Won Jin, who looked about two hundred years old with his long white beard and shriveled skin, was a rare spice trader out of the Joseon Peninsula and something of an expert at evading tax collectors in both hemispheres. He’d given her a lot of interesting advice on “expanding” her business, most of which she was too cautious to take.
The two men were playing poker and sipping tea.
Well, Won Jin was sipping tea. Hex suspected Thaddeus had something a bit stronger in the dainty little porcelain cup clutched in his work-roughed hand.
“A’right there, sweetheart?” Thaddeus called out with a jaunty wave. He was the only one she allowed to call her by such a ludicrous nickname. She wasn’t sure why.
“Ah, Miss Hex! Greetings,” Won Jin said, standing up and giving her a proper courtly bow. “We have been concerned.”
No doubt they’d gleaned some of what had happened to her from gossip around the docks. She was glad they’d both been out of the city when she’d been abducted, however, for they would have tried to intervene—unlike the rest of the self-interested, unprincipled denizens of the port—and Harlan Janus’s men would have made short work of them.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” she said as the rest of her cargo started to descend the rope ladder.
Rowan landed on the dock first and gazed around his surroundings, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. A jumble of emotions passed over his too-open countenance: awe, disgust—he must have had a whiff of the sewage, then—and panic. He nearly jumped a mile in the air at the sound of a distant gunshot, skittish as a colt.
Something tightened in her chest at his obvious disorientation, but she ruthlessly pushed the feeling aside. Her life had no room for sentiment, especially toward him.
Omar flew past Rowan after he’d alighted, careful not to touch him. The man was still terrified of Rowan—so was she, to be honest—and he seemed to want to put as much distance between them as he could. He didn’t even thank her or Rowan for saving his life, the wretch, before he was melting into the dockside throng. She didn’t even try to stop him, though, glad to see the back of the little con artist.
Her father managed to pant his way down the ladder next, protesting his aching bones the entire time, but she made no move to help him. To his credit, neither did Rowan. Hubert dropped heavily to the ground and stumbled a little before righting himself with a groan.
He finally grumbled out a rather half-hearted goodbye to her after straightening his straining waistcoat, to which she replied with narrowed eyes and a frown that made him go pale. He then attempted to slip away in Omar’s wake, aching bones suddenly, suspiciously forgotten.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she muttered, yanking him by the collar until he nearly fell backward. The son of a bitch wasn’t going anywhere. She dragged him in the direction of Thaddeus and Won Jin, ignoring his sputtered protests.
Thaddeus pulled his pouch of Virginia tobacco from his coat and pinched off a sizeable wad, his sharp gaze surveying both her blustering father and the tall stranger who trailed in their wake. Thaddeus’s eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in suspicion on Rowan.
“I’m in need of a favor,” she said, refusing to release Hubert’s collar despite his struggling.
Thaddeus stuck the wad of tobacco into his bottom lip and eyed her coolly, his whole demeanor suddenly shifting from his usual amiability. His reaction was off-putting, but she tried not to take it personally. She doubted anyone who did business on the docks enjoyed granting favors, even Thaddeus.
“When I say favor, I mean that I have a job for you,” she amended. “But I need it done. Today. And I will pay you well.” She wasn’t exactly flush in the pockets, but she’d be tempted to sell her soul if it meant being rid of her father before sundown.
“What’s the job then, sweetheart?” he asked. He sent a wary look in Rowan’s direction, which she didn’t understand. Rowan looked about as unthreatening as anyone could at the moment, barefoot and practically gawking at his surroundings, clad in those ridiculous, biblical-looking white robes he’d been given in the desert. Thankfully, Simon had loaned him a pair of trousers to wear underneath the robes so that he was not going around half-naked anymore.
Not that she’d been looking.
Much.
“This here is my father,” she said, yanking on Hubert’s collar and diverting Thaddeus’s attention back to her. “And I need you to take him somewhere far, far away.”
