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  Chapter Fourteen

  Suzanne’s story

  The white horse waited by the pillar with the bullet holes. For a moment, the moon shone through a gap in the clouds, and the silver harness glittered like the dark rider’s eyes. They mounted and passed in and out of light and shadow as the ragged clouds masked and unmasked the moon. The horse’s hooves sucked against the wet earth.

  “Who are you?” Suzanne whispered.

  The rider covered her mouth with one gloved hand, then replaced his fingers with his lips. She asked again and received the same response. Each time she tried to speak, which was often, he answered with a kiss, an ever-deepening kiss. This time no bugle got in the way, and the horse seemed to pick its own path in the darkness. The sound of the hoofbeats changed as their mount thrummed across a small wooden bridge and came out of a cypress grove by the shore of a lake.

  A stilted cabin stood out in the water at the end of a narrow path. Firelight glowed through the cracks in the walls. The dark rider carried her there, small waves lapping at his boots when the wind sprang up. The first step up to the hideaway sat under water, but inside, the cabin was dry and snug, shutting out the damp.

  A pallet covered in gold satin lay near the antique woodstove. He placed Suzanne there tenderly, hung his cloak and hat on a peg and threw his gauntlets aside. From a dark corner of the room, he brought her a glass of red wine. They drank and watched the flames in the open grate. The warmth of the wine, the fire, and his body spread through her from top to bottom. Not rape or abduction, but seduction.

  At last, he unwrapped the lacy coverlet as if he opened a gift on Christmas morning and pushed down the thin straps of her peach-colored gown. Suzanne reached to unknot his mask, but he grasped both her wrists with one large hand, raised them above her head, and pushed her down against the satin. When he became preoccupied with her breasts, nuzzling, suckling, and lightly running his fingers along the soft sides, she began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt, one by one. This he allowed.

  His skin shone very white against the sable of his shirt. Blue veins stood out across the muscles in his arms. A patch of dark hair, heart-shaped, covered his chest. She toyed with it and ran her fingers firmly over the nipples hidden there. He moaned and moved further down her body, dragging his tongue down her centerline, and supporting her hips with his big, cupped hands. He kissed the tender, sensitive skin of her inner thighs.

  Suzanne could have lain there for hours reveling, but had to do her part. She rose slightly and ran her hands down his back to his buttocks, firm and lean. Reaching around his front, she fumbled with the stiff buttons on the archaic pants. He was long, so long all over. The boots presented a problem. He became impatient with them, sat up, heaved them off, flung them across the room, and then, he came to back to her. Suzanne reached out to cup him and stroke a truly urgent erection, but he took her hands away again and slid back and forth across the most sensitive spot on her body until her thighs ran slick with wetness.

  The rain started again, drumming more loudly against the tin roof of the cabin than it had on the slates at Magnolia Hill. The wind whipped through the cracks and extinguished the candles. His face drew close. By the light of the fire, she gazed into his deep, blue eyes and gasped as he penetrated to the hilt. He paused to see if he’d hurt her. She dug her nails into his backside, spurred him on, and let him continue the whole night long.

  ****

  Morning has to come, and everyone must open their eyes when it does. Suzanne woke not to the soft whisper of her name that she’d heard all night, not to the sound of gently falling rain or to the sweet trilling of birds, but to swearing. Her rider stood in the open doorway looking out at the flood. Water covered all but the top step of the tiny shack, stark in the daylight. The footpath had disappeared and beyond, water inundated the cypress trees half way up their trunks. The white horse was gone, but the black mask remained knotted in place. He’d pulled on the snug, black pants, and barebacked and bootless, he cursed their circumstances.

  “God dammit, screwed up again! Fuck it!” He berated himself.

  “Actually, you do it very well, George. Exceptionally well, I’d say.”

  “I’m not George. I’m the Devil’s Horseman, dammit,” he said hoarsely without turning toward Suzanne.

  She pushed off the coverlet and wrapped his ebony cloak about her. When he finally looked her way, she could see his eyes watering badly wetting the eyeholes in the mark.

  “It is George, isn’t it? Why don’t you take out the contacts?”

