Spellbound

  SPELLBOUND

  Trana Mae Simmons

  “An’ [If] it harm none,

  do what ye will.”

  The Wiccan Rede, the Supreme Law of the Craft

  www.BelgraveHouse.com

  Chapter 1

  Late Spring, 1875

  New Orleans. Damn, it still stinks the same after ten years.

  Nick Bardou steadied himself against the deck railing, staring at the activity on shore as the combined passenger and cargo ship, The Lady Rachelle, nudged the bulwark. Shipping company employees in salt-stiff clothing scrambled around, grabbing ropes the sailors on board tossed and securing them to the pilings with some sort of fancy knot. On the dock, stacks of goods in huge crates and boxes waited to be loaded as soon as the passengers departed and the hold was cleared of the incoming cargo.

  The pain in his leg increased. He’d rested on his stateroom bunk until the last possible moment before he came on deck in response to the captain’s message they were getting ready to dock. The pain always heightened under stress. He had no desire to make his first appearance in this city after all this time with a limp acknowledging his physical weakness to anyone who recognized him. Gritting his teeth, he concentrated on the scurrying mass of people on the shoreline and the piles of waiting cargo.

  Wrong move. Foreboding nudged him. Memories hid and demons waited to pounce among the stacks of cargo. If he hadn’t already known the stifling heat was typical for this time of year in the city he hated the most on earth, he’d think it came from the bowels of hell, carried here by those concealed demons.

  Hell would be easier to handle than coming back here, he mused.

  “Mr. Bernard! Yoo hoo! Mr. Bernard!”

  Nick stiffened. How long would his pseudo-identity stay in place here? Not long, for sure, with Miz Thibedeau shouting at the top of her lungs. He turned to see what the heck she wanted this time.

  “I’ve taken care of getting the luggage unloaded and given them the address to send it to--the one you gave me so I could telegraph my son and let him know where we’d be staying,” the portly woman said between huffs as she hurried up to him. “And the purser said the company’s got carriages waiting to take the first class passengers wherever they’re going. All we have to do is look for the carriages with the shipping company logo on the side of them waiting on the dock.”

  Despite Miz Thibedeau’s harried voice, which still carried a southern lilt after many years spent far from New Orleans, not a hair on her head risked moving out of place in the stiff gulf breeze. Nor did a wrinkle dare mar her starched dress. A multitude of creases lined her face, but Nick barely noticed them anymore.

  You wouldn’t think a servant could accomplish anything and still look like she’d stepped out of a bandbox. But damn, could she cook up a mess of red beans and rice, along with an iron skillet of cornbread that would make a sinner repent.

  Crawfish were in season. He’d gained a taste for the mudbugs and other foods his Creole class disdained while prowling the swamps with a friend his father didn’t approve of. He hadn’t had any in over ten years. She’d know exactly how much red pepper to put in to raise blisters on his fingertips after he broke off several dozen of those delicious tails. . . .

  “I could have handled taking care of the luggage,” he said.

  She flapped a negligent hand. “Oh, you probably could have, but since you didn’t bring a man servant with you, who really ought to be the one to do it, I took care of it myself. Now, out in that wild California country we just left, no one would have thought twice about a gentleman handling his own minor inconveniences. But we’re back home now. It just isn’t done. You know that.”

  Home, hell. And he bit back the retort that people in New Orleans had long ago denied him the title of gentleman. Let her foster her illusions for a while longer. Hopefully after she found out who he was, she’d still want to return to California with him. But if not, so be it. He’d had plenty of practice the last ten years at dealing with the pain of losing people from his life. He handled that suffering the same as the physical pain in his leg--by accepting the inevitability and controlling the ache any way he could.

  Bringing her with him had been a chance he had to take, because he doubted he’d be able to employ any other servants in this city--not when they learned who wanted to hire them. And he didn’t much care to be subjected to the stares and behind-the-hand speculations he’d encounter if he dined out while he was stuck here.

