Corbin's Fancy (2 page)

Jeff nodded. “I know.”

Briefly, Adam touched Jeff’s shoulder. Then, without another word, he turned and walked back toward the house, where Banner waited. Banner, with her lush, cinnamon hair, her green, green eyes—

Jeff, so anxious to leave only moments before, stood still for a time, gazing up at the great stone structure that had always been his home, for all his travels. Tonight, however, it seemed to exclude him.

After almost a minute, Jeff Corbin unlatched the gate, opened it, and walked through. Oblivious to the cold and the biting snow, he made his way down the steep hill to the town, and then to the harbor beyond.

Reaching the long wharf where the
Sea Mistress
was moored, he drew a deep breath, hoped to God none of his grief showed in his face, and marched up the shifting, snow-laced boarding ramp.

His men greeted him with coarse jocularity, as they always did; he spared them a desultory wave of one hand and strode toward his cabin, his head down. Whiskey. What he needed now was whiskey.

The first thunderous blast shook the clippership just as Jeff reached the steps leading below deck, hurling him down into the companionway. There were screams and then another explosion sounded, seeming to tear at the innermost timbers of the ship.

Dazed, Jeff half crawled back up the steps to the main deck. There was fire everywhere; crimson flames crackled through the rigging, consumed the sails, skittered along the deck itself, and danced hellishly on the railings. Men jumped overboard, their hair and clothing
afire, their cries of terror and pain incongruous with the petal-soft snowfall wafting down from a hidden sky.

The heat was unbearable and, as he lunged over the port side of the ship toward the darkness and oblivion that awaited him, Jeff thought he heard the devil laugh.

Chapter One

Wenatchee, Washington Territory
May 12, 1888

T
HE RABBIT WOULD NOT COME OUT OF THE HAT.

Fancy could feel the creature with her right hand—it was crouched deep inside its black velvet bag, shivering and stubborn and heavy. The crowd of children in front of the gazebo pressed closer, their freckled faces intent and smudged with strawberry ice cream, their eyes fixed on the battered top hat.

“She can’t make no rabbit come out of there!” one little boy complained. “That ain’t even a lady’s hat!”

“Maybe she ain’t no lady!” observed a barefooted demon.

Perspiration trickled between Fancy’s breasts and shoulder blades. She tugged harder at the rabbit, conscious of Mr. Ephraim Shibble’s cold glare of warning. Beyond his bulky frame, the glorious pink and white blossoms of the apple orchard seemed to shift and shimmer in a haze. Fancy noted distractedly that
colorful ribbons, dozens of bright balloons, and even presents hung from the boughs of one tree.

“Don’t do this to me, Hershel,” she pleaded. A breeze scented with blossoms and bruised grass and picnic food cooled her burning cheeks and loosened the damp tendrils of silvery saffron hair clinging to the back of her neck.

“I told you she couldn’t do it!” howled the small heckler who had spoken first, squinting up at Fancy in hostile challenge.

Stung anew, Fancy wrenched at Hershel, hard, and he came out of his hat at last—the black bag that had hidden him hanging from his hind legs like a grim flag of defeat.

The adults who had gathered to watch shook their heads and turned away, some grumbling, some chuckling, some pitying the proud young woman who stood stiffly in her ridiculous star-speckled dress, still holding the rabbit aloft.

As the children scattered, too, Fancy bent and thrust an unrepentant Hershel into the wire cage secreted beneath her folding table. When she straightened, she was met with the condemning gaze of Mr. Ephraim Shibble, her employer.

The heavy man, suffering in his tight-fitting suit, bent to take up the worn placard that had stood in front of the table and perused it with calm disdain. “‘Fancy Jordan,’” he read, in mocking tones. “‘She sings. She dances. She does magic.’”

Fancy winced and clasped her hands together behind her back. “Mr. Shibble, I—”

Shibble interrupted by shaking the signboard; a shower of time-dulled glitter fell from the large, carefully formed letters. “You are a fraud,” he accused, in a
scathing undertone. “You are an embarrassment!
And you are out of a job!”

This was what Fancy had most feared, but she retained some semblance of composure and met Mr. Shibble’s small, watery eyes squarely. “You cannot leave me here,” she said, in even tones that betrayed none of the hysteria rising within her. “I have no position, no money—”

Shibble shoved the battered signboard into her hands. “Then I suggest that you sing and dance, since you are apparently incapable of magic. You will not travel another mile, Miss Jordan, with my company!”

