Against the Tide (4 page)

It was after lunch by the time Lydia returned to work. The walk was over a mile, and she was tired after making the journey for the third time in one day.

Willis weighed in immediately. “I should have thought Admiral Fontaine would have provided you with transportation back to the shipyard.” Which showed Willis was not the best judge of human character, as Admiral Fontaine would never do anything to cast a shadow on his sterling reputation. Riding a horse with an unmarried woman clinging behind him would definitely qualify as improper.

“He thoughtfully allowed me a bit of time to restore my apartment to order,” Lydia said as she lowered herself into her desk chair. She went through the ritual of straightening her dictionaries, ink bottles, and pictures, and was prepared to get back to work, but both Karl and Jacob gathered beside her desk.

“Is everything all right, Lydia?” Karl asked gently, just a trace of a Norwegian accent lingering in his voice.

“Perfectly fine,” she said with more confidence than she felt. Everything was perfectly fine
today,
but she would be in this same situation in December if she could not earn an additional six hundred dollars.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Karl asked. Everyone in the office knew her situation, and Karl had offered to loan her fifty dollars if it would help, but Lydia would never accept it. Karl had a wife and four children, and that fifty dollars was probably the only buffer he had. Jacob had offered a few dollars as well, but he was saving every dime so he could bring his parents and sisters over from Salzburg.

“Thank you for the offer, Karl, but I’ll be fine,” she said. Karl nodded and returned to his desk, but Jacob lingered. He had always been like a brother to her, and she could not truly hide her feelings from Jacob.

He squatted on his haunches beside her chair. “You’ll tell me if things get really bad, won’t you?” he asked quietly. “There is a rooming house near the canneries that accepts women, and maybe I could help you find a place there.”

“I’ll find the money somehow,” she said with more confidence than she felt. She knew the tenement of which Jacob was speaking, and the specter of sliding back into a life of squalor was too wretched to contemplate. She pulled the Russian pamphlet toward her and was relieved to see that Willis had provided the list of British and Norwegian warships as she had asked. In the corner, someone had cleaned up the tea leaves she had scattered. Everything was back to normal, and if she moved quickly, she still had a chance of completing this report before the end of the day. She would probably need to stay late, but she did not mind. A cup of tea would help keep her energy alive through the long afternoon. She walked to the corner table and was about to pour a cup when the door banged open.

The most oddly annoying man Lydia had ever encountered strolled into the office. The Adonis. She knew his name was Alexander Banebridge, although Lydia thought she had heard the admiral call him Alexander Christian once.

He was in full dress uniform. Blond hair framed a perfectly molded face that looked like it belonged to a warrior angel. Most arresting were the lieutenant’s icy blue eyes, set above impossibly high cheekbones.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” the lieutenant said as he weaved through the desks of the office, flashed a brief smile to Lydia, then rapped a quick knock on the admiral’s door. Without waiting for an answer, he slipped inside and closed the door behind him.

Willis suppressed a delicate shudder. “I find the sight of that man’s posture aggravating. It makes my spine ache just to look at him.”

Lydia tried not to laugh as she returned to her desk with her tea. She was about to sit down when she noticed something wrong. Her Russian pamphlets were where she left them and the foreign dictionaries were in precise order, tilted at a perfect forty-five-degree angle . . . but the ink bottles were wrong. She always kept them with blue first, then black, then red, but they were entirely out of order from the way they had been only moments ago.

“Did you touch my ink bottles?” she asked Jacob, who looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

“I would not dare disturb the fastidious order of anything on your desk,” Jacob said.

Lydia glared at the closed door of the office where Lieutenant Banebridge had entered. Every time that man was in the office, something turned up askew at her desk. A picture was upside down or her dictionaries were no longer in alphabetical order. She had been staring straight at the man as he crossed through their office, but he still managed to tamper with her belongings and escape her notice. Lydia’s mouth narrowed to a thin line as she rearranged the ink bottles, knowing it would be impossible to concentrate until they were in proper order.

“I
really
don’t like that man,” she muttered under her breath.

Karl looked up from the document he was translating on the far side of the room. “I have heard some strange things about him,” he said. “My sister lives near the Canadian border in Vermont. She said the governor of Vermont wanted to build a bridge that would link up to Canada, but that Banebridge fellow showed up and objected. When the governor refused to stop the bridge, the crew who was building the bridge walked off the job. The governor brought in another crew, but Banebridge showed up a week later, and then they quit too. After that, no workers in the entire state were willing to do the job.”

Lydia stared at Karl’s grave face. What kind of power would it take to intimidate an entire team of workers to walk off their job? Lieutenant Banebridge did not seem physically big enough to threaten anyone. He was not that much taller than she, but he still seemed dangerous. A panther was not terribly large, but none of the other animals in the forest wanted to tangle with it.

“Why would the Adonis object to a bridge to Canada?” Jacob asked.

Karl shrugged. “Who knows? The following year the governor lost his bid for reelection and that bridge was never built.”

