Kitabı oku: «The Drifter»

Praise for the novels of
SUSAN WIGGS

“Wiggs has a knack for creating engaging characters, and her energetic prose shines through the pages.”

—Publishers Weekly on Enchanted Afternoon

Enchanted Afternoon is “a bold, humorous and poignant romance that fulfills every woman’s dreams.”

—New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd

“With its lively prose, well-developed conflict and passionate characters, this enjoyable, poignant tale is certain to enchant.”

—Publishers Weekly on Halfway to Heaven (starred review)

“Wiggs’ writing shimmers…. Her flair for crafting intelligent characters and the sheer joy of the verbal sparring between them makes for a delightful story you’ll want to devour at once.”

—BookPage on Halfway to Heaven

“With this final installment of Wiggs’s Chicago Fire trilogy, she has created a quiet page-turner that will hold readers spellbound….”

—Publishers Weekly on The Firebrand

“Once more, Ms. Wiggs demonstrates her ability to bring readers a story to savor that has them impatiently awaiting each new novel.”

—Romantic Times on The Hostage

“In poetic prose, Wiggs evocatively captures the Old South and creates an intense, believable relationship between the lovers.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Horsemaster’s Daughter

“The Charm School draws readers in with delightful characters, engaging dialogue, humor, emotion and sizzling sensuality.”

—Costa Mesa Sunday Times

Susan Wiggs
The Drifter

To the crew of the Sea Fox/La Tache armada:

Jay, Elizabeth, Jamie, Tucker, Ben and Kristin.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Tom McEvoy and his Jet Ski—the Neptune of mobile marine mechanics. Also to Alistair Cross for advice on the proper way to sabotage a schooner.

Heartfelt thanks to landlubbers: Joyce Bell, Christina Dodd, Betty Gyenes, Debbie Macomber and Barbara Dawson Smith.

Thanks to Laura Shin, whose superb editorial skills brought out the very best in the manuscript.

And finally a big thank-you to Carol and Don Audleman for the most convivial tavolo comune.

“Wherever you are

it is your own friends who make your world.”

—William James, American psychologist

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

One

Whidbey Island, Washington

1894

“Don’t scream, or I’ll shoot,” warned a low-pitched voice.

Leah Mundy jerked awake and found herself looking down the barrel of a gun.

Sheer panic jolted her to full alert.

“I’m not going to scream,” she said, dry-mouthed. In her line of work she had learned to control fear. Lightning flickered, glancing off the dull blue finish of a Colt barrel. “Please don’t hurt me.” Her voice broke but didn’t waver.

“Lady, that’s up to you. Just do as you’re told, and nobody’ll get hurt.”

Do as you’re told. Leah Mundy certainly had practice at that. “Who are you,” she asked, “and what do you want?”

“Who I am is the man holding this gun. What I want is Dr. Mundy. Sign outside says he lives here.”

Thunder pulsed in the distance, echoing the thud of her heart. She forced herself to keep the waves of terror at bay as she blurted, “Dr. Mundy does live here.”

“Well, go get him.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

She swallowed, trying to collect her wits, failing miserably. “He’s dead. He died three months ago.”

“Sign says Dr. Mundy lives here.” Fury roughened the insistent voice.

“The sign’s right.” Rain lashed the windowpanes. She squinted into the gloom. Beyond the gun, she couldn’t make out anything but the intruder’s dark shape. A loud snore drifted down the hall, and she glanced toward the noise. Think, think, think. Maybe she could alert one of the boarders.

The gun barrel jabbed at her shoulder. “For chrissakes, woman, I don’t have time for guessing games—”

“I’m Dr. Mundy.”

“What?”

“Dr. Leah Mundy. My father was also a doctor. We were in practice together. But now there’s just me.”

“Just you.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re a doctor.”

“I am.”

The large shape shifted impatiently. She caught the scents of rain and brine on him. Rain and brine from the sea and something else…desperation.

“You’ll have to do, then. Get your things, woman. You’re coming with me.”

She jerked the covers up under her chin. “I beg your pardon.”

“You’ll be begging for your sorry life if you don’t get a move on.”

The threat in his voice struck like a whip. She didn’t argue. Spending three years with her father back in Deadwood, South Dakota, had taught her to respect a threat issued by a man holding a gun.

But she’d never learned to respect the man himself.

“Turn your back while I get dressed,” she said.

“That’s pretty lame, even for a lady doctor,” he muttered. “I’m not fool enough to turn my back.”

“Any man who bullies unarmed people is a fool,” she snapped.

“Funny thing about bullies,” he said calmly, using the nose of the Colt to ease the quilt down her body. “They pretty much always manage to get what they want. Now, move.”

She yanked off the covers and shoved her feet into the sturdy boots she wore when making her calls. Island weather was wet in the springtime, and she’d never been one to stand on high fashion. She wrapped herself in a robe, tugging the tie snugly around her waist.

She tried to pretend this was an ordinary call on an ordinary night. Tried not to think about the fact that she had been yanked out of a sound sleep by a man with a gun. Damn him. How dare he?

“Are you ill?” she asked the gunman.

“Hell, no, I’m not sick,” he said. “It’s…someone else.”

For some reason, his hesitation took the edge off her anger. Another thing she’d learned about bullies—they almost always acted out of fear.

“I’ll need to stop in the surgery, get some things.”

“Where’s the surgery?”

“Downstairs, adjacent to the kitchen.” She pushed open the door, daring to flash one look down the hall. Mr. Battle Douglas was a light sleeper, but despite his name, he wouldn’t know the first thing to do about an armed intruder. Adam Armstrong, the newcomer, probably would, but for all she knew, the handsome timber merchant could be in league with the gunman. Aunt Leafy would only dissolve into hysterics, and Perpetua had her young son to consider. As for old Zeke Pomfrit, he’d likely grab his ancient rifle and join her abductor.

The gunman jabbed the Colt into her ribs. “Lady, don’t go doing anything foolish.”

Leah surrendered the urge to rouse the household. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t put any of them at risk.

“You may call me Dr. Mundy,” she said over her shoulder. Her hand slipped down the banister as she made her way to the foyer. The man wore a long, cloaked duster that billowed out as he descended, sprinkling rainwater on the carpet runner.

“You’re not a lady?” he whispered, his mouth far too close to her ear. His voice had a curious raw edge to it.

“Not to you.”

