“I told you I’d come to your party Saturday night.”
“What?” He looked horrified. “You think I could stand to wait that long? Mary Scarlett, I’ve been pinin’ away ever since you left Savannah.”
She laughed at his dramatics. “Sure you have, lover boy. That’s why you’ve had four wives since you last saw me.”
He nodded until his wavy gold hair fell into his eyes. “That’s exactly right. Why do you think none of my marriages took, honey?”
“I can’t imagine. Maybe because one woman’s never enough for you?”
“Only one woman’s enough. I married all my wives ‘cause I was looking for you in every last one of those gals. But, Mary Scarlett, when God made you, He broke the mold. There just aren’t any substitutes for the real thing. And, honey, you’re it! Now come here and give ole Allen some more sugar.”
“Allen, behave yourself!” she warned. “Bolt could come through that door any minute. What would he think?”
“I reckon he’d think that he better not leave you alone for a minute, if he knows what’s good for him. He should have figured it’s no use anyway. You ran off last time he tried to marry you.” He pulled a sad face and stared down at the floor. “You could have come to me, Mary Scarlett. Lord knows, you must have known how bad I always wanted you.”
Mary Scarlett managed to keep smiling even though Allen’s words brought an old anger back to the surface. She was half-tempted to say, “You mean you wanted Big Dick’s money.” But she held her tongue. All that was in the past now. She hoped she and Allen could start over fresh, just as friends, like they’d been when they were growing up.
“Can I fix you a drink?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
“Why, honey, you know I never drink before noon. But then with your jet lag and all, I reckon you don’t have your time straightened out yet. It’s probably the cocktail hour somewhere in the world. So if you want one, I’ll have one with you. It wouldn’t be proper to let a lady drink alone.”
She gave him a look that was pure Southern sarcasm. “Would you like more wine or something else?”
Bolton opened his front door just in time to see Allen slip his arm around Mary Scarlett and draw her back into his arms. He slammed the door so hard the crystal prisms on the chandelier in the foyer chimed.
Allen released Mary Scarlett slowly, letting his hand slide down her arm as she moved away. He gave Bolt his most charming, challenging smile. “You didn’t think you could keep her all to yourself until Saturday, did you, ole buddy? I was just welcoming our gal back to Savannah.”
Bolton glanced toward Mary Scarlett, but she had turned away. She was staring out over the river at the replica of a sailing ship passing by. She seemed to be lost in her own private world.
She was lost, all right. The odd dizziness had come over her again the moment she spied that old ship. She was no longer Mary Scarlett. But who was she now?
Faintly, as if from a great distance, she heard Bolt say to Allen, “You should have called before you came dashing over here. She’s not up to company yet. She’s worn out, exhausted from her trip. The jet lag probably won’t wear off for a couple of days.” But his words meant no more to her than the whispering breeze off the river.
Instead, she was listening to music. At first it, too, came from far away. But as she closed her eyes against the glare off the water, the sound grew and grew until she seemed totally submerged in the merry notes of hornpipe and fiddle. She found herself breathing hard and laughing harder.
“No more!” she cried. “Please, Jean, I’ll swoon with exhaustion.”
She stared into his sun- and wind-hewn face. His dark eyes seemed to blaze into hers. Their dancing had fired his passion. She knew that if she left his arms now, he would sweep her below deck to his cabin and make love to her until she begged for mercy.
“But the party’s for you, ma chère. Would you end it before it’s well begun? The best is yet to come.”
He leaned over her, bending her back in his arms, still staring into her eyes. She watched him come closer, closer, until…
Her eyes closed when his lips captured hers. There was such heat in his kisses that they always left her weak, her mind drifting in a soft haze of golden clouds. His sailors cheered the great Jean Lafitte. She could feel her whole body blushing. Why did he take such pleasure in embarrassing her this way?
“Please, Jean! Not in front of the others,” she begged between kisses. “What will they think?”
His laugh thundered in her ears. “My men will think they’d like to change places with their captain. As for their women, every one of them would give her golden earrings to be you at this moment. The amorous feats of Lafitte are legend, after all.” His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “Come below with me, ma petite.”
He still held her close, his strong arm crushing her against his hard, lean body. He snaked one hand between them to fondle her breasts. Her low-necked frock presented only a tempting challenge. She moaned softly into his shoulder as the feel of his rough fingers set her bare flesh tingling.
The sailors with their pipes and fiddle struck up another lively tune.
Lafitte threw back his head and laughed. “Another turn around the decks, then, my darling?”
Before she could answer, he whirled her around, sending her skirts and hair flying. Her heart raced with the beat of the music and the tempo of their dance. She could feel his chest thundering against hers.
What was it about this man? How could he take an upstanding, prim and proper young maid of Savannah and turn her into a wanton—a woman who lived only for his smile, his touch, his kiss? From the first moment she had spied him swaggering up Bull Street, she knew she was lost. Lost to love and to a stranger who could make her feel like a queen and yet ruin her life.
