The Magnolia Duchess (Gulf Coast Chronicles #3)

by Beth White

  He awoke some three hours later to find Easton standing over him.

  Knuckling his eyes, Charlie sat up. “Was that you kicking me? I dreamed I was in a stable with an angry horse.”

  “Get up, you lazy sack of Scottish bones. We’ve been invited to dinner.”

  17

  With Christmas still two days away, the Villeré dining room had been lit as if the holiday had already come. In the tradition of Southern hostesses, Madame set a magnificent table, with fine white linen, heavy silverplate and fragile China dinnerware, and magnolia greenery for centerpieces.

  Fiona sat across the table from Juliet, who had been placed between her little sister Anne and Charlie. On Fiona’s left sat a quiet young man named Lieutenant Easton, with Colonel Thornton to her right. Celestine Villeré, of course, languished in the toolshed with the other American prisoners, while the younger Villeré children dined upstairs in the nursery. Madame had assigned the head of the table to General Keane, seating herself at his elbow.

  If Madame’s prunish expression was anything to go by, her enthusiasm for their captors did not extend beyond good-looking and agreeable young officers like Charlie. Or perhaps the general had offended her in some way. Keane ate his salt-cured ham, boiled greens, and butter-drenched corn on the cob with his eyes fixed on his plate and a singular lack of appreciation.

  When she glanced at Charlie to see if he noticed, she found his eyes upon her. His unreadable expression reminded her of the days when he’d first come to Navy Cove and how much he had changed over the months spent with her family.

  Cheeks heating, she looked away. Would he say the same about her?

  When her gaze happened to catch that of Colonel Thornton, he smiled at her over his wine glass. “Miss Lanier, I believe you are a houseguest of the Villerés?”

  “Yes.” If that was laconic, rude, so be it. Charlie clearly didn’t want her to volunteer information, for her safety. She frowned. Or was it?

  “Miss Lanier is an orphan of sorts,” Juliet said sweetly from across the table, a breech of etiquette that her mother would have frowned upon, though the officers didn’t seem to mind. “Her brother is a free trader in the area and found her in the city, traipsing about in boy’s clothes. He brought her here so that we could properly dress her and care for her until she could be returned to her family in Mobile.” Juliet blinked at Fiona, as though daring her to deny the truth of anything she’d said.

  “What an interesting background you must have,” Easton said politely. “Related to a pirate—”

  “Judah isn’t a pirate.” Fiona clamped her lips together.

  “Free trader then.” Easton waved a hand. “Did you say Mobile? Kincaid was recently there.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Wait a minute.” The colonel shifted his stare from her to Charlie. “Did you know each other in Mobile?”

  Charlie avoided her gaze. Was he going to lie?

  After a moment, he said reluctantly, “Yes, sir.”

  “Is this the young lady who gave you the information you passed on to General Keane this afternoon?”

  Even more reluctantly, “Yes, sir.”

  Juliet bolted from her chair, a hand over her bosom. “You gave information about our troops to the enemy?”

  Fiona tried to make Charlie look at her. If she said yes without further elaboration, she would be seen as a traitor to her country. If she admitted the information she gave was deliberately false, Charlie would never believe another word she said. Justifiably.

  “It wasn’t like that,” she said, twisting her fingers together under the table. “It’s complicated.”

  “You’re his—lover!” Juliet gasped. “How dare you sit at our table, eat our food, wear my dresses—”

  “Juliet Isabelle, sit down!” Madame thumped the table with her spoon. “Have your manners gone begging?”

  “Miss Villeré, if you were a man, I would call you out.” Charlie’s eyes were murderous.

  Fiona rose, shaking. “I can defend myself.” Proudly she met the gaze of each person at the table, one by one. “I am not, nor have ever been, anyone’s lover. And I assure you, Miss Villeré, I will not eat one more bite of your family’s food. I’m going upstairs to put on the boy’s clothes you seem to find so simultaneously disgusting and amusing, and you may burn or give away this dress—whichever you choose.” She tossed her napkin onto her plate and stumbled out of the dining room.

