Halfway up to the top deck, Katy dug in her heels, nearly jerking him off balance.
She freed her hand and shot him an accusing look. He saw her rub her wrist, which was turning red, and it was the last straw. On top of everything else, he was a bully.
It was her fault. He’d never had this kind of trouble before. His girls sold cigars and cigarettes and that was all they sold. He’d have been out of business before he’d ever opened his doors if he ran that kind of operation. A place like his had to be doubly careful not to step over any lines.
“You think it’s all my fault, don’t you?” Standing three steps below him she looked incredibly small, incredibly vulnerable.
“I didn’t say that.”
She was still rubbing her wrist. Trying to make him feel guilty. Dammit, he hadn’t held her that hard. “If you’re waiting to hear an apology, don’t hold your breath. I’m not about to apologize until we get to the bottom of this.”
Eyes so clear and direct ought to be against the law. Whatever had happened down there, she’d been right in the thick of it, whether she’d deliberately sent out any signals or not.
He thought not. He’d stake everything he owned on her honesty.
But that didn’t mean she was off the hook. Trouble was second nature to the O’Sullivans. Before they’d been on board more than an hour that first day, Tara had nearly shut down his entire operation, single-handed.
And now this. “Katy?”
“I didn’t do it. Not what he said I did.”
“I know you didn’t. That is, l’ m sure you didn’t do it deliberately.” He didn’t want to have this conversation at all, much less out here in the open, where anyone could come along at any moment. “Katy, I’m not blaming you. Now come along, there’s a good girl. You don’t want Tara to hear us and get all upset, do you?”
Her chin quivered once before she got it under control. She clamped her lower lip between her teeth, sent him a look that defied interpretation, and then trudged up the last few steps.
What the devil was he going to do with her?
He was tempted to let it drop until tomorrow, to send her below and hide out in his own quarters until he felt more like sorting it all out.
But dammit, he was the captain here. He was in charge.
Wordlessly, he led her to the door of his cabin, opened it, and stood aside, waiting for her to go in. Her head was on a level with his wilted rosebud. She refused to look at him. With a sigh dredged up from the depths of his weary soul, Galen rested his hands on her shoulders.
And then he made the mistake of tilting her face up to his.
At least she wasn’t about to cry. If she’d started crying, he didn’t know what he’d have done. Dry-eyed, she met his gaze with that soul-searing guilelesness of hers, and he groaned. “What am I going to do with you, Katy?”
Her lips parted, but she didn’t utter a sound. Her eyes widened, then narrowed, then blinked several times in succession.
And then it came to him. “Oh . . . my . . . God. You’re blind as a bat, aren’t you?”
Chapter Nine
“It’s not going to work. You’re going to have to get rid of her.” Leading the parade, Aster barged into Galen’s quarters two days later, catching him with his shirt unbuttoned, razor in hand, his face still half lathered.
Tara, wearing an apron left behind by the recently departed maid that wrapped twice around her middle and dragged the tops of her thick-soled boots, was right behind her, with Katy bringing up the rear.
“They’ll never notice, Captain Galen. Sure, and I didn’t even notice myself,” Tara pleaded earnestly.
Ila shoved in front of the trio. “I done my best, Cap’n, but all the paint in the world’s not going to hide them specs.”
Standing in the doorway, feeling like nothing so much as a leg of lamb on a butcher’s table, Katy knew it was true. No matter what Tara said, she’d be a laughingstock dressed in the red silk gown and high-heeled shoes, with her hair all done up fancy and a pair of spectacles on her face.
Galen had taken her to the eyeglass doctor the very next morning after the misunderstanding in the main salon. He’d waited for her, trying to hide his impatience, while she had tried on one pair of spectacles after another. She’d been concerned about the cost, concerned because Galen was angry with her, concerned because so far nothing had turned out the way she’d expected. No matter how hard she tried, one thing after another seemed to go wrong.