She led the way along a hall to the darkened surgery. In the immaculate suite that occupied the south wing of the house, she lit a lamp. Her hands shook as she fumbled with a match, and her anger renewed itself. As the blue-white flame hissed to life, she turned to study her captor. She noted a fringe of wet hair the color of straw, lean cheeks chapped by the wind and stubbled by a few days’ growth of beard. An old scar on the ridge of his cheekbone. He pulled down his dripping hat brim before she could see his eyes.

“What sort of ailment will I be treating?” she asked.

“Hell, I don’t know. You claim you’re the doctor.”

Leah told herself she should be hardened to doubt and derision by now. But some things she never got used to. Like someone—even a dangerous man hiding behind a gun—thinking gender had anything at all to do with the ability to heal people.

“What are the symptoms?” She lifted the flap of her brown leather medical bag, checking the contents. Capped vials of feverfew, quinine, digitalis, carbolic acid disinfectant. Morphine crystals and chloroform. Instruments for extracting teeth and suppurating wounds. A stethoscope and clinical thermometer sterilized in bichloride of mercury, and a hypodermic syringe for injecting medicines into the bloodstream.

“The symptoms?” she prompted.

“I guess…fever. Stomach cramps. Babbling and such. Wheezing and coughing, too.”

“Coughing blood?” Leah asked sharply.

“Nope. No blood.”

It could be any number of things, including the dreaded scourge, diphtheria. She tucked in some vials of muriate of ammonia, then took her oiled canvas slicker from a hook on the back of the door. “I’m ready,” she said. “And I might add that forcing me at gunpoint isn’t necessary. It’s my calling to heal people. If you want to put that away, I’ll still come.”

He didn’t put the gun away. Instead, he pushed the flap of his duster back to reveal a second gun. The holster—darkened with grease for quicker drawing—was strapped to a lean, denim-clad hip. The gun belt, slung low around a narrow waist, bore a supply of spare cartridges in the belt’s loops. Clearly, he was a man unused to being given what he asked for. He jerked the barrel toward the back door, motioning her ahead of him.

They passed through the waiting room of the surgery and stepped out into the night. She could feel him behind her, his height and breadth intimidating, uncompromising.

“Is it far?” she asked, indicating the coach house, a black hulk in the sudden gloom. “Will we need the buggy?”

“No,” he said. “We’re going to the harbor.”

A seafaring man, then. A pirate? Whidbey Island saw its share of smugglers plying the waters of Puget Sound and up into Canada. But this man, with an arsenal of weapons concealed under his long, caped coat, had the look of an outlaw, not a pirate.

As frightening as he was, he needed her. That’s what was important. The oath she had taken compelled her to go. What a peculiar life she led. In the back of her mind, her father’s voice taunted her: Leah Jane Mundy, when are you going to settle down and get married like a normal woman?

The rain drummed relentlessly on her hood. Her booted foot splashed into a puddle and stuck briefly in the sucking mud. She looked back at the boardinghouse. The tradesman’s shingle hanging above the front porch flapped in the wind. In the misty glow of the gaslight Leah always kept burning, the white lettering was barely legible, but the stranger had found it: Dr. Mundy, Physician. Rooms To Let.

“Get a move on, woman,” the gunman ordered.

The light in the surgery window wavered. There was nothing beyond the lamp glow but blackness. No one in sight but the stranger holding the gun on her, pushing it into her back to make her hurry.

Just who the devil was this man?

Rising Star, Texas

1894

“He called himself Jack Tower,” the sheriff said, taking off a pair of ill-fitting spectacles. “Course, there’s a good possibility it’s an alias.”

“Uh-huh.” Joel Santana stroked his hand down his cheek, the skin like shoe leather beneath his callused palm. Damn. He’d been looking forward to hanging up his gun belt and spurs, and now this. Many was the evening he’d spent thinking about a parcel of green land, maybe a flock of sheep, and a good woman with broad hips and a broader smile….

He crossed one aching leg over the other and absently whirled a spur with his finger. “And you say the fugitive took off six weeks ago?”

Sheriff Reams laid his spectacles atop the hand-drawn map on the desk. “Six weeks Saturday.”

“Why’d you wait to call me in?” Joel held up a hand. “Never mind, I know the answer. You and your deputies had the situation under control. This is the first time your posse ever let one get away, am I right?”

“As a matter of fact, Marshal, it’s true.”

“Uh-huh.” It always was. These greenhorns always waited until a criminal had hightailed it across state lines and the trail had grown cold; then they called in a U.S. Marshal. “I guess we’d better get down to it, then. You say this man—this Jack Tower—murdered the mayor of Rising Star?”

Reams narrowed his eyes. “Damn right he did. Probably wasn’t the first. He had a hard look about him. A mean look, like he didn’t have a friend in the world and didn’t care to make any.”

“Who witnessed the murder?” asked Joel.

Reams hesitated just long enough to rouse his suspicions. “No one’s come forward. You need to bring that desperado back and hang him high.”

“Hanging folks is not my job, Sheriff.” Joel lumbered to his feet, fancying he could hear his joints creak in protest. Too many years on horseback had ruined his knees.

“What in blazes do you mean?”

Joel pressed his palms flat on the desk and glared at the map. The shape of Texas formed amutated star, its pan-handle borders so artificial—yet so critical when it came to enforcing the law. “I bring in fugitives, and I’ll bring in this Tower fellow. But his guilt or innocence isn’t up to us. That’s for a judge and jury to decide. Don’t you forget it.”

“I won’t.”

But he would have, Santana knew. Likely if Jack Tower hadn’t fled, he’d have been strung up on a high limb and left for the buzzards to pick over.

“So what’ve you got?”

The sheriff lifted the map, revealing an ink-drawn illustration of a man with cropped, spiky hair, a beard and mustache. A small scar marked one cheekbone. The drawing had indeed captured the mean look.

“This here’s your man. He didn’t leave much behind. Just a tin of Underhill Fancy Shred Tobacco and half of a broken shirt button.” Reams handed them over.

“Oh—” he laid a tintype photograph in front of Joel “—and this here’s the woman he fled with. Her name’s Caroline. Caroline Willis.”

“She’s my…wife.”

Leah heard a heartbeat of hesitation in her abductor’s grainy voice before the word “wife.”

It wasn’t her place to question, but to heal. Still, she couldn’t help wondering why the simple statement hadn’t come easily to the stranger’s lips. It had been her unfortunate lot to attend the deaths of more than a few women while the husband stood nearby, wringing his hands. There weren’t many things more wrenching than the sight of a man who knew he was about to lose his wife. He always looked baffled, numb, helpless.

