Kissing Comfort

by Jo Goodman

  “You don’t have to move,” she said.

  “I don’t think I can.” Even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t accurate. He didn’t want to move, and for the moment he appreciated the difference. “What did you do to me?”

  “I can’t properly pronounce it, but you can inquire of almost any Chinaman and he will be able to tell you. Not every Chinaman can do it, though, so you should be careful not to let just anyone make the walk.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Comfort looked around the wing chair to the clock. “I should go. You’ve had your fill of company, I think, and I prefer to be elsewhere when your mother and Bram return home.”

  “Why? There’s nothing improper about you paying a sick call.” Now he opened his eye and gave her an inquiring look. “Unless, that is, you mean to tell them how you came to be here.”

  “I don’t believe I’ll mention it, although Mr. Hitchens might say something. Before I understood what was going on, I told him I’d been invited by Mrs. DeLong.”

  “Let me deal with Hitchens.”

  Bode would have to, Comfort thought. She certainly had no intention of doing it. She got to her feet.

  “Stay,” he said.

  “I’m quite certain I’m expected at home soon. And I walked, Mr. DeLong, so I have to account for the time it will take to walk back.”

  “I’ll arrange for a carriage.”

  “You’re treading dangerously close to petulance.”

  Was he? Probably. “Are you always so forthright?”

  “No. No one is any one thing always.”

  Bode got his hands under his shoulders and pushed himself up. He drew in his knees and then sprang from that position to his full height. All of it was accomplished without the slightest twinge of pain. “Amazing,” he said under his breath. Even more softly, he said, “Witch.”

  Comfort was already at the foot of the bed retrieving her jacket from the chest. She pretended she hadn’t heard. The characterization did not displease her, though, and she suspected that was because she’d had her fill recently of being called sensible.

  Bode came up beside her and held out his hand for her jacket. She gave it to him and turned so he could help her into it.

  “Thank you,” she said, her hands gliding over the buttons. “I can manage the rest.” When he didn’t step back, she slipped sideways, taking her gloves and bonnet with her. She couldn’t have said what made her uncomfortable. She was fine . . . until she wasn’t. “Good day, Mr. DeLong.”

  He smiled narrowly at her. “You’ve called me Bode before.”

  She had, but she couldn’t remember why. She didn’t want to call him Bode now. Comfort inclined her head politely. “Good day.”

  Bode didn’t reply. He watched as she secured her bonnet, wondering if she would be clumsy with the ribbons. She wasn’t. She did equally well with her gloves, pulling them on smoothly and managing the buttons with the deft precision of one who did not always wait for the assistance of a maid. He grabbed his waistcoat as they passed the chaise and put it on while he escorted her to the door.

  “You don’t have to see me out. I know the way.”

  “I realize that, but I’d like to test the limits of that correction you made to my back.”

  “Unless you throw yourself off the landing, or try to somersault down the stairs, you’ll be fine.” She shrugged when he kept pace with her. “But please yourself.”

  Bode gave Comfort the banister side of the staircase. There wasn’t a step that he took that made him want to reach for her or reach around her for support. He was almost sorry for that. Almost.

  Hitchens came hurrying into the entrance hall when Bode and Comfort arrived. Bode waved him off. “It’s all right, Mr. Hitchens. I’m walking Miss Kennedy out.”

  “But your frock coat . . . your back . . .” He frowned more deeply. “Your hat.”

  “I can’t tell if your concern is for my health or my wardrobe.” Beside him, he heard Comfort laugh softly. “It’s fine,” he told the butler. “I’m only going as far as the street.”

  Comfort opened the door before Hitchens decided to throw himself across it and bar their exit. She slipped out, Bode right behind her. “I don’t think he’d have let you leave if you hadn’t already put on your vest.”

  “Probably not. He’s fussy.” He caught her quicksilver smile. “What is it?”

  “Bram says something similar about you.”

  “Really?”

