Mara picked up her cloak and folded it across her arm, then pulled on her kid gloves. She was wearing the same amber velvet she had worn on her arrival in New Orleans, the small velvet cap sitting well back on her head and trimmed with the same Brussels lace that edged her bodice jacket. “There must be some mistake,” Mara said as she thought of the extra expense.
But there was no mistake, nor extra expense to be paid. Françoise Ferrare’s coachman, sent especially to see them safely on board their ship, helped Mara into the carriage.
“Are we really leaving New Orleans, Mara?” Paddy asked dejectedly.
“Yes, Paddy, we’re leaving New Orleans,” Mara replied softly as she stared out at the iron-grilled balconies adorning pink and yellow stucco houses.
Once on board they were shown to their quarters, Paddy and Jamie sharing one while Mara was shown to a cabin of her own. She had made sure she had enough money to purchase one, for her condition would become more and more obvious as the voyage lengthened. It would save embarrassment all around if she could retreat to the privacy of her own cabin.
But when she had reserved the cabin, she’d had no idea it would be as nice as this one, with its mahogany-paneled walls and finely etched, crystal-shaded oil lamps. A fur rug, which looked as luxurious as sable, was folded across the foot of the berth. Mara pulled off her bonnet and gloves and threw them on top of the cloak she’d dropped across a chair. She walked over to the porthole and stared out, catching a glimpse of water beyond the bow of another ship docked alongside. She heard the activity on deck as the crew made preparations to set sail. Soon they would weigh anchor and sail out into the Mississippi River, which would carry them into the Gulf and far away from New Orleans.
A loud tapping on the cabin door drew Mara’s attention from the limited view, and she turned as the door was swung open.
“We’re going to be sailing in a few minutes, Mara!” Paddy exclaimed. “Do you want to go up on deck and watch?”
Mara shook her head. “I don’t think so, Paddy.”
Paddy looked disappointed. “Can I still go and watch? Jamie said she’d come with me,” Paddy entreated.
“Yes, go on, but try to stay out of trouble,” Mara told him as he rushed from the room with a hasty thank-you thrown over his shoulder. Mara sat in the silence of her cabin unaware of the time, or the damp chill creeping slowly in.
She leaned back against the side of the berth, her head bent as she stared blindly at her hands folded in her lap. She felt a strange tightness in her chest, as if something were welling up inside of her, something that she couldn’t control any longer. She gradually became aware of the gentle rocking of the ship as it caught the current and drifted out into the Mississippi.
They were actually leaving New Orleans. Suddenly Mara realized the magnitude of it all. Never again would she see Nicholas Chantale, the Creole adventurer she had fallen so hopelessly in love with. It was all over, every dream was shattered.
Mara felt a sharp jab of pain behind her eyes as the pressure built, and suddenly her head ached unbearably. Mara frantically pulled at the hairpins holding her thick hair in place and, with a sigh, felt the heavy chignon fall into long strands around her shoulders. She ran her fingers through the thick tangle, but still her temples pounded with a merciless beat. Mara felt a constriction in her throat and swallowed painfully. Blinking her eyes rapidly, she felt a hot, burning sensation inside them, and suddenly she felt the unbelievable wetness on her cheeks and then a saltiness trickling into the corner of her mouth.
“Oh, God, it’s been such a long time,” she whispered as she began to weep, the deep sobs racking her slender body as she doubled over with all the pent-up pain and fury of her childhood, and of the last few years. She cried for Maud O’Flynn, her mother, and saw once again that room in Paris.
She cried for Brendan, for his dreams and failures, for his just wanting to be somebody in life, only to end up in a cold grave on a bleak hill far from home.
But most of all she cried for Nicholas, for the love she could never have and would never be able to give. Burying her head in the pillow on the berth, she cried for all of them, and for all the lost years. It felt as if her heart meant to explode.
Mara moaned as she continued to cry, terrified of the flood of emotion tearing her to pieces. She did not hear the cabin door, open, or the harsh words softly spoken. She did not feel the hard arms that closed around her shaking body and held her close to a warm chest, the heart beating strongly beneath her cheek.
