Halfway Home, page 4
“I do beg your pardon, sirs, but you have the wrong room!”
Hanging onto the door frame, the tallest of the pair swayed toward her. She shoved him upright. They were both grinning, and the bolder of the two—the one with the earring—managed to get inside her room and fling an arm around her. He was stronger than he looked—and he looked strong as an ox. Fortunately, he was also quite drunk.
Sara was not without experience when it came to repelling unwanted attentions, having lived with Titus Smithers for nearly eight years. Barefooted, she could do little damage with her heels, but a fist thrust sharply upward under a bulbous nose and a finger poked into a bloodshot eye was enough to make any man hesitate.
A moment’s hesitation was all she needed. Snatching her umbrella from the cane stand beside the door, she whacked the smaller man on the head, jabbed the big one in his soft belly, and shoved them both out into the hall before they could recover. The washstand would have done nicely as a barricade, but it was too heavy to move. Instead, she snatched one of the two straight chairs, jammed it under the doorknob and placed the washbowl and a tumbler on the seat. There, she thought smugly, standing back to admire her handiwork. Small she might be, but between Simon and Maulsie, she knew how to protect herself against bullies.
Tomorrow she would demand a key.
All night long the noise continued. Only through sheer exhaustion was Sara finally able to gain a few hours of sleep. She awoke early, filled with fresh doubts. What had seemed such a wonderful idea only a few days ago was beginning to lose its luster.
However, she reminded herself, hearing the constant sound of arrivals and departures from the courtyard just outside her window, Archibald was bound to come today. No doubt he had wanted to set his house to rights before he took her there. Bachelors, she suspected, were less than perfect housekeepers.
Or perhaps he had been on the road and had only just got her letter. . . .
The hours crawled by Mrs. Best came by to inquire after her health, not having seen her in the dining room at breakfast.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“Then, I’ll just have a pot of chocolate and some macaroons sent up,” the woman announced, clearly intending to join her.
“Thank you, but I’ve a slight headache,” Sara murmured apologetically. And truly, she did. Waiting was sheer agony. It opened the door to too many doubts.
“It’s that disgusting pack of rabble rousers, is what it is,” the woman said knowingly. “A decent person can’t rest easy without wondering when some drunken fool is going to come busting through her door. For six cents you can rent a key, but then, every key opens every lock in the hotel, so what’s the use?”
“I’ve found a chair under the doorknob works quite well,” Sara said, and was gratified when the other woman agreed with her.
“Smarter than you look, ain’t you? All the same, if the packet don’t come today, I’ll stay here with you tonight. A single woman can’t be too careful.”
“That’s awfully kind of you, ma’am, but—”
“I know, I know, your young man will likely come along any minute now and whisk you away, and the last thing you need is a meddling old busybody dogging your coattails.”
Her young man? After a polite, if distracted response, Sara closed the door and leaned against it, wondering if everyone in the hotel knew why she was here and what had happened last night.
Archibald couldn’t arrive soon enough to suit her, Sara thought fervently. A quiet cottage with flowers in the yard and a kind, elderly gentleman to keep her company sounded just fine to her; it surely did.
*
Jericho was in no mood for the convivial atmosphere he found when he finally arrived at the hotel. A fresh northeast wind had sprung up just after sunup, blowing the smoke inland for a change instead of allowing it to lay like a pall over the entire countryside. Horses milled around, the fresh ones stamping and tossing their heads, eager to be on their way, while the blown ones stood docilely, heads hanging while they waited to be unpoled and turned into the livery paddock. Around the courtyard, men in varying degrees of soberness prepared to set off by boat, carriage or horseback, while others greeted new arrivals.
As he led Bones over to the livery shed, Jericho dug out a coin. “Rub him down, water him and give him a decent feed,” he told the boy who jumped forward to take the reins. “Mind his teeth, though. He’s right partial to ears.”