“Now, hold on, my dear…” Hubert began. One glare from her, however, and his mouth clamped shut.
“America, if possible. Or Timbuktu,” she gritted out.
Thaddeus considered her request. “The old girl ain’t goin’ ta make no Atlantic trip at the moment. Give me a few weeks…”
“No. He must leave. Today.” She had a sudden, wicked thought. She smirked at her father. “How about Scotland?”
“What?” Hubert cried, finally managing to pull himself out her grip by the force of his outrage alone.
“Oh, she’ll make it that far, I expect,” Thaddeus said with a sly grin.
“I’m not going back there,” Hubert said. “I’m a wanted man!”
“You’re a wanted man everywhere,” she said with a roll of her eyes. She turned back to Thaddeus. “Edinburgh. Leith. 201 Easter Road, if you can.”
Hubert let out a disgusted sigh. “You’re a cruel, cruel woman, Hecuba Bartholomew.”
“That’s one very specific destination,” Thaddeus said after aiming a load of brownish spittle at Hubert’s boots. Hubert jumped higher than she’d seen him jump in years and glared at the privateer.
“It’s his mother’s,” she said dryly. “I’ll let her sort him out. Lord knows I wash my hands of him.”
Hubert looked affronted. “Well, I say! Ungrateful girl! You can’t order me to do anything, least of all leave Cairo,” he said in a tone that reminded her of a petulant eight-year-old.
She’d had enough. He’d only ever left her feeling heart sore and helpless. He’d ruined her life—risked her life and Helen’s time and again—and she refused to let him do so anymore.
“You will get in Thaddeus’s dirigible,” she said in a low, dangerous tone, “and go where he takes you. You’ll stay away from Helen and me. Far, far away.”
He sniffed indignantly. “Helen is my daughter. You’ve no right to keep me away from her.”
She was his daughter too—a fact he only seemed to want to acknowledge when it suited him. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you, how it’s going to be. Helen deserves better than your so-called love, and I don’t give a damn whether it’s my right or not. You’ll stay away from her. Otherwise…”
“What? What do you think you can do to make me?” Hubert sneered, a hard glint in his eye, his true nature surfacing at last.
“Otherwise I’ll deliver you to the authorities myself. Edinburgh, London, Vienna, Baltimore, take your pick. All of them would be glad to see you hang.”
He looked a bit taken aback by the vitriol in her voice. “You’d hang with me,” he finally managed.
“Perhaps. If I am very unlucky. But it would be worth it.”
His eyes widened, for no one could have doubted the raw sincerity in her voice. They stared each other down in a silent stand off, and for the last time she let herself mourn the death of her love for him. It didn’t take very long.
After a while, he seemed to deflate. “You need some time, then…”
“No,” she said, nipping his rationalizations in the bud. “Not this time. Not after what you did. I truly never want to see you again. I have forgiven you so many times, but I am done. You took my childhood, my hands, any hope for a normal life, and I forgave you, time and again, God help me, but not this time. Janus roughed me up, nearly did worse, and you let him. He would have killed me, and you would have let him. So I will extend to you the same courtesy. If I ever see you here again, I’ll drop you off on the Swede’s doorstep with a damn bow on your head.”
He flinched, but sh
e couldn’t believe it was over anything other than his fear for his own life, no matter how much it looked like remorse. He wasn’t going to con her into believing he cared about her ever again.
“Are we clear?” she asked.
He swallowed and nodded without meeting her eyes, his jaw taut with stubborn tension.
She managed a halfhearted smile in Thaddeus’ direction, though she was trembling all over with rage. “So you’ll take the job, then?”
Sympathy was written all over the privateer’s weathered face. “Aye. I’ll drop the blighter on his mother’s doorstep just for you, Hex. But I ain’t doin’ it for free, despite us bein’ mates and all. Something tells me the journey ain’t goin’ ta exactly be sunshine and roses.”
Hubert just sniffed at Thaddeus and crossed his arms in a pout.
