Happily Ever After (4 page)

She lifted up the portrait from her desk –
the one she had sketched of Harlan, touching the chin with a finger. She had
drawn him perfectly.

This portrait, along with the only drawing of hers
that her mother had hung in the hall, were the only two paintings Sophie had
rendered to absolute perfection. Simply titled The Wedding Day, the one in the
hall was a storybook picture—her wedding day as Sophie had often
envisioned it. Since childhood, her mother had woven every precise detail for
her, until the vision had reached an almost sanctified perfection. The pristine
white gazebo, decorated with pure snow-white ribbons. The golden rays of
sunshine penetrating a vibrant, rich green canopy of trees… shining down on the
faceless couple within the gazebo. The rays had been so brilliant as they’d
shone on the wedded pair that it had washed away every detail in their faces,
rendering them completely without identity.

She sighed. Maybe she’d always known that destiny
was not hers.

Glancing first at the letter in her hand, she
frowned at the picture she held and then set it back down upon the dresser.
Turning it over, she removed the wooden back, and set it, too, down on the
dresser. She folded Harlan’s letter neatly and lay it against his portrait,
then replaced the back once more. Like everything else in her life, his
imperfection was hidden behind an unblemished facade.

She would take the picture with her... to bolster
her when she wavered.

But now, it was time to pack! It would behoove her
to pack only the most necessary items because she was certain space aboard the
Miss Deed would be limited. For money she would sell the necklace Harlan had
given her as an engagement present. She might have felt a trifle guilty were it
some precious heirloom, but it was merely an expensive token he had purchased,
gaudy and ugly. Sophie had never liked it. She could admit that now.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t have funds at her
disposal, but she refused to allow her father to bear the burden of this, when
it was Harlan who deserved the responsibility. He had taken quite enough from
her father—and from her already. Although Sophie couldn’t do anything
about the grants or the money, she certainly could recover something of her
own!

Pride.

But first things first... she had to find this
Jack MacAuley... he held the key to her plan, and she wasn’t about to let him leave
harbor without her—even if it meant she had to stow away on his ship! But
he wouldn’t turn her down, of that she was certain because Sophie fully
intended to give him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

She removed from her drawer a few sheets of paper
and a pencil, then sat on the bed. But this time, instead of drawing, she wrote
a letter to Harold, explaining to her faithful old servant what she was
compelled to do. She’d place it somewhere where he was sure to find it later,
after she was gone. Next she wrote a letter to her parents, hoping her sarcasm
wouldn’t cause them too much concern, and she felt considerably better when she
was through.

It read simply:

Dearest
Father and Mother,

Please don’t
fret; I’m off to the Yucatan to murder Harlan. Will tell you everything when I
return! My love to you both!

And she signed it.

Love and
kisses, your devoted daughter Sophia.

CHAPTER 2

“Did you find out who was nosing about the
university?”

Jack MacAuley tossed a neatly bound bundle of newly
repaired sailcloth from the pier onto the ship’s deck, eyeing his friend
irritably. Kell was his best friend and a damned good sailor, but he was worse
than an old woman with his gossip.

“No, and I couldn’t care less who or why!” He
lifted up another bundle and hurled it after the first. “I quit caring a long
time ago about that damnable institution. It would seem to me you would’ve,
too!”

“So you don’t care who’s sniffing about asking
questions about you?”

“No.”

Jack had, by stubborn will, earned his degree,
while Kell had been forced to withdraw during his second year. He hadn’t been
university material, so they’d claimed, though Jack hadn’t met many men more
qualified than Kell Davenport. A few barroom brawls weren’t enough cause to
deprive a man of an education. Kell had earned his way into the university
through scholarships and hard work, but his background was as ordinary as could
be, and when pressure came to throw scholarship money elsewhere, elsewhere it went.

It was that simple.

Despite that fact, Kell’s mathematical genius was
off the charts, and that, more than his sailing ability, made him indispensable
to Jack in this particular venture. It worked in his favor that Kell had been
forced to resign his studies so early, and that he’d taken up odd fishing jobs
on old schooners to make his living, but it was a damn shame he’d been reduced
to using good brainpower on idle gossip. Jack fully intended to put the boy’s
noggin to good use again.

