The guests, too, looked glorious, as if they might be royalty, or as close to royalty as America’s elite society could get. The women were dressed to the teeth, and their diamonds, emeralds and rubies flashed and twinkled as brightly as the electrical lights themselves.
Her mother would be thrilled because everyone who wasn’t laid up with a legitimate illness or injury had accepted her invitation. It was because the fools wanted to meet Captain Malachai Quarles and William Frederick Tillinghurst. Loretta’s nerves crackled at the mere thought of the captain. She was sure it was aversion to him that had her so on edge. In her heart of hearts, she didn’t believe that, either.
She stood now with Dr. Jason Abernathy, whom her parents always invited to their parties because his parents were part of “Old San Francisco” society. In other words, they were socially prominent and rich. The fact that their son had, so to speak, let the side down, was a sad disappointment to everyone in the rarified atmosphere of San Francisco’s upper echelon, but it was one that could be overlooked on social occasions, especially since his Chinese wife had died. Were she still alive, matters might have been different.
Marjorie MacTavish stood nearby, still lovely but even more nervous than she’d been while in Loretta’s room. Jason Abernathy had that effect on her, probably because he teased her a lot. Loretta suspected they were both sweet on each other, but for some reason they both chose not to let the other in on the secret. She considered them both sillies.
“Loretta,” Marjorie pleaded, her voice quiet in an attempt to influence Loretta into lowering her own voice. She did this often. It never worked, but she continued to make the effort. “That isna true, and well you know it. And please try to keep your voice down. People are staring.”
“Let them stare,” Loretta declaimed, her bespectacled eyes daring anyone to dispute her words, even those not directly involved in the conversation.
“Oh, dear,” whispered Marjorie, despairing.
“Besides, it is true, Marjorie. Those men are sick. They aren’t depraved. Or,” she amended graciously, “if they are depraved, their depravity is a result of their poverty and not the other way around.”
Jason, grinning like a fiend, said, “I think there are points to be made on both sides, Loretta. You know as well as I do that some of the people who perpetrate crimes in our fair city aren’t doing so merely because they’re poor and need whatever it is they steal. Some of them are flat evil.”
Loretta hated it when her friends turned against her. Nevertheless, she had to concede that Jason was, in part, right. “Perhaps. But not very many of them come my way.” She sniffed. “In the soup kitchen, we see derelicts, but most of them are either driven low by poverty or drink, or were born with weak wits to begin with.”
“And you dinna consider drinking a fault?” Marjorie demanded.
“It’s a weakness,” Loretta conceded, “but so many of the men we see at the soup kitchen have been driven to drink out of sheer despair.”
“How can you possibly know that?” asked Jason, still grinning.
“I’ve seen the poverty in which they live,” Loretta said, shuddering slightly at the recollection of her tour of the slum areas of San Francisco. “It’s poverty and despair, not any particular birthplace in society, that dictates whether a person lives a wholesome life or turns to sin and degradation.”
“Codswallop. And how, pray tell, can you possibly know that?” As a rule, Marjorie remembered her position as Loretta’s secretary and didn’t speak back to her employer, but every once in a while she forgot herself.
Loretta valued those times and tried to advance them. Beaming at her secretary, she said, “Why, I’ll tell you. In fact, I’ll give you an example. Do you recall the other day when I came home late? It was dear Eunice’s ninth birthday, and I had to stay at the soup kitchen because there had been an incident there.”
This time it was Marjorie who sniffed. “An incident, you call it. I call it a crime.”
Loretta waved this away with an immaculately gloved hand. “Yes, well, the fact is that the man who was injured was feeble-witted.”
“His captain wasn’t,” Jason muttered. “He was sharp as a tack.”
“He was a beast,” Loretta corrected, the mention of Captain Quarles having brought to her mind a host of grievances she had against the captain. “But that’s not the point. The point is that when the injured man, Mr. Peavey was his name, ate luncheon with us earlier, he was raving about the Moors invading Spain.”
Marjorie’s eyes grew wide.
