by Nina Bruhns
Aye, he was. He did love her that much. Almost losing her to a madman had shown him how much she meant to him.
But what of her feelings for him? Did she feel the same way?
His heart sank. She may. Instinctively he felt she did. But she would never allow those emotions to flourish as long as she had to choose between him and her brother. Sully would lose every time.
But how could he betray his promise to his mother and father and his own sister, to avenge their cruel fates?
Should he agree to be tested and pray he wasn’t a match? His doctor said that chances were slim he’d be compatible even though he was related to Caleb. If he wasn’t, it would solve the whole problem.
But what if he was? He had to face that possibility. And be ready to decide the boy’s fate. Could Elizabeth ever forgive him for condemning her brother to death knowing he had the ability to save him?
Could Sully forgive himself?
Because of his own background, he’d always championed women, children and the helpless. Always.
But this particular child, this seed of his reviled enemy and murderer of his father and mother, did Sully have it in him to champion this one?
Le Bon Dieu, mait le main. God help him decide, for he surely could not.
Sully was being awfully quiet, staring pensively out the ’Vette’s passenger window. To be honest, Elizabeth didn’t feel much like talking herself.
What an ordeal! Being held at gunpoint had turned her legs to rubber and her heart into a locomotive.
Sully had been amazing. The look in his eyes as she was being held captive had been savage, brutal. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind he would have given his life to save hers without a second thought. If Peel had as much as broken her skin he’d be dead now.
It was a little frightening, having a man be willing to die for you. There was something primitive, primal even, about that kind of a bond between a man and a woman. Something that would normally bind you together for life.
What was it about the Sullivans that was so terrible it prevented Sully from fulfilling the full promise of their bond?
She needed to know.
She needed to know where she stood.
“Sully?”
“Aye?”
“Can we make a stop before we go back to the Inn?”
“Sure. Where?”
“I’d like to go to your grave.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were wandering along a cool shaded path in the Magnolia Cove Cemetery. Sully hadn’t wanted to come, Elizabeth knew that. He’d argued and gotten mulish, then finally thrown up his hands and said, “Bon.”
Hell, she wasn’t sure she wanted to come, either. But she had to do it. Had to put herself into a mindset, an environment, where she could listen objectively to his answer when she asked the question that burned like acid in her heart.
Walking slowly under huge live oak trees that dripped with long strands of Spanish moss, they roamed through a quaint conglomeration of weathered headstones and past small, ornate wrought-iron family enclosures. The ancient brick pathway meandered lazily, giving them the opportunity to read the names and varied inscriptions, testaments to the lives and loves and connections of the people buried beneath. Every once in a while, Sully made a wistful noise of recognition.
It must be so strange for him knowing that every human being alive during his past lifetime now reposed under a headstone somewhere.
For herself, Elizabeth had never liked graveyards. Not since her parents’ funeral when she was a child. This one, being mainly historical, was thankfully different in character from the modern acres of pristine grass and pines where her parents slept. But it still gave her the creeps, in an unsettling, depressing way.
Why on earth had she insisted they come?
It was ridiculously morbid to want to look upon the grave of her lover. But she had to do it. She had to understand what he was going through, understand his past life in order to understand what drove his decisions about her and Caleb.
She would not go all Percy Shelley and ponder the bigger picture. She would not allow herself to wonder about the forces that had brought Sully back to life. Such things were far greater than she, and trying to grasp them would only end in futility.
But she would like to know why he’d come back.
Because she had enough faith that she firmly believed for such a miracle to occur, there must be a very good reason. If she could just find out what it was, she might be able to convince him that saving Caleb was part of that reaso n.
The pathway took a bend, and as they rounded it, they came face-to-face with…
“Merde,” Sully swore softly. “Sacre…”
She stared in disbelief. Good Lord was right.
A large black wrought-iron enclosure surrounded two giant windswept-marble headstones, one for Sullivan Fouquet and one for Elizabeth Hayden, engraved with names and dates. Below the lettering sailed a pair of ships, the hulls of which contained a different kind of writing.
She walked up to the enclosure and peered in for a closer look. The writing was two poems. The one on Sully’s headstone read:
No vow to God or girl or friend
Could keep this gallant from his fate
For Death leaves port without a sail
Its driving breeze a cruel betrayal
“How ironic,” he muttered, startling her. She hadn’t realized he’d come up next to her. “That the real betrayal came from the woman they placed next to me.”
She steeled her spine and turned to Elizabeth Hayden’s marker.
Ne’er a chance to be a bride
For swiftly came life’s changing tide
Beauty and charm, her virtues exalted
In the arms of her love her voyage was halted
She gritted her teeth at the saccharine lines. What. Ever.
Sully let out a derisive snort. “If she were still alive she’d not hold a candle to you, you know that, don’t you?”
Her pique deflated. How could she be jealous when he said things like that?
“I can’t believe they planted me next to the deceitful wench.”
She turned to him and relaxed her jaw, giving him a gentle smile. “This isn’t you, Sully. Not anymore. Let it go. Let it all go. You’re not living in the past any longer. You’re in the future now. Look forward, not back.”