Now, on top of everything else, she had to get used to seeing everything in reverse. Instead of sharp at a distance and fuzzy up close, things were clear as a bell up close, but blurred at a distance unless she remembered to take off her spectacles.
“You’ll be able to make change,” he’d told her on the way back to the Queen.
“But I’ll never be able to find my way about.”
“Katy, you’re not supposed to wear them constantly,” he’d said, sounding as if his patience was sorely tried. “They’re magnifying glasses. You wear them for close work and take them off when you’re finished.”
“Sure, and I knew that.” Knowing it and getting used to doing it were two different things. Magnifying glasses were what old people depended on when their eyes wore out, but she was only twenty-two years old. Which was hardly young, but not really old, either.
They’d strolled down Main Street, and Katy had counted all the people they passed who wore eyeglasses. A few, not many. She’d felt as if everyone was staring at her. She’d been wearing her new glasses to get used to the feel, but she’d removed them again when they’d passed a small shop with a window opening onto Main Street. “Ohh,” she breathed reverently, standing back to admire the gold lettering on the storefront.
Then she’d put them on and moved closer to stare at the display window. It was still blurred.
What was it Da used to say? Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
While Galen had waited, arms crossed over his chest, she’d taken in every single detail of the lavender taffeta gown, the purple straw bonnet with a single lavender plum, and the tiny pair of gray kid slippers beside the dress form, a bouquet of silk violets in the left one.
Someday, she’d vowed silently, she would have a window that would make women stop and say, “Ahhh . . .”
“Seen enough?”
She’d nodded. He’d been more than patient with her. More than generous. Her debt was quickly adding up to a staggering sum, which was depressing enough under any circumstances, but even more depressing when the last thing she wanted from him was money.
For one long moment as they’d continued on their way back to the wharf, Katy had allowed herself to think of what it was she did want from him.
And then she’d been even more depressed.
“Remind me to introduce you to Mrs. Baggot over on Poindexter Street. She’s dressmaker to most of the ladies in town. She might be able to use you in some capacity or another now that you can—”
“Now that I can see to make proper change and sew a seam with the raw edges inside instead of outside?”
“Well, you have to admit, my dear, it does make a difference.”
They’d both laughed a bit, and Katy had thanked him again, promising to repay him as soon as she earned enough. He’d brushed off her offer, but she was determined. And she did feel somewhat more optimistic about the future.
That is, she had until she’d dressed for work this evening and caught a glimpse of herself in all her finery, with a pair of owlish spectacles perched on her nose.
She’d added another dusting of rouge, and with her little finger, dipped into the red salve Ila had given her and smeared it on her lips, hoping to distract attention from her eyes.
It only made things worse. Even Tara had laughed, and Tara’s tastes were—to put it charitably—rather exotic.
She had scrubbed off every smidge of color from her face. She’d pulled back the curls Ila had made with her hot iron, and flattened her hair as much as th
ick hair could be flattened, but it only made her spectacles stand out more.
“You’re going to be late,” Tara had reminded her.
Desperately, she’d tried to ram the wire frames in her bodice, where she could take them out to make change, but by then her skin was damp with perspiration because it was hot and she had on so many layers, and they jammed halfway in.
She’d uttered a bad word, to Tara’s delight. And then Aster had barged in, and now here she was, causing trouble again.
Awash with guilt, she waited for Galen to explode. Men had no patience, none at all. Some things were the same on both sides of the Atlantic.
She hadn’t long to wait. Galen slammed his razor down on the washstand, spattering flecks of shaving soap onto the ruffled bib of his starched white shirt. “For God’s sake, can’t a man have any privacy around here?”
Arms crossed over her bosom, Aster swapped him glare for glare. “I told you to get rid of them. Didn’t I warn you? But oh, no, you and your bleeding heart, you have to take in every stray that turns up with some far-fetched story.”
