The Last Honest Seamstress (10 page)

Sometime later, Fayth could not decide whether an eternity had passed, or only minutes, the Captain reined to an abrupt stop at the edge of the pier. They were out of the height of the fury, but the roar of the encroaching flames pressed hard at their backs. He had jumped down and begun shouting orders before she realized they'd completed their journey. The boy scrambled out.
 

Fayth rose slowly from beneath the blanket to view the scene in front of her. The wave of humanity that coursed over the wood plank wharves was astonishing. As she looked back through the smoky air, less dense at the wharf's edge, to the path they had traveled, she realized the miracle of their safe arrival.

The streets were crammed with carts and people barely moving in the stifling traffic. All fled to the Sound, hoping to move their goods by ship into the safety of Elliott Bay. It was not lost on Fayth, or anyone else from the comments she overheard, the irony of the city burning for lack of water when it rested on such a superb, sparkling blue bay. Man's shortcomings had doomed them.

Hands reached up over the wagon sides, removing her belongings, pulling at the cart. People fought to overtake it. She looked around in desperation, ready to swat at the greedy, clawing people that swarmed. The Captain held out his arms to her from the ground.

"Miss Sheridan, my ship's waiting." His voice was as calm and unflappable as it was the day she proposed to him in the Chinese cafe.

"My things—"

"My men." He nodded toward the two toughs who worked at removing her machine. "They've got orders to load them on the
Aurnia.
Others need the wagon."

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize . . ." She clutched her photo box to her chest.
 

The Captain reached up and swung her by the waist to the ground. Her knees buckled as her feet touched down. He swung her into his arms—strong, broad, reassuring arms—and carried her up the ramp.
 

Over his shoulder, she watched the cart they'd left behind. A pair of hands grabbed for the horse's reins. As soon as the two sailors finished unloading her goods, a new driver mounted and drove it slowly into the crowd, back into the smoke and the burning city behind them.

"Your horse!"

The Captain smiled. "I rented it." He must have recognized her alarmed expression because he added, "Don't worry. They'll take care of it. It'll get back to its owner somehow."

She was surprised that he should be so trusting. She had no such regard for people.

Moments later, Fayth stood on the deck of the
Aurnia
next to her pitiful pile of belongings, a solitary, still figure amid the fury. Sailors scrambled around her securing loads. On the docks below a bucket brigade soaked the pier, trying to save it. She watched the city burn, watched the remains of her life drift away, ashes on the wind. Where would she go now?

Con kept his ship at dock, trying desperately to save the stores of his warehouse. The
Aurnia
was a converted schooner still rigged with sails, a coastal vessel with a flat, open deck used mainly for hauling lumber south to California. Below was a large cargo hold he used for transporting mail and miscellaneous cargo people paid him to ship.

Con had the single screw steam engine installed furthest aft shortly after he bought her. She had no bridge, only one long poop and a forecastle above deck. The wheelhouse and captain's quarters were aft, the crew's fore. In Con's eyes she was a beauty. By day's end, she might be all he had left.

The
Aurnia's
deck was littered with indiscriminately placed goods. Fayth stood amid the mess, watching the crowd disperse and head southward with the advancing fire at their backs. Others grappled with the Captain's men as they fought to keep a path to the ship clear, and prevent stowaways. The boy from the cart appeared from the scurrying mass and made for her side.

"Name's Billy. The Captain sent me to watch out for you." He bounced on the balls of his feet and rocked back and forth as if agitated at being banished from the action. She was eager to set him free and be left alone.
 

"That's very kind, but I'd like to be by myself."

"Sorry. Can't leave you. Not until Captain Con tells me I can."

Fayth brushed a stream of dampness from her cheeks with the back of her hand. Her eyes stung, but didn't account for all the tears that filled them. She didn't think Billy believed it did either. He looked away from her self-consciously.
 

"Where is the Captain?"

"At the warehouse. Sent me on ahead. We're going to put out. They can't save the wharf."

He needlessly gave voice to the obvious. The block of buildings lining the wharf was on fire. The vicious flames advanced west and south, stopped only by the gentle, lapping waves of the Sound. The wooden piers, though poised above the water, were not immune. Sailors and dockworkers continued the bucket brigade to douse the piers and warehouses at water's edge. Others beat out embers that lit on the docks. But the fire had more energy than any number of men. The breeze was still stiff. It arced flames from across the street to warehouse roofs. The dragon breath heat drove the men back, forcing them to the safety of the water. Anyone could see it was a losing battle.

Billy barely finished speaking when the Captain boarded the ship. "Load anyone onboard who wants to sail," she heard him shout. He followed with a string of commands in sailing jargon she didn't understand, but the confidence in his tone was enough. For the first time in hours some of her apprehension slipped away.

"Billy! To your post. We're putting out—now!"

Released from the tedium of watching her, Billy's movements became smooth. Moments later the anchor was raised. As they pulled out into Elliott Bay, the Captain's pier burst into flame.

Chapter 5

They anchored in Elliott Bay to the north and west of the wharves, far from the reach of the angry flames. The Captain emerged from the wheelhouse onto the main deck and walked to where Fayth huddled against her belongings. She sat with her arms clasped around gathered knees, eyes filled with tears. The shop, her security, was gone. Olive was gone. She shuddered, couldn't force herself to imagine what fate Olive had met. Every direction her thoughts turned ended in tragedy. The smell of smoke enveloped her, clung to her clothes, tinged the very air. Seattle smoldered in the distance. When would the angry flames be appeased? How much destruction would be enough?

Out on the water, the destructive breeze felt refreshing and cool as it kissed the deck and played with the sails overhead. To the west, the Olympic Mountains stood before the setting sun.