  Before he’d tasted Miz Thibedeau’s cooking, he might have been happy to subsist for a few days on whatever the ship’s galley could provide for him in a basket. But the one weakness he hadn’t been able to overcome was his love for fine food. They’d barely been able to scrounge up one meal every other day the last few months of the war, and the hunger on top of the emotional pain would have beaten a man less determined to die anyway. He’d sworn never to go hungry again.

  The salt-encrusted gangplank gears squeaked and squalled as a nearby sailor cranked the mechanism to lower it, and Nick glanced over his shoulder to see the captain approaching. Two more sailors behind them shouted at the steerage passengers, warning them to wait until their betters disembarked before they sullied the deck with their dirty bodies. The sailors interspersed their orders with only mild curses, in deference to the ladies flooding onto deck from the upper staterooms, but Nick knew what they’d rather be saying.

  Miz Thibedeau clenched her jaw, and as though reading her mind, Nick knew she found it as hard to tolerate the class distinctions here as they both did in California. Out there bigotry was directed at a different class of people, mostly the Chinese and other foreign immigrants who filled the railroad and construction jobs. But the separations were every bit as defined as in this centuries-old city.

  During the war, he’d shared ‘possum and snake with swamp rats and generals alike, and he didn’t much care for snobbery any longer.

  Ah, N’awlins. After the horror of the war, no wonder I prefer California. Out there, a man makes his own reputation rather than feeding on his lineage.

  Better not let that thought take effect either. He could feel the relentless strain on the door shutting off the memories in his mind.

  “I hope you had a pleasant journey, Mr. Bernard,” the captain said with exactly the proper measure of deference.

  “Very pleasant,” Miz Thibedeau answered for them both. The captain’s brows climbed up his forehead in surprise, just like they had every time Nick’s servant had dared address him. Servants just didn’t do that.

  Mine do in California . . . Nick started to say, but instead he decided to treat the class-conscious captain to a dose of his own medicine. Casting a disdainful look down his nose at the shorter man, an admonishment of his audacity in thinking Nick gave a shit whether he had made the journey pleasant for him or not, he took Miz Thibedeau’s arm and strolled toward the gangplank. Thankfully, he managed the walk without utilizing his cane, and people might think it was for style rather than assistance.

  Miz Thibedeau’s plump body shook with repressed laughter, and Nick almost joined her when he looked down and saw her supercilious look and pursed lips. Damn, he would miss her if she turned on him when she found out his true identify. Only Miz Thibedeau could lighten the darkness clinging to him in an unshakable cloud of despair. Only Miz Thibedeau would he tolerate doing that.

  How the hell he noticed it amid all the other activity on shore, he never understood. But for some reason as he and Miz Thibedeau strolled down the gangplank, Nick’s head unerringly swiveled to get a better look at some motion in the crowd, which tugged at his attention from the corner of his eye.

  He zeroed in on the figure of a slender woman in a pale green dress. There were a dozen or more women in the crowd, most
of them waiting for husbands, sons or other relatives to disembark, and several of them weren’t exactly ugly. None of them except this one, however, drew his gaze--or made him feel a faint stir of male appreciation with only seeing a feminine back.

  The woman bumped into a pushcart filled with flowers among the multitude of street vendors meeting the ship and hoping for a few coins profit. She was in such a hurry, she failed to notice what she’d done until a huge pile of flowers started sliding out of the cart and the pushcart vendor shouted in alarm. Not really interested in the outcome of the spectacle, Nick kept walking.

  Suddenly he froze.

  The woman turned, and the entire mass of flowers hung in the air, waiting for her to scramble back and catch them.

  They couldn’t do that.

  But they did.

  One side of his mind told him that she’d been too far past the cart to make it back in time to catch the bouquet in her arms. The other side informed him in no uncertain terms, that’s exactly what she’d done--with the flowers waiting for her! She returned the flowers to the cart, then glanced in his direction across the crowd.

