Jo Goodman (39 page)

Berkeley opened her eyes slowly. "You know I'm afraid."

"Yes."

"Since this afternoon, at the moment you touched my hand, I felt a threat I couldn't name. I thought you would be torn from me, from my heart. I thought it started with you, and I imagined you felt it as strongly as I did. Was I wrong, Grey?"

He didn't admit it immediately. He would have liked to have told her the explanation lay in their own apprehension as they faced the minister, but he couldn't belittle what she had sensed with a lie. He hadn't been afraid of what they would face together, only that he might face it apart from her. "I felt
something."

"Do you think this is what it was?"

"I hope so." He cupped the side of her face when she frowned. "Because it's nothing. When you hear me out, you'll know it doesn't have to threaten us at all."

She leaned her cheek into his hand and held it in place with her own. After a moment she signaled her readiness by kissing the heart of his palm. Berkeley lowered his hand and threaded her fingers through his. She led him into the sitting room.

Grey closed the balcony doors while Berkeley laid a small log on the fire. He sat on the sofa, but she took the wing chair, perching on the edge with her hands lying open in her lap. She looked as if a drink wouldn't come amiss, but he didn't offer, knowing that she would refuse. He realized his eyes must have strayed toward the sideboard because she was on her feet suddenly. Without a word of her intention she poured two fingers of bourbon in a crystal tumbler and carried it over to him.

He didn't think she could possibly know how much he loved her. "Thank you," he said, accepting the glass.

Berkeley returned to the chair. This time she sat back far enough to curl her legs under her. Her gown spilled over the edge like a cascade of white water. She touched the pendant at her throat. "You told me you didn't recognize this."

His eyes fell to the earring. "I don't. As far as I know I've never seen it before. I haven't lied to you, Berkeley, not in the manner you think. I took my name from the
Lady Jane Grey.
She was a clipper registered to the Asbury Line out of London. I was a member of her crew from '45 until she was abandoned in San Francisco Bay."

"Graham Denison disappeared in 1845. In the spring, I think."

"It was April when I began my service."

"He was sailing with a Remington clipper.
Siren.
He disembarked in Philadelphia, then..." She shrugged helplessly.

"Lady Jane Greys
port of call before I joined her was Charleston. I don't know anything about a Remington clipper."

"I don't understand," said Berkeley. "How can you
not
know?"

"Because I simply have no memory of any part of my life before I awoke on
Jane Grey."
One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. Berkeley was sitting at attention now, her features a mixture of curiosity and disbelief. "It happens, I'm told. I'm not the first person to suffer this affliction. I've talked to one London physician about it, someone who's made a study of amnesia. That was a few years ago and more than eighteen months after I came aboard
Jane Grey.
He gave me no assurances that I would recover what I'd lost. There was nothing much he could tell me at all."

"But how does it happen?"

"Some injury to the head provokes it."

Berkeley's eyes lifted to the crown of Grey's head. She made a thorough examination, as if the damage done to him might still be visible. "You appear perfectly fine to me."

Grey's smile was wry. "Thank you for that, but it's nothing you can see. There's no wound to speak of."

"How were you hurt?"

He hesitated, uncertain he wanted her to know.

"Please don't lie to me, Grey," Berkeley said. "What can be the harm if I know the truth?"

"I was beaten," he said finally.

Berkeley's mouth parted fractionally. It wasn't at all what she expected to hear. "Beaten? By whom?"

Grey shrugged. "I have no memory of it, Berkeley. The bruises I wore for nearly a month afterward suggest that more than one man took part and fists weren't the only weapons used. The beating took place in Charleston harbor, not on the clipper. I learned later that I was taken aboard
Jane Grey
by two of her crew. They happened upon the fight and frightened off my assailants." He raised the tumbler of bourbon in a mocking salute to his rescuers, then he knocked back a mouthful. "At least that's what they always told me."

"You don't believe them?"

"No," he said quietly. "I never believed them. Sheffield and Hanks were not inclined to put themselves out for anyone. Knowing them as I came to, the notion that they acted in my defense is hardly likely. I never saw any evidence that they were the thugs who beat me, but I think they were paid to take me aboard
Jane Grey.
I also think that if it hadn't been for my memory loss, I would have been met with an accident at sea. As it was, they saw no purpose in killing me. I presented no threat to them or the men who insisted on my disappearance. By the time we reached London, they were quite sure of that. Rather than bring any suspicion down on their heads, they elected to let me keep mine."

"You told me once the clipper had been abandoned here. Does that mean those two men are in San Francisco?"

"No. They left the ship in London five years ago. I've never seen them again. I imagine they were paid rather handsomely for getting me away from Charleston. There was no reason for them to stay with
Lady Jane Grey."

"And you were satisfied with that?" asked Berkeley.

"I was." One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. "Oh, I see. You think I should have forced some answers from them. Perhaps do the same turn to them that was done to me." Grey shook his head. "The truth is, I was glad to see them gone. Trying to force answers from them would have most likely resulted in my untimely death, not theirs. I wasn't all that well healed by the time we reached London. I managed enough work to keep the ship's master from tossing me overboard, but I was in no position to act on my suspicions about Sheffield and Hanks."

Berkeley believed that was only part of the truth. "You didn't want to know," she said quietly.

Grey didn't answer immediately. He finished his bourbon and set the crystal tumbler aside. "No," he said. "I didn't. Can you appreciate that?" He didn't wait for her response. "Do you think I haven't wondered why someone would want me dead or, at the very least, out of the way? Hardly a day passes that I haven't considered it. Did I hurt someone? Did I pose a threat? Perhaps I had gambling debts. Perhaps I was a thief. I don't presume I was innocent in what happened, Berkeley, and neither should you. I may well have deserved what was done to me. I could have wronged someone. A woman. A partner. A friend. That's what I didn't want to know. If it was revenge that led to my beating, then I was willing to let it be."

