Jo Goodman (5 page)

"I'm not Jonna Remington's responsibility," Decker said. There was no humor in his tone now.

"Perhaps not," Jack agreed. "I'm only saying that she thinks you are. It's not something you can change. It would be easier to change the direction of a prevailing wind than to move Jonna from a course she's set or an opinion she holds."

Decker had nothing to say to that. He walked away.

* * *

Huntress
officially reached Boston Harbor at ten minutes after eight. The total length of her run from Boston to Charleston to London and back again was calculated at thirty-three days, sixteen hours. It was ninety minutes better than Jonna had quickly worked out in her own head, and a full three hours better than her best estimate upon seeing the clipper off. Her early arrival at the wharf this morning was prompted less by wishful thinking than by her inability to sleep any longer.

When the ship was safely berthed at the pier, the crowd of dockworkers at last breached the distance that had separated them from Jonna. She felt them surge forward just as the gangway was lowered to the dock and Decker Thorne appeared at the taffrail. Her hand that was raised in greeting for Jack Quincy faltered in midair. Her head tilted to one side, and her violet eyes darkened in confusion. She looked past Decker and saw Jack hobbling forward on crutches.

At the angle she was from the ship, it was impossible for her to see the nature of his injury. What she could see, however, as clearly as a lighthouse beacon, was Decker Thorne's careless grin.

Jonna's wide mouth flattened, and the effect seemed only to broaden his smile. She nodded once, curtly, and realizing her hand was still raised, she lowered it to her side. He seemed to find that amusing as well.

There wasn't much that didn't amuse Decker Thorne, Jonna reflected as she was jostled by the men crowding around. When two hands were placed firmly at the small of her back and she was pushed into the drink, her last thought as she tumbled forward was that Decker Thorne would find this very funny indeed.

* * *

Only two men moved. One slipped deeper into the crowd and then out of it. The other tore off his jacket and dove into the icy water.

Jack Quincy clutched the woolen coat Decker had tossed him. He found himself staring helplessly at the spot where Jonna had been standing a moment earlier. Her fall, and now Decker's rescue attempt, had transfixed him. Quincy knew himself to be standing at the taffrail of the
Remington Huntress
, but there was a part of him that had suddenly been transported back in time. Nearly a quarter of a century ago he had been standing in a similar place on another ship of the Remington line. The clipper was
Sea Dancer,
and on the Boston wharf was a woman waiting for the ship and the ship's master.

Jack could see the events unfold as clearly now as he had all those years before. Charlotte Reid Remington stood patiently and proudly at the end of the pier, waiting for her husband John to reach her. In her arms she held her infant daughter Jonna. John hurried toward her. He hadn't seen her for almost three months, and it was his first sighting of his only child.

Jack never did know how Charlotte lost her balance. One moment she was landfast, and in the next she was in free fall. It was her husband who leaped to her rescue and the crowd who had gathered to welcome the ship cheered the recovery. Jack himself experienced a considerable lightening of his heart when he saw Charlotte brought to the surface.

It was the young cabin boy beside Jack who saw what others did not. While John Remington had been able to bring up his wife, she had not been able to hold onto her child.

Before Jack understood what Charlotte's forlorn cries meant, the lad at his side had leaped into the water for Jonna. Jack had marveled at the boy's tenacity as he dove repeatedly for the bundle of blankets and baby. Jack remembered thinking when he'd paid for the boy at Cunnington's Workhouse for Foundlings and Orphans that he'd be burying him at sea before they reached Boston. The child had claimed to be ten; the headmaster had said he was twelve. If he was nine, Jack would have been astonished.

The lad, though, had a way of surprising Jack. He took to the sea and the ship, and as each day put them farther from London, he seemed to grow stronger. His duties as cabin boy were menial but not backbreaking, and John Remington was not a tyrant or a petty and demanding taskmaster. The fresh air may have had something to do with the boy's recovery, but more likely it was the food.