Katy opened her mouth to say she was not a stray, but before she could get a word out, Aster was off again. “Well, I hope you’re satisfied. The tables are already filling up downstairs, and it’s not even dark, and now we’re short a girl. She can’t go in there looking like that, they’d laugh her out of the place. God knows, she’s already caused enough trouble!”
Holding her breath, she waited for Galen to explode.
Ila’s eyes were round as marbles. Tara wasn’t even breathing. Quietly, Galen said, “Is that it? Are you finished?”
“No, I’m not! Let me tell you something, Galen McKnight, the Pasquotank Queen and I will still be here long after you’ve given up and gone back to where you came from. We’ve more than enough carpetbaggers without you, so don’t think we can’t do without you anytime you feel like selling out and going back up north where you belong.”
If a pin had hit the floor, they’d all have jumped out of their skins. Galen laid aside his razor. He toweled the lather from his face. Turning to Ila, he said, “Katy looks just fine to me. More to the point, she sees just fine. Now, if there’s nothing more I can do for you, I’d like to finish getting dressed.”
Aster flung out her arms, endangering seams that Katy had only recently repaired. “Well, I never—!”
Katy felt like crawling into the nearest mousehole. Tara rolled her eyes and started to sway. Fortunately, Ila herded them all outside before the child could utter a word.
*
The next few days were unexpectedly peaceful. Katy gave up on trying to paint her face. Ila tied a black ribbon to her spectacles, and she wore them around her neck, using them as she needed them, letting them hang in between times. Not a single gentleman remarked on it.
Not a single gentleman leered, grabbed her by the behind, and made an improper suggestion, either. Katy didn’t know whom she had to thank for that, but she thanked them all. Buck, the lookout, Pierre, the head dealer, Charlie, who looked embarrassed, and the other dealers, whose names she still hadn’t sorted out.
Tara in her wraparound apron gathered up laundry to be sent out, dusted furniture, made beds, and ran errands. She carried her baskets of food to her newfound friends along the waterfront, always with Oscar or Johnny the Knife in attendance.
What with Oscar’s glass eye and her own spectacles, Katy thought Galen must owe a fortune to the eye doctor. At the rate her own debt was adding up, she might just be able to pay it off in the next hundred years. Her dream of a shop of her own grew more and more distant, but she refused to be discouraged.
Ila insisted on giving her a pair of earbobs that had been given to her by her late husband. “Won’t do an old crow like me a speck o’ good, gussyin’ up in pearl earbobs. I come across ‘em the other day and I said to myself, Ila, I said—it’s time to start getting shed of all the things you don’t use no more. First thing you know, you’ll up and die and then that meddling sister-in-law of yours’ll have herself a field day, going through your private, personal things.”
Katy’s face had crumbled, she’d been that touched. She’d tried to refuse, but the housekeeper had started crying, too, and then they’d both had a good blow and a wipe and Ila had told her all about the scamp of a traveling salesman she’d been married to for seventeen years, who’d kept more ladies happy than a frog had freckles, not that Ila had suspected a thing until after he’d got drunk, stepped off a ferryboat, and drowned in the Chowan River. There’d been so many grieving females wearing full mourning at his funeral that even the undertaker had been confused.
So along with her red silk gown and her spectacles and Ermaline’s pointy-toed, high-heeled patent leather shoes with a wad of paper stuffed into each toe, Katy wore Ila’s pearl earbobs. It was far too much, she knew that, for she’d inherited her mother’s taste for understated fashions, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.
Aster stayed busy with some mysterious new project that kept her in town most of the day. Ava and Ermaline slept late, came to breakfast in their wrappers, and everyone laughed a lot more.
And Tara was on her best behavior. No swaying, no faraway, unfocused look in her sky blue eyes. If she experienced any sightings, she kept them to herself, although she did confide in Katy that Captain Jack showed off his fancy women only because he knew Miss Tyler was watching, and he liked to rile her.
