Corbin's Fancy

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Move aside, miss,” one of them ordered kindly, taking Fancy’s arm.

  “What the hell happened here?” rasped another.

  Fancy couldn’t answer. There were horses down, as well as people. Some of the animals were still screaming and one had a great, jagged piece of wood piercing its neck. She flinched as shots were fired, putting the injured beasts into a permanent and merciful sleep.

  The world seemed to spin around and around, then buckle up and down. Fancy’s knees gave way and she sank into a sleep of her own.

  When she awoke, Jeff was crouching on one side of her, Katherine Corbin on the other. “What—” she croaked.

  Katherine’s Corbin-blue eyes were bright with tears. “There was an explosion, Fancy. Amelie is dead.”

  Fancy remembered the heap of white fabric on the ground and began to shake her head. No, it was too horrible, it couldn’t happen, no. No!

  Smelling salts were passed under her nose, assaulting her senses, jolting her back to reality. Sick, Fancy tried to sit up, and would not have succeeded without help from Jeff.

  “Is anyone else—was anyone—”

  “Three people are dead, as far as we can tell,” Jeff broke in grimly. “A lot more are hurt. It’s a good thing Adam and Banner are here.”

  Fancy wavered, covering her face with both hands. She had to be strong like the others. She had to. No one had time to pamper her and, besides, she might be needed.

  She lowered her hands, drew a deep breath, and rose shakily to her feet. Amelie’s tiny, inert form was being lifted into a wagonbed. Keith scrambled in beside her, his face filthy and wet with tears.

  There was debris everywhere—even the church bell lay in the grass beneath the oak tree, silent now. Fancy forgot Jeff and stumbled toward Banner, who was removing a spear-sized splinter from a man’s shoulder.

  “H–How can I help?” she whispered.

  The man moaned and Banner did not look up from her work. “We need blankets,” she answered. “Tell these people that we need blankets and wagons.”

  Fancy found a man wearing a badge and a look of sick horror and relayed Banner’s message. The wagons came, in due course, and so did the blankets, and the wounded and dead were taken away.

  “I’ll take Fancy and Melissa home,” Katherine said, looking up into Jeff’s face, which was as stunned and ravaged as her own. “You go to Keith. He’ll need you.”

  Jeff nodded distractedly, kissed Fancy’s forehead, and went off to find a horse.

  Melissa was weeping softly and, as the three women walked toward a waiting wagon, Fancy slipped one arm around her sister-in-law’s waist in mute support.

  Eustis Ponder sat in the wagon seat, his wrinkled face wan. “Lord, Kate, I’m so sorry,” he said to Katherine, leaping down to offer her his hand.

  “You—you came to the wedding,” said Katherine, in a dazed voice. And despite her strength, she swayed a little.

  “We was late,” said Eustis, lifting Katherine up into the wagon seat. “Heard the blast, though.”

  Fancy and Melissa got into the bed of the wagon, which was littered with bits of straw and hay. “Where’s Isabella?” Fancy asked worriedly.

  “She went to Doc Haverson’s place, with Adam and his missus,” Eustis answered, taking the reins in his strong hands. “Isabella’s done some nursing in her time and they’re going to need help.”

  Fancy sat back against the side of the wagon and closed her eyes. All the same, she knew that the sun had passed behind a cloud and it would be a very long time before its warming light would shine on the Corbin family again.

  * * *

  Jeff was crying. It was a soft, hoarse sound, but it drew Fancy up out of her laudanum-induced sleep. She stretched out her hand to touch him in the darkness.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  The bed seemed to shake with the force of his grief, though he was clearly trying to suppress it.

  Fancy’s brain was fogged, but her heart was fully alert, feeling her husband’s pain, making it a part of her own. She drew Jeff into her arms and held him.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Temple,” he cursed, as though she had not spoken, sobbing the word.

  Fancy shivered. “What?”

  “Temple,” Jeff spat. “Temple killed my brother’s wife—those other people—”

  Sick horror washed over Fancy. She remembered the blast, the screams, the horses bleeding and keening on the ground. “Temple is far away,” she managed to utter. But she knew that she was wrong. She also knew that she had to tell Jeff the truth about that other explosion or die under the weight of the knowledge.