“But—”

“No! You have humiliated me for the last time!” With that, Mr. Shibble turned and stormed away to watch one of the other members of the small traveling show perform. For a moment, Fancy, too, watched the Great Splendini wobble upon his “high wire,” which loomed all of five feet off the soft ground.

When she was sure that she would not be observed, Fancy sank down to sit on the gazebo’s top step, resting her head against the white-washed railing. A long, despondent sigh escaped her.

“You weren’t all that bad,” remarked a gentle, masculine voice.

Fancy, on the verge of tears, looked up to see a tall man standing before her, his arms folded, his azure eyes revealing both amusement and sympathy. He wore dark trousers, a vest over a pristine white shirt, and a clerical collar.

“I was bad enough to be fired,” she argued.

He bent, took the signboard from the gazebo floor where Mr. Shibble had dropped it, and read it pensively,
as though it were some lofty treatise. “Can you really do magic?” he asked, after some moments.

Fancy blushed. Though one would never know it by the way her act had gone that afternoon, she was, as it happened, a fairly accomplished magician. She could draw coins from behind people’s ears, for example, and she could make fire flash from her fingertips. Once, on a particularly good night, she had even sawed a woman in half and put her back together again. Volunteers for that trick were hard to come by, though, and the props had been borrowed from another magician.

“Yes,” she said, with dignity, “I can do magic.”

“We could use some of that around here,” reflected the young minister.

Fancy looked about, really seeing her surroundings for the first time since her arrival earlier that day. Since then, she, like the rest of the troupe, had been too busy preparing for the noon performance to pay much attention.

Now she saw a massive, gracious stone house, the acres of lushly blossomed apple trees that flanked it, the green-gray river tumbling past the sloping front lawn, the gardens with their budding rosebushes and marble benches. “Do you live here?” she ventured, thinking it a marvel that a man of the cloth could be so prosperous.

“Yes,” replied the reverend, with a slight bow of his head and an amused twist of his fine lips. “My family owns the land, actually, and I manage it.”

Fancy was impressed. Once again her gaze caught on the particular apple tree with the balloons, ribbons, and presents dangling from its boughs. She was certain that she had never seen such a festive sight. “Is it someone’s birthday?” she asked.

The reverend laughed softly. “No. My family has a tradition of celebrating the blossoming of the orchard. The entire community is invited and each of the children gets to take a gift from the tree.” He paused and frowned thoughtfully. “Sounds a little pagan, doesn’t it? Like a rite of spring or something.”

Despite her circumstances, Fancy smiled. “It’s a lovely idea,” she answered.

“I’m hungry, Miss Jordan,” the man announced suddenly. “How about you?”

Fancy was ravenous. There had been no time to eat that morning after leaving the train in nearby Wenatchee, a small but thriving settlement along the same green river that flowed past the house. “I have a rabbit we could roast,” she suggested, only half in jest.

The pastor grinned and offered his hand to help Fancy up from her perch on the gazebo steps. “That would take far too long, wouldn’t it?” he reasoned.

Before taking his hand, Fancy looked down at the worn skirts of her performing dress. One of the silver stars she had stitched onto it was coming loose, and she attempted, in vain, to smooth it with her slender finger. “I don’t know your name,” she said.

“Keith,” he replied informally. “Keith Corbin.”

Corbin.
The name stabbed the pit of Fancy’s empty stomach and spun there before whirling through the rest of her system like a stormwind. Dear God in heaven, surely the family this man spoke of could not be the
Port Hastings
Corbins!

Reverend Corbin crouched to peer into Fancy’s bloodless face, her hand still warmly cushioned in his. “What is it?”

“N–Nothing,” lied Fancy. In her mind, however, vivid, flashing images collided with each other—the
explosion aboard the ship anchored in Port Hastings’ busy harbor; Temple Royce, then her employer and avid suitor, laughing as he lifted a glass to toast the demise of the vessel’s captain.

“Something to eat might help,” speculated the pastor, rising to his feet and pulling Fancy with him in one fluid motion.

After filling their plates at the long refreshment table, Fancy and the minister returned to the gazebo steps, where they sat together, eating in silence. Fancy was grateful for the feast of ham, candied sweet potatoes, green beans, and hard-crusted bread—heaven only knew when she would eat again, now that she’d been dismissed from her job.

