CHAPTER 11
Alternating between exasperation, wariness and fascination, Garrett gazed down from the bedchamber window and out across the garden. With narrowed eyes, he watched the woman he had married kneeling on her hands and knees, weeding the rampant jasmine from around the legs of the garden bench.
In a matter of a mere week, she had managed to breathe life back into the desolate garden.
He wondered fleetingly if her hands smelled of crushed jasmine. Or the slender column of her throat, where she absently brushed it with her fingertips? Or the errant tendril of honey-blond hair she kept pushing back up into her chignon?
Garrett wondered why he did not follow his most basic instincts. Why not drag her upstairs, have his way with her and be done with it? She tempted him to do just that. Why hold back?
Because over the past few weeks his feelings had softened toward her, Garrett told himself.
He looked past her to the roof of the family vault, peeking through the trees. He knew she had visited the tomb several times since their return from Baton Rouge. But she no longer cried and carried on like a woman possessed. And he had noticed of late that her cheeks bloomed vivaciously, like the roses gracing the garden she toiled in so diligently day after day.
Garrett’s attention returned to the woman in the garden. She seemed happiest with her gloveless hands plunged wrist-deep in dirt while coaxing the flowers to unfurl in honor of his brother’s memory. He admired her newly surfaced spunk.
She wore her nails short now, and he racked his brain to recall when she’d cut them. She also refused to wear her bonnet. And she hummed romantic melodies in a sweet sing song voice as she worked.
It was as if he were looking upon a new woman.
Garrett wondered if her heart was finally healing. And if perhaps there might be room in it for a man with a blackened reputation. Somewhere.
He seriously doubted it. Even if she surmounted her grief over Michael’s death, he had no right to go back on their bargain. Their marriage was one of convenience—for the sake of Michael’s child, he reminded himself. Though lately it had been more a marriage of inconvenience.
And what of his suspicions that Calvin and Elizabeth were somehow scheming together against him? That her only goal in marrying Michael, and him, was the ownership of Rowland Plantation?
Garrett slammed his fist into his palm. No matter what he did, she couldn’t despise him half as much as he did this place, with its painful memories—the disintegration of a family due to war and a difference in opinions.
Memories of a young man cut adrift by a tyrannical father and a weak-willed mother unable to stand up to her husband assaulted Garrett. Memories of Michael, who had loved Rowland Plantation better than he. Who had sided with their father rather than risk his sire’s displeasure and the possible loss of his birthright.
He especially recalled the beating his father had delivered the night he voiced his Union sympathies. He’d broken his arm blocking a vicious blow to the head, and afterward had been forced to wear his injured arm in a sling. That had curtailed his decision to run away from home for six grueling weeks…. Yet here he was, fighting to keep the plantation alive for Michael’s unborn heir.
And coveting Michael’s widow with a burning desire that made everything else pale into insignificance.
How ironic for a man who had left behind his heritage, Garrett thought. A man who had fought and gambled and caroused with women without becoming emotionally embroiled. Who had led a rough and carefree life, and who rarely looked back at the past with anything other than scorn. A man who had never coveted home and family, now had everything.
A home.
A child on the way
And a wife.
Once he had resented Elizabeth with all his heart and soul for drawing him back to New Orleans and for fanning the tiny flame of family honor that he had believed extinguished. She’d usurped his precious freedom.
Where had the resentment gone? he wondered as he watched her brush a damp tendril from her lip and recalled the kiss they had shared on the steamer. His intent had been to punish her for the scene with Calvin in the steamer’s dining salon, whether she was at fault or not.
He had pulled her into his embrace only to find all thoughts of punishment banished by the satiny texture of her lips against his.
And when she had leaned into his embrace and opened her lips to him, and pressed her supple body against his…
“What the devil was she trying to do?” he asked out loud.
Did she not realize how close he had come to throwing her down on one of the narrow twin beds?
Later, at the Jacksons’ home, he had stood outside in the garden and watched her through the bay window. She had sat in a rocker in the parlor, holding a vial of violet water, laughing. He had been moved to see her innocently lighthearted and entirely enchanting.
He had told himself an affectionate display in Baton Rouge would protect the Rowland heir from undue gossip. He had assumed that in front of his friends it would be safe to indulge himself and purge his system by kissing her a second time. He’d told himself that before an audience of his peers, he need not fear a repetition of the desire he had experienced on the steamer.
repetition of the desire he had experienced on the steamer. He had lied to himself—he had kissed her because he could not resist the temptation. And it had done nothing to curb his need. And everything to whet his appetite for more.