Jason, interested, said, “I didn’t know that.”
Loretta nodded firmly. “Yes, indeed. What’s more, he was referring to the historical event as if it were a current development instead of one that occurred a thousand years ago. I found out later from Captain Quarles that his confusion was probably due to the fact that Mr. Peavey had been involved in Captain Quarles’ treasure-recovery mission. That, and the fact that Mr. Peavey’s wits are weak to begin with.”
Captain Quarles’ name coming from her own lips made her frown. In her imagination, she’d been calling him Captain Quarrels, and she’d inadvertently emphasized the second syllable of the captain’s name. Peering at her friends, she deduced they hadn’t caught anything amiss in her pronunciation.
“I’m sure you’ve read about it,” she went on. She certainly had, although she hadn’t done so until after her meeting with the captain. Since that day, she’d been devouring every article she could find about the captain and his exploits.
“Of course I’ve read about him. But how does Mr. Peavey’s weak wits prove anything?” demanded Marjorie. “According to you, the poor man had been hit a cruel blow on the head. That might addle anyone’s wits.”
“Yes, but don’t you see, he’d been raving before the blow fell!” Loretta felt triumphant. “What’s more, he was deep into a conversation with another one of our guests, yet they were talking about totally different things. Only neither man recognized the fact. It was quite amusing, really,” she admitted.
“I doubt Peavey would think so,” a voice like waves crashing against a granite cliff came at her back.
Loretta jumped a foot and spun around. “You!” she cried, feeling herself flush.
“I,” said Malachai Quarles smugly, towering over her and overtly pleased at having startled her.
Before she could shout at him, Jason stole her thunder. Sticking out his right hand, he said, “A pleasure to see you again, Captain Quarles. How’s our patient doing?”
Taking Jason’s hand and shaking it heartily, Malachai said with a smile that robbed Loretta of her breath, “Peavey’s recovering very well, thank you, Dr. Abernathy. Your competent doctoring has saved him a lot of agony in years to come. If he hadn’t had that shoulder tended to, it would have bothered him forever.” With a squint at Loretta, he added, “However, I fear his wits are permanently addled. They were before he was coshed. I doubt they’ve improved any since.”
“That,” said Loretta, trying to ignore the captain’s brilliant white-toothed smile and so furious she could scarcely form coherent sentences, “just made my point! That poor, poor man!”
The captain’s right eyebrow lifted over a sardonic and wickedly gleaming dark eye. “Peavey would be the first to tell you he can’t think straight, Miss Linden. His prowess lies in deeds, not words. In spite of his mental failings, he’s a first-class seaman. That day he took a meal in your soup kitchen was the first time I’ve ever seen or even heard about Peavey accepting charity.” He placed a malevolent emphasis on the word charity. “I’m sure it was a momentary lapse brought about by hunger.”
“Why, you—”
Breaking into the spat rather loudly as the orchestra struck up a waltz, Jason held his hand out to Marjorie. “Will you waltz with me, Miss MacTavish?”
Shooting a worried glance at Loretta and the captain, and for perhaps the first time since she’d met Dr. Abernathy, Marjorie accepted an offer made by him with alacrity. “Aye. Thank you!”
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Loretta took umbrage in the fact that her secretary sounded relieved. She turned on Malachai like a termagant. “You’re doing that on purpose!”
“Doing what?” the captain asked, his voice as mild as milk.
Looking him up and down as if he were some odd and malignant life form, she waved her arms in the air in a very broad, unladylike gesture. “That! Lurking and looming! You lurked behind me and now you’re looming over me, trying to intimidate me!” Planting her fists on her hips, she snarled, “Well, it won’t work, curse you!”
“Good. Let’s dance.” And with that, Malachai grabbed Loretta around the waist and swept her off into the waltz.
She didn’t stand a chance of rebelling, since he was so much larger and heavier than she. Neither her size nor his affected her voice. “Let go of me this instant, you brute! How dare you—”
“Sweep you off your feet?” Malachai suggested. “Carry you away on the wings of music? Entice you out of your humdrum life?”