  “Ouch!” A long minute later--or maybe only a short second, he had no idea--Miz Thibedeau slapped his hand and tugged against his hold. “Ow, Mr. Bernard! You’re squeezing my arm off. Let go. Please!”

  Nick released her, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the woman by the flower cart. If her actions were any indication, she was apologizing profusely to the vendor, her strawberry blond hair on her un-bonneted head shining in the sunshine and her delicate hands arranging the flowers securely on the cart. If he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him before, this time he had to be going crazy.

  That woman had been dead for ten years. He’d killed her himself.

  As though sensing his intense preoccupation in her, she lifted her gaze once more and stared across the distance separating them. From here, he couldn’t tell if her eyes were blue or not, but she had the same familiar petite figure, which shouldn’t have stirred a man as much as a more voluptuous one would, but did. The gulf breeze blew her skirt against slender legs, endlessly long, given her short stature. For a man who wanted a woman he could easily handle and adjust for his own pleasure beneath the sheets, she’d be perfect. And she was exactly the proportion and coloring he’d avoided with a distaste bordering on a fear of being poisoned over the years.

  An older woman entered the tiny sphere Nick’s vision had shrunk to, stepping between him and the strawberry blonde. Then the crowd encroached, shutting off the sight of them both.

  Leaving Miz Thibedeau standing there, Nick strode down the gangplank and pushed his way through the crowd on the dock, using his cane when necessary to both lean on and clear his path. Angry shouts and muttered curses fell in his wake, a corner of his mind wishing someone would confront him and let him vent the furious anger boiling inside him. Had he been wearing the more casual attire he preferred in California, rather than proper clothing similar to what Creole gentlemen wore in New Orleans, no doubt someone would have satisfied his need for a confrontation. As it was, only verbal discontent followed him, since the crowd mistook him for one of their betters.

  It couldn’t be her, he reassured himself sternly. But if it were, he’d haul her ass over to the Bardou mansion on St. Charles Avenue with him and keep her there until she told him how she’d escaped death. How she’d managed to survive a five-inch knife wound in her heart and a slit throat. Survived being buried in a coffin, looking every bit as beautiful through her death pallor as in life. He’d only glimpsed her briefly at the burial--an attempt to confirm what he’d seen two nights before--and he’d had no qualms she was dead.

  When he arrived at the flower cart, panting and gritting his teeth against the horrible pain in his leg, the only person there was the vendor and an elegantly attired gentleman purchasing a bouquet of roses. The strawberry blonde was gone, disappeared without a trace.

  “Where’d she go?” he demanded of the vendor.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Sir,” the gentleman waiting for the vendor to wrap his flowers said, “wait your turn. I’m buying flowers for my wife right now. It’s our anniversary today.”

  Nick ignored the man. “The woman who was just here,” he insisted. “The one who knocked the flowers off your cart. Where did she go?”

  The vendor shrugged and turned his attention back to the gentleman. “That will be ten cents, sir.”

  “Damn it . . .” Nick began. Suddenly a flash of strawberry a few yards off to his right caught his attention, and he headed for it. When he seized the woman’s arm a couple seconds later and jerked her around, watery eyes in an aged face topped with obviously dyed hair met his gaze. She couldn’t have gotten that rare color naturally.

  “Ye don’t haveta get nasty, mister,” the whore said. Her foul breath whooshed past a mouthful of rotten teeth and knocked him backward a step. He released her arm as though it were as odious as her breath. “We kin takes care of bidness right over there, ‘mong the crates. Won’t nobody catch us, ‘cause me friend Biddy’ll keep a watchout for us.”

  Nick limped away, but she grabbed the back of his frock coat. “Wait, mister. I ain’t et for a couple days, so’s I’d be willin’ to give it to ya cheap. I ain’t got no diseases--”

  Nick distastefully freed himself from her hold. The easiest way to get rid of her and keep from making a more conspicuous display of himself would be to pay her off. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out a gold piece without paying any heed to the value of it and thrust it into her hand. Then he shoved her aside, disregarding her babbled “God bless ye, sir.”