  “Fastidious is what he said.” Clearly, Comfort saw, it was a word Bode had never applied to himself. “Maybe he meant it in the sense that you are particular and difficult to please.” She saw he wasn’t bothered at all by that description. It made her wonder again about his reluctance to remove his shoes.

  When they reached the street, Bode hung back. “You’ll be careful?”

  “I always am.”

  “No one is any one thing always.”

  Comfort didn’t miss his gently mocking tone or her own words coming back at her. “I’ve heard that also.” She pointed across the street to where a young Chinese girl appeared suddenly from the shadowed, narrow passage between two great houses. She carried a basket over her arm and wore a dou lì, the traditional conical straw hat, on her head. Her long queue had fallen over her right shoulder and lay like a rope of black silk against her white tunic. “That’s Suey Tsin. She’s been waiting for me.”

  “What, there? All this time?”

  “I’m afraid so, but that was her choice. She didn’t accompany me here. She followed. She disagreed with my decision to walk rather than take a carriage.”

  “You could have asked Hitchens to show her to the servants’ entrance. She could have waited for you in the kitchen.” He was aware that Comfort was regarding him oddly. “What?” he asked.

  “Let me say only that she wouldn’t have been welcome and leave it at that.” She waved to Suey Tsin. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Mr. DeLong. I wish you well.” With that, she stepped off the curb and began walking across the street to where Suey Tsin waited for her.

  The Jones Prescott Bank was located on Powell Street in the block between Post and Sutter. The bank had an imposing granite front, but the rest of the building was brick construction, most of it salvaged from structures that had collapsed in the tremblers that plagued the city. If one examined the bricks closely, there was charred evidence that fire often followed the quakes. Still, from any side, the bank looked impressively solid, which was exactly how Newton Prescott and Tucker Jones wanted it to be seen. Their last names were chiseled deep into the frieze above the doorway, the order having been decided eighteen years earlier, not alphabetically, but by the flip of a coin.

  Bram DeLong strolled into the bank on Monday morning and waited his turn at one of the teller cages to inquire after Comfort. He knew she had an office on the second floor, but he had never visited her there. In fact, he’d only been to Jones Prescott on two previous occasions, one time to seek a loan that would not come to the attention of his mother or his brother, and the second time to repay it. He couldn’t depend on Mr. Bancroft at Croft Federal to keep the transaction confidential, and it was only prudent that Alexandra not learn the extent of his gambling debts.

  Bram dealt exclusively with Tucker Jones, not only repaying the loan, but all of the interest. His mistake had been to pay the loan back immediately after his luck turned at the tables. He knew the quick repayment had confirmed Tucker’s suspicions that the loan was for gambling debts, not to buy into a railroad venture. The next time Bram needed funds, he applied for them at Wells Fargo.

  Bram passed one large empty office with two desks turned to face each other. It was the office where he’d sat with Tucker Jones to discuss his loan, but he felt safe in assuming that it was the one that Tucker shared with his partner. He passed several other rooms, all closed off, that he thought were probably for files and general storage.

  He found Comfort’s office at the end of the hall. Her d
oor was open, as were both windows. A light breeze ruffled tendrils of hair that had the good sense to escape the chignon at the back of her head. That nest of hair, Bram noticed, appeared to be held in place by a tortoiseshell comb and two pencils. There were several documents fanned out in front of her, one held down by the corner piece of a charred brick, another by the weight of a book, and in one case, by an actual crystal paperweight. She looked over the reports—and even from where he stood, Bram could see they were boring—while twirling a pencil against her lips and occasionally nibbling it like a dainty beaver.

  She was so entirely engrossed in what she was doing, he realized she had no idea that he was standing just some eight feet away.

  “I can’t say that I enjoy being so completely irrelevant.”

  Comfort gave a start. She fumbled with the pencil at her lips so clumsily that she nearly poked herself with it.

  “Careful,” said Bram. “If you do injury to your eye, you’ll only be good as a bookend with Bode.”

  “Lord, but you scared me.” She tossed the pencil away from her and sat back in her chair. Her expression remained startled. “Where did you come from?”

