Destiny's Magic

by Martha Hix

Genres: Historical Romance

Synopsis

Evelyn Rogers calls the romances of Martha Hix "sexy." "Explosive. Extraordinary. Pure ambrosia," raves Rendezvous. Now, the acclaimed author of River Magic brings you a love story set on a Mississippi riverboat--a story that will captivate and bewitch you--a story to winyour heart... Burke O'Brien's orders to his crew were explicit: No females, young or old, were to board his Mississippi riverboat on his thirtieth birthday. Long ago, the brawny captain of the Yankee Princess had been cursed to meet his bride on that date, and he would do anything to break thehex. Then, just as the clock was about to chime midnight on that fatefulday, a golden-haired enchantress stole her way onto O'Brien's vessel--and into his heart... Susan Seymour spent most of her life under the thumb of her tyrannical father. Now, she had a chance to escape his cruelty forever. Fleeing a carnival with a young child in tow, the beautiful snake charmer sought refuge on a New Orleans-bound vessel. How could she know that Burke O'Brien's own mysterious past was irrevocably bound to hers--his very fate in her hands? Without her, he faced certain ruin. Without him, Susan could lose not only her chance for a new life, but the love the sensual captain was awakening in her heart....

Release date: November 1, 1996

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

It all had to do with black magic.

Captain Burke O’Brien had been sequestered throughout the afternoon and evening, locked in his quarters located aft on the berthed side-wheeler Yankee Princess. His officers were under orders not to allow any female, young or old, aboard the newly christened flagship of the O’Brien Steamship Company’s fleet of paddle-wheel freighters.

Burke had good reason.

Calliope music blasted from a carnival raised on the bluff above Natchez’s wharf, overpowering the babel and shove of freight being unloaded at dockside. Revelry reminded Burke there was little festivity in his life, yet his current lethargy didn’t stem from noise or a sorry social agenda.

It also had little to do with last May’s disaster, when his last flagship blew to smithereens.

Tonight of all nights he needed privacy.

Oh, aye, he needed it.

To thwart sorcery.

The steady flame from one of Horace Seymour’s newly improved gas lanterns lighting this sanctuary, Burke parked his elbows on the rolltop desk and raked his shock of black hair. Scratchy green eyes sought the clock. Eleven-fifty, the hands read. Ten minutes more. Ten more minutes, and his birthday would pass. Then the curse would be broken.

He began to breathe easier.

“Hallelujah. I’ve beaten the hex.”

Fate, cursed fate, altered his assumption at nine before midnight. He heard a pair of speakers on the outer deck.

He heard women.

Hell and damnation! He clutched an empty water glass until it shook. Where were the guards?

The more aged of those voices could belong to no one but his red-haired spinsterly aunt. He hadn’t spoken to Phoebe O’Brien in over four years. And wouldn’t now. Which had everything to do with his reason for holing up in his quarters.

She carried the spirit of black magic.

There was no one on the face of this earth who hated magic—or anything connected to it—more than Burke O’Brien.

Suspicious of the other woman—her voice sounded much younger than Aunt Red Hornet, and English—Burke squeezed the glass until it splintered.

“I knew it—he’s in there,” Aunt Phoebe crowed as he yelped and snatched a shaving towel to staunch the flow of blood from his left palm. “Just like Mr. Storey said he is.”

Mr. Storey. Newt Storey, second mate of the maiden Yankee Princess. Guard of the gangplank. Supposedly.

And where exactly was Throckmorton? That burly clod, a presumed friend as well as first mate, had been ordered to bar the very hatch Aunt Phoebe and the Englishwoman were wanting entrance to. Burke, needing someone to answer his plea, silently cursed the men’s lineages before hurtling to the starboard bulkhead to yank, yank, yank the silent alarm that connected to the wheelhouse.

Fortunately he was right-handed. Unfortunately he was now even closer to the intruders.

Phoebe O’Brien pounded walnut. “Burke, let us in.”

