by Martha Hix
Well, this was one morning he’d never forget.
Aye, this proved to be a morning Burke would never forget all the long years of his life. It turned out to be one of the most hellacious.
That wasn’t caused by visiting the grand plantation to call on his brother and sister-in-law. Their pairing forestalled his marriage to Antoinette, but he’d gotten over the pain of Conn and Ind’s involvement at the onset, in ’64.
Nor was the horrific day spoiled by another encounter with his aunt. She kept a distance. Yet . . . if she’d shown her face here in the solarium at Pleasant Hill, Burke would have extended an olive branch. This was how good Susan made him feel.
He now bounced the infant Pays O’Brien on his knee and attributed the child’s good looks to her mother, even though she was the spitting image of Connor O’Brien, outside of her complexion, which was all India Marshall O’Brien. “She’s a beauty, Ind.”
Dark-haired Connor, who towered over his pint-sized, even darker wife, stood proud as a peacock and squeezed her waist. India smiled, first at her husband, then at his brother. “Why, thank you, sir. We think so, but we may be prejudiced.”
Burke tried to harness the little wiggle-worm known as Pays; she managed to dislodge shirt buttons and to yank chest hairs in the space of a few seconds. It would be some time, her uncle figured, before Pays learned Susan’s finesse.
“Better keep your shotgun oiled, Conn. You’re going to need it for this one.”
India grinned. “That’s what her namesake said. Papa Zeke—you recall his last name as Pays, don’t you?—vows to live long enough to help. In case my husband’s aim gets rusty.”
They chuckled, Burke afterward asking after the rest of the clan. Zeke Pays and his wife—India’s grandmother, Mabel—were catching the gulf breezes, Catfish Abbott and his unfortunate mother in party. Burke didn’t need to inquire about a specific Marshall, the one Toni loved in vain: Matt Marshall. Burke had always called him Marsh.
As soon as Winston Marshall, father of India and her siblings, had miraculously returned from a protracted voyage to the Orient—and not long after Connor took over plantation management—Marsh and his wife, along with their young son, had joined his father on another trip to the high seas.
Marsh was meant for the sea.
His taking off had spared Burke from divulging a painful secret. Antoinette hadn’t just drawn a last breath. She died giving birth to a stillborn son. That boy might have been Marsh’s.
Or Burke’s.
The magic lamp had taken two lives.
“Did we tell you about Persia?” India asked, drawing Burke up from the doldrums.
“What about your beauteous little sister?”
“She and her husband have removed to Texas.”
Texas. Where the youngest of the O’Brien brothers had taken up cowboying. “God help Texas.”
“Uncle Bunk, Uncle Bunk!” a black-haired whirlwind, youngest of the three, exclaimed from the archway, bounding from his nursemaid and into the family circle. “Lik-wish. Want lik-wish.”
Winn O’Brien crawled onto Burke’s lap to nudge his sister into a lesser spot. “Uncle Bunk, did you bwing my lik-wish?”
“Licorice. Check the hall tree by the front door.”
Winn sprang from his lap, not unlike a frog, and bounced out to collect his treat.
“We’re working on his lisp,” Connor said.
“No, we’re not. He’ll grow out of it.”
Burke chuckled. The O’Briens of Louisiana loved to argue. The only time to worry about them? When they got too quiet. Even then it wasn’t a worry. Their love was the enduring kind.
Pays suddenly screwed up her fine-boned face to let out a howl that would have wakened the dead. Her mother took her from Burke, patted her back, and said, “You’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen. This young lady has no patience at mealtime.”
“We’re hoping for one more,” Connor confided. “Then we’re going to quit.”
“Quit what?” Burke teased, winking at his sister-in-law.
India wasn’t a woman to blush, and she didn’t now. “Shame on you!” She shook a finger. “And what puts you in such a good mood? Oh. I know.” Her lips clamped.
“You needn’t shy from the subject, Ind,” Burke assured her. “My birthday has come and gone.”
India gave Pays a bounce and a “Hush a minute, lovey” before demanding to know: “Don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Forgive my wife. She knows what happened.” Connor exhaled. “Aunt Phoebe filled us in.”
