by Laura Frantz
“Dinner is at seven,” the steward said with a little bow.
By the time she’d joined her father in the dining room, Molly had doused her with attar of roses and arranged her hair, then stayed behind to manage their trunks.
A waiter seated her at a linen-clad table overlooking steep river bluffs. A dozen or so tables surrounded them, all empty.
“Papa, are we the only ones aboard?”
“Aye, just us, the crew, and a great deal of cargo from New Orleans.”
Perched on the edge of her chair, she let the lonesome fact take hold, watching a spindly legged heron along the far bank.
“Blue becomes you, Wren.” He was looking at her as he’d not done in days, preoccupied as he’d been. “All grown up. More like your mother when I first met her.”
She glanced down at the ice-blue folds of her skirt, one of a dozen dresses hastily gotten from a Louisville seamstress the day before. “It’s mostly Molly’s doing. I don’t know that I’d ever get in or out of this without her.”
“You’ll likely have a lady’s maid at New Hope.”
“A maid?” The prospect was as unappealing as corsets and crinolines. “But what about Molly?”
She read the answer in his eyes before it reached his lips. “Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh—isn’t like Kentucky. We will do things differently there.”
She fell silent as a creamy soup was served alongside bread and small molds of butter in the shape of swans. Awe faded to confusion as she counted four spoons engraved with an elaborate B. She copied Papa as he chose one, her other hand clutching the napkin in her lap. Serviette, the waiter had called it.
Mindful of the staff watching, Wren followed Papa’s lead and bowed her head. But here, amid such stilted grandeur, his humble Gaelic prayer seemed out of place.
Papa leaned back in his chair, looking chagrined and no hungrier than she. “I ken this trip is something of a shock for you. The letter came—what, a week ago? I’m realizing you’ve been too sheltered. Too hemmed in. Your mother always said I should have taken you upriver years ago . . .”
She tensed, soup spoon suspended, moved by the sheen in his eyes. Any mention of Mama usually made him founder. “I’ll be fine, Papa. Don’t you worry about me.”
“It’s time you met your family . . . Past time.” Taking a letter from his pocket, he pushed it toward her. “This will help explain things.”
She set down her spoon and opened the letter. Grandmother Ballantyne’s writing hand was lovely if fragile, a spidery weave of words that all but begged Papa to come home.
You’re needed here, Ansel. We need to see Wren again. We are growing older and can no longer manage without you. I worry so about your father’s health. He stays strong but the years have taken a toll. Please come if you can. And if you are willing, stay . . .
Folding up the letter, she put it between them. Her eyes wandered to his sleeve and she felt a wrench. Though his mourning band was missing, he was still broken. Grieving. She needed that reminder. She needed to let go of her reluctance about this trip. She needed to help him to wholeness or forever feel like she’d helped him to an early grave.
“I remember once, when I was small, a dark-haired lady came to visit us.” Groping for a dusty memory, she tried to smile. “She wore a gown the blue of a robin’s egg and a string of pearls. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on save Mama.”
He gave a nod, eyes on the roses at the table’s center. “That would have been your aunt Ellie.”
“Ellie?”
“My sister Elinor.” He took a drink of water but made no move to eat. “She’s mistress of River Hill, not far from New Hope. At last count she and Judge Jack had eleven children, most of them sons.”
Her jaw went slack. Nearly a dozen to Papa’s one. And a girl at that. Another course was set before them, something swimming in pastry and cream. Wren willed herself to eat. “Was it just you and Ellie growing up?”
“There’s Andra and Peyton. But I was closest to Ellie.”
His terse words kindled her curiosity if not her appetite. She sampled the offering, pleasantly surprised. “I’m not sure what this is, but it just might keep body and soul together.”
He smiled and forked a bite. “Catfish, but not as you and Molly make it.”
She nodded absently. “Tell me about Aunt Andra.”
“Once, Andra was said to be the belle of Pittsburgh, but she spurned every suitor who came her way.” His words lacked the warmth of when he’d talked of Ellie. “She lives at New Hope with your grandfather and grandmother.”
