The Magnolia Duchess (Gulf Coast Chronicles #3)

by Beth White

  He flashed his charming, lopsided grin and pushed her hat down over her nose. “You’re nothing like Fiona, you know that?” he said when she came out from under the hat, sputtering in aggravation. “I can distract her for hours.”

  “Sometimes I wish I were more like Fiona,” she said.

  And that was when he showed her the cipher and asked her to hide it for him.

  She sat up slowly now, emotions catapulting over one another. “Why would I do this? I barely know you.” She watched his face, looking for sincerity, looking for deceit, looking for anything that would tell her what to do.

  His eyes remained guileless. “You would do this because if you don’t, the Americans will continue to manipulate your people until they are exterminated. Fiona is a good person, but she doesn’t know anything about politics. She doesn’t understand what you went through at Horseshoe Bend.”

  Sehoy shuddered. That much was true. She’d tried to describe the experience, and even Oliver didn’t really want to hear it. Avoiding Charlie’s eyes, she took the pencil from behind her ear and rolled it between her palms. “I’m not sure the English are any better. They give our men guns and uniforms and try to make them march in straight lines to give the Americans something to shoot at while their officers—Oh, it’s all so stupid. Why can’t they leave us alone to hunt and fish and trade as we always did?”

  “Sehoy.” Charlie sat up and unknotted the leather string that tied the pouch about his neck. “No amount of wishing will put things back as they were. Europeans are here to stay, and who’s to say you won’t be better off in the end? Haven’t you heard stories of how the Alabama bands made war on the peaceful tribes of the south? Isn’t it true that the Creeks cannot come to agreement even now? You have to look at the situation pragmatically, make alliances that will benefit yourself and those you love.”

  She loved Oliver and his family. They had welcomed her, made her one of their own, when she had nowhere else to go.

  But Charlie had seen something in her that wavered. Some seed of bitterness and fear that kept her from following her heart. Was she going to hold on to that fear, or was she going to release it?

  Charlie took her hand and uncurled her fingers. He laid the little leather pouch, still warm from his skin, in her palm. “I trust you not to betray me. Soon I’ll go back to my command—and make no mistake, Sehoy, His Majesty’s navy will overwhelm these backwoods Yanks. When the time comes, I’ll take you with me—if you’ll help me now.”

  “What about Fiona?” Her heart broke for her friend’s betrayal. “Can’t you take her too? I know you love her.”

  There was a brief tensing of his shoulder against hers, but his lips curved in a faint smile. “My feelings have nothing to do with my duty. And can you honestly picture Fiona leaving her horses—let alone her family—to move to England? Or to take up the life of a sailor’s wife?”

  No. She couldn’t picture that. Sehoy put her head down on her knees. God had protected her at Horseshoe Bend, he had kept her and Oliver safe during the Battle of Fort Bowyer—for his own purposes. But what would he have her do now, when everything was all muddled? Up was down, right was wrong, and there seemed no clear direction.

  “I’ll hide the cipher,” she whispered. They wouldn’t ask her about it, she was certain of that much. But she wasn’t sure she had the strength to leave Oliver, no matter what Charlie said about pragmatism.

  Sometimes love made no sense at all.

  Fiona’s first thought when Charlie came walking up from the beach with Sehoy was that she wouldn’t have a chance to warn him about what was coming.

  And then she thought that if she’d just told Léon who Charlie was when he first arrived, rather than trying to hide it, she might never have come to love him in this terrible, grief-inducing way.

  Then again, maybe she’d always loved him and compared every boy she met to that delicious, childish hero-worship that colored her memories. And the reality of Charlie Kincaid—his laughter and his kisses, his blue-hazel eyes and his chivalry—had sealed her doom.

  She sat on the porch steps waiting for him to reach her, knowing her brothers and her uncle waited to apprehend him, to chain and lock him in the tack room. He was their best chance at getting Sullivan released. Don’t forget that, she told herself sternly.

