Thunderstruck

  She gasped and spun to face him. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that if you do not slip into your shift shortly, the people who are bringing you new dresses to choose from will be quite surprised.” His gaze traveled the length of her and he winked. “But not disappointed. No,” he added as she snatched the waiting shift and disappeared around the screen to change, “certainly not disappointed.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bravery never goes out of fashion.

  —William Makepeace Thackeray

  Philadelphia

  Her face hidden in the shadow of her voluminous hood, the mysterious woman rose to address them.

  Jack spoke, his hands shifting on the scabbard he held. He squinted at the woman. “I’ve brought you Rowen Burchette, as requested, at the appointed place and time.”

  She nodded, pointing toward a waiting carriage.

  Rowen tilted his head, examining the figure before them and the horses in their traces. Mentally he berated himself for not spending more time in the stables that housed Philadelphia’s steeds and were under his father’s control.

  For not spending more time? For not spending any time. If he had, he might have recognized the woman based on her horses alone. His father would have. Gregor Burchette was like that.

  Jack asked, “You want us to go to the carriage?”

  The hooded woman nodded.

  “Then why not say that was where to meet in the first place?” he grumbled, steering Rowen. “Typical woman,” Jack muttered loud enough she might hear, “says to meet her one place than decides on another. Bad as moving furniture. An indecisive lot you are, you ask me.”

  The horses stamped at their approach. Their driver, bent and narrow with a high top hat’s brim resting low on his brow, hissed them into silence.

  The lady stopped by the carriage’s door.

  Jack and Rowen watched her with equal measures of trepidation.

  They stood like that a long moment, waiting.

  With an exasperated sigh, she knocked on the carriage’s side. On her gloved hand a ruby ring flashed.

  The driver turned in his seat and, leaning awkwardly backwards, peered down at the hooded figure. Reaching across, he yanked the door open.

  She gestured toward the open door.

  “No,” Jack said. “No, nay, never. No one’s getting into any vehicle be it cart, carriage, wagon, or unicycle until I get my money. I delivered him. I want compensation for my pain and suffering. Because this one? His presence brings pain and suffering.”

  “That’s because I have superior reach in a brawl,” Rowen said with a smirk.

  Jack snorted. “Yeah? I’ll whoop yer ass right here and have you crying like a babe without his bottle. Right before milady, if you don’t have a care.”

  The cloaked figure waved her hands anxiously. Again she pointed to the carriage’s open door.

  “I want my money,” Jack returned.

  She stomped her foot.

  “Gentlemen,” the driver said with a sigh, “I believe the lady suggests the money is not on her person at the moment. As a precaution against vandals.”

  Jack rubbed his chin, fingers rasping across his bristly beard.

  Rowen cleared his throat.

  Jack acted as if he hadn’t heard.

  Rowen cleared his throat again. Both the driver and the lady looked at him. Jack, however, ignored him.

  “If the money’s not on you, it does seem we should go to wherever my money’s at …” He reached behind Rowen and, grabbing him by the waistband, shoved him forward.

  Rowen paused at the carriage’s single step, thinking he recognized the carriage—that he had vomited out of its window one night after a bad go of drinking. If it was the same carriage, the woman in question was certainly someone he should recognize. He opened his mouth to say her name at the same moment Ginger Jack hit his rump with his own scabbard, sending him right at the opening and leaving him no choice but to step up. “Bastard,” he growled, now inside the carriage.

  Jack grinned up at him, motioning for the woman to join them. “I assure you—they were married.”

  They settled in to the carriage; the driver closed the door, snapped the reins, and sent the horses into a trot.

  Jack leaned back against the plush seat’s back, one finger tracing the quilted stitching. “Comfortable.”

  The sharp noise of the horse’s hooves echoed, as did the hissing of wheels spinning through water. That’s right, Rowen mused. It was Tuesday. One of the scheduled days rain fell in Philadelphia.

  “Loud,” Jack added.