“Think maybe it was one of Penn’s lackeys nosing
about again, eh?”

Ignoring the question, Jack tossed another bundle
aboard the ship’s deck. Sweat ran in rivulets down his temple and face, and he
swiped the beads away with the back of his arm. “You’ll need to check the sails,”
he instructed Kell. “I have no idea what to look for myself and we’re behind
schedule.”

“Very well.” Reluctantly, Kell gave up his gossip,
dragging one of the folded bundles aside to begin inspecting it. In the
meantime, Jack hauled the remaining bundles aboard, hoping the cloth and
rigging were all in order. He’d have to trust Kell’s judgment in that because
he didn’t know the first thing about sailing. That he was captain of this mass
of tar and lumber didn’t account for a damned thing. He’d merely bought the old
ship; the title fell to him by default.

The Miss Deed had once been christened The
Adventurer. It had been decommissioned at least fifty years earlier, and sat
rotting in the shallows off the New England coast until Jack happened upon it.
It had taken some coaxing on his part for the owner to agree to part with it,
because the vessel apparently held some sort of quasi-historic value. But the
rotting ship was barely worth what he’d paid for it. It had even escaped the
Civil War draft, and Jack could, on closer inspection, see why. He’d had to
reach deep into his pockets to complete the repairs necessary just to get the
bugger seaworthy, and it was on the verge of becoming a very expensive
dinosaur.

Kell cast him a sober glance. Giving up on a knot
on the binding around the sails, he pulled out his pocket knife and severed the
twine with a single slice.

Jack winced and had to restrain himself from
cautioning him to take care with the knife. There wasn’t money enough to
replace the sails. They were skidding by as it was.

Kell returned the knife to his pocket and met
Jack’s gaze. “You realize... it doesn’t matter what you find down there, they
won’t go for it no matter how you present it.”

They
were the powers-that-be, those who decided which anthropological discoveries
were worthy of academic mention and which were simply hogwash. Jack had already
had one go-round with them, and had been raked over the coals, rejected, and
dismissed, all in the blink of an eye. His findings just hadn’t fit in with the
blueprint they were busy creating.

“I’m not going down there with an agenda,” he
assured Kell. “I could give a damn if what I come across proves or disproves my
original findings. I wouldn’t be any better than the rest of ’em if I did,
would I?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m going down there to do my job, because it
means something to me. Period.”

Kell began counting bundles. “Well, you’re a
better man than I am, Jack, because I am going down there with an blasted
agenda.” He stopped and tuned to face Jack, hands at his hips. “Personally I’d
like nothing better than to find something to rub their damned elitist noses
into. Even if they don’t come about to our way of thought, I’d like to see them
squirm just a wee bit. Wouldn’t you? Admit it,” he demanded and stood there grinning,
egging Jack on.

If the matter weren’t so close to his heart, Jack
might have laughed.

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

Jack declined to answer. He couldn’t afford to
make this a personal vendetta, not for his own sake, not for the sake of his
studies.

“They should have at least given you an ear,” Kell
persisted.

“It doesn’t matter.”

But the truth was that Jack didn’t like it any
better than Kell did that they had dismissed him so easily. He’d worked damned
hard, and it grated on his nerves that they would disperse grants so easily to
a man like Harlan H. Penn III, who liked his image far better than he did his
work—only because of who he chose to marry.

In fact, Jack would be surprised as hell to find
dirt under Penn’s nails—the pantywaist! He had no idea what the man was
doing down in South America all this time—drinking mint juleps probably,
and sitting on his duff!

“They should’ve given you the grant,” Kell said
harshly, and returned to counting bundles. Jack wondered how transparent his
thoughts were that Kell had guessed at them so easily. But he let the topic
wane. It wasn’t going to get him anywhere but in a sore mood.

“I think we’re missing a sail,” Kell announced,
scratching his head in frustration. “But who knows until we get them up.”

Jack sighed. “Figures.”

“It’ll be a miracle if we get these up by
tomorrow. That rigging is a deuced nightmare—straight from the Middle
Ages, if you ask me.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t kidding.