His mouth thinned and he took on a faraway look. “Easier said than done, chère. There are things—” He shook his head, turned and paced a few steps away, shoving his hands in his pockets.
At her insistence, on the way they had stopped at the Pirate’s Rest to cut a bouquet of roses, which she carried on her arm. To give him some space, she lifted the latch of the gate and went into the enclosure, placing the flowers in a large glass vase hanging in a built-in wrought-iron holder on Sully’s gravestone, next to the poem. Mrs. Butterfield had said there would also be a watering can filled with fresh water sitting behind the headstones, and sure enough, it was there. While they were cutting the flowers, Mrs. B had explained how Sullivan Fouquet had lots of admirers among the droves of pirate-obsessed tourists who found their way to Magnolia Cove, and that the Magnolia Cove Pirate Museum took care of the graves and made sure there was always fresh water available. The famous Cajun captain, after all, was the tiny village’s one big claim to fame and its main tourist draw.
“Thought you were going to put those on the grave of your namesake,” Sully drawled from behind her.
“Changed my mind,” she said.
He gave her a wry smile and glanced at the mound of his grave with distaste. “Wishing I were still in there?”
She sucked in a breath. “Don’t even joke like that, Sully.”
He opened the gate for her. “Why are we here, chère?”
She walked over to an iron bench that sat under a nearby gnarled oak and took a seat. “We need to talk.”
“Here? It feels rather ghoulish to have a tête-à-tête with one’s lover at the foot of
your own grave.”
An involuntary shudder skittered up her spine, but she forced herself to remain sitting. “Yes, here. It seems somehow appropriate.”
He pursed his lips and sat next to her. “Bon. And what would you like to talk about?”
“It’s tomorrow, Sully. I lived up to my end of the bargain. Now it’s your turn.”
He shot to his feet again, glaring down at her. “Your end of the bargain? Are you…Are you trying to tell me last night was—”
“No,” she interrupted. “That’s not what I meant at all. But you asked me to stay and I did.”
“And it was such a hardship?”
She bit her lip, quelling the aching in her heart. No, the hardship would come after having stayed, when she had to leave.
She sighed. “Sit down, Sully. It’s time for you to tell me why you despise the Sullivans.”
Chapter 15
E lizabeth watched Sully’s handsome face darken and his expressive eyes narrow and take on the glitter of hatred. “Lizzie, are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, his voice low and rough with intensity.
She knew what was at stake. They obviously both did.
This would be either the end or the beginning. The place where their future was decided. He’d tell his story and either he’d draw a line in the sand and make her choose which side she would stand on, or she would be able to coax him to forgive, and erase it.
“Yes,” she said. “We can’t go on like this. I’m going home tomorrow. I want you to come with me, stay with me there, make a home together.”
His lips parted and his eyes filled with an emotion she couldn’t decipher. “A home? On the Sullivan estate?” At the corner of his lip, a muscle jumped.
She nodded. “Or there’s a village nearby. We could find an apartment.”
She was laying out all her cards and it was terrifying. But she didn’t care about her pride, or propriety or anything else. She loved him. She wanted him with her. The future? No one knew what the future would bring. Nothing had taught her that more poignantly than this trip to Magnolia Cove.
If he rejected her, so be it. But she wouldn’t lose him for lack of trying.
He pushed out a breath and sat next to her, putting his elbows to his knees and staring out at his grave. He sat like that for a long time, until she was sure he didn’t mean to answer.
Then finally he began to speak.
“The Acadians were treated like slaves, you know. Because of the political turmoil with France, in 1755 the British confiscated our lands in Nova Scotia and sold us as indentured servants to the highest bidder to pay for our own deportation. Some were lucky and escaped with just the shirts on their backs and made their way south along the coast, eventually settling down, mostly in Louisiana but in other places, too.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said. “About being sold.”
“Standard British procedure. Same deal with Australia. They pretended it wasn’t slavery, but it was pretty damn close. You could work off your indenture after a certain number of years, theoretically. But if the master wanted to keep you…Anyway, my parents landed with Lord Henry Sullivan in Connecticut.”
“Caleb’s ancestor.”
“And Andre Sullivan’s, too.” He gave a humorless laugh. “Yet another irony.”
“What happened?”
“Less than a year later, I was born. Three years after that, my sister.”
Her heart ached for him, guessing what was coming next.
“Apparently old Lord Henry had taken an immediate shine to my mother. I found out later he’d raped her repeatedly over the years. But what could she do? Being indentured, she couldn’t leave and accusations against the master would only have made her ordeal worse. So she hid her shame from her family and lived with it.”
The stark reality of his words, of his mother’s suffering brought tears to her eyes. “Oh, Sully. I’m so sorry.”
“None of us knew.” He hung his head. “Maybe my father knew in his heart. But one day he came home from the fields and found his wife—Found that bastard—”
He swallowed heavily and she wanted to reach out to him, to take him in her arms and rock him until the hurt went away. She took his clenched hand in hers and whispered unsteadily, “It’s okay.”