Garrett watched as she reached up to unbutton the bodice of her indigo gown. It was a deliciously distracting habit she had acquired of late. Though he could not see it from this distance, he imagined the swell of her breasts above her chemise. He had committed to memory what he had seen that day in the library. The day Calvin presented her with the mourning brooch.
He even saw the tempting swell in his dreams. Creamy white. Smooth. Inviting. That was the main reason he now slept in the guest bedchamber. Because he dared not take the chance of rolling over and gathering her into his arms. Because, for a man who prided himself on his self-control, he seemed to be sadly lacking in it lately.
Shifting position, Garrett watched Liz frown and swat at her skirt. She settled back into her routine of digging up tufts of grass for a moment, then rocked back on her heels to slap at the skirt again. A mosquito, Garrett surmised, unable to stifle the chuckle bubbling up in his throat. The humidity was high, and they were bad today.
Determined to rid herself of the pesky insect, she rose, only to settle on the bench. Glancing around, as if to ascertain that no one was scrutinizing her, she raised her skirts to her knees and scratched at her shapely calf with the trowel.
The chuckle died away, to be replaced by a growl of desire as he recalled the flirtatious incident at the Jacksons, the way she had fluttered her lashes at him and dropped her voice to a low, seductive murmur. Garrett felt his body temperature rise. Had she seen him looking down at her from the window? Was she flirting with him again, as she had been doing that day? He could not be sure, but he could not move away from the glass, either.
Mesmerized and appalled at the same time, Garrett watched her stretch one leg down the length of the bench, turning it this way and that—to examine the welts, he presumed. Even from this distance, he could tell she possessed exquisitely long legs. Trim ankles. Delicate feet.
She glanced overhead, squinting toward the sun. As if something had suddenly occurred to her, she turned sideways on the bench and stretched both legs out, bunching her skirts midway to her thighs.
Garrett realized he was watching her with bated breath, anxiously contemplating what her next move might be. He was not disappointed.
Unbuttoning her bodice a little more, she spread the material wide, exposing the delicate lace of her chemise. She stretched her arms out behind her. Tossed her head back. Arched her back. And closed her eyes, as if she actually enjoyed basking in the sunshine.
She reminded him of a celestial being, uninhibited and alluring, that he had seen on a handpainted Grecian urn in a gambling establishment in New Orleans.
Garrett swallowed. Hard. He felt abused, resentful and titillated, all at the same time.
No wonder Michael had ended up bewitched by her. The same thing was happening to him.
Enough was enough! he decided. It was time to end it, once and for all.
Garrett pivoted from the window.
He was going to go down to the garden and do what he should have done long, long ago!
The fragrance of roses assaulted Liz. Full-blown and robust. An attar out of proportion to the budladen vines she’d been training to climb a fan-shaped trellis.
She glanced up, through the haze of the steamy Louisiana morning, to see Garrett standing like a magnificent statue beneath the chinaberry trees that overshadowed the gargoyled bird bath. His shirt was open at the neck, his sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and his hair was tousled, as if he’d been raking his fingers through it.
Garrett had been acting strangely, even for him, ever since their return from Baton Rouge. Brooding. Uncommunicative. In her heart she’d recognized the faint tick-tick of the time bomb that rested between them as he went his way and she went hers.
Therefore, it was a pleasant shock to find him seeking out her company. With a tentative smile curving her lips, she rose from the bench to greet him.
His expression thunderous, he said, “Don’t move.”
The smile died on her lips, and Liz froze in mid-motion.
“What?” she asked.
“I said don’t move,” he repeated.
With disbelieving eyes, she watched him slowly extract the ivory-handled knife from the sheath at his side. Her gaze flew to his face. The look in his eyes sent a chill up her spine that was like an eager flame skittering along a fuse. They shone clear, calm, and menacing.
Liz blinked. “What in the world are you do—” “Be quiet,” Garrett commanded. With grim determination, he flipped the knife in the air and caught it like a pro by the pointed blade.
You can’t mean to do this,” she protested, preparing to run, as instinct dictated she must. But the hem of her gown was caught in the thorny branches at the base of the rose bush.
“Dead reckoning,” he told her, aiming the lethal weapon at her head.
