Kissing Comfort (17 page)

That was how Comfort left Sydney Town with its cruel brothels and treacherous gambling houses. Newt and Tuck had done their best to protect her from the vices, but it had been a long time since they'd experienced the world at the eye level of a curious child, and when they needed to make certain there was shelter for her, they had all lived for a time at the rear of a saloon that was no more than a large tent with rooms cordoned off by blankets hanging over a hemp line. Some games of chance went on in those rooms, but mostly it was drinking and whoring, and while the girls who worked the rooms were always kind to her, the customers were not always kind to the girls. Comfort learned the difference between the moans they made when they lay with a man and the moans they made when a man laid them out.

Lost in reflection, Comfort almost passed the unassuming office for Black Crowne. She did miss the doorway and had to stop and back up a few steps. The tinkling of a bell fastened to the door announced her entry. She stood just inside, but no one came from the back to greet her. A long counter and the gate attached to it split the room in half. The gate was closed, an obvious attempt to keep the customers in one area and the clerks in another. At least temporarily. Rather like the lions and the Christians, she thought, and wondered which she was.

After several minutes of waiting, she approached the counter and rapped hard on it. She thought she heard something, but no footsteps followed the rustling, and that caused her to wonder about wharf rats. There was not very much that made her squeamish, but rats could do it. She gathered her skirts a little closer and pressed against the counter.

There was a spindle filled with notes at her side. For want of something better to do, she began to leaf through the messages. When that proved uninteresting, she counted the cubbies on the wall behind the counter and tried to guess at which ones contained important documents such as bills of lading and passenger manifests and which ones were the repository for things forgotten about long ago, like a schedule for a ship no longer making the Pacific run.

There was a small stove on the clerk's side of the counter whose warmth would have been welcome this chilly morning if someone had thought to tend to it. The clerk was obviously more warm-blooded than she. Rubbing her hands together—she hadn't worn gloves because she had none sufficiently plain—Comfort took a slow turn about the room. There were no chairs, no stools, no amenities for the customers. For the first time she wondered if the business was done by appointment. She felt a little better about being ignored after that and was able to stretch her patience all of five minutes. When rapping on the counter did not provide her with assistance and opening and closing the door several times was equally ineffective, Comfort opened the gate and stepped into what she was sure now was the lion's side of the room.

“Hello?” she called, entering the back room. “Is anyone—” She stopped because it was plain to her that there was no one around. It was a large room, much of it taken over by the storage of boxes and barrels and crates. There was one open corner with a desk and several chairs positioned directly in front of it. The surface of this desk had nothing in common with hers. It was clear of everything except a pen and inkstand, an oil lamp, and a blotter. She suspected she'd found where Bode worked.

Knowing that he had his own rooms somewhere in the building, Comfort began picking her way around the stacks. It was considerably more challenging than a garden maze. Even when she stood on tiptoe, she couldn't see over the top of or around most of the pyramids. She followed a course that she hoped would take her to a set of stairs at the back or to the rear exit and a set of stairs on the outside of the building.

What she found were steps so steep they might well have been a ladder. She recognized them as something that would have served that purpose on a ship's gangway and probably had done so at one time. “Ridiculous man,” she said under her breath. Grasping the rope railings on either side of the stairs, Comfort began to climb.

 

 

Bode sat on a stool with his heels hooked on the lowest rung and his elbows resting on the edge of his drawing table. He studied the sketch in front of him, not satisfied, but not yet clear on what it was he didn't like. Perhaps it was her lines that were wrong. In his mind, she was sleeker than what he'd been able to draw. More fluid. Slippery.

One corner of his mouth lifted, tempering his frustration with humor. Slippery. She should be without friction, without resistance. She should be . . .

He began to furiously erase the changes he'd made in the last hour.

Comfort didn't know if she was expected to knock on the hatch or throw it open and then announce she was aboard. Courtesy dictated her response. She knocked.

Lost in thought, Bode mistook the direction of the sound and glanced up at the skylight overhead, expecting to find a gull pecking at the sash. When the sound came again, he correctly determined the source of it.

“I told you I don't want to be disturbed, John. Handle Mr. Roman's complaint yourself. If you can't manage that, I don't see the use of employing you any longer.”

Feeling rather sorry for John, and hoping that managing Mr. Roman was what explained his absence from the front office, Comfort decided she should show herself. She pushed open the hatch wide enough to poke her head through. She felt rather like a prairie dog cautiously gauging the safety of leaving his hole.

“You won't get many visitors here, Mr. DeLong, although I understand that might be part of the appeal.”

Dropping his pencil, Bode swiveled around and stared at Comfort. “What are you doing here?”

She pushed the hatch open wider and raised herself up another step. “That should be obvious. I've come to speak to you.”

Bode slid off the stool and crossed the room quickly. He threw back the door, reached down to take the hand she extended to him, and helped her up.

Comfort was aware that she did very little of the work herself. He practically hoisted her out of the hole. When he set her down, she straightened her bonnet and shawl and smoothed the front of her dress. She gave a little start when he let the hatch slam shut.

“Well,” she said, striving for a brisk, businesslike tone. “This is unexpected.”

He frowned and pinned her in place with a narrow, steely look. “I think you have our lines confused. That's what I should be saying.”

“Oh, I wasn't referring to the fact of seeing you as unexpected. How could it be? I came looking for you.” She waved a hand airily about the room. “No, I meant this place. Your quarters. They are quarters, aren't they? As on a ship. The gangway. The hatch. Shipmaster's quarters.” She bent a little sideways to peek around him when he didn't move. “It's quite large. A stateroom, I believe. I didn't expect that. It's not as big as the entire floor below, but that would be excessive. You have several rooms, I see. Cabins. Is that what you call them?”

