Stranger (2 page)

But she was through with writing about fashion. That was precisely why she was on this steamship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

With this in mind, Gemma tore her gaze from this vision to find him watching her. A look of faint perplexity crossed his face. Almost bashfulness at her interest.

She let him take the notebook from her, and their fingertips accidentally brushed.

He almost dropped the notebook, and she felt heat shoot into her cheeks. She had the bright ginger hair and pale, freckled skin of her Irish father, which meant that, even in low lamplight, when Gemma blushed, only a blind imbecile could miss it.

Catullus Graves was not a blind imbecile. His reaction to her blush was to flush, himself, a deeper mahogany staining his coffee-colored face.

A knock on the door behind her had Gemma edging quickly away, breaking the spell. She backed up until she pressed against a bulkhead.

“Catullus?” asked a female voice on the other side of the door. The woman from earlier.

Graves and Gemma held each other’s gaze, weapons still drawn and trained on each other.

“Yes?” he answered.

“Is everything all right?” the woman outside pressed. “Can we come in?”

Continuing to hold Gemma’s stare, Graves reached over and opened the door.

Immediately, the fair-haired woman and her male companion entered.

“Thought it was nothing,” the man said, grim. “But I
know
I’ve caught that scent before, and—” He stopped, tensing. He swung around to face Gemma, who was plastered against the bulkhead with her little pistol drawn.

Both he and the woman had their own revolvers out before one could blink.

And now Gemma had not one but
three
guns aimed at her.

“Astrid, Lesperance,” said Catullus Graves as though making introductions at a card party, “you remember Miss Murphy.”

“From the trading post?” demanded the woman. Gemma recalled her name: Astrid Bramfield. She had exchanged her mountain woman’s garb of trousers and heavy boots for a more socially acceptable traveling dress. Yet the woman had lost none of her steely strength. She eyed Gemma with storm-colored eyes cold with suspicion, an enraged Valkyrie. “Following us all the way from the Northwest Territory. She must be working for them.”

Them?

“Let’s give her a chance to explain herself,” said the other man, level. Though he didn’t lower his gun. Nathan Lesperance, Gemma recalled. He wore a sober, dark suit, as befitting his profession as an attorney, but the copper hue of his skin and sharp planes of his face revealed Lesperance’s full Native blood.

A white woman, an Indian man, and a black man. Truly an unusual gathering. One Gemma was glad she’d followed.

“I retrieved this from her,” Graves said, holding up the notebook.

“What does it say?” Astrid Bramfield asked sharply.

Graves glanced down at the notebook. A frown appeared between his brows. Gemma nearly smiled. Her handwriting was deplorable, mostly because she deliberately made it illegible to anyone but her. No sense letting other reporters read her notes. She may as well give those buffoons in the newsroom all of her bylines.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

At this, Astrid Bramfield looked surprised, as though Graves admitting a deficiency in
any
knowledge was shocking.

“If I may translate,” Gemma said, holding out her hand. She did not miss the careful way in which Graves returned her notebook, avoiding the contact of her skin.

Wanting her own distraction, she looked down at her notes, although she hardly needed them. Every word of the conversation she’d overheard was inscribed permanently on the slate of her memory. She recited everything she had heard.

“Eavesdropping,” snapped Astrid Bramfield. “I prefer to call it ‘unsupervised listening,’” Gemma answered.

A corner of Graves’s mouth twitched, but he forced it down and looked serious.

Gemma closed her notebook and slipped it back into her pocket. “All very strange and bewildering, you must admit.”

“We need not admit anything,” Astrid Bramfield replied.

“You’re a journalist,” Graves said with sudden understanding. His keen, dark eyes took note of her ink-stained fingers, the tiny callus on her right index finger that came from holding a pen for hours at a stretch. “That’s what you were doing at the trading post in the Northwest Territory.”

Gemma nodded. “I had planned on writing a series of articles about life on the frontier. But when you crossed my path, I knew I would find a hell of a story. And I was right.”

“A journalist,” Astrid Bramfield repeated, her tone revealing exactly how she felt about reporters.

No doubt most members of Gemma’s profession deserved their reputation. But Gemma wasn’t like them. For one thing, she was a woman. Not an automatic guarantee of integrity, yet it was a small mark of distinction.

