Ciji Ware (19 page)

She ceased thinking then, and allowed herself to be swept up in the rhythm and the melody.

When the quartet swung into “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You,” Daphne stiffened within the circle of Sim’s arms. Sim held her even closer and amazingly, she felt her entire body relax.

Somebody, somewhere has a wicked sense of humor
, she thought dreamily, the crown of her head now firmly tucked under Sim’s chin.

By the time the music concluded, Daphne had fallen into a kind of a contented daze and wished they could dance like this all night. Long after the last note faded and polite applause rippled around the room, she and Sim remained motionless in the center of the parquet floor.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, touching his forefinger to the tip of her nose for the second time that evening. “I loved every step.”

“Me too,” she said, making no attempt to disguise the closeness she felt. She found that she was unable to pull her gaze from his, so she grinned crookedly, and added, “The band quit on us, so I guess we have to go home.” She forced herself to turn away and walked over to Willis McGee. “You guys were just wonderful. Thanks for such great tunes.”

“You two looked mighty pretty out there,” Willis said genially when Sim appeared by Daphne’s side. The bandleader officially introduced them by name to the male members of his band. “And you met Kendra earlier—my eldest girl.” Willis addressed his daughter. “Kendra? Daphne, here, has played jazz harp with Althea LaCroix in New Orleans.”

“Only backup a time or two,” Daphne hastened to add, enjoying the feel of Sim’s hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

“And she sings like somethin’ else, don’t she?” Willis said admiringly.

“Why doesn’t she sing with us sometime, Daddy?” Kendra asked. She glanced around the deserted club. “Natchez nightlife sure could use a goose.”

Willis gazed inquiringly at Daphne, who shook her head. “I’m only in Natchez for another week or so,” she explained regretfully.

“Well… you could do a few oldies with us next Saturday… couldn’t you? We’ll be at the Under-the-Hill Saloon.”

“We just came from there,” Daphne exclaimed.

“So you know the place. Great. Be easy on yourself and just do a couple of numbers like ‘Georgia,’ that you know real well.”

“Daphne, what a great idea!” Sim grinned broadly and said to the group, “I’ll be front row, center, and bring some other people I’ve met.” He squeezed Daphne’s shoulders encouragingly. “What about it, Ms. Harpist? Have a little fun before you get swallowed up forever by the likes of
Swan
Lake
!”

Daphne turned to stare at Sim. How could he know that was exactly what she’d been thinking—and dreading? The mere thought of those intimidating auditions played behind a screen so the judges wouldn’t be swayed by anything but the music they heard made her stomach churn like a Waring blender. She wanted to have some
fun
before she plunged back into a world where ambitious classical musicians would eat their own young if it meant they’d succeed in their demanding art.

“I’ll do it,” she announced, and the small group gave a spontaneous cheer. “Do you want the harp, too?”

“Yeah!” Willis said enthusiastically. “It’ll make people in the audience sit up and take notice. We’ll bring you on ’round ten o’clock… and I’ll put a notice in the
Natchez
Democrat
,” the bandleader promised. He glanced around the bar, whose last patrons were making their way out the door. “Here,” he directed, “write down your number on this piece of sheet music—and can you email me a picture of yourself we can use in the newspaper? I’ll call you ’bout a rehearsal ’fore next weekend.” He turned to his daughter, and said, “Kendra… you’re right, girl. We definitely need to jazz up our act.”

They said their good nights and returned to the Range Rover parked a block away. Sim drove toward Bluff House down deserted streets with pillared houses shuttered for the night. Daphne couldn’t believe that she had agreed to play jazz harp and
sing
in a real club!

Absorbed in these thoughts, she was suddenly aware that Sim was gazing at her across the car. Then he said, “Would you like to drive out to the Natchez Trace with me tomorrow?” referring to a four-hundred-fifty-mile stretch of woods that ran northeast from Natchez to Nashville, Tennessee.

“Oh, Sim… I don’t know…”

But he continued without pause. “Everyone tells me it’s the area where I’ll have the best chance of finding surviving species of the birds Audubon painted.”

