Her face heated. “I know what that was. A listing of all the prostitutes in the red-light district, with all their specialties detailed. For your information, that book was outlawed at the turn of the century. Original copies are real collectors’ items.” Margo, like any other New Orleans native, knew its history well, especially the bawdy stuff, and most compelling had been the section of town noted for the ruby glass lanterns hung on the buildings. Just in case some fool wasn’t sure where the “parlor houses” were located.
“What century?”
“The twentieth. It’s now the twenty-first century.”
He crossed his eyes in the cutest way.
“But, no, Laurent, I am not a hooker. Oh, I keep forgetting that you don’t understand modern language. A hooker is another word for a lady of the night.”
“I know what a hooker is, for God’s sake!”
“You do?”
“Yes, General Joe Hooker visited the New Orleans brothels so often during the war they named the girls after him.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Why would I make up that kind of story?”
She wanted to ask him if he’d visited any of those houses but sensed that now was not the time.
“You’re not going to try to tell me you’re a virgin!”
“Give me a break. I’m twenty-seven years old. How about you, bozo? Are you a virgin?”
He smiled at her then. A wide, dimple flashing with an I-could-melt-your-bones-if-I-wanted-to smile.
Jeesh! Why not just mow me down? I am a dead duck if he beckons me closer with his finger.
He didn’t. Instead, he said, “I apologize.”
“So, can I come?”
He nodded with obvious reluctance.
“You won’t be sorry, I promise.”
She thought he muttered, “I’m already sorry.”
Three
Gone with the Wind was never like this . . .
As he drove the wagon the twenty miles back to Rosylyn, occasionally having to prod the aged horse, Lightning, who hadn’t had the energy his name denoted in more than ten years, Laurent had plenty of time to regret his impulsive decision. He and Lettie bracketed the demented woman on the buckboard bench seat as she talked. And talked. And talked.
Lettie was fascinated.
He was not buying her addled notions. Not one bit.
But she was probably harmless. So, he let her go on about how the plantation homes along River Road had changed, some no longer there, except for ones like Elm-wood, which they passed. She talked about how women wore britches as often as they did skirts and some of the skirts rose inches above the knee. And all homes had electricity for light and heat and, important in the south, air-conditioning. “I couldn’t live with this humidity without my thermostat set at fifty.”
“It appears you’ll have to.” Not that he had a clue what a thermostat was.
She just smiled at him with a secret smile, which annoyed the hell out of him, more than when she had an answer for everything. Plus, he was way too conscious of her thigh pressed against his thigh. Innocent, but tempting.
She looked totally different but still attractive in a different sort of way. She wore a yellow and white gingham dress with short puffed sleeves, a scooped neckline that exposed skin almost to the top of her breasts, and a tight white cloth belt that accentuated her small waist and tied into a bow behind her back. Not that he had noticed much.
“No horses, except for pleasure riding?” he exclaimed then. “Only horseless wagons made of metal? Really! If you were halfway sane, you would know how ridiculous that sounds.”
“If I were halfway sane, I wouldn’t be dreaming in all these dimensions . . . sound, sight, color, smell. Nor would I have plopped myself down in steam heat Loo-zee-anna in 1870, carrying a fringed parasol, wearing an ankle-length dress with a bonnet. And a crinoline, for heaven’s sake! Nor would I have chosen an always-scowling, no-sense-of-humor hero.”
“Hah! You are sadly mistaken if you think I am going to be your hero. And I do not scowl all the time.”
“You do scowl,” Lettie interrupted.
He scowled at his sister.
“I mean if God was going to send me back to this time and place, he could have at least sent me a Rhett Butler.”
“Rat who?” First, she says I am a seal. Now she wants me to be a rat.
“Not rat, silly. Rhett. Butler.”
