“Excellent work,” he told her. Without asking permission, he put his hands on her waist and lifted her out of the stairwell. He did not, however, pass her to his men. He knew them each well enough to see they were disappointed. “Where are we taking Bram?”
The question distracted her and kept her from poking him with the file. She thought that distraction was probably the point, since she'd already told him about the back room. Shifting her attention to it, though, reminded her that it was still locked. “There. Behind the cages,” she said. “I'll open it.”
“Take this,” Bode said, picking up one of the sheets that covered his brother. “I assume there's a table. Put this over it. We'll use the other sheet to make a sling. And you'll still want to clear the lobby.”
Comfort nodded. The patrons might be curious, but no one needed to hear Bram scream.
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Alexandra DeLong sat at her younger son's bedside and read
Innocents Abroad
while he slept. Occasionally she smoothed hair away from his brow, glad that it resisted her efforts to tame it and continued to fall forward. It gave her something more satisfying to do than rearrange covers that really didn't require straightening.
Bram was heavily dosed with laudanum and had been since Dr. Winter set his leg. She was grateful that the doctor had used an ether mask on Bram while he manipulated the bones, but now there was only laudanum and sleep to ease the pain. They only worked in concert. Without the laudanum, Bram couldn't sleep, and outside of sleep the laudanum could only reduce the pain, not erase it.
She looked up from her book as Bode entered the room. “You're still here,” she said, marking her place with a finger and closing the book over it. “I didn't expect that.”
“Obviously.” He went to her side and laid a hand on her shoulder. “I thought I would spend the night. Take one of the watches, as it were.”
“That's not necessary. I don't think I'll be leaving his side.”
“Mother.”
“Don't reprove me, Bode. I'd sit with you if you were in such a state as this.” Alexandra smiled ruefully as she examined his eye. “You almost were. How is your back?”
“It's fine.
I'm
fine.”
“If I'd had any inkling that my boys would be made of such fragile stuff, I would have had girls.”
Bode chuckled. “I just bet you would have.”
Alexandra was mollified enough to reach back and lay a hand over the one Bode had on her shoulder. “Thank you. I appreciate that you went to be with Bram when you heard what happened. I know it's not always easy to be his brother.”
“Not always, no.”
She let her hand fall away. “At least he didn't bring it on himself this time. I can take some solace in that.”
Bode didn't say anything. He left his mother's side and went to Bram's. He studied his brother's pale face with its perfect symmetry of features. There was no denying that Bram possessed the face of an angel. It had been remarked on since the moment of his birth. Bode remembered, though he hadn't agreed at the time. At first glimpse he'd only seen a squealing, pink-and-wrinkled piglet and hadn't changed his mind until Bram was four and had more blond curls springing from his head than a girl. Bode decided it was better for his brother to be an angel than a girl and handed Bram a pair of their mother's sewing shears.
Bode had never encouraged Bram to trouble after that. Bram had always been able to find it easily enough on his own.
“He was at the bank to invite Miss Kennedy to the opera,” Bode said.
“I know. Comfort told me. Is she still here?”
“Downstairs.”
“How like her.” Alexandra looked at the clock. “It's late. Already after nine. You should see that she gets home safely.”
“It occurred to me. If I can get her to leave.”
“Tell her I insist. She's not to blame, and I don't blame her, even if the accident did happen at Jones Prescott.”
Bode thought he would leave that last part out when he spoke to her. He turned around, bent, and kissed his mother on the cheek. “I'll be back after I take Miss Kennedy home.”
“Are you going to stay?”
“Yes, I told you I would. For the night.”
“Forever,” she said.
“No, Mother. I don't live here any longer.”
“Then there's no point, is there?”
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She was being called. The voices, and she was certain there were more than one, came to her first on a delicate, undulating thread of sound. They said her name; she knew they did. How else could they hope to find her if they didn't use her name?
She cupped one hand to her ear to funnel the sound. It was something she often did when she heard them calling. They never spoke all at once. They were an undisciplined chorus, and what they said came at her in rapid succession, the words separated by half measures, each one an echo of another. All of it indistinguishable.
All of it frantic.
She sensed new urgency in their cries. She was touched by it, but not in a tender, yearning way. This urgency had physical presence and sharp claws that dug into her flesh. She bled where they pierced her. She sniffed. That faintly metallic scent, was it her blood? She wanted to wet her lips but was afraid she'd taste blood on them. She swirled her tongue around her mouth instead and swallowed her own spit. Raising her knees to her chest, she made herself small, then smaller yet. Her hiding place was dark, but she closed her eyes to make it even darker. She could still hear them calling her, crying out, though perhaps not as loudly as before. She couldn't be sure. What they wanted from her was a mystery. Was there something she was supposed to do? She always wondered if there was something she was supposed to do.
What she did was flatten her cupped hand against her ear. She raised her other hand and clapped it over the other ear. She could almost not hear them now. She only had to wait them out and then it would be done. They could not go on forever. No echo lasted an eternity.
She had the sense of time passing, though she could never be certain how long. She sensed she was older when they found her, not merely by a few minutes or hours, but by years. She couldn't understand it but accepted it as the truth.
She didn't open her eyes right away. Even when she felt the heat of sunshine on her face, she kept her eyes closed. She could hear breathing, whispers, but she wasn't curious about these sounds. It didn't matter. They weren't part of the chorus. Every word was distinct.
“Christ. It's a kid. Goddamnit, I can't do another kid.”
“You got to. Someone's got to. I figure I'm up two or three on you. Maybe four if you count that woman and the baby like they was separate.”
“Ain't you got sense enough not to remind me? You wanna see me puke? This ain't what I signed on for.”