The boy stepped back, tugged his stocking cap down over his ears and led the big gelding away while Jericho leaned tiredly against the wall. For all he knew, Smithers could be waiting for him right now. He hoped he wasn’t. He could use a good night’s sleep before he faced the bastard over the barrel of a gun. He hadn’t slept in so long, he had all but forgotten what it was like.
Not that there was any reason to believe that tonight would be any different. Still, he intended to try. He had a job to do. Killing Smithers wouldn’t bring back his sister, but he was determined to send the bastard to hell, even if it meant escorting him there personally. As it very well might.
For a moment, the noise around him seemed to fall away. A hot sun beat down on his head, and he took off his leather-brimmed black wool hat with the tarnished brass braid and ran a hand through his hair. God, how he wished he were back aboard the Wilde Wind, pacing the bridge while the salt air blew clean and fresh in his face, with nothing more on his mind than outrunning the latest storm blowing up from the Caribbean.
But she was no longer his. It had fair broke his heart to put her on the market, for the sea had been his life for nearly two decades, the Wind his home for nearly as long. But when, eight months after the event, Louisa’s letter had caught up with him informing him that their parents had been killed in a carriage accident on the old log road, he had lit out of Puerto Barrios without even waiting to arrange a return cargo.
It had been too long since he had been back home. He’d felt guilty over that. Louisa had said to come if he could, because she needed him. Their father had left things in an unbelievable mess.
It had been that, all right. He could scarcely believe it.
Located in northern Pasquotank County, the farm had been in Jericho’s family ever since his great-grandfather had traded a horse, a hog, and a bushel of oysters to Okisko, king of the Weopomeioks, for the rich, fertile acres. Or so the story was told. The old man had then married a woman of the same tribe, which accounted for the Wildes’ dark coloring.
As a boy, Jericho had clashed with his father often, their temperaments poles apart. His father had been bookish. Jericho had not. He’d been a disappointment to ,both his parents, for he’d had a great talent for getting into trouble. Louisa had been the good child, yet Jericho had never resented her for it. He’d only been sorry his parents couldn’t like him for who he was, but then, that was the way of it, he supposed. Some folks were likable. Some weren’t.
At any rate, he had lost little sleep over the matter. At the age of thirteen he had gone to sea with his great-uncle Ethelbert and quickly discovered a love for that life.
Since then he had visited infrequently, mostly to see his sister Louisa, who had grown from a shy girl into a sweet, if rather plain, young woman. She had been twenty-nine when she had . . .
God. Even now he had trouble believing she was gone.
During the weeks he remained at home that first time, he’d had his hands full settling his parents’ estate. Wilde Oaks had still looked prosperous enough on the surface, but closer inspection had proved that the house was suffering from damp rot, termites, and a leaking roof. His father had spent all his time and energies studying some of the more obscure English ports, to the detriment of all else.
Most of the field hands had drifted off and were probably living as free men in the swamp now. Thanks to the scoundrel who had served as overseer before he’d lit out with the only decent horse left, the outbuildings were in sad need of repair and nearly all the drainage ditches were clogged to the point that the fields were rapidly returning to swampland.
What he’d needed was money. A lot of it. Unfortunately, every penny Jericho had and more had been tied up in his ship. Less than a year earlier he’d been forced to borrow heavily to pay for repairs after a storm had caught them in a port in Argentina.
Unable to borrow more to restore Wilde Oaks, he’d been desperate. The farm was all Louisa had. Her dowry, should she ever marry. Her home and her only source of income should she remain single.
The irony of it now was enough to make him weep.
While he had been struggling to make sense of the farm accounts, Louisa, quieter than usual, but as dear to him as his own heart, had spent hours out walking with her red Chester duck dog, Brig. The pair were inseparable, which made Jericho feel somewhat better for having left her alone, except for the housekeeper, for so long.
He had been distracted with trying to find some source of funds in the damnably mysterious account books when she had confided diffidently that she’d been keeping company for some time with a gentleman from Virginia, seeing him whenever he came down to visit Rafe Turbyfill on the adjoining farm.
