would be a kinder foe than Papa.” She stared up at him, her eyes wide with pain and longing. Every word she spoke tore at her heart. “He’ll have you arrested, Sean.”
“What? For being in love? For wanting to give you a wonderful life, a happy family?”
She shook her head sadly. “Say no more of this, Sean. Please. Only hold me a moment before I go.”
He took her into his arms, stroking her dark hair, murmuring her name over and over. “There, there, my little one, my love, my heart. We’ll not let them come between us. We’re meant to love each other, you and I.”
The soft lilt of his voice was like a balm to her soul. She made no protest when he eased the rough cloak from her shoulders. She sighed when he touched her breasts. With tender kisses he urged her on toward love. She was a virgin of sixteen and he a sailor nearly twenty. It was first love for both of them, with all the burning need and blossoming passion that attend the heart’s awakening.
“Had we a babe even your pa could not keep us apart,” he whispered between kisses. “A wee, dear grandson for the old tyrant. Think of it, darlin’. A bit of me for you to hold close while I’m off to sea. A red-haired, blue-eyed, Irish-English babe, who’d grow up knowing none of the meanness of this world. Only his father’s pride and his mother’s love. Come to me now, my little darlin’.”
There in the dusty straw of the loft, Elisabeth Lamar fell from grace and flew to the stars with her one and only love. As their lithe young bodies moved together, she knew that forevermore she would carry a part of her lover along with the scorn of her family. She and her wee babe would be shunned by everyone in her father’s Bull Street house for the rest of their lives. But what did that matter? Sean owned her heart and her soul. He was the only man she would ever love. Only this moment in all of time counted. There would never be another so tender, so sweet.
While Lisbet and Sean still lay in each other’s arms, glorying in the afterglow of love, a dark shadow fell over them. She knew before she heard her father’s voice that they were caught.
He pulled her up roughly, his eyes averted. “Cover yourself, girl. Then go home to your poor mother, if she’ll have you. I’ve business to attend here.”
Sobbing, begging, pleading for Sean’s life, Elisabeth left only when her father shoved her down the ladder, then slammed and locked the door behind her. The muffled sounds from the loft as she pressed close to the door sobbing told her that she would never see Sean again. A sick pain shot through her. If Sean’s life was done, what cause had she to live on?
Mary Scarlett returned to the present with a jolt. She was crumpled naked on the ecru carpet of Bolton Conrad’s bathroom floor. Her skin felt dewy with the sweat of love. Her body pulsed with recent pleasure yet her heart ached with hopelessness. Slowly, she dragged herself up and pulled on her robe.
Her gaze went to the old ballast stone wall beside the bathroom window. One large, blue-black stone stood out from the others. She raised a trembling hand to i
ts sweetly scarred surface. With one finger, she traced the rough heart carved into the stone, then the initials, all but worn away by time.
“Elisabeth Lamar,” she murmured. “My father’s great-grandmother. So that’s why she and her son both carried the family name. She was never married.” She closed her eyes and smiled, recalling her recent passion. “Oh, but, Lisbet, you were loved, weren’t you!”
As she stood thinking about the long ago couple who had made love and conceived a son in this very room over a century ago, she realized how closely her own life mirrored that of her ancestor. She recalled her own father’s drunken rage over her plans to marry. But Big Dick and his fanatical ravings were a thing of the past. He couldn’t touch her now. Nor could he stop her from marrying the man she loved. Granny had been right to send her away. She could imagine her great-grandmother smiling down on her.
“I’ve come home to set things right, Granny Boo. And there’s not a thing anyone can do to stop me.”
Three
Allen Overman had pulled a supremely dirty trick om Bolton Conrad and he couldn’t have been more pleased with himself. Sure, Bolt had been his buddy since they played high school football together. Conrad had run interference for him ever since, during countless business deals, several lawsuits, and all four of his divorces. But when it came to Mary Scarlett there were old scores to settle, old axes to grind.
“And may the better man win,” he said with a chuckle, figuring it would be no contest, since everyone in the Garden City knew that members of the Oglethorpe Club were Savannah’s crème de la crème. As for the bullfighter, Allen refused to give him another thought. He was obviously out of the picture, for at least as long as Mary Scarlett remained in Savannah.
“And, if I have my way, she won’t be leaving anytime soon.”
He had called Kathleen O’Shea a few minutes earlier and was still grinning with glee over his evilly brilliant maneuver. He would love to be a fly on the wall when Bolt found out he was expected to escort two ladies come Saturday night.
He chuckled. “All’s fair in love and war, Bolt, ole buddy! Let’s see how you get yourself out of this one.”
Allen settled back on the gold velvet Empire sofa and traced his hand lovingly over the carved, gilded eagle on the back. The elegant antique screamed “old money” as did the rest of the furnishings in the room—the massive gilt-framed mirror from Austria over the Carrara marble mantel, the English crystal chandelier, the fragile Gothic side chairs, the Brussels carpet, and the John Singer Sargent portrait of an elegant Savannah miss whose ghost probably lingered in these rooms to this very day. The scuppernong-green walls—a traditional Old Savannah color—made the parlor seem an extension of the verdant square beyond the window. This was truly one of the most beautifully restored mansions in the whole city.
“And now it’s mine!” Overman’s grin widened, giving his tennis-tanned face a boyish appearance. “At least for as long as I’m house-sitting.”
The mansion’s idyllic location on Lafayette Square was also its only shortcoming as far as Allen was concerned. From where he sat and from all the front rooms, he could see the great old house across the way—his family’s ancestral home, lost to bad debts long before his birth. It was a constant reminder of the Overmans’ shortcomings that had been inherited through generations to inflict him as well. A love of fine things, a penchant for gambling, and a vast and varied taste in women. The place across the way was sometimes still referred to as “Overman House,” even though no one by that name had slept under its mansard roof for nearly a century. The old manse seemed to stare at him accusingly from the far side of the square. He leered back.
