by Nancy Bush
Drawing several deep breaths, Kelsey finished getting dressed, brushing her hair with long, meditative strokes. She left it loose to her waist, her mouth twisting at the realization that it was because Jesse liked it that way. Annoyed, she braided it and hastily wound it at her nape. Loose wisps curled against her neck, softening the effect. Kelsey stared into the stormy depths of her eyes and wondered how she was ever going to get over Jesse Danner.
“Has Mr. Danner returned?” Kelsey asked Mrs. Crowley thirty minutes later as she swallowed a bite of fresh peaches swimming in cream.
Mrs. Crowley clasped her hands beneath her sumptuous bosom and harrumphed. Since this was as close to conversation the taciturn cook ever allowed, Kelsey interpreted that to mean no, Jesse hadn’t returned.
The peaches, delicious as they were, felt permanently stuck in her throat. Excusing herself, Kelsey walked down the hall and out the front door. The soothing caress of the afternoon breeze feathered her cheeks and neck. Glancing down at her cotton day dress, Kelsey felt an irresistible urge to slip on her old breeches and head to Lady Chamberlain’s. Justice could use a run, and she was dying for some speed.
But in the back of her mind lay a nagging worry. Jesse. He’d never stayed gone this long. He’d always returned by morning.
Instead of following her instincts, Kelsey remained at home, pacing the house like a caged animal. She drove Irma to distraction, the maid seeking desperately to please her mistress in some way, failing at every turn, for as the afternoon stretched into twilight, and twilight to evening, and evening to night, Kelsey’s nagging worry about Jesse turned to out-and-out concern. The fifth time she snapped unnecessarily at Irma, she decided the waiting was finished.
“Drake,” she called to the groomsman. “I need a horse. A fast horse.”
“You’re certain you wouldn’t like the carriage, ma’am?” he asked anxiously.
Kelsey gave him a faint smile. Drake, like Irma and probably Mrs. Crowley too, assumed since she rarely rode that she was incapable of it. “Certain as the blackest midnight on a moonless night.”
“But it is a black night, madam. Dark as hell.” Hearing himself, Drake blinked in shock, his mouth dropping open.
“Dark as hell is exactly what it is,” Kelsey reassured him with a pat on the arm. Honestly, the groomsman-cum-driver was so stiff he looked as if he should be oiled. “Please bring me a decent horse, not that nag Jesse tried to get me once.”
“Yes, madam.” Drake’s mouth quirked.
“And Drake…”
“Yes, madam?”
“Please don’t call me madam. Kelsey, er, Orchid will be fine.”
“Yes, madam.”
¤ ¤ ¤
Samuel rocked back in his desk chair and pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes. A vision of Mary appeared in his mind followed by a yawning ache so huge he could practically fall inside it and never come out.
He dropped his hands and opened his eyes. It was still his same office. It was still 1897 and he was still alone. He thought about the rooms he’d lived in since Mary’s death, and realized he had absolutely no desire to ever return to them.
A shadow slipped through the light streaming beneath his office door. He waited for a knock. It was late. Too late for clients.
The figure of a woman was silhouetted. Kelsey, he realized, pleasantly surprised. Then with a burst of insight, he knew something had happened to Jesse.
Samuel leapt to his feet as the door swung inward. Kelsey, her hair coming unbound from its bun and tangling in an unruly and totally bewitching mass, stepped inside. “Samuel,” she said in relief, coming straight toward him.
He gathered her in his arms. “It’s Jesse, isn’t it? What’s wrong? Where is he?”
She flinched at each question, then drew herself away from him, inhaling a long, trembling breath.
“He left without a word last night. Well, not exactly without a word,” she amended hastily. “But he left.”
The blush that pinkened Kelsey’s neck and traveled to her cheeks made Samuel wonder what exactly had transpired between her and Jesse. “I suspect I’m pointing out the obvious, but Jesse does disappear occasionally.”
“He was very angry with me, but this situation isn’t—usual.” Kelsey moved stiffly across the room.
“What’s changed?”