Glad that she had found congenial company, though somewhat surprised that she hadn’t seen fit to confide in him sooner, Jericho thought he’d better look the gentleman over.
“Shall I invite him to dinner?” he asked.
Shyly, she had stared at the tip of her boot. “I—we—that is . . .”
“Never mind,” he’d dismissed. She’d been timid as a child. She was even worse now. The amazing thing was that she’d found herself a young man at all.
So he had set out to reacquaint himself with Rafael Turbyfill, whom he hadn’t seen since they’d been boys on neighboring farms.
“Bless me, if you ain’t a sight!” the man had exclaimed. “Look like a damned pirate. Sure that ain’t what you been up to, Rico? Come in, come in—have a drink, meet my friends. We’re having us a house party here. Cards, a little hunting, a little racing, a few women—you know how it is.”
Jericho didn’t. He’d been hard at work for the past twenty years. Rafe had grown into a flush-faced dandy. He was still a handsome man, all togged out in a red and gold brocade waistcoat with the fanciest cravat Jericho had ever seen, but his eyes looked old. He looked tired. For a man who was hosting a party, he looked . . . sad.
As a boy Rafe had been something of a bully, but Jericho had more than held his own in their frequent brangles.
God, it made him feel old even thinking about it.
Rafe had summoned the young Virginian, Titus Smithers, and introduced the two men. Smithers had seemed surprised. Possibly, even nervous, although Jericho had put it down to the boy’s youth.
He had come away from that first meeting with an uneasy feeling. Not that there had been anything openly objectionable about the lad, although he was obviously some years younger than Louisa. He was certainly handsome enough, and well dressed if one liked pretty velvet suits and fancy neckwear.
Jericho had reservations, but he’d told himself the choice was not his to make. Louisa was of age. If they wanted each other—if young Smithers could make her happy, why then, they would have his blessings.
All the same, he hoped the fellow had a decent bank account and knew something about running a farm, because otherwise, Jericho was going to have to put the Wind up for sale.
Three days later, after making a few more inquiries, he had been forced to face the truth. The man his sister was riding out with was dirt poor and a known philanderer, with a reputation for sponging off his friends.
Which meant that not only was Jericho going to have to sell his ship, he was going to have to break the news to Louisa about her intended.
Eventually, he had told himself, he would get another ship. Or captain another man’s ship if he had to.
His sister might not be so fortunate. A woman’s choices were far more limited than those of a man.
It had been bad. She had refused to hear a word against the man, and when she burst into tears and locked herself in her room, Jericho had taken the coward’s way out.
He had left. Telling Hester Renegar, the housekeeper who had been there forever, that he would be back as quickly as possible, he had taken the train to Baltimore, put his ship in the hands of a reputable broker and finally sold her for more than enough money to pay off his loan and restore Wilde Oaks. The process had taken longer than he’d expected, but finally he had headed south again, worried about Louisa, desolate over the loss of his ship, but ready to begin salvaging his family’s heritage.
It was too late. It had been too late before he’d ever left Wilde Oaks in the first place, although neither he nor Louisa had realized that fact.
“Damn the bastard, and may his soul rot in hell,” Jericho swore softly, his back braced against the whitewashed wall of the stable.
“You want I should take your bag in, cap’n?”
It was the livery lad, hoping for another coin. Jericho would just as soon have carried his own duffle, but he admired the avaricious gleam in the boy’s eye. “Sure, son. Mind you don’t drop it. Speak me a room while you’re at it, name of Wilde.”
“It’ll have to be the common. All the rooms is took.”
Jericho nodded, and the boy dashed off, tilting under the heavy duffle, which contained a matched pair of flawlessly balanced dueling pistols. As Wilde had issued the challenge, Smithers would get to choose the weapons, but what else would a man use to kill another man? No one used swords in this day and age.
Jericho would have preferred to use his bare hands.