“You’ll be needing a new position,” remarked Reverend Corbin presently, as though reading Fancy’s distraught mind.

Glumly, Fancy nodded. From what she had seen of Wenatchee, it was a small place and opportunities would be limited indeed. Probably few of the residents, if any, employed servants, and she had not seen a restaurant where she might wash dishes or wait tables until she’d earned enough for train fare. “I know,” she said.

“I could give you money,” ventured the minister.

Fancy shook her head in immediate refusal. Debt was a burden she carefully avoided, remembering the anguish it had caused her parents. “I must earn my own way,” she insisted, her chin high now, her plate balanced on her knees.

“Then work for me, here. I’m afraid there isn’t much call for magic in Wenatchee.”

Coming from another man, an offer of this nature would have immediately put Fancy on her guard. After
all, she’d been on her own three years already, though she was just nineteen, and she’d learned readily enough to beware the double-edged kindness of “gentlemen.” But this man was different from most, she knew, and it wasn’t only because of the collar he wore. “What would I do, Reverend Corbin?”

He smiled. “Please—call me Keith so that I can call you Fancy.”

Again, this was not a point Fancy would normally have conceded, being wary of familiarity with the opposite sex. “All right, Keith,” she answered. Then, feeling oddly hopeful, despite a lingering disturbance over his surname, she asked again, “What work could I do here? The apples aren’t ready to be picked—”

Keith took her empty plate, stacked it atop his own, and set them both aside. “No, the apples won’t be ready until fall. But there is a job for you here, Fancy—one that will, I’m afraid, call for no small amount of magic.”

Fancy waited, oblivious to the milling crowds, the frolicking children, the preparations for departure being made by Mr. Shibble’s ragtag “theatre” company.

“Last Christmas Eve, my brother’s ship, the
Sea Mistress,
was at anchor in Port Hastings harbor—”

Fancy’s heart seemed to plummet to her knees, then shoot up to hammer against the inside of her skull. Oh, God, she thought. God, no. This
is
the same family!

Keith stopped, fixing Fancy with haunted, sky-blue eyes. “Do you know where Port Hastings is?” he asked. “It’s near Puget Sound, on the Strait of Juan de Fuca—”

Fancy nodded, unable to speak. Again, Temple Royce’s ugly, triumphant laughter echoed in her ears.

“Anyway, Jeff—that’s my brother—was badly burned. He still has scars on his back and along one of his arms, but the worst marks, of course, are inside him.”

Fancy closed her eyes, bile scalding the back of her throat. Damn you, Temple, she thought frantically. “But he didn’t die,” she said, thankful for that much, at least.

“No, not quite. Like a lot of the other men, though, he was forced to jump overboard. The water was colder than usual and it was awhile before he was brought ashore. He caught pneumonia and almost didn’t survive that.” Keith sighed, gazing pensively at the decorated apple tree, where laughing children were jumping and scrambling for the gifts and balloons that graced it. The joy of the scene was at terrible variance with the story—the all too familiar story—that he was relating. “Jeff is here—once he recovered he didn’t want to stay in Port Hastings. There is some kind of rift between him and our oldest brother, but neither of them will talk about it and it’s really beside the point in any case. The fact is that Jeff is dying, Fancy, though he should be over the physical effects of what happened.”

Fancy shivered. “I don’t understand how you think I could help,” she managed to say. “I’m not a nurse—”

“Jeff doesn’t need a nurse so much as he needs a companion—someone who can spend time with him and bring him out of that inner world where he’s hiding. Between the orchards and my parish, I can’t work with him the way I should, but I love my brother, Fancy, and I don’t want to lose him.”

“I w–would spend time with him? What would that accomplish?”

“I’m hoping that you’ll be able to stir some emotion
in him—anything. Make him laugh, make him cry, make him mad—I don’t really care.”

Fancy swallowed and looked down at her skirts. In every fiber of her being, she ached with the shame of what Temple Royce had done to Jeff Corbin and to his family, not to mention the crewmen who had not survived the blast aboard the
Sea Mistress.
She was not responsible for the attack, of course, but just knowing who was weighted her with guilt. She had not told the authorities what she knew; instead, she had just fled the town to try to forget.