Never. Being in her company, especially tonight, would bring forth too many bad memories of how one ought to be careful of what she wished on others.

“Burke, open up. My bunions are throbbing and I wanna sit down. And I’ve got someone to introduce you to.”

Undoubtedly.

“Doggone it, nephew. You’re acting as stubborn as your brothers. Didn’t you get my letter?” she squawked. “I told you I’d join up here in Natchez.”

He’d received plenty of missives, all tossed away, unopened. Yet as surely as the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, Burke knew what brought her to the Yankee Princess on this July night in 1868: his thirtieth birthday.

As emissary for the even more nettlesome duo of her sister Tessa and a sunzabitchin’ genie, the Hornet had come down from Memphis for the lone purpose of snooping. She would find out if the magic lamp had produced a prospective bride on the accursed anniversary of Burke’s birth.

Not to take any chances, she’d collared a prospect.

“How come he won’t let us in?” someone asked, this voice definitely not female. It also held the unmistakable peep of American youth. “Is the cap’n mean?”

“Pippin, hush.”

“But, Momma, if he don’t help us, what’re we gonna do?”

Momma. Why had Aunt Phoebe brought a mother to him? Burke dreaded the thought of what she had up her sleeve. He assembled reason. The mysterious bride couldn’t be married, might be a widow, and surely wouldn’t be a wallflower. Probably “fragile blonde” described her, since his shrewd aunt knew he preferred ethereal in the fair sex.

His history as a savior of needy women must have been the ember to ignite her decision to supply some helpless-appearing woman and child.

“Burke, open up!”

“Get away from that hatch.” Burke stomped to it, shouting through the barrier, “March back down the gangplank. Now! ”

She wheedled. “Surely you won’t send me into the still of this night, on a path that crosses a circus? It’s not church elders one finds at such dens of iniquity, I needn’t remind you. Some rogue might take a shine to having his wicked way with me.”

Burke almost chuckled. No man had ever been overset at the sight of the harpy. What about Throckmorton? In bygone days Throck had wiggled bushy brows at her bony arse more than once. Then again, the first mate made eyes at anything wearing a skirt.

There were, however, plenty on the wharf as well as at the festivities who’d take a wicked shine to her pocketbook. She might end up with a blade in her gullet, since exhibitions and the like did, as she’d said, attract an unsavory element.

Always the softest touch of the O’Brien brothers, Burke grew concerned about his aunt’s safety. Don’t play into her hands. She’s counting on it, but don’t.

“Find Throck. You know who he is. The big fellow from Bristol.” Burke tightened the bloody handkerchief. “Tell him I said to take you to a hotel. Or wherever.”

“Nephew, I know you’re still angry about that lamp business. But I had nothing to do with it. Tessa bought it, not me. She made those wishes, not me.”

The lamp. An ancient oil lantern purchased on the Mediterranean, bought by Aunt Tessa O’Brien in the earlier part of this decade. True, Aunt Phoebe hadn’t procured the damned thing, nor had she decided to bend the destinies of three O’Brien brothers. Moreover, she hadn’t brought a genie back home to Memphis. But Phoebe O’Brien, by damn, could have put an end to the unholy hell unleashed by the magic lamp.

“Captain? This is Susan . . . Paget. I beg your indulgence, sir. I should imagine we’ve caught you abed, or perhaps in an indelicate . . . um, well, I apologize for the intrusion. But this is a matter of life or death. Would you grant us a few moments of your time?”

While Burke didn’t yield to the siren call, he did like the sound of her voice. It carried a huskiness that made him have fancies about warm, womanly flesh amid an array of mussed silken sheets.

“Pippin, cover your ears,” Aunt Phoebe instructed. “He doesn’t have a woman with him, Mrs. Paget. Mr. Storey says he’s burrowed in by himself.”

What else had Mr. Storey told her? Had the hulking Newt Storey mentioned that a lady sleuth had debarked this afternoon, after giving information on an embezzler who might also have the blood of dead crewmen on his crippled fingers?

O’Brien, you’re excessively wary.

