Loving Sarah, page 13
part #3 of The Caversham Chronicles Series
Seeing Lucky’s boat nearby, Sarah smiled. She took in everything around her, the sights, odors, hustle and bustle of the hundreds of people on the wharf moving about in their daily jobs. It was like home, but it wasn’t. For though it didn’t look or smell much different than the ports of London or Liverpool, this was America. She was in New York harbor. America.
She could now tell her grandchildren one day, should she be so fortunate, that she had actually been to a country other than England or Scotland.
Their gig tied off to the pier, Seamus exited first and extended his hand to her. He assisted her to the lower platform. He then looked down into the gig at the two men who rowed them out.
“Meet us back here in three hours,” Seamus said. The other men nodded.
He then turned a piercing dark gaze at Sarah and said again, “Ye have three hours.”
She nodded and they went up the steps and onto the dock where Seamus hired a hack on the bustling wharf. It took a great deal of pleading with the old salt to get him to agree to this excursion before taking her over to the Avenger. The entire ride into the city, the old man swore over and over that if Ian and Lucky didn’t string him up, the duke would flay him alive.
“Ye know how protective his grace is of his family,” Seamus said. “The man would skin me alive if I let anything happen to ye. So it’d be in my best interest to make sure ye get what yer wantin’ within reason and get ye safely over to Cap’n Lucky.
The hack rolled to a stop in front of a row of shops. “I know my brother well,” Sarah said, “and I’m willing to bet my entire inheritance that he’ll be so happy upon my safe return that he’ll not flay anyone, especially you, Seamus. Though I cannot say I’m as positive about Ian’s safety. Ren will be upset if he learns of some details. But I shall take the blame, for truly it was not Ian’s fault. I…It’s all my fault. Everything that occurred between us was my doing. All of it.”
The driver held open the door for them as they disembarked, and Seamus paid the man to wait for them as they shopped. She dropped her voice to a whisper as they walked toward the door of the shop. “And for that I am willing to accept my fate.”
Seamus waited outside near the door as Sarah went in the establishment. Once inside, she found she needed more than just the two or three items she originally intended to purchase, and when the shopkeeper gave her the total, she paid the woman. Before she could lift the tied package, a boy appeared and carried it to Seamus, who tucked it under his arm and escorted her to the hack.
She asked the driver to then take them to a dressmaker who might have a few ready-made dresses and other lady’s clothing. Minutes later, they rolled to a stop in front of a shop, and she entered alone while Seamus and their driver waited outside.
After first enduring the stares and whispers of the modiste and her staff, she was sure due to her outlandish and unladylike garb, Sarah left nearly an hour later with enough purchases to make the women regret their original opinion of her. When they’d asked her to please come back again, she promised she would indeed visit them again if she ever returned to America. One of the younger seamstresses went out to fetch Seamus so he could carry her packages. Then the young woman recommended the cobbler next door for a pair of well-made boots.
Two pairs of practical shoes and one pair of boots later, she’d finally had everything she thought she would need, then discovered she needed a trunk to carry it all. So the cobbler recommended a shop down the street, and Sarah purchased an embossed leather trunk with polished brass accents.
“Americans really are an accommodating lot,” she commented to her companion. “Everyone here has been very pleasant and helpful” She smiled at the cab driver.
“They’re bound to be pleasant and helpful, as ye say,” Seamus muttered, “when ye spend a small fortune in each shop ye go into.”
Sarah pretended to be taken aback. “You mean they’re only after my coin?”
“Aye lassie,” her protector replied. “You’re not having some bloke billed for your purchases, so they likely think you’re a member of the oldest profession having a really good week.”
She felt the heat rise to her cheeks. “Surely they don’t think that I…that I…?”
“Oh, I’m sure they do. But it doesna matter, does it? They don’t know who ye are.”
She exhaled a deep sigh. “You have a point. It doesn’t matter.”
