Thorne Brothers: With All My Heart Part 4

Grey greeted them formally. "Mr. Burns. Mr. Jolly." He could feel the boy trying to peek around his arm to get a closer look at them. He pushed the lad back in place. "You wanta ?" He purposely let his sentence trail off. Let them state exactly what they came for.

Uncomfortable, Bobby Burns shifted his considerable bulk from one foot to the other. "Aww, Mr. Janeway," he said almost apologetically. "You know we come for the boy."

"What boy?" Grey asked coolly.

"The one hidin' behind your back like he was a joey and you were a b.l.o.o.d.y roo."

"I'd have him in my front pocket then, wouldn't I?"

Burns wasn't sure what to say to that. "It was just an expression."

"A bad one." Grey looked at Jolly. He was fingering the scar that went from one corner of his mouth and disappeared into his reddish blond side whiskers. "Do you have an expression, Mr. Jolly?"

The Duck shook his head. Nothing came to his mind.

Grey continued, unruffled and pleasant. "I'm expecting a delivery this morning, and the boy, the one who's not attached himself to me like a barnacle to a ship's hull, is helping me collect it."

"He works for you?" Bobby Burns asked.

"He works for me."

"You didn't say anything when we grabbed him."

"That's because I didn't mind. He'd been running up and down the wharf long enough. He's a bit of a dervish, you understand, but eager to please."

The Ducks nodded in unison.

"So I didn't care that you took him in hand, but now that everyone's gone fishing, I mink it's over." He pointed past Jolly's shoulder. "Our ship's preparing to drop anchor soon. Do you really want to argue about the boy?"

"Didn't know he worked for you, Mr. Janeway," Bobby said.

"Now you do," Grey said quietly. He pinned them both back with his flint-colored eyes and waited.

They shifted again, exchanged glances, then Jolly spoke up. "We have a ship to meet, Mr. Janeway. Pleasure talking to you."

"Surely was," Bobby Burns added.

Grey watched them go. When their backs were turned and he was certain their attention was on the incoming clipper, Grey let the knife concealed in his sleeve drop to his hand. He bent and slipped it back into his boot.

"You would have used that?" the boy asked huskily.

"If I had to," Grey said with complete indifference. He turned and eyed the boy critically. His shoulders were hunched again, and he was staring at the ground. Grey started to raise the brim of the boy's hat to get a better look at his face, but the child flinched as if he were about to be struck and grabbed the hat, jamming it on even tighter.

"How old are you?"

"Fourteen." The reply was sullen and reluctantly offered.

"You're alone?"

The response this time was a nod.

"Orphan?" Grey didn't waste any more words in asking the questions than the boy did answering them.

"Yes, sir."

"What's your business with that ship?"

"I'm leaving on it."

Grey almost laughed at that. "You have money?" The absence of a reply this time told Grey all he needed to know. His hand snaked out, and he grabbed the boy's chin and raised it. "They'll pitch you overboard if they find you stowed away. You're too scrawny to be any use to them but as fish bait. And how were you planning to get to the ship? You'll need money if you expect one of the scows to take you. They'll smell the desperation on you and ask for something you can'ta"or shouldn'ta"be willing to give." Grey's fingers tightened. He gave the chin a little shake and bent his head closer. His voice was still soft, hypnotically so, and deep with intensity. He stared at the large green eyes raised fearfully in his direction. "And if they realize you're a woman, you'll be flat on your back instead of bent over the bow."

Tears flooded her eyes.

"For G.o.d's sake," Grey said. "Don't cry here."

Her attempt to blink them back was only marginally successful. Several dripped over the rim of her lower lashes. She wrestled her chin free and wiped them away quickly. Glancing around, she looked to see if anyone had noticed.

"Everyone else is occupied with the ship," Grey said.

"I thought you didn't want them to see me cry."

