Aching for Always (8 page)

Fiona gave him a look, which he ignored, turning his gaze back to the street.

“For now, let's concentrate on our immediate next steps, shall we? We need to find out what we can about Alfred Brand—his business, his life, his habits and, most important, his whereabouts.”

She said, “'Twould be good to know if we've landed in the right time to find him.”

Nathaniel, who had been examining the space behind the establishment's little counter, unpinned a calendar from the side of a cabinet and held it for the other two to see.

Hugh gazed at the curious combination of the days of the month and a picture. The picture was odd: a woman in an ornate cream dress—a bride, it seemed—with a cascade of flowers in her hands, standing on the steps of a church, holding the hand of a somberly dressed man. But the far more important information the calendar held was the year. If the calendar was current, and, given its relatively pristine state, there was no reason not to believe it was, they were in the year of Alfred Brand's fifty-eighth birthday.

Hugh felt the black fist of loss like a wallop to his gut. There had been a chance, albeit a small one, that they would land before Brand had made his scurrilous trip to England, a trip that destroyed the lives of so many people. If they had landed before the two hundred and eleventh day of Brand's thirty-fourth year, Hugh might have had the opportunity to save his brother. Now he would have to settle for killing his brother's murderer.

The familiar choking anger rose in his chest, but he kept his face impassive. Vengeance was a bitter pill. “We also need a place to sleep, clothes and money. Since there are rooms upstairs, it looks like we can bed down here.”

“And I can make clothes,” said Nathaniel.

Fiona and Hugh turned in surprise.

“I wasn't always a ship's master,” Nathaniel said, uncomfortable at their sudden interest. “I was a sheetmaker's mate for three years on a ship with a captain with
a taste for women. I can make anything—and there's a drawer full of patterns back there.”

“I think I speak for Miss McPherson as well when I say, to our very great surprise, we find we are set on that front. Fiona, will you—”

Her hand emerged from her pocket. It was filled with small gold ingots.

“Right. According to Belkin, a visit to something referred to as a ‘pawn shop' will win us the currency of the day we need to continue.”

“I'll hit the street. I'm sure one of these nice futurists will help me.”

If men of the future were anything like the men of 1706, Hugh was certain she'd have no trouble getting all the assistance she could handle. “Er, you may want to consider your skirts. The woman outside seemed to wearing hers as high as her knees.”

Fiona grabbed a pair of scissors from the jar, made a large horizontal cut in her skirt and chemise, then tore both across with a jerk. Hugh's eyebrows went up, and even old married Nathaniel, immune to beautiful women for as long as Hugh had known him, watched with interest as Fiona and her shapely calves made their way out the door and into the evening light.

“I know I've asked you this before,” Nathaniel said when the door closed, “but do you really believe her story: that her family's future was stolen by Brand? I wonder at her motive.”

Hugh checked the field of vision through the window in the adjoining room. He wondered just how close Brand was, and whether he had any way of knowing they'd ar
rived. He wished they had more weapons than the three pistols they'd been able to carry. “Did you believe that godforsaken rock would lead us here?”

“Upon my word, no. But rocks don't have ways of making men do their bidding.”

It no longer surprised Hugh that Nathaniel observed more than he let on. “Aye, I believe her. And her motives are clear as day.”

“Indeed.” Nathaniel gave Hugh a dry look. “If only all motives were equally as penetrable.”

Hugh ignored this, and they began the necessary process of securing the shop for what might transpire.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE
 

“I will not make you just one map,” the mapmaker told the old man who had hidden his treasure. “That wouldn't be safe. You must hide the way to your treasure by dividing the directions among three maps. Three is always safer than one.” The man agreed and said he would come back in a fortnight for the maps. But a fortnight came and went and he did not return, then one year, then two. After a while, the mapmaker forgot about the old man.

—The Tale of the Beautiful Mapmaker

Rogan daubed alcohol on the back of Joss's head.

“Ouch! I'm telling you, something very strange was happening there.” She was sitting on the toilet in his master bath. The bathroom still looked like it belonged to a bachelor even though she'd been living there for more than a month. There were a lot of changes she wanted to make, but work had been so busy, she just hadn't had the time. God, he looked good in pajama bottoms.

“What, exactly? You told me about the sparks.”

“Did you see them?” Her head was so muzzy, it felt
like a freshman-year hangover, but the only alcohol she'd had so far tonight had gone on her scalp.

“No. Everything looked fine when I left.” He put the top back on the alcohol and reached for the gauze strips.

“I'm not wearing a bandage.”

He held up his hands. “There's no arguing with a bride-to-be. Did you see anything else?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I feel like there was a man there who helped me.” What she didn't want to add was that the man was dressed like Russell Crowe in that old-time sailing movie and that he seemed to have emerged from an invisible dome that swelled and receded like a bullfrog's throat. Rogan would surely insist she head to the closest hospital for a CAT scan. There was more to that tailor shop than met the eye.

“A man?” Rogan put the bandages back in the medicine cabinet. She could see the muscles in his jaw flex. “What did he look like?”