Levering himself away from the wall of the livery stable, he ambled tiredly across the open courtyard. He was halfway to the main entrance when something prompted him to lift his gaze to the tall window on the Carolina side of the main entrance.
The face he encountered there flat-out stopped him in his tracks. Jericho stared. The woman stared right back. For one fleeting moment, something about her put him in mind of Louisa. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. Something about her eyes . . .
Louisa, God rest her, had been on the plain side. This woman was a beauty, although not in the common mold. His sister had been pale, with dark hair and eyes. She’d been as gentle as a moth, timid and utterly trusting. Animals had loved her. Even now, that dog of hers was mourning himself to death.
What was it about this woman, then—she was hardly more than a girl, from the looks of her—that reminded him of Louisa? Was it the way she stood there, as if she were waiting for something and half afraid of whatever—or whoever—it was she was waiting for?
“Judas priest,” he muttered, tearing his gaze away from the face in the window. That damned swamp fire smoke was rotting his brain!
Crossing the lobby toward the registration desk, Jericho nearly ran over a small, stout woman in the ugliest bonnet he had ever seen. She was talking up a storm to a pair of gray-haired sticks who were lapping up every word she said.
If there was one thing he didn’t need right now, it was a run-in with a swarm of busy bees. He was here to kill a man, and the fewer who knew about it, the better he liked it. Louisa’s misfortune had died with her. He was pretty sure no one knew, but duels always gave rise to speculation, and he wasn’t about to take any chances.
He learned at the desk that Rafe wasn’t yet registered. Nor was Smithers and whatever scum he had chosen to second him. Jericho went into the dining room in a somber mood, determined to enjoy his last meal, if such was to be his fate. Without meaning to, he glanced around, hoping for a glimpse of the mysterious young beauty, but she wasn’t among the diners.
Which was just as well. The last thing he needed at this point was to be faced with another pair of big, reproachful eyes.
*
Politely, Sara listened as Mrs. Best rambled on about who was who in Pasquotank County, and exactly how they were related. Although the woman lived in Elizabeth City, she evidently had relatives scattered all the way up and down the eastern seaboard.
“I do like to travel,” Cordelia Best confided over a dinner of baked shad and roasted potatoes. She had arranged to have their meal served in Sara’s room. “Do you know, I’m almost certain I saw that young Wilde boy downstairs, the one that went to sea with his uncle ever so long ago?”
Sara had more on her mind than boys, wild or tame, but Cordelia needed little encouragement to continue her monologue. “I heard the poor Wilde girl passed away not long ago. They say she caught a fever and collapsed, and before old Doc Withers could even get to her, she was gone. My, it don’t seem fair, does it? Her folks was killed little more than a year ago. Hit a boggy place in the log road, landed in the river, and the horse with ‘em. That poor boy, I wonder if he brought the fever back with him from one of those heathen foreign places . . .”
It was the strangest thing, Sara thought as she toyed with her fork. Across the table, Cordelia’s voice droned on and on about things and people in which Sara hadn’t the least interest.
Instead, and against all reason, she was remembering the man who had stared at her from out in the courtyard.
And to her everlasting shame, she had stared right back. It was mostly because of the way he walked, although not entirely. Sara had never paid particular attention to the way a man walked, and certainly not to his . . . well, his parts.
But this man was different. The way he moved—the way his clothes fit him, as though they were a part of him. He had a way of walking that made her think he’d been riding for a long time. As if he weren’t quite sure of the ground beneath his feet.
For the longest time after he had moved out of sight, she had thought about him. She’d even ventured a few swaggering steps in front of the looking glass to see if she could replicate his powerful, graceful stride, but either her limbs were too short or her shoulders too narrow, or she wasn’t put together in the same way.
But it wasn’t just the way he walked, nor the fact that he was dressed entirely in black. There was something about his face. About his eyes. From where she’d been standing, she couldn’t even determine the color, yet she was quite certain that if she saw those eyes again, even years from now, she would remember them. There was something incredibly sad about them.