She glanced over her shoulder at the gunman. Even in the uncertain light of the ship’s binnacle lamp, he didn’t appear helpless. Not in the least. At the harbor, he’d forced her into a small dinghy. With the gun in his lap and his fists curled around the oars, he had rowed like a madman. It took him only moments to bring her out to a long schooner anchored offshore.

The twin masts had creaked in the whipping wind. She’d shivered and climbed down an accommodation ladder into the belly of the boat. The smell of damp rope, mildewed sailcloth and rotting timber pervaded the air of the once-grand aft stateroom.

An inspection hatch on the aft bulkhead flapped open and shut in the driving wind. Someone—the outlaw, she guessed—had been working on the steering quadrant or perhaps the rudder. Several bolts and cap nuts rolled along the planks. A fraying rope led out through the hatch as if he’d repaired it in haste—or in ignorance of Puget Sound gale winds.

The stranger’s wife lay in an alcove bunk on freshly laundered muslin sheets, her head centered on a plump pillow, her eyes closed and her face pale. Suddenly, Leah no longer saw the run-down boat or the faded opulence of the stateroom. All her fear and anger fled. She focused her attention on the patient. Without looking at the man, she motioned for him to bring a lamp. She heard the rasp of a lucifer and a sibilant hiss as he lit one and brought the lamp forward.

“Hold it steady,” she commanded. “What’s her name?”

Another hesitation. Then, “Carrie,” came the gruff reply.

Observation. It was the most basic tenet of healing. First, do no harm. Generations of doctors had violated that rule, poking and leeching and bleeding and cupping until a patient either died or got better out of sheer exasperation. Thank heaven it was more common practice these days for well-trained doctors to stand back, to observe and ask questions.

And so she observed. The woman called Carrie appeared almost childlike in repose. The dainty bones of her face and hands pushed starkly against translucent flesh. Nordic blond hair formed a halo around her small face. Her dry lips were tucked together in a thin line. Frail, defenseless and startlingly beautiful, she slept without seeming even to breathe.

And she looked as if she was on the verge of dying.

Leah unbuckled her slicker, shrugged it off, and held it out behind her. When the stranger didn’t take it immediately, she gave the garment an impatient shake. It was plucked from her hand—grudgingly, she thought. She refused to let her attention stray from the patient.

“Carrie?” she said. “My name is Dr. Mundy. I’ve come to help you.”

No response.

Leah pressed the back of her hand to Carrie’s cheek. Fever, but not enough of a temperature to raise a flush on the too-pale skin. She would have no need for the clinical thermometer.

Gently, Leah lifted one eyelid. The iris glinted a lovely shade of blue, vivid as painted china. The pupil contracted properly when the lamplight struck it.

“Carrie?” Leah said her name again while stroking a thin hand. “Can you hear me?”

Again, no response. The skin felt dry, lacking resilience. A sign of dehydration.

“When was she last awake?” Leah asked the man.

“Not sure. Maybe this afternoon. She was out of her head, though. Didn’t make a lick of sense.” The shadows shifted as he leaned closer. “What is it? Will she be all right?” Tension thrummed in his voice.

“I’ll do my best to figure out what’s wrong with her. When did she last have something to eat or drink?”

“Gave her some tea with honey this morning. She heaved it up, wouldn’t take anything else. Except—” He broke off, drew in a breath.

“Except what?”

“She asked for her tonic. She needs her tonic.”

Leah groped in her bag for the stethoscope. “What sort of tonic would that be?”

“Some elixir in a bottle.”

Elixir. Snake oil, most likely, or maybe a purgative like calomel, Leah guessed. It had been her father’s stock-in-trade for years. She herself was not that sort of doctor. She found her stethoscope. “I’ll want to analyze that tonic.”

She adjusted the ear tips and looped the binaurals around her neck. Working quickly, she parted Carrie’s nightgown at the neckline. Again, she was struck by the freshly laundered cleanliness of the garment and bedclothes. It seemed incongruous for an outlaw’s lady. A gunman who did laundry?

Pressing the flat of the diaphragm to Carrie’s chest, Leah held her breath and listened. The heart rate was elevated. The lungs sounded only slightly congested. Leah moved the chest piece here and there, listening intently to each quadrant. It was difficult to hear. Storm-driven waves slapped the ship’s hull, and a constant flow of water trickled somewhere below.

She palpated the areas around the neck and armpits, seeking signs of infection. Then she moved her hands down the abdomen, stopping when she felt a small, telltale hardness.

“Well?” the stranger said. “What’s wrong?”

Leah removed the ear tips of the stethoscope, letting the instrument drape like a necklace. “When were you planning to tell me?”

“Tell you what?” He spread his arms, looking genuinely baffled. It was probably all an act, though, she thought.

“That your wife is pregnant.”

His jaw dropped. He seemed to deflate a little, sagging against the wall of the hull. “Pregnant.”

She tilted her head to one side. “Surely you knew.”

“I…” He drew his hand down his face. “Nope. Didn’t know.”

“I estimate that she’s a good three months along.”

“Three months.”

Ordinarily, Leah loved to be the bearer of this sort of news. She always got a vicarious thrill from the joy and wonder in a young husband’s eyes. Such moments made her own life seem less sterile and lonely—if only for a while.

She stared at the stranger and saw no joy or wonder in him. His face had turned stony and grim. He certainly didn’t act like a man who had just learned he was going to be a father.

“So that’s the only thing wrong with her,” he said at last.

“It’s not ‘wrong’ for your wife to be pregnant.”

For a moment, he looked as if he might contradict her. “I meant, so that’s the only thing ailing her.”

“Hardly.”

“What?” he asked harshly. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? To begin with, your boat is on the verge of sinking.” She glanced pointedly at the aft hatch. The rudder seemed to be hanging by a thread—or by a waterlogged rope, to be more precise. Worm-eaten wooden bolts lolled uselessly along the deck. Big gaps separated the caulking of the hull. The line holding the post in place strained with a whining sound.

“This is no place for a patient in her condition. We’ve got to move her.” Leah coiled the stethoscope and tucked it back into her bag. “As soon as it stops raining, bring her to the house, and we’ll put her to bed—”

“I guess you didn’t understand,” the man said in an infuriating drawl.

She scowled at him. “Understand what?”

He stuck his thumb in his gun belt and drummed his fingers on the row of cartridges stuck in the leather loops. “You’re coming with us.”

A chill seized her, though she took care to hide her alarm. So that was why he’d abducted her at gunpoint. This outlaw meant to pluck her right out of her own life and thrust her into his. “Just like that,” she said coldly, “without even a by-your-leave?”

“I never ask leave to do anything. Remember that.”

