The Magnolia Duchess Read online

  “Why?”

  “Because . . . because he doesn’t like the British.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Are we in a hurry?” He hoped not. In spite of the headache, he was rather enjoying the feel of her slim form pressed against his back.

  “I’m supposed to fix supper for everybody, and . . .” She paused as if searching for another excuse, then released a gusty sigh. “My brother Sullivan says if you have to lie, you’d best stick as close to the truth as possible. I’ll tell them you washed up on the beach, and you don’t remember who you are.”

  “Sullivan? Another brother? Will he also object if he finds out I’m British?”

  “I’m sure he would if he saw you, but he’s on a prison ship off the coast of Carolina.”

  He turned to look at her. The words had been spoken stiffly, without inflection, but there was no mistaking the tremble of her lips. Suddenly the pain in his head roared, and nausea overtook him. “Miss Fiona, I . . . I fear I’m about to cast up my accounts. Perhaps you’d better look the other way.” He leaned over the horse’s neck.

  “Oh, Charlie, I’m sorry!” She slid to the ground. “Here, get down before you fall. I’ll hold your head.”

  “No—”

  But she was already pulling him toward her, and he had no choice but to awkwardly slip-slide down from the horse. He managed to stagger off behind a tree, where he knelt and proceeded to be violently sick. The world turned green, then blue, then dark purple. His shoulder hit the tree hard as everything went black.

  He woke sometime later in a shadowed room with a streak of dying sunlight slipping under the curtain over the single window. The aroma of food, perhaps roasted chicken, turned his stomach, and he rolled over, covering his mouth and nose.

  “Charlie! Be still! You’ll start your head bleeding again.” Fiona’s voice came from the open doorway. He heard her hurried steps approaching.

  He gained control of the gagging sensation. “Somebody just . . . shoot me.”

  “That’s not funny. You’re lucky to be alive.” She sounded aggrieved, justifiably, he supposed. He would be an inconvenient houseguest.

  He rolled onto his back and touched the thick bandage holding his forehead together. It hurt like blazes. “Where are we?”

  “My bedroom. It’s next to the kitchen, where I can keep an eye on you.”

  “Your brother allowed this?” He squinted upward at Fiona.

  “It was his idea.” Swathed in a big white apron, she flitted about, tucking the coverlet over him and adjusting the curtain. “He’s really a very kind man, Charlie. He wouldn’t throw you out in this condition—in fact, he and Oliver carried you in.”

  “Oliver?”

  “My cousin.”

  “How many cousins do you have? Never mind.” He could only take in so much information at a time. Strange that he could carry on a conversation, understand basic concepts like cousins and brothers and aprons, yet couldn’t remember what he’d done yesterday. Fiona had called him by name. Somehow she knew him, yet she wanted to hide his identity from the rest of her family. “Sit down so I can see you,” he said abruptly.

  Her hands went to fists at her hips. “You are not my lord, and I am certainly not your servant.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” But had there been a note of imperiousness in his voice? He sighed. “Miss Fiona, you must forgive any bad habits from—from my past. I am of course grateful for your rescue. I owe you my life, I’m certain. I merely want to look at your face when we talk. Please?”

  The fists relaxed. She went to the kitchen, returned with a ladder-back chair, and set it down close to the bed. Seating herself, she turned a pair of big blue eyes upon him, along with a faint smile.

  He felt better immediately and caught her hand to bring it to his lips. “Thank you. Now, please, where are we?”

  “I told you—”

  “Yes, yes, your bedroom, but what country? What city?”

  “Charlie, this is America. Navy Cove isn’t really a city. It’s just a little community near the fort—Fort Bowyer. The closest city is Mobile, but that’s half a day’s sail up the bay.”

  Thinking made his head hurt, but he gave it his best effort. Try as he might, however, he had no recollection of traveling toward a city called Mobile. “What year?”

  She stared at him. “1814. What is the last thing you remember?”

  He hesitated. “I was sent down from Eton.” Everything after that was a jagged blur.

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t remember meeting me and my family?”

  “No. But if you tell me I did, I’ll have to believe you.”

  “This is insane.”