“Don’t worry. I’ll pay,” she said. “And I’ll double it if you drop this one off in London,” she said, pointing to Rowan, who had been watching her exchange with Hubert like a hawk.
Thaddeus’s face darkened immediately, and he took a step backward, as if considering fleeing the scene. “No deal. I ain’t takin’ that one anywhere,” he said, spitting once more.
“Whyever not?” she demanded, taken aback by Thaddeus’s abrupt shift in mood. Thaddeus was a ridiculously superstitious man, but he couldn’t possibly know just how…odd Rowan was. To Thaddeus, Rowan was nothing but a harmless stranger.
“I won’t take ‘im, leave it at that. Don’t like the look of ‘im. It’s the eyes. They remind me of someone I know—an’ I know better’n to get tangled up with that sort o’ business any more than I already am.”
She opened her mouth to demand some sort of elaboration on these rather cryptic declarations, but Rowan immediately cut off any protest she might raise. “I wouldn’t go anyway,” he declared. “I’m staying in Egypt. Unless you think you can threaten me as well?” he asked her.
She didn’t think she could on any level, and that was what was so profoundly frightening about him. She’d expected him to stay, at any rate, but it had been worth the attempt to remove two thorns from her side in a single pass.
“Do as you please, then,” she muttered and took her father by the collar once more, shoving him into Thaddeus’s keeping, along with the bag of guineas she had prepared in advance from the secret stash not even Janus had been able to locate. “Don’t let him out of your sight, Thaddeus, until he is on Scottish soil.”
Thaddeus nodded tersely, and after he sent one last loaded glare Rowan’s way, he pocketed the money and grabbed Hubert by the upper arm. He saluted Hex.
“See you when I see you, sweetheart,” Thaddeus said. “In the meanwhile, steer clear of that one,” he finished in a low tone, nodding at Rowan before dragging Hubert in the direction of his dirigible.
“I intend to,” Hex muttered under her breath. She watched until Hubert was on board the airship and on his way out of her life for good. She sighed wearily and turned around to find Rowan talking animatedly with Won Jin in the man’s native tongue. After all she had seen in the past few days, she was hardly surprised, yet it was just another indication of how…impossible the man was. Who the hell knew Joseon? Other than someone from Joseon?
Rowan must have felt her eyes on him, for he looked around at her and smiled openly. She felt that same guilty clench in her chest, and she struggled to keep her breath steady and her resolve firm. When she’d collected herself as much as she could, she strode over to the tête-à-tête and pulled him away from Won Jin, murmuring a weak excuse to her friend.
“But Won Jin here has tea, Hex, and I’m gasping for a spot,” Rowan complained as she pulled him farther from the other man. She rolled her eyes. If she’d had any doubt he was British, his last sentence would have cleared that right up.
“It can wait,” she said, dragging him out of the berths and onto the dock proper, pushing her way through the crowd until she found a small, dingy pocket of space underneath the awning of the kebap tent.
She tried to give him her sternest look but was afraid she failed miserably. She did not relish what was about to come, even though she knew it was for the best. For her, anyway. “We need to talk.”
ROWAN DIDN’T LIKE Cairo. It was too loud and too frenetic, and it smelled absolutely revolting. It was just too much.
Though he could understand some of the languages floating in the air around him, could provide names for the objects and smells that assaulted his senses, nothing was familiar. He had hoped, once they reached the city, that something would trigger his memory. He hated feeling so helpless, so…raw. It was as if he were a child experiencing the world for the first time, his mind glutted with sensory input and a mélange of emotions he had no idea how to control.
Along with everything else, the moment he’d set foot on the docks, a low throb of panic had taken up residence in his gut and refused to go away. In fact, it only grew worse as Hex packed her father off then tried to do the same to him. It did not abate at all when she dragged him through the crowded docks, away from the Amun Ra and the Joseon man and his offer of tea. She had that determined look in her eyes again and something more. Something hard and unyielding that she’d worn when she’d cast her father upon Thaddeus Fincastle’s tender mercies.
