Destiny's Magic (9 page)

“I have hundreds of eyes. Costs me a fortune every month to pay wages. If it takes the entirety of my company to spy on Paget, so be it.”

“I think you ought to leave me to this newspaper.”

“Loosen your corset strings. They're getting to you.”

She didn't wear a corset, obviously, but his meaning came through clearly. Accept and be happy about some skewed future with an insane and ferocious man trying to stay away from the bottle. And still in love with the woman who'd driven him to it.

She'd boarded this steamboat looking for a savior, but everything had turned around. Burke sought atonement for his failure with Antoinette Lawrence, Susan as the instrument.

For a halfpence, Toni could have him. Actually, Susan would pay to be rid of him. To the last of her twenty dollars.

She scooted to the sofa's far side to clutch a horsehair arm. “What makes you think I would want you? You scare me.”

“I apologized for the neck remark. You'll learn I'm more bark than bite. Like my aunt tried to tell you.”

“Your aunt. Another reason I don't like you. If you aren't good to her, how could you be good to me?”

He gave up fanning duties. Stretching toward her and extending a long and muscular leg behind him on the sofa, he got much too close for comfort. “She doesn't suck my teat.”

Susan blushed. “Papa Legba! ”

“Hush that mumbo-jumbo. Just trust the magic, pretty Susan. It'll make you a believer.”

The creak of sofa fittings being disturbed as he blockaded any avenue of escape were like fingernails on a blackboard.

“Burke, you believe in magic, and I believe in it too. Fair enough. But you needn't give in. Get the lamp. Make your own wish. Amend your destiny any way you see fit.”

“As I said last night, I refuse to do unto others as I've been done upon.”

“You shan't be doing me an injustice if you cease this madness. Were I to have a go at that silly lantern, you can be sure I wouldn't scoff at it.”

“Would you now? And what would you ask for? A taste of this without the benefit of matrimony?” His fingers slipped to her ribs and up her spine; he traced his tongue to her eyelid.

A shiver beset her. It wasn't from attraction, not this time. He had her plain frightened. Burke was the very thing she ran from: quixotic temperaments.

With the crook of a finger he tipped her chin up. “Have you noticed something about me?”

“That is a leading question.”

“All right. I'll say it. ‘Burke, we've sat here for an hour and you haven't once asked my last name.' ” He cocked his head. “Who are you, Susie Black-Eyes? What is your surname?”

She started to say Black-Eyes simply to nettle him, but didn't. Why shouldn't he know the truth? Perhaps it would shut him up. “It's Seymour. I am Susan Seymour, late of New Orleans. You know my father, Horace Seymour.”

A sound rose from Burke's throat, irony mixing with the incredible circumstance of magic. “This must be a joke. Horace Seymour is your father? I would've never suspected.”

At last he gave a moment of peace; he rested against the sofa to examine this latest development. He presented a breath-arresting profile. Susan could have appreciated the manly planes of his well-arranged face. He usually looked at her, full face, his attention never wavering. She simply appreciated that he'd quit breathing down her neck.

As luck would have it, her relief didn't last.

He poised over her again, hovering like the lunatic he was. “So,
you
are Seymour's angel run off with the devil.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Heard it from his assistant. Beeton.” Burke ran the pad of a forefinger over her nose. “Never figured Miss Susan Seymour for a voodooess who bakes and sews. What are you, twenty-one? How come we never met?”

“I don't know. Probably because I wasn't allowed at the laboratory. Unless Father was away. Beeton occasionally let me watch over his shoulder as he manned the beakers and retorts.”

“If I had a daughter, I'd teach her the river.”

She had no wish to discuss his future descendants. “Have you seen my father lately?”

“Saw him once in a while, before I left town.”

“How is he?” A dull ache compressed her heart. “Why am I asking you? He's the same as always. Busy with his experiments.”

“His laboratory does seem to keep him occupied.”

Growing up, she'd tried desperately for attention. In England, though, it hadn't mattered. She'd had Mama then. They had family. Susan had fully expected to take her place in society, and lead the normal life of a matron, complete with a gentle or noble husband and a flock of youngsters.

After Mama's death, though, Father had unceremoniously packed burners and boxes for New Orleans. In Louisiana she reached a coming-out age during a war that turned the city upside down. Never once had Susan attended a ball or even a tea. She'd grown up with snakes and cauldrons and amulets.

“Susan, do you think Seymour will open his purse to you?”

“I have my own money. He is merely the trustee of it. I came into a trust on my last birthday,” she said, not feeling nearly as calm as her words. “I intend to collect it, then be on my way.”