  “This time, I forgot to bring my glasses. I knew I should have gotten refitted for the soft contacts instead of using these old athletic ones, but I didn’t want to spend the money. I forgot how much these could hurt when you wear them all night long. I forgot a lot of things.” He frowned at the engorged lake.

  “We’ll be all right.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not from around here. It could take days for the water to go down. If it rains again, we’ll be swimming right along with the gators. This lake is full of them.”

  “We seem to do a lot of swimming together.”

  “Look, I just shoved a cottonmouth out of here with a chair leg when he decided to join us for breakfast. I’m glad you can joke about it.”

  “What’s for breakfast, then—cottonmouth? I’m starving.”

  “Grapes, cheese, chocolate, and leftover wine. No water bottles. It’s a good thing you weren’t hungry last night because there is precious little of it.”

  “But I was hungry.” She looked directly at the man in the mask. He flushed everywhere not covered by dark fabric. He had too much to own up to this morning.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Suzanne asked gently.

  He sank down in the corner next to the ice chest containing the provisions. “Linc says if she wants romance, give her romance.”

  “The famous Lincoln St. Julien I’ve heard so much about?”

  “The same.”

  “He’s very imaginative.”

  “He always was a big hit with the ladies. Him and my dad, the original Devil’s Horsemen.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  “No. I want to be, but I’m really not.” George stared at his toes.

  “George, come here.” She patted the place next to her on the mattress. He stayed by the cooler but glanced up.

  “Admit it, Suzanne. You pity and maybe like George St. Julien. At least, you did a few weeks ago. You came here with the Devil’s Horseman.”

  She took her turn to blush. He was absolutely correct. If she had not held on to her delusion of a tall, dark stranger whisking her away on a white horse, she could have unmasked George at the start. Deep down, she recognized him from the first, even though she treated Sheriff Duval’s suggestion that they were lovers as a joke. She didn’t want to admit that her dark rider was George, plain, old George. Last night with those blue lenses so clearly defined in the firelight, she knew his identity for sure, but remained pleasantly surprised by the amount of muscle and stamina his gray business suits concealed.

  “You’re right. But, there is a great deal more to George St. Julien than meets the eye—or the hand—or the body.”

  He smiled a little at her truly pathetic joke. “If I told you right now….”

  She held her breath, expecting something other than what came out.

  “If I told you right now that I did not steal the silver, would you believe me?”

  “Yes. I would believe George, but not the Devil’s Horseman.”

  He unknotted the black satin covering his head and took off the mask. His hair, lank and sweat-soaked fell in his eyes. He pushed it back, groaned, and ran his hand over the dark stubble covering his chin. He became simply George St. Julien again, but a gorgeous, bare-chested George with a whole lot of potential.

  He told his story then, featuring Randy Royal and Bobby Sonnier as the villains. This made some sense, only the timing of it bothered her—a
ll the phone calls and driving that would have been necessary to commit such a spur of the moment crime. Suzanne pondered it over grapes and cheese. They finished the bottle of opened red wine, and George gallantly checked the bathroom for snakes before letting her use the facilities. She slipped back into the silky nightie and wrapped herself in the cape again. When she came out, George squatted on the edge of the mattress and stoked the fire with a meager supply of dry wood.

  Feeling warm and cozy from the breakfast wine, she sat next to him. “George, I have an idea.” He looked at her sidelong, hopeful, his bloodshot eyes gleaming. But no, they weren’t going to have sex again right this minute.

  “I’ve gone to Royal’s shop before on the pretext of buying silver. I could go again and ask if he has something in the line of silver-plated ice cream spoons. I’m from out of state, just passing through again. He could sell to me safely. The spoons aren’t the questionable pieces, but I’d recognize them if they came from your mother’s collection. Then, we take the evidence to Sheriff Duval, and we’ve caught the culprit.”

  “And I have to repay $100,000 to Mutual Trust.”

  “You won’t be any worse off than before the theft. I’ll say I hadn’t reported my discovery to you yet, or you could just keep quiet, take back the silver, and return the money.”

  “You’d lie for me?”

  “I already have by keeping quiet this long.”

  “Would you marry a man deeply in debt?”

