by Nina Bruhns
She nodded. “The G-rated version. Is there a problem, Sully?”
“What the hell do you think?”
And just like that, the magic of the night was wiped away, replaced by the irresolvable differences that hovered ever-present between them.
She swallowed, and touched him, the man who had brought her so much pleasure, and for a few hours made her feel like the only woman in the world.
“Sully, please…Isn’t there some way—”
“Non!” he cut her off harshly, then backpedaled and said more gently, “I’m sorry, but you know where I stand on helping the Sullivans.”
Her heartbeat skittered. Now would be the time to bring it up—the information her mother had uncovered. And the suspicions it had raised in Elizabeth’s mind, about the origins of his animosity.
She gathered her courage, and asked, “Because of Lord Henry?”
He bolted upright on the bed and rounded on her. “What do you know of Lord Henry?” he demanded.
She sat up, too, and pulled the sheet around her. “Mom found some old records in the estate archives, from his time. There was reference to a Fouquet family. Servants.”
“And?”
“And my mother surmised from his name that the son, Sullivan, had been…That is, that Lord Henry was his—your?—real father.”
Sully looked as though she’d slapped him. He reeled from the bed and paced unevenly away from it. Staring through the window, he ground out, “Your mother is a very perceptive woman. However, I can assure you of one thing. Lord Henry may have sired me, but he was in no way my father.”
The roughly spoken pronouncement sent goose bumps searing down Elizabeth’s flesh. This was not the voice of a man suffering from delusions. It was the voice of a man suffering from injustice. Personal injustice.
A wave of unreality hit her—from the certain knowledge that she was falling in love with—What? A ghost? A demon? What had he said, transmigration? Lord, a body-snatcher?
She smothered an hysterical laugh. Good Lord.
“Elizabeth, I know what you must be thinking.”
“I doubt it,” she muttered, rubbing the goose bumps from her arms.
He glanced at her sharply. “I’m sorry if you find my motives amusing or inadequate—”
“No. It’s not that.”
“What, then?”
“It’s either laugh…or cry.” She pushed out a long sigh and flopped back on the pillow. “The whole situation is so bizarre. I keep thinking any minute now I’ll wake up and this will all have been just a terrible—” she sent him a heartfelt glance “—wonderful, awful dream.”
The anger in his face drained away, leaving just the stark tension. He came to sit on the edge of the mattress and took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. “Elizabeth, these past three months have been a nightmare for me. Being in the hospital, my body a wreck. Not knowing for certain who I really am, why I’m here, or what forces were at work to bring me back from…wherever I was before. It wasn’t until I met you that I felt the least inkling of…comfort. Or of belonging.”
God, she didn’t want to hear this. Didn’t want to know of his misery, his vulnerability. It would only make what she had to do even harder. “Sully—”
“Non, let me finish. I want you to stay with me, chère. Move down here to Magnolia Cove and—”
“Stop!” she exclaimed, yanking her hand from his and jumping from the bed they’d shared. She stared at him incredulously. “I can’t believe you can ask me that, and in the next breath refuse to help my brother!”
“I’d hoped—”
“Well, don’t. Despite everything, I like you, Sully. God help me, I more than like you. But don’t offer me something you know I can never accept. It’s too cruel.”
With that she swiped up her dress from the floor, pulled it on and rushed out the door before he could catch her.
“Elizabeth!” he yelled after her.
But she didn’t want to listen. Anything he had to say would only make the hurt worse.
This was so unfair. So goddamned unfair! Why did she have to fall for a man she could never have?
Stubborn, stubborn male pride! Poor Caleb had nothing to do with long-dead Lord Henry Sullivan. And if Sully couldn’t see that, he wasn’t the kind of man she wanted in her life.
No matter how much her heart and body disagreed.
Watching Elizabeth flee, for the first time in his life Sully was hit with an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Not even as they’d tied him behind a horse and dragged him from his weeping sister and the dead bodies of his parents, away from the Sullivan estate to be transported to Louisiana, had he felt this unsure of himself. Back then he’d had a powerful purpose. One that had carried him through a difficult youth and forged him into the iron-willed man he’d become. The man he was even today.
But had that iron will begun to rust and weld fast to itself, in the shape of an outdated and unnecessary need for revenge?
He scrubbed his face to banish the mental images that awful day conjured for him. Horrific, sickening images of his family slain, his heart torn apart.
Non! Someone had to pay for that destruction! For that loss of potential and innocence. He must stay the course. Elizabeth didn’t understand. How could she, when she didn’t have the whole story? But would she listen if he told her?
Would it help?
Probably not. She loved her brother. No excuse would be good enough to trump that love. And to be honest, he did not begrudge her. Loyalty was a trait he admired, even when it went against his interests.
So there it was again. The impasse that tore at them and their love like a savage hurricane splintering a ship to pieces.
What was there to do about it? Short of tying her to his bed for the rest of their lives, he could think of nothing.
His gaze fell to the bathroom floor where the water still pooled, a reminder of the passion they both found impossible to ignore. How could he simply stand aside and allow a passion like that to die? Or more likely, survive for a lifetime of loneliness, doomed by vicious circumstance not to flourish?