  She ran the fingers of one hand through Jeff’s rumpled hair in a tender motion, though she knew that there was no preparing him. “Temple was responsible for what happened on the Sea Mistress,” she said in a whispering rush. And then she stiffened, waiting for the inevitable storm.

  Jeff drew out of her arms slowly. “What?”

  “I heard him—heard him boasting about it that night. That’s when I ran away and that was why Temple was looking for me.”

  The silence was chilling.

  “I–I was afraid to tell you, Jeff—afraid you would blame me—”

  The covers on the bed were flung back and the briskness with which Jeff tore himself from her was sharply painful, like tearing away a bandage from a new wound. “Jesus—” he whispered, in the thick darkness.

  Fancy ached. She squeezed her eyes shut and tears trickled out anyway. “It wasn’t my fault, what Temple did.”

  He was far away from her. Only a few feet from the bed where she lay and yet beyond reaching or touching. “Thirteen men died that night, Fancy, and four more were crippled. I knew Temple was behind it, but there was no way I could prove it.”

  Fancy swallowed, unable to respond.

  “But your testimony would have been proof. He would have gone to prison—”

  She bolted upright, furious and full of pain. “I was a saloon singer!” she cried. “A magician! Who would have believed me?”

  “I would have. The marshal might have, too. It would have been a place to start, something to work with.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry,” he drawled, in cruel, marveling tones. “Sorry?”

  “Jeff, please—”

  Suddenly, he was grappling for his clothes, struggling into them. Everything was over, every dream was dashed, he was never going to forgive her for keeping silent. And could she ever forgive herself? If she had spoken up, Temple might not have had a chance to strike again. Amelie and the others might not be dead.

  * * *

  The next three days were the fiber of which nightmares are woven. Amelie’s funeral was held beneath the oak tree where she had been married, conducted by the same aging pastor. Keith watched in heart-wrenching silence as Adam, Jeff, Amelie’s father, and Eustis carried her coffin through the deep grass to the graveyard, where she would rest forever.

  More words were said over her then, hollow words, ancient words that held no comfort. And then the casket was lowered into the ground, and Keith whirled and strode away toward the river.

  A tendril of hair danced around Fancy’s face and she brushed it aside, watching him. She knew, as did the others, that it would not be a kindness to approach Keith now.

  But she could not help but see the way he lowered his head, the way his broad shoulders moved in meter with his grief. With a quick motion of his right hand, he unfastened the clerical collar at his throat and flung it into the river.

  Fancy bit her lower lip and turned away in despair. At another time, she might have sought Jeff out, drawn comfort from him, given comfort. But Jeff had not spoken to her or touched her since the day of the wedding, nor had he slept in their bed.

  “Fancy?” The small, anguished voice made her turn. Melissa was standing there, her face ravaged. “Oh, Fancy, it’s too terrible!” she sobbed out.

  Fancy held out her arms and Melis
sa flung herself into them, trembling. She wept as Melissa wept.

  “There, now,” Fancy said presently, sniffling. “Everything will be all right.”

  It was at that moment that she looked up and saw Jeff watching her with cold, skeptical eyes that seemed to say, “Will it?”

  Fancy met his gaze squarely; though he had wounded her, she would never let him know. When he walked away, she rested her cheek against the side of Melissa’s head and said again, “Everything will be all right.”

  She didn’t believe it for a minute.

  * * *

  Fancy stood in front of Hershel’s hutch, the one she and Jeff had built together the day they first made love. It was dark inside the barn, but she hadn’t bothered to light a lamp.

  With a trembling hand, she opened the hutch’s small, hinged door and reached inside. Hershel’s fur was soft and soothing to the touch. “Maybe we’ll go back into the magic business, you and I,” she said.

  The voice behind her made her start. “That’s where I saw you,” said Adam in tones of gruff revelation. “You were singing in Port Hastings aboard the Silver Shadow.”

  Fancy waited for her heart to flutter back down to its proper place in her chest before answering ruefully, “Fancy Jordan. She sings. She dances. She does magic.”

