Jo Goodman

by My Reckless Heart

  "Are you certain?"

  "No," she said honestly. "But it's what I'm going to do."

  Frigid air buffeted Jonna's cape and skirt about her legs. It wasn't the icy wind that caused her to shiver as she approached the taffrail. It was terror. White-capped swells of water were all she could make out for as far as she could see. When Huntress rolled, the rail seemed to dip so low she could imagine herself simply stepping over it and disappearing in a froth of churning water.

  "Head up," Decker said. "Eyes on the horizon."

  That meant she would have to open them again. For a moment it seemed the safest recourse had been to close them tight. Jonna looked out. She felt Decker's hands curl in the material of her cape. She was secure in the knowledge that he wasn't going to let her go.

  "Put your hands on the rail."

  Jonna steadied herself.

  "Breathe."

  A whisper of a smile crossed Jonna's features. It was good of him to remember what she had forgotten. She took a shaky breath and confronted the vastness of the ocean.

  "You're right to respect it," Decker said.

  Jonna laughed uneasily. "That's putting it kindly."

  "Not at all. There's not a man on board who doesn't share some of the same fear."

  She wondered if he included himself. Jonna started to glance over her shoulder, but Decker caught her head and turned it back to the horizon.

  "Including me," he said. "I'd be a fool to think I could tame this force. The best any of us can hope to do is outwit it."

  Jonna's stomach sank as Huntress's deck seemed to fall out from under her feet. She grasped the taffrail with fingers that turned white at the tips. The hood of her cape fell back. The wind flattened tendrils of glossy black hair against her temples.

  "Steady," Decker whispered near her ear. "I'm not going anywhere."

  Jonna held on to the rail, but it was not really her support. "I think I should go below," she said.

  "All right."

  She wished he would try to persuade her otherwise. A few more minutes like this were what she wanted. Her smile was a trifle sad, a trifle self-mocking.

  "What is it?" Decker asked.

  She shook her head at first, not certain she wanted to answer him. Then she said it anyway. "I'm reminded again that my life is a cliché," she said. "Here I am standing between the devil and the deep blue sea." Jonna didn't have to see his face to know that he was amused by her observation.

  "And if you were forced to choose?"

  Jonna felt his hands resting lightly on her waist and the warmth of him at her back. His chin nudged her hair. In front of her were the relentless north wind and an ocean of icy water. It should have been an easy choice. Jonna's hesitation spoke when she could not.

  "Never mind," Decker said. "It was wrong to ask."

  If it was possible the sun seemed to grow colder. Jonna missed Decker's support immediately as he stepped back to allow her room to move away from the rail. She hurried to the entrance to the hold and braced herself on the stairway by putting a hand on each wall. She was in the gangway below before she realized he was no longer following her. Glancing back, she saw him silhouetted in the entrance, his expression shadowed. Jonna did not think he was smiling. He had never looked more alone.

  * * *

  "Tell me about your parents," she said. They were lying side by side in the bunk, eyes on the ceiling, arms at attention beside them. The covers were virtually undisturbed. Jonna had hoped he would reach for her this night, at least to put an arm around her waist. He hadn't, and she was angry at herself for being disappointed. By her reckoning it had been ten days since he had been with her. The last kiss they had shared was the one he'd given her before taking her topside. She had been on the bridge every morning since then and on three evenings besides, but short of taking her arm in his, Decker had not touched her. He had never given the slightest indication that he wanted to do so.

  The devil was now as cold and remote as the deep blue sea.

  "I don't remember them very well," he said. "Most of what I know I've learned from Colin."

  "I was thinking of Marie Thibodeaux and Jimmy Grooms. Mercedes told me you consider them your parents."

  "In a way I do, it's true. What do you want to know?"

  His tone was not particularly inviting, but Jonna was not going to let that deter her. "Were they really actors?"

  "Always," he said. "Though not only on the stage. Every pinch we made was a little drama to Jimmy. He had a certain flair for it, and Mere liked that about him."

