The Seducer. Jule McBride

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СКАЧАТЬ “You won’t be laughing when you run into my ghost in the dunes,” she warned archly.

      He smiled playfully. “You really believe in ghosts?”

      “This particular one? Absolutely.”

      He released another soft chuckle. “Why am I beginning to think there’s a story in here somewhere?”

      “Because there is.” She paused a beat, building anticipatory tension. “The house was built by a Frenchman,” she began. “Named Jacques O’Lannaise.” When she chuckled, the sound was as delicate to Rex’s ears as glass bells. “If that was his real name.”

      “The man happened to be in disguise, huh?” At least Rex had that much in common with the ghost of whom Pansy was so fond.

      “It was rumored he was running from the law.”

      “A runner? I guess he was a jock as well as a Jacques.”

      Pansy giggled in spite of herself, then flatly said, “Mr. Nelson, that is the worst play on words I’ve ever heard.”

      He offered a look of mock concern. “You seem very attached to your ghost,” he teased. “You seemed like such a nice woman, Pansy, but now I can see you’re drawn to the criminal element.”

      A barely suppressed peal of laughter shook her shoulders. “Only in the case of Jacques O’Lannaise,” she vowed solemnly.

      “He must have been—” flicking his eyes over a face growing flushed with excitement, Rex had a sneaking suspicion that a few of Pansy’s erotic fantasies had been inspired by Jacques “—quite something with the ladies.”

      “So they said,” she murmured, her voice lapsing into dreamy cadences that lulled Rex like a ship on a rolling sea. “Right before the war of eighteen twelve a great-grandmother of ours—”

      “Ours?” Rex interjected curiously.

      “I was thinking of my two sisters, Lily and Violet.”

      Hanley sisters? This was getting more interesting by the minute. Apparently whimsy ran in the family. “You’re all named after flowers?”

      She nodded. “As was the ancestor I was about to mention.”

      Despite all the worry of the past few days, Rex was starting to enjoy himself. “Peony? Daisy? Poppy?”

      “Iris,” Pansy clarified. “In eighteen ten, Iris sailed from Seduction Island—then called Storm Island, by the way—to the city of New Orleans, where wealthy cousins waited to introduce her to Southern gentleman suitors.”

      “Because only crusty sailors inhabited Storm Island?” guessed Rex. “Ones with salty tongues who’d make better mates for serving wenches slinging ale in the local taverns?”

      “Exactly.” Pansy squinted playfully. “Are you sure you haven’t taken one of the Hanley sisters’ famous tours before?”

      She’d mentioned she offered tours on Saturdays. “Never,” he vowed.

      He barely registered what she said next, only reacted to the magical, tinkling lilt of her voice. “The Destiny—that was Iris’s ship—”

      “Funny,” he murmured. “That’s the same name as the boat you saw explode.”

      Unfortunately, Pansy didn’t want to explore the connection at the moment. “Yes,” she continued. “It’s an odd coincidence. Anyway, they’d almost reached New Orleans when pirates came aboard.” Her voice lowered with a sense of impending threat. “They were after sugar cargo in the lower holds, of course, but they robbed the passengers, too.”

      Her lovely sea-green eyes had fixed once more in the distance, on Castle O’Lannaise, and Rex could tell history was coming alive in her imagination. He could taste salt on the air and feel the sea breeze on his cheeks and hear the rustle of the ladies’ long skirts and lace petticoats. “And?” he prompted.

      “Well—” Pansy’s voice sharpened, taking on a strangely rehearsed quality that, despite the dreamy tone, told Rex she’d honed this story over many retellings. “One pirate, in particular, took a liking to Iris. Now,” she paused, “you have to imagine this fellow.”

      “Do I?” murmured Rex.

      “Yes. He was tall, over six feet, and wearing tight black breeches, black boots and a loose white shirt with ruffled cuffs that was laced by crisscrossed leather. A belt circled his waist, and a long, weathered leather sheath hung from it. Sunlight glinted on the sharp silver blade of his sword, temporarily blinding Iris as he thrust it into the sheath.”

      “Very dramatic,” Rex assured.

      Turning her head slightly, Pansy leveled Rex with a stare. “Iris squinted,” she continued. “Which is why she didn’t see it coming.”

      Sucked in by the story, Rex murmured, “See what coming?”

      A slow smile stretched Pansy’s lips. “The kiss.”

      Talking about kisses with Pansy was more unsettling than it should have been, and Rex tried to look less curious than he was. “This pirate, this stranger—he kissed Iris?”

      Pansy’s cheeks flushed with such deep color that she, not Iris, could have been the recipient of the man’s bold move. “He stepped right up to her, wrapped his arms around her waist, hauled her to him and kissed her soundly.”

      Clearly, Pansy had imagined all this in great detail. If Iris had looked anything like Pansy, Rex thought, he thoroughly understood the piratical impulse. “Go on.”

      “Later,” she continued, her tone conspiratorial, “it was rumored that the pirate was a brother of Jean and Pierre Lafitte, and that he came North in eighteen twenty when his brothers fled to Mexico.”

      “The plot thickens.”

      “Well, keep in mind,” Pansy warned, “that the people who witnessed that kiss said it went on forever. It was so unusual that it ruined Iris for the suitors she was supposed to meet in New Orleans, and the cousins had to send her back to Storm Island unmarried. After that—” Pansy shook her head in censure. “Iris,” she clarified, “wouldn’t even go on any more dates.”

      “And Storm Island was renamed Seduction Island?”

      “Correct.”

      Rex had become thoroughly mesmerized by the way Pansy’s mouth moved. Up, down. Back, forth. Puckered, slack. Any way he looked at it, he wanted to feel it on his. “Must have been some kiss.”

      “Even after Iris returned home,” emphasized Pansy, “she continued turning men down.”

      “Given that they kept trying, she must have been beautiful.”

      “She was.”

      “Runs in the family.”

      “Thanks,” she said distractedly, her eyes on Castle O’Lannaise. Rex sighed again, cursing the moment he’d worn clothes intentionally calculated to undercut СКАЧАТЬ