As he washed and dressed for his morning physical therapy appointment, he imagined himself back on the quarterdeck of the Sea Nymph, puzzling out how to penetrate an impenetrable harbor defense, or defeat an undefeated enemy admiral. Those challenges had never posed a problem for him in the past. This one, too, surely had a solution, if he could but see it.
In the meantime, the first rule of capture was not to let the prize out of your sight. He must keep Elizabeth close. Keep her talking to him. If possible, keep making love to her. And perhaps even, against all his instincts, hope for Caleb to make a miraculous recovery…without Sully’s help.
Elizabeth put the receiver back down onto the phone in her room, feeling worried.
It had been a call from her mother, telling her Caleb had taken a small turn for the worse overnight.
The night Elizabeth had spent making love to his sworn enemy.
A cry escaped her, and she put her hand over her mouth to prevent more from following. Enemy. How could a ten-year-old boy be anyone’s enemy? It was absurd!
Her mom had assured her Caleb was okay, just not feeling as well as he had been. But any change in his condition worried Elizabeth. What if he got even worse? What if he had to go back into the hospital and she wasn’t there? What if she really couldn’t talk Sully into doing the test? What if—
Oh, God. She had to do something!
A knock sounded on her door and she went to answer it, swiping a tear from her lashes.
Think of the devil and he appeared. It was Sully.
One thing you had to say for the man, he had the audacity of a fox and the stubbornness of a mule. Too bad those things were working against her and not with her.
“Are you all right?” he asked with a frown.
She took a deep breath and nodded.
He looked dubious, but said, “You’re obviously still not speaking to me,�
�� he said with a shade of contrition, “but I was hoping you might drive me to my physio this morning. You don’t need to say anything,” he added when she remained mute, needing a minute to gather herself and switch gears. “Just nod.”
She sighed. “Honestly, Sully. I’m not a petulant child.”
“Non,” he agreed. “So, how about it? We can have breakfast first. I, for one, built up quite an appetite last night.”
She snapped him a look, but his expression was perfectly neutral.
“I got a call from my mom,” she said as they descended the stairs, not wanting to talk about last night. “Caleb isn’t feeling well.”
He paused in taking a step. “I’m sorry.” The sentiment actually seemed sincere. “It must be difficult for you. Especially being so far away.”
“I’m thinking of flying home.”
“Non!” They’d reached the bottom of the stairway, and he swung to grasp her arms, spinning her to face him. “Don’t go yet. Please.”
“Why?” she asked. “He needs me. Unless…are you telling me you might still change your mind and have the test?”
His fingers dug into her flesh. “Non. You know that’s not possible.”
“Then what reason would I have for staying?” she demanded, guilt instantly flooding over her when his gaze flinched with hurt.
“For me. Because I need you.”
He was doing his best to pull her strings, and the worst part was, he was succeeding. She couldn’t do this. “You’re a real bastard, Sully.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “You don’t know the half of it, chère.”
“So tell me.”
His eyes drilled into hers. “I will, if you stay.”
She wasn’t sure she trusted him this far. He had his own agenda, and keeping her was apparently part of it. Not that it wasn’t flattering, in a very basic, primitive way. But she would not be swayed against her better judgment.
Still, if there was more to his reasons that she didn’t know, she wanted to hear it. You couldn’t fight what you didn’t know.
“Promise?” she asked.
“I swear.” The grandfather clock in the foyer chimed nine, breaking the tension crackling between them. “But I’ll be late if we don’t get moving now. Vien.”
After a quick breakfast, she drove him to the medical center then sat in the waiting room as he did his physical therapy. On the chair next to her he’d left the backpack he’d carried home with him last night from the scene of the fire. He said he didn’t want to leave it in the car in case it got stolen. On the phone Jake had said it might be evidence, and asked if they could peek in and tell him what was there.
Evidence of what?
Curious, she unzipped the top a few inches and peered inside. The backpack was filled with what appeared to be old books. Hmm.
She recalled the conversation she and Sully’d had with Mrs. Butterfield over dinner a few days ago, where their hostess had said the arsonist plaguing the area was supposedly after some two-hundred-year-old paintings, and diaries written by a sailor. Specifically, diaries that had to do with a voudou curse placed on someone by—
Oh, my God!
Sullivan Fouquet!
How could she have forgotten that?
What was more, hadn’t Mrs. Butterfield said that yesterday’s arson victim was a professor who specialized in voudou?
Once again a sense of unreality washed over Elizabeth. Sullivan Fouquet’s sudden reappearance—if she really believed that—could it have something to do with…voudou?
Normally Elizabeth was a fairly practical person. Not given to flights of fancy. Heck, she didn’t even read her horoscope—she thought the whole thing was a lot of hooey. Ghosts? Well, maybe. The universe, after all, was a miraculous, mysterious place, and who was Elizabeth Hamilton to set limits to its powers?
But voudou?
Good grief. Was any of this really possible?
A long shiver traced itself up her spine and down again.
