Virgin Star (11 page)

Trying to ignore this, Sean immediately saw what Kyler meant. Anxiety worked into the two men's tired, unshaven faces. Dull eyes swept the magnificent surroundings before they exchanged frightened glances. The large, heavyset one first removed his blue cap, combed back his hair—as if to rectify his disheveled appearance—then replaced it. The other man stood tall and lean, too lean, the kind got by too much hard drinking.

Butcher briefly considered the men. "Working stiffs, Sean. When the blokes is lucky." He dismissed them with a wave of his knife. "Nothing worse than liftin' a coin or two and spendin' the cold nights bent over cups."

"Aye," Seanessy said. "Shalyn," he questioned, his voice filled with a surprising gentleness, "have you seen them before? Do you remember them at all?"

Stricken, feeling relief and disappointment, she shook her head. She had no memory of either man; they might be strangers on a street. These were the men who had found her and brought her to Seanessy's house?

"No." She found her voice. "I have no memory of their faces. I have no memory of anything!"

Disappointed, Sean looked back at the two misfits. "For God's sake, rest easy," he swore as he returned Shalyn to her seat at the table. "You are not even on the list of people to kill today—much as you deserve to be. I want some information on the pretty package here that you dropped off last night."

"They said they found her on Hyde Street," Kyler prodded.

"Is that right?" Seanessy said.

"Aye, aye, cap'n!" Jack Cracker nodded eagerly, too eagerly. "See wh't 'appen be this: we comes across th' girl as we be leavin' the Silver Cup. She looks done for and we be meanin' to call in the gravediggers, we did, when we sees she's still breathin'. Why, she be as wick as Old Mad George during his heyday, I say to Redman here." He pointed. The other man nodded vigorously. "Then we saw the paper in 'er ‘ands. Redman 'ere"—he pointed—"brings the paper 'round cause ye know we don't know letters or nothin' and finally some bloke says 'tis ye, Cap'n Seanessy. Nine King's Highway. So we know where to take 'er."

The other man nodded, a hopeful look in his eyes.

"Indeed." Seanessy settled unkind bright eyes on

the two unlikely do-gooders. "Where do you suppose she came from?"

"Don't know, Cap'n." Jack shrugged. "She be just layin' there in th' alley; nothin' but closed windows of a tenement all around and not th' kind o' place you would expect to find a woman so ... so comely and all—"

"So! Was there anything nearby this place where you found her? Anything at all?"

"Piles of rubbish, is all. Oh, well, there be a brick by her foot. We thought she might of tripped on it, runnin' from somethin'. A lead pipe by 'er 'ead too."

"A lead pipe?"

"Aye, like th' kind used for the new plumbin' and such."

"How long?"

"Two paces. Maybe less."

She listened with pointed interest. A lead pipe? Someone must have knocked her on the head with a lead pipe. Her hand reached up to the mysterious bump on her head and she asked, "There was no one else in this alley?"

"Nothin' but a passel of mice."

Seanessy rubbed his chin, realizing distantly he needed a shave. If this was true, and he did not see why they might lie about it, then either she tripped on a brick or someone hit her with a lead pipe or both. Or neither. He sighed. The pipe and brick could all be coincidence.

"So when you brought her here, was that before or after you went to the pawnshop?"

It was as if they at first didn't hear the question. The man Jack swallowed, exchanging alarmed glances with his friend before attempting to deny it. "Oh no, 'tweren't like that! We never—"

He stopped, swallowed as Kyler stepped to Sean's chair and leaned over it for a whispered conference.

"No, no," Sean said. "Too bloody. Tilly and my other servants would never forgive me."

Kyler made another suggestion.

"Not that one either. Too much noise. I hate hearing grown men scream like cats in an alley—"

Kyler then said, "Well, not the—"

"Why not?" Sean asked indifferently.

"Half the time they go mad first—"

"Well, there's two of them. Better odds—"

"We meant no harm by it," Jack blurted, wiping his sleeve across a perspiring brow. "We seen it as our due, we did, not 'urtin' the lass or nothin' and takin' 'er all the way 'ere—"

"What was it that you removed from the young lady's possession?"

They exchanged glances. "'Twas a queer piece of brass and glass. 'Tweren't worth more than five bob at th' thrift shop over borderin' Park Street. Mister Rowe Eaten's place. "Twas clasped in 'er 'and wit’ the paper that 'ad yer name on it."

Seanessy motioned to one of the men as Charles appeared with his post. "Check out the other pawnshops in the area as well. She must have had something else with her, even if only some clothes.”

"Yes, right away."

"One last question," Seanessy asked. "Why did you bring her here? Why didn't you just leave her to fate?"

Jack and Redman exchanged glances before Jack looked down, finding a sudden fascination with the large hole at the tip of his boots as he said, "I could not leave 'er there."

"We wanted to, we did," Redman spoke up. "But .. .well—" He stopped, swallowed, and shook his head. "She was too comely by far..."

"I kept thinkin' of me own girl. I know we were the first blokes to find 'er but we weren't goin' to be the last, and 'er bein' so pretty, 'twas plain a lot o' blokes would not care that she canna open 'er eyes. Twas clear she be in trouble too, and, well, we thought there might be a bit of reward and we were goin' to knock on th' door ..."