No one save Throck knew he’d hired Velma Harken to delve into the mystery of why the Delta Star had blown apart in a lonely stretch of river north of New Orleans, or that Velma’s next assignment was to get very close to the suspect.

Suddenly the clock struck midnight.

Relief again rained through Burke. His birthday was no more. No longer would he walk in the curse’s shadow, so now, unfettered, he could face the challenges of owning a troubled steamboat company.

But what should he do about Aunt and company?

Ashore, on the narrow patch of ground between the river wharves and the town bluff, a gaunt and bespectacled man stood concealed near the most magnificent freighter on the Mississippi. He had a double purpose for being at the dock.

Gift delivery and vengeance.

Rufus West shoved eyeglasses up his hooked nose with a bungled hand. He spoke to himself. “What a boon, getting the blond piece to the Yankee Princess.”

Earlier, he called at the Best Ever Traveling Show to collect a gambling debt from the one-clown circus’s owner and star attraction. A family row outside the ring forestalled West’s intentions. Pagan incantations on her lips, the acrobat’s chesty blond wife held a bloody brass hook and stood over her stunned yet reviving man.

“You’ve hurt me and Pippin for the very last time” had been her warning before turning her black-eyed gaze to Rufus West. “Help me, sir.”

A strange influence gripped him, and he’d been powerless to deny her. It could have been lechery. West did like chesty, dangerous women. But Susanna the Snake Lady would better serve as a birthday present for Captain Burke O’Brien.

“She’ll drive him insane.”

Thus, West had brought her to the Yankee Princess, then receded behind cargo, lest the curious spot him. He’d bidden best wishes in the nick of time, since Phoebe O’Brien had marched up to Mrs. Orson Paget. The aunt would drive O’Brien even more insane. “How I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the captain’s quarters . . .”

“Nosy bugger,” said a burly mariner with bad breath.

“I see you’ve finally deigned to answer my summons.” West glowered at his fat and reluctant hireling. He loathed being dependent, but required the services of this riverboat officer. “You want your money, you greedy ass, you’ll watch your tongue.”

A belligerent grunt served as reply.

Rufus West’s primary purpose for being in Natchez, outside lining his purse with the lucre from stupid gamblers, propelled him into eyeing the busy dock. Crewmen gave over freight, longshoremen stacking it on the quay. Once a bookkeeper for the O’Brien Steamship Company, West knew the contents of those wooden crates stenciled U.S. ARMY. They contained ammunition.

“Explosives.” His mind worked harder than any longshoreman’s muscles. “Fodder for another river disaster.”

Lifting his usable hand, West mashed his earlobe and estimated how many more crates might remain in the riverboat’s freight hold. Plenty. Bound for New Orleans, same as usual, but this time on the finale of a riverboat’s maiden voyage.

“Lloyds of London won’t abide two sunken steamboats.” His quest for revenge thick in his marrow, he ordered, “Proceed with the plan. Send the maiden to the bottom.”

“I could kill ’im. ’Twould be easier.”

“I don’t want him dead. If I’d wanted quick amends for these”—West lifted the writing fingers mutilated last year, which would never function again except as a painful prop for a hand of cards—“I’d have told you so, fat idiot.”

West hated fat, but would use it. “Go back aboard. I’ll meet you in Baton Rouge. I expect the Princess to be at the bottom by then. You do know how to set the detonator, I trust.”

A nod answered his queries before the hefty hireling began his return to the gangplank.

Centered on replenishing his purse, West settled a walking stick on his forearm and found the path leading up the bluff. He had money to collect from a circus man. Won’t Paget be surprised to learn his wife rushed to Burke O’Brien?

Papa Legba, she chanted silently, bring the spirit of good luck. Susan Seymour, known by the aliases of Susan Paget and Susanna the Snake Lady, expected to be grabbed and hauled away at any moment. Her eyes scoured the deck, looking for the lunatic who pretended to be her husband. Good. No Orson. Not yet.

