The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

  Bending, she leaned down to see inside.

  “G’damned chafer,” said a furious male voice. “Chicken-bred bastard from hell—”

  She clapped her hands over her ears. “Mr. Underhill!”

  The hatch swung open and his head popped up. His face was flushed a dark red, brow and temples damp with sweat. “Hey, Doc.”

  She cleared her throat. “I’m sure whoever you’re speaking to below would prefer that you keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  To her surprise, he gave her a crooked grin. “I’m alone, Doc. Just having a little argument with this repair.”

  To her further surprise, she felt her mouth quirk in amusement. “And is it working?”

  “What?”

  “Cursing. Is it helping to fix the boat?”

  “No, but I feel better.”

  She eyed a part of the rudder lying across the main deck. Ropes and pulleys lay scattered about. She had never done a destructive thing in her life until she’d sabotaged his boat, and despite the circumstances, she felt guilty.

  “I’ll help you.” Without further ado, she clambered down the hatch. The heel of her boot caught the bottom rung of the ladder, and she lurched forward.

  “Careful there.” Strong hands gripped her waist, thumbs catching just below her breasts.

  He held her only a second, but it seemed like forever. Leah stopped breathing. It had been so long since anyone had touched her. His handling was impersonal, yet she couldn’t help acknowledging that no one had ever held her this way before.

  She saw his eyes widen.

  “No corset, Doc?” he observed. His frankness embarrassed her.

  “Binding is terrible for one’s health.”

  He lifted his hands, palm out, in a conciliatory gesture. “You won’t hear me objecting to a ban on ladies’ corsets.”

  Self-consciously, she straightened her shirtwaist.

  “Watch your step.” He indicated a tub of pitch and masses of coiled rope on the floor. He moved back and regarded her. His attention had an odd effect on her composure. Her face grew warm, her pulse quickened, and she felt completely foolish.

  “So,” he said, his grin slightly off center. “You’ve come to help.”

  “You look as if you could use it.”

  “You’re not too busy?”

  “I’ve already made one call today. If no emergency comes up, I’m free for the time being.”

  “Well, thanks. That’s real nice of you, Doc.”

  She shrugged. “I thought it was the least I could do, since...” She let her voice trail off.

  “Since you’re the one who broke the steering,” he finished for her.

  “You’re the one who tried to kidnap me,” she shot back.

  He nodded. “You’re not one to own up to things, are you?” He handed her a wood spanner.

  She snatched the tool from him. “And you’re not one to apologize for your actions.”

  “Here, hold this steady. Yeah. Just like that.” He put a peg into a freshly drilled hole and tamped it tight with a mallet. “Some landlubber used iron bolts on this mast stepping and they rusted. I have to replace them with wood fastenings or the aft mast could come down.” He repeated the procedure several more times, but each time he tamped down a peg, the opposite one came up. He cursed fluently and unsparingly through gritted teeth.

  She watched him for a while, holding the pegs and holding her tongue until she could stand it no more.

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  The mallet came down squarely on his thumb. He shut his eyes, jaw bulging as he clenched it. “Shoot.”

  “Why don’t you cut the pegs a longer length, then after they’re all in, trim the wood flush with the deck?”

  He stared at her for a long moment. She thought he was going to argue with her or ridicule her. That was what men always did when a woman dared to comment on their work. Instead, he said, “Good idea. We’ll do it your way.”

  She still had to hold the pegs for him, and he had to lie on his side to reach all the fittings, but his mood lightened as the work progressed. He had a long frame, lean and sinewed, and appeared to be remarkably healthy. The human body was her calling, her obsession, and it pleased her to watch him.

  More than it should have.

  “So,” he said at length, and she started guiltily, certain he knew she’d been studying him. “How is it you came to be a female doctor?”

  She let out a relieved breath. “How I came to be a female is by accident of birth.”

  He laughed. “I guess I deserved that.”

  “How I came to be a doctor is by reading, hard work, a rigorous apprenticeship, and ward study in a hospital.” And how did you become an outlaw? she wanted to ask—but she didn’t dare.

  His eyes narrowed as he sealed one of the pegs with glue. “You sure talk a lot and say nothing.”

  His observation startled her. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “So what’s the real story?” He stood and brushed off his leather carpenter’s apron. She liked it better than the gun belt.

  “Why do you want to know?” Why on earth would it matter to you? she wondered.

  “Just curious, I guess. Is it some big secret?”

  “No. I’m just not used to being asked.”

  He swept a mocking bow, the tools in his apron clanking with the movement. “So I’m asking.”

  She caught herself smiling at him.

  “You ought to do that more often,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Smile. Makes you look downright pretty.”

  “Looking pretty is not important to me.”

  “That’s a new one on me. You didn’t have the usual kind of mama, I guess.”

  “Actually, I was raised by my father. Since he had no son, I suppose you could say he pinned his aspirations on me.” She paused, gazing out a portal as she collected her thoughts. In the faraway past, she heard a voice calling, “Dr. Mundy, can you come?”