If she calls me silly again, I am going to push her off the wagon. “The only Butler I know is that Yankee monster Beast Butler who ruled N’awleans with an iron hand durin’ the war.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Rhett Butler was a fictional hero, and Scarlett O’Hara was the heroine. He saved her butt on more than one occasion.”
“Saved her butt?” He had to smile at some of her expressions.
“You are really hot when you smile,” she remarked to him.
“Hot?” Lettie’s brow furrowed with confusion.
“Drop-dead gorgeous,” she explained.
“As if I care!” he said. She thinks I am gorgeous. How . . . interesting!
The idiot then went on to tell the most outrageous . . . and, yes, intriguing . . . story about a plantation called Tara during the Civil War, and how the people fared during Sherman’s march on Savannah. Scarlett was famous for her expressions, like, “tomorrow is another day,” and “fiddle-dee-dee!”
Lettie giggled. “Fiddle-dee-dee?”
“Yes. She said that whenever she was exasperated or annoyed.”
Turning to him, Lettie teased, “That is going to be my new favorite word, Laurie. Whenever you go cursing over the state of my garden or yelling at the mule, or whenever I have to kill another snake, I am just going to put my hands on my hips and say, ‘Well, fiddle-dee-dee!’ ”
He barely suppressed a laugh. He liked to see his sister happy and carefree. They hadn’t had much to lift their spirits in a long time. “And what am I supposed to say to that?”
“Well, Laurent . . .” Margo said to him, mischief dancing in her honey colored eyes, “Rhett’s famous remark to Scarlet was, ‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn!’ ”
“That is just wonderful.” And it was. “The bank just denied my loan application, and, frankly, I don’t give a damn. We don’t have enough money to pay the taxes, and, frankly, I don’t give a damn. A demented woman from the future just attached herself to me like a burr on a dog’s backside, and, frankly, I don’t give a damn.”
Lettie picked up on his thread and said, “The war is over and the south ain’t never gonna rise again, if you ask me, but fiddle-dee-dee! I lost my beau at Shiloh and there’s not an able-bodied man under forty with teeth to replace him, but, fiddle-dee-dee! Cleona died and left me to be the cook, and I can’t cook worth spit, but, fiddle-dee-dee! Lightning just farted for about the twentieth time, and the smell is putrid, but fiddle-dee-dee!”
He laughed out loud then, and it felt damn good. In fact, they all laughed, and laughed, ’til a companionable silence fell over them, and the only sound was the clop-clop of the horse’s hooves on the dirt road.
Margo summed up all their thoughts when she murmured, “Tomorrow is indeed another damn day.”
God must have a sense of humor . . .
Margo was scared.
From an early age she’d had to be brave. Growing up in a New Orleans slum, there had been no one to help her but herself. Not her absentee father, or her druggie mother. .
She’d been a scrappy little kid, determined to rise above her surroundings, often having to fend off bullies, thieves, and even rapists. She’d been collecting tin cans for pennies when she was nine, a paper girl at age ten, and a babysitter extraordinaire, dish washer, and waitress ’til she earned her way through college.
None of those hurdles or threats had scared her the way this situation did. She could fight the known enemy, but this was totally out of her sphere of understanding. Somehow, some way, she had time traveled to 1870. The longer sh
e talked with these people and viewed the passing scenery, the more she had to accept facts.
But how? Surely time travel didn’t exist from a scientific standpoint, did it? The only thing she could offer as an explanation was that it must be some kind of miracle created by God. You could say it was a celestial joke on her.
If that was the case, why? There had to be some reason for this twist of her destiny. Was there something she was supposed to accomplish here? Or was it for her that the change had been deemed necessary?
It was all so confusing.
And it didn’t help that the brooding man beside her threw off erotic heat like a sex furnace. She had to smile inwardly at her corny metaphors. But it was true. He wasn’t the best-looking man in the world. And he frowned almost constantly, as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. On more than one occasion, she had barely restrained herself from leaning over to kiss the frown away.
He glanced at her suddenly. “What? Why are you smiling?”