"I told Billy to look after you." The Captain stood over her with a hand outstretched.

Instinctively, she reached for it. He pulled her to her feet. With reluctance, she released the lifeline of his grip, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked helplessly at him. His gaze was elsewhere, focused on the shorefront. He moved to the railing. She followed him, matching his line of sight.

The wharves were fully engulfed in flame now. His warehouse a memory. His pier a fiery bridge collapsing into the water. His stoic expression never wavered, piercing her heart. She rested her hand on his arm, feeling his pain, knowing his loss.
 

"Gone." His tone was flat. He turned to her. "Material things, unlike people, are repairable, replaceable."

"You believe that?" The breeze blew a scorched lock of hair across Fayth’s face. She made no move to brush it away.
 

The Captain reached over and carefully tucked it back into place.

"Yes, of course." But his tone held little conviction.
 

Fayth realized he was stung by his losses. He had to be. Just as she was.

"Don't you?" he asked.

"Material things are all I have left. Had left." She paused, thinking of everything the fire had destroyed before her eyes. None of them important simply as things, but they held her past, reminded her of who she was, of people she loved.
 

She thought of her parent's four-poster cherrywood bed. She had moved it from Baltimore at great expense, leaving her own much smaller bed behind, because her parents' was where she'd been born. She loved sleeping in it, remembering cuddling with her parents as a small girl. Things, at this moment, did seem important.
 

"Things connect us to who we are," she said aloud. "They represent the sum of what we've worked for. They stand as trophies to our successes. It's all right to be sorry they're gone, to mourn them." Her words seemed inadequate, the comfort she tried to offer so very meager, but she had never been more sincere. She was desperate to relieve his suffering, if only minutely. Somehow, she felt it would help ease hers. A bond was forming between them, a bond she could not stop. And it frightened her. She owed this man who'd refused her, her life.
 

Mercifully, he turned back to stare out across the water to the pier. "You have no people?" he asked, at last.

"I am an only child. My parents were killed in a carriage accident last year."

He did not offer a hollow condolence, but listened with an intense and compassionate expression.

"I let our business flounder. I let Drew . . ."
 

She clutched the deck rail. "It doesn't matter. They died and I had to sell the business. Everything good died with them. I couldn't stand the wagging tongues in Baltimore anymore, so I came to Seattle." She stopped abruptly. She'd said too much.

He turned to look at her, studying her intently. She saw the question in his eyes, but to her relief he didn't probe about the gossip that had driven her from her hometown.

"There's nothing stopping you from loving, from making someone else matter in your life." He spoke softly, seductively, with a passion she hadn't expected. As if it seemed important to him that she did find someone else.

Was he talking about himself? Could he mean . . .

She swallowed hard, confused by his tone and not wanting to hope, not when she felt so desolate again. "Isn't there? A dead heart doesn't count?"

At the look he gave her, she felt a stirring of some wonderful, frightening, ethereal emotion. She spoke quickly to suppress it. "And now look at Seattle; she's dead, too."

"Don't worry about Seattle. She won't die. People here don't give up. Like you, Miss Sheridan, they'll find the courage to survive tragedy. Seattle will rise from the ashes like the phoenix, more beautiful than before."

Yes, Fayth had survived one tragedy, but at what cost? How had he missed seeing her for the fake she was? She was not surviving. She merely existed and she wondered whether she had the strength to continue now. Not wanting him to see her expression, she turned from him to look out over the waters.

He muttered something.

"Your shoulder's burned! I should have seen to it earlier." He yelled for Billy. "Fetch the medical supplies and meet me in my quarters."

Despite her protests, the Captain led Fayth aft through the wheelhouse to the shipmaster's cabin. She barely had time to take in the surprising opulence—the deep wood paneling, marble fireplace, and fine quality furnishings—when Billy burst in with medical supplies in hand.

The Captain took them from him. "Fetch Miss Sheridan's bags and leave them by the door."

As Billy disappeared to obey the order, the Captain led Fayth by the arm to a wooden dining chair next to a fine, matching table. "Sit." He guided her onto the chair and set his kit on the table, pulled up his own chair behind hers, and sat facing her back. She heard him open the kit. "Pull your dress down, if you will."
 

"Captain O'Neill, I thought that you had more finesse! A gentleman never tells a woman to drop her dress."

She had been around Coral too much lately. A year ago, she would never have said such a thing. A decent woman should never intimate anything unseemly, let alone say it directly.
 

The Captain didn't seem offended. In fact, he laughed. "A gentleman probably doesn't cut it off, either, but that may be the ultimate solution. You'll have to forgive me my roughness. I'm not used to treating a lady."

"Then we should find a woman to look at my shoulder. You're much too busy to bother about me—"

"You're the only woman onboard."

The thought stopped her cold. She hadn't noticed. She'd been too distraught to think of others and pay attention to the mix of people who were part of the chaos on deck. She was the only woman he'd rescued? Given his refusal of her marriage proposal, she was dumfounded. Why her?

"Your sailors couldn't think of any other damsels to play hero to?" She turned to look back over her shoulder at him, catching him off guard and getting a fleeting glimpse of raw hunger so powerful a surge of heat encompassed her. As if she weren't burning already.
 

"Apparently not." His tone was dry. "Will you settle for a man with some knowledge of medicine?"

"Do I have any choice?" Shaken, she turned around. "You'll have to unbutton me."

Maybe it was only her imagination, but he seemed to fumble at the buttons. Was the calm, unflappable Captain actually nervous? Was he fighting the pull of attraction, too? She looked straight ahead, trying not to smile at the thought, trying to ignore the fact that a handsome man was disrobing her, touching her neck, exposing her back—