“How do you know that?” In Katy’s opinion, any man who enjoyed making Aster Tyler angry was daft, but it was no concern of hers.
Tara looked smug. “I just know, that’s all. What if Miss Tyler’s trying to get Captain Galen to marry her?”
“Tara,” Katy said warningly. “You promised.”
“I didn’t see anything, I was only thinking about it. Did you know she’s taken her dinner out on his balcony three times this past week? I know, because I’ve heard them up there talking.”
“Well, and why shouldn’t they be talking? They’re business partners.”
“Huh! He has an office for talking. Why does he have to invite her out onto his balcony and feed her egg custard in a glass with whiskey sauce? Willy makes me eat my custard out of a bowl, with only molasses on top.”
Getting dressed for her evening shift, Katy squinted through her spectacles as she tried to attach one of the pearl earbobs. She murmured an absentminded response. “It’s better than no custard at all.”
Tara snorted. “Aren’t you even listening? Katy, we have to do something. What if he marries her?”
She didn’t want to think about it. It made her stomach tighten into knots to think of him holding a woman, lying down with her, kissing her. . . .
“Oh, drat,” she muttered, wishing she saw more to admire in the looking glass. “My shoes—hand me my shoes.” She couldn’t afford to be late. Ila lined up all her girls for inspection promptly at half past four. Already she could hear the sound of early arrivals trooping up the gangplank.
“Katy? Did you hear what I said?” Tara flopped down a set of freshly laundered pillow slips, sighing dramatically. “I do wish you’d pay attention. I said, I think Miss Tyler’s trying to get the captain to marry her, and whether or not you help me, I mean to save him. She’s not near good enough for him. She’s mean.”
Knotting her shoelace, Katy looked up. “Well now, that’s not a kind thing to say.”
“But it’s the truth. Katy, he can’t marry Miss Aster, he’s far too good for her. I know who’d make him the best wife of all, do you want me to tell you?”
“That I don’t, and don’t you go trying to see, either. The captain is old enough to find his own wife.”
Tara had that smug, I-know-something-you-don’t-know look on her face. It never failed to make Katy uneasy, as trouble was seldom long in coming.
“Quit your blatherin’ now, girl. When you’re done putting away the linens, go see if you can help Willy.”
Tara left, carrying a stack of folded linens to be par
celed out to the cabins. There was a knowing look on her face that made Katy want to lock her away before she landed them both in hot water.
Fluffing out her skirts, she hurried to present herself, breathless and barely in time, at Ila’s cabin door. Ava arrived next, complaining about a garter that refused to stay fastened. Ila looked them over, yanked Ava’s bodice higher, flipped up the back of Ermaline’s skirt and adjusted a sagging petticoat, paused before Katy, and finally nodded approval.
Katy let out the breath she hadn’t even known she was holding and followed the other two women to the game salons. Each day she expected to be told she was no longer needed. Told that Aster had hired someone else. Each day she promised herself she could look for work in town. She didn’t fit in here. The smallest and plainest of the lot, to her way of thinking, she couldn’t hold a candle to either of the others.
At least she had no more trouble making the proper change, nor did any of the gentlemen cause her a speck of trouble. By midnight all tables were filled, the noise-level deafening. Her head was beginning to ache, but she had already collected seven dollars in tips tonight.
She thought of the money tucked away in her valise, thought about how she would parcel it out. One dollar a week toward a school outfit for Tara. Fifty cents for books? She had no idea how much books cost here in America. There would be rent to pay, and food to buy, but every penny she could spare would go toward what she owed Galen. Once she had Tara outfitted and enrolled in the public school over on Pool Street, she could set aside even more against her debt.
Katy hadn’t forgotten Galen’s promise to introduce her to Mrs. Baggot, the dressmaker. She liked that plan far better than his other one. Finding her a husband. She knew precisely what she wanted in life, and it wasn’t a husband chosen for her by someone else.
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