  Leah, no more than ten at the time, went along with her father, holding the lamp in the buggy and then squashing herself into a corner of the sickroom at the patient’s house.

  She could not bring herself to admit to this stranger, this friendly man with secrets of his own in his blue-gray eyes, that her father had been the worst sort of doctor, a quack, a purveyor of questionable potions that often did more harm than good.

  “I learned much from being in practice with him,” she said. It was not quite a lie. She’d learned there was nothing more precious than human life. That people needed to look to a physician for hope. That a good doctor could do much to ease suffering while a bad one got rich from it. Her father had given her one gift. He had made her determined to succeed where he had failed.

  She made herself remember the pain and the horror and the fact that even as he was dying, Edward Mundy had withheld his love. She swallowed hard. “He died of complications from an old gunshot wound.”

  He gazed at her thoughtfully. “I take it that’s why you’re not real fond of guns.”

  “A gun is the tool of a coward,” she snapped. “A tool of destruction. I’ve seen too often what a bullet can do.”

  “Touché, Doc, as the Three Musketeers would say.” He changed tools, selecting an awl. “So you became a doctor just like your papa.”

  “Not like my father.” She flushed and looked away. “We disagreed often about courses of treatment.” For no reason she could fathom, she added, “We disagreed about everything, it seemed.”

  “Such as?”

  The proper way for Leah to dress. And talk. And behave.

  The way to snare a wealthy husband.

  Where they would flee to each time one of his patients expired due to his incompe
tence.

  “Well?” Jackson prompted.

  She already regretted the turn the conversation had taken. Yet it was surprisingly easy to talk to him. Probably because she knew that he was only here for a short time; then she’d never see him again. He couldn’t use the things she told him to hurt her.

  “He never quite understood my insistence on practicing medicine for the good of humankind rather than to make money. He thought I should spend my leisure time pursuing drawing-room etiquette. He was disappointed when I failed to marry well.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean—marry well?”

  “My father thought it meant marrying a man who’d settle his bad debts for him.”

  “And you? What do you think it means?”

  “Finding a man who will l—” she didn’t dare say it “—esteem me.”

  “So why haven’t you done it yet?”

  “Because such a man doesn’t exist.” The old ache of loneliness throbbed inside her. “I’ve yet to meet a man who would give me the freedom to practice medicine. Men seem to want their wives to stay at home, keeping the hearth fire stoked and darning socks instead of healing the sick.”

  “It all sounds like a damned bore to me.”

  “Healing the sick?”

  “No. Stoking the hearth and darning socks.”

  She laughed. “Did your mother never teach you a woman’s place is in the home?”

  All trace of pleasantry left his face. “My mother never taught me a goddamned thing.”

  His tone of voice warned her not to probe an old wound. We both have our scars, she thought. We work so very hard to hide them.

  “So who taught you about the Three Musketeers?”

  “Taught myself.” His voice had gone flat, uninviting. Then he brightened, reaching up to lean the heel of his hand on a cross beam. Light from the deck prisms fell across him, striking glints of gold in his hair. “Now that I’ve got the Teatime, I can go anywhere.”

  “Where do you plan to go?”

  “Wherever the wind takes me.”

  “It sounds rather...capricious. Do you never think of staying somewhere, settling down?”

  He got back to work, swirling his brush in a bucket of glue. “I never think of much at all.”

  Letting the wood glue set around a loose bolt, Leah fell silent for a time, thinking. She wanted to ask him so many things: what he had left behind in his past, why he never spoke of the baby Carrie had lost, what he expected of the future. But she held her tongue. At an early age, she had learned caution. Watch what you say to another person. Watch what you learn about him. Watch what you feel for him.

  Once in her life, she had given her whole heart and soul to a man, and he had crushed her flat. That man had been her father. He was a charlatan, but he was all she knew, all she had, and she’d given him enormous influence over her choices. Now she had nothing but broken, bitter memories.

  Wishing she could forget the past, she worked in silence alongside Jackson Underhill, studying him furtively. In her profession she had seen men from all angles, yet she regarded Jackson as uniquely—and discomfitingly—interesting.

  Despite a demeanor she found more charming than she should, he seemed to be a man who expected—and usually got—the worst life had to offer. Yet he still clung to hope in a way that was alien and intriguing to Leah.

  “I’m curious, Mr. Underhill,” she said, unable to stop her incautious questions in spite of herself. “How is it that you came to be in possession of this boat?”

  “What makes you think I didn’t commission her?”

  “Somehow I can’t picture you christening a boat Teatime.”

  “It said ‘eat me’ last time I looked.”

  “Then at least fix the lettering on the stern,” she advised. “If you didn’t name her, who did?”

  He thought for a moment, no doubt weighing what it was safe to tell her. “Some English guy I met in Seattle. I won her in a card game. Her owner was down on his luck, but I’m told in her day, she sailed the Far East, plying the waters around the island groves, looking for rare teas. I mean to go there someday,” he said, almost to himself.

