Lead Me On (16 page)

"Marie Villars?" Scott tapped his forehead to jog his

memory. "Pierre Lafitte's quadroon mistress. Mother to his numerous children."

"Very good." She smiled at him. "During the year Pierre spent in prison on charges of piracy, Jean was frantic to win his brother's freedom. Pierre's health was very poor since he suffered a stroke early in life, and his friends feared he'd die under such ill-treatment."

"That was right before the Battle of New Orleans, right?" Scott asked. "Jean promised the U.S. support toward fighting the British in exchange for his brother's release but the local government ignored him. Pierre ended up escaping prison, although no one knows how."

Allison nodded. "Well, I don't know all the details of his escape, but the voodoo woman had a vision that great danger was coming to New Orleans, and the Lafitte brothers would rise up to protect the city. So she went to the prison and somehow helped Pierre escape and return to Jean's stronghold on the island of Barataria, outside New Orleans. Jean was so grateful to have his brother safe, he presented her with the pearl necklace. He said the pearl was one of the first prizes he'd ever taken and he thought it held great magic, so he gave it to her, saying he hoped it brought her as much luck as it had brought him."

"Cool!" Chloe said. "So what about the vision? Did that come true?"

Scott looked at her. "What do you mean, did the vision come true? Jean Lafitte? Andrew Jackson? The Battle of New Orleans? Does any of this ring a bell with you?"

"Uhhh, Andrew Jackson." Chloe scrunched her nose. "The statue of the guy on a horse in Jackson Square?"

Scott rolled his eyes. "Your second paper will be a report on the Battle of New Orleans. And yes, Jean Lafitte helped to repel the British. When Andrew Jackson arrived on the scene and saw how poorly the city was prepared to defend itself, he had no problem taking Jean up on his offer of men and arms. Without him and his band of pirates the city would have fallen."

"So he's like a hero?" Chloe asked.

"In that one instance, yes, people consider him a hero. No doubt, he's one of New Orleans's most colorful characters in history, dashing and charismatic and all that. Personally, though, I think he should have been taken out and shot rather than merely run out of town."

"Because he was a pirate?" Chloe asked.

"No, because I've read some of his letters, and anyone who writes prose that purple should be put before a firing squad."

Allison pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing.

"You think I'm joking?" He lifted a brow. "Bad prose is no laughing matter, I'll have you know."

"Of course not." She bit her lip, drawing his attention to her mouth.

Don't go there
, he told his wayward thoughts.
Off limits, remember?
"Let's get back to the necklace."

"All right." She nodded. "In her diary, Marguerite talks about one of her rendezvous with Jack where he asked her about the necklace. After telling him the story, she asked if it were true that he had Lafitte's treasure. He laughed and said, yes, his grandfather had given it to him before he died, and that he kept it in his cabin to remind himself what he came from, because he didn't want to be like that. He wanted to be a better man, which was why he'd given up smuggling and only carried legitimate goods for Henri."

"Wait a second," Scott interrupted. "He kept Lafitte's treasure in his cabin? How did he keep his men from stealing it?"

"I don't know. I'm only telling you what Marguerite wrote in her diary."

"Okay, go on."

"It was also during that clandestine meeting that Jack told Marguerite about his decision to start running blockades for the Confederacy. Afraid for his life, she took off the necklace and gave it to him, saying she hoped it brought him luck and kept him safe. He said he'd put it with the rest of Lafitte's treasure to help him remember all the reasons he wanted to be a better man."

"Apparently the charm wasn't strong enough to protect him from a jealous husband," Scott muttered, still making notes.

"No, it wasn't."

"Doesn't matter. This is great." He tapped his pen against the legal pad. "Perfect, in fact. Not only is the item valuable from a monetary and historical standpoint, it has magical powers. My drug lord is going to be insane with greed to have it. I don't suppose you'd let me read Marguerite's diaries, though, since I'm using her as the background story?"

Allison hesitated. "I don't know. We've never let anyone outside the family read them."

"I swear I'll be careful with them." He held up a hand. "Scout's honor."

"You were a Boy Scout?" She asked in surprise.

"Uuh, no. But I do have lots of experience handling old documents."

"I'll think about it."

"Fair enough." He nodded and turned to his niece. "In the meantime what do you say we check out this shipwreck?"

~ ~ ~

By the time Allison headed down to the pier with Scott and Chloe the day had warmed considerably. "We have everything you'll need stored out here," she said as they stepped from the beach onto the wooden pier. Waves lapped at the old pilings beneath them as they made their way to the end. A pelican sat atop one of the storage bins that doubled as a bench, and she had to shoo it away to lift the lid.

"The water's pretty murky for the first twenty feet," she said. "Then it gradually starts to clear. Below forty feet, you could have excellent visibility depending on how much the storm the other day stirred things up."

"How deep is the cove?" Scott asked as he looked over the various tanks.

"Close to sixty feet, the deepest in Galveston Bay," Allison answered. "The ship is directly ahead of us, pretty much smack-dab in the middle of the cove. This chain here"—she pointed to a chain attached to the end of the dock that disappeared into the water at an angle—"will lead you to the ship. It has depth markers for your stops coming back up. As for the ship, it's resting partially on its side, and most of it is buried under silt, but you'll be able to see some of the forecastle and quarterdeck."