Hanging onto the door frame, the tallest of the pair swayed toward her. She shoved him upright. They were both grinning, and the bolder of the two—the one with the earring—managed to get inside her room and fling an arm around her. He was stronger than he looked—and he looked strong as an ox. Fortunately, he was also quite drunk.
Sara was not without experience when it came to repelling unwanted attentions, having lived with Titus Smithers for nearly eight years. Barefooted, she could do little damage with her heels, but a fist thrust sharply upward under a bulbous nose and a finger poked into a bloodshot eye was enough to make any man hesitate.
A moment’s hesitation was all she needed. Snatching her umbrella from the cane stand beside the door, she whacked the smaller man on the head, jabbed the big one in his soft belly, and shoved them both out into the hall before they could recover. The washstand would have done nicely as a barricade, but it was too heavy to move. Instead, she snatched one of the two straight chairs, jammed it under the doorknob and placed the washbowl and a tumbler on the seat. There, she thought smugly, standing back to admire her handiwork. Small she might be, but between Simon and Maulsie, she knew how to protect herself against bullies.
Tomorrow she would demand a key.
All night long the noise continued. Only through sheer exhaustion was Sara finally able to gain a few hours of sleep. She awoke early, filled with fresh doubts. What had seemed such a wonderful idea only a few days ago was beginning to lose its luster.
However, she reminded herself, hearing the constant sound of arrivals and departures from the courtyard just outside her window, Archibald was bound to come today. No doubt he had wanted to set his house to rights before he took her there. Bachelors, she suspected, were less than perfect housekeepers.
Or perhaps he had been on the road and had only just got her letter. . . .
The hours crawled by Mrs. Best came by to inquire after her health, not having seen her in the dining room at breakfast.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“Then, I’ll just have a pot of chocolate and some macaroons sent up,” the woman announced, clearly intending to join her.
“Thank you, but I’ve a slight headache,” Sara murmured apologetically. And truly, she did. Waiting was sheer agony. It opened the door to too many doubts.
“It’s that disgusting pack of rabble rousers, is what it is,” the woman said knowingly. “A decent person can’t rest easy without wondering when some drunken fool is going to come busting through her door. For six cents you can rent a key, but then, every key opens every lock in the hotel, so what’s the use?”
“I’ve found a chair under the doorknob works quite well,” Sara said, and was gratified when the other woman agreed with her.
“Smarter than you look, ain’t you? All the same, if the packet don’t come today, I’ll stay here with you tonight. A single woman can’t be too careful.”
“That’s awfully kind of you, ma’am, but—”
“I know, I know, your young man will likely come along any minute now and whisk you away, and the last thing you need is a meddling old busybody dogging your coattails.”
Her young man? After a polite, if distracted response, Sara closed the door and leaned against it, wondering if everyone in the hotel knew why she was here and what had happened last night.
Archibald couldn’t arrive soon enough to suit her, Sara thought fervently. A quiet cottage with flowers in the yard and a kind, elderly gentleman to keep her company sounded just fine to her; it surely did.
*
Jericho was in no mood for the convivial atmosphere he found when he finally arrived at the hotel. A fresh northeast wind had sprung up just after sunup, blowing the smoke inland for a change instead of allowing it to lay like a pall over the entire countryside. Horses milled around, the fresh ones stamping and tossing their heads, eager to be on their way, while the blown ones stood docilely, heads hanging while they waited to be unpoled and turned into the livery paddock. Around the courtyard, men in varying degrees of soberness prepared to set off by boat, carriage or horseback, while others greeted new arrivals.
As he led Bones over to the livery shed, Jericho dug out a coin. “Rub him down, water him and give him a decent feed,” he told the boy who jumped forward to take the reins. “Mind his teeth, though. He’s right partial to ears.”