  Whatever you do, don’t forget that.

  But when he smiled at her, halfway across the yard, resolution failed. She stood and raised a hand.

  “Make him come to you, Fiona,” Judah said from the doorway behind her. “We don’t want to have to chase him.”

  Chase him? Like a runaway horse or the prey in a hunt?

  She abruptly sat down, grasping her apron in great wads of fabric, in an effort to control the trembling of her hands. “I can’t do this, Judah.”

  “Yes, you can. Just get him to sit beside you, and I’ll take it from there.”

  “You won’t hurt him, will you?”

  “Not unless he attacks me.”

  Would he? She had no real idea what Charlie was capable of if he was threatened. She knew he was brave and clever and resourceful.

  She got up and met him and Sehoy a few feet from the porch.

  Sehoy took one look at her and said, “I’m going to freshen up before I help you with dinner, Fiona. Please excuse me.” She walked on.

  “Where have you been?” Fiona asked Charlie.

  His eyebrows went up at her tense tone. “Just took a walk to the beach. Are you all right?”

  “Charlie, I had to tell my brothers who you are.”

  He let out a low whistle. “Did you now? What exactly did you—wait, brothers?”

  “Judah is here. He’s on his way back to New Orleans from Mobile. He says the British are prepared to attack New Orleans. They know you’re a naval officer, but I didn’t say anything about the—”

  “You told them I’m an officer?” He stepped back, ashen-faced. “Fiona, I’ll be hanged as a spy!”

  “No, no, we—they’ve come up with a better plan than that.” She thought she might choke on the words. “They’ll hold you here until we can get word to your grandfather. We’re hoping he’ll arrange a prisoner transfer—you for my brother Sullivan.”

  “That is insane. I can’t stay here indefinitely. Why didn’t you tell me you were going to—” He looked about wildly. “I trusted you!”

  She grabbed for his hands. “It was the only thing I could think of that would keep them from shooting you. And I couldn’t live as a traitor to my country any longer! I’m just not made that way, and—and—it was wrong of you to ask me to do so!”

  He closed those magnificent eyes, shutting her out, his face twisted in something between a sneer and despair. Pulling his hands free, he straightened, chin up and shoulders squared. “It’s done, then. We’re no longer friends, just garden-variety enemies. I’ll no longer foist my attentions upon you, Miss Lanier.” He picked up her hand and kissed her fingers, his lips bloodless. “Perhaps you’d introduce me to your brother so we can get this unpleasantness over with.”

  He offered his arm and they walked together toward the house, where Judah waited at the top of the porch steps.

  Charlie greeted him with a mocking salute. “Good afternoon, sir. First Lieutenant Charles Kincaid, late of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, at your service. You must be the esteemed pirate Judah Lanier.”

  “I am.” Judah bowed, equally mocking. “I confess, I admire your lack of drama under these awkward circumstances. Perhaps you’d be so good as to turn around and allow me to tie your hands.”

  “Judah, for heaven’s sake,” Fiona burst out.

  Charlie sighed. “It’s all right, I know what is expected of me. If you’re uncomfortable, go in the house until the prisoner is properly disposed of.” He turned and crossed his wrists behind his back.

  Judah approached with a stout rope. “Go inside, Fiona,” he said curtly and proceeded to bind Charlie’s hands.

  She hadn’t even enough breath to wee
p, much less move, so she just stood there, watching her brother take the man she loved by the arm and march him toward the barn.

  “Fiona?” She felt Sehoy’s hand on her shoulder. “Come and sit down.”

  “What have I done?” she whispered. “Oh, Sehoy, what have I done?”

  SEPTEMBER 18, 1814

  It was Sunday morning, and Charlie had to remind himself the Lord’s Day should start with prayer. Truthfully—and since he was conversing with himself, there was no reason not to be truthful—he’d not worried overmuch about praying during his life. It had always seemed to be a waste of time. But lying on his back in the Lanier family’s tack room, surrounded by nothing more interesting than three blank walls, a couple of saddles on a table, and a fourth wall studded with empty hooks—all the bridles and reins having been removed, he assumed, in his honor—he found himself wondering what the Almighty had up his sleeve, so to speak.

