Ciji Ware (56 page)

“Just leave this house! I didn’t want you to come here. No one at Devon Oaks wanted you to come. You merely invited yourself, as you well know.”

“Daphne
…
please,” Simon pleaded, his voice low with intensity. “You’re upset. You’ve had so much to contend with. You’re—”

“I have endured you Hopkinses and your dictatorial, self-righteous
charity
about as long as I can stand,” Daphne cried contemptuously. “If I am not allowed by you and your father to run my own affairs, then I shall find a male quite willing to grant me the privilege.”

“Aaron Clayton?” Simon murmured as if to himself.

“I am a twenty-five-year-old widow with an unbalanced mother who has an unbreakable habit of striking her head against her bedroom wall for hours at a time. I have an incorrigible little brother, and a sister I detest as much as she detests me. My father
and
my other sister took their own damnable lives and left me with this unholy mess to contend with. No one will fault me if I turn to a man who has promised to help me steer my own ship.”

“But you’ve only just met this man,” Simon replied quietly, hoping an unemotional tone would serve to calm the roiling waters. “He’s an interloper. He’s a
Yankee
, for God’s sake! An opportunist! Are you sure you know him well enough to trust him with such a precious charge?” He studied her agitated features, taking in the sight of Daphne’s glittering gaze and the frantic, unnatural way she paced the room as if she were strung as tightly as one of the strings on her harp. “What if the jackal only pretends, now, to give you your head as means of gaining entry to your heart—and to your purse?”

Daphne stared wide-eyed at Simon, as silence filled the air. Then, suddenly, her face crumpled and she sank her head into her hands and began to sob. “You don’t understand
…
” she moaned, shaking her head from side to side. “You’ve never understood what it was like to live in this house
…
what it was like to have a mother who’s as mad as a hatter, and to have my own father—”

Daphne’s desperate cries and her face, so contorted with pain, were alarmingly like the portrait she had just sketched of her mother’s melancholy madness. Simon took a step forward and attempted to enfold her in his arms, but she flailed against his chest with her fists and sank in a huddle beside a chair. In the blink of an eye, the strident, willful rebel had metamorphosed into an inconsolable child, tears cascading down her cheeks, her keening cries rending the air and drowning out the steady downpour that continued to soak the countryside bordering both sides of Whitaker Creek.

“Daphne, please,” Simon implored softly, kneeling beside her as gingerly as he would a traumatized faun. “If I can’t be more to you than just a friend, at least let me be
that
.” He reached out with the intention of embracing her as he had the day Charles Whitaker had taken his life.

“No
… no
!” she screeched, as if she’d been seared by fire. And without warning, she jumped to her feet and fled the room.

Simon sat back on his heels for a long moment. Then he slowly palled himself up and sank into a silk-clad chair. He stared at the silver tray, minus its coffeepot, and reflected upon the malaise that had come to infect all who lived at Devon Oaks Plantation. A few minutes later, the butler who had first welcomed him appeared at the door, his eyes wide in his brown face.

Simon drew himself up, and announced, “Miss Daphne was feeling poorly and has retired for the night.”

“Yessir,” the butler replied, nodding wisely.

Simon’s heart brimmed with a melancholy nearly as piercing as that which he now recognized held the entire Whitaker household in its grip. Slowly, he shifted his weight in the chair and pointed to the smashed crockery heaped on the floor. A dark brown stain discolored the wall just above the wooden baseboard.

“There’s been an accident,” he said. He rose unsteadily to his feet. “Would you be so good as to fetch my cloak?” Then he added more forcefully, “I shall be returning to Hopkins House before the next cloudburst engulfs us.”

Chapter 24

Daphne Duvallon peered through the gloom from her cramped position under the bathroom sink in the powder room at the Governor Holmes House. The heavy pillow from the sitting room couch that she’d wedged between her body and the porcelain sink weighed heavily against her back. The muscles of her thighs and calves ached from kneeling within her bathroom refuge, riding out the storm.

