Kissing Comfort (18 page)

“Reassuring,” he said dryly.

Comfort watched Bode plunge his fingers through his hair again. Sunshine from the skylight directly overhead gave his hair a metallic copper sheen. She realized she was staring when his eyebrows lifted a fraction. Rather than quickly look away just as if she'd done something wrong, Comfort took a careful sip of her drink.

“The gentleman in front of us,” she said after the whiskey slipped warmly past her throat. “The one helping the woman with her train. Do you know him?”

“No. Is that what this is about?”

“Perhaps. I'm not certain.” She drew a shallow breath and released it slowly. “Do you recall what it was that he dropped?”

“A tin. The kind that's sold in drugstores. I didn't get a good look at it. Is it important?” Apparently it was. There was the faintest tremor in Comfort's hands. He thought about taking the tumbler from her but decided against it. Perhaps clutching it was all that was keeping her upright.

“You're not mistaken? It wasn't a glove?”

He disliked quashing the hope in her eyes. He held up his hands, turning the palms over in a helpless gesture. “It was a tin.”

“Oh.” She nodded slowly and sighed. “I remember a glove.”

“What do Tuck and Newt remember?”

“A tin. The same as you.” Leaving what remained of her drink in the glass, she set it beside her on the bench. She pressed her palms against her knees as she'd wanted to earlier. “I was so convinced it was a glove that I think my uncles began to doubt what they saw.”

“Which is why you suspect they'll want to speak to me.”

“Yes. I invited them to. For confirmation.” And then for confrontation, she thought. They would have to say something to her. No matter how distasteful they would find the chore, it couldn't be helped.

She looked forlorn. That troubled Bode. “Do you want me to tell them it was a glove?”

“Would you do that?”

“I don't know. Probably not.”

She smiled a little at his answer. “It doesn't matter. I don't want you to. They saw what you saw.”

Leaning to one side, Bode rested his elbow and forearm on top of his drawing on the table. “How do you account for remembering it differently?”

“I can't. I still see the glove. You can't imagine how disturbing it is to learn I can't trust my eyes.”

“I don't think that's the problem. You can trust your eyes. It's your memory that's failing you.”

“Thank you for clarifying, but the distinction hardly makes it any less disturbing.”

“I understand.” He rolled a pencil back and forth with the tip of his index finger. “What I don't understand is the importance you and your uncles are attaching to it. You haven't explained that.”

Comfort supposed that she hadn't, not really. “I have a tin like the one the gentleman dropped. You remember the color?”

“Red and white.”

“And what was written on it?”

He shook his head. “I didn't study it. You had it in your hand a moment, dropped it, and I picked it up. I barely glanced at it before I returned it to the gentleman. There was candy in the tin, I think. Maybe cough drops.”

“Lozenges,” she said. “Newt and Tuck recognized it at once. Dr. Eli Kennedy's Comfort Lozenges.”

“Well, I don't know about that. I'll have to take them at their word.” Bode considered what she told him. “Is that why you have a tin like it? Because of the name?”

She hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“The name. It's a little like yours, isn't it? Kennedy. Comfort. Do you have a middle name? Eli, perhaps?”

“Elizabeth.”

“Close enough.” He picked up the pencil and waggled it between his fingers. “I would have collected a tin like that myself, supposing it was named Dr. Beauregard DeLong's Royal Lozenges, or some such thing.”

“Is that your middle name? Royal?”

“No. Crowne. My mother's maiden name. I thought Royal sounded better. For a lozenge, that is.”

Comfort smiled. It was a slight one, and in the end, slightly sad. “I didn't find and keep the tin because of the name. I have my name because of the tin.”

Bode's fingers stilled; the pencil stood at attention. “How is that again?”

“I was holding the tin of lozenges when Newt and Tucker found me, so they named me Comfort Elizabeth Kennedy. Elizabeth was a name they attached later. That was Newt's idea. Tucker is credited with having thought of the other.”

“All right,” he said, nodding slowly. “That explains one thing.”

“You have other questions, I imagine.”

“I do, but you tell me what you want me to know.” When Comfort stood, reneging on her promise not to move from the bench, he didn't stop her. He let her wander and pretend interest in her surroundings while she considered what she wanted to say, and more importantly it seemed, got over her reluctance to say it. She was quiet as she passed from one area of his stateroom to another. There were no walls defining the interior, but she recognized the flow and function of the space. Bode had an area for study, for conversation, for eating, and for cooking. The part of his home that was closed off to her by doors, she assumed was for storage, sleeping, dressing, and bathing. He could have lived in a mansion on Nob Hill with dozens of rooms, some of them larger than the one he occupied now, but he'd chosen this. She glanced at the hatch, remembered what she'd said on arrival, and realized she'd been right. Bode wanted to be alone. She wasn't as sure that he liked it.

“Newt and Tuck aren't really my uncles,” she said. She picked up one of the ebony knights from the chess set on the dining room table and rolled it lightly between her palms. “They explained to me early on that I could tell people whatever I liked about how I came to be with them, but if I didn't want to say anything, they were prepared to let on that I was their niece. Newton drew up a family tree that we all learned to explain our connections.”

“The devil is in the details.”

“Precisely. My mother was Tucker's sister. Newt was my father's older half brother. That was to explain the difference in our last names.” She glimpsed Bode's mouth twitch. Hers did as well. She felt lighter in the moment and set the chess piece down. She'd never thought of their story as any kind of burden, yet saying just one small part of it aloud made her feel as if she'd shed a weight.

