Jo Goodman

by My Reckless Heart

  Decker raised a single dark brow and spared Jack a sideways glance.

  Jack Quincy leaned his large frame on one crutch and crossed himself awkwardly. "I swear."

  Raising the telescope, Decker said dryly, "No chance of that happening here." He had never seen Jonna Remington truly angry. He had seen her frustrated and flustered, aggravated and annoyed, but she invariably had some brake on her emotions that kept her anger in check. When he thought of it, he imagined she was more likely to go cold than hot. As for tearing off her clothes... he didn't think in that direction at all. The owner of the Remington line probably bathed in her shift.

  Through the spyglass the coastline was rising in sharp relief on the horizon. Decker knew that with the last dregs of fog burned off by the sun Huntress's sails would reflect light like mirrors. If Jonna was waiting for them she would be sighting them soon.

  * * *

  Jonna raised herself on tiptoe. Nothing moved on the wharf now except men who craned their necks for a better view than they had had before. Wagons stopped. Cargoes were left unattended. The warehouses had emptied of their last workers minutes earlier. If the glimpse of gleaming white sail in the distance was indeed Remington Huntress, then history was being made.

  She knew it was her ship before anyone else. Jonna had put down the design on paper, supervised the building, and toured every one of the decks. She had hired the men who worked on the ship from her inception to the day the vessel left the Remington shipyard north of Boston. From the coast road Jonna had followed the progress to the harbor on her short maiden outing, but it was in Boston Harbor that she had christened Huntress and set her free for her first true test.

  Jonna Remington had done everything but sail on her. She never spoke of her regret in that regard. For years she had been a private person, but in this case it was less a desire to keep her thoughts to herself than it was that she had no one to tell. Her most trusted confidant, Jack Quincy, would not have understood her regret, not when the choice to stay on land was hers. Grant Sheridan, the man who was pressing his marriage proposal, would not have understood why she had felt a need to board her vessel. Privacy came with a price, she realized, because now there was no one who understood her.

  Jonna pushed back this thought as she squinted against the sunlight. Yes, it was her ship. Huntress. She had given as much thought to the name as she had to the design of the cant frames and keel. This would be the last great clipper of the Remington line, and Jonna had wanted a swift and beautiful ship that would make its mark. She had thought of Diana, goddess of the hunt, as under her watchful eye the graceful curve of timber took shape.

  Iron ships would follow soon. Jonna was sure of it. They were lumbering floaters of iron and wood, hybrid hulks that burned coal and used sails only when the wind was high. They had no style or elegance of form, and worse, rather than working in concert with nature, they strove to overpower it.

  Jonna's sound business sense meant that all of the Remington line would someday be powered by steam, but business did not dictate her passion. And her passion was the tall ships.

  * * *

  Aboard Remington Huntress the activity came about with such precision it appeared to be choreographed. Captain Thorne's orders were relayed quickly and sharply and carried out in much the same manner. Men climbed into the rigging to hoist the sails and make the wind's power ineffective. The great sharp-lined ship shuddered as her crew strove to take in the spread of canvas. It was as if she could not bear to be stripped of her finest adornments.

  The shudder brought Decker shoulder to shoulder with Jack Quincy. Quincy had never seen the younger man lose his footing before, even in stormy conditions, and it was nothing like that today. There was a lightness in Decker's step, in his very being, that made Jack think his new captain couldn't stumble. In the next moment, when Decker was holding the telescope again, having stolen it away from Jack's belt, the old salt knew he'd been right. Decker Thorne didn't make a misstep unless it was intentional.

  "How do you do that?" Jack growled. "Should I check my pockets for change?"

  "Oh? Did you have any?" asked Decker. "I counted two bills but no coin."

  Jack's laughter was like a cannon shot, explosive and loud. "I'll bet you did, too." He sobered momentarily. "Is it true you can remove a lady's corset while she's wearing her dress?"

  Decker raised the spyglass. "What's the point in that? I'd still have to get the dress off. I've never been one for tossing up a woman's skirts. You shouldn't believe everything you hear about me, Jack. What isn't an outright lie isn't likely to be the whole truth."

