Celine (31 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

 

Trevor paced the floor of his hotel room. “Damn!” Everyone must think him dead, and he could do nothing about it. Not stuck here in Baton Rouge, anyway.

He'd been through hell trying to get from St. Joseph to New Orleans, only to find the blasted city in quarantine because of a yellow fever plague. Nothing would be moving in or out until the sickness ran its course—no mail, no ships, no goods, no people, no animals.

When he'd first arrived in St. Joseph, he'd sent a telegraph notifying his father that he was alive. Little good that would do since his father would be isolated at Carlton Oaks for the duration. Even if a message had managed to get through, a courier would have to deliver it, and that would not happen during the quarantine. Besides, there was no telling how garbled the message would end up after passing through one inadequate telegraph company after another. Damn the government for not consolidating the communications business. Too bad there weren't any lines strung to San Francisco yet.

He rubbed at his shoulder, still stiff from the arrow that had nearly killed him. All those months isolated from the rest of the world while he suffered. Time wasted. At least he was alive, even if his life was a holy mess. If it hadn't been for those two Dakota women who'd found him, and all that ointment that made a skunk's odor smell pleasant, he wouldn't have survived.

Who would have thought, when he started after Celine, that he'd end up like this, and unable to get word to anyone? To make matters worse, before Wolf and Trevor had gone after her, he'd left specific instructions with Mr. Cummings, a barrister in St. Jo, that if Trevor failed to return within six months, Cummings was to mail a packet to Trevor's father containing Trevor's last will and testament. His father would have sent word to Cameron. They were probably all finished grieving by now.

A dark shaft of loneliness sliced through Trevor. He'd worked his way back to St. Joseph with one thought in mind—Celine. But she wasn't there, and no one had seen Wolf since the day he'd ridden out with Trevor. If they'd returned, Wolf would have taken her through St. Jo, with Mr. Cummings acting as their point of contact.

So what had happened to Celine? That awful sensation of a fist to his gut hit him again. Either Wolf had failed to rescue her and they were both dead, or Wolf had met his demise, and she was living with the Indians. Or perhaps they'd managed to make it to San Francisco. No, St. Joseph would've been closer. Making it all the way to California was the slimmest chance of all.

Despite the odds, Trevor refused to accept the notion that he would never see her again. He chose to believe she was either with the Indians, back in New Orleans, or living in San Francisco.

He drew in a ragged breath. The previous quarantine had lasted three months. He wasn't about to sit around the hotel waiting for it to lift. Since he couldn't very well locate every Indian village west of the Mississippi, and since he was cut off from New Orleans, he ought to consider sailing to California.

A dull ache started at the back of his head. He should probably eat something. He paced again. If only his mind would give him a moment's rest. His brain relentlessly ground out different plans of action. Had he known about the yellow fever, he would have gone straight to San Francisco instead of coming here. Too late for that kind of backward thinking; it served no purpose. Returning to St. Joseph didn't feel quite right either. If Wolf did happen to show up, Cummings would know Trevor's whereabouts and send a telegraph.

He flopped onto the bed and covered his eyes. His rampant thoughts took over again. Why not take a train to Boston and find out if Donald McKay had their next clipper ready? He sat up at a rush of emotion. It felt good. Real good. With or without McKay, surely he could manage to find
something
out of Boston headed for San Francisco. He sprang from the bed, and threw on his jacket. He would telegraph Cummings and let him know he was headed east.

 

 

 

“Jeeesus, what a mess.” Wolf stood, knocking the chair out from under him as he did so. Trail dust sifted off his buckskins as he strode over to a small table holding a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. He filled them both and, raising one, glanced over at George Cummings.

The portly barrister declined with a wave of his pudgy hand. “It's ten in the morning.”

Wolf downed one shot and, picking up the other, moved to the window, hitched one hip onto the deep-set sill, and stared out at nothing in particular.