  “Downstairs. I spoke to one of the tellers. That was all right, wasn’t it? I mean, you do occasionally take visitors in the inner sanctum.”

  She laughed at the drama and mystery he infused into “inner sanctum.” “Occasionally. But this is a first for you.”

  “It is.” He looked around. Besides the desk there were two plain wooden chairs, three file drawers, and a small table littered with more detritus of her work. The back wall held her framed diploma from Oberlin, and between the windows there was a watercolor of a Pacific coast sunset. He lifted his chin toward it. “Is that your work? I didn’t know you had any talent for painting.”

  “That’s because I don’t. And if I did, I still wouldn’t display it here. Uncle Newt painted that. He gave it to me before he left me at Oberlin. There was never the slightest chance that I wouldn’t come back to San Francisco, but Newt is convinced his painting had something to do with my return.” She smiled slyly as she swiveled in her chair. “Uncle Tuck’s threats were equally unnecessary.”

  “Did I ever write that I thought about staying in Boston?”

  “No. Never.” She would have remembered because it would have broken her heart. “Did you consider it seriously?”

  He turned a charming and falsely modest grin on her. “Now, Comfort, what sort of question is that?”

  “A serious one.”

  “And?”

  “And you don’t answer those.”

  “That’s right.”

  She just shook her head, amused, but perhaps not as amused as she would have been before he announced their engagement. “What are you doing here? That’s not too serious a question, is it?”

  “No. I’m here to suggest that you accompany me to the opera house next Tuesday. It’s the opening of Rigoletto, and I have it on good authority that no expense was spared in the production.”

  “Which opera dancer told you so?”

  “Amusing, but you’re wrong. It was one of my mother’s friends. Newland Jefferson. He’s one of the producers.”

  “I know Mr. Jefferson.” She considered what it would be like to sit beside Bram in his family’s box for the length of Rigoletto and be the recipient of envious, covert stares and hushed asides. Attending the event would make their engagement more real to the public. “Will your mother be there?”

  “Yes. A proper affair, with chaperone.”

  “I do like the opera,” she said wistfully.

  “I know. And your uncles hate it.”

  That decided her. “All right, but if this is the beginning of your campaign to extend our engagement beyond eight weeks, I feel compelled to remind you it won’t work.”

  “It’s one evening, Comfort.”

  That was true, she thought, but he was already grinning like he’d pulled a gold nugget out of a claim he’d just staked. Before she could think better of her answer, he was pivoting on his heel and heading back down the hall. She thought he might be whistling.

  Shaking her head and smiling softly to herself, Comfort picked up her tooth-marked pencil and returned to reading. She’d just found her place when her chair listed sideways and the floor rumbled under her. She dropped the pencil and grabbed the lip of the desk to steady her. She held on until the thump and crash coming from the direction of the stairwell shot her to her feet.

  Chapter Four

  Comfort could see that Bram was in a bad way before she reached him. He lay at the bottom of the steps with his left leg turned out at an unnatural angle. Grasping the banister in the event another trembler made her lose her footing in the same way this one had done to Bram, she hurried down the stairs to his side.

  There was a low buzzing beyond the stairwell, as though someone had thrust a stick into a beehive and disturbed the industry and order of the inhabitants. Comfort doubted anyone else had heard Bram fall. She knelt beside him just long enough to determine if he was conscious. He wasn’t, but his chest rose and fell steadily, and when she glanced at his broken leg, she thought unconsciousness might be a blessing.

  Running her fingers over his scalp, she felt a tender spot at the back of his head. She had imagined what it would be like to tidy Bram’s ruffled and unruly thatch of sunshine yellow hair, but the circumstances in her mind’s eye had been significantly different. Comfort snorted softly, impatient with herself for raising that silly, girlish memory.

  She placed a hand on Bram’s shoulder and spoke as if he could hear her. “I’m getting help, Bram. I won’t be long.” Standing, she grasped the door handle. The door to the lobby opened into the narrow stairwell, and there was little room for her to maneuver without disturbing Bram. She inched the door open, nudging aside one of his outstretched arms with the toe of her boot, and slipped sideways through the opening as soon as she judged it was wide enough.