Something that looked suspiciously like disappointment flickered in Catullus Graves’s eyes before being shuttered away. “You’ll find no story here, Miss Murphy.” He took a step back, and she found, oddly, that she missed his nearness. “It is in your best interest, when this ship docks, to turn around and go home.”

Back to Chicago? She would never do that—she had crossed a continent and an ocean for this story.

“Who are the Heirs?” Gemma asked.

Graves, Lesperance, and Astrid Bramfield all tensed. None of them spoke as a sharp silence descended. Very surprising, considering recent developments. Then—

“They’re called the Heirs of Albion,” Lesperance said.

“Nathan!” Astrid Bramfield exclaimed, and Graves looked alarmed.

Yet it couldn’t be stopped now. “A very powerful group of Englishmen,” Lesperance continued. “They want the entire world as part of the British Empire, no matter the cost. But Astrid, Graves, and I are going to stop them. With the help of the other Blades of the Rose.”

“Lesperance, enough,” growled Graves.

Astrid Bramfield was at Lesperance’s side in a heartbeat, alarmed and concerned. Though she still held her pistol pointed at Gemma, her other hand cupped Lesperance’s face with tender anxiety. “What are you doing, revealing such secrets? This woman is a stranger.”

Frowning, Lesperance murmured, “I don’t know. I only know that we can trust her.”

“But she’s a
journalist,”
was Astrid’s reply. Her words fought against a sense of betrayal by one held so deeply within her heart. As Gemma had seen thousands of miles ago
in the Northwest Territory, the connection and bond between Astrid Bramfield and Lesperance was palpable, enviable.

She’d never had that connection, that bond. And never would, given the choices in life she had made.

Gemma shouldered aside that familiar loneliness. “Don’t blame him,” she said quickly. “It’s an … ability I have. To get answers.”

“Ability?” Graves repeated, raising an eyebrow.

She did not want to dwell on something that might derail the entire conversation. “But Mr. Lesperance is right. You
can
trust me.”

“There is no such thing as a trustworthy reporter,” retorted Astrid Bramfield.

“You
did
say you were after a story,” Graves added, somewhat more gently.

Gemma thought quickly. “I can write about these Heirs of Albion and expose them. Stop whatever it is they plan on doing.”

Astrid Bramfield, despite her refined English accent, gave a very unladylike snort of disbelief. “It would not be so easy as that.”

If Gemma was to find an ally, it would not be with this tough, guarded woman, so she turned to Catullus Graves. He watched her carefully, commingled caution and interest in his expression.

“Exposure in a national newspaper can bring even the most powerful men down,” she said, meeting his gaze. Even behind the protective glass of his spectacles, his eyes were a dark pull. He observed her as if not entirely certain to what species she belonged.

“Astrid is right,” he answered. “If it was simply a matter of publishing an exposé, such a thing would have been done long ago. A few printed words would not even dent the Heirs’ armor. They are above trifles such as exposure and public opinion.”

“Surely no one is
that
powerful.”

“Miss Murphy,” he said, holding her gaze, “you have no idea.”

The gravity of his words, the seriousness of his handsome face, shook her like the deep tolling of a bell. Which meant she needed to know more.

“What could they possibly have at their disposal that gives them so much influence?”

Again, that tense silence fell, and Gemma could feel them all struggle against it, against her question.

“Magic,” Astrid blurted, then clapped a hand over her mouth. She stabbed Gemma with an angry scowl.

Over the course of her life and professional career, Gemma had been the recipient of more than one angry scowl, and Astrid Bramfield’s could not upset her. Gemma was much more interested in what the Englishwoman had just revealed. “Magic,” Gemma repeated.

This was not a question, and so no one spoke.

With a deliberate gesture, Gemma put her derringer onto a nearby table, then gave it a small shove so that it moved out of her immediate reach. Now she was entirely unarmed.

Graves saw the move for what it was: a sign of faith. Theatrical, but effective. He tucked his own revolver into his belt, never taking his eyes from hers.

Lesperance followed suit, but Astrid Bramfield put away her gun only with great reluctance. Clearly, some great injury lay in her past, to make her so cautious.