' I don't want to see you cry." He observed that she flinched almost imperceptibly. G.o.d, he thought, spare him from overly sensitive females. In spite of the way he seemed to be able to lash her with mere words, Grey noticed that she continued to stare at him. "What's your name?"

"Berkeley Shaw."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

Grey was mildly surprised and not entirely convinced. He knew she was older than the fourteen-year-old boy she'd pretended to be, but he wouldn't have put eight years on her. "Is there someone I should be turning you over to?"

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"A husband? Brother? Father?" He paused. "A pimp?"

"No!"

"None of them?"

"No," she said more softly. "None of them."

Grey found himself disconcerted by her slightly awed, wide-eyed regard. "Why are you staring at me?"

"Those men, they called you Mr. Janeway."

"That's right."

"Is that your name?"

He was more amused than frustrated. "Do you have a better one?"

Actually, Berkeley Shaw thought she might. She refrained from saying it because coincidence loomed so large that she couldn't accept what her eyes were seeing. The man who stepped forward to protect her from the Sydney Ducks couldn't be Graham Denison. "Will you help me get to the clipper?" she asked.

The change in subject didn't bother Grey. In a way it was a relief. "What's your business there?"

"I have a letter I need to deliver."

Grey felt his confusion mount. "Then you don't want to leave."

For entirely different reasons, Berkeley was confused as well. She continued to search his face. There were similarities, to be sure, with the artist's sketch she'd seen from a Boston newspaper. Jonna Thorne had given Anderson one of the accounts that had been written about Graham Denison, alias Falconer.

The article was five years old now, and Jonna had warned them the sketch was no better than an adequate likeness. It didn't capture either his intensity, she had told them, or the self-indulgent pose he sometimes affected. At best, the sketch would serve to eliminate impostors.

"You're staring again," Grey said.

Berkeley blinked. "I'm sorry." The details of the sketch, the ones that she could remember, faded from her mind's eye. She wished now that she had pressed Anderson harder to allow her to study it. He had a.s.sured her it wasn't important, and now that it might be, Anderson and the clipping were gone. "Have I been rude?" she asked earnestly. "I haven't meant to be."

Grey waved her concern aside. "Answer my question."

She tried to remember what it might have been. "You mean about leaving?"

"That's the one."

It really hadn't been a question the way he had put it to her, but Berkeley didn''t think he wanted to hear that. "I'm staying," she said.

"Then you lied about wanting to go?"

"I've changed my mind." She added quickly, "But I still have a letter to take to the ship. Will you help me?''

Grey knew he should say no. He already had proof that she was trouble, and he didn't need any reason beyond that to refuse her. Besides the fact that she lied to him and had shown the good sense of a jackaroo, she was possessed of a pair of eyes that were so deep and green and compelling that no exact likeness with any natural thing was possible. They had more facets than an exquisitely cut emerald, and they were darker than a spring leaf. Even a forest pool had a bottom; Berkeley Shaw's eyes did not.

It didn't seem to matter at all that she smelled like fish.

"You're staring," she told him.

So he was. He didn't apologize for it.

"Will you help me?" she asked again.

"Yes."

She showed him a shy smile and ducked her head, embarra.s.sed that he was still staring at her. "Thank you," Berkeley said.

Grey felt as if he'd signed a pact with one of the devil's cleverer minions. Whatever they had just bargained for, it wasn't his soul. He didn't have one to give. "Back away," he said.

Berkeley's head came up. Not sure she had heard correctly, she merely regarded him curiously.

"Downwind,'' he said. When she still didn't move he pointed to his nose. "You smell like fish."

"Oh." She took a few steps sideways and to the rear of him. "Is this better?" she asked.

He nodded. "Come along. And for G.o.d's sake, don't talk so others can hear you."

Careful not to get underfoot as she followed him, Berkeley maintained what she hoped was an unoffensive distance. The tabby that had been run off by the Sydney Ducks found her again and was not at all put off by her fish perfume. The cat curled in and out of Berkeley's legs and pawed playfully at her one bare foot.