“No!” she shouted. Fortunately, only those couples dancing closest to them heard her. She was embarrassed when several shocked faces turned her way.
“Tut, tut,” said the captain. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself, my dear.”
“Curse you,” Loretta whispered fiercely. Having been recalled to her spectacles, she realized they’d slid down her nose. She wanted to push them back up, but the captain had usurped her hands and she couldn’t.
“My, my, such language from so exalted a lady.”
“I am not,” she muttered.
“You’re not a lady? I’m glad to hear it.”
She shot him a suspicious glance. ”Just what do you mean by that?”
The glance was a mistake, because Loretta got trapped by those gleaming dark eyes of his. She felt herself flush once more, only this time it was fueled by some kind of internal heat with which she was unfamiliar. It wasn’t rage, although she was certainly angry, and it wasn’t embarrassment, although she was terribly vexed.
Good heavens. Could this be lust?
Loretta, who espoused virtually every modern cause that came her way, had long been an advocate of free love, and not merely because the notion shocked her parents. She honestly believed that an uncommitted relationship was better than a bad marriage. In her slum work, she’d seen too many couples who believed they were shackled together for life even though they were miserable with each other. Of course, the fact that women were unable to secure employment that paid them well enough to support themselves and their children was the primary cause of that injustice.
But she was straying from the point. She advocated free love. The fact that she’d never had the opportunity to test her conviction as regarded a sexual relationship unencumbered by the bonds of matrimony bothered her some. She told herself that no man had yet come up to her exacting standards, although in her more honest moments, she didn’t believe it.
Honestly, Loretta feared the answer was more simple—and more dismaying—than that. She was a high-minded, intellectual, independent woman—and she wore eyeglasses—and men didn’t find her desirable.
“I don’t generally care for ladies,” the captain said in answer to her question. “I’m glad to discover you aren’t one.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” Loretta attempted a brief rebellion, but the captain held her fast. “Do you always make women dance against their wills?” She hoped his conscience would be pricked.
Either he didn’t possess a conscience, or it was an impenetrable object. “Only occasionally.”
He gave her a smile that would have sent her reeling if she hadn’t been held so tightly. He had such white teeth, and such a rich bronze complexion. It didn’t seem fair somehow that Captain Malachai Quarles should be so attractive, physically, when he was such a brute.
Unable to do anything more effective to demonstrate her displeasure, Loretta huffed indignantly. Subsiding into the waltz, since she had no other choice, she acknowledged to herself—she’d never say so to the captain—that her partner waltzed rather well for so large a man. Of course, he’d recently become the darling of society, so he’d presumably had lots of practice dancing with all the current debutantes. Not to mention their mothers, some of whom, Loretta was sure, had no doubt offered the captain a good deal more than a waltz or two. She realized she was grinding her teeth and stopped at once.
Because she thought it might annoy him, she said after a lengthy pause, “How do you like being the toast of the town, Captain Quarles? On our first meeting, I got the impression you didn’t enjoy publicity. I must have been wrong, since you’re in all the newspapers every day.” She attempted a smirk, but it didn’t work very well because Malachai swung her into a series of turns that robbed her of breath.
“It won’t last long,” he said blandly.
“Whoo!” Embarrassed by her loud exhalation, Loretta swallowed another breath and managed to pant, “What won’t last long?” She was sorry she’d done so as soon as the words were out because she didn’t want the arrogant so and so to think she cared.
“My fame.” He still spoke casually, as if fame meant nothing to him.
Loretta was loath to believe it. She wanted the captain to be guilty of every sin in the book, including vanity and greed. Fortunately, the music came to an end so they had to stop dancing. She was about to pass out from lack of breath, and she cursed both herself and Marjorie for forcing her into too-tight stays for her parents’ party. She was usually more sensible than this.