  “Go where?”

  “I’m not sure. Someplace far. Exotic. Maybe I’ll just follow the sunset until I find what I’m looking for.”

  The gruffness in his voice caught at her. “And what’s that, Mr. Underhill?”

  “Paradise. Like that picture in your office.” His ears reddened after he spoke. “I guess. Just something I’ve always wanted to do.” He shrugged dismissively. “Pass me that mallet, will you?”

  She handed it to him, frowning a little.

  “What’s the matter, Doc?”

  “I find you quite hard to understand,” she admitted. “My profession is the motivating factor of my life. It’s what gives me direction and purpose. Yet you have no plan for your life beyond sailing to the next port. You’re like this ship, Mr. Underhill. You’ve got no fixed rudder. No fixed course. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “I’m a dreamer. You’re a planner. Who the hell are you to say your way’s better?”

  She felt a flush rise in her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I apologize.”

  “You don’t need to.” He picked up a sanding block and got to work.

  “How long will these repairs take?” she asked, eager to leave the topic of planning and dreaming.

  He blew out his breath. “Weeks, according to Davy Morgan who claims to know such things. He was amazed I was able to get here from Seattle. He gave me a list of repairs a mile long. I can do the work myself, but I’ll have to go back to the city to earn enough money to pay for supplies.”

  “How will you earn the money?”

  He winked. “I’m a gambling man.”

  “Is that why you’re on the run?” she asked.

  “Who said I was on the run?”

  “You didn’t have to.” She pressed her mouth into a wry smile. “I guessed it as soon as you tried to abduct me. You confirmed it when you warned me not to alert the sheriff.”

  He squinted menacingly at her. “And did you?”

  She forced herself to hold his gaze. “No. But if you give me a reason to, I shall.”

  “I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “I know.” And she did. She’d briefly considered a visit to Sheriff Lemuel St. Croix, but she hadn’t actually done it. St. Croix was a tough, humorless man who seemed out of place in Coupeville. A bachelor of middle years, he had a taste for fine things; even on his modest lawman’s salary he’d managed to acquire a Panhard horseless gasoline carriage. Keeping law and order in the town did not seem to concern him overly much. This was not a problem since crimes in the area tended to be petty and few.

  Lost in thought, she watched Jackson work. When he spoke of the sea, a dreamer took the place of the gunfighter. There was something compelling in his intent manner. Passion burned brightly in his gaze; she was caught by it. She couldn’t remember the last time such a powerful desire had burned inside her. The rigors of everyday life had dulled her heart to dreaming, it seemed.

  When had it happened? she wondered. When had all her dreams died? And why hadn’t she felt the loss until now, until she looked into the eyes of a stranger and saw the lure of possibility?

  She shouldn’t probe into the life of this drifter. He was clearly on the wrong side of the law, clearly had much to hide in his past. The less she knew about him, the better. It was time to tell him what she’d come to say in the first place. “Your wife seemed troubled when I checked on her yesterday evening.”

  “She lost a baby. I guess that might trouble a woman some.”

  And you? she wanted to ask. Does it trouble you?

  “Of course,” she said carefully. “But I fear it
is more than that. She said—” Leah broke off. Were they a husband and wife who shared everything, or did they keep secrets from one another? “She seems agitated.”

  “Yeah, well, she gets that way.”

  “She’s been having some rather terrible attacks of panic, almost like waking nightmares. She speaks of blood and fire—a stain on the floor, a burning house. And she seems to have a horror of being closed in. Mr. Underhill, your wife suffers from a fear that someone or something is after her. Someone is hunting her down.”

  She wanted him to laugh it off, to joke it away as he did so many things.

  Instead, his eyes took on the metallic sheen they’d had the first time she’d beheld him. The dull gleam of gunmetal. Danger emanated from him, causing her to take a step back toward the skylight hatch.

  “It’s all just her talk,” Jackson said. “And none of your goddamned business.”

  “Anything that affects the condition of my patient is my business,” she retorted.

  He squeezed his jaw, clearly fighting his own temper. She wondered what made him so angry, what he was hiding. She wished it could be as he said—none of her business. Unfortunately, it was.

  “Carrie’s had a rough life,” he said grudgingly. “We were raised in an orphanage, and if she seems scared sometimes, it’s because her whole life’s been scary.”

  She felt an unexpected thickness in her throat. Life had clearly been brutal to Carrie. “I see. I’m sure the orphanage was awful for you both.”

  “Awful,” he echoed, putting a wry twist on the word. “I guess you could say that. All right, Doc. You ready to help with the mast?”

  Surprised, she followed him up on deck. He’d put his outburst behind him. It was, she realized, the boat that seemed to save him. He forgot everything else when he worked on it.

  “Here.” He tossed her a line. “Grab onto that. If I did this right, the top section should drop into place.” He struggled for several moments with his end, breaking out in a sweat and cursing. He paused to peel off his plaid shirt and fling it aside. Leah stared, caught herself doing so, then forced her attention to the task at hand.