Wren made note to be chary of her unknown aunt. “And Uncle Peyton?”
“I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about my older brother and his heir.”
The grim tenor of his tone couldn’t be ignored. Selkirk’s voice sprang to mind, challenging her ignorance.
Bare facts, Wren. You’d best be finding out.
She took a deep breath. “Papa, I’d rest easier if you told me more. Like why you left Pennsylvania in the first place.”
“I owe you an answer. But where to begin . . .” His face clouded as if she’d touched a nerve. “Years ago, when I was young as you, our family sheltered runaway slaves at New Hope and helped them to freedom. After a time we were suspect, and I became the target of bounty hunters and the like. Some of the slaves we helped were caught and sent south again. Things became more and more dangerous. I decided to go to England after an attempt was made on my life.”
Wren went cold, sifting through the carefully crafted words to the crux of the matter. “Someone meant you harm? Is that why you limp?” He’d always made light of such, telling her it was an accident.
He met her eyes, and she read the answer. “I thought, after being away in England, the danger had passed. But one night on a road outside Pittsburgh, shots were fired and I was injured. You and your mother were with me, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had to move you to safety. Kentucky seemed the best refuge.”
“You wanted to shelter us, protect us.” That she could understand. He’d always loved his family deeply.
His gaze held hers. “I was willing to let go of anything to ensure that you’d grow up beyond any danger.”
“Are you in any danger now—in Pennsylvania?” She lowered her voice, all too aware of the ship’s staff hovering. “Do the Ballantynes no longer help runaways to freedom?”
“Their involvement is different now. But since it doesn’t concern you and likely never will, there’s really no need for you to know more. I don’t want to fill your head with unnecessary fears.”
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair as Captain Dean reappeared, top hat tucked beneath one arm. “I trust supper is to your satisfaction?” At Papa’s praise he smiled his practiced smile and said, “If I might be so bold, perhaps you and your daughter would care to join us later in the grand salon. Some of my officers have a particular fondness for string instruments.”
“Of course,” Papa replied cordially.
Wren looked at him. “But we didn’t bring the Cremona violins—”
“The Cremonas are in my cabin.” There was an apology in his eyes. “I intended to tell you . . .”
She set down her fork, feeling he’d pulled the finely upholstered chair out from under her.
The captain turned back to her father. “I’ve heard about your violin hunting in Europe. I’m particularly interested in your Amati. The Nightingale, I believe it’s called.”
Papa smiled, seemingly blind to her dismay. “Yes, Rowena prefers it to all others. I’ll accompany her on a Bergonzi. I’ve brought them all.”
Robbed of speech, she looked to her lap. So the Italian Cremonas were on board, the cream of their collection, the fruit of countless hours and untold wrangling to acquire them. It could only mean one thing.
Papa had left Kentucky for good.
3
The Mississippi River will always have its own way.
MARK TWAIN
James Sackett stood in the wheelhouse of the Rowena, steering into the twilight, alert to the slightest alteration in the river’s mood or appearance. The sonorous music drifting up from the grand salon below made him slightly melancholy. It was his birthday. Only he didn’t know how old he was. Over thirty, he guessed. The sun lines framing his eyes bespoke a good many years but on a good day were chased away by a boyish smile. He supposed age didn’t really matter if the soul was eternal, as Silas Ballantyne claimed.
“Sackett, sir?”
At the sound of his name, he glanced down. A lean shadow strode across the texas deck and began a slow climb to the pilothouse. The lead engineer appeared in the doorway, expression smug. “The Molly Dent is chasing us. Feel like a bit of racing?”
“Not with the cargo I’m carrying.”
“The Kentucky Ballantynes, you mean? The ones making all that racket in the salon?”
James nearly smiled. “It’s a wee bit sweeter than your yammering.”
“Sweeter to look at, you mean.” With a wink, Perry fished a flask from his pocket and took a sip. “I’ve never heard such violin playing.”