“I wouldn't count on that. Seymour's carrying a grudge. Says he sent your money back to England.”

She froze. He couldn't. That overstepped his authority. “He wouldn't confide in you. You're a customer, not a friend.”

“You think he'd display dynamite to just anyone?”

Mama Loa! Under agreement with the Swedish inventor, Father was neither to sell nor demonstrate the explosive for a period of time. It had been the big secret of the laboratory. Then again, she'd been gone since October.

Dynamite was beside the point. Horace Seymour had taken Burke into his confidence. The money might truly be in England.

Suddenly, she craved comfort. Whereas fear had driven her from Burke, need presently sent her to him. He was mad as a March hare, yet he still exuded stability that could and would give comfort. Oh, how this man had her confused!

She pressed her cheek to his shirt, inhaling his scent, trying not to picture her father setting her valise on the doorstep, his parting words: “You've chosen that blister on the heel of humanity over me. Be gone with you.” He'd returned to his laboratory, shutting the door soundly.

A tear spilled onto Burke's finger.

“Don't cry, Susan. I can't stand to see a woman cry.” He took the tear onto his fingertip, then laid his hand along her cheek. “Please don't cry.”

She tried to stop without success.

“Susan, we're a helluva pair.”

The
Yankee Princess
got under way on the afternoon of July fifteenth. The trip went without incident. Or so it seemed to Susan by the evening of the sixteenth. She'd pleaded headaches, avoiding more confrontations with Burke, the only trips out of her stateroom's confines to visit his aunt.

Rueful Phoebe. Optimistic Phoebe. “Things will turn out for y'all.” She nodded once to confirm her claim. “I have to believe something good will come out of this trip for Burke.”

“I'm not that good.” Susan knew a way to turn the lady off. Sitting on the bed in Phoebe's imposed prison, she leaned toward the redhead in an armchair close by. “I may be a miss, but I have a checkered past.” Exaggerating, she said, “I am a pagan, and dance naked with snakes.”

“Horse feathers.” Phoebe wiggled on the chair, and her bawdy side surfaced. “I'd like to dance naked with a snake. Make that Throck and his snake.”

Mama Loa! Susan had never imagined this spinster with an erotic thought. “Is he inclined to let you?”

“We've got plans for midnight. Right here in this room. Gal, I could use some advice. What am I supposed to do? Should I be naked when he shows up? Let him undress me? Am I supposed to do anything to him?”

Susan couldn't help but laugh. “Phoebe, I'm trying to turn you off, yet you seek my advice. To be honest, I'm not that skilled in bed matters. Orson wasn't an imaginative man, and the one month we spent in lustful pursuit, he couldn't've cared less if I'd been dressed or not. He was terribly disappointing.”

Phoebe dropped her jaws onto fists. “I hope Throck won't disappoint.”

“My intent wasn't to depress you, dear Phoebe. I know it's different with some men, and Throck seems a lively sort.” Standing, Susan went to the worried figure and took a shaking hand. “I could tell you something I've eavesdropped upon.”

Gray eyes brightened. “Do tell.”

Without mentioning a pertinent name or bonfire, or the specifics of a stolen moment in a particular captain's quarters, Susan told how it might be, ending with, “Romps may be quite glorious.”

“Holy lance! I intend to find out.” Phoebe patted faded orange hair, fell to giggles, then sobered. “How can I be excited for Throck and sad about Burke at the same time?”

“I'm sorry for the way he's done you. So sorry.”

“Thank you, Susan. You're a good gal.” Phoebe smiled. “Will you promise me something? No matter what happens, can we be friends?”

“Absolutely.” A pause. “Friend, are you sure you won't give me a shot at that lamp?”

Phoebe shook her head. “I've pushed it, offering Burke a chance. The genie says his power will go only so far.”

“Burke doesn't want any wishes. Let me—”

“I'm gonna give him another chance. When I leave tomorrow, that lamp will be waiting in his quarters.”

At least that gave Susan hope he'd have second thoughts. “I must be going, Phoebe. Have fun tonight, chum.”

Susan kissed the lady's forehead before proceeding to the outer deck. By gaslight she caught sight of a boy running toward her, and when he approached, the flush in his cheeks.

“The cap'n just showed me the most wonnnderrrrful sight, Momma. The constellation Cancer! And Jiminy. And Virgin. Gosh, it was great! And he even let ole Snooky in on it. Snooky got to roam the top deck. Can you beat that?”

“Don't get too attached to the captain.”

“Sometimes, Momma, you are no fun.”