  Jack nodded. "Fair enough. But tell me how you got the scope without me feeling a thing."

  Decker continued to scan the harbor. He could make out a crowd standing on the wharf but not the individuals in it. He shrugged. "Magic, Jack."

  Not satisfied with that answer, Jack grunted.

  "Some people call it sleight of hand," Decker said.

  This time Jack snorted.

  "Judges mostly call it stealing."

  "That's the word I heard for it, too," said Jack. "Now give me back the 'scope."

  "In a moment." They were close enough now that the spyglass brought Jonna Remington into focus. Decker smiled wryly to himself. Even though the arrival of her flagship was cause for celebration the chiseled face of an iceberg would have offered a warmer reception than this woman.

  Her posture on the lip of the dock was the only thing that betrayed her eagerness, and that was an optimistic interpretation of her position. "I'll be damned," he said softly.

  "What?" Jack demanded, sidling closer. "Give me that thing. What do you see?"

  "She's not wearing a bonnet." He handed the telescope to Jack. "Miss Remington's hair is flying in the wind. Have a care, Jack. She may actually smile."

  Jack Quincy had known Jonna Remington all of her young life. He had worked for her father, and at John's death had worked beside her until she reached her majority and took control of the company herself. Jack defended her now. "She was a wee thing when her mother passed on," he said. "And only fifteen when her father was lost to her. If she's serious about her responsibilities, then you should take heart. As her employee she considers you one of them."

  "I'm not Jonna Remington's responsibility," Decker said. There was no humor in his tone now.

  "Perhaps not," Jack agreed. "I'm only saying that she thinks you are. It's not something you can change. It would be easier to change the direction of a prevailing wind than to move Jonna from a course she's set or an opinion she holds."

  Decker had nothing to say to that. He walked away.

  * * *

  Huntress officially reached Boston Harbor at ten minutes after eight. The total length of her run from Boston to Charleston to London and back again was calculated at thirty-three days, sixteen hours. It was ninety minutes better than Jonna had quickly worked out in her own head, and a full three hours better than her best estimate upon seeing the clipper off. Her early arrival at the wharf this morning was prompted less by wishful thinking than by her inability to sleep any longer.

  When the ship was safely berthed at the pier, the crowd of dockworkers at last breached the distance that had separated them from Jonna. She felt them surge forward just as the gangway was lowered to the dock and Decker Thorne appeared at the taffrail. Her hand that was raised in greeting for Jack Quincy faltered in midair. Her head tilted to one side, and her violet eyes darkened in confusion. She looked past Decker and saw Jack hobbling forward on crutches.

  At the angle she was from the ship, it was impossible for her to see the nature of his injury. What she could see, however, as clearly as a lighthouse beacon, was Decker Thorne's careless grin.

  Jonna's wide mouth flattened, and the effect seemed only to broaden his smile. She nodded once, curtly, and realizing her hand was still raised, she lowered it to her side. He seemed to find that amusing as well.

  There wasn't much that didn't amuse Decker Thorne, Jonna ref
lected as she was jostled by the men crowding around. When two hands were placed firmly at the small of her back and she was pushed into the drink, her last thought as she tumbled forward was that Decker Thorne would find this very funny indeed.

  * * *

  Only two men moved. One slipped deeper into the crowd and then out of it. The other tore off his jacket and dove into the icy water.

  Jack Quincy clutched the woolen coat Decker had tossed him. He found himself staring helplessly at the spot where Jonna had been standing a moment earlier. Her fall, and now Decker's rescue attempt, had transfixed him. Quincy knew himself to be standing at the taffrail of the Remington Huntress, but there was a part of him that had suddenly been transported back in time. Nearly a quarter of a century ago he had been standing in a similar place on another ship of the Remington line. The clipper was Sea Dancer, and on the Boston wharf was a woman waiting for the ship and the ship's master.

  Jack could see the events unfold as clearly now as he had all those years before. Charlotte Reid Remington stood patiently and proudly at the end of the pier, waiting for her husband John to reach her. In her arms she held her infant daughter Jonna. John hurried toward her. He hadn't seen her for almost three months, and it was his first sighting of his only child.