“Nor have I.”
“Miss Ballantyne is the talk of the entire ship. Did you know Ansel had a daughter?”
James fixed his eye on the flag flying from the jack staff. “No.” He’d returned to Pittsburgh soon after Ansel’s marriage to begin his pilot’s apprenticeship and lost track of him. Ansel’s subsequent homecoming was hazy—and had likely been secretive given the danger.
“Makes me wonder what else he’s hiding.”
“I like surprises.”
Perry chuckled at the blatant falsehood. “She has the look of a wood nymph, if you ask me. All sun-browned and wild-eyed. Not like a Ballantyne.”
“She takes after her mother’s people—the Nancarrows in England.”
“Does she now? I suppose you’d know more about that than anyone.”
James gave a slight shrug, eyes on the far wooded bank. “That was a long time ago.”
Taking out a handkerchief, Perry buffed a brass lever. “I wonder what she thinks of her namesake? None finer than the Rowena . . . though that brag boat is sure to trump her if Bennett Ballantyne has his way.”
At the mention, James wanted to spit over the railing. The polished walnut wheel grew damp beneath his grip. “Brag boat?”
“Floating circus is more like it. Word along the levee is that Bennett is determined to have it—and you as pilot.”
Setting his jaw, James put an end to the conversation. “I’m going to call for the lead.”
At the boat’s deep, throaty whistle, the violin music stilled. By the time the second engineer called “Mark four,” or four fathoms, the salon had emptied and Captain Dean and guests had emerged onto the hurricane roof.
“No bottom!” came the welcome call, confirming the river beneath them was more than four and twenty feet deep. At this rate they’d see Pittsburgh by dawn.
James took his eyes off the water just as Miss Ballantyne emerged from the salon onto the polished promenade below. In the glimmer of moonrise, her blue dress was silvered. She’d removed the bonnet she’d worn when boarding, rewarding James with an unhindered look. Somehow she seemed out of place. A fragile wildflower in a stifling hothouse. The poignancy of her expression reached out to him like a woman drowning.
Home, she seemed to say. I want to go home.
He understood. It had been his heart’s cry over the years. Pittsburgh was home . . . yet it wasn’t. He knew what it was like being at sea in a situation, surrounded by strangers. He’d not forgotten. The wrench of it made him want to take her aside, into some quiet corner. Tell her who to cling to, who to avoid.
Her father might have wanted to protect her by keeping her secreted in the hills and hollows of Kentucky. But there’d be no protecting her now.
There were times Wren suspected Molly was deaf as well as mute. This was one of those times. Light from a paper lantern fell over her lithe figure like gold dust, reassuring Wren she was asleep—something of a miracle since the steamer shuddered from stem to stern in convulsive heaves. Chaos loomed beyond their cabin, but Wren didn’t care. She was desperate for air and wanted to be sick over the railing in the dark, not in the stateroom’s elegant marble sink.
The confections her grandmother had ordered, a great beribboned box of them, had kept her company since their concert for the officers in the ship’s salon. She and Molly had sampled far more of the French bonbons and ribbon candies than good sense allowed, the cloying taste of them now lingering on Wren’s tongue. If her stomach was at sea, she was more to blame than the rocking boat.
Cracking open the door, she found the grand salon empty, the entrance to the promenade deck ajar. She nearly forgot her queasiness as she stepped outside into a night so sharply beautiful the stars resembled shards of glass.
All around her, sweating deckhands who’d been busy working scattered like cat-stalked mice as the boat pulled back into the river. They’d just taken on wood again. This great beast of a steamer liked to be fed every thirty miles or so, Papa said.
She shut her eyes. Tried to savor the cool wind against her heated skin. A sudden noise made her press her back against a paneled wall. An officer took a stair to her left. The ship’s clerk? She wasn’t sure if he was more prince or pauper. Whoever he was, he couldn’t compete with the figure crowning the Rowena. Her gaze swept upward and held fast. She knew nothing about steamboats except they were noisy and proud and served too much supper. But she knew somehow that the man standing at the wheel high in the pilothouse could do something.