“Can’t we talk about this?” she rasped, chastising herself for not heeding the warning signs. She’d known it was only a matter of time before the ticking bomb detonated.
“Too late,” he murmured.
An ominous silence followed. Even the woodpecker searching for insect larvae in the tomb’s wooden gables stopped his incessant tapping.
Liz watched in horror as Garrett raised the gleaming blade in the air and, with a whiplashlike flick of his wrist, released it. The knife sailed past her face, barely missing her nose. She heard it land with a heavy thump somewhere behind her.
Fear welled in the pit of her stomach and spiraled, gathering itself like a whirlwind. It inducted every nerve ending in her body as it gained momentum, blotting out every sensation except itself.
Gulping convulsively, Liz dropped the trowel she’d been using to aerate the soil, ripped the indigo gown from the clutches of the rosebush and scrambled to her feet. She forsook the beaten path and zigzagged through the garden, away from Garrett, toward the plantation house and Mrs. Crawford’s kitchen.
“Elizabeth!” she heard him yell.
She stumbled, scraping her hand on the rough bark of a camphor tree she used to steady herself.
“What’s gotten into you? For God’s sake, stop,” he called.
Clutching her ankle-length skirts in both hands, Liz kept right on running, through the garden, beyond the tomb, past the yard pump, to the doorway of the freestanding kitchen. Winded, Liz peered inside. Pans of aromatic beignets cooled on the butcher-block table. But Mrs. Crawford was nowhere in sight.
Her thoughts as tangled and disorderly as the Cherokee rose vines, Liz continued to search out Mrs. Crawford, driven by pure instinct.
Alerted by the sound of Garrett’s pounding footsteps, she sprinted from the kitchen in hopes of gaining the house before he caught up with her. But her legs felt like clay, her heart like a lead weight. The air was as thick as honey and it resisted the passage of her body and slowed her steps.
Liz realized she had experienced this nightmare of some faceless something intent on murder before. And she couldn’t race far enough or fast enough to escape the inevitable.
But this was no dream. And her assailant wasn’t faceless.
Or nameless.
“Elizabeth!” Garrett thundered, in a voice that curdled her blood in her veins.
Liz ignored him. With perspiration trickling down her sides and molding the fabric of her bodice to her trembling body, Liz sprinted up the back steps.
“Leave me alone, Garrett!” she cried.
Liz glanced over her shoulder to find him not five feet behind her. She dropped her skirts to clutch at the stitch in her side and bolted down the central hallway toward the stairs.
Directly behind her now, Garrett reached out and caught roughly at her elbow. She heard her sleeve rip as she wrestled from his grasp.
“Get away from me!” Leaning heavily on the handrail, Liz ascended the stairs two steps at a time. She had almost reached the second-floor landing when a tread that had been solid earlier that morning suddenly gave way
Liz toppled backward. Straight into Garrett Rowland’s waiting arms.
She went wild, clawing at Garrett’s face with her short nails.
He captured both her hands in one of his.
“Stop struggling. You’ll hurt yourself,” he growled.
His words were ludicrous, though his concern sounded genuine.
“As opposed to you doing it for me?”
“Have you gone daft again?” he asked. His arms tightened around her, pinning her to his muscular chest. “I’m not going to harm you.”
“Yes, you are,” Liz insisted.
“Preposterous!”
“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are it’s a duck.”
His incredulous expression was almost comical. “What?”
“You just tried to skewer me with your knife—that’s what.”
“You’re distraught.”
“What if I am overreacting? In my situation, what woman wouldn’t?” Liz asked, trying to buy herself some time. Wondering if she was strong enough to tip him off balance and push him down the stairs.
“You mean a woman married to a man with my reputation,” he said darkly.
I mean it’s not every day someone is attacked by a man from the past. “Yes.”
“Listen to me. I’m not your enemy. I only came down to the garden to talk to you.”
“And decided on the spur of the moment it might be fun to draw a little blood.”
“Not yours,” he said wryly.
Liz raised a brow at him. “That’s not how it looked to me.”
“Only because the canebrake rattler was behind you, where you couldn’t see it. Poised and ready to strike, I might add.”
Liz stared at Garrett in amazement. “Are you trying to tell me you were aiming at a snake?”
Garrett nodded. “They normally keep to the shelter of the sugarcane thickets. I can’t imagine why one would be coiled out in the open like that.”
“I don’t believe you,” Liz said recklessly.
She saw something flicker in his eyes. Distress? Caused by her distrust of his motives? Surely not.