By the time Leah had finished neatening her bag, she had worked herself into a fine fury.

With a quick movement that had him going for his gun, she shot to her feet. The old boat creaked ominously.

“No, you don’t understand, sir,” Leah said. “I have no intention of going anywhere with you, especially in this leaky hulk. I’ll treat your wife after you bring her to the boardinghouse where she can enjoy a proper recovery.”

Leah tried not to flinch as he trained the gun on her.

“She’ll recover just fine right here with you tending her,” he said.

Leah glared at the too-familiar blued barrel, the callused finger curling intimately around the trigger. “Don’t think for a minute that you can intimidate me. I won’t allow it. I absolutely won’t. Is that clear?”

His lazy gaze strayed over her and focused on her hands, clutching the bag in white-knuckled terror. “Clear as a day in Denver, ma’am.”

She hated the mocking edge to his voice. “Sir, if you hope to give your wife a decent chance to recover, you’ll let me go, and after the rain you’ll bring her to the house where I can treat her.”

“You call yourself a doctor. So how come you can only doctor people in your fancy house?”

Fancy? She almost laughed bitterly at that. Where had he been living that he’d consider the boardinghouse fancy?

“I refuse to debate this with you,” she informed him.

“Fine. I’m not fond of debating, either.”

“Good. Then—”

“Just get busy with Carrie, and I’ll be in the cockpit, making ready to weigh anchor.”

Red fury swam before her eyes, obliterating everything, even the hated gun barrel. “You will not,” she said. Her voice was low, controlled, yet he seemed to respond to her quiet rage. He frowned slightly, his hand relaxed on the gun, and he regarded her with mild surprise.

“Lady, for someone at the wrong end of a gun, you sure have a mouth on you.”

“Sir,” she went on, “you cannot simply pluck me from my home and sweep me away with you.”

She gestured again to indicate all the damage. Her gaze followed the fraying rope across the heading of the room; the line exited through a scuttle and was tied somewhere above.

“Sugar, it’s not that I want to sweep you away,” he said insolently. “It’s just that I need a doctor for Carrie.”

He stepped forward, and for the first time, she got a good look at his eyes. They were a cold blue-gray, the color of his gun barrel, and his gaze was piercing, as if he saw more of her than she cared for him to see. Leah experienced an odd sensation—as if the tide were tugging her along, drawing her toward a place she didn’t want to go and couldn’t avoid.

No. She would not surrender to this man.

“You cannot force me to come with you.” She looked pointedly at the flapping hatch. The wind made a sullen roar, twanging the shrouds against the mast abovedecks. “This ship is unseaworthy. Honestly, what sort of sailor are you, to be out in this tub of—”

“Shut up.” In one long-legged stride, he came to her and pressed the chilly round eye of the gun to her temple. “Just…shut up. Look, after Carrie’s better, we’ll put you on a ship back to the island.” He added under his breath, “And good riddance.”

The touch of the gun horrified her, but she refused to show it. “I will not go with you,” she stated. Clearly, this man had no appreciation for how determined she could be. He’d never outlast her. “I have too many responsibilities in Coupeville. Two of my patients are expecting babies any day. I’m treating a boy who was kicked in the head by a horse. I can’t possibly come along on a whim as your wife’s private physician.”

“Right.” He removed the barrel from her temple.

Relieved, she brightened and took a step toward the door. “I’m glad you decided to see reas—”

“Yeah. Reason. I know.” He gave her shoulder a shove, thrusting her back into the room. “Now get busy, woman, or I’ll make sure you don’t ever see your patients again.”

He stepped out into the companionway. Leah heard a bolt being thrust home as he locked her in the stateroom with his wife.

Standing in the bow of the creaking schooner, Jackson T. Underhill looked up at the sky. A white gash of lightning cleaved the darkness into eerie shards. The thunder roaring in its wake shouted a warning from the very throat of heaven. The storm came from the sea, blowing toward the shore. It was crazy to be out in this weather, crazy to sail in night so deep he could barely get a heading.

But Jackson had never been much for heeding warnings, heavenly or otherwise. He jammed his gun back into its felted holster, fastened the clips of his duster, and scowled when the wind tore at the backside of the coat, separating the flaps. The garment was made for riding astride a horse, not sailing a ship. But everything had happened in such a hurry, everything had changed so quickly, that the last thing on his mind had been fashion.

Bracing himself against the wind, he hoisted the sails. They went up squealing in protest, the mildewed canvas luffing. He hoped like hell the ship would hold together just long enough to make it to Canada. He’d been working on the rudder when Carrie had gotten sick, and had only managed to keep it from falling off with a hasty rig of lines connecting it to the helm. A sailor’s worst nightmare was being swept onto a lee shore in a storm with no steering. The vessel would round up into the wind and start going backward, then go to the opposite tack as the sails backwinded. It would seesaw its way toward shore with sails flapping and no control.

Jackson set his jaw and told himself the steering would hold. Once they were out of the country, there would be time to fix the schooner up right.

Over the quickening breeze, he heard indignant thumps and muffled shouts from the stateroom below. Add kidnapping to his list of crimes. That, at least, was a first for him.

Yet when a healthy puff of wind filled the sails, he felt a measure of relief. The unplanned stop at Whidbey Island hadn’t been so costly after all. He had a doctor for Carrie, and no one was the wiser. The doctor wasn’t at all what he’d expected, but he’d have to put up with her.

A lady doctor. Who would have thought it? He’d never even known such a thing could be possible.

Leah Mundy was a prickly female, all pinch-faced and lemon-lipped with disapproval, and there wasn’t a thing to like about her.

But Jackson did like her. He’d never admit it, of course, and would never find occasion to, but he admired her spirit. Instead of getting all womanish and hysterical when he’d come for her, she’d taken it like a man—better than most men he knew.

He felt a small twinge when he thought of the patients she wouldn’t see tomorrow, or the next day, perhaps even the day after that. But he needed her. God, Carrie needed her.

Pregnant. Carrie was pregnant. The thought seethed inside Jackson, too enormous for him to confront right now, so he thrust it aside, tried to forget.

Dr. Mundy would help Carrie. She would heal Carrie. She had to.

Jackson pictured her bending over to examine her patient. That’s when the doctor had changed, shed her ornery mantle. He’d seen something special in her manner—a sort of gentle competence that inspired unexpected faith in him.

It had been a long time since Jackson T. Underhill had put his faith in anyone. Yet Dr. Leah Mundy inspired it. Did she know that? Did she know he was already thinking of her as an angel of mercy?