It was sheer madness to wait for a contrary riverboat captain to heed the call of desperation. Despite the July night, she shivered. Escape from Natchez was the only choice, Captain O’Brien the only means.

Plotting her getaway, she’d thought of the riverboat captain from Tennessee who moved the headquarters of his firm to New Orleans in late 1864. That she knew Burke O’Brien to be more than a wee bit wicked had been supplementary to the obvious. His steamboat was the only southbound vessel moored in Natchez.

Even the stranger who’d helped her to the wharf said the Yankee Princess would be the safest, quickest means to flee south. The Memphis lady had reconfirmed his advice.

Pippin tugged on Susan’s wrist. “The cap’n ain’t gonna help us, Momma. You said he would. You promised.”

Showing the familiar after an all-too-familiar evening of chaos, Susan smoothed the cowlick that defied taming at the crown of Pippin’s head. “Don’t say ain’t, dumpling.”

“Mom-muh!” Troubled young eyes looked up at her, expecting a miracle. “What’re we gonna do now?”

The red-haired lady from Memphis did the answering. “Don’t give up, sprig.” She tugged on the jacket bottom of her expensively cut traveling suit. “You can count on my nephew. I always have.”

If Burke O’Brien were so dependable, why did he balk at seeing his aunt?

It was then that the tall and lean baron of the Mississippi, a blood-soaked towel wrapped around one hand, yanked open the hatch. A dashing pirate in appearance, he was even more handsome than Susan remembered, albeit her recollections were brief and never of the acquaintance sort. No one will ever know I’ve seen him before. To mention it would unleash a secret best kept locked away.

In light of his unfriendly words beforehand, she presumed he’d tongue-lash Miss O’Brien, but his thunderous visage didn’t settle on his aunt. His glower—shadowed by whisker stubble—welded first to the boy Susan called son, then to her.

“Just as I suspected.” Burke O’Brien laughed without mirth, saying an odd thing: “You are a blonde.”

“Her hair is yeller. Like a daisy.”

“Hush, sprig,” Phoebe O’Brien said.

Susan tipped her head. “Sir, do I gather you prefer brunettes?”

“I prefer to be left alone.”

Don’t we all. She took her own measure of the man who continued to glare at her, seeing thick hair the shade of a raven’s wing. It whisked against his white shirt collar, a hank tumbling over a straight brow. His eyes were deepest green. Like the leaves of an oleander. Yet those leaves were blazing.

“Where are your manners?” his aunt piped up. “Step back, let us in, and pour us a tot of something expensive.”

Something cheap would work.

“I’m not running a saloon.” That fiery gaze burned toward his kinswoman. “This is a lousy trick you tried to pull, aunt.”

Trick? Whatever did he mean? Mystified by it—not to mention those strange allusions to a lamp—Susan patted Pippin’s shoulder when he inched closer, pulling Snooky’s cage with him.

The friction between relatives left no doubt that she’d stumbled into the middle of a squabble of long duration. Having flown from a worse situation of relations, she vowed to get past O’Brien family discord, even if it took perpetuating the Mrs. Paget ruse. “My son and I must flee this city.”

“We’re going to help.” Phoebe stamped a brogan.

“We? Got a midget behind your skirts?” he said snidely.

Knowing the captain did business with Seymour Pyrotechnics & Inventions of New Orleans, Susan considered a tidbit that might advance her case. She wouldn’t mention it. While the captain could be unaware Horace Seymour even had a lost-lamb daughter, she’d admit nothing. It would ask for trouble. The O’Briens might put two and two together and come up with several truths. Primarily, that she’d absconded with someone else’s son.

“Captain, I would like to book passage for two on the Yankee Princess.”

“I suggest you call on the Lucky Lady,” he snapped. “She’ll be along tomorrow at noon.”

“Tomorrow will be too late.”

He raised his injured hand to pat the air. “Lady, I’ve heard enough. Aunt, you and I have nothing to discuss. Take this woman and her boy, then get the hell off my riverboat.”

