An Inconceivable Deception

by Sydney Jane Baily

  “Why?”

  She hesitated.

  “Why, Rose? Why did you come to the base and put yourself in such danger?”

  “To ask you to sign the divorce papers,” she said quietly.

  Her words were like a knife gutting a helpless fish. Even with Woodsom out of the way, she wanted to be free of him.

  He couldn’t blame her though. Look where knowing him had brought her. Still, it stung.

  “Anyway,” she said, “go on, what happened next?”

  “I waited for Liam to come out. Before he did, I was grabbed from behind, a sack crammed over my head. I was punched hard in the stomach so I couldn’t breathe and dumped where you found me.”

  “I was, too,” she said, “except I wasn’t punched or trussed up as you were.”

  “Dammit!” The idea of her being manhandled by some goon made his heart pound and his blood boil.

  Perhaps it was the look of shock on his face that caused Rose to add, “Sorry for interrupting again. Please continue.”

  He took a steadying breath. She was here with him. She was safe. Except for his being unable to keep his hands off of her. With that thought, he grabbed hold of both her hands, realizing they’d made love with her gloves on.

  “When I could breathe again,” Finn continued, “I was already bound and gagged and in the storage room in the pitch black. Then you arrived and, honestly, at first, I was unsure . . .”

  He didn’t finish his sentence. In a flash, however, he saw that she understood.

  “You were unsure if I was real, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he confessed. “Right up until you untied me.” Her arrival had been too similar to so many of his disappointing dreams.

  Rose offered him a smile in the waning light.

  “I suppose real peril is better than believing it’s a trick of your mind, yes?”

  She did understand, and it felt like a massive weight lifted off his chest.

  “Rose, you have no idea.”

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “As I said before, we wait. I know the yard fairly well, but whoever did this knows it better. We need darkness to get out of here.”

  Into the silence that followed came Rose’s next question. “Will you tell me about your injury?” She pulled one hand free of his and placed it upon the knee of his good leg.

  He rested his hand over hers, imprisoning it. “It’s not a very interesting tale.”

  “Was it the ship’s sinking that caused it?” she pressed.

  “No, it was my own stupidity. I let my mind wander while working.” Looking up into her dark blue eyes, his breath caught in his chest. How could he ever be worthy of this woman?

  She frowned at him, clearly not understanding his intense expression.

  “Tell me,” Rose persisted.

  “I was wielding an adz.”

  “I don’t know what that is.” She gave a rueful smile.

  “Why should you? It’s a wicked tool, used by brutish men.” He caressed the side of her face. “It’s like a large axe, only heavier, made out of forged steel. It has a curved chisel head,” he added, demonstrating the shape with his hands. “I was hewing timbers with it, dubbing, we say — that is, carving out the wood.”

  “Why am I already feeling a little queasy?” she asked, then added, “Go on.”

  “Unfortunately, I was not attending to the work at hand. My thoughts were like driftwood on the tide. I should have been concentrating. Instead, I was thinking of—” he broke off sharply. He considered telling her how her face and the memories of them together used to fill his waking moments. Would that be manipulative? He didn’t want to make her feel guilty, or to be an object of her pity. Yet he wanted her to know that he had not callously put her aside.

  “I was always thinking good thoughts of being with you,” he continued, and watched her nod solemnly, her large dark eyes never leaving his. “A moment’s carelessness was all it took. Splintered my shin bone. Damn painful, too.”

  He lifted his trouser leg and rolled down his stocking. Rose gasped and put a hand on her own stomach. He had no doubt it was churning for the scar was ugly and deep, a white line, running crookedly across his shin about four inches below his knee.

  “I was damn lucky it didn’t chop my leg in half, but it wasn’t a full blow. A knot on the timber deflected the blade — unfortunately, right into my shin bone. As I said, though, it was a glancing strike.”

  Rose reached her hand slowly out to touch the scar, but Finn released his pant leg, covering the old injury. He grabbed for her other hand, so he held them both in his again.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “There’s no pain anymore except on the dampest of evenings when it throbs a bit.”

  “Yet your limp,” she began.

  He shrugged. “I lost a wedge of bone, but I had a fine physician. I was in Newcastle at the time and was treated at the Infirmary. Couldn’t have asked for better.”

  He offered her a small smile. “As I said, I’m lucky not to have lost my leg — either to the adz or to amputation.”

  He could feel her tremble while she continued to stare at him in silence for a long time. Then he realized her eyes were glistening. Reaching up, he stroked her sweet cheek with his knuckles.

  “Really, love, it’s all right.”

  His words of comfort seemed to be her undoing. He watched tears fall from her eyes and course down her cheeks.

  In an instant, Finn pulled her to him, taking her into his arms, and then settling her on his lap.

  “Please, Rose. Don’t cry for something that’s over and done with.”

  ***

  Rose knew Finn was right, but couldn’t seem to stop herself.

  “I can’t help it,” she told him between sniffles.

  She was crying for him and his pain, as well as for their lost years together, every lost minute, every lost hour, taken from them by the ship’s sinking.

  “Hush,” he soothed. “It hurts me when you cry.”