Gemma’s attention moved back to Graves, drawn to him as if by some inescapable force. He had been watching her, assessing her, and she prayed she would not blush again under his scrutiny. God! She was hardly an innocent child, and had seen—and done—rather a lot in her twenty-seven years. Yet nothing and no one made her blush as Catullus Graves could with just a look.

He narrowed his eyes. “Yes, magic, Miss Murphy.” He spoke lowly as though recounting to a child a tale of terror.
“There exists in this world actual magic. It is too dangerous for any civilian reporter to confront—and live.”

“I know.”

“You might scoff, but—wait. You
know?”

“Yes.”

“About magic?”

“Yes.”

“That it is
real?”

“Yes.”

He gaped. As did Astrid and Lesperance, who traded looks of disbelief with one another. Obviously, everyone had anticipated that she would
not
believe in magic. And, had she been anyone else, perhaps she wouldn’t have.

“How—?”

Gemma turned to Astrid. “Assist me with something.”

Guardedly, the Englishwoman approached.

“Please, stand out in the passageway.”

“Why?”

The Englishwoman’s caution grated. Gemma said, teeth gritted, “Just … please. I promise I won’t seduce or kill anyone while you do.”

With one final, suspicious glance over her shoulder, Astrid opened the cabin door and stood in the passageway. Gemma shut the door in the woman’s face. A yelp of outrage penetrated the door.

Lesperance strode toward Gemma with a dark scowl, as ferocious as a wolf protecting its mate.

“I’m not going to harm her,” Gemma said, raising up her hands. Without question, Lesperance would utterly annihilate anyone foolish enough to try to hurt Astrid. “Just a brief demonstration.”

Barely appeased, Lesperance held himself back. A pulse in her throat proved to Gemma that she had narrowly avoided danger. “Now,” Gemma said, turning to Graves, “lock the door.”

A small frown knitted his brow, but he came closer to do
so. His boots brushed past the hem of her skirt, and, even though the gesture could not have been less intimate, Gemma’s heart sped into a gallop. She’d spent months in the Canadian mountain wilderness, living close with trappers and miners and men of every stripe, the raw and the refined. Almost nothing any of them did or said affected her the way a simple brush of Catullus Graves’s boots against her skirt could. And he seemed equally flustered, despite the fact that he was well past boyhood and most definitely a grown man.

Gemma made herself focus on the lock. It wasn’t an ordinary lock on the door, but a small device that clearly was his own invention—an intricate network of metal fittings that looked as if it was assembled by tiny, industrious Swiss watchmakers. Graves’s long, agile fingers worked quickly over the lock, and she heard a click.

“There,” he said, straightening. He cleared his throat and stepped back, and Gemma realized that she had drifted closer to watch him at work.

“Now, Mrs. Bramfield,” Gemma said through the door, “try to come in.”

The doorknob rattled, but the door remained closed. “I can’t,” came the muffled reply.

“Use a little force.”

This time, the knob rattled harder, the door shaking a bit, but it still remained shut. “Still can’t,” Astrid said. “I could try to kick it in.”

“Not necessary.” She turned to Graves, watching avidly. “You agree that I didn’t
kick
the door open when I came in a short while ago.” When he nodded, Gemma said, “If you would, unlock the door and let Mrs. Bramfield in.”

He did so, and the Englishwoman strode back into the cabin, looking puzzled. “What did that prove?” she asked.

“That, when the door was shut and Mr. Graves’s lock was set, you could not open the door.” Gemma walked to it and opened the door again. “I’m going to stand in the passageway,
and I want you to lock the door behind me. Just as you did with Mrs. Bramfield.”

Graves, still frowning, gave a short nod. So Gemma did exactly as she said she would, going out into the passageway and letting Graves close and lock the door.

“All set?” she asked through the thick wood.

“Yes—all set,” he answered.

Gemma placed her hand on the doorknob. And opened the door.

Instead of being met by a gun, three stunned faces greeted her entrance into the cabin.

She shut the door behind her again. “You asked how I might know of magic, Mr. Graves? There it is.”

“Could be a trick,” Lesperance noted.

“No,” said Graves. “Nothing can open that lock except the key that I made.” He gazed at her with a mixture of admiration and surprise. “Nothing, but magic.”