Thief of Hearts (2 page)

But it was so hard. Too hard. A man couldn't give up a lifetime of resentment just because it was time to die. And as for his father, he was convinced his resentment was deserved. With Nick it was different. With Nick…

There was a rattle at the lock and the iron door squealed open, revealing two guards in the threshold. A priest hovered behind them. Brodie glanced at Shooter. They scrambled to their feet at the same moment.

Shooter began to cry. One of the guards unshackled his wrist from the wall while the other took hold of his free arm. When his knees buckled, they had to drag him toward the door. Brodie pressed back against the cold stone, not wanting to watch, unable to look away. All at once Shooter broke free, but instead of running he dropped to his knees again, then to his side, and wrapped himself up in a fetal ball. The sounds coming out of his mouth were horrible. One of the guards kicked him, and after a few seconds the other joined in. The priest kept his eyes on his prayerbook.

Brodie hardly knew he was yelling Shooter's name until the condemned man looked up at him, his face twisted in agony. "What's your name?" Brodie shouted, his free hand stretched out toward him. "What's your real name? Your
real name
, man!"

The guards paused. Shooter clambered up on his elbow, licking blood from his lower lip and holding his middle. He stared at Brodie until the film of fear over his eyes lifted a little. He whispered. "Jonathan."

"Jonathan what?"

"Shoot. My name's Jonathan Shoot."

Brodie held his arm out farther. "Good-bye, Jonathan."

One of the guards muttered a warning, but neither tried to stop Shooter when he staggered to his knees, then his feet, and gave Brodie his hand. The clasp was wet and shaky, but it got firmer the longer it went on. "I'll see you in hell, I reckon," Shooter got out, his voice trembling but his chin jutting in a brave imitation of his old bantam rooster style.

Brodie squeezed his fingers tighter and tried to smile. "Aye, I reckon you will. God bless you, Jonathan."

Tears flooded Shooter's eyes again, but he blinked them away. "God bless
you
" But the guards were sick of it now and bundled their prisoner out of the cell with rough hands. "Give 'em hell, mate" was the last Brodie heard, the voice full of desperate courage, before the door clanged shut and a terrible silence muted the room.

Brodie stared at the empty wrist iron dangling from the stone wall in front of him and shuddered. He'd felt like hanging Shooter himself a few times in the week and a half they'd been locked up together. He'd have given all he had to have him back now.

A new despair descended, worse than anything he'd felt before. All his life he'd taken things as they came, with a sailor's prosaic conviction that death operated on its own schedule and that worrying about it wasted a man's time. But life had turned ugly on him. The old complaisance wasn't a comfort any longer. Someone had murdered Mary and the child she carried, not his, but what difference did that make? and he would be put to death for it the day after tomorrow. He had no philosophy, knew of no system that could make sense of this atrocity. The priest had told him it was God's will, a piety that had filled him with black, baffled rage. He felt it now, and brought his fist back to smash against the wall he was shackled to. Again, again. And now his boot, kicking the unyielding stone with vicious futility, over and over until the pain and his own weakness forced him to stop and he sank to his knees, panting.

His pale blue gaze went to the window again. The sky was almost black; he could hear thunder in the distance, moving closer. "Shooter's going out in style," he said out loud, then flinched. Jesus, was he going to start talking to himself? He settled back against the wall and closed his eyes. What if he did? To sink into babbling, slavering madness would be a mercy right now.

But no such luck. His mind was as clear as lake water. Already he was thinking again of his family. One of the deepest regrets of his life and he had many, was that he'd never looked up his father and told him what he thought of him. Had Nick found him yet, he wondered, and ingratiated himself to him? If so, they deserved each other.

But what did they think of him? Anguish lay behind that question; he could scarcely face it. His family didn't know him. If they thought of him at all, if they believed anything, they must believe that Mary Sloane was a dockside whore and that he had killed her.

Brodie put his head down and watched tears spatter on the floor between his shoes. Rain beat in through the open window, soaking the wet stone floor. Outside the door he could hear the guard coming, dispensing the prisoners' dinners. How many more meals would he get before they hanged him? He counted. Five. He'd eaten a lot of bad food in one ship's galley or another, but he'd never eaten anything as putrid as the slop they served in the Bristol gaol. His stomach rumbled. He was starving. He knew he would eat all five of his meals, and then he would die.

April 14, 1862 Liverpool

"Mrs. Balfour!"

Anna looked up, startled, and caught sight of her own smiling, wide-eyed gaze in the mirror. I look
pretty
, she thought wonderingly, before she called out in answer, "Yes, Mr. Balfour?"

"Are you ever coming out? The champagne's going flat. You've been in there for hours."

The smile widened. "Nicholas, it's been five minutes! Give me five more, and I'll be ready." She heard a mock groan, and giggled. In the mirror, she saw that she was blushing.

Giggling? Blushing? Could this flushed and foolishly grinning young woman really be Anna Jourdaine Balfour? She leaned closer and peered at herself, as if to make certain. In truth, she'd have given a great deal to know what her husband of six and a half hours saw to love in that face. Healthy skin, perhaps, with no bumps or blotches. Pretty hair, she hoped, a sort of reddish-blonde color. And once someone had told her her eyes were "interesting," whatever that meant; to her they just looked brown. But beyond these dubious assets she could see nothing special about herself, nothing at all. She sighed, giving up, and then smiled again. After all, what did it matter? To her it would always be a mystery, but the deliciously incontrovertible fact was that Nicholas must see something in her, because he'd married her!

