The Scandalous Miss Howard Read online

  “Where is it, Laurette?” he asked impatiently. “The black nightgown I gave you?” He turned to face her.

  She swallowed hard. “Jimmy, surely you don’t expect me to—”

  “Yes, I do,” he interrupted. “Get the nightgown and put in on.” He took off his frock coat, tossed it over a chair back and began unbuttoning his shirt. When she didn’t move immediately, he said, his tone commanding, “What are you waiting for?”

  Laurette went to the armoire, took the revealing back gown from the lower drawer.

  “Good, you found it,” he said. “Now go in the dressing room, put it on and come to me.”

  Laurette, dismayed by the prospect of making love with him in the middle of day, tried one last time. “Please, Jimmy, can’t we wait until tonight? The sun is shining brightly and—”

  “I know it is and that is exactly the way I want it,” he said, whipping his arms out of his shirt and tossing the shirt aside. “I’ve humored you long enough, Laurette. You will only agree to make love in the dark of the night so that neither of us can see the other. Well, no more foolish modesty. You’re my wife and I want you to start behaving like it.” She stood stock-still, staring at him, her heart hammering. “Go!” he said, pointing, “and when you come back, you will allow me look at you for as long as I please.”

  Laurette turned and walked into the dressing room with its free-standing mirror. She placed the wispy black garment on a velvet stool and began undressing. When she was totally naked, she picked up the lace-trimmed gown and drew it down over her head. It fell over her breasts, eased down her hips and came to rest around her slender ankles.

  She looked at herself in the mirror and her face turned fiery red. She may as well have been naked for all the gown concealed. The nipples of her full breasts jutted against the gossamer fabric, their size and pale wine hue perfectly clear through the black gauzy bodice. Worse, the thick blond curls of her groin were fully visible. She was totally exposed, barer than bare.

  And she hated it.

  “Darling, what’s keeping you?” she heard the impatient Jimmy call out to her.

  “Almost ready,” she said, gritting her teeth, dreading what she knew was going to happen.

  She always dreaded Jimmy’s lovemaking. Never once had she enjoyed it. She blamed herself, not him. He had tried patiently to please her, to arouse her, but it hadn’t worked. She didn’t love him, didn’t want him, disliked going to bed with him each night. And now she was expected to make love with him in the middle of the day!

  Laurette sighed wearily, took a slow, deep breath, turned and left the dressing room.

  When she stepped into the sun-filled bedroom where the tall windows were thrown open to the warmth of the February day, Jimmy was lying naked atop the sheets. Laurette quickly averted her eyes, but dutifully started toward him.

  “No, Laurette,” he stopped her. “Stay right where you are and let me admire you.”

  Laurette paused as requested and then grudgingly complied when he asked that she raise her arms and lift her long blond hair atop her head. She stood poised in that position for what seemed an eternity before Jimmy suggested she release her hair and slowly turn so that her back was to him.

  She did as he asked.

  He gazed at her for several long minutes before saying, “Now turn back to face me, Laurette.”

  Clenching her teeth so tightly her jaws ached, Laurette turned around and saw that he was now sitting on the edge of the mattress, his bare feet on the floor, his erection thrusting up between his spread legs.

  “Come here, darling,” he said in a husky voice.

  Laurette walked to the bed. When she was a few feet away, he grabbed her, drew her between his spread knees.

  “God, you are so beautiful. Every time I look at you I want to be inside you,” he murmured and pressed his hot face between her soft breasts. “When I saw this gown, I envisioned you in it, knew exactly how you would look, how hot it would make me.”

  “Yes,” was all she could manage and closed her eyes in distaste and forced herself not to flinch when he began to suckle a soft nipple through the gown’s transparent black fabric, wetting it.

  For the next trying hour, Laurette endured his probing kisses, his intimate touches, his eager invasion of her body while he murmured words of passion. When his sexual hunger was finally sated, he rolled, spent, over onto his back, sighed contentedly and said, “I have to get back to the bank.”

  “I know,” Laurette agreed, experiencing a great degree of relief. Anxiously she reached down and pulled the covering sheet up over her bare body where red marks, left by Jimmy’s passion, decorated her breasts and inner thighs.