  Miz Thibedeau met him halfway back to the gangplank. “I don’t blame you for wanting to see for yourself if that really happened, Mister Bernard,” she said in a breathless voice. “Why, that looked like magic when that pretty woman kept those flowers from hitting the ground. And didn’t she look a lot like Sa--”

  “Come on,” Nick snarled before she could utter the hated name. “The ship’s carriages will all be full, and we’ll have to try to find a hansom ourselves. I’m not inclined to wait around in this heat to get transportation to the house.”

  “Nick!” another voice called. “Hey, Nick! Nick Bardou! Is that you?”

  Nick closed his eyes for a brief moment and shook his head. When he opened them again, he saw Chet Emilie hurrying toward him. Damn it to hell, the two of them had shared dozens of hangovers, so there was no chance of convincing Chet that he’d mistaken Nick’s identity.

  Funny. When he glanced down at Miz Thibedeau while he waited for Chet to reach them, she looked completely unamazed at hearing someone hail him with a different name than she knew him by.

  #

  “Come along, Wendi.” Sybilla pulled Wendi through the crowd. “You shouldn’t have done that. You should have let those flowers fall. What if someone saw you?”

  “Well, I like that, Aunt,” Wendi Chastain said. “I’d think you’d be glad to see my magic work so easily after all the trouble I’ve had with it. Besides, I did it instinctively. At least half of that vendor’s flowers would have been ruined in the filthy street because I knocked them off the cart, and his family might have gone to bed hungry tonight. Did you see how not even one single flower slipped out of the bunch and hit the ground?”

  “I saw,” Sybilla said in a grudging voice. “But I’d much prefer you practice at home instead of in front of a hundred people.”

  “Hmmmmm. Then why did you turn that woman of the evening’s hair the color of mine? What do you think she’s going to do when she looks in a mirror and finds out she’s not gray any longer?”

  “She won’t. The spell only lasts ten minutes, and then the color will revert back. But we’ll discuss this when we get home, not here. Not where someone might overhear us.”

  Aunt Sybilla’s obvious agitation silenced Wendi as they continued away from the docks. Had they known a ship was arriving, they probably would have put off their shopp
ing trip rather than fight the crowds of people. But the bare cupboards couldn’t be filled with magic. Well, they could be, but the food wouldn’t be nearly as delicious as real food. For some reason, food conjured from and cooked with magic lacked something intangible.

  That the Fates had decreed the trip this morning wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Aunt Sybilla’s uneasiness was triggered seemingly out of thin air, as though something had been waiting for just the proper moment. The confusion and distress in Sybilla now were a different type of bewilderment than she’d seen in her since her aunt’s magic started giving her difficulties.

  Wendi shifted her shopping bag to the other hand, glad she hadn’t forgotten it at the flower cart. The okra, corn, potatoes and tomatoes in it wouldn’t even make a flavorful soup without some type of meat or seafood to season it, but Aunt Sybilla had turned them toward home before they reached the fish stall. Wendi followed her rather than call attention to them both any further by arguing with her aunt. Maybe they could pick up some crawfish or shrimp at Stefan’s bayou stand near their house.

  The further they got from the docks, the more the crowds thinned. The smells didn’t abate in the same proportion, though. Thank the Goddess they’d been able to grow multitudes of flowers around their house, encasing their yard in a cocoon of sweetness nearly year round. She especially loved the honeysuckle, which the upper-class neighborhoods considered a weed. The poverty of her neighborhood couldn’t be completely hidden, and the small house on Canal Street was a far cry from the manor house where she’d spent her first four years, but most of the owners of the houses in her neighborhood tried their best to keep their dwellings in repair. They were too close to the docks and factories to completely escape the odors, but growing flowers helped.

  A familiar face caught her attention. Doc Meneur stumbled down the sidewalk, deep in his cups even this early in the day. Wendi winced at the grating sound of his drunken jollity.