“Why would I lie to you?” he asked.
She shrugged brazenly, trying to bluff her way through this confrontation, as she had so many others. “Because you’re tired of being married.”
“If that was the case, I could have stood by and let the snake sink its fangs into you.”
“Are they poisonous?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
“Fatal.”
“Did you kill it?”
“Rest assured, if I aimed at it, it is dead.”
The word if was the key word, Liz thought.
Garrett must have read the skepticism in her eyes, for he asked impatiently, “Must I bring the carcass to you to prove there was a rattler in the garden?”
“Since I didn’t hear it, seeing is believing,” Liz said, realizing that the worst thing about the whole suspicious incident was that she was falling in love with Garrett—a prime suspect in a potential murder case. It came to her in a blinding, almost debilitating flash. One that baffled her even as she acknowledged it. Funny—she’d never thought of herself as having masochistic tendencies.
“Have it your way, Elizabeth,” Garrett exclaimed.
Suddenly she was freed from his embrace, but not of the pain that shot through her heel and up her leg. She sagged back against him, surprising herself as much as she did him.
“You’re injured after all! The snake didn’t—”
“No. It’s my foot. I think I’ve broken it. It hurts like hell….”
Garrett let the profanity slide without comment, glancing at the stair tread, askew on its riser, instead. “How did that happen?”
“You tell me. The step was fine this morning, when I came down to work in the garden.”
“Are you accusing me of throwing a knife at you and then chasing you this way so you could fall down the stairs and break your neck?”
Liz nodded.
The snake temporarily forgotten, he scowled at her. “Don’t be absurd. What if Mrs. Crawford had tripped on the stairs instead of you? Besides, if you incurred an injury it would thwart my purpose, Elizabeth.”
“And that’s a healthy child,” Liz finished for him.
“Exactly.”
Liz realized he was correct. If he allowed anything to happen before the baby’s birth, he would have defeated his purpose in marrying her. He wasn’t concerned about her.
She felt a profound sense of disappointment. And she still didn’t know what he intended to do with her after the birth.
“And now, to that end…” he said.
In one swift motion, Garrett swept Liz off her feet, stepped over the tread and headed for the bedchamber.
Unable to resist the mad impulse, Liz asked, “Garrett, what would you do if you found out I wasn’t pregnant after all?”
She felt him take a misstep, but he quickly recovered himself.
“I honestly don’t know, Elizabeth,” he said dully, as if the thought had never occurred to him until now. “But I seriously doubt it would be a pretty sight.”
Suddenly apprehensive again, Liz asked, “What have you done with Mrs. Crawford?”
A sable brow arched over one eye. “What do you think I did with her?” he asked.
“No telling.”
“That’s one of the things I’ve come to admire in you, Elizabeth—your bravado,” Garrett said.
For once, Liz was rendered speechless.
“Never fear, Mrs. Crawford is still very much alive,” he said. “I sent her on an errand. She should return within the hour. In the meantime, let’s have a look at that foot.”
Garrett deposited Liz unceremoniously on the bed.
Garrett deposited Liz unceremoniously on the bed.
Marshaling her wits like a shield of armor, she braced herself to resist him
But his wandering hands felt too gentle, too soothing, too contradictory to what she’d expected, for her to resist.
He deftly removed her slippers, smoothing his fingers along the arch of her injured foot and around her ankle. A look of intense concentration registered on his face.
“Does that hurt?” he said. He pressed here and there at random.
Liz fought the wince rushing to her lips when he manually wiggled her toes. “Only when I laugh.
He glanced up sharply. Almost warily.
“Then don’t laugh,” he said solemnly.
Liz glimpsed something in his eyes that startled her. A vulnerability that he quickly masked with an almost imperceptible lowering of his lids. The moment passed so quickly, she almost thought she’d imagined it.
Finally, he said, “I don’t think your foot’s broken.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
“It’s swelling, but not badly. And the skin isn’t turning blue. Breaks usually cause discoloration.”
She assumed he’d learned that during the War.
“If only we had some ice to pack it in,” he continued.
“But we don’t,” she said. Because you don’t have an ice-maker, and it isn’t winter.
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “The next best thing is to elevate it.”
Garrett plumped up the feather pillows on the bed and, gingerly cupping her heel, stuffed them in a mountain beneath her foot.
Critically eyeing her foot, she thought, An ace bandage wouldn’t hurt, either.
