Elizabeth Grayson (9 page)

“Thank you,” she acknowledged with a nod, and though his words were patented flattery, her cheeks warmed. But then, Ann wasn’t sure if it was the compliment or being called “Mrs. Hardesty” that flustered her more.

In that moment of confusion, she missed any chance she might have had to beg off dining with him.

“It’s good of you to join me and my officers this evening.” Chase extended his hand. “Shall we go on down to the salon?”

Hesitantly, Ann lay her fingers across his palm and let him draw her out into the deepening twilight. It was the first time she’d touched him skin to skin since she’d tried to refuse his wedding band, and she became abruptly aware of his long, rough fingers encircling hers. Of the vitality of his flesh, of the strength and certainty of his grip, of the confidence that seemed to run bone-deep in him.

The power in him disturbed her equilibrium. A strange, warm tingling began in the hollow between their palms. Spangles of sensation crept up her wrist and danced toward the crook of her elbow. Her skin flushed and her chest went inexplicably tight.

Chase inhaled sharply, as if he felt the same connection and was every bit as taken aback by it as she was.

It was as if both of them were caught by a bright river of energy, swept up by a current so strong and swift that they were helpless to deny the affinity suddenly burgeoning between them. It was as if the world around them had dropped away, and they were caught, drawn by some strange force that was as compelling as it was inexplicable.

Whatever it was, the attraction glowed and grew, became as captivating as it was unsettling. Chase turned to her, high color burnishing those strong, broad cheekbones. Ann recognized the wonder in his eyes.

His grip around her fingers tightened. He stepped in close enough that the warmth of his body penetrated the layers of her clothes, close enough that she caught the smoky essence that clung to his skin and hair. She heard the heightened cadence of his breathing, watched as his lips bowed.

Chase Hardesty was going to kiss her.

Ann’s nerves rippled with anticipation. Then panic cold as winter’s breath sent shivers down her back. The bite of camphor stung her nostrils. Chase’s nearness and the clasp of his hand imprisoning hers became unbearable.

With a frantic tug, Ann jerked free. She stumbled toward the edge of the deck and stood there panting.

Chase followed her and lay his hand against her sleeve. “Ann?” he whispered. “Ann, what is it?”

She moaned and threw off his hold a second time. She clung to the railing as if she were dangling above an abyss and ready to fall.

Chase must have sensed how unnerved she was, because he backed away, first one step and then another. Still, she knew that he must be watching her, watching her and wondering, no doubt, what kind of lunatic he’d married.

Ann fought to regain control of herself. She turned her thoughts to simple things: how the spring wind ruffled the tails of her shawl, the way the ropes lay coiled in perfect spirals on the deck below. The breath-soft ripple of the water against the hull of the steamer.

Gradually Ann began to notice that lamps were being lit in the windows of the buildings along the waterfront, that bales and barrels were piled at the end of the gangway, ready to be loaded. The
Andromeda
was tied up at the foot of a town, sharing the landing with another smaller steamer.

“Where...” Ann had to swallow before she could finish the question. “Where are we?”

“We’ve tied up at Glasgow for the night,” Chase answered quietly from where he stood braced against the rail an arm’s length away. “Glasgow’s about two thirds of the way between St. Louis and Kansas City.”

Ann took a better look at the place. Warehouses crouched close along the riverfront. A wide main street lined with businesses, a school, and a church ran up the bluff. The houses that nestled farther up the rise were swiftly being swallowed by the deepening dark.

“They grow a good deal of tobacco hereabout,” Chase told her, making innocuous conversation. His voice was low and even, as if he were calming a skittish colt.

She felt like that tonight, all high-strung and wary.

“Is—is that why we’ve stopped here?” She was still uncomfortably aware of his scrutiny. “Did we put in at Glasgow to load tobacco?”

“To deliver farming implements,” he answered and pushed away from the railing. “Are you feeling settled enough now that we can go down to supper?”

She stole a glance at him and was relieved that the inexplicable sense of connection had dissipated. Certainly a room full of people would further dilute whatever it was that had passed between Chase and her. Dispel whatever madness had induced him to try and kiss her.