Cummings chuckled. “That's what you get for involving yourself with clients.”

Wolf shot a scowl over his shoulder, and then went back to sipping his whiskey. “I'm looking for solutions, not mindless babble.”

“If a decision is what you're after, may I suggest you take a bath, get a shave, and haul your behind back on your horse and point its nose west. Then ride like you mean it.”

Wolf strode over to the desk, leaned against it with stiff arms, and glared at Cummings. “You're serious, aren't you?”

Cummings stroked the ends of his moustache as he slowly nodded. “That I am, sir. You and Trevor barely missed one another coming and going.” He tapped the telegraph cable sitting in front of him. “Says here he left yesterday out of Boston. Care to miss him again?”

“No.” Wolf steamed with frustration that he'd missed Trevor by a little over a week. He shouldn't have held off so long on returning from San Francisco, damn it. But he'd needed a rest once he got Celine settled in her friend's hotel. He'd also struck up a friendship with Cameron Andrews, another reason he'd been in no hurry to return. Now Wolf was beginning to wonder what the hell he'd come back to.

He flipped through the pile of open mail on the desk. One letter was from Trevor, telling Wolf to meet him in San Francisco around the middle of June. Dread, heavy as a brick, sank in his gut every time he picked up the other missive. This one had arrived from Justin right before the quarantine shut down all communication. He wrote that he'd received a letter from Cameron stating he intended to marry Celine so they could properly raise Trevor's son.

Wolf cursed again. “Can you imagine Trevor sailing into San Francisco and announcing he's alive, only to run smack into Cameron and his new bride of say, two, maybe three days? Ain't that going to be one helluva sweet mess?”

“Not if you get there first and break the news,” Cummings said.

“I can't . . .”

“Yes you can, Wolf.”

“You're right, Cummings. That's what I get for making friends.”

Cummings turned his chair around and opened a cabinet door, revealing a small safe. After a few spins and clicks on the lock, the door opened. He counted out a stack of bills and handed them to Wolf. “You'll need this. And ride with care. There are a few good people depending on you.”

“Guess there's not much goddamn choice,” Wolf muttered.

“I suppose you could ignore the entire situation and go about your life like you did before you ever met Trevor.”

“I supposed I could.” Wolf stuffed the money into his saddlebag, slung it over his shoulder and headed for the door. “But I won't.”

 

 

 

Bearded and weary, Wolf strode through the door of the Andrews Shipping Company Limited.

Cameron tossed his pencil down, and stood. “Wolf!”

Wolf fell into a chair opposite Cameron, stretched his legs out in front of him, and crossed his booted feet at the ankles.

Cameron rested a hip on the corner of his desk. “By God, you made it in time for the wedding.”

“Yup.” Wolf leaned hard against the back of the chair, tipped its front legs off the floor, and crossed his arms over his chest.

Cameron glanced down at Wolf's muddy boots marking the good Chinese carpet.

Wolf snorted and rubbed at eyes that hurt so bad he could barely keep them open. “Got any coffee? Something to eat?”

“Mr. Abbott,” Cameron boomed at his bookkeeper. “In all your days, have you ever seen a more disheveled person?”

The man winced, erased the pencil mark on the ledger his flinching had produced, and continued on without a glance upward. “No, sir.”

Cameron grinned. “Well, you have now.”

Abbott set his pencil down and heaved a sigh. “I most certainly have not noticed your visitor, Mr. Andrews. I am much too busy making certain the books are in order before you leave port tomorrow.”

Devilish satisfaction settled into Cameron's grin. “Would you mind rousting something up for Wolf?”

Abbott sighed again, scratched hard at a muttonchop sideburn, and withdrew his watch from his vest pocket. He set his pencil down, closed the ledger in front of him, and snapped his watch shut with a loud click. He stood, rolling down his shirtsleeves. “I may as well break for lunch at the same time so you don't get charged extra for duties beyond what I was hired for.”

