Kissing Comfort (38 page)

“Perhaps tomorrow.”

“You're not suggesting that I go back?”

“No. I believe he'll come here when Farwell tells him you stopped by. If he were in his apartments, Mother, he would have come down to see you. You can't seriously believe otherwise. He must have been out, probably with investors. He's always been guarded in business.”

Bram saw that she was calmed, at least for now. It was interesting to him that she would leave his room in a less agitated state than she'd entered, while he would lie there as inert as a sponge, soaking up every one of her anxieties and making each his own.

 

 

Bode and Comfort ate dinner with Mr. Douglas in his cabin. Comfort was aware that the
Demeter Queen
's cook wanted to impress her, and she was flattered and grateful for his effort. The halibut was baked to perfect flakiness in a tomato sauce with onion, cloves, and sugar. It was served with small white potatoes and green beans with almond slivers. Mr. Douglas opened a bottle of white wine to drink with their meal. Afterward, there was angel cake and strawberries.

“May I meet Mr. Henry?” she asked when she'd finished forking the last crumb of angel cake into her mouth. “He wasn't on deck this afternoon. I was in awe of his biscuits then. Now I am seriously thinking of asking him if he'd take a position in a landlubber's kitchen.”

Mr. Douglas chuckled. “If I weren't certain that he'd turn you down, I'd lock him in the galley, but give me a moment, and I'll arrange that introduction.” He excused himself from the table and stepped into the passageway.

Bode took advantage of his absence to reach across the table and take Comfort's hand. He brushed his thumb over her knuckles. “You should know now that there won't be anything like this on the
Artemis Queen
.”

“There won't? But she's your flagship.”

“She's also nearing the end of a journey already delayed. Her stores will be low, and Mr. Gilroy, her chief cook, will have used most everything in his galley by the time we board her. There won't be tomatoes, potatoes, or green beans. We'll have what's been smoked and pickled and fermented. And you shouldn't judge Mr. Gilroy's culinary skills by what appears on your table once we're there.”

“I don't suppose we could take some provisions from this ship?” she asked, teasing more than hopeful.

“We could, but we won't.”

It was the answer she expected to hear. During their turn on deck, she'd witnessed his attention to every detail of the ship and how the crew worked her. She imagined that he had the paddle steamer laid out in his mind, and as they walked, he was making a small change here, a larger one there. She saw the
Demeter Queen
through his eyes and began to understand what drove him to seize on her strength and make something stronger, to capture her speed, and to build something that would outrun the wind. She didn't mind that her presence at his side was incidental; she appreciated his concentration to a single undertaking. There would come a time when they were alone again, and she would be the undertaking that focused all of his concentration. The thought of it made her shiver then and now.

Comfort's gaze dropped from Bode's sly, knowing one to where his thumb passed back and forth across her hand. The gesture was more intimate than she could have imagined. She regretted that Mr. Douglas would return at any moment.

Bode removed his hand just before the shipmaster stepped into the cabin. Comfort slid hers to her lap and positioned it in the folds of her gown as carefully as a jeweler setting a ruby in a velvet bed.

The man who followed Mr. Douglas into the room filled the doorway first. He had to duck his head to enter, and Comfort supposed that had he been anything but clean-shaven, he would have had to dip his head even farther. This giant's skin fairly radiated a blue-black sheen that, by contrast, made the whites of his eyes glow as though lighted from within. For all the strength inherent in his large hands and muscular forearms, he was clearly nervous about making her acquaintance. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and couldn't quite meet her eye.

Comfort knew she was at her best when she could make other people feel at ease. It was when she became the very essence of her name. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Henry. I am grateful you would remove yourself from your duties to allow me to thank you.”

His head bobbed once. “Welcome, Missa DeLong. You very welcome.”

Comfort was so intrigued by the soft lilt of an accent that what he said to her didn't immediately register. It was catching the quick exchange of glances between Mr. Douglas and Bode that directed her attention to what was said. “Miss Kennedy,” she corrected him.