The boy stepped back, tugged his stocking cap down over his ears and led the big gelding away while Jericho leaned tiredly against the wall. For all he knew, Smithers could be waiting for him right now. He hoped he wasn’t. He could use a good night’s sleep before he faced the bastard over the barrel of a gun. He hadn’t slept in so long, he had all but forgotten what it was like.
Not that there was any reason to believe that tonight would be any different. Still, he intended to try. He had a job to do. Killing Smithers wouldn’t bring back his sister, but he was determined to send the bastard to hell, even if it meant escorting him there personally. As it very well might.
For a moment, the noise around him seemed to fall away. A hot sun beat down on his head, and he took off his leather-brimmed black wool hat with the tarnished brass braid and ran a hand through his hair. God, how he wished he were back aboard the Wilde Wind, pacing the bridge while the salt air blew clean and fresh in his face, with nothing more on his mind than outrunning the latest storm blowing up from the Caribbean.
But she was no longer his. It had fair broke his heart to put her on the market, for the sea had been his life for nearly two decades, the Wind his home for nearly as long. But when, eight months after the event, Louisa’s letter had caught up with him informing him that their parents had been killed in a carriage accident on the old log road, he had lit out of Puerto Barrios without even waiting to arrange a return cargo.
It had been too long since he had been back home. He’d felt guilty over that. Louisa had said to come if he could, because she needed him. Their father had left things in an unbelievable mess.
It had been that, all right. He could scarcely believe it.
Located in northern Pasquotank County, the farm had been in Jericho’s family ever since his great-grandfather had traded a horse, a hog, and a bushel of oysters to Okisko, king of the Weopomeioks, for the rich, fertile acres. Or so the story was told. The old man had then married a woman of the same tribe, which accounted for the Wildes’ dark coloring.
As a boy, Jericho had clashed with his father often, their temperaments poles apart. His father had been bookish. Jericho had not. He’d been a disappointment to ,both his parents, for he’d had a great talent for getting into trouble. Louisa had been the good child, yet Jericho had never resented her for it. He’d only been sorry his parents couldn’t like him for who he was, but then, that was the way of it, he supposed. Some folks were likable. Some weren’t.
At any rate, he had lost little sleep over the matter. At the age of thirteen he had gone to sea with his great-uncle Ethelbert and quickly discovered a love for that life.
Since then he had visited infrequently, mostly to see his sister Louisa, who had grown from a shy girl into a sweet, if rather plain, young woman. She had been twenty-nine when she had . . .
God. Even now he had trouble believing she was gone.
During the weeks he remained at home that first time, he’d had his hands full settling his parents’ estate. Wilde Oaks had still looked prosperous enough on the surface, but closer inspection had proved that the house was suffering from damp rot, termites, and a leaking roof. His father had spent all his time and energies studying some of the more obscure English ports, to the detriment of all else.
Most of the field hands had drifted off and were probably living as free men in the swamp now. Thanks to the scoundrel who had served as overseer before he’d lit out with the only decent horse left, the outbuildings were in sad need of repair and nearly all the drainage ditches were clogged to the point that the fields were rapidly returning to swampland.
What he’d needed was money. A lot of it. Unfortunately, every penny Jericho had and more had been tied up in his ship. Less than a year earlier he’d been forced to borrow heavily to pay for repairs after a storm had caught them in a port in Argentina.
Unable to borrow more to restore Wilde Oaks, he’d been desperate. The farm was all Louisa had. Her dowry, should she ever marry. Her home and her only source of income should she remain single.
The irony of it now was enough to make him weep.
While he had been struggling to make sense of the farm accounts, Louisa, quieter than usual, but as dear to him as his own heart, had spent hours out walking with her red Chester duck dog, Brig. The pair were inseparable, which made Jericho feel somewhat better for having left her alone, except for the housekeeper, for so long.
He had been distracted with trying to find some source of funds in the damnably mysterious account books when she had confided diffidently that she’d been keeping company for some time with a gentleman from Virginia, seeing him whenever he came down to visit Rafe Turbyfill on the adjoining farm.