Or so she hoped.
James caught the movement of a passing shadow on the bare promenade deck below. Miss Ballantyne? She stood near the churning paddle wheel, looking like she wanted to jump in the frothing water. Still clad in the lovely gown, her gloveless hands clutched the railing, the light from the firepots calling out the misery in her expression. No father. No maid. Alarm bells tripped inside him.
He tore his gaze from her, hopeful the clerk would intervene. He couldn’t be distracted, especially heading upstream in the dark when vessels were at the most peril. Buchanan handled all passengers with a good deal of grace, reassuring them and returning them to their rooms. As James thought it, his practiced eye met the mast of a wrecked packet poking through the black water, starboard side. A slight adjustment of the wheel took them around it, but the sobering sight remained locked in place.
He fought the nudge to look below a second time, thinking it the end of the matter. And then with that sixth sense every good pilot had to have, he felt a presence, the hair on the back of his neck tingling.
Rowena Ballantyne stood in the pilothouse doorway. Silent. A bit white about the mouth. James went hot then cold. He tensed as she stepped inside, invading his world of glass and leather and brass. Her gaze swept the floor’s oilcloth and corner stove before resting on the costly inlaid wheel he stood beside. Wonder filled him. He was having a hard time coming to grips with this young woman he never knew existed.
“I’m James Sackett, lead pilot of the Ballantyne line.”
She gave a small nod. “My name’s Wren.”
Wren. How they’d wrested that from Rowena bemused him. There was a touching simplicity to her speech, so unlike the formalities he was used to. He’d expected a proud reference to being Silas Ballantyne’s granddaughter. Or even a prim Miss Ballantyne. “Is there anything I can do for you this evening?”
A slight pause. “I’m just feeling slightly . . .”
Homesick. Heartsick. “Seasick?” he said.
She came closer, nearly pushing him off the cliff of composure. “But how can that be? This is only a river.”
“The motion is the same. And it’s all water besides.”
“The steward gave me peppermint drops.” She looked down, eyeing a small tin in her palm. “If I was home I’d chew on gingerroot.”
“I could have some ginger bee
r brought to your stateroom if you’d rather.”
“No need.” She smiled at him, clearly relieved. “Up here the boat doesn’t seem to rock so.”
“You get used to the motion in time. A few hours’ rest should cure you.” A polite curtness had crept into his tone, a subtle cue she needed to go below.
But she was clearly having none of it.
“You’ve been on the river a long time, Papa said.” She was studying him as if he was the most interesting thing in the world, or till now her world had been very small and so everything was of interest. “You apprenticed with the Ballantynes.”
“We go back a long way, your father and I . . .” He left off. Now was hardly the time to talk ancient history. Not with fog creeping in. He adjusted the wheel, making a wide arc around a white snag in the midnight waters. His pulse had hardly settled when she came to stand beside him.
This close she was even tinier than he’d thought. She barely cleared his shoulder. Keeping his eyes on the water, he guessed at all the rest of her. Though he couldn’t see her eyes, he wagered they were like her mother’s, the color of sea foam, that mesmerizing green on the curl of a wave. He caught a hint of peppermint on her breath and lost himself in the gentle rhythm of her Southern speech.
“Do you pilot by the stars?”
“The stars, yes—and memory. A pilot has to know every bend and shoal in the river, be it daylight or dark.”
Reaching out an ungloved hand, she touched the great wheel, her soft shoulder brushing his arm. A start shot through him at her nearness—and her audacity. The wheel was almost a sacred thing, handled by a chosen few. His was likely the first in steamboat history to feel a woman’s hand. Hiding a wry smile, he forced his attention back where it belonged.
“Being up so high reminds me of home.” Her voice was thick with wistfulness. “There’s a mountain in back of our house with a view of the river. On summer mornings the sunrise is a sight to behold.”