“I’m going. This baby is hungry.” India made a quick exodus from what, undoubtedly, she suspected to be the line of fire, despite Burke’s heretofore fine frame of mind.
Connor frowned once he and his brother were alone. “You going to marry Miss Seymour?”
“Aye.”
“When you marry a woman, you marry her family. And I recall you washed your hands of Horace Seymour.”
“I spent many an hour strolling through his laboratory. But he’s a changed man. Wild-haired, cold-eyed. In a helluva state.”
“He once floated a barge south to the old pirate’s cove at Barataria Bay, I recall. Asked you to go along, didn’t he?”
“I went out of curiosity. But he’d gathered up everything that reminded him of his wayward daughter. Didn’t know he’d blow memories of Susan to smithereens. He crawls my skin.”
“You sure you want that guy for a father-in-law?”
“Hell, no. But I’ll have his daughter.”
“Seems you’re not fighting the magic spell.”
“I’ll make Susan my wife. But I don’t want to make her miserable in the doing. I admire her. She’s plucky and determined, and a fine mother. And I’ve got a constant hard-on for her.” Burke chuckled dryly. “Hell, if she were weak like Toni, I could take the helm.”
“One of you needs to give. Or you need to find a compromise.” Always the big brother, Connor cautioned, “Be careful, toying with a woman’s heart. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Burke studied the ceiling. What would he do to guard her heart? Hellfire, why be concerned? Her heart did not, and might never, beat for Burke O’Brien. “Everything will work out.”
“I understand she has a stepson.”
“Aunt Phoeb has been busy yapping.”
Connor paced the room but returned to Burke. “Be careful how you handle the youngster. If anyone knows what it’s like, growing up amid family troubles, it’s you or me. And Jon Marc.”
“I’ll take care,” Burke replied with integrity.
Right then a boom rent the air.
Both brothers leapt in the sound’s direction to peer out the tall windows located on the western side of the mansion. Her bow berthed at the wharf, the Yankee Princess teetered. A plume of smoke rose from somewhere toward aft. “Holy shit!”
Susan! He had to save Susan.
Already Burke was rushing toward the riverboat.
If the fire reached the hold—“She’ll blow!”
Twelve
Coming from aft, the ferocious blast ruptured portholes. The force threw Susan from bed and to the floor. She landed hard. Too terrified to think, she functioned on instinct, calling for the god of fire. “Papa Legba, send Zo!”
Acrid air bombarded her nose; a sweet, burning taste, her tongue. Smoke clouded before her eyes. An ache pounded her head. She knew that sound, those sequences. They capitulated her from instinct to reason.
Dynamite.
A meaty man—his head gray—darted past the portholes and jumped overboard. Throck? Hadn’t he gone ashore with Pippin? Of course he had. Relieved, she had to get out. Get out before the fire trapped her there, then burned to the cargo hold. Pippin needed her. She had to live, had to make an English gentleman out of him.
She crawled toward the exit. Then smelled smoke. From where? Surely not the freight hold. It would have blown by now. A hiss.
Snooky.
Take him. Ridiculous. Only a snake. Pip
pin loves him!
“Papa Legba—send Damballah, protector of waters!” Grabbing the pet, she dug first one knee and then the other into the rug. Snooky wouldn’t let her flee.
He fought rescue. Spat. Tried to sink fangs long gone to Orson’s pliers. The serpent flipped his head madly. With all his force Snooky bashed against the side of Susan’s head.
She screamed.
Stars flashed before her eyes. Her head hit the carpet. She fell over Snooky. He slithered from under her, yet she barely noticed. Black began to close in.
Fight it!
Beside himself over Susan’s whereabouts and safety, Burke, his brother abreast, reached the wide pathway that sloped down to the river. Workers and family raced from buildings and fields. Burke shouted for Susan. No response.
At a run, his feet ate up the earth toward the wharf. Snapping his head left to right, Burke searched the riverbank. No Susan. He reached the dock and eyed the steamboat bow. No Susan. Where was she?
“Sleeping,” he said, fear clawing at him. Was she alive?
Behind him, Burke heard Aunt Phoebe screaming: “The lamp! The lamp’s on that boat!”