Mara felt herself drifting to sleep. Then the enticing images of dreams began to flee as consciousness returned and she fought against opening her heavy eyes. She felt so warm, almost secure. She stretched, then suddenly stilled as she felt the hard muscle of an arm across her waist.
Mara’s eyes flew open and met the green ones that had been intently watching her waken from exhausted slumber.
“Nicholas?” Her lips trembled as her golden eyes filled with fear. “Oh, God, don’t be so cruel to torment me this way. It isn’t real. He isn’t here with me.”
Nicholas’s arms wrapped around her, holding her closer to his heart, the sable rug covering them warmly. “Feel me, hear my heart pounding with love for you, Mara,” he said softly against her ear. “I’m very much alive, and here with you on this ship.”
Mara looked up, her eyes clinging unblinkingly to his face as if afraid he would disappear. “Nicholas, oh, Nicholas…how can it be? I thought you were still at Sandrose. You are going to marry Amaryllis, and yet here you are with me. Why?” Mara cried, trying to pull free from his arms. But Nicholas continued to hold her close against him. “You hate me, you despise me. Have you forgotten who I am? I’m Mara O’Flynn, the Irish actress you once swore vengeance against.”
“No,” Nicholas corrected her gently as he touched his mouth softly to hers, “you are Mara O’Flynn, the woman I love.”
Mara stared at him in confusion. “You can’t love me.”
Nicholas smiled. “I can see now that we shall always be arguing. So,” he put the question to her, “why can’t I be in love with you? You are with me.”
Mara gazed at him in surprised silence.
Nicholas’s smile widened. “I see I have finally found the way to render you speechless. I shall have to remember to keep telling you I love you, ma petite. But then, I don’t think I shall ever forget to do that.”
Mara felt a tear slide from the corner of her eye as she stretched out a tentative hand and touched Nicholas’s hard cheek, her fingers caressing his lips. She whispered brokenly, “You love me? You aren’t just saying that to be cruel, Nicholas?”
Nicholas’s smile faded as he looked deeply into her eyes, willing her to open her mind and heart to him. He held Mara’s face cupped within his hands as he said, very quietly, “Give me your love, Mara. Trust me with it, share it with me and don’t keep it to yourself. I love you, Mara, and I need you more than anything else in this world. Will you believe in me and in my love?” Nicholas asked her, his green eyes never leaving her face as he searched for some sign of acceptance.
“I know you are wary, and still mistrustful,” he began, a husky note in his voice, “and you have reason to be, for in the past there have been too many hurtful lies between us. But I am opening my heart to you now, Mara, my love. When I heard that you had left Sandrose, I felt as if a part of me had died, and I was frightened for the first time in my life. I thought I had lost you, that I wouldn’t be able to find you again.”
“Why did you follow me?” Mara asked in bewilderment.
“Because I finally knew with no doubts to plague me that you loved me. Only a woman who loves a man deeply and with every breath in her body would have offered her life to protect his.”
“I died a thousand times over when you threw yourself in front of me and Alain shot you,” he said grimly, a brief flash of anguish showing in his eyes as he remembered.
“But what else could I have done?” Mara asked.
Ni
cholas dropped a light kiss on her forehead. “Exactly, my dear. You could have done nothing else but that act of foolhardy heroics, and it proved to me that you loved me—something your beautiful lips refused to admit.”
Mara drew a deep breath. “I couldn’t tell you how I felt when I thought you still hated me.”
“That damned, lovable pride of yours—as well as my own pride—kept us apart. That, and a few other things of late,” Nicholas said in a hard-edged voice, his green eyes narrowing. “I think you have something to tell me, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Mara asked uncertainly, his tone of voice making her think of the old Nicholas, who had always been so disapproving.
“I mean, my sweet,” Nicholas said unrelentingly despite the quivering of her lips, “that I wish to hear about my child. You neglected to tell me about him—or her.”
“I couldn’t,” Mara admitted in a whisper. “You would have pitied me, Nicholas, and that I could not have lived with. You spoke with Françoise? That is how you found out?”
