By the Bay (14 page)

She nodded.

He looked past her. “He here with you
?
”

“Soon,” she said. “He had to take care of . . .of a family emergency. Mr.
Stewart
where do you think I would find my aunt and my mother at this time of day
?
”

He laughed heartily as though at a joke. “Where else would they be but over at the café. Lots of business this
close to
the New Year. Some folks start celebrating early.”

“
T
he café.” She nodded and fearful to even ask anything else until she had a better idea of what was going on, she said goodbye and went outside, heading in the direction the café used to be. Who could know if it was still there considering that the whole block, cottages like her mother’s on one side and the bright pink row of apartments on the other, were all gone and replaced by businesses that looked as if they’d been in place for a long time.

And Texas was a country! She’d give a shiny dime to know how that had come about.

People she met on the street, most of them folks she at least had a speaking acquaintance with, stared at her strangely. Halfway down the block she ran into Roy Ezell, the chief of police. She guessed he still held that job since he was in uniform.

“Jillian!” he seemed especially delighted to see her. “Your aunt has been about driving me crazy insisting you was kidnapped by that French guy. Guess you and him got married and that—he pointed at the apple green gown—is your wedding dress?” He frowned as he took in her appearance. “You do look a little beat up, honey, you sure you’re okay?”

“Fine, Roy. Tell you all about it later. Right now I’m in a hurry to see my family and let them know I’m all right.”

To her great relief the café  still stood in place, though after she blinked a bit she saw that though the sign still read ‘
Owen
’s Café,’ the ambiance was considerably changed. The building was neatly painted and flowering plants and a palm tree decorated the
front
.

It was even more different when she stepped inside. What had been a little hole in the wall fishermen’s restaurant had been turned into something elegant. Tables were covered with white linen cloths and silver candlesticks set in the middle. The floor felt cushion
ed
under her feet and when she finally saw
Owen
, standing behind the counter as he often did, he wasn’t wearing slouchy
slacks
and a sweat shirt, but was dressed in a white shirt, tie, and a blue suit.

Never in her life had she seen
Owen
in a suit.

‘Oh, Lordy,’ was her irrelevant thought. ‘Can’t turn my back for a minute and everything changes.’

Owen
froze in place when he saw her, “Jillian! Oh, thank God, Jillian!”

She ran behind the counter to hug him, barely hearing as
a
couple seated in the back of the room welcomed her with polite enthusiasm. She felt comforted by Uncle
Owen
’s warm
teddy bear
hug and when she stepped back was surprised to see tears on the big man’s face.

“Your mom and aunt have been frantic,” he said, as though to deny his own fears, “run back and let them know you are here.”

She hesitated only a moment. “But where are they, Uncle
Owen
. The cottage is gone and I didn’t know what to think.”

He frowned. “What cottage?” Then he gave her a playful shove. “It doesn’t matter, not right now. They shouldn’t have another second of this agony. Hurry! They’re in the trailer where you live with your mother, of course.”

She ran through the restaurant, still dressed in what was becoming an increasingly out-of-place ball gown, noting the presence of staring kitchen help, none of them familiar to her. Sure
enough,
in the beautifully landscaped back yard, lush with flowers and greenery
,
stood a house trailer. Aunt
Florence
was just coming out the door and screamed when she saw her niece.

She stood staring in obvious shock while Mother, coming in response to
Florence
’s scream, appeared in the doorway. “Jillian, darling,” she said faintly.

They both hugged her, hardly able to let her go, until Aunt
Florence
said, “What is that you’re wearing?” and then, “Did you really get married? Where is Philippe? Are you all right?”

Jillian laughed shakily. Shock was beginning to set in and she felt distinctly unwell.

“You poor dear.” Mother released her and pushed her sister away from the three way
hug as
Owen
came out from the café. “Come on inside and let’s get you sorted out.”

This was another shock. Mother was being motherly, instead of expecting to be looked after by everyone around.

She allowed herself to be led inside. Mother insisted she have a bath and clean clothes before being questioned any further. Nothing had ever felt as good as stripping off the green gown and the confining underclothing and sinking into warm water. Only then did she look around. The bathroom, though small, was certainly more luxurious than the old cottage had been, but she missed her familiar home with a real
longing
. It was terrible to go away and then to come back, only a little later, and find everything changed.

“Philippe,” she murmured his name softly and bent over to let her tears drop into the water. “How are we ever to find each other?”

In this moment of despair, she wasn’t sure she would ever see him again.

Chapter Nineteen

“I couldn’t say I was in my right mind, for fair I couldn’t say, since everything seemed murky around me and I could only run because she kept pulling me along. That’s a female with a lot of pluck that you got for yourself, cap’n, I can tell you that for sure.”

His heart heavy, Philippe wearily listened to his first mate ramble on, not making much sense a good deal of the time. With a small band, Philippe had broken into the plantation that was acting as headquarters for the invading British, and found a dazed Bloody Mac bound and gagged and shut up in a closet.

They’d done as thorough a search as was possible for Jillian with no success and once they’d pulled the bloody gag from Mac face, he’d told them, “No use a looking for her. She’s gone for sure and don’t you ask me where.”