He figured he’d thank her, maybe even apologize as soon as they got under way. It was the least he could do for a woman he’d ripped from a warm, dry bed and dragged along on an adventure not of her choosing. The least he could do for a woman he intended to take to Canada, then abandon.

He’d cranked in the anchor and moved to the helm when he heard a strange thunk, then an ominous grinding noise. The whine of a rope through a wooden pulley seared his ears. With a sick lurch of his gut, he looked behind him. The line he’d used as a temporary fastening for the rudder was slithering away.

He let go of the wheel and dove for the rope. A split second before he reached it, the rope disappeared, snakelike, through a scuttle in the hull.

“Shit!” Jackson said, then held his breath. Maybe the rudder would stay put. Maybe—

A terrible wrenching sound shattered the night. Then a quiet hiss slid through the noise of the storm. Jackson hurled himself at the aft rail and looked over.

His curses roared with the thunder. Dr. Leah Mundy, his angel of mercy, his divine savior, had just wrecked his ship.

Two

17 April 1894

My dear Penelope,

I debated quite a bit with myself about whether or not I should relate what happened to me in the wee hours of the morning. The temptation is great to stay silent.

But since you are determined to become my partner in the practice when you complete your medical studies, I feel I owe you an unvarnished picture of what a physician’s life is truly like.

Sometimes we are called upon to treat cases against our will. Such was the circumstance around three o’clock this morning when a man abducted me at gunpoint.

Somehow I managed to keep my wits about me. The scoundrel forced me aboard his ship to treat his ailing wife, who is with child. His intention was to sail away with me aboard so that I could tend to the unfortunate woman.

Naturally, such a criminal had no care whatever for my other patients and would not listen to reason, so I took matters into my own hands. When he locked me in a stateroom with his wife, I used a scalpel to slice through a rope, thus disabling the steering and stopping our departure. After the mishap, my abductor burst into the stateroom, roaring with fury and actually threatening to use me as an anchor.

He is an uncommonly large man, broad of shoulder, with a lean and dangerous face and terrible eyes, but I refused to flinch. In my travels through the untamed West, I learned early to hide my fear. Thanks to my late father and his constant schemes and intrigues, I am no stranger to gunfighters and bullies. In my heart I knew my abductor would not harm me because I have something he needs—my skills as a physician. It is a great virtue to be needed. Greater, even, than being liked. For of course, the outlaw does not like me at all. But he needs me. And this prevented him from shooting me on the spot.

Instead, cursing so profusely I swear the air turned blue, he anchored his broken ship and together we bundled his wife into a dinghy. By sunup, we had her in a proper bed here at the boardinghouse in the main overnight guest room. Though her condition is still grave, I know she has a better chance to recover here. As for the husband, I can only wonder what sort of life it took to mold a man into such a hard-edged desperado.

Hoping I’ve not frightened you away from joining me upon completion of your ward studies, I remain as always,

Leah Jane Mundy, M.D.

Leah rolled a velvet-wrapped blotter over the page to soak up the excess ink. The heavy-barreled roller with its engraved pewter handle reminded her of earlier times.

She would have sold the ink blotter along with everything else if she could have gotten a decent price for it. But it was old and battered, and the initials stamped into the handle had meaning only to her.

G.M.M.

Graciela Maria Mundy. The mother Leah had never known.

A wave of sentiment washed over her as it often did when she was fatigued. She had no memory of her mother, but she felt a tearing loss all the same. Or more accurately, an emptiness. The absence of something vital.

Although it seemed nonsensical, she had an uncanny feeling that if only her mother had lived through childbirth, she would have taught Leah the things textbooks couldn’t explain—how to open her heart to other people, how to live life in the middle of things rather than outside looking in, how to love.

She stared at her face in the barrel of the blotter. Her features had the potential to look exotic, owing to her mother’s Latino heritage. But Leah worked hard to appear ordinary, choosing the plainest of clothing and scraping her hair well out of the way into a bun or single braid. She could do nothing to change her eyes, though. They were large and haunted, the eyes of a woman who knew someone had taken a piece of her away, and she’d never gotten it back.

Regaining a firm grip on her emotions, she thrust the blotter into a drawer, folded the letter precisely into thirds, and sealed it with a blob of red wax. “Work hard, Penny,” she murmured under her breath. “I shall be glad to have your company soon.”

She and Penelope Lake had never met face-to-face. Leah had contacted Johns Hopkins Medical College, newly founded the year before. The college had opened its doors to women from the very start, so Leah had asked to sponsor a promising young female medical student. Her father had sworn he wouldn’t tolerate yet another woman in the practice.

In a rare act of defiance, Leah had persisted. She’d been put in touch with Miss Penelope Lake of Baltimore, who showed signs of becoming a gifted physician and who was interested in moving west. Away, as she hinted in her letters, from the cramped confines of settled society.

The correspondence grew surprisingly warm and intimate. Leah could well imagine Penny’s world because long ago Leah had once been a part of it—cavernous homes like mausoleums, grim social visits, mannered conversations that went nowhere. And always, always, the unspoken expectation that any woman of worth would concern herself with home and family, not a profession.

Leah and Penelope Lake seemed to be kindred spirits. Why was it so easy to write openly to Penny, Leah wondered, when she was so guarded with the people she saw every day? She lived in a busy boardinghouse filled with interesting people, yet she could find no true friend among them. Even Sophie, her assistant, maintained a cordial distance. Leah wondered if it was simply her destiny to be alone in a crowd; never to know the easy familiarity of a close friendship or the quiet comfort of a family.

Even less likely was the possibility of intimacy with a man. Her father, always formal, demanding and distant, had made such a thing seem impossible. That was his legacy. With his pride, his expectations and his tragic shortcomings, he had left her as a creature half-formed. He had taught her that appearances were everything. He’d never shown her how to dive beneath the surface to create a rich inner life. Some parents crippled their children by beating and berating them. Edward Mundy was far more subtle, molding Leah’s character with undermining phrases that slipped in unnoticed, then festered into wounds that would never heal. He sabotaged her self-confidence and he limited her dreams.

“What a charming frock,” he used to say to her when she was small. “Now, do you suppose Mrs. Trotter would fix that unruly hair in order to do the dress justice?”

And later, when she was a schoolgirl: “There are a hundred ways to be mistaken, but only one way to be right. You have your mother’s looks and—alas—her contempt for conventional wisdom.”

When she became a young lady and a social failure, he had said, “If you cannot attract a decent husband, I shall permit you to assist me in my practice.”

By the time she recognized the harm he’d done her, it was too late to repair the damage. But he was gone now, and maybe she could find a way to move out from under his shadow. Maybe the world would open up for her.