  "Mere," Jonna said softly. "That means mother, doesn't it?"

  "Yes. That's what I've always called her."

  Jonna turned carefully on her side. She slid one arm under her pillow to raise her head a notch and studied Decker's shaded profile. "Were there other children?"

  "No. Just me. Mere couldn't have babies. Before Jimmy found her she had been used pretty roughly."

  "She was a prostitute?"

  Decker smiled faintly, remembering how Marie would have answered. "She'd tell you that was putting too kind a light on what she was. 'Until Jimmy came into my life,' she'd say, 'I was a whore. But it took you, Pont Epine, to make me a saint.' "

  "And was she a saint?"

  "I thought so. She was smart and funny and cheerful. She had an almost endless well of patience, and she loved me and Jimmy to distraction."

  "Did she always call you by that name?"

  "Mostly. It was my professional name, she said. Part of the drama."

  "How were Jimmy and Marie caught?"

  Decker didn't answer immediately. Finally he told her what he had told no one else. "They weren't. Not really."

  "But—"

  "I was."

  That silenced Jonna for several minutes as she considered what it meant. "Mercedes didn't tell me," she said quietly. "I wouldn't have—"

  Decker interrupted her. "Mercedes doesn't know."

  "Oh."

  "Mercedes and I shared a cell, Jonna. Not every detail of our lives."

  "She was too refined to ask some direct questions, you mean."

  "Something like that," he said dryly.

  "I can be very forthright, you know, even tactless. I'm not good at diplomacy. I don't have the patience for it. And I'm almost insatiably curious."

  He had observed all that about her. Her guileless approach to most things still had the power to charm him. He wondered if tonight would be the night she would reach for him. Better the devil you know, he wanted to say. If she thought her life was a cliché, then she should grasp one that could change these intolerable circumstances. "Well?" he asked finally. "Have you really finished the inquisition?"

  Knowing that she was being challenged didn't make Jonna think better of responding to it. "How were you caught?"

  "I got careless," he said. "I let my mind wander while I was lifting a watch fob. I had done the very same maneuver twice already that day. I had done it hundreds of times since Jimmy first let me try it on my own on my tenth birthday. This time I forgot the cardinal rule."

  "The cardinal rule?"

  "Jimmy's rule, anyway. 'Every mark is different,' he'd tell me. 'Them that seem to have their mind engaged elsewhere, might be they're just thinkin' about the time.' He only meant that the mark's preoccupation might not be quite what it seemed. I reached for the fob, my little blade ready to cut it free from a certain dandy's breeches, at the same time the dandy decided to check the hour. He caught me by the wrist, and I sunk the blade into his palm. I thought it would make him let me go, but he held on tighter and started shouting for the constable."

  Jonna's eyes were wide now. She edged closer to Decker. "What happened then?"

  "Jimmy and Mere were watching. They had been working the crowd with me, and now they joined in the middle of it. Jimmy pulled me loose and tossed me to Mere. She spun me out and away, but somehow my blade caught her pocket. It ripped open and spilled her morning's work onto the street. There was a cameo, a pair of e
arrings, some silk ribbons. I tried to get back to her when she was grabbed, but the crowd closed in around her. I think Jimmy must have dove for her because I heard someone yell to hold him back. People were shouting and pushing, and I couldn't see over them anymore."

  "You were forgotten."

  "I'd like to think the dandy that I stuck remembered me."

  Jonna thought she saw a glimmer of a smile, but this one was bittersweet. "You got away," she said.

  Decker nodded. It was a moment before he spoke again, and this time his voice was husky. "Mere and Jimmy were taken to Newgate. I couldn't visit them for fear of being taken myself. In light of the fact that they had risked everything to save me, I would have been ungrateful to present myself at the gate." He paused. "At least that's what I told myself."

  "I'm sure you were right."

  "I don't know. If I had given myself up all three of us might have been transported."