"And if it wasn't? Your past was taken from you, Grey. What about your family? Didn't you ever think that someone deserved to know what had happened to you?"

"Of course I thought about it. Over the years I learned enough to know there were never any inquiries made out of Charleston. No one there was trying to find me, not in any obvious way. There were no rewards offered. More attention was given to runaway slaves. No one was looking for anyone matching my description."

"That's not true," she said. "The Thornes were looking for you. But you're correct in that their search was not conducted in any obvious way. They were paying for the discretion of their investigators. Decker and Jonna Thorne recognized there were some reasons for you to desire anonymity. They were trying to honor that while attempting to find you for their own purposes."

"We don't know that I'm Graham Denison. And if I am, what does it matter? There's nothing I can do to help the Thornes now. I certainly can't identify that earring. If they expect I can lead them to the youngest brother, then they're sadly out of it there." Grey rubbed the back of his neck. Tension had corded the muscles. He felt the beginnings of a blinding headache.

Berkeley watched the grooves deepen at the corners of his mouth. He looked weary suddenly, and she recognized it was pain giving his eyes their cool, distancing look. She stood and extended her hand. He didn't seem to know what to make of her offer at first. After a moment, he also stood and placed his hand in hers. She led him into the bedroom.

After lighting the lamps, Berkeley helped him out of his jacket and loosened the collar of his shirt. "Sit there," she said, pointing to the bed. "I'll only be a minute." She disappeared into the adjoining dressing room.

Grey was pulling off his shoes and stockings when she returned. He frowned a little when he saw she was wearing her nightshift. "I would have helped you out of your wedding gown," he said. "In fact, I was rather looking forward to it."

Berkeley took the shoe he was dangling from the end of his index finger and placed it beside the other. "I'm sure you were," she said. She knelt in front of him, removed his sock, and dropped it inside his shoe. "Lie back."

Grey scooted backward and stretched out. His eyes closed immediately. He felt Berkeley crawl onto the bed beside him. His head was gingerly raised and laid on her lap. He heard himself actually sigh when her fingertips began massaging his temples. "It was so obvious, was it?" he asked, referring to his headache.

"You were white around the mouth," she said. "Do you get the headaches often?"

"No, not often."

"Another good reason, I suppose, not to call up the past."

Grey looked up at her, surprised that she had divined the connection.

"That's what brought this on, isn't it? Or have I mistaken the matter?"

He closed his eyes again as her fingers pressed against his scalp. "You're not wrong," he said tiredly. "It's always been this way. Sometimes I think I'm on the point of remembering something, then there will be a flash of hot, white light behind my eyes. The recollection, if there was one to be had, is gone in the explosion."

"So there's nothing," she said. "Nothing at all that you remember."

"Not exactly. It's when I try to dredge up my past that I'm rewarded with this pain. You're right that I don't like to try very often. But there are occasions when it seems as though a memory slips through. I can't predict it or even account for it fully. I believe that it has something to do with what I'm engaged in at the time. As if I'm going through the motions of some activity I've done before." There was a heaviness in Grey's shoulders as tension seeped out of him. Berkeley's fingers ruffled the fringe of hair across his forehead. She touched his cheek. "The first night I stood with you on the stairs, introducing you to the crowd in the gaming hall, I had a sense that I had done something like it before. It was a glimpse into my past. Nothing more. It only lasted a few seconds. There have been other moments like that over the years."

"Tell me about them."

"There's not much to tell. I was sitting in a Paris brothel once, playing whist with the madam, when I was struck by that sense of repetition."

Berkeley tugged on his hair. "You might have spared me that one."

Grey drew her hand to his mouth and kissed her. "It was only once."

"And you were only there to play cards."

"That's right." He risked a peek at her and caught her trying to tamp down her smile. Grey let her withdraw
her hand. Her
fingers returned to his scalp. "When
I
was drawing
up the
plans for the Phoenix there was something about it that was familiar to me."

"You mean the act of designing?" she asked. "Or the plans themselves?"

"The plans."

"Perhaps this hotel is very much like the house you lived in."

"I thought of that. I don't know. I suppose it could be. Or perhaps I always lived in hotels."

"Graham Denison comes from Southern aristocracy. His family has money, land, and privilege that predates the Revolution by a hundred years."

"Have you ever seen his home?"

"No. I was never a visitor to Beau Rivage. My family moved away from Charleston when I was six. In any event, we weren't likely to have been invited to one of the parties the Denisons, or any other of the plantation owners gave. My mother wouldn't have been welcome."

"Why not?"

"She was a reminder of how far one of their own could fall from grace."

Grey opened his eyes and stared up at her. "What do you mean?" But he knew the answer. Suddenly it was very clear to him.

Berkeley saw it in his face. "My mother and father weren't married," she said. "Anderson Shaw was my stepfather."

Grey wondered that he hadn't realized it before. There had always been a hesitation on Berkeley's part when she spoke of Anderson Shaw. Had she thought he would care she was a bastard? "And your mother? Who was she?"

"Virginia Lerner. She was born at Summerfield, west of the city. The plantation was old and relatively profitable. She was the youngest of four. All girls. My mother was a disappointment, she told me once, from the moment of her birth. She was supposed to have been a boy, you see, and spent most of her growing-up years pretending she could be one. Then at sixteen she committed her one unforgivable act of rebellion."