  Jack never did know how Charlotte lost her balance. One moment she was landfast, and in the next she was in free fall. It was her husband who leaped to her rescue and the crowd who had gathered to welcome the ship cheered the recovery. Jack himself experienced a considerable lightening of his heart when he saw Charlotte brought to the surface.

  It was the young cabin boy beside Jack who saw what others did not. While John Remington had been able to bring up his wife, she had not been able to hold onto her child.

  Before Jack understood what Charlotte's forlorn cries meant, the lad at his side had leaped into the water for Jonna. Jack had marveled at the boy's tenacity as he dove repeatedly for the bundle of blankets and baby. Jack remembered thinking when he'd paid for the boy at Cunnington's Workhouse for Foundlings and Orphans that he'd be burying him at sea before they reached Boston. The child had claimed to be ten; the headmaster had said he was twelve. If he was nine, Jack would have been astonished.

  The lad, though, had a way of surprising Jack. He took to the sea and the ship, and as each day put them farther from London, he seemed to grow stronger. His duties as cabin boy were menial but not backbreaking, and John Remington was not a tyrant or a petty and demanding taskmaster. The fresh air may have had something to do with the boy's recovery, but more likely it was the food.

  When Jack first laid eyes on Colin Thorne he knew the boy was starving.

  Jack Quincy was brought abruptly to the present as he saw Decker surface with nothing to show for his efforts. Even from the distance that Jack viewed the rescue attempt, he could see that Decker's skin was pale and his lips were already turning blue. They would have to drag him out of there if he wasn't to die from the frigid water himself.

  As Jack thought this, Decker pushed under the surface again.

  Jonna's cape and gown took to the water like a sponge, pulling her down as she fought for another direction. She managed to claw open the frog fastening at her throat and get rid of the cape, but it was not as helpful as she had hoped, not when she couldn't swim a stroke.

  The current tossed her against the pilings. Her shoulder slammed the barnacle-encrusted wood. Pain made her gasp, and icy water replaced air in her lungs. She had no sense of up or down as darkness edged out her vision. With a clarity that astonished her she understood she was losing consciousness and that she was going to die.

  Something floated past Decker's face. His hands reached out blindly for it. Jonna's cape. Somehow she had gotten out of it. He surfaced, tossed it to the onlookers, and ignoring the oars and hands they stretched out to him, he dove for what he knew would be his last time.

  The current pushed him toward the pilings, and he went with it this time instead of fighting it. Was this what had happened to Jonna? Kicking hard, he pushed himself deeper. It was impossible to see. His lungs burned with the need to breathe and icy fingers of water seemed to have slipped under his skin. His bones ached with cold. He was so numb that he almost missed the first brush of her hand against his leg.

  Decker instinctively turned away from the touch, pulling up his knees to his chest. When he realized what he was doing he changed direction and reached out for the thing that had held him so briefly. His hand clamped over Jonna's forearm. He yanked, bringing her close so that he could grasp her shoulders, and began swimming for the surface. It was like dragging an anchor, he thought. She was a dead weight in his arms. The thought chilled him in a way the water couldn't.

  A dead weight. He hoped it wasn't true.

  There was help aplenty when Decker surfaced with Jonna. He pushed her limp body toward the small boat that had been lowered into the water and waited until she was hauled in before he dragged himself over the side and then collapsed.

  He had a vague memory of being covered with blankets before he was lifted to the pier. He recalled turning his head and seeing Jack Quincy bent awkwardly over Jonna, his splinted leg thrust out to one side as he pressed on her back. Men crowded around him and circled Jonna. She was lost to his vision and then his vision was lost.

  * * *

  Decker was not familiar with his surroundings upon waking, but he had a good idea where he was. He had been in enough well-appointed bedrooms, either as a guest or an intruder, to recognize the quality of the furniture and linens in this one. It could only mean he was somewhere in the Remington mansion. That meant Beacon Hill.