  Rowen shifted on the seat. It did not matter how well appointed—that was gilt, was it not?—or comfortable the carriage was. What mattered was completing their mission. “Take down the hood, Catrina,” he snapped. “I know. I do not understand, but I know.”

  With a disapproving sniffle, Catrina Hollindale, ranked Fourth of the Nine, reached up and lowered her hood, trying her most winning smile on Rowen Burchette, wanted man.

  He shook his head. “Two questions,” Rowen said. “First, why? And second, do you have the money? Because, if not, I expect things will go very badly. And they will go very badly very fast.”

  Jack nodded.

  “Why?” She looked surprised by such a question. “Because the government was unwilling to see reason. Had they succeeded, Rowen, dear,” she said, though he flinched at the endearment, “you would have been taken in and summarily made an example of. Or used as a pawn to keep your father and the military he controls more beneath their thumb.” She shook her head. “They would have seen you captured, tried, and hanged on trumped-up charges. To save you I had to have some dolt—”

  “Dolt?” Jack protested.

  “—find, capture, and bring you to me. For safekeeping.”

  “Safekeeping,” Rowen repeated.

  “Dolt?” Jack snapped again, bristling.

  Catrina only had eyes for Rowen. “Yes. You will stay with me until I can get to your family and tell them all that has transpired. Then we will move in appropriate steps to have you exonerated and reinstated as Sixth of the Nine. You will return to your family, begin courting, and be at the right place and time (and the right mind) to serve your enlistment.”

  Rowen blinked. “And I suppose we will marry and have a dozen babies.”

  She sat back in her seat. “A dozen might be a bit much, but I will not stop you from trying to reach such a goal.”

  He slammed his head back against the carriage wall in frustration. “I will do no such thing.”

  “But, without sufficient trying there can be no such number of offspring. Surely some carousing friend has explained how such things happen….”

  “I know how such things happen.”

  She pulled the fan off her hip, waving it between them. “Then what—?”

  “—do I mean?”

  She nodded.

  “I mean that this myopic vision of yours will never work, Catrina.”

  “Myopic? Why not?”

  The carriage had rolled to a stop and Jack let out a long, low whistle, peering out the window.

  “I have the means and motivation to make it happen. I have some pull on the Council. I can—I will—” she corrected “—make this work.”

  “You can’t, Catrina,” Rowen repeated, almost sadly.

  “Why ever not?”

  He fixed his eyes on hers and said slowly, carefully, “Because I do not love you.”

  She flicked the fan closed.

  The carriage door swung open, and it seemed she could not get away from him quickly enough, tripping on the carriage’s step and nearly falling onto the sidewalk.

  Jack jumped out, looking up and down, admiring their change of venue.

  Rowen joined them, a quick glance registering what he had expected was their destination—the Hollindale estate.

  “No,” Catrina murmured. “No. I do not believe it,” she said, her voice shrill. She walked in a tight circle,
snapping her fan open and then closed.

  “My lady,” the driver said, “you had best get inside and out of sight of the watch. They will return shortly.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she agreed with a sharp nod. “Go, put up the carriage and horses. I will pay you a bonus tomorrow.”

  The driver nodded, and, with a crack of the reins, set the horses into motion.

  Catrina addressed Jack, who had the good sense to take the sash binding Rowen’s hands as if they were truly captor and captive. “You want your money, yes?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation.

  “Bring him inside. I will give it all to you. You did as I bade and should be rewarded for such action.”

  They followed her up the steps to the large manor with its carefully pointed brick walls and elegant trim. Inside the foyer, she stopped.

  “You do not love me? Perhaps that is true now. But you loved me once,” she insisted, searching his face for some confirmation.

  “No.”

  “Yes you did,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else. “You have just forgotten. You will learn to love me again.”

  “The money?” Jack reminded.

  “Yes, yes. Untie him.”