“Ah, yes. Miss Kennedy,” he said, carefully pronouncing her name. “Not Missa DeLong. Forgot.”

She smiled, but she felt herself flushing. She didn't dare look away from him. “It's all right,” she said graciously. “May I ask where you're from, Mr. Henry? Your accent . . . it's quite musical, but I can't make it out.”

“Tobago.”

“Oh. You are the first person I've ever met from there. And you're here now. I'm sure there's a story.”

“Plenty story, Missa DeLong.” He heard what he said this time and quickly corrected himself. “Sorry. Miss Kennedy. Story is Mista DeLong make me free. Now I cook for him. Now he give me money.” He smiled broadly, without guile. “Maybe he give me more because I please his missa so well.”

Chuckling, Bode waved him off. “Go on. I don't know why I thought you wouldn't seize the opportunity to ask for money. You, Mr. Henry, are as dependable as the tides.”

Mr. Henry smiled broadly, revealing a gold tooth where his right canine used to be. He nodded at everyone just once before he backed out of the room and closed the door.

Mr. Douglas held up a second bottle of wine and cocked an eyebrow at Bode. When Bode nodded, he opened it and poured some in each glass.

Comfort raised her glass but didn't drink. She rolled the stem between her fingers and watched Bode across the table. “What did Mr. Henry mean when he said you made him free?”

“I tell him all the time that God made him free, but he's as persistent along that course as he is in asking for more money.”

Comfort had no intention of accepting that answer, but before she could prompt Bode, Mr. Douglas helped her out.

“Mr. Henry was a house slave on a Georgia plantation. The best I've been able to get from him is that he was tricked into leaving Tobago for work and good wages in Philadelphia. Or New York. He's never been clear about where he was supposed to have been going. The men who misled him and a good number of his friends posed as missionaries. They all ended up somewhere in Georgia, probably first coming ashore near Savannah. Mr. DeLong encountered our Mr. Henry during Sherman's march.”

Comfort had politely inclined her head to Mr. Douglas while he spoke, but now her attention returned to Bode. She wasn't used to seeing him looking awkward in his own skin. He was self-conscious and mildly embarrassed, and he clearly wished himself elsewhere. She was charmed.

“What's the rest, Bode?”

He took a swallow of wine. “We made overnight headquarters in a plantation house that the owners fled in advance of our arrival. The slaves were still there. There was no place for them to go. Some were glad to see us. Most were afraid. The ones that didn't hide helped us. Mr. Henry prepared dinner for the general and his officers that evening, and it fell to me to send the general's compliments to the cook.”

He shrugged lightly, a mostly helpless gesture, and shook his head. “I still don't know what I said to encourage it, but Mr. Henry attached himself to me. When we left the next morning, he came along. The other officers thought it was amusing until I tried to persuade Mr. Henry to stop following, then they were nearly apoplectic that I was going to send away the best cook they'd ever had. Someone, not me, got him to enlist. He was an Army cook until Lee's surrender, and when I mustered out, he followed me home. I'm not sure he ever had an official discharge, but then not many did at the end.”

Comfort sipped her wine and regarded him past the crystal curve of her glass. There was still something left unexplained. Bode said that Mr. Henry followed him home, but home, for however briefly, would have been the mansion on Nob Hill. “How is it that he's working on the
Demeter Queen
and not in your mother's kitchen?”

Bode's smile was tight and wry. “It seems Alexandra's abolitionist views hinge on theory, not practice. Not so dissimilar from Leland Stanford's hypocrisy of publicly denouncing the Chinese immigration when he was governor while employing them by the hundreds to build the Central Pacific. He paid them wages that made them virtual slaves. My mother and Stanford are merely different sides of the same coin.”

Comfort wished Mr. Douglas were not in the room. She would have asked Bode if his mother's intolerance for Mr. Henry contributed to Bode's reasons for not living on Nob Hill.

Nathan Douglas stroked his beard. “Mr. Henry was allowed to choose the ship he wanted to work on. One of my men had just finished polishing the figurehead. Mr. Henry said she brought his mother to mind. That's how we got him.”