She and Malachai applauded politely, the captain as serene as a mirror-smooth ocean, Loretta puffing like a steam engine. She refused to look at him, but she felt his gaze upon her. She was about to turn and storm off when he said, “You might think about getting more exercise, Miss Linden. You’re out of breath, and we only danced one little waltz.”
Goaded beyond endurance, Loretta said through clenched teeth as she shoved her eyeglasses back into place, “I do not need more exercise! It’s my damned corset!”
As luck would have it, the applause stopped a split-second before the word damned popped out of Loretta’s mouth. She felt her cheeks flame up like a fiery sunrise as every person in the ballroom turned to stare at her. Damned, combined with the word corsets, and Loretta had stepped far beyond the bounds of polite conversation. Gasps and titters floated up from the assemblage of beautifully clad party guests.
Smiling down upon her as if she were an amusing child, Malachai said, “Did he really say such a thing in your presence, Miss Linden? Tsk, tsk. I’m very sorry. I’ll speak to him about using such shocking language in front of a lady.”
Loretta had never seen an entire herd of people lose interest in anything so fast. As suddenly as they’d begun staring at her, the company turned away and resumed talking about other things. And she had the captain to thank for saving her from social pariah-hood—or, at the very least, a lecture from her father. She’d sooner jump off a high cliff than be indebted to Malachai Quarles for anything at all.
“Curse you!” she whispered at Malachai, who was grinning down upon her like one of the devil’s operatives who had caught a human object in a lie and was now going to exact payment.
“What dreadful language. I wonder where you learned it.”
“Monster!” She whirled around but didn’t get far.
He took her arm. She tried to shake off his hand, but, as ever, couldn’t. “My goodness, Miss Linden, you’re certainly a fiery young lady. I mean, of course, young woman. You’ve proved yourself to be no lady.”
“Let me go,” she growled as he started off, taking her with him by the simple expedient of hanging onto her arm and walking away from where they’d been standing.
“Not yet.” He glanced down at her, his chiseled features wearing an expression of benign and only vague interest. “I think it would be best if you picked up your feet, Miss Linden. You’re likely scratching the polish on this lovely dance floor. I doubt that your father would approve.”
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Her heels screeched against the highly polished parquet flooring, and Loretta finally gave up and lifted her feet. She was in enough hot water with her parents; she didn’t need her father complaining to her about having to resurface the ballroom floor. “What do you know about my father?” she demanded in a hiss like a kettle boiling.
“Not a thing except that he disapproves of his hellion of a daughter.” Malachai sighed dramatically. “The trials parents endure for the sake of their children. Fortunately for him, your brother is more conformable than you. Or so I understand.”
It was true. Loretta had long since given up trying to raise her brother to a sense of his societal obligations. He was not merely rich as Midas, but stiff as a stick, and he believed anyone not wealthy was somehow undeserving. In other words, he was a prig, and Loretta didn’t like him. “Bother my brother! Let me go!”
“After I get you a glass of punch. Isn’t that what gentlemen are supposed to do for ladies with whom they’ve danced?”
“Gentlemen?” Loretta said with awful sarcasm.
“Men, then,” the captain amended genially. “You seem a trifle hot under the collar, however. I’m sure a glass of punch will cool you down.”
“Oh, Loretta, dear!”
The tittering voice of her mother slapped Loretta’s ears like a wet washrag. Loretta, finding herself next to the punch bowl and on her own once more, Malachai having released her arm, turned with resignation. Once again pushing her spectacles up her nose, as they’d slid a trifle as the captain had dragged her to the refreshment table, Loretta said, “Hello, Mother.” Loretta loved her mother dearly, but she wasn’t happy to see her. Her voice reflected it.
“I’m so glad to see the two of you together, dear,” Mrs. Linden said, bestowing a smile of affection first upon her daughter and then upon the captain. Loretta’s teeth started grinding again.
The captain executed a perfect bow. Loretta glowered at him. “May I get you a glass of punch, Mrs. Linden? I was just pouring one for your daughter.” He gave Loretta the same perfect bow, marred only by the sardonic grin on his face.
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