“Sir, you’re cantankerous from your wound,” Susan said softly. “Allow me to find the ship’s surgeon. Or let me have a go at your hand. You need attention.”

“Not from you.”

Insulting cad! But she needed—required!—every resource at his wounded fingertips. Captain Burke O’Brien, no matter what it took on Susan Seymour’s part, would help a desperate pair run away from the circus.

Burke retreated to fasten the hatch.

A cracked straw bonnet topping a coronet of braids, the blonde stepped forward, a shaft of gaslight illuminating her. She wore no corset below a green frock that bore witness to many turns at a washboard. His suspicions increased. What was her trick? This dark-eyed Mrs. appeared too young to have given birth to the youth at her side.

Furthermore, someone had brutalized her; the evidence, a yellowing bruise on her chin.

The freckled lad, a cowlick at the crown of his dark head, showed similar signs. Purple blotches ran below the tatters of his shirt-sleeves. Undoubtedly the same bully had yanked him around, and hard.

His blue-gray eyes filled with trepidation, Pippin stared up at Burke. Trying for bravery, he whispered, “H-hullo, sir.”

How could anyone strike such an innocent?

Burke liked kids. While he didn’t want the hell of magic to pick him a wife, he couldn’t picture growing old without a Mrs., children, and resultant generations circled around the hearth on Royale Street. Once, he’d almost had a child, but those were circumstances he chose not to dwell on.

“How old are you, lad?” Burke asked solemnly.

“Eight.”

Eight, and uprooted in the night. Pippin would be better supplied with McGuffey’s and a glass of milk than by the proof of upheaval: a traveling case tucked under his arm. The youngster also had charge of a carpetbag stuffed to the hilt, along with a wooden crate tied with grass twine.

“Who struck you, lad?” he asked.

“My father.”

“Your husband?” Burke inquired of Susan.

She nodded slowly, ashamed.

Stymied, Burke gave attention to his kin. Thin as a stick and straight as a broom, with more lines radiating from her eyes than she’d had four years before, the Hornet yapped, “This lady and her son require cabins, as will I.”

There were a half-dozen staterooms, all unoccupied, this being the last leg of the voyage, but the passenger manifest didn’t irritate him. The mere sight of Aunt Red Hornet, and to a lesser degree her presumptions, galled him.

What should he do? If he banished the Pagets, could he live with his conscience? This, he knew, was exactly what Aunt Phoebe counted on.

She announced, “By the time we reach your brother’s home in Louisiana, we will have settled this rift between us.”

Why not just rub his nose in reminders of the past? Being around Connor and India would surely do that, especially if the visit were so near to this particular birthday.

After a sharp bark of disgust, Burke challenged, “Make me believe you didn’t have ulterior motives for showing up”—his glower deepened—“with a prospective bride in tow.”

“What does that mean?” Pippin tugged his mother’s arm.

She shushed him while Aunt Phoebe reconciled her presence. “If you’d read my letters of late—by the bye, I am sorry about the Delta Star. What in the world happened?”

He refused to discuss the fatality. Yet he chewed the bitter root of recall. Last April, Rufus West arrived at the door of 21 rue Royale, New Orleans, laughing and jeering. His actions left little doubt in Burke’s mind who had ordered theexplosion. Proving it depended on Velma Harken’s talents.

Aunt Phoebe shook a finger. “If you’d read my last letter, Burky boy, you’d know to expect me. I’m within my rights. I did my part in wiping your nose and bandaging your skinned knees, so why shouldn’t I be here for your birthday?”

“You missed it.”

“That’s where you’re wr—”

“Enough!” He checked the impulse to jab a finger at her long, sharp nose. “I won’t tie in with a woman picked by magic, especially a married one with the hell beaten out of her.”

Having said his piece, he again started to close the hatch.

“But you gotta help me and Momma, sir,” the lad piped up in that brave manner of youths forced into nasty situations, something Burke knew everything about. “Else . . .”

