Destiny's Magic (11 page)

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.
Pippin 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.

 

 

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.

“I'd still love to have a baby.” She brushed a forefinger on the black down. “I don't need a husband, just a man. No one in England need know how or why I increased. Mama Loa! I'll have to lie anyway, explaining Pippin.”

Susan did not like the idea of lies. One led to another, as she'd learned.

She heard Burke before he ambled down the veranda. The scowl setting his lean face dissolved into almost-dimples. If only he were even-tempered, if only his love were available, if only he weren't a New Orleanian. If only Orson were dead.

Burke swung into the rocker next to her and bent over to play with Pays's fingers; they curled around his so-much-larger forefinger. “When I first saw you”—he looked up at Susan—“my mind's eye drew a picture of you with babes.”

Tender emotions flowed through her heart. Yet she had to be practical. “Pippin is enough for me.”

“How do you keep a straight face and say that?”

“Go away, Burke.”

“Not until you and I have a chat.” He reached for his niece, settled her on his shoulder, and patted Pays's diapered behind. “You and Pip getting what you need? Clothes, shoes.”

“You've been more than generous. And I was touched that you took time from the tragedy”—he'd conferred with the sheriff, had sent telegrams back and forth to New Orleans, and any number of other business matters—“to shop for me.”

“You needed a Spanish fan. And fou-fou powder.”

“That's quite kind of you.” Orson had never given her anything but trouble. It touched her, Burke's thoughtfulness amid chaos. “I know it's a struggle, your fortune blown apart.” Along with her twenty dollars.

“Susan, I'm not without influence. It doesn't take me long to put cash together.”

She hoped her influence would come as easily once she reached Seymour Hall.
Please let my money be available!

Pays roused from sleep, looked up at her uncle, and smiled. They both laughed at the wee coquette.

As she snuggled back against his broad shoulder, Burke turned solemn. “Susan, I understand you've asked after Throck's whereabouts when the
Yankee Princess
went down. Why?”

Since he'd asked, she wouldn't lie. “A big man with gray hair jumped overboard right after the first explosion. I think—thought—he was Throck. But Throck was with Pippin and Winn, so it must've been someone else.”