“Oh, Laurent, you really do not want to know.”
He tilted his head to the side, then pressed his thigh even closer against hers. He knew. Oh, he knew all right. And she would bet her Victoria’s Secret bra he felt the same way.
Best to change the subject before she jumped his bones, with his sister as a witness.
“Do you own slaves, Laurent?” she asked.
Her question surprised him, probably because she had been staring at him like eye candy. “No.”
“Did you, before the war?”
“My father did. He died of a heart attack at home a year after the war started. Most of the slaves left on their own.”
“Did that bother you? Did you want to go after them?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t a secessionist, but I was never in favor of slavery, either, which was a huge disappointment to my father. In truth, I never wanted to inherit Rosylyn, but as an only son, I had no choice.”
“Laurent is being too nice,” Lettie interrupted. “He and father had constant fights over release of the slaves. In the prosperous times, he wanted father to pay them as workers.”
“Well, no need to worry about that now. Prosperity is gone. Poverty is here to stay.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist, Laurent,” his sister chided.
“A realist, Lettie.”
“So, now all the slaves are gone?” Margo persisted.
He nodded. “Oh, there are eight or so blacks still there. They have no other place to go. But they are the old, the very young, or crippled.”
And he was taking care of them all, Margo realized. She put a hand on top of Laurent’s forearm and squeezed.
He glanced at her, and their eyes held for one brief, sizzling moment.
She laughed and told him, “Here’s a great news flash, honey. You’ve gotta appreciate this. The president of the United States in my time is Barack Obama, and guess what? He is a black.”
There’s more than one way to pique a man’s interest . . .
Halfway to Rosylyn, they stopped at a stream a short ways off the road to relieve themselves and the horse.
Margo headed for the stream to get a drink of cold water and splash water on her face and arms, or so she said. Living in Louisiana her entire life, she made too much of the heat, in his opinion.
“Pssst! Come over here,” Lettie whispered from the other side of the small clearing.
He walked over, wondering what disaster was about to befall him now. It had been a day above all days so far.
“What do you think of her?”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Fiddle-dee-dee, sometimes you are an idiot.”
He rolled his eyes. “I think she is a bit crazy but harmless. Kinda like Maisie Mae Benoit who used to run naked during Mardi Gras.” Now there is a thought.
“I didn’t mean that. I meant, isn’t she wonderful?”
“Wonderful?” Maybe the craziness is contagious.
“She has so many stories to tell, and she’s going to teach me how to do my hair. She even has some ideas for us to earn extra money.”
“Now wait a minute. I don’t want her interfering in our business.”
Lettie shrugged. “I think she already has . . . just in coming to Rosylyn. One more thing,” she giggled, and whispered extra low. “She’s wearing a thong. I saw it when she changed her clothes at the market stall.”
He blew in and out with frustration. “I can see you’re dyin’ to tell me. What is a thong?”
“Ladies don’t wear drawers in her time . . . uh, place. They wear panties, or a special kind of panties called a thong.”
“Good Lord, Lettie! You are wastin’ my time, standin’ around discussin’ ladies’ undergarments.”
“Dontcha wanna know what a thong is?”
“Hell, no!”
He started to turn away when she said, “It leaves almost all of her buttocks bare.”
He stopped and glared at her, but it was obvious she had caught his attention.
“There’s this strip of lace that runs up between her . . . uh, crack; so, from the back, it looks like she’s wearin’ nothin’. And the front is just this little scrap of V-shaped lace coverin’ . . .” She pointed to her groin area. “It’s scandalous, of course.” But then she added, “She’s going to help me make one for myself.”
Laurent was speechless for a moment, but the image was now planted in his head. “Don’t you dare!”
Lettie just laughed.
Of course the first thing he saw when he stomped away was Margo on her knees, leaning over the edge of the stream, her gingham-covered bottom aimed his way. And all he could think was, How soon can I see the damn thong?
