“So,” he said, without opening his eyes. “You came back. Truth to tell, I never thought I’d see you again.”
“I told you I’d be here,” Caleb said. “I said I’d be here today.
Sergeant O'Malley has been in twice as a show of my good intentions.”
“Yes, well, I can’t say as I put a lot of faith in the word of a lobsterback.” Jonathan Harriman’s eyes flipped open just in time to observe Caleb grit his teeth.
“I believe we’ve had this conversation before,” Caleb said, very cool and even.
Jon ripped the towel, steaming in the cold air, away from his face and spoke sharply to the barber. “That’s long enough. Get this beggar’s beard off of me.”
I could see why he wanted rid of it. Long and thick, the untrimmed hanks reached below his collarbone. Caleb had said the prisoners wore their beards and long hair for warmth, and I saw it was true. Nearly every man in sight had an impressive growth.
Then, as if my thoughts had drawn him, or he just this moment noticed my presence, he looked me over, red cloak and all, and drawled, “Well, well. What have we here, Cousin Ethan? Is this your fancy woman come to meet the wild American?”
Fancy woman, indeed! If he meant whore, why didn’t he say whore, so I could refute the accusation? Or not, perhaps. Let him think what he wanted. I decided right then and there I didn’t like him, and wondered at a magic that sent me chasing after a man I didn’t care for. Caleb intervened before I could start. “Miss Annabelle Winthrop, this is my cousin Jonathan, as I’m sure you’ve surmised.”
I nodded curtly.
“Jon, your grandmother has selected Miss Winthrop to—to meet with you. Miss Winthrop is a lady with a compassionate heart, besides being of an adventurous bent. Qualities we thought invaluable when dealing with your situation.”
Jonathan snorted derisively. “My situation? God, don’t get me started.”
Although I hated to agree with any of his sentiments, situation did seem too mild a word for his predicament. I hated the way Caleb tried to placate Jonathan. Besides, Caleb was wrong on all counts. Passionate heart, yes…but maybe not so com passionate. Adventurous? Foolhardy more like. Or perhaps merely obedient to the will of the magic. Even I didn’t know the answer to that one. But I knew I didn’t want to deal with Jon Harriman.
At least Boothenay didn’t. I felt a twinge I identified as Belle and, with the twinge, an indication she felt more sympathy for Jon’s plight.
Sometimes, as I was in the middle of discovering, there is difficulty in getting your head straight when you have two personalitites vying for just one brain, one set of hands, and one heart.
Still…fancy woman… That rankled. Did my night—no—make that two nights with Caleb show so openly? Was our encounter emblazoned across my face in a scarlet slash? I laughed a little to myself. So what?
Scarlet slash, my foot. More like a happy glow.
Jon Harriman’s beard fell away in chunks. The barber first used scissors to shorten it all over his face, then finished the job with a lethal looking straight-edge razor he whipped back and forth against a piece of leather before scraping it across Jon’s face.
The man who emerged from this hairy blanket looked very like Caleb. Or Ethan—or both. Damn, there I went again. Tripping over the paradox of Caleb being Ethan. Now there appeared yet a third man with a countenance to confuse me and thicken the plot.
Oh, I saw differences. Jon’s eyes were a less brilliant shade of green, as if frost lay over grass. He was thinner, of course. That was a given considering the time he’d spent in prison subsisting on starvation rations. He had a heavier bone structure, though, and if he ever got enough to eat, I suspected he would be heavier than Caleb’s whipcord leanness.
The most noticeable difference I saw between them had nothing to do with bone structure or their strong family resemblance. It had more to do with basic character. Caleb was open and honest, while I fancied a cold aloofness constrained Jonathan’s nature. Of course, I freely admit to a certain amount of prejudice Jonathan’s next words did nothing to lighten.
“Pay the man, cousin,” Jonathan said. “I fear my pockets are to let.”
Caleb directed a narrow-eyed scowl at his cousin before he tossed the barber a coin and suggested he take a walk.
