Thief of Hearts (34 page)

"Well, let's go, then, shall we, before the men go off work. Anna, do you want to come with us?" She shook her head slowly, and still he couldn't read her mood. He had to force down an urge to go to her, to touch her and make her talk to him. "Well, then. We'll see you in an hour or so." He stepped back to let Carter precede him out the door; Aiden and Martin Dougherty followed behind. With the door half-closed, he sent her one last searching look.

"It's all right, John," she said in a murmur he could barely hear. "I'm all right. I'm glad it's happened."

But she didn't look glad, she looked close to tears. It took all his will power to close the door on her pale, troubled face and leave her alone.

Most of the day had been overcast, but a fresh wind was blowing the clouds away in time for the spectacle of the sunset. Anna's office window overlooked the shipyard and the river beyond. She watched as bands of color layered and sank behind the western shore, softening the air and tinting it in delicate shades of coral and ochre and old gold. She never tired of watching the passing of the ships on the busy river, slow and stately as clouds, moving out to sea on a fresh voyage or scudding gracefully home to port.

She turned away from the seductive glory of the sunset and sat back down at her desk. She had much to do, but her mind was preoccupied with thoughts of Horace Carter and his proposition. She started at a knock on her closed door. "Come in!"

It was Neil Vaughn. "Nick here?" he asked.

"No, he's out; I'm afraid you've missed him."

"Ah, too bad. Gone for the day, I suppose." He lifted an eyebrow at the remnants of orange sunlight in the window.

"Oh, no. He was giving someone a tour of the yard, and then afterward I think he was going over to the reflag docks." She smiled at his blank expression. "Where we reclassify ships." Still nothing. "Make repairs, get them seaworthy again so they can meet reclassification requirements." He nodded his understanding, but she could see his interest was only polite. What, she wondered, and not for the first time, had Nicholas liked about this man?

"Nick's a busy fellow, isn't he?" he said in his bored drawl. "I've hardly seen him since the two of you returned from Italy."

Something in his tone made her wonder if he resented her for that. She didn't answer.

"Give him this, will you?" He strolled toward her, pulled something from his pocket, and put it on her desk.

She saw that it was money. "Yes, I will." There was silence while she waited for him to go. Instead he sat on the edge of her desk and folded his arms. He looked thinner than the last time she'd seen him; his cheekbones jutted whitely, leaving sunken hollows of sallow flesh beneath them. Did Jenny find his gauntness attractive? Romantic? It was hard to believe he was younger than Anna herself. His teeth were stained brown and his breath had an odd and unpleasant odor. He put a bony elbow on his knee, propped his chin in his hand, and leaned in toward her. He stared intently out of his pale, wolf's eyes, as if he were seeing her for the first time. "You look different," he murmured. "I think marriage agrees with you, Mrs. Balfour."

She recognized the implication in his words and steadfastly ignored it. He didn't mean "marriage," he meant lovemaking, and he wanted her to know it. He was making an advance. A few men had flirted with her in the past, but Neil's blatancy was a first.

No, that wasn't true. There was no one in the world more blatant than John Brodie. What was the difference between him and Mr. Vaughn? Everything, she realized. But why? She pondered it while Vaughn continued to look at her as if she weren't a person at all but an object, some thing he could make use of for his private gratification. For him, she belonged to a class of objects women and she was indistinguishable from the others to the extent that he could use her.

With Brodie it was different. He wanted her as much, no, more, much more, but it was she, Anna Jourdaine Balfour, he wanted. When he looked at her, he saw her.
Her
. She didn't represent anything to him, she was only herself. She felt a light trembling in her chest at the thought, a subdued euphoria that thrilled and dismayed her.

She looked up at Neil. "I still have quite a lot of work to do," she said quietly, then waited.

Rather a long moment passed. At last he removed his black-clad thigh from the corner of her desk and stood. "Of course. I wouldn't want to keep the businesswoman from her work," he said, giving the word an unpleasant emphasis. Then he smiled. "Good night, brown eyes." He made a shallow, facetious bow and walked out.

Anna stared at the closed door, thinking how little she liked Neil Vaughn. After a minute she sighed and shook her head, forgetting him. She had work to do. She picked up a packet of papers Brodie had handed her yesterday, with great casualness, she recalled, asking her to take a look at it when she had a moment; no hurry, it was of absolutely no importance, just something to read when she had a spare minute. His very offhandedness piqued her curiosity.