He waited for her to nod, then guided her down the stairs with no more contact than the brush of his palm against her back.

“We’ve got lots of guests for dinner tonight,” he told her as they made their descent. “When word gets out that Frenchy’s aboard one of the steamers, half the town turns out. Some of the men brought their fiddles and guitars, so I expect we’ll have dancing afterwards.”

Ann nodded, relieved that her condition allowed her to beg off such exertions. It wasn’t that she didn’t like dancing, only that she was feeling ungainly. And after what had passed between Chase and her, she preferred to maintain a certain distance between them.

She was grateful that he’d warned her about the crowd. Well over a hundred pairs of eyes followed them as Chase escorted her across the salon. Once he’d settled her at the captain’s table, he took the chair to her right.

“So how’s the captain’s lady this evening?” Rue asked from where he was seated at her opposite hand.

Ann wasn’t at all sure she liked being thought of as “the captain’s lady.” It made her feel like property, something Chase had bought and paid for. Which, she supposed, he had.

“I’m quite well, thank you,” she answered crisply.

The young, sandy-haired man she’d seen measuring wood this afternoon, smiled at her. “Glad to hear it. The captain said you’d been ailing.”

Ann was taken aback. What Frenchy had intimated must be true, that a steamship full of crewmen had been speculating about her. Knowing that made her squirm, and she couldn’t help wondering what else Chase might have told them about her.

“I thank you for your concern,” she murmured, then pointedly turned her attention to the cup of oxtail soup the waiter set before her.

She’d barely picked up her spoon when Chase began making introductions. “I believe you’ve already met our clerk, Mr. Skirlin.”

He was the man who’d tried to bar her from the steamer not quite a week before. That day he’d been the soul of chilly officiousness; tonight he was all kindness and cordiality. Ann saw through him like plate glass.

“A pleasure, Mrs. Hardesty.” Skirlin’s eyes gleamed in a sly, contemptuous way as his gaze slid over her. It came to rest on her belly; he gave her a supercilious smile.

Ann straightened and glared back. “Lovely to see you again, too, Mr. Skirlin.”

Oblivious to the hostility between one of his senior officers and his wife, Chase continued with the introductions. “This is our engineer, Cal Watkins. He knows more about what keeps steamboats running than any man on the Missouri River!”

To deflect the praise, the pinched little man to Skirlin’s left reached out a grease-stained hand and patted the black-and-white spaniel settled on the floor beside his chair. “I—I never once in my life thought to be serving on so fine a steamer as the
Andromeda,”
he murmured earnestly. “Me and Barney.”

Ann could see Cal would be worlds happier down with his boilers and gauges than he was here, so she turned her gentlest smile on him. “And how long have you and Barney been consulting on machinery, Mr. Watkins?”

Cal flushed red, both agitated and delighted that so fine a lady would include his dearest friend as part of her inquiry. “My pa owned a salvage boat,” he answered, “so I been working with engines all my life. Barney here come on as my associate about five years back.”

“Barney brings Cal his wrenches,” Rue put in. “And coaches him at checkers.”

“An’ amazing enough, ole Barney always knows which move to make so I can beat you!” Cal cackled with glee at Rue’s expense.

Chase introduced Gustave Steinwehr next. “Goose oversees the cargo and supervises the deckhands.” Ann had noticed the big man with the peg leg this afternoon while they were wooding up.

Only now, close up, Ann could see how huge a man he really was. He was nearly as tall as Chase, but broader, with a deep chest and shoulders as wide as the handle of a broadaxe. His face was hard, blunt-featured, Germanic. The deep creases around his eyes and mouth underlined his air of solemnity.

“It is good to meet you,
Frau
Hardesty,” Steinwehr said, his voice rumbling in that massive chest.

“Und Ihner, Herr
Steinwehr.”

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

Though it didn’t show in his expression, Ann could hear the hopefulness in Steinwehr’s tone. Once they left St. Louis, he must not have had much chance to hear his native language spoken or to speak it himself.

“My mathematics teacher was from Darmstadt,” Ann answered. “She taught me a few phrases in German.”

“Ah,” he said, clearly disappointed. “Ah.”