The storm!

Which
storm? she wondered, her heart thudding heavily in her chest. One minute she’d been running for cover during an engagement party, and the next, she was witnessing another storm, in another era, at another grand old house—Devon Oaks Plantation.

She recalled the harrowing scene of Daphne Whitaker hurling a china pot against the parlor wall. Her namesake’s behavior was that of a woman in the midst of a full-blown nervous breakdown. And probably the most peculiar aspect of the entire event was that she’d experienced this latest foray into her ancestors’ pasts from the viewpoint of a
man
this time—the poor, beleaguered young Simon Hopkins.

“Oh, God,” she gasped. “Sim!” Where had the Simon Hopkins
she
knew been during this storm? Was Maddy all right? What about Willis and the band?

The air inside the small bathroom was stifling and Daphne couldn’t stand her close quarters for another second. She disentangled herself from the couch pillow and the sink and slowly, painfully, rose to her full height. Then she cocked her head and listened intently. No more thunder and lightning, no more howling winds, she thought thankfully. The only sound she could hear was a steady downpour—not the cacophony visited upon the brick house just before she had slipped into this latest crazy time warp.

“Daphne? Daphne!”

She yanked open the powder room door and beheld hotelier Bob Pully standing in the foyer amid the distraught members of the aborted engagement party. His worry and concern evaporated at the sight of her, and he rushed forward to enfold her in a hug. Then he looked over his shoulder, and proclaimed, “Well, thank heavens! Everyone present and accounted for.”

A feeble cheer went up from the assembled storm survivors and the remaining bedraggled guests descended the stairs from the second floor.

“Is your house okay?” Daphne asked worriedly.

“Fine, ’cept we lost that big ol’ tree in the side yard, the electricity’s off, and the phone is dead,” Bob replied. “Guess we should count ourselves lucky.”

“I’ve got to get back to Bluff House and check on Cousin Maddy,” Daphne exclaimed. “May I leave the harp in your sitting room, Bob?”

“Of course. Let me get your raincoat, and you be careful now.”

Within minutes, Daphne was in her Jeep, headed down Washington Street at a snail’s pace thanks to the continuing monsoon-like downpour. She could hardly see the road as she made a right turn onto Canal Street and picked up speed, heading in the direction of Cousin Maddy’s. She dodged the uprooted trees and debris that littered the street.

“Bless you, four-wheel drive,” she muttered.

Behind her, two bright headlights flashed in her rearview mirror and the driver of the car began to honk incessantly. Annoyed, Daphne speeded up as much as she dared. So did the mystery car behind her, tooting its horn even more furiously.

Despite the pouring rain and the empty thoroughfare, she dutifully made a stop at the intersection with Jefferson Street, and winced when the car behind her slammed on its brakes, screeching to a halt on the slick pavement only inches from her rear bumper.

Daphne glanced angrily into her mirror and was frightened witless by the sight of a man bursting out of the driver’s-side door and sprinting toward her side of the car.

“Sweet Jesus,” he cried. “I’ve been chasing you for two blocks! Didn’t you see me?” he shouted through the car window that was nearly opaque with rain. “Thank God you’re okay.”

Wordlessly, Daphne unfastened her seat belt and opened the car door. A man in bright yellow foul weather gear with water cascading off his billed hat stood beside her car in the pouring rain. Scooting out of the driver’s seat, Daphne absorbed the close-up sight of a dented Range Rover with a distinctive black rack on the roof. She returned her gaze to the face of her pursuer.

“Sim! Oh, my God!” she shouted through the rain. “It was pouring so hard, I couldn’t see a thing! I had no idea it was you!”

“What did you think? That I was a carjacker?”

“I was just trying to get home to see if Maddy’s all right. How did you know where to find me? From Maddy? Oh, my God
…
is she okay? Is Bluff House all right?”