  “Fiona, come back here.” Charlie’s voice followed her. “Wait, I say!” He caught up to her in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs, grabbed her arm, and whirled her around. “I’m sorry that happened—”

  “I don’t know what you expect from me, Charlie.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “What did you tell them? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’m leaving here.”

  “Where do you think you’re going? You’re a prisoner!”

  She dropped her hands. “Yes, and isn’t that just the ultimate irony? Well, you’re going to have to put me somewhere else—maybe in the toolshed with the militia—because I’m not spending another minute in the same house with that vicious doxy!”

  He hauled her to him, and she felt laughter rumble in his chest. “You’re not going into the toolshed.”

  “Then the sugarhouse.” She turned her cheek to feel his heart beat. Now he smelled like Charlie, clean and only slightly swampy.

  “Not the sugarhouse either.”

  “Let me go, you’re going to get in trouble.”

  “I’m afraid we’re already there.” He kissed the top of her head. Then he tipped her chin up and his lips came down to hers.

  Suddenly the front door burst open.

  Fiona and Charlie jumped apart.

  “General Keane!” A young officer stood panting in the doorway. “Find the general—quick! The Americans have attacked!”

  Easton was dead. Ears ringing, every inch of exposed skin grimy from sweat, gunpowder, and blood, eyes stinging, Charlie stumbled with his friend over his shoulder across the Lacoste plantation onto the Villeré property.

  Wrenched from Fiona’s arms into battle, Charlie had survived the next three hours on willpower and prayer alone. At just past 7:00 p.m., an unlighted schooner had slipped up to the levee where the British force had bedded down for the night. Assuming her to be a merchantman or a British ship sent to guard their flank, the pickets on guard had fired a greeting. Receiving no responding signal from the ship, they’d sent word to the closest officers, requesting instructions. But before an answer came, a blast of cannon fire erupted, precipitating chaos.

  By the time Charlie arrived, the officers on the field had attempted to pull their men together, with some measure of success, despite the rain of fire from the American ship. But then a series of flares went up from the schooner—blue, then red, then white—apparently the signal for the American infantry to attack. From that point, the pitch-black battlefield became an inferno of gunfire, smoke, fog, and hand-to-hand fighting punctuated by the squeal of horses and the mortal cries of the injured and dying.

  Now the night seemed darker than ever. Charlie stepped into a ditch, nearly fell with Easton, but righted himself and kept going.

  What sort of army attacked at night like wild Indians or barbarians out of a medieval drama? Wars were fought in the daytime, orderly lines of artillery advancing upon one another, courage and discipline and sheer numbers determining the victor.

  Was he sobbing? Dear God, he hoped not. He hoped he possessed the physical and mental fortitude to fulfill his duty without crumpling in childish disarray. There, he could see the lights of the Villeré plantation across the plain, and gradually the cane stubble became visible, so that he no longer stumbled over it. When he thought he couldn’t walk another step, his boots found purchase on a gravel path. He straightened. He was going to make it. Easton would lie in a clean bed, with someone to tend him, someone to give him a decent passage into eternity.

/>   But who? Easton himself had functioned as the chaplain of the company, and he, Charlie, wasn’t good enough or spiritual enough or even brave enough to pray over his fallen comrade. Blindsided by grief, he fell against the back door of the house, slid to his knees. “Let us in,” he whispered. “God, let him in.”

  The door was yanked inward, light spilled out, someone almost stepped on him.

  “Someone come here! Hurry! It’s Kincaid and—Oh, Lord, is that Easton? Poor blighter. I said, come here, you!”

  They pulled him inside, a big colored man wrenched Easton away from him, though he tried to hold on, and carried the dead man off. Swaying, he got to his feet and followed.

  “Wait, Kincaid, let somebody look at that shoulder!”

  Charlie shook off a hand and kept going.