“It’s not fair for me to pin so much hope on you, Penny,” Leah said, shaking off her thoughts.

She placed the letter to Penelope Anne Lake on a wooden desk tray, then checked her register. Mrs. Petty-grove had sent her houseboy with a list of the usual complaints, all of them imaginary, all treatable with a cup of Sophie’s mild herb tea and a bit of conversation. The Ebey lad, the one who had been kicked by a horse, had passed a quiet night.

Unlike Leah. Her own head throbbed—not from an iron-shod hoof, but from a man with an iron will.

And the most frightening eyes she had ever seen.

Just the thought of those hard gray eyes brought her to her feet. Restlessly, she paced the surgery, scanning the bookshelves and the framed certificates hanging on the walls, trying to construct her day in some sort of orderly fashion. But the extraordinary night she’d passed destroyed her concentration.

Memories of the man’s bleak gaze troubled her as she stopped at the coat tree behind the door and put on a white muslin smock. The garment had been laundered and starched and fiercely pressed by Iona, the deaf-mute girl abandoned by her parents three years earlier.

Over her father’s protests, Leah had taken in the girl. Other women marry and have children of their own. But you have to adopt someone else’s damaged goods.

Leah wished she could forget her father’s bitter words. But she remembered everything. Her blade-sharp memory was both a gift and a curse. In medical school, she’d been renowned for her ability to commit the most minute detail to memory. Yet the curse of it was, she also recalled every slight, every slur, and they hurt as fresh as yesterday. Leah Mundy, too busy doing a man’s job to remember she’s a woman… Her childhood friends had gone to parties while Leah had stayed home, memorizing formulae and anatomy. Her classmates had married and become mothers while Leah doctored people and delivered other women’s babies.

Resolutely, she filled a small earthenware churn with vinegar heated at the kitchen stove. She added sassafras and mint, then a pinch of ground cloves, and put the container on a tray to take upstairs.

As she passed through the hallway, she heard the sounds of clinking dishes and silver from the dining room, the clack of the coffee grinder in the kitchen. Smells of sizzling bacon and baking biscuits wafted through the house. Eight o’clock, and Perpetua Dawson would be serving breakfast.

Leah rarely took the time to sit down for a meal with the boarders. When she did, she felt awkward and intrusive anyway. She had never learned to be comfortable in company, even among people she encountered every day. For most of her life, she’d been regarded as an oddity, an aberration, sometimes an absurdity: a woman with a mind of her own and the ill manners to show it.

She paused in the grand foyer. Perhaps this was the area that had deluded the outlaw into thinking the house fancy. High above the front door was a wheeled window of leaded glass depicting a ship at sea. The colored panes with their fanciful design served as a reminder of bygone days when the owner of the house had been a prosperous sea captain. A railed bridge, reminiscent of a ship’s deck, spanned the vestibule from above, connecting the two upper wings of the house.

By the time Leah’s father had bought the place, it had been an abandoned wreck for many years. He’d gone deep into debt restoring it, but impossible debt was nothing new for Edward Mundy.

She went up the main staircase, noting with satisfaction the sheen of verbena wax on the banisters. Iona kept the house immaculate.

Leah stopped outside the first door on the right. She tapped her foot lightly against the door. “Carrie? Are you awake?”

No sound. Leah shouldered open the door, the tray balanced carefully in both hands. Silence. Heavy drapes blocked out the morning light. She stood still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. The room had a fine rosewood bedstead and, when the curtains were parted, a commanding view of Penn Cove.

Carrie lay unmoving in the tall four-poster bed. Alone. Good God, had the husband abandoned her?

Leah turned to set the tray on a side table—and nearly dropped it.

The gunman.

He dozed sitting up in a chintz-covered chair, his long legs and broad shoulders an ungainly contrast to the dainty piece of furniture. He still wore his denims and duster, his hat pulled down over the top half of his face.

Held loosely in his hand was the Colt revolver.

Leah gasped when she saw it. “Sir!” she said sharply.

He came instantly alert, the hat brim and the gun barrel both lifting in warning. When he recognized Leah, he stood and approached her, raising one side of his mouth in a parody of a grin.

“Morning, Doc,” he said in his gravelly voice. “You look mighty crisp and clean this morning.” Insolently, he ran his long, callused finger down her arm. The forbidden touch shocked Leah. She flinched, glaring at him. Before she could move away, he cornered her. “Uh-oh, Doc.”

“What’s the matter?” She forced herself to appear calm.

“You missed one.” Before she could stop him, he reached around and fastened the top button of her shirtwaist.

A man should not be so familiar with a woman he didn’t know. Particularly a married man. “Sir—”

“Do you always look so stiff and starched after wrecking a man’s boat?”

Ignoring his sarcasm, she moved past him. “Excuse me. I need to check on my patient.” She deposited the tray on the table. “Did you find a bottle of your wife’s tonic? I need to know what she’s been taking.”

“All our things are on the boat.”

“I wish you’d remembered the tonic.”

“We had to abandon ship pretty fast. It was all I could do to keep myself from choking you to death.”

“That wouldn’t do Carrie much good, would it?”

“Damn it, woman, you could have killed us all.”

“Perhaps you’ll consider that the next time you try to kidnap me.” She took the lid off the medicine crock.

He crossed the room, boots treading softly on the threadbare carpet. “What’s that?”

“An inhalant to clear the lungs.”

“So what’s wrong with her?” he asked, and she heard the anxiety in his voice. “Besides…you know.”

“Yes, I do know.”

“She’s got the croup or something?”

“Or something.” Leah folded her arms. “I’ll need to do a more thorough examination. Her lungs sounded congested last night. She’s in danger of developing lobar pneumonia.”

His ice gray eyes narrowed. “Is that bad?”

“It can be, yes, particularly for a woman in her condition. That’s why we’d best do everything we can to prevent it from happening.”

“What’s everything?”

“The inhalant. Complete bed rest. Plenty of clear liquids and as much food as we can get her to eat. She must regain her strength. Pregnancy and childbirth are arduous chores, and they take their toll on frail women.”

He glanced at the sleeping form in the bed. So far, Leah had not seen him touch her, and she thought that was strange. None of her affair, she told herself.

“Carrie doesn’t eat much,” he said.

“We have to try. Since she seems to be resting comfortably, don’t disturb her. When she wakes on her own, help her sit up. Have her inhale the steam and try to get her to take some broth and bread. Mrs. Dawson will have it ready in the kitchen.” Leah turned to go. He stepped in front of the door, blocking her exit. He was one of the tallest men she had ever seen—and one of the meanest-looking. She folded her arms. “If you dare to threaten me again, I’ll go straight to Sheriff St. Croix.”

