Off Kilter

by Laura Strickland

  She stirred in the bed slowly like an old woman and stretched her ears, listening to the house. Somewhere, steam servants must be stirring. They always did around Boyd, like wasps around a proverbial honey pot. But in this sumptuous place she could hear nothing. And she supposed her guard, Kilter, must be out there beyond her closed door, in this suite of rooms that had become her prison.

  Kilter. Her mind fastened on him as it might on a stray beam of light in darkness. When she first saw him at the airstrip, she’d been appalled by his appearance. He made a shocking enough sight with his half-ruined face and patchy head. But she wouldn’t call him ugly, no—she must reconsider that initial label. She who had looked into Boyd’s face recognized true ugliness.

  And Kilter’s eyes…how alive they looked in that terrible mask! How much they conveyed. She’d seen sympathy there, yesterday.

  But, she reminded herself, he could not become her ally. No one could help her, not unless he or she wished to invite ruin on a scale barely imagined.

  Summoning strength from deep inside, she pushed back the covers and climbed from the great maw of the bed. Thick carpeting met her bare feet. She tiptoed first to the window and pushed aside the flowered draperies.

  The house faced east, the river some blocks to its back, and ordinarily the morning sun must flood this room, but not today. Rain wept down on a scene as gray and bleak as Cat’s heart. Trees, newly leafed, bent before drops hard as stones, and the street shone wet.

  Even so, people moved about below. A milkman made his rounds, using an old-fashioned horse-drawn dray. The horse stood with its head bowed before the onslaught of wet, as much a slave as Cat.

  Her heart stirred with sympathy for the beast; how she wished she could free all the enslaved of the world, or at least of this city.

  Others hurried by—mostly men on their way to work, so it appeared. Steamcabs jostled past, emitting black trails of coal smoke, and one or two ragamuffins splashed through puddles, their feet bare as Cat’s own.

  Where was Boyd at this early hour—where the monster she feared? Still in his bed, curse him? Why could he not die in his sleep?

  Perhaps, rather than escape, she should plot for that—Boyd’s death. For if she managed it, if she found a way to stab or smother him in the dark, she would help so many besides herself.

  “In payment I will have a woman—one of your household.” She heard him say the words to her stepfather once again. “It is my customary price. I want the young girl.”

  Becky, barely thirteen years old. Cat remembered the sharp horror she’d felt, the rush of wild, protective determination. In the end, in the face of her mother’s tears and her stepfather’s spinelessness, she’d persuaded Boyd to take her instead.

  That didn’t answer the question: How many other times had Boyd done this, taken women in payment and then destroyed them? And would he follow through on the threat he had whispered to her when first she passed into his hands?

  What had happened to her courage, that which flared so bright when she made her choice for her little sister’s sake? Over the ensuing days, it seemed to have bled away in droplets and left her hollow. She needed to gather it up again, if only to find a way she might kill Boyd, or herself.

  An image of Kilter flashed through her mind again. He had the strength to accomplish either deed: wide shoulders, big hands, strength in his movements. She wondered where he was now—still out there beyond the closed door of this flower-choked room, no doubt, though she heard no sound from him.

  Perhaps he slept. Did such men, always on guard, sleep? If so, did he dream? Were his dreams half so terrible as hers?

  Curiosity, an emotion lately leached out of her, got her to the door. The sitting room lay in gloom; she could see no one. Was he in the narrow chamber designated as his own?

  She stepped out into the parlor, and beside the outer door a shadow stirred. Surely he had not been standing there all night? Perhaps, like a horse, he slept on his feet.

  “Miss Delaney, are you unwell?”

  Yes, she was unwell—sick to her very heart. But she didn’t say so, just stood there listening. What an attractive voice he had, deep and mellow and so very male. She wondered again what had happened to him, how he came to be, physically, nearly as ruined as she.

  Help me.

  She ached to speak the words but couldn’t. Instead she swayed on her feet and, as he had yesterday on the curb, he stepped forward quickly and grasped her elbow. As she had then, Cat felt the impact of his touch, the warm fingers on her skin, strong yet gentle.

