The Topaz Brooch: Time Travel Romance (The Celtic Brooch Book 10)

by Katherine Lowry Logan

  Kenzie’s eyes narrowed, and she remained poised for attack, staring him down for a tense five-count. “You don’t mess with my man, O’Grady! I don’t tolerate that from anyone. Not even family.” Then she cradled her injured hand. “Damn. That hurt my thumb.”

  Rick’s vulnerability was on full display. Might as well have taken out an ad in The Times-Picayune.

  David collected the brooch and shoved it into one of the pockets of his cargo pants before extending his hand. Rick swatted it away and staggered to his feet under his own power.

  “Ye’re out of control, man.” David folded his arms across his chest, making every muscle flex. If he had a bald head, he would have looked like Mr. Clean. “Ye’re not going anywhere, especially Verdun. Between the French and Germans, almost a million soldiers died. If that’s where Billie went, ye’d never find her, and ye’d probably get yerself killed. And right now, I wouldn’t care.”

  Rick collapsed into a chair and scrubbed a hand through his hair. Alarm was written all over Pete’s face, and it almost kicked Rick flat on the floor again.

  “I’m flat-out embarrassed for you,” Pete said. “What the hell’s wrong?”

  Sophia’s brow pinched, and her lips pursed. Behind her eyes, she was sketching a picture of him. The sketch should go into a dictionary next to the definition of a damn fool. Remy stood like a soldier at ease with his arms folded, a cell phone in his hand, shaking his head at Rick’s pathetic performance.

  And he was pathetic.

  “M-kay, I flipped out. I’m off my game.” Rick folded his arms, mimicking Remy, but directed his anger at David. “You want to talk about being off your game? Let’s do it. When you went back for Kenzie, how many times did you screw up? How many times did you almost get her killed? Don’t talk to me about being off my game. And don’t judge my mental state either.”

  “David doesn’t have to, lad, but I will.” Everyone turned to find Elliott standing in the hallway, his face angry red, his fists bunched. He strode into the kitchen. “What the hell is going on? I’ve been leapfrogging between conversations and text messages from one part of this country to another,” he growled. Then he pointed to Rick. “O’Grady, outside. Now.”

  Rick sucked in a deep breath, lifted his chin. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Elliott loosened his fists and shot his shirt cuffs. “The reports I was getting pissed me off. Let’s take it outside.” Elliott hooked his thumb in the direction of the back door.

  A chewing out by Elliott usually scored high on the Richter scale. No telling how high this one would go. The anger in Rick welled even higher, and he muttered a string of expletives as he yanked open the back door. The evening air was muggy and hot, and the tepid breeze failed to cool his sweaty forehead.

  Elliott grabbed the whisky bottle and two glasses and followed Rick out to the private yard where the pergola’s overhead lighting lit the BBQ kitchen and surrounding trees. A small fire in the stone firepit crackled, adding to the romantic atmosphere. According to the House Rules, the owner came by at dusk to turn on the outside lights, start the fire, and provide any cleanup services guests desired. Rick wished he hadn’t turned on the lights and firepit. He’d much rather sit in the dark.

  He propped his ass on the edge of the barstool, hooked his bootheel over the rung, and pinned Elliott with a questioning glare. If Rick wanted a future with MacCorp, if he wanted to continue as president of Montgomery Winery, if he wanted to find Billie, then he had to straighten things out with Elliott.

  “Why are you here, Elliott? To bust my balls? Fire me? What?”

  Elliott eased onto another stool, challenging Rick’s glare with a laser look only he could manage. He pulled two cigars from his shirt pocket and handed one over to Rick. “I promised Braham I’d give ye the spiel about this cigar, but I’m not in the mood. Light it and shut the hell up.”

  Elliott tossed a lighter on the counter next to the whisky bottle but didn’t light his cigar. Instead, he slowly rolled it between his finger and thumb, keeping his eyes on Rick. When Elliott looked at you the way he was looking now, it sliced through all the shit with the efficiency of a meat cleaver.