“You’ll be working,” Daphne protested mildly. “Wouldn’t I slow you down or get in the way?”

“I’m not shooting tomorrow,” he replied. “I’m just going out to meet an elderly doctor who’s established a private bird sanctuary on his property that borders the Natchez Trace Parkway. Hopefully, he’ll let me photograph on his forty acres, but he wants to meet me first. My friends Liz and Otis Keating have set up the introduction, but Dr. Gibbs has to give it his official okay.” He addressed her in a tone of mock supplication. “And besides, I might get lost. I need a local guide to get me out there, plus all the personal references I can get.”

“A man who’s traveled up the Amazon?” she queried, skeptically. “I’m sure you can find your way up the lil’ ol’ Mississippi River Valley.”

“Oh, I’ve come to the conclusion recently that the Mississippi region could be much more dangerous than I thought,” he replied with a wry smile. He was gazing at her steadily when he asked “Please spend the day with me.”

One more slow dance with a man of Sim Hopkins’s charm and good looks and she knew she’d be in big trouble. However, a mere hike in the woods…

“If my cousin Maddy doesn’t have anything planned,” she said after a long pause, “I’d love to.”

Now, why did she say yes? The electricity between them on the dance floor had been the product of the sexy music—hadn’t it? Or perhaps mere lust on her part, she thought with some chagrin. After all, how long had she been celibate since bolting from Saint Louis Cathedral? Two years, plus?

“I’ll call you—what? About nine tomorrow morning?” he proposed. “I’d like to get started by nine thirty, if that works for you.”

The truth was, she’d love to see some backwoods country after all this time living among the concrete monoliths of Manhattan. She reached back with both hands and lifted her hair off the nape of her neck, allowing the soft, fragrant night air to cool her skin. She’d be returning to New York in a little more than a week. She was on
vacation
, after all… her only respite before the grim task of finding a steady job with another orchestra. Surely she was entitled to enjoy the company of an attractive man without making a fool of herself, wasn’t she? It would be a good exercise in self-restraint.

At least, she hoped so.

***

The drive out to the Natchez Trace past the historic red brick Jefferson Military College, founded in 1802 when Mississippi was still a territory, took less than twenty minutes. The Monday traffic on the divided parkway was light, and Daphne settled back in the leather seats of Sim’s car, sighing contentedly as emerald woods of oaks, dogwood, and sweet gum trees streamed by on both sides of the vehicle.

“Not a billboard in sight! I’d forgotten how absolutely gorgeous Mississippi can be,” she murmured.

“It’s bucolic, all right,” Sim agreed. “Hard to believe that in the last century or so, a lot of folks were robbed and killed among the wild orchids along the trail.”

“That’s probably why the survivors coming down from Nashville called the Trace ‘The Devil’s Backbone.’ Did anybody tell you you’ll need leather boots and snake leggings if you go very far off the trail?”

Sim nodded and gestured over his shoulder in the direction of a pile of gear in the rear. “Left over from the Amazon,” he said with a laugh. “If it worked with the exotica there, it should protect me against copperheads and water moccasins on the Trace.”

“Let us pray…” Daphne said, shuddering.

Sim took a left-hand turn down a dirt road. “First stop is Liz and Otis Keating’s,” he announced. “Liz is the floral designer at Monmouth. She offered to show me her new house and point out where the old Trace parallels the roadway. She’s also going to give us directions to Dr. Gibbs’s place because it turns out she can’t join us. A landscaping client called this morning and wants to talk to her about a job and her husband Otis will still be at church this morning.”

The Range Rover bumped along a gravel driveway up a small rise where, through the thick foliage, Daphne caught sight of a low-lying, broad-roofed house flanked on all sides by a veranda that was supported by widely spaced pillars.

“It looks straight out of the West Indies, doesn’t it?” Sim remarked.