“I call them rooms.” Bode shifted and planted a foot firmly on the floor when she tried to step around him. “Who knows you're here?”

She shook her head. The look he gave her occupied the range between incredulity and fury. Knowing that she deserved at least some part of it, although perhaps not with the intensity of his present expression, Comfort found the grace to look sheepish. It wasn't her fault, she thought, that he believed she was being disingenuous.

Bode put his palm directly in front of her face. He was satisfied when she flinched. Good. She deserved to be a little afraid of him. “What about your maid?” he asked. “Suey Tsin.”

Comfort's eyebrows lifted, surprised he remembered Suey Tsin's name. “She probably thinks I'm at the bank.” She disliked talking to his hand but was loath to nudge it aside. Touching him did not seem to be advised, and in truth, she was averse to the idea on general principle. The general principle being that she didn't put her hand in fire.

Bode lowered his palm. “And where do your uncles think you are?”

“At home.” She watched him close his eyes briefly and supposed he was dipping into his well of patience. When he looked at her again, she surmised the well wasn't very deep. “I'm certain they will try to visit you sometime today. I thought it was better if I arrived first.”

“You mean I can expect that they will find you here?”

“No. No, I don't mean that at all. Not unless you continue to ask questions that delay me from explaining the point of my visit.”

By God, she was taking
him
to task. “By all means, explain yourself.”

She exhaled softly. “Well, I'm sure it will seem that a lot of fuss is being made about a misunder—” She broke off. “Can't you invite me in?”

“You are in. I dropped the hatch, didn't I?”

Comfort supposed his intention was to remind her that he could have dropped her through it. That he could
still
drop her through it. Her legs felt a little wobbly. “May I sit, then? You can put the stool right here. I won't move. I promise.”

Bode didn't answer immediately. One corner of his mouth flattened as he pushed his hand through his hair, thinking. “You can sit over there,” he said, stepping aside at last and pointing to the ball-and-claw-footed upholstered bench beneath a pair of windows. “I will hold you to your promise not to move.”

Comfort was careful not to brush him as she crossed the room. She paused briefly at the drawing table, curious, but Bode's back-of-the-throat growl was like the sharp point of a stick in the small of her back. She kept moving.

Sitting down, she pressed the dove gray fabric of her dress over her knees and managed a small smile. “The walk here took longer than I expected.” She shrugged. “But that is not—”

“You walked here?”

Bode's well wasn't merely shallow, she realized. It was bone-dry. “I did.”

“Christ.”

His language surprised her. The fact that he didn't apologize for it did not.

“Do you have any idea what might have happened to you?”

She looked pointedly at his eye patch. “I think I do, yes.”

He tapped his eye. “This is the least of it. How far did you venture into the Coast?”

“Not far.” She ticked off her route on her fingers—and all the reasons she considered her journey not to have been as dangerous as he supposed. When she was done, he was sitting as well. She folded her hands in her lap. “The important thing is that I've arrived safely. There's no point in reviewing all the things that
might
have happened. They didn't, and because the hour will be later when I return, I intend to hire a hack. I made certain I brought enough money with me to do that.”

Bode swore again, this time so softly that it was hardly satisfying. “I won't let you leave here in a hack without an escort.”

“Then maybe your clerk can accompany me. John, is it?” When he looked at her oddly, she explained, “You thought he was the one at the hatch, remember?”

Bode wondered if anything ever escaped her notice. “Mr. Farwell has another matter to occupy him. I'll take you back.”

“That's very kind, but not necessary.”

“I was going to call on you today.” He added facetiously, “Remember?”

“Yes, but by then my uncles would have met with you, or if they hadn't been able to get away from the bank, they certainly would have cornered you upon your arrival, and I would have to hear all about it secondhand.”

“What you just said made sense to you?”

Comfort gave him a withering look.

He didn't smile, but he appreciated that she had regained her footing. Now it was up to him to do the same. “Very well,” he said. “What is the nature of this discussion that I am apparently going to have with your uncles?”

“They're going to ask you for your recollection of last night's events.”

“I don't suppose they'll be inquiring about the third act of
Rigoletto.
”

“No. They had already figured out that Gilda would be murdered. It's their contention that operas don't end well. I've told them that . . .” Her voice trailed away when Bode cocked an eyebrow at her. She hadn't expected that it would be so difficult to come to the point. It made her wonder if she was really as confident of what Bode would tell her uncles as she had supposed. Her palms were clammy and her heart had begun to thrum uncomfortably. She did not think she was going to faint, but she hadn't known it was going to happen the last time either.

“Miss Kennedy?”

The change in his voice from contemptuous to concerned brought her around. She blinked. “I'm sorry. I think this was a mistake.” Offering a wan but apologetic smile, she began to rise.

“Sit. Down.”

Comfort sat.

“That's better,” he said. He stood and crossed the room to the sideboard, where he measured out a finger of whiskey. He carried the tumbler to her and pressed it between her folded hands. “Sip.”

She did.

Bode stayed where he was, watching her until some color returned to her ashen face. “All right,” he said when he returned to the stool. “I agree that you being here is a mistake, but since you've come rather late to that realization, you might as well carry out your intention. What is it in particular that Newt and Tucker will want to know?” A small crease appeared between his eyebrows. “Do they think I said or did something that caused you to faint?”

“No! No one said anything like that.” Her dark eyes widened a fraction, and she asked softly, “You didn't, did you?”

“No.”

She nodded. “That was my recollection also.”