They returned to the waiting hack, and Sarah asked the driver to carry them to a respectable, clean hotel. Preferably a very nice one, as the food was sure to be better there. After arriving, Seamus procured a room for her, then tipped an attendant to carry her packages and trunk up. The first thing she did was order a hot bath to be sent up, then she and Seamus waited in the public room, feasting on fall-apart-tender roasted ham, fresh warm bread, and plates piled high with summer vegetables.
“Please do not take offense, Seamus,” Sarah said through a full mouth, “but this surpasses anything you’ve made on the boat. I wonder if I could hire this cook for the return voyage.”
“When cookin’ on board a boat, lassie” —he stressed his pet name for her, obviously insulted— “it’s not the talent o’ the cook that makes the meal—though it doesn’t hurt ta have a skilled cook. It’s the supplies ye have on hand and the limited use of fire. Ye know there’s only the one flame. So naturally the biscuits will be cold before the main course is done. And that, too, is why yer meals are usually slopped into a bowl and eaten wit’ a spoon.”
Just then a maid entered the dining parlor of the main floor in the hotel, informing the lady that her bath was ready. Sarah smiled as she stood, eager to get clean. “I will see you in a bit, as I plan to make up for a month without a tub.”
She followed the maid to her room and bolted the door, then spent the next hour soaking in the most luxurious hot bath she’d ever had in her life.
Well, at least since she left London.
Ian stepped onto the dock surveying the boxes of foodstuffs and crates of marine supplies being loaded onto his longboats for delivery to Revenge. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Lucky heading his way.
His friend obviously hadn’t heard yet about Sarah or he wouldn’t be wearing a smile. Ian had planned to go over to Avenger with Sarah as soon as the items on this dock made it onto Revenge. And if he were honest with himself, he almost expected Lucky to have heard something from the crew gossip as the men congregated on the dock while working on transferring goods and materials. He didn’t want to speak in such a public place, so he motioned for Lucky to follow him off to the side a few feet away from the working men.
“Do you have everything you requested?” Lucky asked.
“Aye,” Ian replied. “Though once this boat is loaded, you should come with me to Revenge. We had an incident that you should be aware of.”
“What happened?” His friend’s expression grew sober and intent. “Is everyone well? Did anyone get injured during the storm?”
“Everyone is well,” he replied. “We had a stowaway that no one discovered until we were miles from home.”
“Hopefully you put the lad to work,” Lucky said with a chuckle. “I’d make him earn those three meals.”
“Umm…. You will need to come with me. This guest is not your average stow away.”
Lucky looked at him rather oddly, his face then going pale. Ian knew him so well, he could see his friend’s thought process, and it was as though he knew at heart, but didn’t want to believe. “Tell me” —Lucky ground out, his voice so deep and threatening Ian actually feared for Sarah— “it is not who I think it is, and if it is tell me she is alive and in once piece so I can throttle her.”
“She has occupied my cabin the entire trip,” Ian said, right before a flood of curses in both English and Italian poured from his friend.
“Impossible! Sarah’s here?” Lucky hissed, not wanting to yell in front of his sailors. “How on earth…? No, I know how. When I get my hands on her, I’ll wring her scrawny neck.”
Ian’s voice took an uncharacteristically hard edge when he replied, “She’s a lady, and you’ll not be harming a lady, sister or not.” At Lucky’s look of surprise, he added, “Much as I have wanted to over the past month, I’ve managed to restrain myself. I think you can as well.”
“Ren’s going to be furious! And Lia’s probably beside herself with worry.”
“Sarah assures me she left them a note telling them what she’s done.”
“How on earth did she come to be with you?”
Ian explained the story as she told it to him, and Lucky couldn’t help but laugh. Their laughter died down at the sight of a young lad running toward their pier.
“Anyone here from the Revenge?” A group of his crewmen verified, and Ian stepped forward.
“I’m her captain. What’s the message?”
“Do ya have a dollar coin?” The lad looked from Ian to Lucky and back. “Well do ya? I was told when I delivered the message that I’d get a whole dollar.”