  “I heard what happened this afternoon. Then Connor called and told me he was heading to Napa because ye were second-guessing where Billie went. After he called back from her house to tell me she had stacks of World War I books, and her bedside reading was the Battle of Verdun, I hopped on the plane—”

  “And here you are. What words of wisdom does Obi-Wan have for me?” Rick riddled his tone with sarcasm.

  “With that attitude, lad, any wisdom I have won’t be processed in yer screwed up brain.” Elliott wasn’t even trying to restrain his inner grizzly. “What’s up yer ass? Is this all about doubting yerself? Ye’re a Medal of Honor recipient. I never pegged ye as a quitter.”

  Rick frowned behind a cloud of cigar smoke. Then he covered his disgusting behavior and the dressing-down from Elliott by adopting pseudo-confidence. “I’m no quitter.”

  Elliott pointed at him with the unlit cigar balanced between his fingers. “Kenzie just took ye down. Any other time, no one could have snuck up behind ye and done that.”

  “How the hell could you possibly know what happened ten minutes ago?”

  “I have eyes and ears planted where they’re most useful.”

  Remy. Rick could trust the bodyguard—anytime, anywhere—unless it involved family business. Remy’s loyalties would always be with Elliott. Rick took a short draw, then removed the cigar from his mouth and studied it as if the dark, natural wrapper held all the answers to his problems.

  “Pain’s etched on yer face, clear as if an artist used a sculpting chisel to carve it out of marble. It ripples through yer voice.” Elliott ran the cigar back and forth under his nose, sniffing the sweet-scented tobacco. “Ye remind me of Jack after he lost Carolina Rose. Just like him, ye’re searching for the why so ye can make peace with what happened in Afghanistan.”

  “That’s old history.”

  “All history is old, lad.”

  Rick slid off the barstool and walked around the firepit as if stalking it. “I should have died that day. I was the only one without a wife or fiancée.” He stopped and propped his booted foot on the pit’s stone wall. The flames lapped at the kindling, and the smoke swirled upward into the breezy night air. The dancing flames were hypnotizing.

  “I can’t hide from the pain. I breathe it. Smell it. Hear it. It’s a part of me. My shrink tells me I gotta learn to accept it. I have moments when I’m so pissed I can’t catch my breath. Then it passes, and I function as well as the next guy. But today it all came rushing back. I doubt I’ll ever fully recover from the war.”

  “Do ye want to?”

  “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “Sometimes, it’s easier living in pain than learning to live with pain.”

  “I see their faces, hear their voices. We were laughing, swigging Gatorade, then that damn IED hit and that Humvee took off like it had wings. Some of the boys just kept flying toward Heaven. I should have been one of them.”

  “So ye think going to Verdun will get ye there quicker?”

  Rick shrugged. “God knows.”

  “Well, it won’t. Billie’s not there. She’s where ye thought she was. Back helping Andy Jackson defeat the British.”

  “Is that Obi-Wan talking?”

  “Nope. That’s Meredith bringing sense to the senseless. Billie’s seven-times-great-grandfather fought under General Jackson. He was one of the thirteen Americans killed that day.”

  “Does Billie know that?”

  “Don’t know. But here’s the interesting part. The brother of the soldier who died married his sister-in-law. He abused her and her child. Abuse and alcoholism cycled through generations of Malones. If Billie knows about him, I believe she’d want to save him. It wouldn’t take much to find him, move him to a different location, and instead of thirteen lost souls, General Jackson would only
lose twelve.”

  “Or someone else would die in his place.” More tension crept through Rick, his teeth clenching with viselike intensity. “How the hell did Meredith put that together? And in less than twenty-four hours?”

  “I’ve spent almost thirty years trying to figure out how my bride’s mind works. But you, Billie Malone, and NOLA buzzed around in her brain until she went back to yer genealogy file. There was a subfile about yer two acts of heroism that resulted in yer Medal of Honor award. In the file were obits for the men who died in the Humvee. Gunnery Sergeant Malone’s obit stated that a member of his family had served and died in every American war since the War of 1812”.

  Rick was incredulous. “One of the men I lost was related to Billie?”