  She sniffed and wiped her face on his shoulder. She couldn’t tell him her tears were for more reasons than she could list, including that he’d let her believe him dead.

  Regardless of his many reasons for staying away, a part of her hung onto the believe that if he had truly loved her, he would have come back sooner. Despite the intimacy they’d just shared, it was hard not to toss aside his excuses about being injured and then wanting to better himself.

  If he loved her the way she loved him. Had loved him?

  She pulled away until he released her, and she scrambled back to her own space.

  “Forgive me,” Rose said stiffly. “I’m behaving like a child. Of course, you’ve long since healed, and it’s all in the past.” The confusion clamoring in her brain, however, was nothing compared to the topsy-turvy feelings of her heart.

  Or maybe it was simply the peculiarity of how intensely her body had reacted to Finn, despite how her heart no longer yearned for him as it once had.

  “Nothing to forgive,” he muttered.

  “No,” she agreed, keeping her own counsel. Perhaps not. Not anymore. Holding on to her pain over his betrayal was pointless, and she would make an effort to root it out.

  “Do you know that William and I . . .? What I mean to say is that William has gone abroad, and we are no longer engaged.”

  Finn nodded, and she appreciated the fact that he didn’t gloat, nor did he offer condolences that they both knew would have been quite false.

  They sat in silence again for a few minutes. Rose wondered what he was thinking. For her part, she was still amazed that she was part of this dangerous adventure. What would Charlotte say about her abduction? She almost smiled at the idea of telling her how she untied Finn and, hopefully, how they escaped.

  “You’re practically grinning,” he accused. “Are you enjoying this?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “Certainly not, though it is rather exciting and will make a good story. It’s precisely
something my sister-in-law would get up to.”

  Finn shook his head, and she could barely see his face in the dusky light.

  “I don’t think we got ‘up to it’ so much as got dragged into it, though I think it’s time to get ourselves out of it.”

  She glanced around. “Shall we venture out? It sounds very quiet now.”

  He looked at her askance. “The walls supporting this building are three feet thick. We can’t hear footsteps outside.”

  However, at that instant, they both clearly heard a door slam back against its framing in the direction from which they had entered. Someone had pushed open the iron door with great force.

  Rose’s heart started pounding double time, precisely when she’d been lulled into nearly forgetting why they were sitting on the floor in the middle of the shipyard’s Ropewalk having a chat, as well as engaging in other marvelous activities.

  “Now what?” she whispered into his ear.

  “We wait,” he said tersely.

  In about a minute, the footsteps echoing through the building sounded nearly abreast of their hiding place, and Rose held her breath.

  “We’ll find them,” they heard a voice close by. “They haven’t left the yard. I’m sure of that.”

  Gilbert, she mouthed to Finn, who nodded in agreement.

  “And when we do?” came another voice, unfamiliar to her.

  “Accidents happen every day at the Ropewalk. Dangerous place to be,” the master builder concluded.

  Whoever was with him laughed.

  Gilbert didn’t. He sounded deadly serious. “As the authorities will see it, if that little miss wasn’t here illicitly meeting her beau, she would not have suffered the same fate as him.”

  “Which is?” asked the other man.

  “The slicer will swing down and take off both their cursed heads.”

  Rose nearly gasped aloud, managing to stifle it with her own trembling hand. She stared silently into Finn’s eyes.

  “Perhaps they were locked in an embrace,” Gilbert added, warming to his invented tale, “and didn’t notice the rope slicer had broken free of its mooring. They died painlessly.”

  “Will they?” the other man asked.

  “I quite doubt it,” the master builder said, and his accomplice laughed again. “No bullets though,” Gilbert warned. “This can’t have the look of anything but an accident. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The two men were still directly next to the rope coil behind which she and Finn hid, and Rose wished herself anywhere except there.

  In another moment, their footsteps had moved on. Unnecessarily, Finn put his finger to his lips to keep her from speaking, which she knew better than to do. Then he raised his head until he could see beyond the thick rope.

  When he lowered himself again, he put his lips to her ear. “They are heading to the north entrance, about two hundred yards away. Not far enough yet.”

  She closed her eyes. She most certainly didn’t want her head taken off.

  “In another minute,” he continued, his breath hot against the shell of her ear, “we’re going to go quietly back the way we came.”

  Rose opened her eyes and looked at him, shaking her head. She made a gun out of her right hand and pointed at it with her left.

  He leaned into her again. “You heard what they said. No guns.” Then he paused and rested his forehead against hers for a second. “On the other hand, if it seems we’re escaping, I suppose they’d have to shoot us and try weighting our bodies down in the harbor.”

  Rose shivered. Decapitation or death by drowning. She wanted to live. And to cook.

  Finn eyed her thoughtfully.

  “There are only two doors to the Ropewalk,” he said, “and a quarter mile between them. We’re already halfway there.” He stood up and offered her his hand. “Come on, love. Let’s get out of here.”

  They took off at a quick pace, despite his limp, moving as quietly as they could, though it was impossible to avoid the reverberation of their footsteps through the vast, silent building.

  In fact, she was certain she heard the men chasing after them.