  “I’m not insane. I just don’t—”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  They stared at one another for a long moment. Fiona bit her lip.

  Charlie closed his eyes. “My head hurts.”

  He felt a small callused hand laid gently upon his brow. “I’m sorry,” Fiona said. “I think you’d better rest, so I’ll leave you alone. But first, do you want something to eat?”

  Charlie’s stomach rumbled. He laughed. “I don’t know how one can be sick and hungry at the same time. But something smells good.”

  “Dumplings. I’ll fix you a plate.” Her thumb gently brushed his eyelid. “There’s a doctor in Mobile. I could send for him.”

  Alarmed, he looked up at her. “No, you’re right. The fewer people who see me the better. A good night’s sleep will put me right as rain.”

  “I hope so.” Fiona withdrew her hand and rose. “I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  He watched her disappear into the kitchen again. Not daring to sit up, he carefully turned his head to look around. The dying light revealed a small room, barely larger than a closet, with walls made of some rough plaster-like material and a high-beamed ceiling. He ran his hand along the wall to his left. It felt like seashells embedded in the plaster. Strange.

  It seemed the Laniers were not wealthy people.

  So how would a young lady living in an American coastal village cross paths with the son of a British earl? He picked through their conversation on the beach. She claimed to have visited his grandfather’s estate with her aunt, uncle, and cousin . . . Maddy? Yes, that was the name. He had no memory of such a meeting, but neither could he deny it.

  One thing he knew for certain. Concentration on anything beyond his physical body was cursed painful. He must lie very still and allow his head to heal—and hope the protective brothers and other assorted relatives of his attending angel did not decide to put a period to his existence for reasons beyond his control.

  2

  Charlie’s sudden arrival had yanked aside the curtain of time, flung open the window, and all but blinded Fiona.

  She stood in her bedroom doorway with the bowl of steaming dumplings. He was sound asleep again. It didn’t seem like a good idea to awaken him, but she’d been hoping to question him further before Léon and Oliver and Uncle Luc-Antoine returned from bedding down the horses. Normally, she and Uncle took care of that job, but because of Charlie, she’d been left in the house.

  She stood there for a moment, drinking in his sleeping face. For years, every thought of the Kincaid family—indeed any memory of that trip to England with Uncle Rafa and Aunt Lyse—had been like ripping a scab away from a painful wound. So she had stuffed it all, good and bad, into an attic place in her mind. She’d hoped to one day be able to safely bring the memories out and turn them over, perhaps even learn to enjoy them.

  If she closed her eyes, she could still see Charlie seated at his grandfather’s desk, poring over a book of maps, chin in one hand and idly twirling a sextant with the other. He’d looked up at her with those blue-splotched eyes, and with one lopsided grin stolen her heart right away. And he’d promptly taken to calling her “duchess” as Uncle Rafa did, delighting in making her blush at the attention.

  She’d remained in a
perpetual state of warmth for the entire month they remained at Riverton Farm in Essex. And now he was here in her own room, making her feel warm and uncomfortable again. While Sullivan languished in prison.

  This was not what she’d prayed for at all.

  Blinking away the tears blurring her eyes, she returned to the kitchen, poured the dumplings back into the pot, and went out to the pump to wash the bowl.

  She was walking back to the house, shaking out the last drops of water, when she heard the sound of voices carrying from the direction of the shipyard. She squinted into the gloaming. The few neighbors scattered around the Cove would all be at their evening meal or otherwise occupied in family pursuits.

  Uncle Luc-Antoine came to the open doorway of the barn. “Who is that, Fiona?”

  “I don’t know.” The voices grew louder, and now she could distinguish one male, deep and strong, and the other that of a young female. The girl spoke English, but her accent was both odd and familiar.

  Fiona glanced at the house, where Charlie slept. This seemed to be a day for reacquaintances.

  Uncle Luc-Antoine joined her on the porch. “You’re not expecting anybody else?”

  “I didn’t expect anybody today.”

  He gave her a skeptical look. “A young man with a gash in his noggin just happens to wash up on the beach? A strapping young man who makes you blush like a rose in bloom?”