When Jack first laid eyes on Colin Thorne he knew the boy was starving.

Jack Quincy was brought abruptly to the present as he saw Decker surface with nothing to show for his efforts. Even from the distance that Jack viewed the rescue attempt, he could see that Decker's skin was pale and his lips were already turning blue. They would have to drag him out of there if he wasn't to die from the frigid water himself.

As Jack thought this, Decker pushed under the surface again.

Jonna's cape and gown took to the water like a sponge, pulling her down as she fought for another direction. She managed to claw open the frog fastening at her throat and get rid of the cape, but it was not as helpful as she had hoped, not when she couldn't swim a stroke.

The current tossed her against the pilings. Her shoulder slammed the barnacle-encrusted wood. Pain made her gasp, and icy water replaced air in her lungs. She had no sense of up or down as darkness edged out her vision. With a clarity that astonished her she understood she was losing consciousness and that she was going to die.

Something floated past Decker's face. His hands reached out blindly for it. Jonna's cape. Somehow she had gotten out of it. He surfaced, tossed it to the onlookers, and ignoring the oars and hands they stretched out to him, he dove for what he knew would be his last time.

The current pushed him toward the pilings, and he went with it this time instead of fighting it. Was this what had happened to Jonna? Kicking hard, he pushed himself deeper. It was impossible to see. His lungs burned with the need to breathe and icy fingers of water seemed to have slipped under his skin. His bones ached with cold. He was so numb that he almost missed the first brush of her hand against his leg.

Decker instinctively turned away from the touch, pulling up his knees to his chest. When he realized what he was doing he changed direction and reached out for the thing that had held him so briefly. His hand clamped over Jonna's forearm. He yanked, bringing her close so that he could grasp her shoulders, and began swimming for the surface. It was like dragging an anchor, he thought. She was a dead weight in his arms. The thought chilled him in a way the water couldn't.

A dead weight. He hoped it wasn't true.

There was help aplenty when Decker surfaced with Jonna. He pushed her limp body toward the small boat that had been lowered into the water and waited until she was hauled in before he dragged himself over the side and then collapsed.

He had a vague memory of being covered with blankets before he was lifted to the pier. He recalled turning his head and seeing Jack Quincy bent awkwardly over Jonna, his splinted leg thrust out to one side as he pressed on her back. Men crowded around him and circled Jonna. She was lost to his vision and then his vision was lost.

* * *

Decker was not familiar with his surroundings upon waking, but he had a good idea where he was. He had been in enough well-appointed bedrooms, either as a guest or an intruder, to recognize the quality of the furniture and linens in this one. It could only mean he was somewhere in the Remington mansion. That meant Beacon Hill.

Decker pushed himself upright. The heavy covers fell away to the level of his waist. Looking down at himself, he saw he was wearing a nightshirt. The tautness of the fabric across his shoulders made him sure it wasn't his own. If that hadn't been enough, there was the faint scent of cedar that clung to the material, hinting at a season or more in storage. His own clothes were not clearly visible. Even his boots were missing. He could only imagine that somewhere in the house, servants were working on laundering and drying and polishing.

A fire had been laid. It burned with enough intensity for Decker to feel its warmth across the room. The flames were reflected in the polished surface of the walnut wainscoting and in the spindles of the great four-poster. Above the mantel was an oil painting. Decker leaned forward to study it closer. It was a portrait of a couple, but the pair was not brother and sister. The rather stiff, clean-shaven young man had his hand lightly resting on the shoulder of the woman. The dark-haired beauty was not looking out from the canvas. Rather, she was looking up at the man. There was a profound sense of calm in her gaze, an expression of such tenderness that it defined the notion of a heart at peace and filled with love.

Decker had seen that expression before. When she wasn't exasperated with him, Marie Thibodeaux had looked at Jimmy like that. She'd looked at him like that right at the end, Decker remembered, just before he swung from the gallows and the trap dropped from beneath her own feet. Marie had loved Jimmy Grooms with the same sense of rightness and conviction that the woman in the painting had about her feelings for her husband.