She took so long in answering, Samuel almost rephrased the question. “Nothing’s changed,” she said finally. With a sound of frustration she raked back the tendrils of escaped hair, then yanked all her tresses from their confines and let the hair fall free in a shimmering red wave. “Oh, I don’t know. Samuel, something’s wrong! I can feel it. I made Jesse furious, but that’s hardly a headline. And anyway, I would have at least seen some trace of him by now. I went to Zeke’s, but Jesse missed an appointment with him. Even Montana stopped by the house to return some signed papers and Jesse didn’t show up to look at them.”
“That’s odd.” Samuel frowned.
“And Jesse and I crossed a threshold last night,” Kelsey admitted obliquely. “He wouldn’t just run out on me now. There are too many unsolved problems. He said he’s close to finishing his deal with Montana. As soon as that’s done, he’ll give me my divorce.”
“Last night it was an annulment,” Samuel pointed out.
Kelsey stopped short, her lips parting in dismay as she realized what she’d given away. “I—I just want the marriage to end,” she said, swallowing.
“How does Jesse feel about this?”
“He wants to be free as much as I do,” Kelsey answered vehemently. “He’s just unwilling to let me have my way.”
Samuel had his own doubts about that. Though Jesse refused to talk to him about his feelings for Kelsey, Samuel had a pretty fair idea that his brother was unwilling to let her go for entirely different reasons. Maybe reasons he hadn’t yet realized himself.
But telling Kelsey that would be throwing oil on the fire. Besides, there was a more immediate, troubling issue at stake. “Where would Jesse have gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“What kind of mood was he in?”
“Angry. Very angry.”
“At you?”
Kelsey nodded.
“Why?” Samuel asked bluntly.
“Because… I… because he purposely made it impossible for me to have an annulment and I… slapped him.” Her cheeks flamed. “I would have shot him if I could have gotten my hands on my gun,” she added quickly, as if that were more acceptable behavior. “But as it was, I just hauled off and hit him.”
“Are you saying he forced you?” Samuel asked quietly.
“Oh, good heavens, no!” Kelsey’s mobile face was earnest. “Oh, no. I’m saying he’s absolutely impossible, and half the time I want to murder him with my bare hands!”
“And the other half?” Samuel asked with a half grin.
“I’d like to murder him with a bullet.”
A lightness filled Samuel’s dark soul. Jesse and Kelsey helped make him forget. “Let’s go find Jesse,” he suggested, snagging his coat from the brass stand by the door. “And then you can kill him.”
¤ ¤ ¤
It was three A.M. by the time Samuel, with Kelsey tightly gripped beside him, entered the shadowy environs of a place called Briny’s. Briny was the word for it, Kelsey thought, wrinkling her nose at the dank, fish-rotting smell that seemed to seep through the cracks in clouds off the nearby Willamette River.
Conversations stopped and dozens of pairs of eyes stared at Kelsey as if they’d never seen a woman before. She held her reticule tightly, wondering if she should remove her derringer right now and establish herself.
Samuel, however, smoothed over the moment. “Yes, it’s a woman, and no, she’s not interested in anything but finding her husband.”
“Husband?” a voice snorted from the rear. “Whoever he is, he ain’t here!”
A chorus of male voices agreed.
“His name’s Jesse Danner,” Kelsey said
coolly. “We were married about two months ago.” Her face reddening with humiliation, she added, “I believe he spent our wedding night with a woman called Mamie.”
“No, it were Patricia Lee!” a drunken man hollered from the back.
“You know him?” Kelsey turned swiftly to the man who’d spoken.
Silence.
“This isn’t just a case of a scorned wife searching for her errant husband,” Samuel said dryly. “Jesse’s been missing for about a day and we’re afraid he may have run into trouble.”
“I don’t know his name,” the man behind the bar said, wiping his hands on a towel thrown over his shoulder. “Called hisself Mr. Duped.”
“Mr.—Duped?” Kelsey asked, disheartened. This couldn’t be Jesse.
“Said he’d been duped into marriage. He’s been here a time or two. Was here last night for a while.”
“And?” Samuel asked, interested.
Kelsey shot him a glance. “You don’t think this is Jesse, do you?”