  “Here, sit.” He guided her to the nearest chair and eased her down. She could barely see him in the dim room, but she could feel the concern emanating from him.

  “There, now,” he said softly, meaningless words yet comforting, for all that. “You are chilled to the bone. Wait there.”

  He let go of her arm, and Cat’s heart protested. Don’t leave me, she begged silently, yet he disappeared from her vision. In his absence, she shivered violently.

  But he soon returned with the duvet from the bed, like a bundle of roses gathered in his arms. He wrapped it around her as he might around a child, lifting her bare feet onto the seat of the chair and tucking the warmth close. Then he crouched beside the chair, his eyes level with hers.

  “Better?” he asked.

  Yes, it was. She turned her gaze on him, tried to see him among the shadows. Details blurred; she could see the fall of dark, reddish hair on the left side of his face and little else. Yet a calm, steady strength continued to flow from him.

  She reached out from the nest he had made for her till her fingers touched the flesh of his forearm. He started as if the intensity of the contact shocked him.

  “Miss Delaney,” he began.

  “Catherine,” she whispered. “Call me Cat.”

  He didn’t repeat the name. She supposed he would consider doing so unprofessional, but she didn’t care. She wanted him to see her as something more than what Boyd declared her to be.

  “Do you need a physician?”

  Swiftly she contemplated the question. Could a physician provide a way out? Perhaps some medicine, if prescribed, could be taken all in one dose and so end her life.

  But any physician sent for now would be selected by Boyd, in his pay and under his thumb.

  “No. Just stay with me for a moment, Mr. Kilter.” Her fingers clenched on his arm. She felt better, stronger with him near. “That’s an unusual name…Kilter.”

  “I’m an unusual fellow—as you can see.” How was it she could so easily sense his emotions, virtually hear what lay in his mind? The slight edge of irony in his voice said he mocked his appearance. She wondered what it must be like to walk through the world presenting such an aspect, and she shivered again.

  “Talk to me, please,” she beseeched him. She wanted his voice in her ears, to beat back the darkness.

  And, bless him, he stayed where he was with her hand on his arm. “The way the story goes, an ancestor of mine came to this country years ago and landed here when this city was little more than a rough place hewed out from the trees. He was running away, not to; he’d fled his home in Scotland under threat of deportation. Ironic, isn’t it? He avoided being sent away by sending himself away.”

  “We do as we must,” Cat said.

  “So we do. Anyway, running as he was, he dared not give anyone his true name. But he turned up in a kilt, you see, so they called him ‘the kilter’ and it stuck. He became what he appeared—as we so often do.”

  “And sometimes don’t. Sebastian Boyd looks like a human being.”

  “Ah.” He hesitated an instant. “Whereas I do not.”

  Her heart protested it; she could feel the humanness streaming from him, the very best of humanness, but she couldn’t argue against the reactions he must encounter every day.

  Instead she said, “So you—and all your kind—became the Kilters?”

  “There’s another theory. My enemies say the name describes the a
ction. They believe my mother died at my hands, that I ‘kilt her,’ in common speech.”

  “But you didn’t.” Cat couldn’t say why she felt so certain, save for what she sensed emanating from him, steady and sane.

  “I didn’t. But you have to admit it makes a good tale.” He drew a breath. “They also declare that from time to time I go ‘off kilter’—when I lose my temper, that would be.”

  “Do you often lose your temper?”

  “Only when I encounter injustice.”

  “Then you were clearly the wrong choice for this post.”

  “Perhaps I was.” He made as if to rise to his feet and step away. Cat’s fingers tightened on his arm, keeping him where he was.

  Persistently, she sought his eyes in the gloom. “Or maybe, Mr. Kilter, you are the right choice.” The only choice, a glimmer of light in her darkness.

  “Miss Delaney, I doubt that very much.”