Both men searched their pockets for an appropriate equivalent, and each handed one to the lad. “What’s the message?”
“Seamus said the lady finished her shopping and is safe in a room, but she’s takin’ a bath and it’s keeping him from making it back on time.”
“I’m going to put her over my knee and—” Ian muttered. Then he started with a panic. “Where in hell are they?”
The towheaded lad looked barely ten summers and was likely accustomed to hearing the foul language of the docks because he didn’t even flinch. “At the new Continental Arms, on Merchant Street,” he said as he inspected the coins to see if they were real. Presuming they were, he smiled at the two men and continued. “The fire last winter burnt the old one to the ground, but the new one is right nice I hear. And made o’ brick and stone too, so it can’t burn like the last one did.”
Before the boy was even finished talking, Lucky and Ian were searching for officers to leave in charge of the loading. Then Ian took the steps up to the dock and immediately hired a hack. He jumped in front of the driver’s perch. “The Continental Arms on Merchant Street,” he said just as Lucky jumped in.
“Faster if you can please,” Lucky added as he tapped his fingers on his knee.
“I told her not to leave the boat. That I would take her to you,” Ian said.
“She has never listened to reason when reason interfered with her wishes. Now she’s ruined any chance of ever having a decent marriage. And Ren will have to find someone willing to take her….”
“I’m going to marry her.”
“You don’t have to do that.” Lucky must have thought Ian was being helpful by sacrificing himself for the sake of the family reputation when, in fact, it was the opposite. He needed Sarah.
“No, I want to,” Ian said, trying to hide the fear rising in his gut about her safety.
“She does come with a sizable dowry and an inheritance. It will make getting funding for those new clippers a great deal easier….”
“I don’t want her money.”
“It’s your money if you marry her.”
“I don’t want her money,” he repeated. “And I don’t want to be known as a fortune-hunter. Any success we achieve will be because of our hard work and determination.”
“I’ll not argue with you.” Lucky was silent for a brief moment as the hack moved through the congested traffic on Merchant Street. “You’re certain she left a note?” he asked Ian again.
Ian nodded, praying she was truthful in this, because if he found out otherwise, he’d throttle her—for real this time.
“I don’t know why you want to marry her, Ian. She’ll vex you for the rest of your life, man. Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Of course, I do,” Ian said. “Sarah will fight this marriage tooth and nail. But the sooner we get it over with, the better for her. We can marry in England, though it might be wiser to do it now.”
His friend gave him a look that was both curious and disbelieving as he asked, “Why wiser?”
Ian just gave him a level-eyed stare—one his friend understood.
Sarah dried her wrinkled and water-logged skin with the towels the maid provided. She should never have fallen asleep in the tub, but the water was so warm and clean that she’d forgotten she wasn’t in London and relaxed perhaps a bit too much.
The maid knocked at the door, and Sarah called out for her to enter, and the petite brunette crossed the room and said, “Ma’am, there’s two gents in the parlor downstairs and they said you had better hurry.”
“Young men? What happened to Seamus?”
“If you’re meanin’ the old salt, they told him to get back to his boat.”
Sarah shook her head. “Well, it seems I am found out.” She turned around and asked the maid, “How are you at the duties of a lady’s maid?”
“I’m not a maid to the likes of soiled doves! I clean rooms thank you very much. That’s honest work, it is.” The girl got down on her hands and knees and began to wipe the spilled water on the floor as she continued her diatribe. “I’m trying to work my way up not down! The fires of hell await those who succumb to the pleasures of the flesh outside wedlock. And you with two men…you’re long past redemption!”