Her warning made no impression on him—or did it? Perhaps his eyes got a little narrower, his mouth a little tighter. “Lady, if you know what’s good for you, then you won’t breathe a word to the sheriff.”

She hitched up her chin. “And if I do?”

“Don’t take that risk with me.”

The icy promise in his voice chilled her blood. “I don’t want any trouble,” she stated.

“Neither do I. So I’ll be spending the day working on the boat you wrecked last night.”

“That boat was a wreck long before I disabled the rudder.”

“At least I could steer it.” He hissed out a long breath, clearly trying to gather patience. Then he dug into the pocket of his jeans and took out a thick roll of bills. “What’s your fee?”

She swallowed. “Five dollars, but—”

He peeled off a twenty-dollar note. “That should take care of the fee, plus room and board. I ought to be able to get the steering fixed today, and then we’ll be off.”

She stared at the paper money but made no attempt to take it. “I’m afraid you didn’t understand. You have to stay here and take care of your wife. Not just for today, but until she gets better. You can’t just go sailing off into the sunset.”

“But you said—”

“I said she needs complete bed rest and plenty of food and care. She won’t get that on your ship. She won’t get that without you. You’re staying here, Mr….” She floundered, realizing he’d never told her his name.

“Underhill. Jackson T. Underhill. And I’m not staying.”

“What’s your hurry, Mr. Underhill?” Leah demanded. As if she didn’t know. He was a man on the run. A fugitive. From what, she didn’t care to speculate. None of her affair. Her gaze flicked to the twenty dollars in his hand. Was it stolen?

“I don’t have time to lollygag on some island.”

She felt a niggling fear that he’d go off and leave Carrie. “You cannot abandon your duties,” she stated. “I simply will not allow it.”

“I’ve got business to take care of.”

“You’ve got a wife to take care of.”

He waved the money at her. “That’s what I’m hiring you to do.”

“I’m a doctor, not a nursemaid.” Leah planted her hands on her hips and wished she were taller so she could face him down, eye to eye, nose to nose. “Good day, Mr. Underhill. I’ll look in on your wife this evening. If you need anything before then, tell Mrs. Dawson. She’ll instruct Mr. Douglas to fetch me.”

She reached past him for the doorknob. He seized her wrist.

Something happened; she wasn’t sure what, but his touch sparked a hot and alien sensation within her. His grip was strong, though it didn’t hurt. His gaze was brutal and uncompromising. And in spite of it all, she felt a curious breathlessness, a quickening in her chest.

“If I need anything?” he repeated. “Lady, there are a lot of things I need.”

She snatched her hand away, mortified by the forbidden sensations his touch had caused. “I wasn’t speaking of your needs, but Carrie’s. I’ll treat your wife to the best of my abilities.” She hoped he didn’t hear the slight tremor in her voice. “Beyond that, I can promise you nothing.”

Face flaming, she pushed past him and left the room.

The Mundy place had a real honest-to-God bathhouse, Jackson was pleased to discover. Apparently, this had been a fine estate at one time, and the previous owner had spared no expense in endowing it with luxuries. Perpetua Dawson, the small, busy woman who ran the kitchen, had shown him to the bathhouse, pointing out the deep zinc tubs and the furnace-heated water supply.

After laboring to bring the crippled boat into harbor, Jackson had looked in on Carrie, finding her listless and vague. Trying to calm the panic beating in his chest, he went to the baths to enjoy the first good soak he’d had since…Santa Fe, was it? No, there was that night in San Francisco not so long ago. A frizzy-haired whore, wet-brained from too much beer, had careered right into Jackson and landed in his lap. Laughing, Carrie had struck up a conversation with her and blurted out that they’d bought passage to Seattle. He’d thought the whore was too far gone to hear. He hoped he was right.

Carrie had cajoled him into spending his winnings on a room at the Lombard Hotel. She had exclaimed gleefully over the luxurious velvet draperies, the champagne and oysters, the tray of chocolate truffles….

But then she’d looked at the fancy grille on the window and shivered. “This is a prison, Jackson. They’ll never let me out of here. I’ll never be safe. Never.”

“Hush now, Carrie,” he’d said, repeating an age-old pledge. “I’ll keep you safe.”

“Build up the fire,” she had begged. “It’s too cold in here.”

The thought ignited an old, old memory that raised a bittersweet ache in his chest. The years peeled away and he was a boy again, sitting on the wet brick pavement in the moldering courtyard of the St. Ignatius Orphan Asylum of Chicago. Through a grille-covered window he could hear a little girl sobbing, sobbing.

Carrie. With shaking hands, Jackson had held the bundle of sweets he’d stolen from the pantry of the refectory. The sweets were never given to the children, of course. Brother Anthony and Brother Brandon saved them for themselves.

Holding a little cloth bag of gumdrops, Jackson started to climb. His feet, in worn and ill-fitting shoes, wedged into the gaps left by crumbling mortar. His wiry arms trembled as he pulled himself up. A sliver from the windowsill stabbed into his hand. He ignored the pain. At St. I’s, kids knew better than to cry over a sliver.

“Carrie,” he said, finding a toehold on the rain gutter. “Carrie, it’s me, Jackson.”

Her sobbing hiccuped into silence. Then she spoke, her little-girl’s voice clear as a crystal bell. “They locked me in. Oh, save me, Jackson. I’m so cold. I’ll die in here.”

“I couldn’t pick the lock,” he said apologetically. “I tried and tried.” He pushed the bag of sweets between the rusty bars of the window. “Gumdrops, Carrie!”

“Red ones?”

The silence spun out. A distant horn blew, signaling the end of the shift for Chicago’s dockworkers at Quimper Shipyards. The swampy smell of Lake Michigan blew in on a cold wind through the courtyard. “Carrie?” Jackson strained to see inside the locked room, but spied only shadows. “You all right?”

“No,” she said, the word muffled by a mouthful of candy. “What’s this, Jackson?”

“Something I made for you. Carved it out of firewood.”

“It’s a bird.”

“Uh-huh.” He imagined her turning it over in her small hands. He was proud of his work, his attention to detail. It was a dove; he’d copied the stained glass Holy Ghost in St. Mary’s Church. At Christmas and Easter, the brothers scrubbed the orphans up and paraded them to church, and Jackson had always spent the hour staring at the jewel-colored windows.