  Chapter Five

  “I will not need your services this evening. I am holding a dinner party, and Miss Delaney will be in my company until late. You can take yourself off. Just be sure and return by morning.”

  Morning? James twitched at Boyd’s words and hoped his expression remained impassive. Dinner parties, as he well knew, did not as a rule last all night. What about the hours between? What would happen to Miss Delaney—Catherine—after the guests went home?

  Ah, but he had no say in that, much as his heart might wish for one. But since their exchange early this morning, he’d felt protective toward her, far too protective.

  He could only accept his orders. He stood in the entry hall where Boyd had delivered them and watched the tradesmen and women bustling in. One of them, obviously a seamstress, came leading two steamies laden with fabrics, ribbons, and other finery.

  He needed to go back to headquarters for a conversation with Tate. But he didn’t have to like abandoning Catherine to whatever fate Boyd had in mind.

  He nodded, threaded his way out through those arriving and into the rain. It still pissed down as it had most the night. He’d had little to do but listen to it while he stood at his post throughout the dark hours. After Miss Delaney stopped weeping, and he assumed she slept, he’d heard little else.

  Despite the rain it felt good to be out of that place. He paused on the sidewalk, looked up at the grand facade, and found Miss Delaney’s window. How must she feel knowing she couldn’t leave? For if he wanted to, he could quit.

  She could not.

  He wouldn’t quit, though, he silently promised himself and her. It would feel far too much akin to deserting her. He wasn’t quite sure what had taken place between them in the sitting room early this morning when she’d reached out and anchored herself to him—or him to her. Some intimacy beyond describing.

  James never shared intimacies with women, other than prostitutes. He’d grown into male adulthood looking like a monster, which repelled ladies rather than attracted them.

  Miss Delaney might well be a prostitute, he reminded himself. At least, she admitted to being bought—the very definition of prostitution. He would dearly love to know her story, for she bore no resemblance to any doxy he’d ever seen.

  She’ll be busy all the day and evening, he reminded himself now, with fittings and then a great, fancy dinner party.

  But what after? The devil whispered to him: What then?

  He cursed softly, tucked his head well down, and slogged off through the rain. He had his orders, damn it.

  Headquarters lay on Niagara Street in an old, crumbling building that had escaped the fires back in ’12. Tate always said the place might well benefit from burning, but Tate pumped a lot of his profits back into the community and had little to spare for beautification projects.

  Once the shipping offices of a lumber baron, the place now crouched in a moldering pile, all weathered gray wood and dull windows. It looked and felt better inside. Tate had his office on the ground floor along with supply and weapons rooms. Upstairs slept the men in his employ who had nowhere else to stay. Out back lay what Tate called “Kilter’s kennels.”

  The kennels had grown slowly, one abandoned dog and then two. Tate—his heart as big as his Irish fists—could not bring himself to deny them refuge. James built the wire enclosures with his own hands, bought the rugs, bowls, and feed out of his own pocket. Now there were ten cages and a larger enclosure where rough doctoring took place.

  At first James looked after his rescues alone. Gradually, others in Tate’s employ began to take part. Now someone was always on hand to let the animals out, and to feed or clean up after them.

  “I’m running a fecking dog nursery here,” Tate complained, but he hadn’t put his foot down about it, not once.

  James’ fellow members of security had even accompanied him on raids a few times, either to rescue animals in need or mete out retribution. Of course there were always those, like Drappot, who called him soft for what he did.

  “They’re hounds, Kilter—animals,” Drappot had jeered more than once. “Put here for mankind to use any way we will.”

  James didn’t believe that. No one had been put in the world to be ill-used. Thinking on it, he pictured Miss Delaney again, her eyes wide and filled with dread.

  And of all the men he didn’t want to meet, who should he encounter now on his way to the kennels?

  Drappot, built like a fireplug, was probably as wide as he stood tall, and all of it muscle. He had a sharp, ferrety face, dark eyes, and a shock of blond hair rumored to be bleached. Off the streets like most of Tate’s crew, he had a tendency to fight dirty, and Tate had spoken to him several times about throwing his weight around in bars when off duty. He had a mean streak, too, that loved to ridicule others. He particularly enjoyed mocking James.