The barber made no objection. On the contrary, he caught the coin in one hand and left the four of us in possession of his tent without a backward glance. I thought we were fortunate the queen had been generous with her bag of gold. Caleb had succeeded very well in furthering the economy within her realm.
“Ah.” Jonathan stared at Caleb with a mocking expression on his face. “How benevolent you are. How fortunate in your ability to spread largesse with a liberal hand.”
Caleb’s expression did not change. “A little grease for the wheel, Jonathan. That’s all. And if it helps get you away from here, why should you complain?”
“I trust you don’t expect me to walk out wearing these clothes, do you?” Jonathan said sharply, as if he was angry. “Or is this so haphazard a plot you believe no one will notice? Oh, yes. I’m supposed to be the hero of last summer’s Spanish campaign, aren’t I? A hero, and so beyond question. After all, you saved the general, single-handedly no less. Who would dare question you?”
Caleb flushed. Even the silent Mr. Bates fidgeted uncomfortably upon his stool.
All of this hero business was news to me, although with what I knew of Caleb—or Ethan, as I should remember to call him now—I can’t say I was terribly surprised. What did surprise me was the vitriol Jon showed, and which he didn’t even attempt to hide. Most amazing of all was that outwardly Ethan took his cousin’s guff, because of what he perceived as his duty to the queen. I felt sure, had they simply been two men, face to face, his more natural reaction would have been to floor his cousin with couple of well-placed punches.
“Annabelle,” he said then, turning to me with a harried expression.
His lips were white and his right hand clenched a tight fist. This was an Ethan in a temper such as I’d not seen before. “I’m sorry you’ve been subjected to my cousin’s ill temper. Believe me when I say I had no idea, nor did the queen, that you, that any of us, would be greeted with this sort of attitude. I’m afraid I didn’t realize Jonathan would be such a boor when in the presence of a lady.”
“Bloody ungrateful as well, which is not your fault,” I said, in a tone that left neither of them mistaking my feelings on the subject, or whose side I was on. “Too bad we don’t have some say so over who our relatives are, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I’ve kind of lost heart over this business. I make a motion we walk out of here right now and leave him.”
Caleb took a deep breath and grinned crookedly at me. “Can’t do it, I’m afraid. I know I can’t and I doubt you can either. Duty and all that.”
“Duty, schmooty,” I muttered. He was right, even if the reason I couldn’t back out was not because of duty or regard of the queen’s wishes, but because, until the power called us home, I had no recourse.
The escapade had lost all zest.
Caleb gestured to me then, and I removed my cloak, dropping it with a clunk onto the ground. Thus revealed, I wore a strange mish mash of clothing, including several extra garments. First, I took off Caleb’s second best shirt, the one I’d rescued from becoming bandage strips. I wore it with the sleeves pushed up, buttoned on over the top of my gown. Next, without bothering to turn away or to act coy, I lifted my skirt and shimmied out of his extra breeches, cinched tight around my middle and rolled up and out of sight beneath my hem.
Jonathan watched this strip act with a contemptuous smirk on his face. I didn’t care. Let him think whatever he wanted.
“Enjoying yourself?” I asked, reaching for my dropped cloak. From within the folds I retrieved the pair of Caleb’s boots I’d carried, one attached to each end of a leather belt suspended around my neck. My elbows had held them tight against my body so they didn’t flop around.<
br />
I noted with wry amusement that while they hadn’t added anything to the grace of my movement overall, between the extra clothing and the boots, I appeared much slimmer without them.
Jon looked a little happier. “Well, well. Not so unprepared after all, eh, cuz? I suppose you think I’ll look respectable enough now to pass under the guards’ noses like an invisible man.”
If only he knew how much I’d like to make that happen.
“Not quite,” Caleb said. “Now comes the part where you’ll need to depend on Miss Winthrop’s help. If I were you, I believe I’d treat her a little more politely. In fact, I’d treat her a whole lot more politely, just to be on the safe side. You’re going to need her good offices in order to get out of here.”
“He’s already too late for that,” I said, an interjection neither of them heard. They were too busy trying to stare each other down.