“We're going to have a world of fun in England. And you are going to learn many wonderful things.”

“The cap'n says I won't like it. It's cold and wet and the people slurp tea and bow down to some lady what thinks she's better than ever'body else. It just ain't American!”

Susan steered Pippin toward his cabin. “Time for peepy-byes.”

“I ain't sleepy. I could run a race, I'm so happy.” Lacing his fingers with hers, he skipped toward his quarters, swinging their arms as they went. “You oughta get the cap'n to show you all that constellation stuff too, Momma. He's real nice. And he never gets tired of questions, not like Orson did. I like ole Captain O'Brien.”

It was good, Pippin's change of heart. But enough was enough. “Pippin, we—”

“I'll be happy as a pig in a poke once he's my dad!”

She said resolutely, “He is not going to be your dad.”

“The cap'n told me you'd say that. He said for me to smile, and wait and see what happens. Do you think he'll be happy, goin' with us to England?”

“He's not going to England.”

Perplexed, Pippin asked, “How's that gonna work? How can we go to England without him?”

Blast the man! He'd chided her for steering the youth on a crooked course, yet he used Pippin for his own gain.
Susan, that is not true.
He was being a fine friend to a boy who'd never known male kindliness. That Burke had taken a young mind off Orson couldn't be argued. If there was any approach certain to break down her resistance to Burke O'Brien, it would be through Pippin. And he knew it.

Of this she was more than certain.

Blast the man.

 

 

Today they would reach St. Francisville. The sun rose, its rays streaming into Phoebe O'Brien's stateroom. She lazed in bed with Throck, both naked as blue jays, cuddling and kissing. She did dread reaching the Pleasant Hill wharf, but that wasn't important just then. The previous night turned out to be a spinster's dream, thanks to a peach of a man and a few suggestions from Susan.

“Hate to leave, I do, but 'tis not to my station I get, there'll be hell to pay from yer nephew.” Throck reluctantly got to a seated position, then took her hand in his beefy one. “Thank ye, Miss Phoebe.” He kissed her knuckles. “Ye made me a happy man. Will ye gimme another go at ye?”

“We haven't docked yet . . .”

“If I be a lad of twenty-five, which I ain't and ye know it, I couldn't do it again. Ye wore me out, wench.” He patted her scrawny behind tenderly. “One thing ye gotta learn, pussycat. A man's gotta build up a head of steam between trips.”

“My trip is over,” she said, now glum and reflective. “We'll say our good-byes today.”

“No good-byes. There'll be none of that betwixt us.” Throck tucked the sheet under his abdominal overhang, rubbed his hairless chest, then sighed. “Meet me in New Orleans, Miss Phoebe. 'Tis there we'll be, could be for a long spell. The Lloyds of London flea gotta be scratched, ye know.”

“Take good care of Burke,” she whispered.

“Always do.” Throck chucked her jaw lightly. “Turn up in New Orleans. In case I need some help in the taking care. And because I want ye with this old dog of the river.”

“You are truly the answer to a spinster's prayers.”

“Fifty years I spent searching for a woman like ye.”

“Yes,” she teased, “and you did quite a lot of looking.”

“Ye don't argue with me training, do ye?” He ran a toenail along her calf while his finger fondled her nipple.

“I love it.” Lordy, had she gotten more than her anticipated tweak, and had done more than tweaking herself.

Throck took his leave, kissing her twice more before he went to his duties. Phoebe stayed abed until way after the breakfast bell summoned everyone to the meal. Yes, she would travel down to New Orleans. Wicked place, that New Orleans. Phoebe intended to be wicked with the best of them.

How could she keep from meddling in Burke's affairs while there though? Throck may have asked for help, but she'd stuck a long nose into her nephew's life too many times.

Yes, she would leave the lamp for Burke, but considering his attitude, she doubted he'd use it. It was up to Susan to make him happy.
That Susan, such a plum.
Guilty for denying her new friend's request, Phoebe reconciled her mind. Susan did need Burke, and vice versa. Those two could heal each other.

There was but one way to ensure happiness for everyone. One way. If this wasn't an emergency, what was?

Phoebe eyed the locked valise. The means to happiness rested within it. She wrapped a sheet around her thoroughly sated body and unlocked the treasure. So cold and lifeless it felt. As she had twice before, she rubbed the bowl and felt warmth. “Lamp, make Burke perfect for Susan.”

She expected the genie to walk right in.

“Eugene? Eugene, where are you?”

Always before, he'd materialized within seconds. Not this time. She shook the lamp. “Come out, doggone it!” Screwing up an eye, she looked inside. Nothing. “Where are you?”