“I've never told anyone. No, not even Bram. And I feel confident that Newt and Tucker have been silent as well. In some way, I suppose we've come to believe what we invented. Certainly, we've lived as if it were so. The truth is that I don't know who my parents were. I have the tense right, though. What I do know about them is that they're dead. I was part of a wagon train heading west that was attacked and robbed in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I was the only survivor. Newt thinks I crawled off on my own sometime during the raid. We can't be sure, because I don't remember any of what happened before Tuck found me wedged between some rocks.”

Comfort smiled a trifle crookedly. “Actually it was Newt's mare Dulcie snuffling around that made Tuck investigate.”

“Newt reminds you and Tuck of that, I take it.”

“He hasn't for a long while,” she said. “But in the beginning, yes. Frequently.” She walked over to the table where Bode sat and studied the drawing under his arm. She said nothing about it, picking up the thread of her story instead. “We think I was five. I told them I was. It was about the only thing I would, or
could
, tell them, and they chose to accept it as fact. There was some discussion about whether they should take me with them. Apparently there was a trading post a ways back. If they'd been willing to retrace their steps, they could have left me there. They didn't really argue about it, not that I remember. It was mostly Tuck who decided and Newt who went along.”

Bode had tried not to ask any questions, allowing Comfort to set the pace, but he was afraid she wouldn't mention the thing that had brought them to this point. “How does the tin figure in this?”

“I was clutching it, and I wouldn't give it up. I had no interest in anything they brought me from the wagons. Dolls. Combs. Books. Newt said that if I recognized any of it, they couldn't tell.”

Bode nodded, understanding. After every battle, there were soldiers who couldn't have recognized their own mothers. They barely knew that the hand at the end of their arm was their own. “I saw it sometimes,” he said. “During the war.”

“I wasn't like that, Mr. DeLong. I was hiding. I didn't see the shooting. I didn't see bodies. Newt and Tuck buried everyone before they found me.”

“You don't know what you saw. You don't remember.”

Comfort returned to the bench at the window and sat. “No,” she said. “I don't. That's at the very crux of the matter, isn't it?”

“He dropped a tin,” said Bode. “A red-and-white tin.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed them with her thumb and forefinger. “I can't see it.” Unwelcome tears suddenly pressed against her lids. She didn't have a handkerchief.

“Here.” Bode pushed one corner of a handkerchief into the center of her fist.

The ache in her throat prevented her from speaking. She simply nodded and accepted the gift.

Bode returned to the stool. “Perhaps you'd like to finish your drink?”

Dabbing at her eyes, she shook her head.

“All right, then I want to ask you about a week ago Monday night.”

“Monday?”

“Yes. Bram broke his leg earlier in the day.”

“Well, I certainly remember that.”

He went on as if she hadn't spoken. “And you fell asleep in the parlor waiting for me to return from speaking to my mother. I chose to let you sleep because it was clear you were exhausted. I didn't wake you because you were dreaming. I woke you because you were terrified.”

“I'm sure you've had nightmares. Everyone does.”

“Not like that. At least not since I was a child.”

She shrugged. “It doesn't matter. I don't recall it anyway.”

Disappointed, Bode shook his head. “This is the first time since you've arrived that I don't believe you.”

“I can't help that.”

“You could tell the truth.”

“You told me I could tell you what I wanted you to know.”

“I didn't ask you to tell me what the dream was about.”

Comfort twisted the handkerchief. “Very well. Then, yes, I remember some of it. Not everything.”

“Do you have it often?”

“No.” She hesitated and then admitted, “I had it again last night. I didn't wake during it, but I know it happened while I slept. This morning I woke thirsty.”

“Thirsty?”

“Yes. I always need something to drink when I wake after I've had that particular dream. You gave me sherry.”

“You only sipped it.”

“That required a great deal of restraint, I assure you. Before then, my throat couldn't have been dryer if I'd swallowed a handful of sand.”

“You could have asked for water. Tea. Whatever you liked.”

“No, I couldn't. I wouldn't have been able to resist drinking my fill, and that would have put your eyebrows at the level of your hairline. It was better that you didn't see.”

Bode didn't smile, but nevertheless, his blue-violet eyes softened. “Have you ever tried Dr. Eli Kennedy's Comfort Lozenges?”

It surprised her that she actually shivered. “No. It never occurred to me.”

“Apparently not. Was the tin empty when they found you?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps you tried them once before and didn't like them.”

“I don't know.”

“Why do you think you fainted last night?” he asked.

Comfort untwisted the handkerchief, smoothed it out on her lap, and began to fold it neatly in quarters. “I thought it was the warmth and the press of people and the fact that I stooped and stood so quickly when the gentleman dropped his glove.” She stopped, hearing what she said, and sighed inaudibly. “Dropped the tin, I mean. After what I've told you, I expect you put the same construction on what happened as my uncles. You think it was because I saw the tin, don't you?”

“Haven't you seen others like it before?”

“Yes. Exactly. That's what I told Newton and Tucker. I don't faint when I walk into Donahue's Apothecary and see those exact tins displayed behind his counter.”

“I'm sure you don't. That would have attracted some notice before now.” He picked up the pencil on the table again and started to tap it lightly. “But your hand had a fine tremor in it when you held it.”

“It did?”

He nodded. “I saw it. That's why you dropped it.” He could see that she'd been unaware of it. Her expression was genuinely nonplussed. “Besides the tin you were holding when they found you, have you ever held another like it?”

“No.”

“Ever purchased the same lozenges?”

“No. There are other kinds.”

“But Dr. Kennedy's are still popular and have a reputation for effectiveness. I would have recognized the tin if I'd given it more than a cursory glance.”

“Well, I've never used them,” she said stiffly.

“And before last night, apparently never held one that wasn't your own.”

Exasperated with his reasoning, she said, “Then you
do
think it prompted me to faint.”

“No. It prompted you to let it drop as if it were a hot coal, but that's not when you fainted.”