  Decker pushed himself upright. The heavy covers fell away to the level of his waist. Looking down at himself, he saw he was wearing a nightshirt. The tautness of the fabric across his shoulders made him sure it wasn't his own. If that hadn't been enough, there was the faint scent of cedar that clung to the material, hinting at a season or more in storage. His own clothes were not clearly visible. Even his boots were missing. He could only imagine that somewhere in the house, servants were working on laundering and drying and polishing.

  A fire had been laid. It burned with enough intensity for Decker to feel its warmth across the room. The flames were reflected in the polished surface of the walnut wainscoting and in the spindles of the great four-poster. Above the mantel was an oil painting. Decker leaned forward to study it closer. It was a portrait of a couple, but the pair was not brother and sister. The rather stiff, clean-shaven young man had his hand lightly resting on the shoulder of the woman. The dark-haired beauty was not looking out from the canvas. Rather, she was looking up at the man. There was a profound sense of calm in her gaze, an expression of such tenderness that it defined the notion of a heart at peace and filled with love.

  Decker had seen that expression before. When she wasn't exasperated with him, Marie Thibodeaux had looked at Jimmy like that. She'd looked at him like that right at the end, Decker remembered, just before he swung from the gallows and the trap dropped from beneath her own feet. Marie had loved Jimmy Grooms with the same sense of rightness and conviction that the woman in the painting had about her feelings for her husband.

  Decker turned away from the mantel, no doubt in his mind that the couple captured in the gilt-framed portrait above it were Charlotte Reid and John Remington.

  Jonna's parents.

  He could no longer pretend to himself that he wasn't thinking about her. His eyes may have been wandering about the room, taking in the armoire and highboy, the exquisitely scrolled workmanship on the vanity, the expensive rug from the Orient, but his mind was wondering. He strained to hear movement in the hallway outside his door or beyond that, something below stairs that would tell him what had happened after Jonna had been pulled out of the water.

  What did so much silence signify? A vigil? Or mourning?

  On the bedside table was a silver tray and tea service. Decker would have preferred something stronger than milk in his tea, but h
e made a cup anyway. Sliding his legs over the side of the bed, he hooked his heels on the frame and drank the tea. It was the first time since jumping into the Atlantic that he had the sensation of being warm on the inside.

  He stood. If no one was going to come to him—

  "Now where do you think you're going?" The no-nonsense voice belonged to Mrs. Davis, Jonna Remington's housekeeper. She was carrying a warming pan in front of her as if she meant to do battle with it. Though small of stature, she had a militant look about her even when she wasn't harried as she was at this time. Normally her apron was as crisp as her speech and stiff as her upper lip. The wrinkles in it now suggested Mrs. Davis had indulged herself briefly in a little hand-wringing. Her white cap was slightly askew on her graying hair, and there was a hint of puffiness beneath her eyes. The tip of her thin nose was pink. Her handkerchief was a visible bulge under her sleeve. "Back in bed with you," she ordered. Brooking no argument, she advanced with the warming pan.

  "Miss Remington?" The weakness in his voice was unexpected. He wasn't sure he was even understood.

  Her face looked about to crumple, but she busied herself exchanging the warming pan in her hand for the one under Decker's sheets, this bit of industry helping her recover. "The doctor's been and gone," Mrs. Davis said.

  What exactly did that mean? "Then Miss Remington is..."

  "In her room." Mrs. Davis plumped the pillows, smoothed the covers, and, pressing Decker's shoulder firmly, directed him to lie down again. Her eyes watered as she studied his drawn features. There was a certain tightness in his jaw that she could not recall seeing before, and a muscle worked in his cheek. She thought of his careless smile only because it was absent. "You should rest, Mr. Thorne," she said quietly. "Though I suppose it's Captain now. Mr. Quincy tells us you mastered the clipper when he took to his bed." Mrs. Davis felt absently along her forearm for the handkerchief she'd tucked under her sleeve. Tears threatened to fall. "He told us what you did in the harbor... how you risked yourself to pull Miss Remington free. We're grateful." A tear that she could not blink back fell over her delicately lined cheek. "I just thought you should know." Her cheeks turned pink. She gave up trying to find the handkerchief and began to walk hurriedly away.