  Adam struck a match and a lantern flared to flickering brilliance. “Does she also plan to leave her husband?” he asked forthrightly.

  Fancy lowered her head. “It might be better—Jeff is so angry.”

  “Jeff needs you,” said Adam, coming closer, closing and latching Hershel’s cage.

  “Y–You don’t understand. I told him something that—”

  “I know what you told him,” Adam broke in, not unkindly. “You overheard Temple Royce boasting about blowing the Sea Mistress to hell and gone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jeff knew that Temple was behind that—we all did. He has another reason for being angry with you, Fancy.”

  Fancy could only stare up into her brother-in-law’s rugged, tension-ravaged face.

  Adam sighed and took her arm in a gentle hand. “Let’s sit down and talk,” he said.

  Fancy let him lead her to the very bale of hay where Jeff had done such lovely, wicked things to her on that day over a month before. She blushed at the memory but sat down, and Adam sat on another bale across from her.

  “Fancy, Jeff is using what happened in Port Hastings as an excuse to hold you at bay. If you’ll be patient with him, he’ll come around.”

  “Why would he want to do that?” whispered Fancy, truly mystified and just a bit hopeful, too.

  “What happened to Amelie was a shock to him, of course—it stunned all of us. But I think Jeff in particular was reminded that we’re all mortal. Any of us could die at any time. In short, I believe his reasoning is that if he convinces himself he doesn’t care about you, you won’t be taken away from him.”

  “But if that’s true, he’s wasting so much—”

  “Exactly. But he’ll realize that, Fancy. Right now, he’s looking at Keith and he’s thinking, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’”

  “Don’t you feel that way, too, Adam? Aren’t you afraid for Banner?”

  He sighed. “I don’t think I could bear to lose her. But O’Brien and I are both doctors, Fancy, and in our business you’re never allowed to forget that life is all too fragile.”

  One tear rolled down Fancy’s cheek and dropped off into her skirts. “I love Jeff so much,” she said brokenly. “I really don’t know what to do, though—”

  Adam caught one of her hands in his own and squeezed it. “Wait, Fancy. Be patient. Most of all, go on loving him.” He paused. “Do all the magic you know, for both your sakes.”

  Fancy could only nod.

  A stall door rattled as they were standing up, ready to go back into the house and join the rest of the family. Stepping into the center of the barn, they saw Keith leading a spirited black gelding out into the summer night.

  “Keith,” Adam called. “Wait.”

  Keith was slipping a bridle over the gelding’s head, and if he’d heard his brother, he ignored him.

  “Where are you going?” the eldest brother persisted.

  The youngest flung a saddle blanket over the beast’s back, and then a saddle. “Away,” he said hoarsely, wrenching the cinch into place.

  “Away where?”

  Keith’s broad shoulders moved in a shrug. His features were partially visible in the light of the lantern Adam carried and it hurt Fancy to look at him, to see the depths of his grief.

  “Right now, I don’t really care.”

  “What about your parish? What about all these cussed apple trees of yours?” demanded Adam, harsh in his desperation.

  Keith shrugged again and buckled the cinch. His jaw was set and it was clear that he didn’t plan to answer.

  “Keith.”

  Tormented azure eyes glittered in the lantern light. Fancy wanted to walk away, wanted not to hear, but she couldn’t move. She remembered the way he had wrenched off his clerical collar that morning and flung it into the roiling Columbia.

  “What about God?” she asked softly, and then could have bitten off her tongue because she hadn’t meant to speak. She had no right to.

  “God,” scoffed Keith, on a long, raspy breath. “There is no God.”

  Adam reached out a hand to his brother, drew it back at the menacing look of warning the gesture inspired. “Keith, listen to me—the pain will stop. You’ll be able to think clearly again—”

  Keith swung up into the saddle and the gelding danced beneath him like an evil beast, part of the night, a pet of the devil. “Said the man whose wife waits for him with a baby in her belly,” he broke in bitterly.

  “You can’t run from this, Keith. It will follow you.”