It was no Tara, but . . .
It was early evening before they arrived.
Margo’s first glimpse of the rundown and overgrown Rosylyn was not impressive. But on second glance, she could see how splendid it had once been and could be again.
Rosylyn was not a huge plantation by the standards of the time, but it was large enough. A square French Creole-style house sat on a rise about a football-field length from the river. Its three stories were covered by a broad sweeping-hipped roof with dormer windows on the upper level. Railed galleries encircled all sides of the second, or main, floor, which were supported by columns down to the ground level, which was an open loggia. Clusters of roses, jasmine, and other creepers grew wildly up the columns. While the upper part of the house sported peeling, white-painted timber, the bottom was brick covered with bousillage, a mud and moss mixture, once whitewashed to match the rest of the house.
Farther away from the house could be seen waist-high, green sugar cane, like a green lake, tassels waving in the slight breeze, with the sugar house rising above all in the distance. She guessed that the crop covered several acres, a small percentage of what might have flourished here before the war.
The front lawn leading down to the river would once have been clipped regularly with a scythe but was now mostly an overgrown jungle of wild semitropical plants and trees, except for about a hundred feet directly surrounding the house. A necessity, she would think, if they didn’t want snakes and other native wildlife coming indoors.
A horseshoe-shaped drive allowed visitors to ride right up to the front, but Laurent turned at a lane before that, which presumably led to the back of the mansion.
Numerous ramshackle outbuildings were scattered throughout the back . . . barn, laundry, blacksmith, carpentry, stable, smokehouse, pig pen, and chicken coop. Even the old slave quarters, which appeared mostly unoccupied.
But look. People were emerging from all these structures, including the back of the house, and lining up to welcome Laurent and Lettie back. Or more likely, anxiously waiting for the supplies they carried.
There were about ten people, all ages, and every shade from almost white to cafe au lait to ebony black. The closer they got, the more horrified she was, though.
Among the gathering crowd was a man wit
h no legs in a wheelbarrow-type apparatus, being pushed by a young boy. Another man was missing one arm. A frail, elderly woman moved slowly, as if afraid of falling. A young light-skinned woman, who might once have been beautiful, had a livid scar puckering one side of her face and a bump on her nose, which must have been broken and healed improperly. A tall, statuesque woman held a newborn baby.
“Laurie! Delilah must have gone into labor as soon as we left this morning.”
Laurent appeared less impressed with that fast delivery than he was with two men who were approaching from the sugar fields, carrying hoes. “Looks like Cordell and Ivory have come back.” At least these two looked like healthy young men, in their twenties, with no missing body parts.
“They upped and went North expecting to be handed a sack of gold. Ivory left about seven months ago, but Cordell has been gone more than a year,” Lettie explained to her in a whisper. “Ivory is the father of Delilah’s baby, but I don’t think she’ll be welcomin’ him back to her bed anytime soon. And Cordell left his son Jacob behind.”
Margo turned to look at Laurent.
He inhaled deeply, then pasted a thin smile on his face. It was apparent to Margo that he was attempting to put the best face on for all these people who depended on him. Many men would have just walked away from such a huge responsibility. Oh, maybe not from a family member, like Lettie. But all these others? No way!
Her heart constricted with emotion as she continued to gaze at this incredible man, and in that instant, she fell a little bit in love with him.
She squeezed his hand to show her support.
To her amazement, he squeezed back.
This is why I was sent back in time, she realized suddenly.
And I suspect that I am never going back.
She was always on his mind . . . rather, her thong was . . .
Laurent helped unload all the supplies.
And kept watching Margo as she was introduced to the others, taking particular note of her manner in dealing with the almost white Jonas, who had fought for the Yankees and left both legs at Gettysburg. He stood alongside Clarence, who’d been on the Rebel side and lost an arm in the notorious Andersonville prison.
Ladies Prefer Rogues: Four Novellas of Time-Travel Passion Page 11