  She stiffened when, dressed and ready to leave, Jimmy came to the bed, picked up the discarded black nightgown, lifted it to his face, inhaled of her scent and made an animallike sound of pleasure.

  Then he leaned down, brushed a kiss to her lips and said, “Darling, I can’t wait to get back home to you. Promise you’ll wear the gown for me again tonight.”

  Eighteen

  Down in the dark, drafty dungeon at Devil’s Castle, the two prisoners were quickly becoming friends. The long, lonely confinement and deprivation had affected them differently. Finis hadn’t lost track of time. He knew what year it was, what month, what day. Even what hour. Ladd was impressed. But Finis was mortified that he had lost his sense of direction, had made such a costly miscalculation by tunneling into Ladd’s cell. How could he have gotten so disoriented?

  When finally Finis grew weary and said it was time he return to his own cell and get some sleep, Ladd said, “Wait, Finis. You did manage to dig a tunnel of sorts. You have tools?”

  Finis nodded. “I made some for myself. I have a crowbar and a knife I fashioned from my bed rail. I dug the tunnel between us with those two tools. Twenty feet.”

  “My God, twenty feet?”

  “Yes. It took me a long time to…” Finis hung his shaggy gray head in defeat and stated, “I realize now that escape is impossible. It is my fate to die here in this dark hell.”

  “No!” Ladd quickly reprimanded the older man. “Don’t give up hope. You dug one passage, why not dig another in the opposite direction? Try again?”

  “Try again?” Finis looked up, frowned at Ladd as if Ladd had lost his mind. “You are insane! You don’t understand, it took three years just to make the tools. Have you any idea how hard I worked, how long it took to tunnel into your cell?” Ladd shook his head. Finis continued, “Two years! For two long years I worked steadily, every night, scraping and digging at earth as solid as stone.”

  His wild eyes wilder than ever, Finis began to rave, waving his bony hands about, telling of how he had labored until his arms were too weak to lift and of how it had been next to impossible to dispose of the loosened rock and dirt. He had, he explained, managed to locate an abandoned drain pipe that had been barred to prevent escape, but it had afforded him a place to hide the mined earth.

  Ladd listened patiently, nodding, sympathizing. And when Finis finally stopped talking, Ladd said, “But it wasn’t for naught, Finis. You found me, and even if you hadn’t, the project, the work itself, kept you going all those months. You had a hope of freedom, a reason to go on.” Finis shrugged thin shoulders. Ladd continued, warming to his subject, “Let’s dig another tunnel together. A tunnel out the north wall of your cell to freedom.”

  A long pause, then Finis, thoughtfully, softly, said, “It would take too long. I haven’t the energy.”

  “I’ll do the work. I have enough energy for us both.”

  “I don’t know.” Finis heaved a deep sigh and added, “You realize, it could take two, three years, perhaps longer, to complete a tunnel into the prison yard and beyond the ‘deadline.”’

  Smiling, Ladd quickly replied, “Is that all? With freedom possible, I could make it sitting on a straight-edged razor for a couple of years. When do we start?”

  Ladd’s enthusiasm rubbed off on his new companion. Finis
began to smile. He said, “I’m too tired now, but if you’ll come to my cell tomorrow night, we’ll begin work.”

  That very next night the two began their tedious labor, carefully and silently. Ladd deferred to Finis, since it was his project. Finis had, in the years he had been locked up, done intensive planning, knew exactly how far to dig to get them out of the dungeon and into the prison yard.

  Ladd was filled with a new sense of hope as they worked tirelessly together, night after night. They didn’t work days. It was too dangerous. An alert guard might hear and expose them. But the days were not a waste of time.

  Ladd was delighted to be in the company of the educated, highly intelligent Finis who dearly loved to talk and inform and was more than happy to play learned professor to Ladd’s eager student. From Finis, Ladd learned more than he ever had in school or at the military academy. Finis was a fount of knowledge on a myriad of subjects: history, philosophy, art, music, the theater. Finis looked on Ladd as the son he’d never had. He spent his days cheerfully educating his young friend who was more than eager to learn. And at night, the two of them worked long and hard toward a common goal.