Decker turned away from the mantel, no doubt in his mind that the couple captured in the gilt-framed portrait above it were Charlotte Reid and John Remington.

Jonna's parents.

He could no longer pretend to himself that he wasn't thinking about her. His eyes may have been wandering about the room, taking in the armoire and highboy, the exquisitely scrolled workmanship on the vanity, the expensive rug from the Orient, but his mind was wondering. He strained to hear movement in the hallway outside his door or beyond that, something below stairs that would tell him what had happened after Jonna had been pulled out of the water.

What did so much silence signify? A vigil? Or mourning?

On the bedside table was a silver tray and tea service. Decker would have preferred something stronger than milk in his tea, but he made a cup anyway. Sliding his legs over the side of the bed, he hooked his heels on the frame and drank the tea. It was the first time since jumping into the Atlantic that he had the sensation of being warm on the inside.

He stood. If no one was going to come to him—

"Now where do you think you're going?" The no-nonsense voice belonged to Mrs. Davis, Jonna Remington's housekeeper. She was carrying a warming pan in front of her as if she meant to do battle with it. Though small of stature, she had a militant look about her even when she wasn't harried as she was at this time. Normally her apron was as crisp as her speech and stiff as her upper lip. The wrinkles in it now suggested Mrs. Davis had indulged herself briefly in a little hand-wringing. Her white cap was slightly askew on her graying hair, and there was a hint of puffiness beneath her eyes. The tip of her thin nose was pink. Her handkerchief was a visible bulge under her sleeve. "Back in bed with you," she ordered. Brooking no argument, she advanced with the warming pan.

"Miss Remington?" The weakness in his voice was unexpected. He wasn't sure he was even understood.

Her face looked about to crumple, but she busied herself exchanging the warming pan in her hand for the one under Decker's sheets, this bit of industry helping her recover. "The doctor's been and gone," Mrs. Davis said.

What exactly did that mean? "Then Miss Remington is..."

"In her room." Mrs. Davis plumped the pillows, smoothed the covers, and, pressing Decker's shoulder firmly, directed him to lie down again. Her eyes watered as she studied his drawn features. There was a certain tightness in his jaw that she could not recall seeing before, and a muscle worked in his cheek. She thought of his careless smile only because it was absent. "You should rest, Mr. Thorne," she said quietly. "Though I suppose it's Captain now. Mr. Quincy tells us you mastered the clipper when he took to his bed." Mrs. Davis felt absently along her forearm for the handkerchief she'd tucked under her sleeve. Tears threatened to fall. "He told us what you did in the harbor... how you risked yourself to pull Miss Remington free. We're grateful." A tear that she could not blink back fell over her delicately lined cheek. "I just thought you should know." Her cheeks turned pink. She gave up trying to find the handkerchief and began to walk hurriedly away.

Decker pushed himself up on his elbows. "Here, Mrs. Davis. I think you're looking for this."

She stopped, turned, and saw Decker holding her handkerchief between his thumb and forefinger. She'd heard stories about him. All the servants had. It seemed an odd time to verify there might be some truth in them. Her tears dried of their own accord. She would have to set the maids to counting the silver as long as he was a guest. Mrs. Davis took the crumpled square of linen back. "How did you do that?"

The incorrigible grin surfaced now. "Habit."

* * *

Decker waited several minutes before he left the room. He belted the dressing gown he had found in the armoire and stepped into the empty hallway. He had only been in the Remington home on two occasions, both times with Jack Quincy on business matters, and he had never been above stairs. He knew from the view from the street that the mansion was laid out in two distinct wings. If the portrait above the mantel was any indicator, then the bedchamber in which he had been placed to recover had belonged to the master and mistress of the house. Would Jonna's room have been in the same wing as her parents' or would it have been elsewhere?