Perhaps she should just take a little peek inside the diaries. See what she could find out. She’d be very careful. Only touch the edges. Maybe—What was the arsonist’s name? Wes? Wesley Orange? Pulp? Peel! That was it—maybe Wesley Peel had found and marked the passage he’d been seeking in the journals. The one about the curse.
Maybe that could shed some light on, or give her some insight into what drove the man, Sullivan Fouquet.
Knowing she’d probably regret it, but unable to help herself, Elizabeth pulled the top diary from the backpack and began to read.
Chapter 11
“W hat the hell?”
Elizabeth looked up in surprise, then guiltily shut the sailor’s diary she’d been thoroughly engrossed in for the past half hour. “Sully!”
“Where did you get those?” he demanded, scanning the volume in her hands as well as those stacked on the chair beside her.
“Um. The backpack. I’m sorry. I know I probably shouldn’t have touched them, but when I saw what they were I just couldn’t resist. And Jake did say to find out…”
“God’s Bones, those are Davey Scraggs’s journals! How on earth did they get—” His eyes widened and he plopped down in the plastic chair on the other side of the diaries. “So it was Wesley Peel at the fire. He dropped the backpack when Jake started chasing him.” Sully reached out to pick one up, but his hand stopped and hovered above it, almost as though he was afraid to touch it.
“Fascinating reading,” she ventured, watching him carefully.
His gaze snapped to hers. “Oh, aye?”
She nodded. Waiting.
The corner of his lip curled up wryly. “You mean to assess my knowledge, don’t you?”
Her face went warm that her intent was so transparent. But this was an opportunity that would only come once, and she wouldn’t back down. “If you really are Fouquet…”
“Are you certain you want to know the truth?”
“You’re that sure?”
“Trust me, there is nothing in those diaries I can’t tell you about in greater detail than is written here. At least—” he shrugged “—the ones penned before my death.”
Another shiver sifted through her. Did she want to know the truth? Well, didn’t she already believe, in her heart of hearts, that howev er improbable, this man really was Sullivan Fouquet?
Or was it that the alternative would be too awful to bear—that Andre Sullivan was a complete fraud…about everything from feigning amnesia to his reasons for not being tested for Caleb? And their affair—it would make that a sham, too, and her a gullible idiot for believing something so preposterous.
“Would you object?” she asked.
“I’ll welcome it if it means putting to rest any doubts you have about me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, but managed a smile when his brow rose.
He made a face. “Let’s get out of here. If I must endure an inquisition, I’d like to be somewhere more comfortable, and preferably with a glass of ale in my hand.”
“But shouldn’t we get the backpack to Jake first?”
“I called him from the nurse’s station to ask about it. He said to hang on to it for now. Apparently Peel slipped past them yesterday, and he’s working another lead to catch him.”
“That’s great. I’d like to read more.”
“Before or after my inquisition?”
She chuckled. “I saw a jetty out behind Pirate’s Rest. How about we go there and talk? We could pick up a six-pack.”
“Perfect.”
First they stopped at the Inn to change. While Sully continued up to his room, Elizabeth dug through her suitcase for her bikini and a pair of shorts. She was just getting out the sunblock when he reappeared in her doorway. Looking much as before. He’d only switched his polo shirt for a T-shirt.
“Aren’t you wearing shorts?” she asked, examining his attire critically. “It’s hot out there.”
“Shorts?” He tore his gaze from her bikini top and
glanced down at himself uncertainly.
It took a bit of convincing, but ten minutes later, kicking and screaming the whole time, he’d changed into navy gym shorts, a white sleeveless T-shirt and an Old Fort Mystic FD baseball cap that she scrounged from the dresser in his room. She pulled on her own UConn ball cap and headed for the door.
“You are not going out like that?” he asked, exchanging horror over his own attire for hers—or rather her lack of it.
“We’re just walking down to the water. No big deal.”
“But people will see you!”
“It’s a bathing suit, Sully. That’s what women wear to the beach these days.”
“Not my woman!” he declared with a scowl.
There were so many possible reactions to that vehement statement—the thrill of being claimed so adamantly as his, irritation at the chauvinist edict of what she could and couldn’t wear, despair at having to deny the relationship he so patently envisioned they were in—all she could do was stare.
Rather than deal with all that, she wordlessly went back into her room and pulled a light camp shirt on over her bikini top.
“Better?”
Something of the war waging tightly within her must have shown on her face, because his shoulders notched down and he said, “Some things take a man longer to get used to. Sharing your body with the world—” He shook his head. “Not there yet.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Bad enough I have to share my own,” he muttered with a scowl at his bare legs, and followed her down the stairs.
Inwardly, she gave in to a half smile. Okay. She supposed her covering up was a fair trade for making him change into those sexy shorts. With any luck both their shirts would be off before the afternoon was out and he’d be over his prudish attitude toward bathing attire.
As for the rest…well, that remained to be seen.
The day was hot, but absolutely glorious.
The narrow wooden jetty behind the Inn stretched at least a hundred feet out into the sparkling inlet, past the shallows where the spartina and sea oats swayed near the shore and out into deeper water where you could tie up a boat or do some fishing if you were so inclined.