“Ain't what I signed on for either, but I reckon it's what we're in the middle of. Now, you gonna jaw about it or get it done?”
She opened her eyes. The light hurt them, and she blinked rapidly. The men moved closer together, blocking sunshine. Their faces were indistinct, protected by shadow and a penumbra of sunlight around their heads. They might have been angels, but she didn't think so. They wore hats. She'd never seen a picture of an angel wearing a hat. They didn't always have halos, but they never wore hats.
“What the hell are you two doing? You find something?”
She gave a start. The two men were joined by a third. His voice was hoarse. It scratched her skin, making it prickle. She stopped flattening her hands against her ears and hugged herself.
“It's a kid,” One said. “A girl. Damn me if somehow that don't make it worse.”
Three bent and peered into her rock shelter. “Christ.” He straightened, reached into his pocket, and withdrew something that fit neatly into his palm. After a few moments spent fiddling with it, he raised a hand to his mouth. When he spoke, his voice didn't scrape her skin quite so much. “Leave her be,” he said.
“But you said no survivors,” Two said.
“And now I'm saying leave her be. Do you have a problem with that?”
Two hesitated before he said, “No, sir.”
“Seems like you do.”
“No, sir. Not really.”
One spoke up. “She's gonna die here. We're takin' most everything.”
“So it would be a kindness to kill her now, is that what you're saying?”
Neither One nor Two said anything. They didn't shrug. They didn't move. They didn't make decisions.
“That's what I thought,” said Three. He stared at the object in his palm, turning it over and over while the others waited for him to speak.
She waited, too. It would be important, what he said.
“Leave her,” he said at last. “And leave her this.”
She didn't have time to prepare for the thing that was tossed in her direction. It was an afterthought, and it landed in the cradle of her dress between her knees. She stared at it and had one clear image of the afterthought before she was plunged into darkness.
And then the voices began calling to her again.
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“Miss Kennedy.” Bode touched her shoulder, shaking her more forcefully than he had moments earlier. “Comfort. Wake up.”
Comfort rolled her shoulder, trying to avoid the insistent and disturbing fingers that crawled over her skin like fire ants.
“Wake up. You're dreaming. It's a dream.” By quickly stepping to one side, Bode managed to narrowly avoid hard contact with Comfort's head when she bolted upright. Watching her, he rubbed his chin as if he could feel the blow that hadn't happened. He wasn't certain she was awake. Her stare was vacant. The dark eyes, so beautifully expressive even when she did not mean them to be, were almost frightening in their perfect emptiness.
He put himself in front of her again and hunkered down. That positioned him below her eye level in a way that he hoped didn't threaten her. A single swift kick aimed at his chest, and he would be sitting on the floor. He tried to draw her attention to him by fanning his palm in front of her face.
Comfort blinked. “What are you doing?” She put out one hand to stop him before her eyes crossed.
Bode withdrew his hand but didn't move away. He studied her face. Her cheeks were sleep-flushed. Her slightly parted lips looked as soft and plump as pillows. Wisps of hair framed a smooth brow and brushed her temples. He thought that if he touched the cord in her slim neck, he'd feel only a steady pulse. Searching her eyes, he found them changed as well. What had haunted them had fled, and she now returned his regard as if he were the peculiar one.
“You were dreaming,” he said.
“Was I?” Her eyes darted away, embarrassed. “I didn't realize I was tired enough to fall asleep.”
“You don't remember?”
“What? Falling asleep?”
He shook his head. “The dream.”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Really.” It was the only lie she could tell and have a reasonable expectation that she would be believed. She'd been practicing it for years, and when Bode didn't press her further, she was glad she'd made the effort.
Bode stood. “I was going to have a glass of whiskey,” he said. “Would you like a sherry?”
Comfort touched her throat and nodded. She was parched. It was not possible to recall a time when she'd awakened from the dream and hadn't felt as if she had a mouthful of dust. Swallowing was painful as she watched Bode pour the drinks.
Looking away, her gaze slid over the gilt-edged clock that rested squarely in the middle of the mantelpiece to the oil painting that hung above it. A clipper ship, one with all of her gleaming white sails straining before the wind, ran high in the water, her bow cutting sharply through foamy crests like a knife through meringue. It captured a single moment in time, but looking at it, one couldn't fail to appreciate the artist's mastery of motion. The clouds were ellipses, casting long shadows as they rode on the back of a swift wind. The ship drew a narrow wake, exposing the cleft in the churning water to sunlight and throwing out a thousand glittering crystals of spindrift. Her sails were stretched to their full allowance, each one of them cupping the following wind, and at the top of her foremast her colors were unfurled in a rippling, snapping line.
Bode held out a glass of sherry to Comfort and followed her gaze to the painting when she didn't immediately take it. “Do you have an opinion?” he asked.
She shook her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw he was holding her drink. She took it, sipped only enough to keep her tongue from cleaving to the roof of her mouth, and then told him, “I have a reaction.”
Curious about the distinction she made, Bode arched an eyebrow.
“I'm moved by it,” she said simply. She held the stem of her glass between her palms and rolled it slightly. “It's a portrait, isn't it?”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“That's a Black Crowne clipper. I recognize her colors. And the artist has taken some liberties with the scale of the ship against the waves. It makes me think this painting is more personal in nature. So many seascapes are about the artist's study of light. There's an attempt to capture reflection and distinguish the gradations of color in the sky and the sea and create a horizon that is real and yet insubstantial.” She lifted her eyes to the painting again. “This artist was trying to capture speed. Perhaps supremacy. To the extent that such things can be caught, I think he succeeded.”