She spread it out before her, four closely covered pages. At first it was indecipherable, strange sketches with arrows and keys and obscure marginal explanations. On closer inspection, she saw it was a rough, inexpert series of designs for a cargo carrier. But unlike any cargo carrier she'd ever seen. He'd moved the bridge and engine room aft, leaving an unbroken space for freight. It looked like an elongated steel box, with a forecastle for the crew sticking up at one end and a poop to house the engines at the other. It made her think of an enormous dachshund. She shook her head, smiling, studying it. She tapped a pencil against her teeth. Slowly the smile faded as puzzlement turned to attention, then understanding. Yes, she mused, now I see what you're thinking of. Her eyes narrowed critically. But could it work? The design provided a long, unobstructed bin for the ship's chief cargo, in this case iron ore. The shrewdness and simplicity of it intrigued her. It would have to be redrawn, of course, by an engineer; he hadn't even used drawing paper and his scale was hopelessly off. But the idea was sound. No, it was more than sound: it was revolutionary. By rearranging the vessel's three primary components, he'd increased cargo space by… she frowned, reckoning it… by about 25 percent. She looked straight ahead, unseeing. Good lord!

She glanced at her watch. Past seven o'clock; the yard whistle had blown over an hour ago. She had a hundred things to say to Mr. Brodie. He must have finished his tour with Horace Carter long before now. Even though the work day was over, he'd undoubtedly gone to the reflag dock to check on the progress of the
Alexandra
. If he had anything at all in common with his brother, it was a habit of working long hours.

Anna stood. She straightened her desk in the fading light, picked up her shawl from the back of her chair, and took a last fond look around her office.
Her office
. She hugged herself, taking in the warmth of the painted wood paneling, the bright new carpet, the flowers on her desk and on the table under the window. To her the room seemed feminine and businesslike at the same time. Aunt Charlotte would loathe it, loathe the very idea of it, were she to deign to pay a visit; but to Anna it was beautiful. And it was much, much more than an office. It was her personal symbol of freedom and escape and opportunity. She put her hands to the sides of her face just for a second, the better to contemplate the odd and astonishing fact that she owed its existence to John Brodie. Then she whirled around, pulled open the door, and hurried out to find him.

The
Alexandra
was a three-masted English cargo steamer, a light scantling vessel of wood and iron, about seven hundred tons, used for hauling nitrates. She needed new decking, most of her scarfs reset, and a great deal of new plating. She was surrounded by scaffolding in her shallow, inclined slip. Anna cast a practiced eye over her enormous side, noting that the shell platers and riveters had finished their work and the caulkers had begun water-testing some of her inner compartments.

The dock seemed deserted. It was growing dark. Had she missed Brodie somehow, passed him on his way back to the office? Just then she thought she heard a noise on the
Alexandra
's deck. "Mr." she caught herself and trilled, "Nicholas? Are you there? Nicholas?" No answer. "Mr. Brodie!" she called in a low, conspiratorial tone, then made a face at herself. Of course he couldn't hear that. She tried calling "Nicholas!" again, but still there was no response. Amid the scaffolding a tall, sturdy ladder tilted from the dock to the top of the
Alexandra
's bulwark amidships. Heights didn't bother Anna. She gathered up her skirts in her left hand and began to climb.

Negotiating the gunwale in a flaring crinoline was a task best accomplished without witnesses. She managed it fairly easily, and stood on the edge of what remained of the decking over one of the cargo holds directly below. Three thousand tons of the Mersey River had been pumped into the hold in order to test its watertightness. "Mr. Brodie!" she called across the blackish corrie at her feet, spanned by a thirty-foot plank. She heard a noise from the quarterdeck in the stern. "Mr. Brodie!" The plank was a yard wide, thick and strong. She hesitated only a second, then stepped up and set off across it toward the bridge.

It was when she was one step away from the precise center that she saw the drilled holes, perhaps a dozen of them, neatly bisecting the plank. She halted, unable to go forward, too frightened to step back. Horrified, she heard the crack of ripping wood and watched sharp white splinters leap out across the dotted line. She twisted sideways as she fell, to keep from striking either half of the severed board. She didn't hear herself scream.

The water hit her with a body-jarring smack that forced the breath from her lungs. Flailing, kicking, she fought back to the surface and gasped a great chestful of air. She was only fifteen feet from a wooden ladder built into the bulkhead, but her skirts were dragging her down. She went under long enough to rip feverishly at the ties of petticoats and crinolines under her dress; kicking free, she struggled back to the top and treaded water, panting and exhausted.

Through the water in her ears she heard her name. When she looked up, she saw Brodie catapulting off the deck high above, arms outstretched in an ungainly swan dive. His impact almost swamped her.

She spat out a mouthful of water and waited for him. Seconds passed. His head bobbed up, seven feet away. She saw him take one panicked gulp of air before he disappeared again under water. The truth struck her like a blow to the head. Brodie couldn't swim.

She dove, her brain empty of everything but horror, and thrashed through the heavy water barrier between them. She could see his darker outline in the blackness and reached out. She caught a handful of cloth, hauled on it, scissoring her legs, and pushed against the wall of water toward the air. She caught a breath just before she felt Brodie's hands on her hips, heaving her up higher and then letting go. With an inward scream she dove again. This time her panicky fingers found his hair; she pulled up and backward with all her strength. Her head hit the surface just before his.