  In a minute, they’d reached the south door and slipped outside. Finn took the time to close it and to lodge a piece of timber across the handle and through the latch, hopefully providing them enough time.

  With luck on their side and Finn’s knowledge of the yard, they made their way quickly toward the main gate. They passed the timber shed and were running across an open stretch of grass toward Second Avenue when Rose thought she heard the Ropewalk door forced open.

  Distracted, she stumbled momentarily but had righted herself with Finn’s hand on her arm when to her amazement, her brother appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He was flanked by policemen with their guns drawn.

  Chapter Thirty

  Later that evening, on the sofa in her own family’s sitting room, sherry in hand and her mother at her side, Rose could scarcely believe the afternoon she’d had. It had been hard to let Finn go, even after the police had apprehended Gilbert and his accomplice who’d run up behind them in the darkness, unaware of the force there to meet them.

  Even after Rose had been embraced by Charlotte who was waiting in the guard’s hut.

  Even after they’d gone to the station and told the police everything.

  Even after Reed had accompanied her into her home and practically bellowed so all the neighbors could hear, “What happened to you at the shipyard makes me so furious that I want to thrash Bennet and lock you in your room. You should not have been anywhere near the Ropewalk.”

  Even then, she felt as if things were dreadfully unfinished between her and Finn.

  It had not been easy to watch him walk off into the night. They had not even had a chance to touch hands or speak privately.

  She’d had no option but to let him disappear into the darkness. If she hadn’t gone to the shipyard, Finn might be dead already. That thought haunted her as she’d excused herself after dinner and readied for bed. Thankfully, she had gone and stuck her nose where some might say it didn’t belong. Now, Master Builder Gilbert was in jail, along with some ogre of a man Finn said used to work at Kelly’s yard.

  According to Reed, the Garrard’s owner would be taken into custody, as well as the yard overseer, Walsh, if they ever found him. They had all shared in the hefty insurance claim. They had all committed manslaughter, and more recently, the ogre had apparently committed outright murder of at least two people of whom they were aware, dumping the bodies into the harbor.

  In the quiet of her firelit room, Rose admitted to herself she had not thought of William when she had made love with Finn in the Ropewalk. Though she felt keenly William’s disappearance from her life, she realized she was not experiencing the same type of utter despair as she had after the supposed death of her husband.

  No, this time, she was not entirely destroyed. Not because she had loved William less than she had loved Finn, but because she was more of a complete person apart from her heart’s desire. As Fannie had said, she was still Rose Malloy, heartbroken or disappointed, engaged or not.

  Moreover, Rose had the knowledge of having survived such anguish before, and she knew she would survive it again. It had taken a few dark days of worrying her mother and the rest of her family and, of course, Claire, but Rose had decided she would not fall into the deep despondency that had taken her four years earlier. No, this time, she would rescue herself.

  ***

  “I’m none the worse for wear,” Rose told her mother for the umpteenth time the following morning. “It was truly not so terrible an experience.”

  Because she still had her head attached and her life intact. What more could she ask for?

  There was also the not-so-small matter that she had let her husband make love to her. She could speak to no one about this, not even Claire. She could only replay the momentous event and let a myriad of emotions roll over her like waves.

  All that day, in fact,
Rose couldn’t shake the feeling that Finn was near. She expected to see him at every turn, just as had happened at the start of their relationship four years earlier. Yet he was nowhere to be seen.

  The rest of the week, she went to cooking class and helped ready her mother for her upcoming marriage to Mr. Nickerson and subsequent move across the river. Lastly, Rose went about the unpleasant task of composing notes to those who had sent her and William early wedding presents.

  Still, no Finn.

  A few days later, Rose deposited Claire on her doorstep after they’d supped on broiled lobsters at Crawford House’s ladies lunch. They’d also spent a futile few hours hunting at Parker Brothers and at R. Hollings for a present to mark her mother’s special day.

  “We should go to Amano on Hamilton Place,” Claire suggested as they hugged goodbye. “We’ll find some perfectly exotic gift there from Bombay or Hong Kong.”

  After Rose agreed to another shopping expedition, she climbed back into her carriage. The sudden realization that there was a note on the seat cushion barely surprised her. At least it wasn’t attached to a brick. She glanced around but saw no one.

  Meet me at The Quincy, Rm 504, five o’clock tonight. Tell no one.

  Well, that was rather presumptuous of Finn, she thought, though she knew she would go — if only to remind him that he owed her brother a visit and a signature.

  ***

  Rose entered the seven-story hotel on Brattle Street, passing under its massive clock tower at 4:50 pm. It had been about five years since The Quincy House’s last renovation, and she still thought it very au courant.

  Making a mental note to suggest to Claire that they lunch there the following week, Rose crossed the lobby, hoping she looked like a lady who was merely going to her room and then perhaps for a meal at the hotel’s so-called New Café. Not like a woman about to meet her estranged husband.

  After telling the elevator operator — a woman about her own age in a smart uniform and cap — her desired floor number, Rose eschewed the small seat in favor of standing and waited. Inwardly, she felt about four years old, letting the “magic box,” as she thought of it, lift her through the hotel.