“And he left with the cap’n, and he ain’t come back,” the man continued. “Neither’s a few others.”
“The captain?” Samuel asked with dread.
“The captain?” Kelsey repeated, her mind jumping ahead to the same horrible conclusions Samuel had drawn. “Captain of a ship?”
“Aye,” a voice murmured mournfully from the shadows.
“You think he may have been shanghaied?” Samuel asked in a quiet, deadly voice that made Kelsey shiver.
More silence. Uneasy silence.
It was common, if unspoken knowledge that men and boys and women sometimes disappeared without a trace, kidnapped and taken to ships bound for the Orient. The unlucky were used for slave labor, then tossed overboard into the vast Pacific when the ship neared its destination. No one was left alive who could plead for help. It was easier to simply snatch someone else off the waterfront when the ship docked in Portland again.
The bartender flicked the bar with his towel, his expression gloomy. “That particular captain don’t come off his ship unless he’s got hisself a reason.”
“Damn it all,” Samuel breathed.
“Which ship?” Kelsey asked. “Is she still docked?”
“Don’t know.”
“Which ship?” Kelsey ground out through her teeth.
“The Lady Leanna,” the mournful voice from the back of the room answered. “Cap’n Randolph’s the man yer want to see…”
¤ ¤ ¤
The hot August wind felt cooler, almost chilly, at the edge of the river. The Lady Leanna was berthed next to a darkened ship that was the last on the pier. Beyond them was a slow-moving blackness, the southward-flowing Willamette. Stars hung low in the sky, nearly touching the water, and a strip of moonlight shivered and swirled, lighting the end of the Lady Leanna’s deck.
“Stay here,” Samuel ordered softly.
Kelsey watched the yellow glow from the portholes below deck. Lantern light moved eerily across the water with the sway of the ship. “No.”
“This isn’t Rock Springs,” he said through his teeth. “Do you know what they’d do to a woman?”
Kelsey eyed Jesse’s brother squarely. “I’m not afraid.”
“Foolhardy is closer to the truth,” he muttered, beginning to realize why Jesse found Kelsey so aggravating.
“If Jesse’s on board that ship, I’m going to help rescue him.”
“The hell you are.” Samuel stripped off his suit jacket and tie and rolled up his sleeves. Kelsey withdrew her derringer and checked the chamber. “You’re not going on board,” he told her.
“You’ll have to try to stop me then.”
“Kelsey…” Samuel laid his hands on her shoulders. “I need someone to stand guard. In case something should happen and I can’t get off the ship, you’ve got to run for help.”
“Then you stay here and—”
“No.” His voice was implacable.
“Why aren’t you afraid for me here?” she argued, glancing over her shoulder to the shadows and figures moving around the crates and boxes lining the docks. “Something could just as easily happen to me here as on the ship.”
“Unlike my hotheaded brother who can’t seem to remember the Kelsey from Rock Springs, I know just what kind of excellent shot you are.” He gave her a light shake, smiling. “I wouldn’t like to try my trigger hand against yours. I tried to tell Jesse the same one evening, but he’s too pigheaded to listen.”
“Since I’m such a crack shot, it makes sense that I should be the one to save my husband from whatever mishap he’s gotten himself into.”
“We could argue all night and it wouldn’t solve anything.” Samuel strode toward the gangway and the burly sentinel who was on watch. “Stay put.” His voice drifted softly back through the velvety darkness.
“He’s probably not even on board,” Kelsey grumbled, wishing she’d brought her rifle. Sighing, she glanced again at the uncertain golden lantern light shimmering from the portholes, decorating the water like a row of littering topaz gems. Where are you? she asked Jesse silently, wondering if he hadn’t fooled them all and was at this very moment bedding down with Mamie, or Lila, or any other willing woman, knowing in her heart that that just wasn’t so. Womanizing rake that Jesse was, his main motivation was revenge on Montana Gray, and his plan would have been finished by now if Jesse had been home this afternoon.
No, something had happened to him. Something terrible.
¤ ¤ ¤
The metallic taste of blood filled Jesse’s mouth. He lay perfectly still on the narrow bunk, his hands tied behind his back, his wrists numb. Stupidity had brought him to his current fate. His wits were all that would save him.