  Her cheeks warmed. She didn’t like to lie to her uncle, but something made her hold her tongue. “You wouldn’t have had me leave him to die?”

  “Hmph. Something fishy in this fish tale of yours.” But Uncle’s dark eyes twinkled. “Come, let’s see who our new visitor is.” He limped down the steps and met Léon and Oliver on the path leading toward the water.

  “That sounds like Nardo,” Léon said. He glanced over his shoulder at Fiona, eyes narrowed. “You know he was coming?”

  “No!” One washed-up relic on the beach and she was suddenly suspect for everything. Fiona pushed between her brother and uncle, hurrying down the path toward Nardo Smith and his companion. “Nardo! Welcome! What are you doing here?”

  “Miss Fiona!” Nardo’s deep voice boomed like cannon fire. A massively built black man in his early thirties, he was a metalworker after the trade of his blacksmith father, but he specialized in the chains and hasps and other accoutrements of the shipbuilding industry. “I’ve brought you a surprise!”

  Fiona strained to see the young woman with Nardo. She didn’t at all resemble Nardo’s tall, buxom wife. “How nice. But I—”

  “Fiona? It’s me—Sehoy.”

  “Sehoy!” Fiona ran to fling her arms around her fifteen-year-old distant cousin. “Oh oh oh—you came!”

  Sehoy laughed and returned the embrace. “Yes, I came—thanks to Mr. Smith here, for bringing me from Mobile. I’d forgotten how long a trip it is down the bay.”

  “But you’re trembling!” Fiona released Sehoy and grasped her hands. “What is wrong? And where are your parents?”

  But before Sehoy could do more than draw breath to answer, Luc-Antoine and Léon closed in, with Oliver lurking shyly in the background. Giving way to noisy greetings, Fiona looked up into Nardo’s dark face. “Do you know what brought Sehoy down here? Is something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “Miss Fiona, you better let her tell the story.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Ain’t my place.”

  Worried and impatient, she watched her brother turn with an arm about Sehoy, directing Oliver to pick up the small trunk Nardo had carried from the pier. Léon was smiling, but Fiona knew he would be calculating the expense of another mouth to feed. Uncle Luc-Antoine had already begun to tease Sehoy about the broken hearts left behind in Indian territory.

  As the others talked, Fiona took the opportunity to study her cousin’s clear-skinned oval face and almond-shaped brown eyes. The glossy black hair was caught in a braid down her back and tied with a green ribbon to match her simple dress. Indeed, Sehoy had grown into her name, which meant “beautiful” in the Creek language.

  The last time the Indian branch of the family had visited Mobile—perhaps a half-dozen years ago—political turmoil had already begun to simmer between native peoples and American settlers. Since then, people didn’t travel much, at least not like when Uncle Rafa’s diplomatic assignments had taken the family to exotic places like New York and St. Louis and England. And when Mama and Papa had sailed the world on business.

  Sehoy, blushing at Uncle’s nonsense, caught Fiona’s gaze. “I’m sorry to burst in on you all with no warning, but I have no place else to go.”

  “You’re always welcome, dear one.” Fiona hooked her arm through Sehoy’s. “Come, let’s go in the house. I’ll give you a cup of tea, and we’ll sit down for a nice catch-up visit. Are you hungry?”

  “No. But tea would be nice. Makes me think of Aunt Daisy.”

  “Mama loved a cup of tea, didn’t she?” Fiona smiled and led the way to the house arm in arm with Sehoy, leaving the men to follow with the trunk. “Papa and his chicory, so Creole in every way, and Mama so proper and British.”

  Sehoy bit her lip. “I know you miss them.”

  “It’s been over two years and I still . . .” Fiona swallowed. “And now Sullivan’s gone.”

  “What?” Sehoy clutched her arm. “Sullivan’s dead?”

  “No—at least they say he’s alive and well. The Brits took him prisoner. They’re holding him on a ship off the Carolina coast. We got a letter from the admiralty just this morning.”

  “Oh, Fiona! But thank God he’s alive.” Sehoy blinked back tears. “This awful war. It’s all I can do to hold on to my sanity. Andrew Jackson—how I despise him!” She spat the words as if they choked her.