As if reading her mind, Garrett said, “We’ll watch it for a few hours to make certain I need not ride for Dr. Breninger. When Mrs. Crawford returns, I’ll have her find something to wrap it in to keep down the swelling.”
An uneasy silence settled between them. Finally Liz said, “I should thank you for…uh…rescuing me from the snake. And for checking out my foot.”
“Checking out—” he began, then paused, as if mentally shaking himself. “I suppose you should,” he amended.
“You act as if my thanks would be a first,” Liz said, adjusting her foot more comfortably on the pillows.
“As a matter of fact, it would,” he said, just as Mrs. Crawford appeared in the doorway.
“Whatever in the world—?” the housekeeper asked from the doorway.
Garrett glanced over his shoulder. “Mrs. Rowland has had a little accident. Do you have something in the house we can use for bandages?”
“Certainly.” Mrs. Crawford hurried away, returning with a roll of material that looked surprisingly like an ace bandage.
Garrett deftly wrapped her foot, causing her heart to scamper while his fingers burned her skin everywhere he touched.
When he finally turned to Mrs. Crawford, Liz gave a silent sigh of relief.
“Did you deliver my message?” he asked the housekeeper.
“Yes, sir. The gentleman said he and his friends look forward to your arrival.”
Liz glanced at Garrett. “You’re going somewhere?”
Without responding to her question, Garrett said to the housekeeper, “Perhaps you’d like to go down and fix us a bit of lunch. I believe I smelled fresh-baked beignets when I passed the kitchen.”
“Yes sir, you did.” Mrs. Crawford looked relieved to be released from her duties as bandage holder.
Garrett followed her to the doorway and stepped out into the hallway. They conversed quietly for a moment. The housekeeper nodded. And then Garrett returned to Liz’s bedside.
“You haven’t answered my question,” she said, wondering why the fact that he’d made plans without asking her disturbed her.
“There is a house party at Destrehan Plantation.”
Liz knew the name well. Located near New Orleans International Airport, a part of the Live Oak Society and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Drestrehan Plantation was one of the oldest estates in the lower Mississippi Valley. In her time.
“And?”
“The men plan to indulge in a game of hazard later this evening, after the ladies retire for the night.”
“That’s where you sent Mrs. Crawford—over to Drestrehan with a reply to the invitation.”
He nodded.
“Of course, you accepted.”
“I could hardly afford to do otherwise. The stakes will be quite high.”
“I understand,” she said. Garrett had ridden into New Orleans earlier in the week to pay some of the bills stacked on his desk in the library. She imagined he’d agreed to participate in the dice game in hopes of recouping some of his losses.
“You think you’ll win a bundle tonight, don’t you?” she asked.
Liz watched Garrett fight the smile that played across his lips.
“I hope to, as you so aptly put it, ‘win a bundle.’ But you never know. Sometimes fate plays havoc with the best-laid schemes.”
Garrett wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t experienced firsthand, Liz thought, visualizing the uncooperative tomb. For some reason, she’d expected it to work like a sci-fi transporter room. But some vital element was missing. She should have realized after being trapped inside that it didn’t work on cue. Perhaps it happened only during storms….
“Should you need anything while I am away, Mrs. Crawford has agreed to spend the night in the spare room off the kitchen. And, by the by, don’t wait dinner for me. I may be gone until the wee hours.”
When Mrs. Crawford returned bearing a tray laden with food, Liz and Garrett shared their first meal since the breakfast on the steamer. It was pleasant. They spoke of mundane things. She drank hot chocolate laced with ginger, which the housekeeper insisted was “good for calming the heart,” while he sipped coffee. She ate two beignets slathered with whipped butter and honey, a serving of gumbo with rice, and a wedge of cheese. By the end of the meal, she felt so relaxed she could hardly hold her eyes open.
When Liz awoke a few hours later, the house was dark and quiet, and the room filled with the scent of roses which fell with the delicacy of a pink silk curtain over her face. She fought the curtain, acknowledging the conviction that Elizabeth Rowland was dead.
Had she dreamed it? Or had some poignant voice whispered it in her ear?
Restless and slightly befuddled, she slid from the bed, barely thinking of her foot as she padded to the window and brushed back the lace in search of fresh air.
Her eyelids felt heavy, and her mouth dry. And to top it off, she couldn’t remember falling asleep.
Boy, did Mrs. Crawford’s ginger pack a wallop!