“Perhaps you could teach me some more?” Ann found herself suggesting. “I’ve always had an ear for languages.”

Steinwehr’s expression immediately lightened. “I would like that,” he answered.

Chase indicated the bright-eyed young fellow who’d inquired about her health. “Beck Morgan is our mud clerk,” he told her.

“Please, Mr. Morgan,” Ann asked, smiling at him, “what exactly is a ‘mud clerk’?”

“I’m the one who gets stuck with all the dirty work!” Morgan said and laughed.

“What Beck means,” Chase interpreted, “is that when we put in somewhere, it’s his job to stand on the bank in the mud and keep the tally of the goods we’re loading and unloading.”

“Chase can tell how well Beck’s done his job by how high the mud goes up his boots,” Rue confided in an undertone.

“And when it gets all the way up to his knees, does he get some sort of a bonus?” Ann asked brightly.

“It’d have to go a good deal higher,” Chase assured her, “for the commodore to approve money for a bonus.”

They all laughed.

The last two men at the table, Roger Brady and Ira Foster, were the captain and the pilot from the
Iowa
Princess,
the smaller steamer tied up beside them.

“Where are you bound, Captain Brady?” Ann inquired.

“Downstream, ma’am,” Brady answered.

Before she could ask just how far downstream, the waiters swooped in to take their orders for dinner. Harley Crocker, the meat and vegetable cook, was offering a fish course, several meat and game entrees, three hot and three cold side dishes. But as good as the dinner was, Frenchy’s desserts were the highlight of the meal.

Ann ate three: chocolate cake light enough to have been baked from fairy dust; a dish of thick, creamy custard; and a slice of pecan pie.

“I’ve never in my life had such a sweet tooth!” Ann confided to Rue as she set her fork aside.

While the diners lingered over coffee, Chase and Jake Skirlin circulated through the salon, shaking hands with the men, complimenting the ladies, and ruffling the children’s hair. It wasn’t long before Chase was balancing a sweet-faced little charmer in a frilly dress on one hip, while several boys of five or six trailed after him.

“I had no idea Chase had such a way with little ones,” Ann murmured half to herself, wondering if it was true that children were good judges of character.

“That comes of Chase raising so many of us,” Rue answered.

“Raising you?”

“Ma and Pa loved us and took care of us,” he told her, “but in a family as big as ours, the children kind of raised one another, too. Chase, being the oldest, never went anywhere without three or four of us tagging after him. He got good at keeping us out of trouble, and teaching us things.”

Ann couldn’t imagine growing up in a family like the one Rue was describing. A family where parents showed their children affection, where brothers and sisters played together and looked after one another. Where there was the kind of teasing and honesty and laughter she’d seen between Chase and Rue.

As far back as she could remember it had been just her mother and her. Then Sarah Pelletier had married James Rossiter, and they’d come to live in St. Louis.

The family her mother had tried to cobble together from her and Ann and the commodore and his son had never come to much of anything. Sarah herself had been too preoccupied with meeting her husband’s demands to have time for much else. For himself, the commodore had played Boothe and her against each other like pieces on a chessboard, making them compete for his time and his attention.

Whatever connection there had been between the four of them, it had dissolved like sugar in hot tea the day her mother died. Not three weeks after, Ann had been shipped to school back East like so much excess baggage.

Ann leaned in close to Rue, determined to use these few minutes over coffee to discover what she could about the Hardesty clan. But before she could wangle one more insight out of him, a man burst into the salon.

“Fire!” he shouted. “The Fletcher house is afire uptown!”

Chairs scraped across the floor as people jumped to their feet. Shrill voices echoed off the ceiling. Everyone rushed the doorways, draining out of the salon like water from a colander.

From the deck Ann could see an unnatural glow in the windows of a two-story house halfway up the bluff. The townsfolk saw that, too. With cries of alarm, they flooded down the stairs and thundered across the landing stage.

As the mob ran up the town’s main street, both crews and passengers grabbed pails and axes, and followed. Ann hurried along in their wake, trying to keep up. By the time she reached the house, a bucket brigade was forming in the yard. Ann took her place in line between one of the
Andromeda
’s roustabouts and a woman from town.