She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself, savoring it. She was
married
. She, Anna Constance St. Claire Jourdaine, bookish and not beautiful, serious, some said humorless, but she disagreed with that and, level-headed to a fault, with really quite little to recommend her except the enormous fortune she would one day inherit, she was not after all, despite her own inner certainty and the countless predictions of friends and family to the contrary, going to die an old maid. But the most wondrous, the most miraculous part of this prodigious piece of good luck wasn't even the fact of her marriage, it was
who
she had married: the handsomest, smartest, most exciting man in the world, the man with whom she'd been in love since she was sixteen, the incomparably wonderful Nicholas Balfour!

And he loved her, too. He must, for this morning he'd told her he couldn't possibly wait three more weeks for the formal wedding her aunt had been planning for months, he had to marry her now,
today
. His impatience thrilled her, it was so uncharacteristic of him. Their elopement must be the most impulsive act of his life. It most certainly was of hers.

And now she had everything. In the space of six months, she'd gone from a lonely, semi-invalid spinster with unrealistic dreams of someday designing passenger ships, to a silly, laughing bride whose new husband not only allowed but actually encouraged her to participate in her family's shipbuilding business, which he would take over himself now that her father was so ill.

"Anna, I'm lighting the fire. Are you hurrying?"

"I am!" With a last awed look at herself, she turned away from the bureau and crossed to the cane chair on which Aiden O'Dunne had deposited her traveling bag. For the first time she noticed the white carnation stuck upright in the handle. How very sweet, and how like Aiden to put it there for her. When debating who should stand up for the groom, she and Nicholas had easily chosen Aiden, for one, because he was not only Jourdaine Shipbuilding's attorney but a dear family friend. For the second, Anna had suggested her cousin Stephen, for propriety's sake, to give their sudden elopement at least the
appearance
of having the family's blessing. But Nicholas had argued that Stephen would disapprove of their haste so thoroughly, he might give them away to Anna's aunt or even her father, ill as he was. So without much enthusiasm on her part, they'd asked Neil Vaughn instead, Nicholas's new friend. He was no friend of Anna's, but at least he'd been sober during the quick ceremony in Reverend Bury's best parlor this afternoon, and even at the gay, intimate dinner at Aiden's house afterward. At least she thought he'd been sober; with Neil, it was sometimes hard to tell.

For herself, she'd told only two people: her cousin Jenny and her friend Milly. Milly had wept with happiness and immediately offered to be matron of honor. But Jenny had pleaded a migraine and begged off from the ceremony. Now Anna wondered if the headache was real. With all her heart, she hoped it was. Until a year ago Jenny and Nicholas had kept company, in a casual way. But when Anna's brother had died, Nicholas had comforted her and they'd fallen in love, or rather, he'd fallen in love: Anna had loved him since the day they'd met, eight years ago in her father's shipyard. The idea that Jenny's heart might be broken made her ache with pity and distress, but truly,
truly
she didn't think it was so! Her beautiful cousin could have any man she wanted with the crook of one finger, and she'd entertained
dozens
of suitors during the months Nicholas and Anna had been engaged. Jenny was fond of Nicholas, that was all. She was sure of it.

"Anna Jourdaine Balfour?"

"I'm coming!"

Anna moved to the wide tester bed in the center of the room, bare floorboards creaking with each footfall, and tossed her nightgown across the worn coverlet. The lamplight was mercifully dim, obscuring the dust and cobwebs in every corner, the dinginess of the plaster walls and the uncurtained window. The tiny two-room cottage was an unlikely choice for their wedding night, perhaps, and she didn't doubt that Aunt Charlotte would be doubly scandalized when she learned of it. But Nicholas had wanted secrecy as well as privacy, so that no one could interfere with their honeymoon escape to Italy tomorrow morning. He'd borrowed the cottage, five miles east of the city and in the middle of nowhere, from a bachelor acquaintance. Anna's home was a Liverpool mansion, but to-night this room didn't seem a bit damp or gloomy or untidy. In fact, it was the loveliest room she'd ever seen.

But her fingers were not quite steady as she began to undo the hooks down the front of her corset. She muttered the vilest curse she knew "Blast!" No doubt it was a flaw in her character, but she hated being new at anything. And she hated this nervousness she could suddenly feel, like hungry mouths nibbling at her insides, turning her arms and legs watery with weakness. It was because she didn't
know
. If she
knew
what was going to happen, that is, something beyond the bare, unnerving fundamentals of the thing she and Nicholas were about to do, surely she would be reassured. Oh, why hadn't she asked Milly? Her friend would've explained everything, in the kindest possible way, provoking the least amount of embarrassment. But she'd been too timid. The thought of asking Aunt Charlotte had never entered her head. This `al ignorance was outrageous, she saw now, even if in it she was no different from any other unmarried lady of her class. But tonight it struck her as a conspiracy.