  “I’m not sure. That would all depend on how well he made love with his mask off.” She’d done it, truly done it, fallen in love with a nice guy—who was great in bed.

  Isolated from the world, they had time for all the sex they wanted. The morning passed swiftly. Covered with only the black cape, they recuperating from trying out a new position fondly named “The Horseman’s Bridle” when they heard the motorboat.

  “Oh, shit,” George said. “We’re being rescued.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Suzanne’s story

  Suzanne finally got to meet the famous Linc St. Julien. Feeling “kind of responsible” for their predicament, he’d come to their rescue in his Uncle Jack’s bass boat. She liked him immediately even if he did keep grinning and glancing at the stained gold satin sheet pulled half off the mattress. At least, he refrained from any wisecracks about George’s half-buttoned pants or her ensemble of peach nightie and black satin cloak. She expected to endure locker room humor from the former jock and teammate, but Linc seemed so genuinely happy for George, she put aside preconceived notions about a man who would instigate stunts like these.

  Linc smuggled them home with a minimum of fanfare. George and Suzanne sat together in the back of Linc’s pickup along with the cooler, deflated air mattress, and the ball of badly stained satin sheets. He signaled them once to lie flat when a patrol car came up the road. She snuggled against George’s chest in the bed of the truck and remained in that position until they came to the Hill.

  Suzanne expected the interlude at the lake to change things entirely, but George became George again as soon as Linc disappeared from the scene. He went upstairs to put on jeans and a shirt while she, still clad in her best sexy nightgown, made coffee and sandwiches. George brought her robe from upstairs and very sensibly suggested they discuss the problem of the silver over lunch.

  While she studied his body with a new appreciation and regretted the return of those black-framed glasses that made gazing into his plain gray eyes nearly impossible, George outlined the presentation of their suspicions to Sheriff Duval and his fiscal responsibilities to Mutual Trust. She ran her fingertips up and down his muscular arm until he moved out of reach, so she let him finish uninterrupted. Then, they argued.

  “Let me try my plan first, George,” Suzanne said, standing on tiptoes to rub his shoulders. He flicked her off.

  “Tomorrow after I’ve thought out all of the financial implications, I’ll share your ideas with Sheriff Duval.” His tone implied “crazy ideas.”

  “No, George! Let me get the goods on Randy Royal first. Real evidence.”

  She liked the idea of trapping Royal single-handedly. All those Nancy Drew novels read in the sixth grade came to mind. She visualized the title on the spine of the book, The Case of the Stolen Sterling, starring that resourceful, honey-blonde antiques detective, Suzanne Hudson. George obliterated her fantasy.

  “That is both dangerous and foolish. Let Duval do his job and search the shop.”

  Funny, he had not used the word “foolish” earlier that morning when they made love like the last two survivors of the Great Flood ready to repopulate the earth again. And she said so. George stomped out of the house and splashed down the lane. She watched him from the window, then went to change into something severe. Perhaps, the Nancy Drew novels had no sex in them because Nancy had to deal with stubborn, unimaginative idiots like George St. Julien.

  When he returned carrying a damp Sunday paper and a mass of Saturday’s forgotten mail, mostly flyers that went instantly into the trash, George tried to make up to her by putting a protective arm around her shoulders. This time, she shrugged him off. She went to work on her paper. George left for Linc’s house, she supposed, but her mind continued to wonder how to confront Randy Royal in the morning. The various scenarios kept her company that night, too, because George did not come to her bed.

  ****

  Miffed, Suzanne stayed aloof at breakfast. Whenever George reached across the little kitchen table, she managed to have her hands occupied with a knife and fork cutting into one of Birdie’s superlative waffles or holding a scalding hot cup of coffee. Birdie had prepared a strangely lavish breakfast, which kept George at the table longer than usual. The housekeeper hummed “Strangers in the Night” as she waddled over to force more waffles on the couple, winked at George, and murmured scoobey-doobey-do in his ear. Suzanne wondered if Birdie had been talking to Linc’s mama after services at the Pilgrim Baptist Church. At five to eight, Birdie made herself conspicuously absent by announcing she was taking out the garbage, an event usually done without fanfare. That gave George his chance.