"How'd it get buried?" Chloe asked, tugging on the shortie wetsuit she'd borrowed from Allison. The suit fit her snugly, and showed off a figure that was far more developed than that of the average twelve-year-old.

Scott gave his niece a disbelieving look. "Ever hear of the Great Storm?"

"No. Should I have?" Chloe asked.

Scott rolled his eyes. "Okay, your third report will be on the hurricane that nearly wiped Galveston off the map."

The girl's face fell. "Damn, Uncle Scott, how many papers are you gonna make me write?"

"What, three isn't enough?" He raised a brow. "I'll be happy to add another on why young girls shouldn't curse."

"No, three is fine." She held up her hands. "More than enough. Really."

"Okay, if you insist." Scott picked out an air tank, weight belt, and fins for Chloe, then helped her get them on.

"This stuff always makes me feel like a turtle with a whole house strapped to my back." Carrying the fins, she plopped down on a second storage chest so hard she nearly toppled backward.

"Careful." Scott chuckled as he peeled off his shirt, tossed it aside, and presented his beautifully nude back to Allison.

The sight struck her dumb—just when she'd been congratulating herself on how well they'd slipped back into their proper roles of innkeeper and guest. Now he stood before her, with sunlight shining off his tan muscles, and she wanted to run her tongue right up the middle of his spine.

He glanced over his shoulder. "You going to help me with the tank?"

"Oh. Sorry." Laughing and blushing, she lifted the air tank so he could slip his arms into the buoyancy vest.

"What sort of shape is it in?" he asked, turning to face her. His biceps rippled as he fastened the buckles to hold the vest and tank in place.

"Great shape," she breathed, then cringed. The ship. He was asking about the ship. "I mean—it's in great shape considering it suffered two direct hits from a cannon." Her gaze strayed back to his chest as he fastened the last buckle. "I wish you'd let me ask Adrian if you could borrow his wetsuit. You're going to freeze in nothing but swim trunks."

"The water's not that cold."

'Tell me that after you've been down at sixty feet for half an hour."

He glanced up, straight into her eyes, with a lopsided grin. "I'm tougher than I look."

"Okay, well." She blew out a breath and tried to focus. "One thing we ask all the divers is that you try not to stir up the bottom."

"You don't want me to stir things up?" The double meaning sparkled in his eyes and she realized how close they were standing.

"No, I ..." She stepped back and caught the heel of her sandal on a wooden plank.

Scott grabbed her arm, steadying her. Time hung suspended as he looked into her eyes.

Her gaze moved to his lips and he longed to lean forward and kiss her.

"Uncle Scott, are we going in or not?"

He dropped his hand. "I'm coming."

Turning away, Scott slipped on his mask and clamped the mouthpiece for the breathing regulator between his teeth. He held them in place as he giant-stepped off the end of the pier. The water engulfed him in a whoosh of bubbles. When he surfaced, he patted the top of his head to signal that he was okay and for Chloe to follow. She jumped off the pier like a cannonball, sending a giant splash onto the dock. Allison shrieked and barely jumped back in time. Scott held up his hands in a gesture to apologize.

As soon as Chloe surfaced, they went through their safety checks. Satisfied, he glanced at Allison and gave the thumbs-down signal to tell her they were going under. She nodded and waved as he deflated his vest and sank slowly into the murky brown haze. The salty taste of it slipped into his mouth around the regulator as bubbles gurgled past his face mask.

They swam slowly at a downward angle, following the chain. As Allison had predicted, the water cleared as they descended. It also grew colder. At forty feet, the haze all but disappeared. Enough light filtered down for him to see reasonably well. Even so, he turned on the dive light and hand-signaled Chloe to ask how she was doing. She wiggled her head to pop her ears, puffed a bit of air into her mask to compensate for the water pressure, then signaled back that she was okay. Nodding, he continued toward the center of the cove.

They came upon the ship all at once. One moment there was nothing in the beam of his light but an occasional fish and specks of suspended silt. Then suddenly, there was the bow of a nineteenth-century sailing vessel rising out of a cloud of silt stirred up by careless divers.

He glanced sideways and caught Chloe's look of excitement before they swam in for a closer look. A carved mermaid greeted them from beneath the jibboom, her face still proud in spite of the cracks of age. Swimming past her, Scott reached out a hand to feel the rough texture of barnacles that covered the ornately carved railing.

They swam up and over the rail as a school of small fish darted through the beam of light in flashes of silver, then turned and dipped out of sight. He swept the light along the broken relic as they floated slowly toward the stern. A single mast had endured, rising at an angle, like a giant cross. Chloe flipped her fins and headed over to explore the crow's nest as he continued straight ahead.

Reaching the quarterdeck, he saw it lay at an awkward angle, not quite lined up to the bow. Had one of the cannon blasts ripped the vessel in two? Or had it been the explosion of gunpowder in the cargo hold?

His mind conjured images of what that night must have been like based on tales handed down from the surviving crew. Marguerite had sent a message to Jack through a servant, telling him that Henri had found out about them, and that she feared for both her and her daughter's lives. When the servant told Jack that Marguerite had been badly beaten and locked in her room in the tower, he'd set sail straight for Pearl Island.