  Fiona vaguely knew who Andrew Jackson was—a militiaman from Tennessee, perhaps a general? News was slow to travel all the way to the Gulf. How had Jackson crossed paths with Sehoy? She opened the screen door and held it for Sehoy to pass inside. “Come, my dear, sit down and rest. Mama’s little rocker you liked so much is right here.”

  While Sehoy settled in the cane-bottom rocking chair and the men set the trunk in the corner, Fiona assembled the tea things. In a short while they all sat in a cozy circle, with the windows and doors open to a lethargic evening breeze.

  Uncle Luc-Antoine lit his pipe. “All right now, tell us what brought you all this way by yourself, little girl.”

  “I didn’t travel alone. A man named Desi Palomo came with me, as far as Mobile. He had been serving as General Jackson’s interpreter, and they sent him down with messages—”

  “Desi’s here?” Fiona smiled in delight. Maddy’s foster brother had always been one of her favorites.

  “I’m sure he’ll come to see us at some point.” Uncle waved a hand. “I’m interested in what that wild man Andrew Jackson has been up to.”

  “It’s not a nice story.” Sehoy’s teacup rattled as she set it in its saucer. Her voice was tight. “I know you remember when Tecumseh came down to rally the Creek against all the squatters coming into our territory along the new federal mail road through Georgia and Alabama. The US government had promised no more settlers would stay, but they just kept taking land, taking or killing our horses and cattle, tearing down our homes . . .”

  Léon nodded. “We’d heard about the controversy. The Burnt Corn affair was in the papers. The Indians were moving arms in from Florida—and the US Army stopped it?”

  Sehoy’s mouth flattened. “Yes. Shot every one of them without a trial. So about this time last year, Red Eagle and the other chiefs decided enough was enough, and they gathered the men and rode to attack Fort Mims. It was—harsh, I admit it. But there was no going back. And what General Jackson did in response was—” Sehoy shuddered. “The things I saw . . .”

  Fiona bit her lip. “Oh, honey.”

  “They had us trapped at Horseshoe Bend—you know, where the Tallapoosa River takes that crazy sideways turn? It’s holy ground, and we thought we’d be safe there. But
we were surrounded and the soldiers were about to attack, so that night Red Eagle managed to get most of the women and children out, across the river and into the woods. I was in one of the first canoes across, and I’ve never been so . . . Oh, Fiona, the sounds and the darkness, and the snakes!” Sehoy bent over her teacup. “Mama and I stayed close to the edge of the woods right at the river, and I could hear the soldiers whooping as they made it across the water and charged. Our men were so brave, but they didn’t have a chance.” Sehoy pressed her hands over her ears as if to block the sounds in her head.

  Fiona grabbed her in a fierce hug. Horrified, she sought Uncle Luc-Antoine’s eyes.

  He shook his head. “How long ago was this?”

  “Late March.” Sehoy dragged in a painful breath as she pulled away from Fiona. “Those of us who made it out wandered around in the woods all summer, trying to find food, afraid to show our faces. The general had set up camp at Fort Toulouse—which he had the gall to rename Fort Jackson after himself! Finally, one day a couple of white soldiers came through the forest, yelling for us to come out and go with them, that they wouldn’t hurt us. They said Red Eagle had survived the massacre. He’d apparently realized there was no going back, and the Americans weren’t going away, so he surrendered to Jackson and asked him to take care of the Creek women and children still starving in the woods.”

  “And Jackson did that?” Fiona exchanged incredulous glances with her brother.

  Sehoy nodded. “I still don’t understand it. Red Eagle signed a treaty giving the federal government all our territory—twenty-three million acres—and we were to move on west of the Mississippi, out into Oklahoma Territory.”

  “Where are your parents?” Oliver so seldom spoke that his quiet voice drew everyone’s attention. His bony, freckled face was set, tragic. He had never known his own mother, who died giving him birth, but Fiona’s mama had helped Luc-Antoine raise the boy, and her death at sea with Papa had been as devastating to Oliver as to Fiona or her siblings.