Marie came of solid Savannah stock. She had been sheltered and cared for all her short life by loving parents and even more loving servants. Her husband had been chosen when she was still a child. He, too, had the unblemished bloodlines, the family home, and a fortune to inherit. Their lives, once they were married, would be ordered and perfect as dictated by Savannah tradition. She would take her place in society beside her proper husband. She would make him a beautiful home and give him devoted children. She couldn’t have been happier with her lot in life or her plans for the future. Until…
Until that moonlit night when she had seen his ship sail silently up the river. Until she had felt the thrill of adventure and the unknown tug at her heart. Until she had taken the mirror to the attic and gazed into it to see the face of her love at the stroke of midnight. Her future husband had never appeared. In fact, the tales her grandmother had told her of seeing her one and only love in the mirror seemed no more than an old wives’ tale until that night. When she lit the candle and gazed at her image—hoping, praying for some sign—she had seen over her shoulder the dark visage of a stranger. A rugged, laughing face framed by unruly, wind-tossed locks. A single, golden earring. A scar upon his cheek. In his eyes she had seen such love and such passion that her heart had leaped in her breast.
Frightened by seeing a stranger’s face, frightened even more by her own reaction to that face, she had hurried downstairs and quickly replaced the old gilt-framed mirror to its usual place on the foyer wall. Then she had run off to bed and covered her head with the counterpane. But sleep had eluded her. She had felt feverish until the early dawn chased away the night’s shadows.
Only hours later, she saw him for the first time in the flesh. He stood tall and erect with an arrogant air to the tilt of his head. He wore blue velvet breeches and a brocade waistcoat. Silver buckles shone on his boots. And as he passed her house on Bull Street, where she was in the garden cutting roses, he had tipped his hat, said, “Good day,” and gone on his way. He might be a total stranger, but Marie remembered that face and she relived that painful ache in her heart when she saw him.
After he passed, she linger
ed on the front veranda for hours, awaiting his return. Surely, he would come back this way. It was near noon on that broiling hot day when she spied him approaching, retracing his earlier steps. She hurried to the front gate and busied herself at pruning the roses along the wrought-iron fence. As he drew nearer, she managed to drop her basket, spilling blood-red blossoms in his path.
“Oh dear!” she’d cried softly.
“Allow me,” he’d said, branding her arm with his gentle touch.
She watched, transfixed, as he gathered her scattered flowers, then handed her the basket. Again their hands touched. Again she felt his heat.
His smile was more dazzling than the noon sun. He swept off his hat and bowed deeply. “Captain Jean Lafitte at your service, mademoiselle.”
“Thank you, sir,” she whispered, her voice all but vanished.
“Might I be so bold as to ask your name?”
He was bold all right, no doubt about that! If her mother spied her conversing with a stranger on the street, Marie would find herself locked in her room with her prayer book, subsisting on bread and water for the next few days. Still, she wanted him to know who she was. It seemed all important to her. After all, he was the man she had seen in her mirror—the man meant to be her one and only love.
“Mademoiselle Marie Angelique Lamar,” she answered softly.
“Ah, you are French, then, as am I.”
“Acadian. My mother was sent here on one of the refugee boats from Nova Scotia.”
His frown of concern made him even more handsome. “Poor woman. What a dreadful experience!” His radiant smile returned. “But I see she survived it to bear a most beautiful child.”
“I am not a child!” she answered defensively, impulsively. He assessed her with his gaze, then chuckled. “Indeed not! How could I have made such a mistake? You are by far the loveliest woman I’ve yet seen in Savannah.”
His frown of concern made him even more handsome. “Poor woman. What a dreadful experience!” His radiant smile returned. “But I see she survived it to bear a most beautiful child.”
“But you only arrived last night.” She covered her lips with her fingers. How could she have made such a blunder? Now the great Jean Lafitte would think she had been spying on him. She had, but she certainly didn’t want him to suspect such a thing.
“Would it be too forward of me to ask your mother’s permission to invite you to visit my ship?”
“Oh, yes!” The very thought of such a thing terrified her. Then she quickly changed her answer. “I might come, but my mother mustn’t know.”
Again he laughed. “Most mothers, I’ve found, don’t approve of Jean Lafitte. You have a standing invitation, ma chère. I will look forward to seeing you again.”
Then he clasped her dainty fingers in his. Ever so gently, he slipped off her gardening glove, bowed over her hand, and kissed it. The heat of noon was cool compared to this.
“I doubt I can come,” she whispered, trembling all over.
“Then I shall be the most heartbroken man in all of Savannah, Mademoiselle Lamar. Would you wound me so?”
Without giving it a second thought, she shook her head to indicate that she would never do such a thing. He sounded so sad, so hurt, so harmless.
“If you are an early riser, you might come for a visit and be home before your mother knows you have gone. The river is lovely at sunrise. Tomorrow then?”
“I don’t know, Captain.” Even though she was in a quandary, Marie knew. She could no more refuse his tempting invitation than she could stop breathing.
Again he tipped his hat, bowed, and flashed her the very smile that had endeared him to countless women all over the world. “Until dawn, then, Marie.”
At that, she turned and ran so quickly into the house that she left the Savannah grey bricks of the path strewn with roses.