  The parlor where they’d had tea that afternoon was a nightmarish cacophony of agonized screams, groans, and the urgent calls of those caring for the wounded. The elegant furniture had all been pushed against the walls, except for the dining table, which had been moved in for the surgeon’s use. Charlie stepped over piles of wounded men, determined not to lose the slave who carried Easton. At last they reached the dining room, clear now but for row upon row of corpses—and a woman who moved from one to the other, closing eyes, straightening limbs like some macabre puppetmaster. He watched the slave lower Easton to the floor in a corner. The room reeked of death, but Charlie barely noticed. As the slave left the room, sparing him a compassionate look, Charlie went to Easton and dropped to his knees.

  He bowed his head.

  Sometime later, he felt a gentle hand upon his hair. He knew it was Fiona, knew her touch as well as he knew his own name, and he let her fingers slip to his shoulder, let her wrap her arm about his neck, let her pull his head to her bosom, where he cried for Easton and cried for himself and told her he loved her as she held him.

  “It will be all right,” she whispered.

  “It will be if you love me.”

  “I do. I love you, Charlie.”

  “Then don’t leave me again.”

  She didn’t answer, just kissed the top of his head.

  He fell asleep in her arms.

  DECEMBER 24, 1814

  VILLERÉ PLANTATION

  With the two armies fully engaged, there was now no question of leaving the Villeré plantation. Fiona, conscripted with the other women into nursing wounded British soldiers, lost track of time as she changed bandages, emptied chamber pots, and fed spoonfuls of soup and tea to men who couldn’t feed themselves. Sometime around dawn, she sat eating a bowl of grits by the fire with Lulu and Rachel, and looked up when Charlie entered the kitchen. Hair combed and face washed, uniform brushed and cocked hat neatly under his arm, he looked much more himself than when she’d left him asleep beside his friend’s body in the dead men’s ward.

  She jumped to her feet, ready to run to him, but he stayed her with a hand out.

  “I just came to say goodbye. I’ve reported for duty, and they’re sending me to the Royal Oak to oversee prisoner transfers.”

  “How many . . . I mean, is the battle over?” How could this anticlimax be all there was?

  Charlie shook his head. “The Americans retreated sometime around midnight, pulled back behind the Rodriguez Canal on the McCarty plantation. Heavy losses on both sides.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, then thought better of it. “It’s not over. We’re going into the city.”

  “Oh. What about me and . . . and the Villeré women?”

  “You’re useful here.” His eyes warmed with approval. “I can’t thank you enough for that, Fiona. And Thornton appreciates your efforts as well. He’ll make sure you’re safe here—and as I said, the action will be moving closer to New Orleans.” He looked away. “It will be over soon. Our entire army is arriving even as we speak.”

  She was sure that was true. But what Charlie and the rest of his command didn’t know was that Laffite’s men—including her brother Judah—had been allowed to join the American cause. Those seasoned sailors, artillerymen, and cannoneers, able to navigate the swamps and bayous around New Orleans blindfolded, could turn the tide of battle on a dime.

  Charlie was the one who should be worried.

  Lifting her chin, she set her bowl on the table and held out her hand. “And Americans do not concede. I will pray for your safety.”

  He kissed her fingers and let her go. But his eyes lingered on her face. “You still have my ring?”

  She put her hand over the bump under her dress. “Do you want it back?”

  “No. If something happens to me, you may send it to my grandfather—or keep it, whichever you choose.”

  “Charlie—”

  He smiled. “Au revoir, sweetheart.” Clapping his hat on, he turned and ran up the steps and out of sight.

  She collapsed into her chair.

  “Mm, mm, mm,” Lulu sighed, “that is one fine gentleman.”

  DECEMBER 25, 1814

  HMS ROYAL OAK, OFF CHANDELEUR ISLANDS

  Charlie entered the ward room of the HMS Royal Oak and found it gaily decorated with magnolia boughs, palmettos, and other semitropical evergreens native to the Louisiana coast—demonstrating beyond question the British seaman’s ability to lacquer over the worst circumstances with tradition. Cook had even managed to find a couple of wild turkeys somewhere, and a giant plum pudding graced the center of each table.