He knew what was coming. He’d known, really, since she’d told him they were bound for Cairo. She didn’t even have to speak.
“Look,” she began firmly, her eyes landing upon him with great reluctance. Something in his expression that he had yet to learn to hide made her flush and look away once more, however. “Damn it, don’t look at me like that,” she bit out angrily.
“Like what?” he asked, honestly curious. He was feeling…rather a lot of emotions at the moment, all of them perplexing and contradictory, and he wondered what she read on his face. He must have known how to control his expressions once, but it seemed that ability had vanished along with his memory.
“Like I’ve drowned a bag of kittens or…cancelled Christmas, for God’s sake,” she hissed.
He shrugged. “What do you care?” he asked her.
She looked a bit stricken at this, but only for a moment. Then her shields seemed to snap back into place with a vengeance. Her expression hardened and her shoulders set defensively. He sighed inwardly. He wouldn’t even bother to plead his case.
“Look, Rowan…” she began again.
“You want me to go away,” he said bluntly.
She flushed again and still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Something like that,” she murmured. “I would have paid for you to go to London, since you said you might be from there, but you’d rather stay here. Which is fine. It’s none of my business.”
He nodded and drew himself up with as much dignity as he was able. He shouldn’t have felt so hurt by what she was doing. They were little better than strangers, thrown together under extremely unusual circumstances, and she had already done more for him than strictly necessary. He had saved her life, but the debt had been more than paid. He’d still be wandering in the desert if not for her.
“I know it isn’t,” he finally said.
“I have a sister,” she continued shrilly, as if he had argued with her. As if she wanted him to argue with her.
“I know, I met her,” he said evenly, his brow furrowing in bewilderment.
“I wanted you to meet her so you would understand this…this moment,” she said in an accusatory way, as if he were the one who was abandoning her.
Women. Something told him that even before he’d lost his memories they’d been impenetrable to him.
He raised an eyebrow in question. “This moment?”
“Yes, this moment, where we part ways,” she ground out, as if he were being deliberately obtuse.
“Ah,” he said, since that seemed innocuous enough.
She looked suspicious of his mild response, but he had expected it. She was suspicious of everything.
“No chance you’re in need of my services, then?” he said wryly, coveri
ng up his hurt and resignation as best he could. “You could use a bodyguard.”
She rolled her eyes. Oh, she hadn’t liked that, hadn’t liked the notion that she was anything less than capable of looking after herself, all evidence to the contrary.
“That’s just it, Rowan,” she said. “You have been an…excellent bodyguard. You are an extraordinary man, and I wish…I wish I could help you figure out what has happened to you, but…but you frighten me.”
She finally met his eyes and allowed him past all of those walls she had so painstakingly constructed. He could see for himself the fear there, alongside the awe and the bafflement.
“You frighten me,” she repeated. “And I don’t have the room in my life for the sort of trouble you bring.”
“Helen needs you.”
“Yes,” she said, looking away once more and releasing a long, pent up breath. “So I want you to stay away from me. I wish you well, but just…let this be the end of things.” Her eyes looked suspiciously damp, but he’d never point it out to her.
Though something deep inside of him told him not to give up, to cleave to her, he couldn’t help but understand and accept her reasoning. He frightened himself, and he couldn’t blame her for wanting distance from him.
He nodded, and she sighed deeply, but he couldn’t tell if it was with relief or frustration. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small leather purse.
He bristled. “You don’t owe me anything,” he protested.
She rolled her eyes in exasperation, grabbed his hand, and thrust the purse into it.
“At least in this you are an ordinary, prideful man. Take it, if only to assuage my conscience. It already feels battered enough as it is. Allow me this one thing, despite your pride. Toss it in the Nile if you want, but take it now,” she finished through gritted teeth.
Thief of Hearts (Elders and Welders Chronicles Book 3) Page 9