Lafitte brought Marie’s thoughts instantly back to the present with a fierce hug. The music had stopped. Rum, long banned in Savannah, was being passed about on deck, sloshed as tankards clinked in one rousing toast after another. But Marie needed no spirits to make her burn inside.
“Will you come below with me, ma chère?” Even after weeks of these secret visits to his ship, he still asked and she still refused. The question was her cue to flee back to the safety of the house on Bull Street. But tonight he added something new. Whispering close to her ear as he held her in his arms, he said, “Please, Marie. I burn for you so.”
If he burned, she was charred through to the core. How could she deny her own desires any longer? How could she go into the loveless marriage that she knew would soon be her fate without having given herself to the one and only man she would ever love? If, just this once, she could know total happiness in the arms of her star-crossed lover, she could bear the thought of spending the rest of her life with a man for whom she had always felt respect, but never love.
Tears brimming in her eyes, but a smile on her face, she whispered, “Yes, my darling. Oh, yes!”
A gentle hand touched her shoulder. She covered it with her own and smiled through her tears. “Yes,” she repeated.
“Mary Scarlett? Are you all right?”
Bolt’s voice jolted her. She felt as if she’d been jerked roughly back through time. Her whole body still ached for Jean Lafitte. With her very soul she longed to be his.
“You were a million miles away, honey. When Allen said goodbye you didn’t even answer him. What’s wrong? What’s happening to you?”
She turned toward Bolt slowly, trying to wipe away her tears before he could see them. But it was no use. The more she dabbed at her eyes, the faster the tears flowed.
“Mary Scarlett, what’s the matter? Did Allen say something stupid again? So help me, I’ll break his damn neck!”
She shook her head, not sure she could trust her voice yet. Gripping Bolt’s hand to steady herself, she eased down on the couch.
“Something’s happening to me, Bolt,” she admitted at length. “Something I can’t control and don’t understand. I’m scared.”
“Tell me,” he urged gently.
She settled in the curve of his arm and sighed. “I can tell you what’s happening, but that’s all I can tell you.”
“Anything,” he prompted. “Tell me whatever’s on your mind.”
“Since the moment I set foot back in Savannah, nothing’s seemed right. At first I thought it was the town, but now I know it’s me. Things keep changing.”
“What kind of things, honey?”
“I keep losing myself, drifting back in time.” She squeezed his hand tighter. “It’s so scary, Bolt. But at the same time there’s something wonderful about it. Each time I go back, I learn something new about my life.”
“So that’s where you were when Allen left? Off drifting?”
She nodded, then felt a blush creep into her cheeks. “If you hadn’t snapped me out of it, I’d be making love to a pirate at this very minute.” She paused, stunned by her own words. Then she laughed softly. “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. You were always a history buff. Tell me, did Jean Lafitte ever visit Savannah?”
Bolton stared at her blankly. He didn’t say it in so many words, but the tone of his reply accused her of insanity. “Jean Lafitte was going to make love to you?”
“If I had the courage to let him.” She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “Bolt, tell me he never came to Savannah. Please. Tell me I dreamed all this.”
Now it was Bolt’s turn to nod, speechless for the moment. Finally, he gave her the answer she already suspected to be the truth. “He was here, all right. Twice, so historians say. In 1817 his brother’s ship Jupiter stopped here to take on board a Greek friend named Captain Nicholas. He was with Jean Lafitte when he died in the Yucatan in 1826, if historians’ tales can be believed.”
“You don’t believe he was really ever here?” she asked hopefully.
“Oh, Lafitte was here. I’m convinced of that. I do
n’t believe he died in 1826. I think he lived to a ripe old age under an assumed identity. Possibly even with the woman he fell in love with in Savannah.”
“There was a woman?”
Bolt nodded. “Yes. When Lafitte came again on the schooner Nancy Eleanor in 1821 he met her. Some people claimed he even married the girl. I doubt it, though. He’d lost his wife not long before at Galveston. Most likely he was still mourning her. But what does any of this have to do with you, Mary Scarlett? I’ll admit, I’m at a loss.”
“I don’t suppose you know his lover’s name.”
Bolt leaned his head back and closed his eyes, trying to remember. “Come to think of it, I believe her name was Mary.”
Mary Scarlett found tears gathering in her eyes again. Her voice was only a thin whisper when she said, “She was French. She called herself Marie. And, no, I don’t think she married him. But she certainly was in love with Jean Lafitte.”
“What are you saying, Mary Scarlett? How could you know anything about that if you didn’t even know whether or not Lafitte had been to Savannah?”
She turned slowly and stared up into Bolton’s troubled face. “I know because until you brought me back a few minutes ago I was with Jean Lafitte. I was Marie.”
“This is crazy!” Bolt exclaimed. Then he got hold of himself. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean that. It’s just hard to believe that such a thing could happen. Why, you’re talking out-of-body experience or something equally as bizarre.”
“I know,” she answered calmly. “And it’s not the first time. I realize now who the soldiers in the Colonial Cemetery were last night. Only it wasn’t last night when I saw them. It was well over a century ago. I saw Sherman’s men, Bolt. And shortly after my taxi passed the old burial ground, I saw a funeral procession—the carriage draped in black bunting, the horses black-plumed.”
“Whose funeral was it?”
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