  "Or you might have hanged with them."

  Decker shook his head. "They hanged because they wouldn't give me up. That dandy I stuck turned out to be the Duke of Westport, and that small cut I gave him almost took his life. The authorities were so certain he was going to die that they made Mere and Jimmy hang for it. The charges against them were theft, but no one will ever convince me it wasn't the duke's condition and the fact that they wouldn't lead anyone to me that sent them to Tyburn Tree." Decker drew in a breath and let it out slowly. "Westport began recovering three days later. I had a mind to run him to ground and stick him again, but there was really no sense in it. Mere and Jimmy were gone to me."

  "What did you do?"

  "What makes you think I did anything?"

  Jonna merely raised one eyebrow.

  "I waited three years and found a position in the duke's country home as a cook's helper. I made off with two place settings of silver, a chalice from the chapel, and a ruby necklace that had been in the family for three generations." For the first time Decker turned to look at Jonna.

  Her expression was difficult to read. "Isn't that more or less what you expected?"

  "It depends," she said. "Did you keep any of it?"

  "No."

  "Did you sell it?"

  "No."

  "You threw it away."

  "Tossed it in the river."

  Jonna's smile was slow to surface, but she didn't hide it. "Then it's exactly what I expected. Not more. Not less." Pleased that she was not always so predictable, her smile deepened. "Now I've surprised you. Did you think I would make a rush to judgment? I really can't say what I would have done in your shoes, but I like to think I would have done something." Under the covers Jonna's hand closed the distance between them and covered his wrist. "Have you ever wondered how your life would have been different if your own parents hadn't been murdered?"

  Decker didn't answer the question directly. "It sounds as though you've given it some thought."

  "I don't think you would have been raised to be a thief."

  He wouldn't be here now, he thought, with her, in the dark, her palm lying possessively across his wrist. What about his past could he regret when all the events conspired to bring him to Jonna? "I would be the dissolute middle son of a titled family, with a small estate of my own and a hunting lodge. I would dabble in politics and horse racing, and have a rake's career of breaking hearts."

  "You would not." Then Jonna considered his reckless smile. "Well, perhaps the last would be true." She found she didn't want to think about that. "Do you remember the circumstances of your parents' deaths?" she asked.

  "I take it you mean my real parents."

  "Yes. I know you were young."

  "I was four," he said. "Old enough."

  "You don't have to—"

  "It's all right," he told her. "I don't mind talking about it." He wondered if that were strictly true. The only person he had ever spoken to about it was Colin, and that was only to compare memories of what had happened. "For a long time I chose not to remember it at all. I was hardly aware that it was a choice, but when Mere and Jimmy were gone it seemed pointless to pretend any longer. I had another family somewhere; the earring was proof of it. It was my only real link with my brothers. It was odd, but I had more of a sense of being part of them than of my parents. The night they were killed I remember Colin thrusting Greydon in my arms and telling me to keep him quiet. I thought that somehow everything that was happening was my fault, that I hadn't done my part right and my parents had died because of it."

  Jonna's hand tightened over his wrist. "Oh, Decker."

  "I didn't see anything outside the carriage, not the highwaymen, not their horses, I heard my father offering what money he had. I heard my mother pleading with them not to hurt her children." He paused. "I heard the shots."

  Jonna edged closer. She laid her head on his shoulder. Her arm slid across his chest.

  "Colin ran after them, but there was nothing he could do. It was later that night we were taken to the workhouse. No one understood that the Earl of Rosefield was our grandfather, and he didn't know we were on our way to visit him. It was at Cunnington's that we were separated."

  "But the earring brought you back to Colin."

  "Eventually it did exactly that."

  "Do you ever think it will lead you and Colin to Greydon?"

  "I think it will lead Greydon to us."

  "How?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know."

  Jonna was quiet. She yawned once, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. "Do you really think you would have dabbled in politics?"