Looking up at the miles of rigging, Jack wondered
just how seaworthy the damnable ship really was. With his luck, she’d break up
just out of harbor and they’d end up swimming back to shore. But beggars
couldn’t be choosers. He walked to where he’d tossed his shirt over the ship’s
railing and picked it up, shrugging into it.

“I’ll go see if we left one.”

“Send Shorty,” Kell suggested. “He knows where to
go.”

“No, he’s saying g’bye to his gal, and everyone
else has his own job to take care of. I’ll go.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

Jack tried not to sound impatient, considering Kell’s
loyal defense of him. “Shouldn’t, oughtn’t—they’ll drive you nuts if
you’ll let them, Kell.” He didn’t bother buttoning his shirt. Half the men on
the docks worked shirtless on a day like today. The sun was so hot a bald man
could fry an egg on his head. All that was missing was Satan and his damnable
pitchfork. Hell couldn’t possibly be hotter.

“There are a deuced lot of things that shouldn’t
be that just are,” he added. “You just do what you have to, and to hell with
the shouldn’t be’s.”

Kell shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll get these inspected
while you’re gone,” he said. “But I’ll need some help to set the rigging and
hoist them.”

“I’ll be back,” Jack promised him. “Don’t go off
saving the world while I’m gone.”

Kell was that sort of man. He bore the weight of
the world on his shoulders—always pulling for the underdog. There wasn’t
a finer man Jack could have at his side.

Kell shook his head. “No chance of that. It’s gone
to hell already.” He peered up at the sun, shielding his eyes. “Blasted heat’s
gonna kill us!”

Jack took one last look at the rigging, and his
blood began to simmer with excitement.

Almost
there.

As soon as the sails were hoisted and they made
one final inspection of the ship and supplies, they would raise the anchor and
be on their way. He couldn’t wait to see those sails billowing and rippling in
the wind—his proud lady of the sea with her breasts puffed in pride. He
could almost feel the wind in his hair and the undulation of her sweet lithe
body beneath him. Once the sails were up, the little imperfections and repairs
would be all but invisible. Old as she was, rickety as she was, she was all
his, and the pride he felt in that moment as he gazed up at her choked him. To
hell with Penn and his sugar daddy-in-law.

This tremendous feeling of accomplishment was
worth the struggle. In fact, he felt damned near invincible right now, and it
showed in his stride as he left the ship to retrieve the last of the sails.

They had precious little to say about Jack
MacAuley at the university, but from what Sophie had gleaned from sources close
to her father was that he was a pretender of sorts.

An Irish immigrant, his father had belonged to
Boston’s growing fraternity of new money. Mr. MacAuley had apparently received
his inheritance this past year, on his father’s death, and had already
squandered most of it on this venture, deemed politely, by his peers, as
reckless.

Sophie didn’t give a fig whether his comrades
respected him or not. Nor did she care if his theories were poppycock, or if he
was taken seriously by respectable academia. None of that was any of her
concern.

She only wanted passage aboard his ship.

Jack MacAuley himself was of no consequence to
her—nor was any other man for that matter. She’d had quite enough of them
all. They could go to the devil!

The Miss Deed, they’d informed her, was scheduled
to depart sometime today or tomorrow, and Sophie fretted she would miss it.

Just to be certain she didn’t give Jack MacAuley
any reason at all to waver in his consideration, she came prepared with her
bags packed. She wasn’t about to go home without having accomplished what she’d
set out to do. Somehow it was crucial to her sense of self-worth that she
salvage her pride. She also had tucked away in her purse a considerable sum
that she intended to use as
persuasion
,
and she was prepared to offer quite a bit more if necessary. In fact, she felt
so confident that she had gone so far as to open a small account in Jack
MacAuley’s name and had already placed the sum of five thousand dollars in it.
And there was more where that came from if she should need it, but she had
learned a thing or two in all these years of watching her father’s ruthless
negotiations. She intended to offer enough and no more. It was good business
sense all around, she decided. Jack MacAuley needed the money, and she needed
passage. It would be a mutually beneficial arrangement for both.