  “I did not ever love you. And I will not. You cannot make someone love you,” Rowen said, gentling his tone.

  “You did, you will again—I mean, why would you not love me? I did everything I could to get you to notice me.” Catrina stomped her foot so her heel on the tile echoed. “There was not a day that went by that I did not dress to my utmost, that I was not coiffed and styled to seek your appreciation. Your approval. I gave you my complete and undivided attention, I afforded you every kindness even though you were two ranks below me. It was like a knife in my heart when you started spending more time with Jordan than me. Even though my parents scoffed about my affections for you, even though they said you were a waste of my time and good graces, still, I silenced their protests. I silenced their doubts about you. Forever,” she added, a mad light flaring in the depths of her eyes.

  She caught her breath and continued. “Did you truly not heed me? I knew you first, I introduced you to each other! When I realized you were falling for Jordan … I knew what I had to do.” She was breathing rapidly, her hand on her stomach, her chest heaving in her tight dress. “You were destined to be mine. You just needed a distraction removed.”

  Rowen stiffened, his eyes narrowing.

  “So I had Jordan’s dress ingeniously designed, made, and I contacted the Councilman.”

  “You did what?” Rowen was still as a viper poised to strike, but Catrina was so wrapped up in her own admittance she no longer had sense enough to stop herself from rattling on.

  “I commissioned the dress—such an expensive thing with its intricate little cage of wire netting—but necessary to get the sparks to run as they did. It was a piece of genius. All I had to do was convince them that she was the Witch—all it took was some planning and a touch at the right moment …”

  Rowen’s jaw dropped. “Shite, Catrina,” Rowen whispered.

  “Please! I am a lady!” she admonished. “So they took her away.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Off to whatever palace they keep them in as they educate them for their lifetime of travel and adventure … I arranged for her to go to a different place, live a different life, and assured that you and I would eventually come together.” She reached out to lay her hand on his arm, but Jack slid between them.

  Jack sought Rowen’s eyes. “She didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “Just who are you,” she asked Jack, “captor or confidante?” She wrinkled her nose up at him. “And you are wrong,” she told him. “I knew precisely what I was doing,” she said with a snort of dismissal. “I knew that by sending her off on a lifetime of travel I was keeping you for myself. That was all I ever wanted.”

  “Rowen,” Jack warned, “she didn’t know what the conditions were like. She couldn’t.”

  “What?” She rounded on Jack, blinking. Her hand reached out to touch Rowen’s arm and he shook her off, rage making him tremble. “I did it all to win you, dear Rowen. How could I have guessed that you and that servant of yours—Jonathan— Where is he, by the way?”

  Rowen’s nostrils widened and he sucked in a deep breath, everything about his form tight, wound like a spring.

  She again waved her dainty hand. “How could I have known you and Jonathan would traipse into the wilds to find her? You’d never done anything that bold before. And certainly not something that went so strongly against your mother’s wishes …”

  “Stop.”

  “But you went plowing ahead like a bull!”

  He dropped his tone and volume, every bit of breath warning her. “Stop now. Before I stop you …”

  Jack cleared his throat. “My money.”

  Catrina hurried to a nearby chest and wrenched it open. She pulled out two sacks of coins with a grunt and, hefting them beyond the trunk’s edge, shoved them into Jack’s waiting hands. He took a half step backwards under the sudden weight, releasing Rowen.

  Rowen thrashed at the knotted sash, worrying it loose.

  She stepped into him then, her bodice brushing his chest.

  He stepped back, glaring.

  “I was so worried I had to set up a wanted poster with a reward that was more valuable than any others. I couldn’t bear you being dragged before the Council, knowing I set this entire thing into motion! It just didn’t seem right!”

  “My being hunted after the duel didn’t seem right to you, but what you did to Jordan and her family, did?”

  “I never had qualms with her family, that’s my one regret,” she admitted. “But I would have done anything to have you returned. And here you are! Safe and sound! Thanks to—”

  “Jack,” he replied, working his way more firmly between them.