The genie still didn't show his face.

Two beeps of the steam whistle announced the arrival at the Pleasant Hill plantation. Why didn't the jinn appear? “Eugene Jinnings, don't you do me this way.”

Eugene didn't heed the call. What did this mean? Would her wish not come true? She crammed the lamp into a nest of her unmentionables. “I've gotta keep faith in Tessa's wish.”

But how long would it take, getting Susan for Burke?

 

 

Getting shut of the magic curse was the last thing on his mind. Burke stared westward, as far from the magnolias and oaks of Pleasant Hill as eyesight reached. He thought of the night Antoinette was carried off the
Delta Star,
right there. Yet he hadn't taken a drink that night. The booze started in December.

“Are you not going ashore?” Susan asked from behind him.

“I am not.”

Pippin spoke. “Please, Cap'n. Please! Throck says they got sort-a fun stuff. And kids too, but they're younger than me. That's okay. I like little kids.”

Burke turned from the aft rail. Susan and Pip were five or six paces away, her hand holding the lad's. Her chin bruise gone, she stood with sunshine sparkling on her coronet of braids.

His thoughts shifted. This was the first he'd seen her since learning her relation to Horace Seymour. If Susan knew the lengths the wizard had gone to in forgetting his daughter—

“Won't your brother and his family be disappointed if you don't go ashore and greet them?” she asked.

“Conn will understand. I wrote him weeks back. He's warned not to expect a visit this close to my birthday.”

“Very well.” Susan spoke next to her boy. “Best run along, dumpling. Throck is waiting for you.”

Pip glanced down at his scuffed boots. “I really would like you to come with me, Cap'n. You said they got one o' those fancy spyglasses like you was telling me about. We could look at the stars tonight.”

Pip had become Burke's shadow these past days. Eager to learn, quick to comprehend, he was a fine lad. Disappointing him did not sit easily with Burke. He strode to the youngster, ruffled his hair, and bent at the knees to settle back on his haunches. His thumb brushed two crumbs from a corner of the boy's mouth. “We won't be staying the night at Pleasant Hill.”

“Why not?”

“It's an unscheduled stop.” Its purpose to eject a bothersome aunt “Besides, I own a telescope. It's at 21 rue Royale. First night we're there, we'll study the galaxies.”

A moue of disapproval twitched Susan's lips. Burke knew why. It was time to do more persuading. He winked at Pip. “Lad, you don't want to keep Throck waiting. Cast off!”

The first mate had strict orders not to let Pip out of his sight, in case a certain father should jump from the bushes. “I'll be right here, waiting for you to tell all about my niece and nephew, and the other delights of the place.”

“Well, o-kay. I mean, aye, aye, sir!”

Snapping a salute—Burke had taught him how—Pip took off, leaving the couple alone on the
Yankee Princess,
the crewmen on their way into the quaint town near the plantation. And there was a God. Aunt Phoebe had taken her leave without incident.

Fingers shading her brow, Susan turned to watch as Pip dashed down a companionway. She didn't pivot toward Burke. “You're good to him. And good for him. For that I thank you. But I would appreciate your not rotting his mind on England.”

She swept toward her stateroom, Burke in her wake. “Aren't you going ashore?” he asked.

Her hand on the latch, she shook her head. “No. I believe I'll rest today.”

“Another headache? Another excuse to avoid a ‘madman'?”

“Do you accuse me of lying?”

“Aye.” He closed the distance between them. “If you're worried about the true madman, don't. A skiff just took off. My man's aboard. Newt Storey will catch a northbound in town to go back upriver and track Paget down.”

“Who is Newt Storey?”

“He let you and my aunt aboard.”

“I don't recall him. I was quite addled that night.” Susan tipped her chin to a wary angle. “What exactly have you ordered Mr. Storey to do once he finds Orson?”

“Report back to me.”

Burke wouldn't mention how Storey took the orders: not well. Always envious of Throck's higher position in the hierarchy, Storey had objected to a job “beneath him.” But he'd obeyed orders so Burke wouldn't dwell on his second mate's reaction.

He had a different problem. Susan. She shoved open the entry to her stateroom and stepped inside. One try at closing the hatch failed, for Burke planted his feet in the interior. “I don't reckon to be avoided.”

“Leave me be, Burke. Go to your quarters. You might find something to interest you there.”

“You interest me.” He sidestepped her and blocked her way. Her heliotrope scent enticing him, her eyes wary, she retreated. “You needn't fear me, Susan. I won't hurt you.”