  There were no obvious signs of damage to the bank lobby that Comfort could see at a glance. Five patrons were milling around the open doorway, chatting among themselves while they observed activity in the street. The three tellers on duty were still at their posts, but no longer making transactions. Newt and Tucker had put certain procedures in place in the event of shakers, and the tellers had evidently followed them. The reinforced door that led to the bank’s Boorstein & Durham safe was closed, and the cash drawers in the cages were locked. Once thirty minutes passed without an afterquake, the tellers would open for business.

  She hurried over to the cages and joined the men’s huddle. They ended their hushed conversation abruptly, and Mr. Tweedy, head teller these last five years and with the bank for more than eight, regarded Comfort over the top of his gold-rimmed spectacles.

  “I was just saying how I was going to go up and see to your welfare since you didn’t come down straightaway,” he told her. “Are you all right? It was only a little quake, but rules is rules.”

  “I know, Mr. Tweedy, and I’m perfectly fine. Mr. DeLong, however, is lying unconscious in the stairwell. I’m certain his leg is broken. I need one of you to summon a doctor and another to go to the Black Crowne Shipping Office and inform Mr. DeLong’s brother. If he’s not there, you’ll have to go to the warehouse.”

  Mr. Appleby was quick to volunteer to find a doctor. No one in their small group doubted it was because he wanted the easier of the two assignments. “Dr. Winter was at my cage not twenty minutes ago. If he was on his way home, I bet I can catch him.”

  Comfort wanted more certainty from their newest teller. “You will find him, Mr. Appleby, whether or not he’s on his way home, and you will bring him here even if you have to sling him over your shoulder. You understand?”

  Appleby’s jug ears reddened at the tips, but he straightened and pulled his narrow shoulders back, meaning to show that he had the strength to do it. “I won’t be long.” He ducked out of the huddle before Comfort could change her mind about letting him go.<
br />
  “Mr. Tweedy? Mr. Harte?” Comfort looked from one man to the other and saw only reluctance in their features. “Well, I will go then.” When the men made what was obviously a perfunctory objection, she merely raised an eyebrow. “I appreciate your reluctance, and I’m not going to insist you do something that I am not willing to do, so one of you will remain at Bram’s side, and one of you will manage the bank until my uncles return from the exchange.”

  Mr. Tweedy shook his head. “You can’t go, Miss Kennedy. It’s not safe even in daylight for you to venture into the Barbary Coast.”

  “It’s only eleven o’clock, Mr. Tweedy. The sots and sailors are either sleeping or still passed out. Most of gambling houses are just opening their doors. Even the Rangers are resting after a long night of brawling and thieving. That little quake wasn’t enough to make them leave their whores.” She watched Mr. Tweedy blink so owlishly that the effect was comical. It was a good indicator of her frustration that she didn’t laugh. “There. I’ve shocked you. If you don’t report my language to my uncles, I won’t mention that I gave you and Mr. Harte an opportunity to go to Crowne Shipping in my place.” She turned on her heel and offered one last piece of advice over her shoulder. “You’d do well to make sure Mr. Appleby doesn’t give you up.”

  Comfort crossed half the lobby before Mr. Tweedy caught her. “I’ll go,” he said, holding up his hat to prove that he was prepared. “The warehouse only abuts the Coast, doesn’t it? And the Crowne Office is a few blocks from there. I can go around.”

  “Go whichever way you like,” she said, out of patience. “Just go.” Turning away, she thought she should probably feel guilty for shaming him into it but couldn’t find that emotion for all the worry covering it. She caught Mr. Harte’s eye as he was heading toward the stairwell and directed him back to the cages with a jerk of her head.

  Comfort slipped into the dim stairwell and turned up the gaslight to better evaluate Bram’s condition. Stooping, she touched his shoulder and tapped it gently. “Bram? Bram, can you hear me?”