by Jenn Bennett
“‘Manager’s Office,’” Mr. Magnusson read from gold-stenciled wood. They walked farther. “Ah, here are the compartments.” Occupied, occupied, occupied. The last compartment door slid open, and out stepped a gangly young man in a railway uniform. He couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen.
“Pardon me, sir,” he said, dropping his eyes as he stepped back into the stateroom to allow them room to pass.
“This one’s not occupied?” Mr. Magnusson asked.
“Not at the moment, sir.”
Mr. Magnusson flashed the porter a train ticket. “We were on the 127, my sister and I,” he said, motioning to include her. “They switched us to this train in Salt Lake City. My sister’s husband . . . well, there’s no sense in mincing words. The man’s a mean drunk, and he was threatening her, you see. And she’s got a bun in the oven. A bad situation.”
Hadley’s mouth fell open.
The porter looked as confused as she felt. “Yes, sir.”
“So they were kind enough to move us,” Magnusson continued. “They told us to come aboard, and that the ticket office manager would bring us the new tickets while they called the police—you know, to detain her husband. For her protection.”
“Oh, my,” the porter said, leaning to get a better look at her.
“Only, the train left the station, and the manager never came. So now our luggage is on the 127, and we’re stuck here without a stateroom assignment.”
“No one informed me,” the porter said.
“It happened so fast,” Magnusson replied, shaking his head. “Her lousy husband had a revolver—can you imagine? Pointing a gun at a woman carrying his own child.”
“Ma’am,” the boy said with sympathy.
Hadley responded with a strangled noise.
“Now, now,” Magnusson said, patting her shoulder. “Buck up, old gal. I know you say he only drinks when he’s overworked, but this can’t go on. Daddy will hire you a lawyer. It’s just not safe. You have to think of your child, now.”
“A crying shame,” the porter mumbled.
“Amen,” Magnusson agreed. “Do you think this is the stateroom they had in mind for us?”
“This one? It’s been booked by a party scheduled to board in Nevada.”
“Oh.” Magnusson’s face fell. He turned sad eyes on Hadley. “I know this is upsetting, and you’re exhausted and terrified. I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve already endured so much with you tonight . . . dear brother,” she replied dryly.
The porter cleared his throat. “I suppose the couple who booked the compartment haven’t been through your difficulties. I can put them in an open coach berth, if the two of you don’t mind sharing this compartment.”
Hadley didn’t like the sound of that, not one bit, but her protest was buried under Mr. Magnusson’s overdramatic sentiment.
“Oh, that would be wonderful. Just wonderful,” he said, flashing the porter a grateful smile as he enthusiastically pumped the man’s hand. “We’re both grateful.” He fumbled in his wallet and gave the boy a five-dollar bill. “Do you think you could do us one last favor and bring a pot of coffee and some sandwiches?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hot tea for me, please,” she added. If they were doing this, she might as well have what she wanted.
“Yes, ma’am. Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back,” the porter said, allowing them entry as he flicked the sign on the door to read OCCUPIED.
Hadley silenced her tongue and followed Mr. Magnusson inside the cramped stateroom. A small door led to a private toilet and shower on the right, and the parlor lay to the left: two cushioned seats faced each other in front of a wide picture window, capped by two pulldown sleeping berths above.
Mr. Magnusson pulled off his satchel and, along with his coat, hung his things on a hook. Then he ducked beneath the berth to plop down on one of the seats. His long body took up too much room. His shins brushed the edge of the facing seat.
“First class,” he murmured on a sigh. “I think the public berths on the 127 were stuffed with hay.”
Why on earth anyone with a bootlegging brother was riding coach was beyond her, but Hadley didn’t care to find out. As she unwound the handbag chain looped over her wrist, she addressed her bigger gripe. “First you’re on the health committee of the League, and now you’re a heroic brother to a pregnant hussy—”
“Not a hussy. I said you were married.”
“Is this what you do? Lie your way out of every situation you encounter?”
“I prefer to think of it as inventing a character. Acting.”
“Acting,” she repeated, hanging her handbag on the hook next to his satchel. She started to remove her coat, but remembered the rip in her dress. She wasn’t the only one; a slow smile crept over Magnusson’s face. She tightened the coat and perched on the facing seat. “Why wasn’t the truth good enough?”
“You mean, I should’ve told him that I’m an archaeologist who found a piece of a mythical artifact purported to open a door to the land of the dead—and two hired thugs were shooting at us to get it, so we jumped the train like hobos?”
She crossed her legs. “You, sir, aren’t an archaeologist. You’re an entrepreneur.”
“I have a degree.”
“And I have two.”
He casually kicked up his feet on the seat next to her, one ankle crossing its mate. “But no fieldwork.”
“Not for lack of wanting, but kudos for making me feel small.”
His face pinched as if she’d slapped him. But only for a moment before blankness settled over his features. He stretched his neck, loosening muscles. “You said you wanted honesty.” With his head lolling on the seat back, he rested his hands on his chest and closed his eyes. “If you’d like me to tiptoe around your feminine feelings, I’m happy to do so.”