The rain continued in a steady downpour, although the wind suddenly lessened enough for them not to have to shout.

“I haven’t been there. I just remembered you said you were playing at the Governor Holmes House today. As soon as the worst of the storm blew past, I raced down here. If I hadn’t had the Range Rover I’d never have made it. Trees and power lines are down all over.”

“Is Bailey all right?”

“I left him having a bourbon, straight up,” Sim said.

“I saw a funnel cloud.” She glanced overhead at the ink-black sky, struck by the terrible danger they had miraculously avoided. She lowered her eyes to meet Sim’s worried gaze, and began to tremble. “I was wedged under a sink in a tiny bathroom
…
by myself. Oh, Sim
…
I saw
…
I
…
it was so
…
”

Her words trailed off as Sim threw his arms around her, pulling her close. Daphne wrapped her arms around his waist, her cheek against his slicker, and held on tight, reveling in the refuge and strength of his embrace. Sim peered down at her through the drizzle that had finally begun to taper off.

“I’m sorry I was so disgusting and stupid on the phone when I got back to Natchez,” he apologized.

“Ditto, me too, you, in Brazil or wherever you were. I was just worried and missing you,” she said, sniffling.

“I think I had some sort of weird flashback to the way it used to be with Francesca and me whenever I couldn’t make it back on the dot. You’re not her. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted, especially since I’ve met the lady.”

Sim looked at Daphne in amazement, “You did? How’d that happen?”

“Tell you later, but first
…
” She held up her right hand as if she were swearing on a Bible. “A double ditto apology for getting testy whenever I think somebody’s not playing it totally straight with me. I automatically imagine the worst. It’s a nasty habit that I
really
want to break, trust me, Bird Man.”

Sim glanced at the fallen branches and broken electrical wires strewn across the street. “All I could think of when trees started crashing down around Bailey’s place was, what if you were driving alone, or you were somewhere where you couldn’t take cover. Suddenly, all that stuff on the phone just seemed stupid. Nothing else mattered except to get to you,” he said, enfolding her in his arms again.

After a moment, Daphne leaned back to touch Sim’s face. “I had the same pictures in my mind of you in trouble out on the Trace. What if something had happened to you after our horrible conversation?” Her voice choked and she couldn’t speak.

He pulled her roughly against his chest again and they hugged each other tightly. Then he kissed her so soundly, no other words of apology or explanation were necessary.

At length, Daphne broke their embrace.

“Maddy!” they pronounced simultaneously.

“But wait!” she said. “Before we get to Bluff House, there’s something you should know. Maddy’s waiting for the results of a biopsy that her doctor has sent down to New Orleans for a second opinion from the pathologist down there.”

“Oh, God, no! What do they think it is?”

“Some kind of skin lesion. I’ll tell you everything I know about it later. Let’s go.”

They made a dash for their respective cars. Sim drove his Range Rover around Daphne’s Jeep and led the way.

***

Bluff House, as it happened, sustained only moderate damage to a section of its roof. Despite branches and debris scattered about the yard, the rest of the house came through the storm unscathed. Sim and Daphne found Cousin Maddy on the first floor, shaken but unharmed.

“I was mighty glad I took cover in the downstairs bathroom,” the older woman exclaimed. “I saw the funnel cloud on the other side of the river, comin’ straight across the water, and I just hightailed it in there! By the time I had the gumption to look out the window again, that mean ol’ cloud’d disappeared.”

Maddy made a pot of tea on the gas stove, which fortunately was working, and they sat around the kitchen table telling their war stories about the storm. When they all felt calmer, Sim set off to check on the Richeses’ welfare at Monmouth Plantation and confirmed that the McGees came through the storm in one piece. Then he called Daphne’s cell phone from his own wireless, which miraculously worked, to say he was heading back to Bailey’s to help remove the fallen branches and repair the birdhouses knocked over by the high winds.