To hell with the lamp.
He had to save Susan. Had to get aboard.
“The walkway’s intact,” said Connor. “Do we trust it?”
“Gotta try.” Would it hold?
Rushing up the gangplank, Connor to the rear, Burke got a confident feeling. Almost there, almost there. With a single hand Burke grabbed the rope railing. Just in time. The gangway gave way from the wharf, broken hinges grating at the ship’s bow. Burke fell. Holding the rope, suspended above the waterline, he arced his free arm. Got that hand around the—Aw, shit!
Stitches split.
Blood poured from his palm, yet he held fast to the rope.
In the same few seconds he heard his brother slosh into the water. Screams came from ashore mixed with his groans of effort and agony as he climbed the makeshift ratline.
Near the top, a hand reached for his forearm. Susan’s hand. Thank God. “You’re alive!”
Blood on her face, she squatted on the deck, Snooky’s crate beside her.
“Let go my hand, Susan. Jump.”
“I can’t swim.”
“Hell and damnation, jump! I’ll save you.”
She didn’t. She wrapped her second set of fingers around the first, holding him steady. He dangled, a pendulum in motion, held by a surprisingly strong woman.
“This is gonna hurt us both,” he muttered, not expecting Susan to hear him, “but you’re going in.”
Getting a foothold on the hull, he wrenched upward. He yanked her arm with all his might, which wasn’t much considering his position. It was enough. She flew through the air.
He hit the water, went under. A sizable amount of river rushed down his gullet. He surfaced, spat, then grabbed Susan before she went down for the second time.
The burning Yankee Princess began to drift to midstream.
Burke got Susan to terra firma. She sputtered, coughed. Good. She’d be fine. A crowd closed in. Burke wiped blood on his wet britches and yelled the onlookers away: “Get back before that boat explodes!”
“Snooky,” Susan wailed.
The small cut on her temple had stopped bleeding. Her lip trembling, she reared from the grassy bank of Pleasant Hill to stare at the dying maiden. The Yankee Princess.
“I didn’t save him,” she wailed.
Here she was, worrying about a damned old cobra, when a fortune was on its way to the silt of the Mississippi, yet Burke said, “I’m sorry, honey. We’ll get another snake.”
“That’s . . . that’s good.”
Another explosion rent the air. A bigger blast—caused by fire spreading to the crates of ammunition—splintered the big freighter. As if giant hands were lifting her up to pagan gods, she blew apart, a tidal wave of water rising up.
Pieces of the maiden catapulted in every direction.
Burke threw himself over Susan to protect her. Luckily, no shards landed on him, nor did the water reach them. Again, people rushed forth. Burke rolled away, then got to his feet. Sick at heart, he stared at burning timbers and oily patches. The second Yankee princess sacrificed to the waters.
Yet he took comfort in knowing no lives had been lost this time around. No lives, except for a pet snake.
Burke couldn’t take comfort in what the future held.
Lloyds of London would not look favorably on another sinking of an O’Brien Steamship Company vessel.
“It’s a crying shame. Just a crying shame.” At dusk, Phoebe sat with Susan’s boy in the hilltop gazebo and stared down at the patch of river, where Pleasant Hill workers were collecting bits and pieces of the Yankee Princess.
“Are you talkin’ about the cap’n?” Pippin sat on the floor beside Phoebe’s rocking chair. “Momma says his hand’ll be okay. Her head’s okay too. Didn’t even need stitches. They was lucky, Momma said.”
Not feeling as blessed, Phoebe did give thanks that Burke rescued Susan. When his aunt had dared go to the plantation infirmary that afternoon, where the doctor sewed up the two burst stitches in Burke’s palm, he hadn’t yelled when she extended her condolences about the steamboat. His reply had been “Thank you.”
It wasn’t much. But it was a start.
Trouble was, Susan Seymour had called her aside and asked a strange question. “Where was Throck just before the explosion?”
“He and Pip and my grandnephew Winn were down at the cotton gin.”
But Phoebe couldn’t be absolutely sure. She now had the chance to ask a guileless child. She looked down at the gloomy little boy. “Sprig, was Uncle Throck with you and Winn the whole time at the gin?”