Nicholas shook his head. “No, that merely confirmed my suspicions. I’m no fool, my dear, and I believed you might be with child,” Nicholas said, then laughed abruptly as he confessed. “Actually I think I was hoping you were, because then I’d have had even more of a hold over you. But you never said anything, except to keep pleading with me for your freedom. Now I know why,” he said softly as he smoothed back a thick curl of her hair. “With that stiff-necked pride of yours you would have run off and had our child, never letting me know of its existence, raising him as your own. We have much to forgive each other for, I think,” Nicholas said sadly.
“I love you, Nicholas,” Mara spoke the precious words she had longed to have the right to say to him. Arching her neck backward, she raised her lips to his in a gentle kiss that sealed their love.
Relaxing in the warmth of his embrace, her arms holding him close to her, she asked shyly, “When did you come to love me?”
Nicholas rested his chin on top of her head and breathed in the sweet fragrance of her unbound hair. “It was a gradual process, although I suspect that part of me fell in love with your picture the first time I saw it.”
“The locket,” Mara murmured. “That’s what started it all.”
“Perhaps. Although I might have been attracted to your face, it was Mara O’Flynn, the woman, that I came to love. The allure of your beauty would have dimmed after a while. But the love I feel for who you are, Mara, will only grow brighter.”
Mara felt the now-familiar wetness on her cheeks as she pressed her lips to his, her words of love becoming lost beneath the answering pressure of his mouth, their kiss taking on new sweetness and fire.
But there were still questions that needed to be answered, and so Mara asked the most painful one first. “What of Amaryllis?”
Nicholas smiled unpleasantly. “I left Amaryllis in little doubt of what I felt about her,” he replied easily.
“She said you asked her to tell me to leave. She said that you and she would be marrying,” Mara said huskily, the wound of that conversation still raw.
“She lied, my dear,” Nicholas reassured her. “She was desperate. She knew I felt nothing for her, yet she couldn’t admit defeat. I suppose she thought if she got rid of you, then I would turn to her. Her vanity allowed her to believe she could succeed. She hadn’t counted on the fact that I was madly in love with you,” Nicholas told Mara, feeling no pity for the old flame who, in selfish jealousy, might have destroyed his happiness. “She never told me you had left until just a few days ago. By then I’d found Alain, and I couldn’t leave until I’d settled the affairs of the estate. I was like a man possessed until I managed to get away from Sandrose.”
“But what of Beaumarais? Aren’t you going to rebuild it, Nicholas?” Hugging him tightly, she said, “I’m so sorry about what happened to it. I know how much you loved that house. It was your home, and it’s so unfair that you should lose it just as you returned to it.”
Nicholas folded his arms behind his head and gazed up thoughtfully at the beams of the ceiling. “I came back to New Orleans thinking I wished only to discover the truth and reconcile with my father, but when I saw all the old, familiar places I began to relive the past, hoping to recapture it.
“Gradually I came to the realization that the past was dead and could not be reclaimed. I had changed too much in the years away from New Orleans, and my friends had not. They were the same stiff-necked Creoles they always had been, and I no longer belonged—nor did I wish to.
“I thought perhaps I was still in love with Amaryllis, and when I heard she was a widow, I thought maybe there might be another chance for happiness with her. But it didn’t turn out that way. Every time I looked into Amaryllis’s pale eyes, I saw a pair of golden ones baiting me, and when I kissed her lips, I remembered a half-smile and a taunting voice. You haunt me, my dear, and I know now that there is no escaping you. I don’t want Beaumarais any longer. Let her go back to the swamp she was born from, for there are only ghosts left to inhabit her now.”
Mara felt a relief and calm descend on her as she heard him. He was no longer held captive by the past, and they could start anew, in some other land. They would never have been able to begin again if they had stayed at Beaumarais. Mara laid her head on his chest and asked dreamily, “Where shall we be living in London?”
Deep laughter rumbled in his chest, and Mara propped herself up on her elbows as she stared into his face.