  “Jack. Well. Isn’t that just a wonderfully common name?” She patted the sacks. “This is what you’re due. Thanks ever so much for bringing Rowen to me and,” she leaned in, placing one finger against her lips, “we must never speak of this again. It is important no one know he’s in my keeping.”

  Jack merely blinked at her.

  “Now, Rowen, we must get you out of those—clothes—and into things of a more distinguished sort.”

  “Catrina. That is not my priority.”

  She wrinkled her nose and pulled loose her fan. Flicking it open, she waved it between them, nearly smacking Jack in the nose. “And a bath. I daresay you could stand a bath.”

  “Catrina,” he said, heaving her name out in exasperation.

  “Yes, dear boy? I apologize for rushing you along, but there is much on our agenda you do not yet know about.”

  A door opened and they spun to face the intruder.

  Disheveled-looking as always, Catrina’s uncle paused in the doorway. He straightened. “Oh, isn’t this interesting …” He strode forward—no, staggered more than strode—and stopped beside them to stare at each in turn through bleary and bloodshot eyes. He rubbed his chin. “Fascinating.” He waved at his niece, grinning at Jack and Rowen with the look of one who knew too much and said too little. “Go on, dear girl. Don’t let me stop you.” He peered at her again through half closed eyelids. “Your agenda … ?”

  ***

  Aboard the Artemesia

  Jordan had barely dropped the towel and slipped into a simple linen shift when she heard the door open and close and more footsteps roam the floor space of her room. She peeked around the screen and heard Meggie laugh.

  The child slapped her hands together and said, “Oh, Miss Jordan, this is so exciting!”

  Jordan shot a look at Caleb.

  He raised one shoulder in a shrug. “I have an amazing sense of style, but I thought Meggie would also rise to the challenge of giving you a fine new look.”

  Meggie just grinned up at Jordan, her heart-shaped face glowing.

  Maude glanced from Jordan to Caleb, regaining
Meggie’s hand. “I was told you and Caleb would watch my dear little sprite, but you do not appear ready …”

  Caleb waved a hand at her and detached Meggie’s hand from hers to take it in his own. “I assure you she will be well taken care of. You may go about your day and we will bring her Topside when Jordan is more suitably attired. Good enough?”

  Maude smiled, leaned over and gave Meggie’s forehead a kiss, and then left the room.

  “Jordan, come join us,” Caleb said, patting her bed. He moved to a waiting chair, his eyes following her as she came out from behind the screen to sit on the edge of the bed.

  Meggie jumped up on her lap and clasped her hands together, waiting for the show to begin.

  There was someone at the door nearly immediately. “Oh!” Meggie slid back down and raced over to open the door wide.

  A maid walked in, holding high a broad gold gown with wide skirts and a deeply pointed wasp’s waist. Jordan didn’t need to try it on or even have the girl turn it around to display its back, but said with a snort, “No.”

  Caleb’s eyebrows rose.

  “Ah, yes. You never saw me in my gold ball gown that I wore the whole time I was housed in Holgate. The gold ball gown lined with a net of metal thread that caught lightning and led people to believe I was a Witch. And that my family was guilty of Harboring.”

  Caleb swallowed hard and clapped his hands together, signaling a change of view and the girl spun on her heel and exited before a new girl stepped into the room, this one holding up a bright purple dress trimmed out in both gold and silver. Its sleeves puffed at the top before narrowing near the elbows and flaring again, growing heavy with lace at the wrists. The skirt was narrower than the first and Jordan rested an arm around Meggie’s shoulders, leaning lightly across her.

  “What do you think?” she asked the child.

  “Show us the back!” Meggie declared.

  The girl smiled and turned the gown around.

  “Your derrière will look gigantic!” Meggie whispered.

  “From out of the mouths of babes,” Caleb said with a chuckle, reaching out to tousle Meggie’s pale blond curls.