Concurrently, Susan shoved the toe of a half-boot beneath the hatch. She carried herself with dignity despite her pathetic situation. “I refuse to believe you’ll turn us out.”

He had to admire her spunk. And her looks weren’t bad, although she was no fragile thing. She wasn’t overly tall. Nor was she short. Her bruised chin might be prominent, her mouth somewhat pinched and smallish, but expressive eyes, dark as the center of a black-eyed Susan, matched her name. Black-eyed Susan fit her. And it had nothing to do with her bruises.

She took a step inside. This flower refused her namesake—a pleasant scent accompanied her. Heliotrope. Burke suddenly imagined Susan in a field of clover. A garland of wildflowers in her flowing golden hair, a clutch of youngsters and a handful of birds adoring her, she fed them milk and honey. He could not envision her abed, the musk of coupling in silken sheets, feeding a man from an abundant breast.

Her husky voice belied his imagery as she asked, “How much would it cost you, a scrap of grace and favor?”

“I don’t want trouble from your husband. And whatever you’ve got planned with my aunt—”

“I only just met Miss O’Brien. On the wharf.” Her plight gushed like the winds of a gale at his determination to keep out of her marital dilemma when she added, “If my husband catches me and the child, he’ll kill us.”

From Aunt Phoebe’s stunned mien, Burke realized the declaration came as a shock to her too. All right, she hadn’t connived this blonde into a plot.

Burke got to specifics. “We don’t travel at night. Your mister could board before we make steam in the morning.”

“Not if you take up the mooring lines and reposition this boat clear of the docks. You could anchor in midstream. I must reach New Orleans posthaste. My father resides there, and—”

“You don’t sound like a New Orleanian.”

“English people live there too.”

Burke then heard her stomach growling. Good God, she’s hungry! These two really are in dire straits, fugitives from hell. The least he could do was offer the bounty of his galley.

To take with them.

Marshaling his arguments, Burke pointed out, “You belong to your husband, and if he’s like most men, he’ll come looking for his wife. I won’t have discord on the Yankee Princess.”

Aunt Phoebe slapped hands to her scant waist, frocked in gray twill, the dye matching eyes that had snapped in disgust for fifty-eight years. “Where’s your decency? Surely you haven’t changed that much, since that nasty business with the Lawrence woman.”

“I’ve changed.”

“Strike off your chains, Burky boy. There’s another day ahead of us!”

Out of the blue, the earth mother gathered up the hand that he’d forgotten was injured and pulled back the toweling to pick a piece of glass from his palm. Head bowing, she began to dab his cut with her handkerchief. The timbre of her voice lowered to a seductive pitch. “You need me, sir.”

He didn’t feel pain. Susan’s touch, soft yet sure, bespoke the woman. She might be wounded, but she had strength to her. Just what he needed, to be attracted to a married woman with a violent husband in her wake. He drew back his hand and rewound the bloodied towel.

Yet Susan’s husband didn’t scare Burke. Delays and problems—and the possibility Velma would turn up nothing—put the fear of God in him.

Susan dropped her arm. “I’ll repay you for passage. Soon. For now I’ll be at your service.”

At his service? He grinned. From the suddenly abashed look on her pretty yet bruised face, Susan had realized the double entendre of her offer. She knew the joys of silken sheets, or at least sheets, he figured. After all, she had borne a son. Anything might happen if she weren’t married.

She looked him straight in the eye. “I can cook and clean and mend. Starting with your hand, if you’ll permit me.”

It would take the meanest son of a bitch on the river to send her back down the gangplank. Some people called him mean enough. Many said he made his own rules. Becoming a shipping magnate before reaching the age of majority, Burke found out early that rules were made to be broken. He did as he pleased. But he tried to be fair about it.

At the moment Burke wanted to be mean as the devil himself, but couldn’t. Had she cast some sort of spell over him?

He relented. “We’ll steam to a cove south of town. Your husband won’t know to look there.”

Hers was a huge sigh of relief.

Right then, a hiss from the crate caused both Pagets to start, which prompted Aun. . .