“Oh, Jackson.” Her voice came through the barred window. “I’ll keep it with me always.”

“I put a hole in the back so you can wear it on a string around your neck.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” she said, and he had the eerie impression she wasn’t speaking to him. “I just wanted to hold the baby, just wanted to be warm by the fire, but they blamed it all on me, put me here in the cold. I’m scared, Jackson.”

His legs began to tremble from the effort of holding himself up. “Carrie—”

“You there,” barked a deep, familiar voice. “Get down from there, boy!”

Jackson didn’t have to look back to know Brother Anthony stood below, flexing a knotted belt while his eyes gleamed with hell’s fury and his costly ring of office flashed in the light.

“Are you deaf, boy, or just stupid? I said get down.”

He tilted his head up. Just a short reach away loomed a drainpipe. If he could grab onto that, he’d climb up to the roof, maybe find a way down the other side. He leaned toward the rusty pipe, closed his eyes, and leaped. The ancient iron groaned under his weight, but it held. He began to climb, up and up, ignoring the wrathful commands of Brother Anthony. Jackson kept climbing toward the pigeon-infested ledge above him. How he wished he were a bird. He’d fly away free, soaring…

“If you won’t come down, I’ll give your punishment to that little devil-spawn girl you like so much,” Brother Anthony promised.

Jackson stopped climbing. His brief fantasy of freedom flickered and died. He blew out a long, weary breath. He slid down the drainpipe and dropped to the cracked brick yard, stumbling a little as he turned to face Brother Anthony.

The portly warden backhanded him across the face. Jackson’s head snapped to one side; he saw a spray of blood fly out. Brother Anthony’s ruby ring had cut him above the cheekbone.

He knew from years of observation that the warden would go easier on him if he cried and begged for mercy. But he’d never been able to plead. Instead, he wiped his bleeding cheek with his sleeve, then clawed off his shirt even before Brother Anthony commanded it. With a cold gleam of defiance in his eyes, Jackson turned, braced his hands against the wall, and waited for the first blow to land.

In the detention room, Carrie was strangely silent.

In the bathhouse, many miles and many years away from that moment, Jackson plunged his head into the lukewarm water and scrubbed hard, wishing he could wash clean the past. But he couldn’t, of course. The past would always be with him, just as the scar from Brother Anthony’s ring would always be with him. Just as Carrie would always be with him.

Pregnant. God Almighty, Carrie was pregnant.

She had awakened briefly this morning. Like a petulant child, she had turned up her nose and complained about the sour smell of the vinegar and herbs, but she seemed to breathe easier after the treatment. He had managed to get her to eat a bit of bread sopped in warm milk and flavored with cinnamon and sugar.

“You’re good to me,” she had murmured. “You’re always good to me.” And she’d reached her hand out for the bottle of tonic she needed.

“I left it on the boat, honey.”

He’d taken her hand in his. Her fingers tightened into a fist, and she knocked his arm away. “I need it, Jackson. I need my medicine now.”

Resigned, he’d rowed out to the schooner. He planned to bring her in to dock anyway. He’d paid the harbormaster, then returned to Carrie. He should have talked to her about the pregnancy, talked about what it would mean to bring a baby into the world. Their world. Instead, he watched her grab the bottle, watched her drink greedily until her eyes grew dazed with a sated look.

“Save a little of that,” he said. “The doctor wants to know what’s in your medicine.”

“I need it,” she mumbled, visibly calmer. “I always do.”

He’d sat with her and held her hand until she slept again. All in all, it had been an easy day with Carrie. Not every day was like that. Her moods had always been unpredictable, but lately her spirits had spiraled downward at an accelerated rate. He supposed the pregnancy explained that, but what the hell did he know of female things?

For that matter, what did he know of anything the future held for him and Carrie? He knew better than to expect love and security, a settled life, a home. That was something that didn’t happen to people like them. They were too desperate, too damaged. He would simply drift along with Carrie, taking each day as it came.

He’d never done a lot of planning for the future. He’d always lived for the moment. Decisions that had altered his life had turned on a single moment. A three-year stint on a whaling ship? He’d gone simply because his bed in the flophouse where he was staying had been lumpy. Ownership of a broken-down seagoing schooner? He’d won it with a single hand of cards.

Good or bad, it was the way he had lived. If you don’t expect anything out of life, he reasoned, then life won’t have a chance to disappoint you.

It was enough to simply stay ahead of the law. Drifting along had never bothered him in the past, though today it preyed upon his mind. There was something about that lady doctor that made him wish he could be something more than a wanderer. Made him weary of always being on the wrong side of the law—even when he was trying to do right. If he could get Carrie away to a safe place, maybe they could start over again, settle down, get a house and some land like regular folks.

He dried himself with a clean towel and wrapped it around his waist. The timid deaf girl called Iona had set out some shaving things for him. Peering into a small, oval mirror, he lathered up. He’d gotten careless the past few days with Carrie being so sick. He had to stay clean-shaven because the Wanted poster showed him with a beard.

His mood rose a couple of notches. The likeness and its screaming headline hadn’t been posted in Seattle, so he guessed the search wouldn’t reach this far north. Not anytime soon, he figured.

By the time they traced him here, he’d be long gone, thanks to a lucky hand of cards dealt at a tavern on Yesler Way in Seattle. A timely quartet of queens had won him the schooner.

The thought of the boat almost brought a smile to Jackson’s face. He’d always dreamed of having a boat. When he was a boy, he’d stolen a copy of Treasure Island—everything worth having was stolen. Late at night, burning a contraband candle in the boys’ dormitory at St. I’s, he had devoured the adventure story with his eyes, his mind, his heart. Against all odds, he had learned how to dream. Ever since reading that book, he’d wanted to sail away, wanted the freedom, wanted the sense that he was in control of a world of his choosing.

Jackson T. Underhill had never found that. Not yet. He was still looking.

The whaling ship had not been the answer. He’d hated the tedium, the rigid pecking order among the crew, the sick cruelty of the second mate, the grim violence of the hunt. As in all the things Jackson had done in his life, he’d gleaned important skills from the experience; then he’d moved on.

The schooner was a new—if leaky—start. But it had problems. The damage done by the lady doctor was only the beginning. Once he’d docked the boat, the harbormaster’s assistant had given him a depressing litany of repairs to be made before she was seaworthy again.

If he could just get her running well enough to make it to Canada, he’d take his time, maybe make a plan. He had only the vaguest idea where he would go; all he knew was that he needed to find a place where Carrie would feel safe, where his face wasn’t known, where a man could be judged by the hard work he did, not by a past he couldn’t change.