“I want to be treated like a man.”
He glanced at her from under squinting eyelids, one brow cocked.
“I mean to say, I want to be given the same directness you’d offer a trusted colleague. I am your equal. Speak frankly to me, or not at all.” A quick anger flared inside her chest. She stared out the window, looking past her own tense reflection to the rolling black landscape.
One, two, three . . .
“All right, then,” he said after a few moments. “If you were a man, and we were colleagues, the first thing I’d do is drop the formal address.”
She hesitated. “Thank you . . . Lowe.”
“You’re welcome, Hadley.” He smiled before closing his eyes.
They sat in silence. Perhaps she’d misjudged him. Now that she had time to think about the evening’s events, she supposed some of his actions might have been well intentioned. He’d pushed her out of the first gunman’s path and defended them with the knife. He’d also shielded her from the broken glass in the first train car, not knowing she’d been the cause of it. And now that they were settled, she could admit that she’d rather be here than taking her chances back at the station.
“You know, now that I’m thinking about it,” he said with his eyes still closed, “if we were trusted male colleagues on a first-name basis with each other, I’d probably be bragging about how I just got a peek at a bea-u-tiful ass and nice pair of legs, and what a shame it was that the strange woman who curates mummified corpses in the antiquities wing of the de Young Museum dresses like an old maid.”
The nerve.
“And I’d tell you that she dresses that way so that the men she works with treat her with respect, not as the privileged daughter of Archibald Bacall.”
His voice softened. “Then I’d tell her that she shouldn’t change herself to please anyone, and her coworkers are probably overeducated Stanford graduates with no real-world field experience, so who the hell cares what they think, anyway?”
&nb
sp; “I’m a Stanford graduate.”
A knock at the door halted whatever smart retort he was planning on releasing into the wild. The porter entered with a tray. Mr. Magnusson had the decency to remove his feet from her cushion so that a folding table could be erected between them. After piling the table with silver pots of steaming coffee and tea, a covered plate of sandwiches, and two table settings, the porter gave her a pity-filled look and left them alone.
“You’re eating for two,” Lowe said lightly, tugging a pair of thin, brown leather gloves off. When he laid them down, she noticed a strange alteration on the left glove. “So I’ll leave you all the ones with . . . What is this? Olive spread? I think there might be chopped walnuts in here. No-o-o, thank you.”
Left glove, left hand. By God, he was missing his pinky finger. Completely gone, all the way to the knuckle. His skin was discolored there. Stitches had left scars where the missing finger had been sewn up.
“Want a closer look?”
She glanced up, mildly embarrassed for staring. “Looks fairly recent. How did it happen?”
“Lost it in Alexandria.” He made a chopping gesture. “Never steal a Muslim’s woman.”
A woman? Surprise faded into disbelief. Did he take her for an idiot? “Sharia law concerning amputation as punishment is for thieves. I believe what you are referring to would be considered adultery, punishable by stoning to death.”
He lifted the top piece of bread from another sandwich. “Maybe he didn’t like the woman all that much, so he gave me a warning.”
“You know what? I don’t even care why you lost it,” she said, doing her best to curb the desire to call up her specters again. Maybe they’d unlatch the berth above him and re-break that crooked nose of his. “No more of your silly stories. Show me the amulet.”
He stopped picking through the sandwiches. “Show me a check.”
“Money. Of course. My father said that would be your first concern.”
“It’s everyone’s first concern.”
“You’re wrong, and that’s the difference between us.”
“Oh, do enlighten me.”
“You’re a digger. I’m a scholar.”
“If people like me didn’t dig, what would you study? Mummified rats in the walls of your precious museum?”
They stared at each other through the whorls of steam rising from the coffeepot. She eventually gave in and dug out Father’s check from her handbag, placing it on her side of the table.
He brushed breadcrumbs off his hands before reaching for his satchel. Ah-ha! She’d guessed correctly. No chance he’d pack the object in a shipping crate after all the hullabaloo it had garnered in the press.
Moreover, she really did experience an inexplicable buzzing sensation when she’d walked into the train station. It wasn’t the first time she’d sensed power coming from an object. The museum contained a door from Newgate Prison that made her head swim whenever she got within a few feet of it, and her father had occasionally acquired things over the years that made her hair stand on end. An object’s power was like a perfume, recognized upon first scent, but fading into the background as one’s nose became accustomed to it.
Lowe took out a small bundle of suede cloth and opened it on the table. Inside sat an elongated golden figure, about six inches tall, two inches wide. Osiris, funerary god of the Egyptian afterlife. The atef crown sat atop his head, and the iconic crook and flail crossed his chest. The figure was one component of the mythical Thoth djed amulet. Osiris’s body was the base of a pillar. Missing were the four crossbars that stacked upon each other to create the top: a dark hole on the figure’s crown hinted where the missing pieces would attach.