“Dunno, exactly.” She cut her gaze sideways. “He wore a sort of . . . navy thing.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

She'd gotten only the barest of impressions. Tall, broad-shouldered and smelling of sandalwood—sort of like Patrick Dempsey, but with one of those wonderful, rumbly British accents.

“Joss?”

“What? No. Nothing of interest.”
“Spirit,”
he'd said.
“I like that.”
The memory made her grin.

“Well, let me know if you see him again, okay?”

She frowned. “You think he was following me?” That didn't make any sense.

“I just don't want anyone bothering you. So you'll tell me, right?”

“Sure.” She shrugged.

“I think we'll have to chalk the bump up to a loose brick or something. You're lucky all you got was a little bang.” His eyes glittered, and he leaned down to kiss her forehead, then look into her eyes. “Big bangs can be so debilitating.”

He took her hand and led her toward the bedroom.

“And you're sure you don't mind waiting?” she asked as she got into bed.

“Waiting?” He hopped in beside her and stretched out along her length.

“You know. Until Tuesday.”

“Ah, the proverbial wedding night.” He grinned. “I thought I had you convinced this afternoon.”

“Darn close. Thank God for little boys.”

He gazed at her, eyes like shimmering blue lakes. There was so much about him that reminded her of the good parts of her father—generosity, sense of humor, ambition. But unlike her father, there was no hint of cruelty. And he didn't mind her silly waiting game for that final act of intimacy. Waiting had been her mother's wish for her, or at least that's what Joss had told herself. Her mother had loved to make up stories and tell them to Joss, and one of Joss's favorites was about a beautiful mapmaker and her little daughter, which undoubtedly explained why it was her favorite. The little girl is happy until her father disappears and her mother falls ill. As her mother lies dying, she tells the young girl to be wary of the men who will come to court her, that she must save herself for the
handsome knight who will offer her all he possesses—his help and his heart. Which is why, Joss knew, she had seen Rogan as some sort of gift from beyond the grave from her mother, and why, despite the odds, she was still technically a virgin at twenty-three.

But technically was enough. What girl didn't look forward to a knight? Waiting seemed the least she could do—especially once he'd actually arrived.

It still felt weird for her to live in his home—hers now, too. But combining households had allowed her to put her condo up for sale, which would bring another influx of cash to Brand O'Malley.

“I feel like I waited a lifetime to meet you,” he said gently. “Why would a few more days make any difference? In fact”—he drew a long, slow thumb over her breast—“I think we should refrain from doing anything in the next week that would compromise my ability to deliver, well, shall we say Tchaikovsky and the Fourth of July.”

“‘Tchaikovsky and the Fourth of July?' You know, Mr. Reynolds, you've excited my anticipation to such an extent that anything short of Mount Saint Helens is going to be a bit of a disappointment.”

“Then pack your asbestos nightgown. Tuesday's going to be a cataclysmic night.”

C
HAPTER
S
IX
 

Hugh looked at the Olympian iron and glass structure that towered over him at the crest of the alley. He'd never seen the likes of it, even in the greatest palaces of the Ottoman Empire. This was surely a place of great magic. Fearing for his ability to stay focused, he turned instead to gaze down the sloping alley and let the morning sun warm his face. Passersby took little notice of him. That was good. It meant the outfit Nathaniel had made fit the times.

The aroma of bacon and toast from a nearby public house wafted between the buildings, and for an instant he was transported back to the cottage in Wych Cross twenty-two years ago—well, twenty-two years ago in his own time—with Maggie at the hearth and his brother at the head of the table, laughing and talking. And just as quickly the scene in his head turned to the table a year later, when he'd found the cottage empty and his brother sprawled in a pool of his own blood, dead of a pistol wound. Hugh's hand went automatically to the chased gold in his pocket, feeling its power like a charge. Hugh would never forget the shock of the discovery, nor the realization, crippling to
a child of eleven, that he was totally alone. And the slow white-hot burn began again. For twenty-one years he had carried the poison-laced brew in his heart. For twenty-one years he had laid the path for vengeance, one stone at a time, until he found himself standing here, in this alley. He would not rest until he had destroyed Alfred Brand and everything the man held dear.

He pulled the timepiece from his pocket and opened it.
His blood for yours
, read the inscription he'd chosen so carefully.
A brother's promise.
He remembered every detail clearly—the smell of coffee in the jeweler's shop when he opened the door, the weight of the gold from his first prize as a captain in his pocket, the feel of the velvet over which the various choices had been laid and the horrified look on the jeweler's face as Hugh spelled out the words he wanted engraved there.

Joss stood cautiously at the top of the narrow road, the hanger holding her wedding skirt in one hand and her cell phone set to video in the other, and peeked down the alley. No sparks. No dome. And the Gulf Tower weather beacon was shining a serene blue. She slipped the cell back in her pocket and stepped off the sidewalk, leaving the throngs of down- and wool-bundled workers on Grant Street to begin her descent. As she crossed William Penn Place, she spotted the door of the tailor shop opening. She paused. A man stepped outside. It was the man from yesterday. She would have recognized the shoulders anywhere. Only today he had ditched the old-time navy clothes and was wearing finely cut pants, a vest and an ocean blue shirt. He turned to look
up the street, and she found herself making a 90-degree turn to disappear out of sight on William Penn.