  “A cousin several times removed.”

  “And he came from one of those families stuck in a cycle of abuse and alcoholism.” Rick sat back down on the stool, poured whisky into a glass, and gulped it down.

  “Aye. Gunnery Sergeant Malone joined the Marines to get away from it all. Ye need to close that chapter of yer life, lad. Go back and save Billie and her ancestor.”

  “We can’t change history.”

  “This situation is similar to what Kenzie experienced, and that turned out okay. Saving one ancestor might save generations of Malones, including yer gunnery sergeant. Or the alcoholism and abuse will only be delayed a generation and ye’d still lose yer man in the war.”

  Elliott flicked the lighter and puffed on his cigar, sending the rich tobacco’s fragrance into the air between them. “Ye don’t often get a second chance. This is yers.”

  The face of Rick’s gunnery sergeant loomed large in his mind. The heartwrenching look on the widow’s face at the cemetery loomed even larger.

  “You’re not Obi-Wan, you’re the Nostradamus of our generation.”

  “I’m neither one. I’m just an old man with a wee bit of insight and a wife with even more.”

  14

  Barataria (1814)—Billie

  Billie snuck inside the estate house through the only open door facing the bay. It was a clear night, and without light pollution from gas or electric lights obscuring the brightness of the stars, celestial objects could be seen in all their glory, just like in Afghanistan.

  She pushed the walk down memory lane aside. There was no time to stargaze.

  Before searching the house for a phone, she removed the bark sandals to keep the rough, crumbly material from scraping the wood floor.

  Candles burned in wall sconces, creating funky-looking shadows on the walls. Why wasn’t there any electricity? Weird. But as long as they had a telephone or shortwave radio, she’d get by without lights.

  She tiptoed through a room that resembled an armory, with early nineteenth-century cannons stationed in front of gunports like those in the sides of the hull of a ship, and there were tools and equipment hung on the walls to clean, load, and fire the cannons. Back when those cannons were still in use, any enemy ship sailing up to the shore would be a goner.

  She sniffed. What was that aroma? Baked chicken? Her stomach wanted her to go in one direction, but the commander yelling in her head told her to go another. Following the commander’s advice, she approached the dimly lit hallway.

  Which way should I go?

  That asshole she’d decked would be sounding the alarm soon. She didn’t have much time.

  A match sparked and flared in the darkness. The sharp sound and the scent of sulfur screamed into the quietness like the bolt action of a rifle. Just when Billie’s adrenaline had leveled out, it exploded full blast again, and she ducked.

  “Ah! Mon Capitaine already returns from the brothel,” a deep voice cut through the quiet room. The small flame briefly illuminated a man’s face. “Was William not enough for you? I sent you the most well-endowed of my sailors.”

  She scowled at his glib nonchalance. “You’re an asshole and a sadist.” She straightened, looking directly at Shiny Boots, planning her first move. “He and I came to a different understanding of what was going to happen.”

  Shiny Boots lit a candle, blew out the match. “What understanding was that?”

  Deep in her chest, anger turned into a growl, and she knotted her hands into fists, eyeballing the distance to the door. If she made a run for it, Shiny Boots would get there first and block her exit. Best to wait and karate-chop his neck, too. Another low growl escaped.

  “That I intended to kill him, and that I didn’t intend to be raped. Don’t get me wrong, I like sex as well as the next guy…gal. But it’s more enjoyable when I’m an active and willing participant, not a victim. And what’s-his-name wasn’t very romantic. Neither was the audience waiting in line outside the door.”

  Between the bite marks and the bruises on her breasts, she probably looked like she’d gone three rounds in a no-holds-barred cage fight.

  Shiny Boots’ long strides ate up the space between them, showing her just how powerful he was. She held her ground, but it wasn’t easy. If she had to fight him, she might lose. She already knew he would anticipate her next move before she even thought of it.

  He had changed clothes since she saw him last. He was no longer dressed in dark, mysterious, dangerous black. His tight tan trousers and light-colored shirt with billowing sleeves open to the waist made him look more approachable. His eyes were still dark and piercing, but the vertical crease in his brow had relaxed. His bearing, though, remained that of a dangerous man, well-muscled and sleek as a jaguar.