Sarah laughed. “Fine then, think what you will,” she said as she disappeared behind the screen and reappeared with her petticoat and drawers. “One of those two men downstairs is my brother, you ninny, and the other is his friend.” She looked at the maid, cleaning the room and readying it for the next customer. Just then it dawned on Sarah what type of establishment she’d rested in, and she giggled. “Oh, my! You think…that I’m….” She took in the decor earlier and thought it bold, but not particularly bawdy. “I understand now why you think as you do, but I assure you…you’re….” Sarah blushed. She couldn’t even think clearly. That the girl thought she was a light skirt was rather embarrassingly funny. “Well, you’re wrong in your judgment, but I don’t care at this point. We have to leave in a few hours for the second leg of the race. Now, there’s a coin in it for you if you help me with my demi-corset and dress. And if you can do something with my hair, I’ll double that coin.”
Different barmaids kept coming into the parlor trying to attract the attention of Ian and Lucky while they waited for Sarah to reappear. The room’s fringed decorations looked straight from a Parisian brothel, and why Seamus brought Sarah here, Ian would never know.
The crushed red velvet walls and lounges were all the latest fashion—if this were a bawdy house. Scarlet and black, trimmed with gold leaf on the carved crown molding and wainscoting, was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. Ian kept his eye on the door and saw a woman enter the room in a smart yellow dress and did a double-take. Even without her boy’s clothing he’d grown accustomed to seeing her wear, he instantly recognized Sarah.
Lucky rushed toward her and hugged her, then backed away and began giving her the scolding she deserved. Ian met Sarah’s gaze when she looked past Lucky to where he stood near the cold hearth.
“Do you know how angry Ren will be? How frightened Lia must be?” Lucky droned on and on about all the possible repercussions facing Sarah upon her return, and Lucky finally mentioned the only way out of the social shunning she should expect upon her return to London.
“You’ll have to marry quickly,” Lucky said, then he went on to add, “Ian has volunteered to marry you, and it’s ideal actually….”
“Never,” Sarah said.
“What?” her brother asked.
Ian stepped forward, finally finding his tongue as he watched her, a vision in yellow, tell her brother she would not marry him. He’d let her argue, play her hand if you will, for now. But he still held the trump card.
She tilted her stubborn chin up, determination in her expression as she looked at Lucky. “I will not marry, Ian. He does not love me, nor does he want to marry me. I’ll not let him sacrifice himself because I didn’t hire a boy who could read to bring me to the right boat.” She looked to Ian for support, but she’d get none from him. Either they married here or in England, especially when her brother found out she wasn’t with Lucky during the first leg of the race.
“Sarah, whether you want to or not is beyond the point now,” he said.
“Never,” she said, then started to cry. Lucky was a sucker for woman’s tears, and his sister surely knew this.
“Fine, we can discuss this later. Let’s get you back to the boat.”
“Can I return with you, Lucky? I don’t want to go back with Ian. I’ve interfered in his life enough.” Lucky looked over Sarah’s head with a questioning gaze. All he could do was shrug. Turning his back to them, Ian went to the lobby and asked for the lady’s trunk and a handsome cab to return them all to the docks.
CHAPTER NINE
He didn’t love her. He didn’t want her. He’d resigned himself to a marriage with her.
Sarah had to remind herself of the fact for at least the one-hundredth time. She swiped her eyes angrily as she tied the trunk handles to the foot of Lucky’s bed to keep the thing from sliding about the room once they made the open sea.
The entire time she’d been selecting dresses that afternoon, she chose each one with Ian in mind. He’d said once that he thought she would look good in yellow, so she chose a yellow gingham with white rosettes on the puffed sleeves. Another time, he’d said sapphires and diamonds would look beautiful on her, so she chose a deep blue day dress with silver piping. And there were more yellow and blue dresses, and the silver pelisse with white satin trim.
Of course, Ian would never see her in them. He hadn’t asked her to remain with him. She would have, had he asked. She didn’t hold out hope for love. But if he just said he wanted her to stay with him she would have. She wiped her eyes again, the tears falling with greater frequency. She’d thought to swallow her pride and beg him to allow her to stay, but she just couldn’t. Her pride wouldn’t let her.