  As the third Kincaid son, if he had followed the tradition established by his family, he would be standing behind his own pulpit in some village parish, holding forth about . . .

  Well, what would he speak about? The only thing that came to mind was the story of Jonah, that distinctively unnautical fellow who had sailed in the opposite direction from where God had told him to go and singlehandedly caused one of the worst storms at sea recorded in the Bible. As a youngster, he’d read the story over and over, fascinated by the description of the whale’s bowels and the reluctant prophet’s appearance after his ejection from the fish’s digestive system.

  It occurred to him now that the allegory wasn’t far from his own experience. Of course Charlie hadn’t been gulped down by anything live, be it fish or mammal. But metaphorically speaking, he’d been violently absorbed into the world of American shipbuilding and the Lanier family lifestyle.

  And he had changed under their influence.

  When they got around to spewing him back into his old life, he would never be the same, would never look at being an English aristocrat through eyes of complacency or resentment or any of the variety of ways he’d heretofore responded to the circumstances of his birth.

  Here he’d seen men and women take control of their dreams and pursue them, unfettered by fear of reprisal, uncluttered by expectations of centuries of tradition. Léon was good at carpentry and business, so he built boats—not because his father had done so, but because he dreamed of owning the finest shipbuilding industry on the Gulf Coast. Judah hated staying in one place, so he simply sailed off to become a pirate. Sullivan’s love for the sea and desire to defend his country at the point of a sword sent him into naval service. Even Fiona had been allowed to cultivate her passion for horseflesh and turn it into a means of earning her own place of responsibility in the family.

  More than that, Charlie was changed by their love for one another, a love that recognized flaws, spoke unvarnished truth, and yet still accepted each person’s value to the family as a whole. It was, he suspected, a uniquely American characteristic, that clear-eyed desire for personal growth and maturity, accepting responsibility and yet generously welcoming and protecting weaker members.

  And being changed, was he now going to continue on his original path, running like Jonah as fast and hard as he could from fulfilling his place in his family—or could he find a way to adapt to some new, higher calling? The most frightening question he had to consider lay in his patriotic identity. Could one really go to sleep as a Briton and awaken as an American? How to settle the conflict between responsibility and treason? If he switched loyalties, his captors would never believe and trust him, and his British command would label him a deserter.

  Suddenly he sat up, holding his splitting skull between his two hands. He must be insane to even consider such a course of action. They would say he’d been suborned by a beautiful woman. And in some senses, he had.

  Or was that it? He’d been influenced as much by laconic old Uncle Luc-Antoine as by anyone else.

  And now this new complication—the pirate brother, Judah, who bore the news that the English meant to attack New Orleans. Without the intelligence Charlie carried, they were likely to make disastrous mistakes. The British naval command did not understand the political entrenchments in Louisiana. Charlie himself would never have believed it until he spent six months there, carousing in the taverns of New Orleans, roaming the wharves, shopping in the French Market. The French, Spanish, American, and free colored factions might treat one another with veiled contempt when socializing in their individual districts of the city—but taken as a whole, they were patriotic Americans and unlikely to welcome British promises of peaceful rule.

  Indeed, it seemed incredible to Charlie that anyone would give up autonomous control of one’s fortune and property to an invading monarchy. He wouldn’t do it himself.

  What was a turncoat prisoner of war supposed to do? There was no place for him at his father’s estate in Scotland, he was too old for rusticating with his grandfather in England, and he found himself increasingly reluctant to return to service under some autocratic naval commander who treated his junior officers like so much expendable cash.

  And so he came full circle to his original question of the day: could there be some answer to his dilemma in heaven’s grand plan? Could God be truly interested in the mental and spiritual perambulations of one Charlie Kincaid, as Fiona claimed?