  He speared her with an intense gaze, though. “You are an unusual woman, mon Capitaine Malone.”

  “There are lots of women like me. Women who’ve gone to West Point and joined the Rangers. I’ve worked hard. So, Boss, you know my name, how about sharing yours? A real name. Not the name your men call you.”

  “You came here and didn’t know who you’d find?”

  The sound of dozens of feet clacking against the hardwood floor reached them. “Boss! Boss!”

  “In here,” Shiny Boots said, as calmly as if answering a child with nightmares.

  Billie ducked into the shadow. He would likely turn her over to his men again, but she would fight this time.

  A silver, triple-stem candelabra with unlit candles stood on the table at her side. She’d start with that and improvise from there. Give her a knife, a pistol, and she could put two, maybe three men out of commission before they raped and murdered her.

  “She’s gone, Boss. She clobbered William, used his knife to cut through the rope, and escaped.”

  “She won’t get far tonight,” Shiny Boots said. “Send a search party out first thing in the morning. And do not hurt her. Bring her directly to me. If anyone puts a scratch on mon Capitaine Malone or harms her in any way, he will die in her place. Now, go.”

  After they were gone, Billie slipped out of the shadows. “Why’d you do that?” she whispered.

  “Because I like women who know when and where and how to fight.” He carried the candle across the room to a large table where an elaborate meal—chicken, vegetables, fruit, freshly baked bread—was spread out, along with the contents of her purse, including Morgan’s flyer about the tour of the Battle of New Orleans.

  Her stomach rumbled. “Are you expecting company for dinner?”

  “You,” he said. “I anticipated you’d find your way back here before the night was over. I didn’t know how many men… Well,” he waved a dismissive hand, “never mind.”

  She ground her molars. “That attempted rape was a test? That’s disgusting, and I want my ring back.”

  “I’m not giving it back, and if you ask again, I’ll throw it in the bay.” He poured something from a gold pitcher into two gold goblets and handed one to her, ignoring her question. “You’re educated, an American, and a Capitaine in the United States Army. The British Navy will be at our shores very soon.”

  She sipped, not wanting to drink much on an empty stomach, but she desperately needed liquids. “What shores are you talking about?�
�

  “Barataria, of course.”

  “Which Barataria?”

  “There’s only one.”

  She cocked her eyebrow. “Tell Sancho Panza that.”

  “Ha! So you’ve read Don Quixote.”

  “Yes, and I’m also familiar with the Barataria in Trinidad and Tobago. Along with the steamer Barataria, the Coast Guard cutter Barataria, and the Navy’s USS Barataria. But I assume you’re talking about Louisiana.”

  “Of course.”

  She mentally high-fived herself. She was only a few miles from New Orleans and a plane ride home. She guzzled the contents of her goblet, then took a deep breath while Shiny Boots refilled it. If Shiny Boots would give her a ride, she could be back in the city tonight.

  “I didn’t know many people lived on Barataria. I thought it was just a scenic stopover for tourists.”

  “I have over a thousand men here, and some have families.”

  “Payday must be insane.” Now she needed his name so she could report him to the police. “So, are you going to tell me your name?”

  He made an elegant leg. “Jean Lafitte, at your service.”

  “Of course, you are. So what happens now, Jean? Will you drive me back to New Orleans?”

  “It’s a three-day boat trip.”

  “Don’t you have a car, a truck, something? Or a phone? I’ll call an Uber.” An Uber would cost a fortune, but at least she’d get out of here.

  He did a flip-the-air-thing with his wrist. “I don’t know what an ‘Uber’ is, or a ‘phone,’ but the only way to New Orleans is through the swamp. How long did it take you to get here?”

  “I don’t know. I was drugged and dumped here.”

  Despite his somber demeanor, his features showed a whisper of amusement, as if he thought everything she said was entertaining. “Why?” he asked.

  Now it was her turn to flip the air. “I don’t know. I guess they wanted you to catch me.”