  Freedom.

  The months went by and Finis was pleasantly surprised with the progress they were making. He found that Ladd, much younger and stronger than he, could get done in one night what it would have taken Finis a week to accomplish. The tunnel moved farther and farther toward the precious liberty for which both yearned. But with the passing of time, the talkative, bright-eyed Finis began to grow weaker, thinner, more listless.

  Ladd was worried about his friend. He encouraged Finis to eat even if he wasn’t hungry, to get plenty of rest, to look forward to the hour when they were free. But the little man’s failing health continued to worsen.

  When more than a full year had passed, the tunnel was nearing completion. But Finis was seriously ill.

  Both men knew that he would never leave the prison.

  “You must go on alone,” Finis told Ladd. “I’m not going to make it, Laddie.”

  “Sure you are,” said Ladd, refusing to leave his friend. Instead, for the next several months, he stayed at Finis’s bedside and patiently, hopefully nursed the dying man. He shared his ration of food and water with Finis. He massaged the older man’s thin, aching limbs. He talked to him softly, soothingly in the long silent hours.

  Finis, having no family, was grateful and impressed by Ladd’s loyalty and kindness. And when he recovered enough to speak, he told Ladd he had something important to share.

  “Ladd, when you get out of here, I want you to go and claim the gold,” rasped Finis, his eyes rheumy, his chest rattling. “The rest of your days will be spent in splendid ease, because you will be a very, very rich man.”

  The next evening, a bitter cold February night in 1875, Finis Schafer died in Devil’s Castle prison with Ladd at his side. When Finis took his last, shallow breath, Ladd closed the dead man’s eyes, then returned to his own cell through the secret passage.

  At bedtime the guards came to Finis’s cell and Ladd heard one saying, “Well, I’ll be damned, you win the bet. The crazy old bastard is dead.”

  “So he is,” said the other. “Go get a shroud. We’ll bury him tomorrow.”

  Ladd waited until the guards had put Finis in a canvas shroud. When he was sure they were gone, he returned to Finis’s cell. He opened the shroud, carefully, gently took out the cold, stiff body of his dear friend and moved it into his own cell. He placed the body on his bed and positioned Finis so that he was facing the wall. Ladd covered the corpse with his thin blanket, pulling it up halfway around Finis’s head and ears.

  “Goodbye, my friend,” he said before returning to Finis’s cell with a crude bone needle and twine. He crawled into the canvas shroud, pulled it up over his head and sewed it shut.

  Then he waited.

  All through the long, dark, lonely night he waited. At last the cell door opened and the burial detail came for the corpse. Ladd made his body as stiff as he possibly could. He was carried out of the prison and carted to the graveyard that was outside the deadline, the line where a prisoner would be shot if he crossed it.

  There he was carelessly tossed into a shallow grave and he inwardly winced as dirt was shoveled over him. Feeling panicky and certain that he would surely suffocate, Ladd forced himself to wait until he was absolutely certain all was clear. That the guards and their snarling dogs were gone.

  Only then did he cut open the shroud and struggle up out of the newly thrown sod before he made a mad dash for the nearby coastline. He leaped into the cold waters of Chesapeake Bay to avoid the prison dogs picking up his scent. He began to swim as fast as he could. But the water was frigid and he was weak and his thin arms were tired. He soon realized that he would die if he stayed in the bay.

  Exhausted, Ladd paddled back toward shore, looking about to see how far he was from the prison.

  Not far enough.

  Beaten, he reached the slick, muddy banks, but found to his despair that he was too weak to pull himself up. He tried again and again, but he couldn’t make it. The mud was too slick. He could not get purchase. He felt himself sliding back down into the icy waters. He knew he was going to die.

  But he was too cold and too tired to care.

  Just then a strong hand reached down, gripped his shirt collar and hauled him up onto the banks. Ladd furiously blinked away the water. The only thing he could see was a set of white crossbones.

  And then he passed out.