Assuming the daylight hours had passed while she snoozed, Liz sucked in a great gulp of the cool evening air, trying to get her bearings. It was then that she noticed the ghostly lights weaving through the garden, only to stop at the tomb. Then backtrack and return to the tomb once again.
For a moment, she thought she was imagining things. No, there it was again! A distinct flicker.
Her eyes narrowed as she gazed out through the darkness.
What was it? It couldn’t be fireflies. It was far too big for that. Candles? No, too bright. Too steady.
“What’s going on here?” Liz asked out loud. Excitement assailed her as she wondered if this could be a supernatural signal from the tomb…her ticket home.
Apprehensive, yet feeling compelled to investigate, Liz made her way down the stairs, carefully, so as not to awaken Garret, should he be in the house. She crept past the open door of the kitchen’s spare room, where Mrs. Crawford was snoring away as if there was no tomorrow. Liz paused at a bucket of water and took a drink. She splashed the remainder of the refreshing liquid on her face.
Then continued on, beyond the chinaberry trees.
Out into the gray-green shadows of the silent garden….
CHAPTER 12
Liz discovered Garrett seated in the gazebo with his arm braced back against the railings in a territorial fashion. Watching. Waiting patiently. As if he’d expected her to eventually find her way to him.
Her steps slowed.
Twilight spilled in pools around him, splashing on the greening plants and the gazebo’s peeling paint and silhouetting them in a glow of molten silver. Liz wondered at his connection with the lights.
“I thought you were going to be gone until the wee hours,” she said softly, surprised at how thready her voice sounded.
Garrett scanned her crumpled indigo gown. She, in turn, noticed that he’d tossed his coat over the railing beneath his hand, that his shirt was unbuttoned to the waist and displayed a patch of darkly curling hair, and that his sheath and knife were missing from his waist.
“It is the wee hours, Elizabeth,” he said after a moment. A devilish grin curved his lips.
“Oh,” she responded.
Liz studied the five-o’clock shadow hollowing Garrett’s check and emphasizing his scar, then glanced up at the sky—bruised purple and yellow and crimson by the ensuing dawn. She’d slept through the afternoon, beyond full night and into the next day. How? Via drugs? she wondered. Perhaps a dose of laudanum to relax her muscles, administered in her food by Garrett when she wasn’t looking, because he knew she would refuse to take it otherwise? She’d seen his sleight of hand before, when he’d slipped the Jackson children coins.
“You slept in your clothes,” he said.
“I suppose I did.” She glanced down at her skirt, with its torn hem, as if his observation were news to her. “I don’t even remember falling asleep.”
Liz expected Garrett to make some sort of reference to the fact that she’d been dead to the world for such an abnormally long time. Instead, he said, “You shouldn’t be on that foot.”
“You were right. It isn’t broken. It feels fine now. Really.” She should be afraid of him, she knew, but, surprisingly enough, she wasn’t.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said.
“How did it go at Destrehan Plantation?” she asked, trying to recapture the lost hours.
“My, but you’re in an inquisitive mood,” he commented.
“Is that anything unusual?”
His good humor obviously restored by the night of gambling, Garrett laughed. “No, not unusual as of late.”
Jolted by the thought that he was beginning to recognize the differences between her and Elizabeth, and wondering how much longer she would be required to remain in the past before the tomb revealed its puzzling properties of time travel again, Liz stuttered, “S-so…how about that dice game?” She wanted to get to the flickering lights, but she couldn’t cut Garrett off without arousing suspicion.
His unsettling gaze remained on her face. “How do you think things went?”
They were conversing innocuously. Talking around something. She knew it and Garrett knew it. Yet they continued with their inconsequential banter.
“Considering your smug expression, I’d hazard a guess you cleaned them out,” Liz said, feeling flirtatious, uneasy and impatient all at the same time.
“You’re a saucy wench, but then, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”
“And you’re riding high on success.”
“To be sure,” Garrett remarked.
Liz glanced toward his waist once again. “By the way, where is your knife? I’ve never seen you without it.”
He patted his side. “That’s a very good question. I was wondering the same thing. After lunch, I looked for it. It had vanished into thin air, along with the snake. You wouldn’t know where either is, would you?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t waste my time asking about the knife if I knew where it was,” she said indignantly. “As for the snake…”
Garrett studied her face intently, as if really seeing her for the first time. She was acutely aware of the brute strength emanating from the man. And yet this time a yearning that started as a mere flutter in her stomach, accelerated to a catch in her throat and spread as a tingling across her skin surpassed her fear of him.