Only when his men had persuaded a reluctant Philippe that they must leave or risk capture, and wouldn’t the Brits love having him in their hands, did they flee silently through the woods, supporting the injured first mate of the Belle Fleur between them.

Relatively safe behind the barricades Andy Jackson’s men had built to withstand
firepower
, Mac had been rendered first aid and began to talk none stop.

The rest of the party made gestures to indicate that old Mac was off his head from the head wound, but Philippe gave his testimony more credence. He had reason to believe the impossible.

According to the story the injured man told, he and Jillian had been stolen from the governor’s ball and carried away to the plantation house. He’d been unconscious for most of the time and awakened to a dozy reality when Jillian engineered an escape that allowed them to flee, under pursuit
,
into the nearby woods where the red-haired girl unexpectedly produced a gun and shot a soldier before he could shoot them.

“Then just like that, she disappeared,” Bloody Mac concluded dramatically.

Without her help, he’d been immediately recapture
d
. “Fellow she shot weren’t dead. She was worried about that. Said she hadn’t shot to kill noways.” He chuckled. “She’s
quite a woman
. We’ll make a pirate of her yet, cap’n.” His broad face sobered. “If we ever get her back from wherever she went.”

He shook his head and then winced at the pain the motion cost. “Just like that.  One minute she were there. And the next she was gone.”

His men looked at him with both amusement and concern that the first mate was so mixed up. Philippe didn’t comment. What could he say? That most likely Jillian had been transported to some other place and time? He only hoped she was back home with her kin. One thing he was damn sure of, there was no use looking for her here.

He had no choice but to focus on here and now. The Baratarians were now, with as much certainty that was ever possible with this varied band, back firmly on the side of the Americans and the Brits were calling them deserters, which was, of course, absurd.

The
ships
Carolina and Louisiana had fired their shots at the invaders as they tried to set up fortifications just off shore in the deep mud
of the bayou country
, dealing with the fact that each hole they dug just filled up with water immediately.

That was the trouble from the British point of view. They didn’t know their way around the swamp land, didn’t understand the terrain, and feared the dangerous and unique wildlife, especially the big mouthed alligators who could look like part of the landscape until they suddenly snapped to life.

The most powerful army in the world, out numbering and out gunning Jackson’s
ragged band of
frontiersmen
,
Choctaws
, and pirates was fighting on their soil, a war written in their own terms. Still, Philippe knew, history rested on the point of a pin here and every bit of skill and knowledge he possessed would be needed. And, more than anything, with Jean
Lafitte
absent, he had to be
here
, a symbol of leadership to the
privateers
that would keep them on America’s side.

Until Jean came back . . .until he could be with Jillian again . . .

If those things ever happened.

No time to think about that now.

The kind of dense, wet fog that is unique to the Louisiana  coast replaced the raw cold that had characterized the last weeks of 1814, smothering the swamps and bayous in a thick blanket of sightlessness as though everybody had gone blind. Philippe felt closed in, locked away in a small world as he went about the business of war. He checked Jackson’s
barriers
and made recommendations for further improvements. And like the others at the plantation house where Jackson had set up temporary headquarters, for three days he had heard the sound of pounding and shoving, the moving in of equipment, and knew the enemy was lining up for battle.

The morning of January 1 saw no brightening dawn. The troops were lining up to present at parade for the officers
and their guest
, horses dancing with excitement, the men marching past in their best gear, not always very good in the case of the
frontiersmen
, though the
privateers
as always wore gaudy colors and bits of glitter.

Philippe stood at the doorway of the big house, waiting as Jackson and the other officers completed last minute dressing in readiness to join the parade. Visitors from New Orleans, a bit of the elite and some of those not so elegant, waited as spectators.

And then light broke through. Philippe felt a brightening of his own mood as the world opened up and the fog lifted.

He stared for only an instant
. There, like a scene from a bad dream, not more than
five hundred
yards away stood the line of British soldiers dressed in their cherry colored uniforms.
He’d barely taken this in when the boom of a cannon ball hit the
front
wall of the house on his right, shattering stucco and
shattering
wood into powder in the air.

Even as he ducked for cover, a second shot struck and then a regular barrage hit the building as the parading troops scattered and th
e
n began to man their own posts and reform for battle. Shouts brought the officers running to take charge of their troops and Philippe ran out to collect his own
men
.

The plantation house that had served as a temporary refuge for the command officers was quickly deconstructed so that only the smoking walls of a ruin stood in place, but the British had been apparently as surprised by the sudden lifting of the fog as
were
their prey for they did not take sufficient advantage of those first few minutes of surprise and soon the Americans were defending themselves valiantly.

When he had a second to think of Jillian, he could only be grateful that she wasn’t here but, he prayed, safely back in her quiet little town.

Chapter Twenty

The sound of distant guns out in the Gulf reverberated through her dreams as Jillian slept the sleep of exhaustion in her
little bed in the back bedroom of the trailer. Twice she vaguely was aware that he
r
mother looked in to see that she was well and was too far gone to more than think how odd that was. Mother didn’t look after her. She looked after Mother.