“London? Who said we were sailing to London, my love?” Nicholas declared with a grin that twitched the corners of his mouth. “We happen to be headed for California, and if we experience good weather the babe will be born there.”
Mara opened her mouth, but it was a moment before any sound came out. “B-but I bought tickets on a ship sailing for London. I don’t understand,” she exclaimed weakly.
“You really should be more observant of your surroundings, ma petite,” Nicholas scolded. “You see, under my orders you were brought to this ship, not to the one you had booked passage on. This is one of the faster clippers and should make the golden shores of California in three months or so.”
Mara stared at Nicholas in mingled disbelief and suspicion. “You tricked me. But how?” she demanded. “Françoise and Etienne. Of course! I never even thought to ask how you knew where to find me. They were the only ones who knew.”
“They send their love, my sweet,” Nicholas told her, totally unrepentant. “I arrived at Françoise’s late last night and discovered, to my great delight, that you had been there. I would have torn New Orleans apart trying to find you, my dear,” Nicholas told her without exaggeration. “Luckily for me, this ship happens to belong to Armand de St. Jaubert. Remember? The father of little Gabriella? It was quite easy to make arrangements for our passage, even on such short notice. Etienne will handle all my affairs in New Orleans. He will have some of the heirlooms and keepsakes I had sent to Sandrose shipped out to us in California, and he will handle the sale of the land should I decide to sell. Although I think Amaryllis may not be quite so anxious to acquire it now that the house is gone. Nor may she have the funds now to do much speculating. I left her making plans to follow her ex-almost-fiancé to New Orleans. There was a desperate gleam in her eyes. She wishes to patch things up between them.”
“So,” Mara breathed, “we’re going back to San Francisco.”
Nicholas grasped her chin and turned her face to his. “You do want to return? There aren’t too many bad memories there for you? And remember, my dear, should Brendan’s wife still be there—which I doubt—you will be with me. She would not dare touch either you or Paddy,” Nicholas promised her.
Mara smiled. “No, I don’t fear her, or my memories of San Francisco. In fact, I think I’m rather pleased to be going back there,” Mara added with an innocent look at him. “After all, I do have friends there.”
“Ummm,” Nicholas murmured. “I think by now the Swede will be safely wed to that re
dheaded landlady of yours, and I won’t need to worry about him moping around with a long face. Of course, I shall be right by your side at all times, for by then you will be so big with our child that you will need a bit of assistance. And by the look in my eye no one will doubt who the father is, or whose woman you are,” Nicholas added.
Mara’s golden eyes darkened momentarily, and she said softly, “And what name shall the babe be born with?” For despite all his words of love and devotion, never once had Nicholas mentioned marriage.
Nicholas suddenly rolled over and Mara found herself staring up into his blazing eyes. “And what name did you think he would be born with, my dear?” he asked in a very quiet voice.
Mara swallowed. “Since I am not wed, the name O’Flynn is as good as any.”
Nicholas narrowed his eyes until only a sliver of green shone from behind the thick fringe of black lashes covering them. “And I was thinking that this voyage would be an excellent opportunity for a honeymoon,” Nicholas said casually, shrugging as if it were of little concern to him whether they were married or not.
“Did ye now?” Mara retorted, the sick feeling that had lurked in the pit of her stomach disappearing. Her lips curved in a smile of provocation. “And here I was thinkin’ ye had to be married first. Well, that’s what comes of bein’ raised in the old country. Here am I, just a poor, Irish lass without the sense to be knowin’ me own name anymore, or whether I’m to be your wife of not.”
A smile curved Nicholas’s mouth and a devilish light twinkled in his eyes. “Since you’ve assumed so many identities in your short but colorful life, Mara, me love, I think there might be room for one more. And the final one will be,” he added in deadly seriousness, “Mara Chantale. It sounds right,” he whispered as he enclosed her in his arms, holding her as if he would never free her, “as if it belongs to you, and only you.”
Mara’s arms encircled his strong neck and she gazed up at him with all her love revealed. Never had she looked more beautiful than she did at this moment, Nicholas thought humbly. He knew all too well the great effort it had taken for her to declare her love to him.
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