“ ’Cept when he had to go to the outhouse. Took him a long time. Said his piles was naggin’. Aunt Phoebe, what’s a piles?”
“Never you mind.”
Pippin fell back to gloom, remarking in a saddened voice as he looked down at the salvagers, “I hope they find Snooky.”
I hope they find the magic lamp. Phoebe had to be practical. The way that riverboat had blown, nothing was spared.
“Cap’n ain’t too happy neither. Told his brother he was gonna find the son of a bitch responsible and string him up by his toes.”
“Sprig, it’s not nice to curse. Or repeat it. I’ve soaped many a mouth for that very thing.” Which obviously hadn’t worked.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Phoebe. Momma don’t like it neither. Anyways, I’m worried about the cap’n. Anybody what’s mean enough to blow up a snake is mean enough to hurt the cap’n.”
Phoebe patted the lad’s shoulder. “Mark my words, sprig, that nephew of mine can take care of himself. And he’s got Lloyds of London to pay the loss.”
“You sure about that?”
“More than sure.”
Besides, the Yankee Princess had been a material thing, not a matter of the heart. Possessions could be replaced.
What, if anything, did her sinking do to the lamp’s power? Phoebe wondered as cold chills shook her spine. Could be the magic was no more. Chances were that Tessa’s wishes for brides had been canceled.
If the lamp were no more, what would that do to the genie?
Vanished. Vanished in thin air. Where could Genie have gone? Tessa O’Brien, at breakfast on the nineteenth, fretted to her age-wizened father, “He wouldn’t leave of his own accord. Where could he be?”
A gnarled hand that had been petting animals for ninety years now reached for the dog that begged at the table. He stroked the bloodhound’s abundant scruff. “Look for your man ’round suppertime.” Shamrock’s tongue curled out to lick the hand that fed him; he closed drooping eyes as his master added, “Jinnings will be coming home for dinner, or my name isna Fitz O’Brien.”
But Eugene Jinnings did not return for supper, forcing Tessa to sleep in a lonely bed. Her worries for the eunuch who knew just how to satisfy this particular virgin, well, heavenly days! Where was he?
He wasn’t her sole concern.
Tessa had the feeling that something had gone wrong. Something terrible. Intuition told her it had to do with Burke. Telegrams, one from dear India and the other from Phoebe, confirmed Tessa’s suspicions. Another steamship had gone down.
Poor Burke.
And poor Tessa.
Her magical man was still missing.
Shredding a handkerchief at the next breakfast table, she asked her aged father, “Do you reckon I’ll know no more magic?”
“Tessa, eat yer banana.” Fitz slipped Shamrock a slice of toast, much enjoyed; slobber flew from the long tongue to the giver’s fingers. “Take a lesson from this hound, ye should. Let any crumb that falls be magic.”
That second morning after the horrific blast, Susan sat on the veranda and rocked a sleeping Pays, the babe’s mother having been called indoors to settle a squabble between housemaids. How calming it was to hold an infant. The black-haired mite yawned, smacked her lips, and nuzzled against Susan’s breast.
“How I would love to have one such as you,” Susan whispered. “A babe is truly a miracle.”
She could give Pippin a sibling. It was as easy as saying yes to Burke’s proposal. He could give her more children. Shoving all negatives aside, she allowed herself a daydream. A family. A peaceful cottage, surrounded by roses and ivy, with birds nesting in the trees. Perhaps even a garden. No nannies, no mammies. Susan would cook and clean and care for her family. And Burke would come home to slippers and pipe. Then they would go to their room to make more babies.
“Ridiculous. Rivermen are gone more than they’re home.” She chuckled and stroked the soft cheek. “And your uncle doesn’t smoke a pipe.”
Moreover, she didn’t want a husband. As Anne Helene used to say, You never know what you’re getting till it’s too late. With Burke, Susan would know what she was getting. Temper fits. His choler had been up since the explosion, but that was to be expected, she supposed. She’d yet to mention the notion of dynamite, since it was too absurd for discussion. Nor had she mentioned Throck. By all accounts, he had been with the boys.