"Ah, fear set you back, did it? The snake pit, was it?" And when they nodded, Seanessy laughed as Kyler shook his head. Missionaries were as rife as beggars in London streets and the barrel of live snakes proved an excellent deterrent to the endless proselytizing of the zealots. "Well, gentlemen, the only devil I know is fear and it's a mean one at that. All quite unnecessary after all. I hear you've both been after work on the docks?" They looked startled, more surprised as Sean turned to Butcher. "Give them something rich to hold them over and then set them up on the Sovereign Wind; she's due in by Friday, am I right?"

"Ah, Sean," Butcher protested. "A man needs a whip to get a day's labor out of sods like this—"

"Then find a whip, dear man."

"Curse all, Sean." Butcher looked cross. "For all you know these are the worthless sons of bitches that knocked the poor lass on her head!"

"Don't be ridiculous. First of all, Shalyn would not let either of these two close enough to land a blow, would you, darling? Second, would they by some miracle have knock her senseless, strip her, and then extend the kindness necessary to carry her nearly a mile to my house to keep her safe from a raping? I think not. Now off with you two. Gordon—"

Gordon led the two away.

Seanessy finished his breakfast. The men asked questions about her lost memory, but she felt tense and nervous, and not just from the masculine attention. She reached for the necessary composure to escape.

"You might be English but you didn't learn those tricks here. You must have been in the Orient?"

"She remembers Malacca," Seanessy said.

The men exchanged glances. Their Far East shipping enterprise operated from Malacca. "What do you remember about Malacca?"

She remembered in picture-perfect clarity the port at the English settlement of Malacca, the sun-washed white stucco buildings, the church steeple rising above the governor's mansion and Tunku Hamzah nearby: the small village where the natives lived. She knew the lush jungle-covered mountains, the road that circled the bay of crystal-blue water and eventually wound around to the Tampin River.

"I know I have lived there, I feel quite certain of that, but I can only remember the place, its tropical geography, the mountain range and blue of its ocean. I remember the Tampin, its flooding during the monsoons, but when I try to place myself in these pictures or remember who was with me... nothing. I don't remember."

A silence followed, as if they half expected her memory to return as they waited, but saw only her growing distress.

"Well," Butcher finally offered, "there's your connection with Sean—Malacca's our port. We ship from there. Mostly tea now, but some tin and silk."

"But what connection is it?" Seanessy asked. "Why was she given the Oriental training?"

The men explored reasons why someone might have a white girl trained to the arts, and all of them struck her as wild and farfetched. She only half listened. Urgency mounted. She needed to get out of here. She had to escape.

"Pardon me," she interrupted Butcher midsentence

and looked at Seanessy. "I must be excused of necessity from your company. The water closet?"

Seanessy considered her for a brief moment before he set his tea on the table with a light chuckle of amusement. "You're too polite—it's a dead giveaway, Shalyn. Gordon." He motioned the young man over. "Escort our sweet mystery lady to the guardlope." He had the habit of using the old-fashioned word for the privy. "Keep her at a distance and by all means shoot to maim if she so much as looks at you wrong. And, Shalyn darling, keep in mind all the medals young Gordon has won for his marksmanship."

"Indeed? A celebrated marksman?" She pretended surprise.

"As a matter of fact, there are only two better shots at this table, and not one man here couldn't hit a rabbit's ear at two hundred paces."

Shalyn rose. "I see at last l am your prisoner."

"For you own good."

"Come along then," Gordon said, as he picked up Sean's pistol. He led the beautiful girl through the doors, careful to keep the cocked pistol raised.

Seanessy was not the only man who watched the long gold braid swing to and fro across her back with each light and poised step. He had never felt such a damnable lure from a woman's backside ...

He shook his head, as if to rid himself of a spell. "I knew she'd be trouble!"

Yet he hadn't anticipated just how much.

Within minutes a scream sounded as Tilly discovered young Gordon unconscious in the lower gallery. Seanessy was already cursing as they rose and raced into the hall.

Once free of her guard, Shalyn had dashed through the front doors. She might have lost her memory and with it her past, but she had not lost her wits. Anticipating exactly what would happen, she did not make a run to the street and freedom, not now. She would wait until after they went through the gate looking for her. The one place they'd never find her was behind a search.

Shalyn tore down the stairs and around the house. Breathing hard and fast, she ducked into the tall shrubbery and crouched down. She did not wait long.

Within a minute came the sound of running boots through the open front doors. Seanessy's curses made her smile, the first she ever remembered, and it was sweet indeed. Butcher laughed, "Never thought I'd see the day when one of 'em runs from your greedy hands, Sean."

"So much for gratitude." Seanessy sighed, and with hands on hips said, "She'll be headed for the docks. Give it your best shot, Butcher. That girl won't survive the day there. I daresay, I'll have little pleasure in collecting the shattered pieces. I'll be down at the ship within the hour myself to see our good fireworks—"

He abruptly realized his billfold was missing.

"Why, that little termagant lifted my billfold!"

The deep sound of his laughter gave her a moment's pause before she heard a threat that raised the hairs on her neck and made her blush. A threat that involved baring a portion of her anatomy to the hot sting of his hand. She'd never see him again, she began telling herself over and over as she waited long minutes after the last of the men departed. Keeping to the cover of trees and shrubs, she rather calmly put herself through the iron gate and stepped onto the London street.

Dark eyes searched the tall masts resting in the harbor, then traveled up to the gold sun sinking over the ubiquitous rooftops characterizing the decidedly ugly city of London. Only two ships remained. His gaze traveled up the long straight lines of the tall mast, the tallest in the harbor, and the only clipper. He read the name in large gold and black flowing letters: Wind Muse. Scorn marked his clean-shaven face as he thought that only an Englishman's flight of fancy could create that wholly imaginative name.