“No,” he ground out. “It’s not okay. My father went crazy. Attacked him. Tried to kill him, like any normal man would do under the circumstances. But the foreman came running and dragged my father off him.”
Elizabeth’s blood screamed through her veins, not wanting to hear what came next. She had an awful feeling…
“They hanged him. They took him straight to that big oak tree in front of the estate house and strung him up. No trial. No mercy. I remember my mother screaming, pleading for his life. That’s when I found out I was Sullivan’s bastard son.”
She put her hands over her mouth to keep from crying out. Her eyes overflowed. Oh, my God. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He gave her a pitiless glance. “It gets better. When my father stopped moving at the end of the rope, my mother couldn’t face life without him. She grabbed a knife from the belt of a man standing next to her and stabbed herself in the heart. I didn’t notice because I was too busy fighting three of Lord Henry’s thugs, trying to get to that oak tree to help my father. Not until I heard my little sister’s wrenching sobs did I turn and see I’d lost both my parents that day.”
Tears ran down Elizabeth’s face as her heart broke in two. She couldn’t say she was sorry again, because her throat was completely blocked by a huge lump of shame and horror that something so awful could have happened to him. To the family he loved. To anyone. She wanted to cover her ears, not listen to any more.
“Then, since I was branded a danger to society, I was tied behind a horse and dragged to the village jail to await transport to Louisiana to be with ‘my kind.’ I found out later that my sister had been sold to a family moving out west. She ended up in Kansas.” He looked up and she saw the barest glimmer of a smile. “Clara, Tyree’s wife, is her descendant.”
A small sob escaped from deep inside Elizabeth at that unexpected happy twist in such a tragic tale.
Then another, larger one, escaped because she understood with dead certainty that never in a million years would he ever forgive the Sullivans for what they did to his family. Nor should he.
She rose from the bench, unable to speak, unable to do anything but shake her head and let the tears fall freely. She turned to flee. And was halted by his low, unsteady voice.
“Elizabeth. There’s more.”
She turned back to him, desperate to go, unable to bear it any longer. How could there possibly be more?
“You asked me once why I’d come back,” he said. “Do you remember?”
She nodded, and all at once the pieces fell together and she understood that, as well. “Revenge,” she shuddered out. “On the Sullivans.”
He nodded grimly. “You were right about the voudou. It is what brought me back to life.”
“The curse on Tyree?” she asked hoarsely, wishing, hoping that was it. Knowing it wasn’t.
He rose and walked over to her, reached up and gathered her face in his hands. “Non. Not that one. When I was young and angry I put a curse on Lord Henry, on all his legitimate heirs. I cursed them to oblivion and begged to be alive to witness the demise of the Sullivan line.”
The demise— She sucked in a breath of anguish. “Caleb!” she cried.
He nodded, looking oddly regretful. “The last two male descendants of Lord Henry were Andre Sullivan and Caleb. Now there is just one left.”
She could barely breathe. Oh, God. Oh, my God. “And you’re here to see him die.”
And she had thought Sully could cast a spell to save Caleb! Tears flooded anew.
“I’m sorry, Lizzie. Even if I took that blood test you want, I doubt I’d be a match. And if I were…” His words trailed off. “The curse is a powerful one, Elizabeth. There’s nothing
I can do.”
So Caleb was fated to die because of Sully’s quest to see the Sullivan line wiped from the earth. His revenge on Lord Henry would then be complete.
She looked at him through her veil of tears, and in his gaze saw a hint of regret, a hint of pride and a wellspring of pain and sorrow.
“I understand,” she whispered.
And the worst part of it, the very worst part of all, was that she truly did.
Sully put his arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders and together they walked back to the Pirate’s Rest Inn. Somewhere along the line today he’d forgotten his stick, so they took it slow. They both used the time to pull themselves together. Not that he was in any hurry to get there. He dreaded what was to come. He dreaded the inevitable.
Which he had brought upon himself.
They arrived at the Inn and Mrs. Butterfield made a huge fuss. She’d heard all about what had happened at Rose Cottage. The news of Peel’s capture had streaked around the village like wildfire, so they had to bank their personal crisis and sit and tell her all about it over more tea and crumpets. She must have attributed Sully’s pensiveness and Elizabeth’s red-rimmed eyes to the ordeal.
When they were finally able to escape the kitchen, they went up and Sully lay quietly on Elizabeth’s bed, staring at the ceiling while she moved wordlessly around the room, packing her cases to leave for home in the morning. When she was finished, he heard her set them by the door. She was silent, but he felt her gaze on him.
“Elizabeth, I just want you to know—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted softly. “Please, Sully, whatever it is, either I already know or I can’t bear to hear it.”
He rolled his head on the pillow to see her standing in the middle of the room looking lost and forlorn and sadder than he’d ever seen anyone in his life. Her beautiful blue eyes glistened with unshed tears.
He nodded reluctantly, granting her that small comfort. Why put her through it—why put both of them through it?—making declarations of love and regret that would do neither any good?