His head was clear. Pain had a nasty way of sharpening every sense. At least it kept him awake. One should be thankful for small favors, he thought grimly.
He opened one eye to squint narrowly at Captain Randolph, a huge blond-haired man with the strong, wide chest of a sailor and arms thick from the pulling and lashing of ropes. Randolph was conferring with his first mate. It seemed to Jesse that they couldn’t decide what to do with him. They kept turning to stare at him. He was not their usual type of victim, if you counted the other Briny patrons who’d been unwillingly recruited for the Lady Leanna’s next voyage. The other men looked like lost souls, but Jesse didn’t fit the mold. Clearly Randolph and his first mate were concerned about him, concerned about what kind of hornet’s nest his disappearance might stir up.
He’d never thought the trappings of wealth would suit his purposes on the docks, but it was clear his expensive clothes had them wondering about him. It gave him a few extra minutes to think. And for them to think about him.
The first mate held a towel to his mouth, courtesy of Jesse Danner’s right fist. Two of the man’s half-rotten teeth had given in one easy blow. Jesse had fared better. His jaw ached miserably, but his teeth had proved to be strong as a horse’s once again.
There was a third man on the floor, unconscious. Jesse had aimed two well-placed kicks at him before the first mate had subdued him; the first to the groin, the second to his head. Unfortunately that’s when Randolph had reappeared and thrown Jesse onto the bunk as easily as if he were a sack of potatoes. The good news was that they hadn’t tied his ankles. Feigning unconsciousness, Jesse had managed to listen to their conversation while they ignored him—and the hapless man lying on the floor—but he had yet to come up with some plan of escape.
Jesse sighed inwardly, berating himself harshly for falling into this trap. He’d been too angry with Kelsey to think straight. The way she’d delivered that slap had brought back unpleasant memories of Lila and the beating she’d caused him. And it had also brought back memories of Emerald, and her wicked taunting ways. Of course it could hardly matter now, he reminded himself with furious self-honesty. He’d certainly fared a lot worse at the hands of Randolph and his crew. He just hadn’t expected it from Kelsey, and it had wounded him in a way he couldn’t truly fathom.
When Randolph had entered Briny’s Bar Jesse had been too immersed in his own problems to bother to look around and discover why the place had suddenly grown silent as a corpse. And even the resultant scuffle of bodies out the front door had only mildly interested him. He’d only forsaken his drink and painful reflections when he’d heard the sound of a blow.
And then he’d made the fatal mistake of asking Randolph what the hell the captain thought he was doing by choosing these derelict specimens of humanity to crew his ship. He’d capped that announcement with another: “You’ll be lucky to make it to the Columbia River without running aground. Can’t you even find a decent sailor to shanghai?”
The captain’s answer had been swift and silent. Jesse had caught a brief look at a wooden stick that looked something like a billy club before the instrument crashed against his skull, dazing him and bringing him to this current state.
Stupidity. Jesus, he probably deserved this.
Randolph strode up to the bunk, his knees at Jesse’s eye-level. He slammed a hammy fist against Jesse’s shoulder, trying to wake him. Pain exploded through every sinew. Jesse fought to keep his eyes closed but couldn’t prevent a groan of pain.
“He’s out,” the captain said, satisfied, jabbing Jesse once more for good measure.
“Kill ‘im,” the first mate garbled fiercely through the cloth pressed to his mouth.
“Later.” Randolph was unconcerned as he headed for the steps to the deck. “Make sure he stays like that.”
“I’ll smash ‘im over the head with the lamp!” Lifting a lantern, the first mate hefted it toward the narrow ceiling.
“Cap’n!” a voice hailed from above. “Someone’s here!”
Randolph’s bootsteps clamored up the steps. Before he’d topped the deck stairs, Jesse thrust himself off the bunk and rolled across the floor. The lantern crashed inches from his head. He hit the first mate’s legs and knocked him off balance. The man yelped in surprise and fell on Jesse, hard. Stunned, Jesse couldn’t breathe for a moment. He wondered if his ribs were cracked.