“I’ve got my own place now. Stow that in your chimney and smoke it!”
Of course, no one else in the city knew the exact details of Allen Overman’s sudden acquisition of the elegant residence on Lafayette Square. He had put the word out that a recent smooth deal with Atlanta developers had enabled him to buy the place for cold cash from old Ida Hampstead. In truth, the owner, a rather dowdy widow from Upstate New York, had entrusted Allen with the keys while she visited relatives in Saratoga Springs before embarking on a six-month tour of certain European spas that guaranteed foolproof age-reversal cures. While madame was off soaking her wrinkled body in volcanic mud, being injected with sheep fat, and drinking ill-tasting but rejuvenating concoctions, Allen would help himself to the luxury of her mansion, including her well-stocked spirits chest and celebrated wine cellar.
Savannah knew none of this. Savannah knew only that “that lucky sonuvabitch Overman” had once more cemented a big deal and was now living high on the hog with his hard-earned profits.
“And a party is just the ticket,” he said, adding another top-drawer name to his growing list.
He had already secured the services of the best caterer in town, phoned the florist and the liquor store. The next item on his agenda was to procure his staff of “servants” for the evening. The White brothers, “’Tator” and “’Gator,” could serve with the best of them, when the spirit moved them. And they’d do it free for Allen to keep him from blowing the whistle on them. He knew their secret. He had been a witness to the gas station job they’d pulled a couple of years ago. How fortunate Allen considered himself to have found his gas gauge on empty that night when he’d started home from a rousing evening at Hard-Hearted Hannah’s, the liveliest nightspot in town. A few weeks later he had hit paydirt again when he stopped by a convenience store to pick up a six-pack of beer and blundered into another hold-up in progress. It hadn’t taken long for Allen to put two and two together and confront the boys.
The identical twin brothers had the local cops baffled because they could appear to be in two places at the same time. One would knock over a gas station or convenience store while the other was miles away, establishing an airtight alibi. And how fortunate for Allen that he knew them and their tricks from way back. When they were kids—just knee-high to the gate post—their mama had worked as the Overman household’s ironing woman. ‘Tator’ and ‘Gator’ used to employ the same trick against Allen himself. So to keep him from blowing their cover, the twins were always willing to help out.
He made a mental note to stop by River Street later in the day. He could always find one or the other of the White brothers there—even Allen himself wasn’t sure which was the musical twin—playing his banjo, with his battered straw hat out for tourists’ tips.
Actually, ‘Tator’ and ‘Gator’ were a pair after Overman’s own heart. What he wouldn’t give to have a twin of his very own to cover for him.
“Ah, the things I could do, the scams I could pull!” he mused aloud as he traced over Mary Scarlett’s name at the very top of his list, making it stand out in bold, dark script.
He smiled and poured himself a glass of Madeira from the decanter on the table. As long as he had to go to River Street anyway, he might as well pop in on Bolt and welcome Mary Scarlett back to Savannah in style. She’d always loved surprises.
Mary Scarlett had recovered from her episode with Lisbet and Sean by the time she heard the knock at the front door. The whole thing would have seemed like a dream if she hadn’t found the heart carved in stone on the bathroom wall. Closer inspection revealed that Sean had even dated his work of art—“1859.”
“I’m coming,” she called, wondering why Bolt didn’t use his key. Maybe he had his arms full of grocery bags.
When she opened the door, she had to shield her eyes against the bright, midday sun. Before she even knew who was there, familiar arms swept around her.
“Oh, God, you feel delicious! Better than ever, Mary Scarlett.”
“Allen?” she said, trying to pull out of his embrace. After all, they were standing in the open, putting on quite a show for all of Factor’s Row and Bay Street.
He refused to be fought off, but he did guide her into Bolt’s entryway and close the door for privacy.
“Baby, let me look at you
.” Allen held her at arm’s length and gave her an appraising onceover. “Gorgeous,” he murmured. “You haven’t changed a bit. Except for your hair. God! What ever possessed you?”
His remark tempted her to fly to the phone and cancel her afternoon appointment at the beauty salon. But she only smiled at him. That was Allen’s way. If he didn’t like something, you knew about it immediately.
She twirled a tendril around her finger and laughed. “Just a lark. Don’t worry, I won’t disgrace you at your party. I’m having it dyed back this very afternoon.”
Allen glanced about the room. “Where’s Bolt?”
“Gone out on a couple of errands. He should be back any minute.”
Overman moved in closer, gathering Mary Scarlett’s soft green dress close to her body. “We’d better not waste any time, then. I sure do want to kiss you, but I sure don’t want him to catch me doing it. You know what a prig he can be.”
He gave Mary Scarlett no time to agree or disagree.
Allen still kissed like a horny high school jock—wet lips, open mouth, questing tongue. He’d been drinking; she could taste it. That probably accounted for his busy hands, kneading the smooth fabric over her breasts. In spite of her best efforts to repel his amorous onslaught, Mary Scarlett realized that he still knew all the right buttons to push. He made her feel like a kid again, making out in a dark corner of the high school gym at the prom.
Finally, she maneuvered out of his embrace. “Hey, it’s not even noon yet and I’ve still got a big time case of jet lag. I’m no match for you, Overman.”
“All the better,” he crooned, trying to reel her back into his arms.
She stood firm, warning him off with a steady, authoritative gaze. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
He pulled a hurt face. “Aren’t you glad to see me, Mary Scarlett? Shoot, I dropped everything to get right over here after we talked on the phone. I’d been calling all over town trying to find you.”
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