Wolf shot Abbott a sardonic grin. “Good to see your mood stays regular as your timepiece.”

The bookkeeper slipped into his jacket. “What makes me think trouble just walked in? I'll return in half an hour.”

When the door closed, Cameron turned back to Wolf. “What with the quarantine in New Orleans, I didn't know if you'd received the letter I sent through my uncle. I mailed one across country as well, but it probably won't arrive in St. Jo before the next decade. We've been looking for you every day of late. I was about to give up, but you know how Celine can be.”

Wolf shifted in his seat. “Didn't think I was going to make it in time.” His gaze lowered along with his voice while he searched for words. “How's Brandon?”

“He's fine.” A shadow slid across Cameron's countenance. He leaned back on the flat of his hands, studying Wolf. “His mother is fine, as well.”

Wolf gave a slight nod. He didn't want Celine mentioned just yet. “Need to talk to you about something.”

Cameron gave a shrug as if he wasn't concerned, but he folded his arms across his chest and lowered his lids. “Go on.”

The silence lengthened between them.

Finally, Wolf spoke. “I just rode in. Didn't even make it to the hotel.” He fell silent again.

Cameron's eyes narrowed. “What the devil is going on, Wolf?”

“I need to tell you . . .” Wolf swept the back of his hand over his mouth. “Ah, hell. Trevor's alive.”

Cameron sat frozen on the edge of his desk, a blank look on his face. And then he jumped to his feet, and in long strides, moved to the window facing the bay. “My God, Trevor is alive! How?”

Wolf shifted his weight in the chair and fiddled with his thumbs. “Don't know much in the way of details. I only know what I heard from Cummings in St. Jo and a short letter from Trevor. Seems after I went to get help, a couple of young Dakota women came along—sisters. They thought I'd left Trevor for good, so they dragged him off to some little island in the middle of a lake. Turns out it was a Dakota burial ground. Their mother had just died, so they hauled him onto the funeral platform and stretched him out next to the mother.”

“Don't know how the hell they managed all that, since I couldn't have lifted him back on my horse once I got him lowered to the ground.”

Cameron returned to his chair behind the desk. He picked up a cheroot and lit it with trembling fingers.

Wolf studied him. “Do you know what Indians do when they grieve?”

“No.”

“They wail, that's what they do. Hard telling what all else, but they do get left alone. So, when Trevor was lost in a fever and moaning, the girls sat up there with him and their dead mother and howled over the top of his groans so no one else would hear him. Brought him food. Nobody paid them any mind. Thought they were taking it to their dead mother as an offering. Somehow they got the arrow out of his back and greased him up with bear fat and herbs. Jesus. Can you imagine spending weeks in a damn hellhole of a graveyard?”

Cameron stared out the bay window over Wolf's shoulder. “Go on.”

“When I got to St. Jo, Cummings had a few telegraphs from Trevor sitting on his desk. Since Trevor couldn't get through to New Orleans on account of the quarantine, he caught a train to Boston to pick up a ship that was due for completion.”

“The
Serenity,
” Cameron responded. “Fitting name under the circumstances.” There was the faintest tremor in his otherwise calm voice.

“That's the one Trevor said he'd be taking.”

Cameron nodded absently. “It would be.” There was another long pause. He pressed his shaking fingers to his forehead and drew circles on his skin. “It took me months to accept that my cousin would never again walk through life with me.” He pointed to the door. “For a long while, every time that door opened and closed, I looked up expecting—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you have any idea how many times a clipper sailed into the harbor and I stood at the dock, hoping Trevor would be on it? Christ.”

He rested his head against the high back of the brown leather chair and lowered his lashes, looking through them at Wolf. “Celine needs to be informed right away.”

“I know.” Wolf went back to his silent study of Cameron. “Need to be alone?”

Cameron nodded. “Meet me here in the morning. Seven sharp.”

 

 

Wolf walked in at daybreak, a hangover hammering his head.