  He supposed he had nothing to lose in asking.

  Flattening himself facedown on the blanket they had given him to cover the tack room’s wooden floor, he shut his eyes and cast about for appropriate verbiage with which to address his Creator. Jonah’s words came to him as if they’d been printed on his brain, and he whispered them aloud, “‘I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.’”

  Louder, he said, “‘For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed.’” He gulped, listened to the silence of the little room, and spoke the last line he remembered.

  “‘Salvation is of the LORD.’”

  8

  OCTOBER 5, 1814

  NAVY COVE

  For two and a half weeks Fiona had been effectively a prisoner—perhaps not, like Charlie, shackled by the ankles to a wall in a tack room in the barn. But she was not allowed to get near him, Sehoy being assigned the morning task of bringing him food and emptying his chamber pot. Fiona occasionally got a glimpse of Charlie when Léon took him, hands tied, on short walks in the evening to stretch his legs, but even when she tended her horses in the barn, someone was always with her. She felt like a child who couldn’t be trusted to be alone.

  Dressed in her working clothes this morning, in the paddock putting Tully through his paces, she looked up when a flock of Canada geese came honking by on their way to Mexico. There was a slight chill in the breeze and the sun hunkered behind steely clouds, echoing the heaviness in her spirit. From the barn she could faintly hear Charlie singing a hymn. He wasn’t exactly a good singer, but his voice was pleasant, and his choice of songs was surprising, especially in his circumstances. She remembered their conversation about God all those weeks ago. Maybe what she’d said to him had made an impression.

  She sighed and nudged Tully with her heels to change his gait. Maybe the hairs of her head were numbered, as she’d reminded Charlie, but she remained at Navy Cove, unable to speak to the one person in the world she wanted to talk to.

  Tully raised his head and whickered, and she looked around to see what had drawn his attention. From the wooded path at the eastern boundary of their property, five horsemen appeared, dressed in the navy blue uniforms of American cavalry. The horses were beautiful—three bays,
a buckskin, and a palomino, the silver conchs of their bridles polished to a gleam, the saddle leather strong and supple.

  Fiona guided Tully through the paddock gate and stopped at the edge of the yard. Uneasily aware of her male attire, she waited to greet the visitors. There was no time to go inside to change, and all the men were at the shipyard—except Charlie, of course. Léon had warned her not to let anyone from Mobile know they had him detained, otherwise they would lose their negotiating power with Charlie’s grandfather. But what if Charlie himself cried out or otherwise made himself known while these officers were here? What if he started singing again? Léon hadn’t deemed it necessary to gag their prisoner, and now it was too late.

  “Good morning,” she said to the ranking officer, who rode ahead of the others and stopped a few feet away from her.

  He took off his hat and nodded, looking taken aback by her unconventional dress. But he said respectfully, “Morning, miss. I’m looking for the Lanier brothers. I was told they own the only developed property outside the fort.”

  “I’m Fiona Lanier. My brother Léon and our uncle and cousin are working over at the shipyard. How can I help you?”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Lanier. I’m General John Coffee. That’s a very fine animal you’re riding—in fact, that’s the reason I’m here. Everyone in Mobile says your brother is the best horse breeder and trainer on the coast. I’ve come to talk to him about purchasing mounts for my regiment.”

  Fiona couldn’t help grinning. She slung her leg over the pommel and relaxed in the saddle. “I’m sorry, General, but everyone in Mobile has lied to you.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean? That stallion looks to be perfectly acceptable—even superior, if I’m any judge of horseflesh.”

  “You’re an excellent judge of horseflesh, sir, but Léon isn’t the breeder of the family. That would be me.”

  “You?” He glanced over his shoulder at his companions. They were snickering, sure this little girl was playing a joke on them. “Contain yourselves, gentlemen,” the general said and returned his attention to Fiona.