Grey stopped when he reached the scow he had rented. "Wait here," he told Berkeley as he jumped aboard. It was when he landed that he turned and saw she was holding the cat. It was a bundle of purring, brindled fur in her arms, and she was allowing it to lick her face. "Get rid of it," he said.

Berkeley put the cat down and shooed it away. It scrambled away a distance of four feet before it paused, turned, and began to stalk her bare foot again.

Grey shook his head in disgust. "It wouldn't do that if you wouldn't wriggle your toes. Where's your shoe?"

"I'm not sure." She looked around the wharf for some evidence of it just as the tabby pounced on her foot. A shiver went up her spine as the damp, slightly rough edge of the cat's tongue licked the underside of her toes.

Grey saw the feline's little pink tongue flick once, then he saw Berkeley's unembarra.s.sed, sybaritic response. G.o.d help him, he thought, when her eyes closed and a breathless sigh of pleasure escaped her parted lips. She wasn't merely trouble; she was dangerous. "Do you have your letter?"

"Hmmm?" Berkeley's wistful smile disappeared as she opened her eyes and found her rescuer scowling at her. "I'll try to get rid of her again," she promised quickly.

"Forget the cat; give me your letter."

"Oh, but I want to go out to the ship myself," she said. "I should speak to the captain personally."

Grey couldn't imagine what she thought she had to say to the clipper's master or why she thought she would be allowed to say it. "I'm not going to the ship," he said. "And neither are you. Now, do you want the skipper of this scow to deliver your letter or not?"

In answer, Berkeley turned away and reached inside her flannel shirt. From under the loose bindings that covered her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she pulled the last letter Anderson had written. She stared at the folded and sealed paper and wondered if she should send it at all. She knew the contents by heart: Mrs. Shaw and I regret to inform you that no significant progress has been made in locating either Mr. Denison or Mr. Thorne. Our most promising lead has not (in the vernacular of these environs) panned out. We extend our best regards and continue to pray that we will have something more encouraging to report next month.

Anderson had composed it on the ship, before they had gone as far as Panama. He had intended writing all six of the progress reports the Thornes had requested during the voyagea"just to get them out of the waya"but other things had distracted him. He had sent off the first one himself a month after their arrival. This was the second. If mere were more, Berkeley didn't know about them. She would have to try her hand at composing one, but this letter gave her another month to think about it. She couldn't hope to copy Anderson's bold scrawl even if she could duplicate the tone of his missives. The next letter would have her signature. It remained to be seen if she would have the encouraging report Anderson promised they were praying for.

"I'm waiting," Grey said with more patience than he felt. "Or are you writing it now?"

When Berkeley turned back she was holding out the letter. "May I at least give it to the skipper?" she asked.

He realized with some small shock that she didn't trust him. Apparently she was afraid he'd read it. Having enough of that nonsense, Grey took the letter out of her hand. He glanced at the name above the waxy seal. Mr. and Mrs. Decker Thorne. "There's no address."

"I know," she said.

"The captain of the clipper will know what to do with this?"

"You said it was a Remington clipper."

Grey nodded.

"Then he'll know," Berkeley explained.

When she didn't offer anything more, Grey simply shook his head and sighed. "Wait here while I talk to the skipper."

Berkeley obeyed, more or less. She picked up the cat and moved a few yards down the wharf so her angled view allowed her to see both Grey and the scow captain. She watched Grey hand over the letter and some coins. The two men talked a bit longer, then Grey shook the skipper's hand and headed back to the wharf. If he noticed that she had moved, he didn't mention it as he stepped up onto the dock.

The scow's crew lifted the ropes, keeping them dockside and the large, square-ended, flat-bottomed boat was pushed away from the wharf with slender poles. Berkeley stood long enough to watch it negotiate the pa.s.sage between two listing, abandoned hulks, then she sat down on the edge of the wharf.