Caleb won eventually.
Jonathan bowed his head to me. “Your pardon, Miss…Winthrop, did you say?”
I arched an eyebrow.
“Please forgive my boorishness,” he went on. “I assure you I am not usually like this. Put it down to being angry over being confined. Put it down to being hungry, if you like. Or you might even blame Ethan, because he is free to come and go as he pleases, while I am held prisoner.
“I confess I’m jealous, not only of his freedom, but of the fact he is in the company of a lovely lady.” Jonathan followed this speech with a charming grin as he plucked my hand from my side and planted a kiss in the vicinity of my grimy knuckles.
I wrenched it away. I hate hand kissers. More than that, I hate grinners who grin with charm they pour out like honey on an ant trap.
And I’m afraid I wasn’t about to fall for his lovely lady story—if he meant me. Not right after he’d called me Ethan’s fancy woman. But I could tell he was desperate enough to say just about anything that might help him win his freedom. He really was frightened, terrified we would go off and leave him here without even the defense of his long hair and beard. I knew that everything he said and did was an act of bravado.
It occurred to me that cool is not necessarily an invention of the twentieth century.
“Am I forgiven?” he asked. His eyes looked desperate.
I glanced at Caleb and he made a questioning face back at me. I shrugged and said, sounding rather ungracious even to myself, “I suppose. Now can we get this show on the road? Ethan?”
“I’ll fill him in, Annabelle, while he gets dressed. Why don’t you walk around the market, get yourself noticed. We’ll catch up with you.
Buy a gewgaw…buy two gewgaws…stack them high while you’re at it. Give folks something to talk about.”
“Oh, boy! At last I get to have some fun. Power shopping here I come!”
Both men looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Pardon me?”
Jonathan asked.
I grinned.
At a gesture from Jonathan, Bates trailed after me, my guardian against purse-snatchers and pickpockets, while I wandered from one vendor to the next. The square had been trampled and stirred into a cold mud that oozed through the seams of my shoes. One of my hands was occupied in holding up the skirts of both my gown and my cloak or they, too, would have been covered with the gluey stuff.
As if the mud were not enough to make things miserable by itself, a stiff breeze blew inland from the sea, picking up speed while crossing the moor. I don’t know how the men in the square stood the cold, clad only in their prison issue canvas shirts and short, loose-legged trousers.
The wind did one good thing that I knew of. It blew away some of the stench and miasma that hung over the market.
The variety of goods the prisoners had somehow made available for sale, manufactured out of practically nothing, was almost unbelievable.
In the end, I made my purchases from those who looked most destitute.
Four pairs of very finely knit stockings. I had said I had four brothers, hadn’t I? Four sets of eight carved and polished bone buttons. Four decks of playing cards, which when examined a little later, I discovered to be delicately pornographic. Last of all, I bought four models of the ubiquitous sailing ships, carved from scraps of wood and bone, their ropes braided from the builder’s own hair.
My coachman limped toward me across the square, ignoring everyone and everything else as he plowed through the crowd with single-minded intensity. His smoothly shaven jaw was pale from illness and prolonged confinement. A tic jumped in the muscle up by his ear, and his eyes glittered with excitement.
At a distance, Jonathan Harriman really did look amazingly like Caleb. Especially after he’d cleaned up, wore Caleb’s distinctive, many caped overcoat and remembered to walk with a limp.
So our ultimate venture had begun. There would be no backing out now. I piled all of the articles I’d purchased across Jonathan’s extended arms until he was loaded down like a pack mule. He coughed once and asked me to clear a space for him to see out, so he could tell where he was going.
Going for freedom, that’s where. I took a deep breath and plunged into act two of the farce.
“Don’t you mutter and scowl at me, Samuel Coachman,” I was saying as we neared the gate. I pitched my voice to its most carrying register and became a virago in a red cloak. “I’m sure it’s nothing to do with you if I spend every penny my husband has. After all, he gave his permission for me to come here so I could buy gifts for my brothers and I don’t care if you don’t like carrying them. You don’t need to like your assignment—you just need to obey my commands.”