Lydia stared at her ink bottles, the sun from the window casting a little glint along their shiny glass surface. She was almost embarrassed to ask, but the question came out before she could stifle it. “Has Lieutenant Banebridge ever tampered with anything on your desk?” she asked Jacob.

“I don’t have anything on my desk worth stealing.”

Lydia shook her head. “He has never stolen anything,” she said. “He just disturbs things. Moves my pencil cup where it does not belong, turns a dictionary upside down. That sort of thing.” She looked at Karl and Willis to see if they had experienced anything similar and got the same blank looks. She threw up her hands in frustration. “I have never exchanged a single word with that man, so why does he pick on me like this?”

“You are prettier than Willis?” Jacob offered. “Perhaps the Adonis is carrying a torch for you.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. She supposed she was attractive enough, with red glints in her dark hair and cinnamon-colored eyes that people often complimented, but she was nowhere near the splendor of Lieutenant Banebridge’s perfection. “Men like him have no interest in mere mortals,” she said. “Besides, any man with feelings for me ought to go paint the cabinets in my apartment.
That
would
get much better results.” She glowered at the closed door leading to Admiral Fontaine’s private office. How was it possible the man sent her off-kilter merely by striding through her office? Other than his bizarre quirk of tampering with her desk each time he came to see the admiral, they had no communication whatsoever.

Then again, even Admiral Fontaine seemed to be in a foul mood each time the man darkened their office. Perhaps Lieutenant Banebridge simply had a talent for sowing discord wherever he went.

3

T
he numbers did not add up. No matter how many times Lydia tallied the figures or trimmed her budget, she simply could not make the numbers work. Which meant that she needed to start earning twice as much money as she currently made or face eviction from the only decent home she had ever known.

“Let me top off that chowder for you.” A gnarled hand reached across the surface of the mahogany counter as Big John took her empty bowl to the cooking pot for a refill. “It’s on the house,” he said as he slid it back to her.

Lydia tried not to smile. “I’m not
that
poor.”

“The new owner will never know,” Big John said as he flashed her a wink. Last week Big John’s purchase of the Laughing Dragon Coffeehouse had been finalized, but he had taken on a hefty debt to make the deal go through. As he pushed the bowl of steaming clam chowder across the counter toward her, Lydia knew it would be rude not to accept the gesture of kindness, even though she cringed at the implication.

She and Big John shared the same dilemma. Both of them had
lived in this waterfront building for years. John operated the popular coffeehouse on the first floor, and Lydia lived in one of the many apartments on the top floor of the building.

Big John had been sweating bullets for weeks, but he had at last succeeded in getting a loan to buy the coffeehouse. The Laughing Dragon was more than a place for a mug of coffee or a quick dinner. It was a place where merchants sold cargo, politicians planned strategy, and off-duty sailors played chess and traded stories. The century-old coffeehouse was lined with dark mahogany and old brass fittings. The walls of the public room were covered with schedules displaying the arrival and departure of ships. The Laughing Dragon also served the best New England clam chowder in town, with just the right amount of hickory-smoked bacon to season the thick broth of cream and potatoes. Lydia’s apartment had no kitchen and she took all her meals at the battered mahogany countertop of the Laughing Dragon.

She turned her attention back to the figures. She was used to working amidst the steady din of background noise of the coffeehouse, so it seemed strange when the noise dwindled away. The drone of laughter and conversation tapered off, a busy waitress stopped her order in midsentence, and even the fiddlers in the corner stopped playing. Lydia looked up to see what had caused the drop in conversation.

Oh my, my.

What was Lieutenant Banebridge doing at the Laughing Dragon? His crystalline blue gaze sliced through the dwindling twilight that illuminated the coffeehouse as he scanned the occupants. The man was not particularly tall. Indeed, compared to the oversized longshoremen who filled the room, he seemed almost slight, but he radiated a calm sense of power as he navigated through the cluster of tables and barrels, and headed toward the serving counter.

Lydia’s eyes widened as his gaze riveted on her. A hint of a smile lifted the corner of his perfectly shaped mouth, and Lydia’s breath froze as he strode directly to her.

“Lydia Pallas?” he asked as he slid onto the vacant stool next to her. How did he know her name? It was the first time he had ever spoken directly to her, and she wondered how he knew where she lived. All she could do was nod.

“I hear you read Turkish,” he said as though that were an entirely natural opening line. “Eric recommended you as someone who was willing to pick up a little translation work on the side.”

It took her a moment to process what he had said. “Eric? Do you mean Admiral Fontaine?”

“Yes, Admiral Fontaine. He said you have a remarkable ability with languages.”

“I’ve never heard anyone refer to him as ‘Eric’ before,” she said. “It would be like calling Queen Victoria ‘Vickie.’” She glanced at the insignia on his uniform. “And I certainly did not think that lieutenants ever called admirals by their first name.”

That lazy smile could probably slay damsels at a thousand yards. “I don’t report to Eric. He is a friend, not someone in my chain of command. I am Alex Banebridge, but everyone just calls me Bane. Eric said you might be able to help me with these.”