  Decker realized she had picked up threads of their earlier conversation. "And horse racing."

  She smiled sleepily. "I think you would have been good at both those things," she said more to herself than Decker. "I think you can do most anything." Her cheek nudged his shoulder as she fit herself more comfortably against him. "May I sleep here?" she asked.

  "You only had to ask."

  * * *

  Jonna stood at the rail as Huntress approached Boston Harbor. If there was even the slightest possibility that Jack Quincy was watching, Jonna wanted him to see her on the deck of the clipper. For years Jack had tried—and failed—to get Jonna on board one of the Remington ships. She knew he would appreciate her success now. Raising the spyglass, she eagerly scanned the wharf for a glimpse of Jack.

  "Have you seen the warehouse?"

  Jonna turned so suddenly that she almost knocked Decker in the head with the spyglass. He managed to duck under it as she pivoted in place.

  "Careful with that thing." He took it from her. "You should remove it from your eye before you start dancing around." Holding it up to his own eye, he adjusted the glass for a clear look at Jonna's rebuilt warehouse. "Jack and the men must have been very busy. It seems completed to me." He collapsed the spyglass and tucked it in his trousers. "As promised."

  "Did I even once entertain the notion that Jack wouldn't have it done?" she asked.

  "Not aloud," said Decker.

  Jonna glanced sideways at him, frowning. "What do you mean by that?"

  "I mean that you've obviously been preoccupied these last ten days." He recalled most of their conversation the last time they had talked at any length. He had been over it in his own mind half a dozen times, wondering what he had said that kept her at arm's length for the remainder of the voyage. When she had curled herself against him and asked if she could sleep in his arms, he had been hopeful. Each evening since then, when she made no other overtures, he had felt a little more of that hope slip away. Perhaps she did despise him every bit as much as she had first said.

  Jonna scanned the harbor again. "Preoccupied," she said quietly. It was true, but she hadn't thought he'd noticed. He always seemed busy himself with some aspect of running the ship. "You never said anything."

  "I asked you on several different occasions what you were thinking."

  She remembered that he had. And each time she had fixed a smile on her face and made up something to placate hi
m. Now she realized he hadn't once believed her. She wondered how much it mattered since she could never have shared the truth. "I suppose I've had too much practice at keeping my thoughts to myself," she said. "Did you think marriage would change that?"

  "No."

  "Do you think it should?"

  "I'd like to think you could tell me when something's troubling you. More importantly, tell me what's troubling you."

  Jonna turned her back on the harbor. All around her the crew was making ready for docking. Decker's second in command was issuing the orders, and no one was paying them the least attention. It was as good a time as any to tell him at least one of the things she had been thinking since they'd left London. "I'm not certain I want to announce our marriage, at least not right away."

  "Have you forgotten?" Decker asked. "We already announced it to the crew. How long do you suppose they'll keep it a secret?"

  "We can ask them not to say anything."

  Both of Decker's eyebrows rose. His expression was patently skeptical. "That will guarantee the news will be out to every matron and scandalmonger in half the usual time." Decker studied her face. There was a small vertical frown between her dark brows, and she was worrying her lower lip. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"

  Not sparing him a glance, afraid of what she would see, Jonna nodded.

  Although Decker was fairly certain of the answer, he asked the question anyway. "Is there someone specific you don't want to hear about our marriage?"

  Jonna didn't flinch from his tone, though it felt like ground glass against her skin. "Grant," she said. "I'd like to tell him myself."

  "So you do intend to tell him."

  "Of course. I just think he should hear it from me."

  "I have no problem with that, as long as I'm with you."

  "There's no need," she said.

  "There's every need." Decker saw she was about to make another protest. He cupped her chin and brought her face toward his. "If I even suspect you're going to visit Sheridan without me, I'll make certain every town crier has the news of our wedding." He let that sink in. "Now, if you don't want to hear the announcement from the street corners, you'll let me accompany you when you tell your fiancé about your husband."