The guard sent an appalled glance my way and averted his eyes. My voice became sharper, pouring caustic sound into his ears.
“…it won’t hurt you a bit to convey them to the carriage for me, even if fetching and carrying is not part of your usual duties. You don’t expect me to handle these things myself, do you? Why, common criminals have had their hands on them! I declare! What is this world coming to when one’s servants think they need servants?” This last I asked of the guard, who assiduously directed his focus elsewhere.
His expression as empty as this morning’s coffee cup, he stood rigid in front of the gate with his musket leaning, barrel up, against his shoulder. He stared slightly off to my side as though mesmerized by the scene just beyond my bonnet. At my direct question, his face turned crimson, his throat worked and gulped. In an agony of embarrassment, he fidgeted in place, as if he had bugs crawling up the crack of his butt.
His gun barrel steamed over with condensation as he gripped the cold metal in his sweaty hand. He didn’t want to look at me, let alone speak to me, an aversion that extended to my coachman.
Which was according to plan, if he’d just move his butt away from the gate.
“Well, sir, do you mean to keep me standing here all day?” I demanded shrilly.
“No, mum,” he said. He shifted from one planted foot to the other, as though trying to drag them out of quicksand, but as soon as he got one free, he put it right back down in the same spot so it was all to do over again. Then over yet again.
Come on, come on, open the fricking gate! I tried willing him to action with dire intensity.
This was not the reaction I’d expected. He was supposed to let us through the gate immediately, only too glad to be rid of us—of me.
There is nothing in the world that frightens and confuses men more than a loud, bitchy woman. My tirade must have confused him until he couldn’t make up his mind what to do. He fingered the trigger of his musket as if his preference would be to shoot me.
His hesitation grew more marked. Other visitors who wished to leave lined up behind us, muttering. More than one questioning glance was sent our way. Jonathan Harriman panted with terror. I saw an officer standing in the guardhouse doorway, look toward us and with a puzzled frown, head in our direction.
Lord help me, I thought desperately. What am I supposed to do now? It was becoming apparent that I’d done the wrong thing. We’d have bee
n better off had I kept quiet and unobtrusive. Yeah, right. So why couldn’t I have figured that out before, instead of when it was too damn late?
My heartbeat drummed in the veins at my temple. The power was building, coming to help like an unexpected savior. I felt the pupils of my eyes expanding until they reflected the stupid, stolid guard, frozen in place like a toy action figure with dead batteries.
“Excuse me.” I touched—well, pushed actually—with just one shaking finger in the center of his chest. To my surprise, he staggered as if my finger had been a pistol and I’d shot him. I swallowed the shriek that wanted to build in my throat and managed to croak, “Please step aside. I wish to leave.”
“Yes, yes, my good man. What do you think you are doing? We all wish to leave. Here, wake up! Incompetent ass.” The fat naval officer, finished with his business inside the prison, elbowed my coachman aside and crowded ahead of us with an order to the guard to move. An annoyed murmur from what had become a regular queue at our rear agreed.
Stirred to action by the familiar voice of authority, the guard at last lumbered out of the way. I’m sure I saw him sag with relief when at last, along with my silent coachman, I passed through the gate.
“’Ere,” at the guard’s sudden shout my heart nearly stopped. Jon’s face turned whiter, if that were possible, and I saw he was on the verge of flight, every muscle in his body tensed to run. Although my look warned him to stay put, I put myself in his path, peering around his body at the guard.
“Yes?” My voice was steady, my control iron bound. “Did you want something?”
“’Ere,” the guard said again. “You dropped sumpthink.” He ignored me. Placing a banded deck of cards back on top of the pile in Jonathan’s arms, in the end the guard accorded him just one direct glance of embarrassed commiseration.
Our little cavalcade started on again. Once I looked back and saw that while the duty officer had gone back inside the warm guardhouse, he still watched from shelter. The gatemen stood at his post once more, his back turned to us.
In The Service Of The Queen (The Gunsmith Book 1) Page 23