“It’s curious, but you know what?” he asked.
Liz shook her head, attempting to deal with her body’s betrayal as she realized that the light was coming and going less frequently now. She wondered if she should confess her time-travel experience to Garrett, suggest that he accompany her into the future.
Then again, perhaps he couldn’t travel to the future as she had to the past.
“I think I’m inclined to believe you concerning the knife.”
“I suppose I could say the same about you and the purported snake.”
“It must be the witchery of this garden,” Garrett said. He panned the area around the gazebo, his gaze falling on the Cherokee roses. “You’ve done wonders here—Michael would be pleased. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, considering the way it looked a week ago. It almost makes a man forget to keep his guard up.”
His pose seemed too relaxed for the Garrett she’d come to know. Had he been drinking fine whiskey with the other men at Destrehan Plantation? Or was he being ultra-cautious while he fished for solutions to questions she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
“I’ve told you before, I…” Liz began, realizing the light had finally vanished, and probably taken with it her opportunity to return to the future.
“I know—you have a green thumb.”
Liz could have cried, but she held back. It would come again. It had to! she told herself. And the next time she’d be ready for it.
Trying to sound as normal as possible under the circumstances, she said, “More importantly, I love plants. I…rarely admit this, but I talk to them.”
He frowned. “Talk to them?”
She had his undivided attention now, which wasn’t exactly what she’d been aiming for.
“They respond to it,” she said. “It seems to make them happy.”
“How do you know? Do they answer you?”
It was a strange conversation to be having at twilight, in the middle of a garden. But, what the hey…
“I can tell by the way they grow,” Liz said. “They like music, too.”
“The violin, perhaps?”
His smile mocked her.
Liz stiffened.
“That, among other things,” she said. She put in a jazz CD some days. Classical, easy listening or country and western, others. It depended on her disposition.
“Do they enjoy fairy lights, as well, Elizabeth?”
The question soared at Liz from out of the clear blue, startling her.
“Do they look forward to your walks through the garden with a light at night as you signal someone?” he continued.
So, Garrett had seen the lights. They weren’t just a figment of her wild-and-woolly imagination.
“I don’t know what to say,” Liz said, fighting to steady the ebb and flow of her emotions. One minute she felt so close to Garrett. The next…
He folded his arms across his muscular chest. “I bet you don’t.”
“You’ve got this all wrong. I wasn’t the one with the light.”
“No? Who, then?” he asked sharply.
Liz hesitated. Garrett would think she was crazy if she told him what she really thought.
“Go ahead,” he prompted. “Confess something else to me. Something I’m dying to hear.” His words were biting. And yet she suspected there were underlying reasons for it. Good ones.
Liz glanced at her nails to buy herself some time before she replied, “I think it might be a ghost.”
Mouth agape, Garrett stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed until tears came to his eyes.
“It’s not that funny,” Liz said sullenly.
He hid his face in his hands, and for a moment his features were obscured. Then he took a deep breath and eased his head so far back his face was almost horizontal. Liz couldn’t keep her eyes from straying to the strong column of his throat, wondering why she had an insane desire to run her fingers from his chin to his navel. And lower. And then follow it with the same sort of nibbling kisses he’d used on her in Baton Rouge.
Garrett was right. The garden was filled with witchery.
Or else the sensual fantasy was some kind of residual effect of the laudanum, Liz thought, watching as Garrett combed his fingers through his hair. He straightened, then stood.
“A ghost,” he exclaimed with a muttered oath, “haunting Rowland Plantation? You expect me to believe that? What do you take me for?”
Believe me, I don’t like this any more than you do. “I know it sounds kooky, but I’m only trying to give you a fair answer.”
“Kooky?”
Liz wondered if she’d ever learn to mind her tongue.
“Offbeat. Crazy,” she explained.
“You’re right about that. Tell me this—who is this apparition? Or, more importantly, who was it before now…when it lived and breathed like you and me?”
Elizabeth, Liz mused. She believed either someone was getting kicks from playing psychological games or Elizabeth’s ghost was trying to contact her, to guide her to the murderer. But she couldn’t tell Garrett any of that. Because she was supposed to be Elizabeth.
“I’m not sure,” Liz said finally.