The lieutenant reached inside a satchel and pulled forth a foul-looking heap of papers that seemed to have been pulled from a pile of garbage. They smelled that way too, but the lieutenant was quite charming as he apologized for the state of the papers—his housekeeper had accidentally tossed them out before he could rescue them—and said he needed a translator and was willing to pay her extra, given the shoddy condition of the papers.

Ever since that awful eviction notice had been tacked to her front door, Lydia had been taking in extra translating work wherever she
could find it. The work usually came from a local newspaper that wanted to reprint stories about the Italian opera or the never-ending conflicts between Greece and Turkey. It was odd for a complete stranger to approach her with work. Especially a man so attractive and who stared at her as if she was an object of immense fascination. Men that stunningly handsome simply did not pay attention to girls like her.

Then she caught herself. Was she actually considering turning down a job merely because the man was
attractive
? She straightened her shoulders and pulled the ratty stack of papers toward her. A glance at the top sheet revealed a tidy row of Turkish script.

“Certainly I can translate these. When do you require them back?”

“Tomorrow. I’m leaving for Philadelphia tomorrow night and I’ll need these before then.”

Her heart plummeted. “Impossible. The very soonest I can have them for you is sometime this weekend.”

And that was because she was committed to be at the Brandenbergs’ doing clerical work until ten o’clock tonight, leaving precious little time to work on translation. Thumbing through the stack of Turkish documents, Lydia figured the job would require around six hours. But if this man needed them in a hurry . . .

“How much will you pay me?”

“Five dollars. Plus an extra two on account of the shabby condition.”

Lydia shook her head. “Not possible. I’ll need at least twenty dollars if I am to forgo a night of sleep over this.”

“Twenty dollars would pay your salary for an entire week!”

“It will also pay for an overnight translation.” She needed that money and was determined to fight for it. With a casual glance she scanned the other customers in the coffeehouse. “Perhaps someone
else could do it? Let’s see. Paddy O’Malley, playing chess in the corner, is always looking for work. Perhaps you can ask him. Or better yet, there is a school of architecture just down the street. Perhaps they’ve got some Turkish translators with a bit of time on their hands.”

The way the lieutenant lounged against the side of the counter and kept his blue gaze riveted on her reminded her of a cat watching a canary. “Careful, Miss Pallas,” he said. “I’m starting to get the impression you might be a bit on the miserly side. And such a fetching young lady. What a shame.”

“I prefer to call it thrifty.”

“
Mingy
is what they call it in the navy. You’ve got it written all over you.” She really ought to take offense, but he was so charming as he said it she was tempted to laugh. She forced herself to remain calm.

“Twenty dollars will persuade this mingy young lady to forgo the comforts of sleep tonight. Nineteen dollars will not.” She pretended to savor a spoonful of chowder, silently praying she had not pushed too hard. She was demanding a shocking fee, but modesty was not going to accumulate six hundred dollars before the end of the year.

“Come now,” he said in a coaxing manner. “I’ve seen ten-year-olds forgo a night of sleep in order to see Santa Claus. Surely you are up to the task.”

“Did any of those ten-year-olds read Turkish?”

She had him there, and the lieutenant’s eyes narrowed in amused frustration. What a shocking shade of crystal blue, with the tiniest bit of light gray around the irises. There was no doubt this man could charm the birds out of the trees, but she still didn’t quite trust him. She was certain he sometimes used another surname, and what sort of honest man needed more than one name?

“Why does the admiral sometimes call you Alexander Banebridge and sometimes call you Alexander Christian?” The question
popped from her mouth before she could call it back. She needed the twenty dollars more than she cared about his use of an alias, yet the lieutenant did not seem to mind her impertinence; he just sent her a lazy smile and leaned in a little closer to her.

“Now, Miss Pallas, we were discussing the flaws in your character, not the trivial inconsistencies in my life story. Tragic, the way young people today are so obsessed with money. I am surprised you are able to sleep at night. Fifteen dollars for an overnight translation.” He nudged the stack of papers a few inches closer to her.

Lydia would have taken the job for five dollars, but she could not afford timidity if she wished to save her home. She pushed them back. “I’m trying to eat, and those pages smell like they were used to collect cat droppings.” She feigned an air of nonchalance, knowing he would never meet her price if she appeared too desperate for the cash.

She took her time to polish off the chowder, then rose to her feet. “It’s been a pleasure finally meeting you, Lieutenant Banebridge. Or Bane, if you prefer. I’m sure you will be flattered to know that my co-workers call you ‘The Adonis,’ so you can add that to your string of names if you choose.” She held her breath as she began walking toward the door, hoping she had not driven too steep a bargain.

She walked only three steps when he slid in front of her, pushed the stack of papers into her hands, and reached for his billfold. Lydia tried to suppress the surge of triumph from showing as he extracted a ten-dollar bill. “Ten now, ten tomorrow evening,” he said. “I’ll meet you here to pick up the work.”

He leaned a little closer and his voice was as warm and smooth as chocolate. “I’ll be praying about your mingy ways,” he whispered into her ear.

A completely irrational shiver raced through her, but before she could respond, the lieutenant straightened and Lydia stared at his ramrod straight posture as he strode from the room.