Glad that she had found congenial company, though somewhat surprised that she hadn’t seen fit to confide in him sooner, Jericho thought he’d better look the gentleman over.
“Shall I invite him to dinner?” he asked.
Shyly, she had stared at the tip of her boot. “I—we—that is . . .”
“Never mind,” he’d dismissed. She’d been timid as a child. She was even worse now. The amazing thing was that she’d found herself a young man at all.
So he had set out to reacquaint himself with Rafael Turbyfill, whom he hadn’t seen since they’d been boys on neighboring farms.
“Bless me, if you ain’t a sight!” the man had exclaimed. “Look like a damned pirate. Sure that ain’t what you been up to, Rico? Come in, come in—have a drink, meet my friends. We’re having us a house party here. Cards, a little hunting, a little racing, a few women—you know how it is.”
Jericho didn’t. He’d been hard at work for the past twenty years. Rafe had grown into a flush-faced dandy. He was still a handsome man, all togged out in a red and gold brocade waistcoat with the fanciest cravat Jericho had ever seen, but his eyes looked old. He looked tired. For a man who was hosting a party, he looked . . . sad.
As a boy Rafe had been something of a bully, but Jericho had more than held his own in their frequent brangles.
God, it made him feel old even thinking about it.
Rafe had summoned the young Virginian, Titus Smithers, and introduced the two men. Smithers had seemed surprised. Possibly, even nervous, although Jericho had put it down to the boy’s youth.
He had come away from that first meeting with an uneasy feeling. Not that there had been anything openly objectionable about the lad, although he was obviously some years younger than Louisa. He was certainly handsome enough, and well dressed if one liked pretty velvet suits and fancy neckwear.
Jericho had reservations, but he’d told himself the choice was not his to make. Louisa was of age. If they wanted each other—if young Smithers could make her happy, why then, they would have his blessings.
All the same, he hoped the fellow had a decent bank account and knew something about running a farm, because otherwise, Jericho was going to have to put the Wind up for sale.
Three days later, after making a few more inquiries, he had been forced to face the truth. The man his sister was riding out with was dirt poor and a known philanderer, with a reputation for sponging off his friends.
Which meant that not only was Jericho going to have to sell his ship, he was going to have to break the news to Louisa about her intended.
Eventually, he had told himself, he would get another ship. Or captain another man’s ship if he had to.
His sister might not be so fortunate. A woman’s choices were far more limited than those of a man.
It had been bad. She had refused to hear a word against the man, and when she burst into tears and locked herself in her room, Jericho had taken the coward’s way out.
He had left. Telling Hester Renegar, the housekeeper who had been there forever, that he would be back as quickly as possible, he had taken the train to Baltimore, put his ship in the hands of a reputable broker and finally sold her for more than enough money to pay off his loan and restore Wilde Oaks. The process had taken longer than he’d expected, but finally he had headed south again, worried about Louisa, desolate over the loss of his ship, but ready to begin salvaging his family’s heritage.
It was too late. It had been too late before he’d ever left Wilde Oaks in the first place, although neither he nor Louisa had realized that fact.
“Damn the bastard, and may his soul rot in hell,” Jericho swore softly, his back braced against the whitewashed wall of the stable.
“You want I should take your bag in, cap’n?”
It was the livery lad, hoping for another coin. Jericho would just as soon have carried his own duffle, but he admired the avaricious gleam in the boy’s eye. “Sure, son. Mind you don’t drop it. Speak me a room while you’re at it, name of Wilde.”
“It’ll have to be the common. All the rooms is took.”
Jericho nodded, and the boy dashed off, tilting under the heavy duffle, which contained a matched pair of flawlessly balanced dueling pistols. As Wilde had issued the challenge, Smithers would get to choose the weapons, but what else would a man use to kill another man? No one used swords in this day and age.
Jericho would have preferred to use his bare hands.