  A sudden and ragged sob, terrible to hear, tore itself from the depths of Keith’s chest. “Don’t stand there and preach to me, God damn you! Your wife isn’t dead—you have Danny and Bridget—”

  “Get down from the horse,” Adam went on smoothly, reasonably. Fancy wondered if Keith heard the tears in his older brother’s voice the way she did. “We’ll talk. We’ll get drunk. Anything. We’ll get through this, Keith.”

  “I couldn’t get drunk enough to forget that damned bell!” roared Keith. “It—it crushed her—the bell from my own damned church—”

  “I know,” said Adam, and he was holding out his hand now. “Please. Stay.”

  But Keith shook his head. “I can’t, Adam,” he breathed. “I can’t.”

  And then he was gone, perhaps forever. Though he was shaken, Adam took Fancy’s arm in a firm grasp and escorted her back to the house.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THOUGH THE HOUSE WAS FINISHED, IT STILL SMELLED OF sawdust and fresh paint. Every window was taller than Fancy herself, and she stood before one that faced toward the harbor, her mother’s letter in one hand. An early-winter snow slanted past the glass.

  Even from that distance, the new ship was clearly visible, its bare timbers and towering masts a constant reminder that Fancy was losing her husband. She sighed. Surely, she had already lost Jeff.

  Oh, he shared her bed. But for all its ferocity, Jeff’s lovemaking was somehow distant, not born of love but of the undeniable needs of a healthy male body. She had the feeling that any woman would have done.

  The child, due in late February by Banner’s calculations, moved within her. Despite the tears blurring in her eyes, Fancy smiled. She had this baby, she would always have this baby.

  “Mrs. Corbin?” sang a bright, nasal voice from the vicinity of the front door. “Mrs. Corbin, you here, mum?”

  “In here, Mary,” she called, turning back to the window as the new housekeeper entered the spacious but still only partially furnished parlor.

  “Saints be praised, it’s a chill day!” Mary babbled, and Fancy smiled again. Mary was young, redheaded, and frankly Irish, and she had a talent for liftin
g her new and inexperienced mistress out of a dark mood. “Would you like some tea, then? I could make it that fast.”

  “That would be nice, Mary,” replied Fancy. Her vision was clearer now, but she still didn’t dare to turn around and show her tear-streaked face. “Thank you.”

  The snow was coming down faster now; by nightfall it would be deep indeed. What fun it would be to play in it, to roll up a snowman or to make angels in the pristine whiteness.

  Fancy sighed again and looked down at the letter, twice-read already. It was a comfort to know how happy her parents were, living at the Wenatchee house, overseeing the orchards. Fancy’s father thrived on the fresh air and her mother had pretty clothes to wear and Alva Thompkins to look after her. The two women were great friends, sewing together, planning gardens, reading aloud to each other from the many books in Keith’s fine library.

  Fancy folded the letter, and now she did not see the clippership that haunted her days and nights like a specter. She did not see the snow or the bustling spectacle of Port Hastings. No, she saw Keith riding away that night after Amelie’s funeral, his soul broken in his eyes. No one had heard from him since, though Jeff, in a rare moment of communication, had said that the banker had told him that Keith had drawn twice on his private funds. One draft had been sent to Sacramento, one to a place called Los Alamos, in the New Mexico Territory.

  Now, living in a beautiful new house, a child growing inside her, and with all the money and security she could ever have hoped for, Fancy felt as much a lost wanderer as Keith. Jeff was so rarely home; his every waking moment was consumed either by that blasted clipper or consultations with the Pinkerton agents he and Adam had hired to search for Temple Royce.

  So far, not a trace had been found. Fancy half hoped that Temple would never be located—if he was, Jeff would kill him and no doubt hang for it.

  “Mrs. Corbin? Mrs. Corbin, the tea’s ready.”

  Fancy started and turned from the window to smile at Mary. The thin winter light danced in the girl’s short, springy curls. “Thank you.”

  “Was a fair walk,” hinted the housekeeper brightly, “up that steep hill. That snooty Maggie McQuire from the big house went right by me in a carriage, if you please—didn’t even offer a lift!”