  Someday he’ll push me too far, James had once warned Tate. And I’ll take him apart piece by piece. But it hadn’t happened yet.

  Now Drappot greeted him with a glower and the words, “Damn dog of yours barked half the night, Kilter. I thought about coming down and strangling it.”

  The dogs barked but rarely; many of them were too sick or had been cowed to the point where they didn’t dare make a sound. James didn’t have to ask which dog. He’d brought her in a week ago after catching her master beating her with a chain. James, in a fury—or off kilter, as Drappot would probably deem it—had used the chain on the man before carrying the dog home.

  His hearing in court was scheduled for next week.

  Now he eyed Drappot and thought, I’d like to see him try and strangle Greta. She had barely even let James near her, since she recovered.

  “Sorry about that,” he said with absolutely no regret. “Wouldn’t want you losing any sleep. God knows your disposition shouldn’t get any worse.”

  “You ever think that bitch’s master might have beat her for a reason?”

  “You ever think about jumping into the river with a sack of bricks tied to your feet?”

  “You mean like your ma should have done to you when you were born so ugly?”

  It was just a taunt, James reminded himself: Drappot knew very well James hadn’t been born like this.

  Drappot smirked. “That why you kilt her? Because she let you live?”

  “What’s going on here?”

  James knew that voice with its rich Irish brogue. He twitched in response but didn’t break eye contact with Drappot even when Tate strolled up to join them where they stood.

  Drappot answered the boss, “That new bitch of his yapped all night, Tate. Never tell me you didn’t hear it.”

  “A deaf man could have heard it,” Tate replied.

  James did look at him then. “Sorry, Tate. I’m sure she’ll calm down in a day or so.”

  “Calm down or get shot,” Drappot said.

  “Now, Samuel,” Tate soothed, “sure the beast is hurtin’, scared and alone. She’ll settle soon.”

  “Not soon enough, Tate. I don’t know why you tolerate it. Not fair to the rest of us.”

&nb
sp; “I’m sorry to hear you think so, Samuel, but you know if you’re not happy staying here you have only to go. Plenty of rooms in this city. I’m that sure you could find somewhere.”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” Drappot retorted, clearly annoyed, “and think about taking my services elsewhere also.”

  Tate crooned, “You just do that, if you feel you must. I’d be sorry to see you go—you’re a valuable member of staff—but you do what you will.” A glint came into Tate’s eye. “Just as I do.”

  Drappot snorted and stalked off.

  “‘Valuable member of staff’?” James echoed then.

  “So he is, think what you will. The man’s a badger on certain jobs and relentless on hunting people down.” Tate eyed James. “And the dog did bark most the night. I think one of the lads came down and tried to calm her—Relsky, probably.”

  It would be Relsky, James reflected; the big Russian had a soft heart.

  “She doesn’t like the dark,” James said helplessly. “And she’s little more than a pup.”

  “I know.” Tate’s hand came down on James’ shoulder. “Best perhaps to farm her out, if anyone will take her.”

  James always tried to place his dogs once they recovered. He didn’t think Greta ready for that but didn’t say so. Instead he asked his boss, “Come and see her with me now?”

  “All right,” Tate assented. “I have a few minutes. New client coming in, though, after.”

  The yard looked depressing in the driving rain. Six of James’ wire kennels were occupied, with Greta in the largest of them. A big dog with a grizzled brindle coat, she stood nearly chest high on James if she got up on her feet. She rarely did, but preferred to crouch and growl.

  The other dogs all ran to the doors of their enclosures when James and Tate approached, some wagging their tails, if they had them. One or two were ready to leave; James had an ongoing active search for likely homes.

  He now went about distributing a pat here, a gentle caress there, where welcome, along with soft words. As always, his heart filled in this company. These creatures didn’t care what he looked like. His mutilated face meant nothing to them.