Levering himself away from the wall of the livery stable, he ambled tiredly across the open courtyard. He was halfway to the main entrance when something prompted him to lift his gaze to the tall window on the Carolina side of the main entrance.
The face he encountered there flat-out stopped him in his tracks. Jericho stared. The woman stared right back. For one fleeting moment, something about her put him in mind of Louisa. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. Something about her eyes . . .
Louisa, God rest her, had been on the plain side. This woman was a beauty, although not in the common mold. His sister had been pale, with dark hair and eyes. She’d been as gentle as a moth, timid and utterly trusting. Animals had loved her. Even now, that dog of hers was mourning himself to death.
What was it about this woman, then—she was hardly more than a girl, from the looks of her—that reminded him of Louisa? Was it the way she stood there, as if she were waiting for something and half afraid of whatever—or whoever—it was she was waiting for?
“Judas priest,” he muttered, tearing his gaze away from the face in the window. That damned swamp fire smoke was rotting his brain!
Crossing the lobby toward the registration desk, Jericho nearly ran over a small, stout woman in the ugliest bonnet he had ever seen. She was talking up a storm to a pair of gray-haired sticks who were lapping up every word she said.
If there was one thing he didn’t need right now, it was a run-in with a swarm of busy bees. He was here to kill a man, and the fewer who knew about it, the better he liked it. Louisa’s misfortune had died with her. He was pretty sure no one knew, but duels always gave rise to speculation, and he wasn’t about to take any chances.
He learned at the desk that Rafe wasn’t yet registered. Nor was Smithers and whatever scum he had chosen to second him. Jericho went into the dining room in a somber mood, determined to enjoy his last meal, if such was to be his fate. Without meaning to, he glanced around, hoping for a glimpse of the mysterious young beauty, but she wasn’t among the diners.
Which was just as well. The last thing he needed at this point was to be faced with another pair of big, reproachful eyes.
*
Politely, Sara listened as Mrs. Best rambled on about who was who in Pasquotank County, and exactly how they were related. Although the woman lived in Elizabeth City, she evidently had relatives scattered all the way up and down the eastern seaboard.
“I do like to travel,” Cordelia Best confided over a dinner of baked shad and roasted potatoes. She had arranged to have their meal served in Sara’s room. “Do you know, I’m almost certain I saw that young Wilde boy downstairs, the one that went to sea with his uncle ever so long ago?”
Sara had more on her mind than boys, wild or tame, but Cordelia needed little encouragement to continue her monologue. “I heard the poor Wilde girl passed away not long ago. They say she caught a fever and collapsed, and before old Doc Withers could even get to her, she was gone. My, it don’t seem fair, does it? Her folks was killed little more than a year ago. Hit a boggy place in the log road, landed in the river, and the horse with ‘em. That poor boy, I wonder if he brought the fever back with him from one of those heathen foreign places . . .”
It was the strangest thing, Sara thought as she toyed with her fork. Across the table, Cordelia’s voice droned on and on about things and people in which Sara hadn’t the least interest.
Instead, and against all reason, she was remembering the man who had stared at her from out in the courtyard.
And to her everlasting shame, she had stared right back. It was mostly because of the way he walked, although not entirely. Sara had never paid particular attention to the way a man walked, and certainly not to his . . . well, his parts.
But this man was different. The way he moved—the way his clothes fit him, as though they were a part of him. He had a way of walking that made her think he’d been riding for a long time. As if he weren’t quite sure of the ground beneath his feet.
For the longest time after he had moved out of sight, she had thought about him. She’d even ventured a few swaggering steps in front of the looking glass to see if she could replicate his powerful, graceful stride, but either her limbs were too short or her shoulders too narrow, or she wasn’t put together in the same way.
But it wasn’t just the way he walked, nor the fact that he was dressed entirely in black. There was something about his face. About his eyes. From where she’d been standing, she couldn’t even determine the color, yet she was quite certain that if she saw those eyes again, even years from now, she would remember them. There was something incredibly sad about them.