Bode and Mr. Douglas finished the second bottle of wine while Comfort allowed her glass to be refilled just once. She didn't drink most of it, but she wasn't ready to excuse herself from the conversation. Even when it turned to maritime matters, she hardly cared that she didn't understand most of it. She was reminded of all the times she sat between Newton and Tucker while they discussed capital, trusts, debt, interest, and amortization. As a child, that conversation quite literally had taken place over her head. When she listened to Bode and Mr. Douglas discussing propeller pitch, bilge pumps, and trailing astern a taffrail log, it was still true, at least in the figurative sense.

It was only when she saw Mr. Douglas eye his pipe and tobacco tin with something akin to longing that she pleaded exhaustion and asked to be excused. Bode would have accompanied her back to the stateroom, but she insisted that he stay. It wasn't entirely selfless on her part. She wanted to be by herself while she prepared for bed, and she needed time alone to weigh the benefit to cost ratio of him joining her.

 

 

Comfort was sitting much as she had been earlier when Bode came upon her, wedged in one corner of the window bench with her legs extended in front of her. This time, however, she wore a white cotton shift and sat in a pool of light from an oil lamp while she read. The book lay open in her lap, and she appeared to be making good progress, because it looked as if a quarter of the pages had already been turned.

She looked up when he didn't move away from the door once he was inside. He was leaning against it, his hands behind him, not bothered in the least that she caught him out staring. Resisting the urge to fiddle with her hair, she wrinkled her nose at him instead.

“You brought the captain's pipe smoke with you,” she said.

“I'm afraid I did. There's no way to avoid it short of leaving, and I don't mind it. My father smoked fat Cuban cigars. Those, I minded.”

“It's all right. It's rather pleasant, a little sweet. I couldn't have stayed in the room, though. I'm still finding my sea legs. I hope my departure was not too abrupt and obvious.”

“No. Not at all.” He pushed away from the door, removed his jacket, and slung it over a chair. “You haven't mentioned sea legs before. Are you feeling well? Some people take days to accustom themselves to the rolling.”

“It comes and goes. Mostly it passes quickly.”

“If you can read, then it passes very quickly. There are passengers who would throw themselves against one of the rails just thinking about it.”

“Mm.” She was on the point of raising a question, but he started for the washroom and she let it go. He seemed remarkably steady on his feet, so she supposed there hadn't been a third bottle of wine uncorked in her absence. That was good; she wanted him to have a clear head.

When Bode emerged, his hair was damp and spiky. He'd removed his vest, collar, and bib. The shirt was open at the throat, and a towel lay around his neck. He held an end in each hand, tugging first one way and then the other.

“I thought you might be asleep by the time I returned.” He'd been hoping, actually. He was careful not to glance in the direction of the bed. “I suppose we should talk.”

“It's why I'm still awake.”

“Would you like to go first or shall I?”

“I will. I doubt that anything I'm going to say will surprise you.” She closed the book over her finger. “I don't think we should share the stateroom any longer. I'm willing to move to another cabin tonight if you like. I'll pack my trunk again in the morning. It will be no trouble.”

“You can have the bed,” Bode said. “I'll sleep on the floor.”

She hadn't expected him to acquiesce quite so easily, and she recognized her own contrariness when she was hurt by it. Shaking her head, she pressed on. “No, that's not good enough. You probably think I don't trust you, but I don't trust myself. I'm not confident that you're far enough away if you're still in this room. One of us needs to be somewhere else, and since I've already proven that I can attach myself to you like a Barbary Coast whore to a sailor with five dollars in his pocket, I think it should be me.”

It was rare, but not unheard of, for Bode to lose his footing. There had been the stumble during the fight with the Rangers, and later that same evening Comfort had tangled his feet during their waltz. Those recent examples came to mind quickly. There were other occasions, he was certain of it, but none that he could recall when he had been away from shore. He was reliably sure-footed here, always oriented to the wind, his position, and the motion of the ship.