  He stood behind Suzanne’s chair and whispered, “I want you to stay out of this mess, Suzanne. I want you to be safe.” George bent and kissed her cheek gently because she would not turn her head to accept a kiss on the lips.

  “I’ll call you this morning,” he said and hustled off to the office. All the tenderness welling up with his kiss and his concern, she tamped down again, knowing he would be checking on her. Well, that’s what cell phones were for—to be in contact anywhere a person happened to be—working on a paper at home or shopping for antiques in Opelousas.

  Suzanne went about her job in the upstairs rooms and waited for his call. It came around ten on the Magnolia Hill land line. Perfectly cordial to George, she asked if he had seen Sheriff Duval. No, he said, the sheriff was late coming in this morning, having put in a long day Sunday checking the roads for accidents and helping out after the storm.

  “Oh, when I see you later, you can tell me all about it,” she replied innocently. “And, George, I may check out the attic today, so call me on my cell if you need to get in touch again. I don’t want to drag dust and cobwebs through Birdie’s clean house.”

  After he hung up, she called a number scribbled on a piece of paper the previous night. Then, she told Birdie she was going out to check the mail.

  “Won’t be here yet,” she yelled over the roar of the vacuum cleaner she plied in the front parlor.

  “I’ll wait. I’m expecting some important papers for my project,” Suzanne lied. By the time she reached the end of the drive, she could hear Willie’s cab clattering up the hill.

  “Business has sho’ picked up since you been here, Miss Suzanne. Up this hill an’ down this hill. I got me a new carburetor and a pillow for the back seat wit’ the proceeds.

  Considering she wore a dark skirt, she decided to avoid the chenille pillow covering the bare springs. The fuzzy fabric looked like a h
eavily shedding variety.

  “To Opelousas, Willie. Royal Antiques.” She flashed the address on Randy Royal’s card at the driver and settled back to mentally rehearse her confrontation with the thief, a waste of practice as it turned out.

  She asked Willie to wait for her, confident that it would only take a few minutes to wheedle a piece of stolen silver out of Mr. Royal with her clever ruse.

  “Hello, it’s me again,” Suzanne warbled pleasantly, entering the shop. “Just on my way back home. I thought perhaps you found a few small treasures to sell me in the interval, Mr. Royal. You were quite right about there being nothing in Port Jefferson.”

  Randy Royal, sipping tea from a wonderfully translucent Limoges cup and paging through a copy of Antiques magazine at his sales counter, glared at her.

  “You may drop the pretense, Miss Hudson, not Mrs. Hudson, formerly of Philadelphia, now of Magnolia Hill, Miss Know-It-All antiques expert. I have a few friends left in Port Jefferson, you know.”

  The memory of George and Bobby Sonnier exchanging words at the Roadhouse restaurant suddenly came back to her. The resourceful, blonde detective had just botched the job.

  “Bobby told me all about the lovely girl staying with George St. Julien, what you wore, what you looked like. He thought we could all have lunch together one day and talk antiques. Bob is so naïve. He thought you were too fine for George. I set him straight on that. I told Bobby how you came here pretending to be someone else, snooping after the St. Julien silver. So you think you know something about Victorian teapots and candelabrum? I’m surprised you didn’t bring the police right along and accuse me here in my own shop. I’m astounded you don’t have a search warrant to tear the place apart. Maybe there’s a punch bowl hidden in the rocking horse!”

  Randy took a gulp of tea and replaced the cup against the saucer with a crack that made her eyes blink.

  “You think I’m a thief. Well, I’m not. But I will tell you what I was—hagridden. Yes, hagridden by that old lady at the Hill who knew I wanted out of Port Jefferson more than anything on earth. She lured me with a cut of the profits when I sold off that silver. She told me what pieces to fake, what to sell off and when. And you know something else? She planned this robbery. I’m sure of it. Virginia Lee died before she could find someone crooked enough to carry it off for her. Why else would she sell the stuff secretly and replace it with fakes? She wanted her precious son to know nothing about it. Now here’s the joke. You come along, and poof! The silver is gone on the eve of revelation.”