  Seconds later, Ladd came to. He looked up. Someone was crouching beside him, staring down at him. It was man, a man who looked to be of medium height, but who surely weighed a good three hundred pounds without one ounce of fat. All steely muscle.

  The burly, unsmiling man was wearing black trousers, a black watch cap and a long-sleeved black-knit shirt upon which a pair of woven white crossbones stretched snugly across his gargantuan chest.

  The husky man grinned down at Ladd and said, “You should save your swimming outings for summer.”

  “I think I will from now on,” Ladd replied as he sat up and introduced himself. “Ladd Dasheroon, late of Devil’s Castle prison. If you are going to take me back, do it now.”

  The muscular man gripped Ladd’s hand firmly and said, “On the contrary, my friend, I am going to help you get away.”

  Relieved, surprised, Ladd said, “Then, thank you…?”

  “Bones,” replied his savior with a self-deprecating smile and shrug of his massive shoulders. “I’m called Bones.”

  He laughed then and so did Ladd.

  PART TWO

  Nineteen

  Mobile,

  Alabama Winter, 1880

  “Made his fortune in rails,” said one of the men.

  “I heard it was gold,” said another.

  “Telegraph,” offered someone else.

  “No, no, I’m told it was running the blockade back during the war,” exclaimed yet another, “he most surely made the bulk of his fortune—”

  “Well, no matter,” the first speaker interrupted. “I am told that he is a very wealthy man. Has tons of money.”

  The topic of the gentlemen’s conversation was the well-heeled guest of honor who had not yet arrived at the evening’s gathering. The man was an enigma to them all. Sutton Vane had recently arrived in Mobile, expressing his intention to make the port city his home.

  It was rumored that the newcomer had purchased a private island off the coast near Ono where he intended to build a summer home. They knew for a fact that he had bought a magnificent mansion on Government Street in the heart of the city.

  Other than that, little was known of the mysterious man who had been invited to tonight’s gala by the host, Colonel George P. Ivy. The aging, silver-haired colonel had, only yesterday afternoon, played cards with Sutton Vane at the Magnolia Club. The colonel had found the much younger man to be pleasant company, if somewhat reserved, and had promptly exercised his brand of true Southern hospitality b
y insisting that Mr. Vane come to tonight’s gathering at the Colonel’s Oakleigh Garden district home.

  In the Dauphin Street mansion Laurette Howard Tigart prepared to make a rare appearance at a social gathering. Laurette chose to lead a quiet, sedate life. Stung by the scandal surrounding the breakup of her marriage and the nagging rumors that her husband had been forced out of the Planters Bank amidst accusations of embezzlement, Laurette preferred the solitude and privacy of her home.

  Or, of the home that had once been hers.

  The title to the Dauphin Street mansion, like everything else, had been lost when her husband had defaulted on his many debts. Her beloved home was now owned by the Bay Minette Corporation. She had no idea who the owners of Bay Minette were—probably wealthy Yankees—but she was grateful that the company had graciously allowed her to remain in the house for a mere pittance a month.

  Laurette had felt obligated to attend this evening’s party, since the Colonel, an old and dear family friend, had insisted that she be there. The Colonel had dropped by the Confederate Veteran’s Convalescent Hospital where Laurette worked to issue his invitation.

  She had started to make an excuse, but quickly changed her mind. The silver-haired Colonel’s cherubic face had worn a big grin, his blue eyes had sparkled and he had acted as if he were harboring a delicious secret.

  Genuinely fond of him, she had said, “I’ll be there, Colonel.”

  Laurette had purposely, all during her long, unhappy marriage to Jimmy, kept her misery hidden, sharing her despair with no one, not even her best friends, Johanna and Juliette. Even when Jimmy, in the last eighteen months before he left, had openly begun seeking the company of other women, she had kept silent.

  In some regards, Mobile was really a small country town and there was little doubt that the gentry had known of Jimmy’s indiscretions. But Laurette had never said a word about them, either to Jimmy or to anyone else. When he came home late night after night, half-drunk and with the scent of cheap perfume clinging to his clothes, she had never once reprimanded him. She felt that she was responsible. She had never loved him and he knew it. The failure of their marriage was as much her fault as his.