  Restored to his duties aboard the Sophie after escorting the American prisoners onto the Royal Oak, Charlie had received his dinner invitation with some amusement. This sumptuous and long overdue meal, it seemed, resulted from the coincidence of one of the prisoners having been a groomsman at Captain Dix’s wedding in New York some years ago. Jettisoning the typical prisoner treatment of reduced rations and crowded below-decks quarters, Dix must plan this elaborate dinner and invite the officers of the whole fleet.

  As he found his place at the table with other officers from the Sophie—missing Easton’s quiet presence—Charlie tried to remember the last Christmas dinner he’d enjoyed with his family. He supposed he would have been about thirteen and already planning his headlong venture into the Royal Navy. His brother Jacob, in the tradition of elder brothers from time immemorial (witness the Prodigal Son parable, if one wanted proof), made Charlie’s life miserable by never stepping wrong in any pursuit their father deemed essential to the life of a country baronet. The old man, livid at Charlie’s precipitate exodus from public school, persisted in bringing the subject up at every turn. His mother, chronically ill with every malady known to man and some she made up, fluttered her hands and refused to interfere.

  In short, not a happy time. Only Grandfa’s invitation—couched in the terms of a summons—to join him at Riverton had saved him from some other escapade as disastrous as the one that got him in trouble at Eton.

  Staring at the wilted sprig of holly atop the pudding, he had to smile. At Riverton he’d met Fiona.

  His gaze went past the pudding and focused on a black-haired gentleman in a plain but finely tailored suit just now seating himself at the captain’s table. Charlie got up so fast his chair fell backward with a crash.

  Desi Palomo looked up and rose as well. “I might have known I’d run into you here. I came over on a boat with another of your officers.”

  Charlie rounded the table and reached to shake hands. “I won’t ask how you are, Palomo, in these awkward circumstances.”

  “I’m as well as can be expected,” Palomo said with a smile. “I expect my diplomatic skills will earn our release before long.”

  “Knowing Cochrane, I wouldn’t count on rationality to prevail. If you need anything, you’ve only to mention my name.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Charlie nodded and started to go back to his seat, then hesitated. “Palomo, did you know that Fiona is here—at the Villeré plantation?”

  “Yes, her brother Judah finally had the grace to tell me he’d taken her there. I’d been looking for her al
l over the city.” Palomo grimaced. “She’d apparently cut off her hair and joined a cavalry regiment as a horse wrangler. If I didn’t know her better, I’d blame that on you.”

  “I assure you I had nothing to do with it—in fact, I’d done my best to convince her to stay away from New Orleans.”

  “You mean she told you she wanted to come here?”

  “Well, she mentioned the idea.” Charlie looked away. “But at the time I had no way of knowing I’d be coming back here—”

  “Coming back?” Palomo’s dark brows snapped together. “Then you were here as a spy at some previous time.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Yes, though I didn’t remember until it was almost too late to do any good.”

  “I knew it.” The American released a hissing breath. “I suppose we should be grateful the damage was kept to a minimum.”

  “I tried to do a lot of damage.”

  Palomo smiled. “But Fiona is safe?”

  “Safe and making herself useful as a nurse. She can’t quite get the hang of sitting around swooning.”

  “I suppose that would be too much to ask.” Palomo shook his head. “At least you’re here, which will keep her out of a certain amount of trouble.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Charlie grinned. “Enjoy your dinner, Palomo. There may not be another one.”

  DECEMBER 28, 1814

  VILLERÉ PLANTATION

  Christmas morning had brought General Sir Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, to Conseil, where he proceeded to relieve Keane of his command. Fiona volunteered to serve the general and his staff that evening at a meager Christmas feast, where she noted that his arrival improved the morale of the troops—frustrated from bad weather, lack of food, and lack of action—and stirred resentment on the part of the officers, who found their every decision either second-guessed or outright dismissed.