“That’s because it is,” Daphne replied, surveying the newly built structure whose freshly stuccoed walls were not yet whitewashed. “The style, at least. A lot of colonists from the Caribbean came to Louisiana and Mississippi, during the slave revolts in the seventeen hundreds, and brought their architecture with them.”

Sim’s car rolled to a stop, and he put on the emergency brake. “Well, it’s a perfect design for the climate, I’d say.”

Inside the Keating house, the ceiling fans and tall windows opening onto the veranda also reflected the West Indian flavor of the place.

“Oh… isn’t it lovely and cool,” Daphne remarked approvingly.

Liz Keating, a pleasant, round-faced woman in her late thirties, held out her hand in welcome. “I think I’m related by marriage to that wonderful cousin of yours, Madeline Whitaker. At least, that’s what Otis tells me. She taught me the harp when I was a little girl.”

Daphne looked around the living room. “No sign of a harp,” she said, laughing. “You were one of the lucky ones. I see you avoided the dreaded disease.”

Liz smiled, pointing to an easel in the corner. “I liked art classes better, and gardening even better than that. Didn’t Maddy ever twist your arm about becoming a member of one of the rival gardening clubs?”

“I only spent vacations in Natchez.” Daphne turned to Sim, explaining, “The town is famous for its two competing garden organizations—the Natchez Garden Club and the Pilgrimage Garden Club. For a time, there were what’s fondly referred to as the Petticoat Wars when the leaders weren’t speaking to one another.”

“Now the Petticoat Mafia cooperates beautifully,” Liz said dryly. “Tourism is Natchez’s main product, so everybody finally buried the hatchet in an effort to make a success of the twice-a-year home tours.”

Daphne liked the woman’s sense of humor and no-nonsense approach. Liz poured them each a glass of lemonade and, following a brief interval on the veranda, led the way down a grassy path that veered away from the house.

“Any snakes ’round here shouldn’t be out and about much this time of year, but just keep an eye out,” Liz warned. She halted on the path and pointed to a narrow lane branching out from the one on which they were standing. “We’re nearly at a linkup with the trail.”

Sunlight filtered through a thick stand of black willows, casting dark shadows and creating a cocoon of cool air as they trod down a steep, four-foot rise into a peaceful forest track.

“Down the rabbit hole,” Sim murmured as they found themselves in a green tunnel of trees. The vaulted, verdant ceiling sprouted bright, new spring leaves.

“Isn’t it just?” Liz said proudly. Braids of dangling vines added to their sense of being inside a leafy cathedral. An eerie hush descended, and their guide spoke in a low, reverential voice. “Thousands of travelers risked their lives over hundreds of years tramping this old Indian trail into a sylvan burrow that runs on for miles like this.”

“
Sh
, listen,” Sim said urgently. The women halted in their tracks and concentrated on faint, rustling sounds on either side of the lane. Occasionally a solitary birdcall was answered in the distance. “How far are we from the Mississippi River?”

“Oh, ’bout twenty miles, as the crow flies, I ’spect,” Liz replied.

“That’s why we can hear more bird sounds,” Sim declared. “There are fewer pollutants in a national parkland, so their eggshells aren’t thin and the young survive at a higher rate.”

Liz nodded grimly. “You’ll hear all about that from Dr. Gibbs.” She glanced at her watch. “Speaking of which, we’d better get you on the road. I’ve written down the directions for you back at the house. He’s expectin’ you at ten thirty, sharp. And as you’ll discover, he’s a very punctual man.”

Chapter 8

Sim and Daphne left Liz Keating’s place and returned briefly to the parkway, heading back in the direction of Natchez. Less than two miles down the road, they made a sharp turn left and bumped along a dirt driveway reminiscent of the tunnel-like Trace itself. Dappled sunlight streamed in silver shafts through thick stands of oaks and flowering dogwoods that arched overhead. Myriad shades of budding green foliage lined the lane leading to a tall, wrought iron gate hung between thick brick posts painted white and topped by cast concrete finials shaped like pineapples. A sign on the left declared “Gibbs Hall—Private Drive.”

“The gates are open,” Daphne said. “That’s a good sign.”