She fished out a folding magnifying glass from her handbag and examined the piece more closely. The style was right. Telltale metallurgy markings showed at the side seams, and the gold bore a distinct reddish coloration that gold from Ancient Egypt often possessed. According to the National Geographic article, Lowe claimed to have found the piece in a flooded secret room of the main temple at Philae.
Her throat went dry.
“Can I see the other side?” she said, her voice a raspy whisper.
He flipped it over. The back was flat, embossed by a series of hieroglyphs and unrecognizable symbols that abruptly cut off where the rest of the amulet’s crossbars would attach. Was she really looking at magical symbols from the mythical Book of Thoth? God, it was thrilling to even allow herself a moment to believe it might be true.
If she was forced to validate the piece’s authenticity and give a blind assessment on the spot, her education and experience told her that the object very well could be 3,000 years old—a priceless artifact, and a beautiful example of Amarna Period goldwork. Now, whether it actually opened a door to some mythical underworld was unknown, but something powerful crackled beneath the surface.
“If it’s real, my father wants it,” she finally said.
“I can’t just hand it over to you right now,” he said, reclaiming the amulet. “I’ll need signatures, people present, that sort of thing. And you and your father will want the Egyptian documentation.”
“You have it?”
“My uncle does.”
Dear God. How thrilling.
Nothing mattered but this. All the insults he’d thrown her way were forgotten. Every strange feeling he’d dredged up inside her. Whatever she’d endured had been worth it to secure this arcane piece of history. The knowledge that it would also secure her the job promotion she so desperately wanted was, as they say, killing two birds.
She slid the check across the table. “Consider this a down payment. I want your word that you won’t sell it to someone else. My father will give you the remainder when you meet.”
“Gentlemen’s agreement.” He stuck out his hand—the one still flaunting all its digits—but shook his head when she offered hers in return. “No gloves. Like a man would.”
Skin to skin? Not even the promise of the amulet could make her give him that. She avoided touching in general and skin contact at all costs. Beyond a few brief kisses at petting parties in high school and the loss of her virginity in college, she didn’t remember the last time she’d touched someone with her bare hand on purpose.
Within the space of one afternoon, this walking vaudeville act of a man had already touched her several times: his palm against her back when he was walking with her inside the station lobby; running hand-in-hand with her to catch the train; intimately pressing himself against her torn skirt. So much touching!
She supposed it was nothing to him—some people had no boundaries, after all—but it was something to her. “A gentleman would keep his gloves on,” she insisted, thrusting her gloved hand forward.
“Fine. If you don’t want it to be binding. There are special Man Rules, you know. Spitting, secret handshakes.” Smiling a crooked smile, he took her hand.
His grip was firm and steady. Warm through the thin leather. Rational thought abandoned her until she realized they weren’t shaking. Why weren’t they shaking? A small noise vibrated from the back of his throat. Her gaze lifted to meet his.
Just like that, he’d captured her eyes above, and her hand below. His thumb swept over the tender skin of her wrist, grazing her pounding pulse. A whisper of a touch, barely there. Barely a touch at all, really—it might’ve even been accidental. But the tingles that rippled up her arm didn’t care about distinctions.
She tore her hand away from his, back to safety.
“Mr. Magnusson,” she said, hoping she sounded less frazzled than she felt. “It appears we have a deal.”
THREE
LOWE DIDN’T PLACE MUCH value on a gentlemen’s agreement. Any kind of agreement, really. Much like the rest of his family, he saw words like “law” and “binding” as boundaries to be pushed—loose suggestions, if you will. It made no difference if it was a hand
shake, committed to paper, or filed in a government office.
His agreement with Hadley was no different than a hundred others he’d given without intent to follow through, so he wasn’t sure why it made him . . . uncomfortable. Maybe it was her intense, too-serious personality that rattled him. Or the way she looked at him with those discerning, hawklike eyes of hers.
Or maybe it was because he actually felt guilty when she’d trusted his lying handshake against her better instincts. Why had she? Hadn’t he given her every reason not to trust him? He certainly didn’t trust her. The woman was too smart. Too rational. Too critical. He saw the wheels turning inside her Stanford-educated mind.
Which was why, while she made use of the compartment’s restroom, he tucked the amulet base beneath the pillow in his berth, as he’d done every night since he found the cursed thing. And like his previous nights spent on the train, he didn’t expect to get much sleep. So when he woke up the next morning, he was surprised to realize he’d slept the entire night. And she’d slept, too.
Oddly pleasant to see her stretched out on the opposite berth, still wearing her coat. Her sharp, long features softened when she slept. She was rather pretty. Strikingly so.
Regardless, he damn sure wasn’t selling the djed amulet to her father. If Bacall wanted it so badly, surely Lowe could find someone else to double the man’s offer. Pointless to think about, because even that wouldn’t be enough to cover his debt.
Big problems required creative solutions, and Lowe knew exactly what he was going to do to solve them. After he had a hot meal and a bath.
Talking shop with Hadley helped to pass time during the last leg of their journey. It was four in the afternoon when he finally stepped off the train onto the Twin Peaks station platform and breathed in San Francisco air. Home at last. Thank God.