“That’s cruel—to taunt me with the prospect of my brother’s ghost, when you know we never made peace between us.” Then, as if another thought had occurred to him, he added, “You won’t find him here. He’s gone, Elizabeth.”
Liz shook her head quickly. “I didn’t say I thought it was Michael, and I wasn’t looking for him when I came to the garden. I’m not sure what I expected to find, but it wasn’t—”
“Me,” Garrett finished quickly.
“No, it wasn’t you.”
“Shall I tell you what I suspect?” he asked.
Sensing his anxiety, Liz nodded. “Feel free.”
“I fancy the lights are nothing more than a telltale sign of your moonlit trysts with Calvin,” he said, almost wearily
“That’s why you came to the garden, isn’t it? Expecting to catch us red-handed?”
She could allay his accusations by telling Garrett here and now that she wasn’t Elizabeth. That she was just a conscientious observer dropped into the nineteenth century by the hand of fate. But it was no longer true. She was involved. Because, as outlandish as it seemed, she loved Garrett Rowland. The blinding flash had stayed with her, and now she saw it for the truth.
“You’re wrong, Garrett. It’s not what you think.”
“Explain it, then.”
“I can’t. Not right now.”
“I see. You refuse to implicate Calvin.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He’d never seemed so savagely contained. So dangerous. Not even in Calvin’s company.
Garrett paced across the gazebo to stare out toward the tomb, then turned and retraced his steps.
“You’re trying to drive me mad, aren’t you?” he asked. “The haphazard manner in which you dress —Look at the way you’re dressed now, with your bodice partially buttoned! The sparkle in your eyes. The eerie lights in the garden. Everything is calculated to that end.”
Liz realized she was witnessing a real case of shattered nerves. It seemed their roles had reversed in the weeks since her arrival. At first, it had been Garrett encouraging her to calm down. Garrett, who seemed so strong and reasonable and sure of himself. But now…
Seeking some harmony and some balance, Liz said, “Come back to the house. Get some sleep. You’re stressing out, Garrett.”
“Stressing out? What do you mean, stressing out? If that’s your way of telling me I’ve come to the end of my rope, then you’re correct. I have. So…what now, Elizabeth?”
Liz involuntarily shivered. “You’re frightening me, Garrett.”
“Why? Because I’m once again charging you of conspiring with your cousin against me? Because I suspect you both of wishing to be well rid of me? Because I’m slowly losing control?” He paused, his eyes glittering with self-loathing. “Or because I’m not losing control fast enough to suit you and your fairhaired compatriot?”
His tortured expression transformed Liz’s shiver into a sympathetic quivering that started somewhere in the regions of her heart. She couldn’t stand to see him this way. In such…anguish. And all because of her. She felt torn, because the future’s draw was lessening in relationship to her feelings for Garrett. She still wasn’t sure of him. She couldn’t afford to let her emotions color her rational side. And yet…
In a calm, and she hoped, soothing voice, she said, “You’re frightening me because you’re staring at me the same way you did at the Jacksons’ house.”
Cocking a regal brow, Garrett relaxed somewhat at the mention of the Jackson family.
Relieved that her ploy had worked, Liz continued in the same vein, for she had glimpsed a gentler Garrett through the Jacksons’ eyes, and she hoped to reclaim that side of him now.
“You were standing out in the herb garden with Charles, gazing in through the bay window toward me. I wondered if you were angry with me. Wondered what I’d done to make you look at me that way.”
“You laughed,” he said simply.
She was totally unprepared for his response. “I what?”
“Your face was alight with laughter. Your eyes were soft and warm. Your lips full and rosy from the hot tea,” he said slowly, as if weighing the impact of each word. “I’d never seen you laugh. It was a tiny, insignificant thing that burgeoned all out of proportion. It nearly stopped my heart. God! How I wanted you! The ache nearly choked me. I could only listen to Charles and nod dumbly. And…stare.”
Liz gulped. It was the first time she had ever heard Garrett falter over anything. She could feel her heart melting. “I don’t know what to say.
“Later, I thought to indulge myself. A kiss here. A kiss there. What could it hurt, with my friends looking on? How wrong I was. I’ve thought of nothing else since Baton Rouge. Do you have any idea what that kind of desire feels like? How overwhelming? How irrational?
Liz surprised herself by saying, “Yes, I do. I’m feeling it right now.”
Garrett towered over her, darkly handsome and decidedly agitated—with himself or with her for the audacity of her admission, Liz couldn’t be sure.
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