Dead Handsome

by Laura Strickland

  He had been dead.

  And the little lass with the uncanny eyes had brought him back to life.

  How could anything else that happened really compare with either of these truths? How had she done it? She spoke so casually of an ability, but surely this smacked of sorcery. He had been dead. For how long? An hour? Longer? Could a man hope to rationalize that?

  His heart now beat strongly in his chest; he could feel it as he lay here in the dark. Air billowed in and out of his lungs. He could hear, see, taste…

  He could desire a woman. No question he desired Clara Allen. Every time he so much as looked at her it hit him like a physical blow.

  Helplessly, he probed and prodded the wall in his mind, striving to remember something before the noose. He must have performed a job, in order to keep himself. There would be a reason he’d been hauled off to jail, where some unknown bastard of a jailkeeper had decided to murder him.

  Anger flared inside at that thought. He would identify, locate, and settle that bastard. He always did—how did he know that? He would give the fellow a good look at what should be a dead man before doing the world a favor and finishing him.

  How did he know the things he knew about himself, then? That he was a man who chose revenge, that he was a laborer who worked with his hands. That he loved horses. That he was a brawler who’d likely been arrested for just that reason.

  These pieces of self clung to him even though all else had evaporated in his return to life. For he supposed he must believe Clara had returned him to life. She did not seem capable of speaking a lie. And anyway, he remembered that part of it sure enough—her mouth on his, her essence flowing into and filling him.

  Suddenly restless, he got out of the bed, went to the door, and cracked it open. Breath caught, he stood listening. Nothing. He pictured Clara in her bed and wanted to be there with her so badly he ached. Which room was hers? At breakfast, the children had confided most of them slept on the third floor, but Clara and Georgina must have rooms on this corridor. What would Clara do if he appeared and demanded his husbandly rights?

  But they weren’t yet wed, and besides, she said it wasn’t to be that kind of marriage.

  He cursed long and low, under his breath. He needed out of here.

  He tiptoed to the main staircase and looked down. The parlor door stood open and light spilled out. Clara must still be awake, then. He’d never make it past that doorway.

  With another muttered curse he turned back for his room. The window would have to do.

  ****

  “Put another in the glass, there’s a good man.”

  The bartender eyed Liam questioningly but not as if he recognized him. No one here seemed to recognize him. The bartender was merely trying to gauge his level of intoxication. The tavern, which sat right on Buffalo’s waterfront, hopped with activity, voices raised in laughter and argument, accents of every description. This area teemed with taverns and brothels both.

  Liam carefully placed another coin on the bar. He’d lifted the purse from a fellow outside—part of a crowd, all of them inebriated—and thus discovered another of his latent talents. He’d already lost count of how much he’d had to drink.

  The bartender nodded and filled the glass with whiskey. The purse Liam had lifted still felt plump, and he considered leaving here and visiting one of the brothels, if just to get some relief.

  Might not work, though. He wanted Clara Allen, and no one else.

  “Listen to me,” he said to the bartender. “I have a question.” The man gave him a dubious look. Liam tossed back his drink in one gulp. Maybe if he drank enough this dark wall in his mind would open and he’d remember.

  “Who’s the prick that runs the jail in this city?”

  The bartender looked surprised. “The county jail, you mean, on Delaware?”

  “I expect I do.” Liam realized he wasn’t even sure where he’d died.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’ve a score to settle with him.”

  “You’ve a score to settle with someone but you don’t know his name?”

  “Aye. Strange world, is it not?” Liam wagged his head. “Strange life.”

  “Listen, Mick—”

  “Don’t call me Mick. That’s an insult, that is.” Liam’s mood instantly turned ugly.

  “Look, buddy, I can tell by your voice you’re a Mick, and a drunk Mick, at that.”

  “I am a respectable member of the Irish race, and I’ll take apart with me bare hands anybody who says differently. Now fill the glass again.”

  “You’ve had enough.”

  “Not your job to say.” Liam felt himself growing enraged. “Fill the bleedin’ glass.”

  “Look, sir, you keep this up and you’ll be hauled off to the clink, and you’ll meet the warden personally.”

  “Warden, is it?” Liam went suddenly still. “Don’t that sound all high and official, the bastard.”

  “I’m going to ask you to leave. There are plenty other places to drink. I don’t want you in mine.”

  Liam reeled outside. As soon as the cool air hit him, his head began to spin in slow, sickening circles. A stiff breeze blew from his right, and he could smell the river. The street seemed crowded with other fellows—laborers, like as not, bent on spending their wages as quickly as possible.

  For an instant he felt so lost it nearly brought him to his knees. Who was he? What had become of all the things a man ordinarily held in his mind—the sound of his father’s voice, the memory of his mother’s face, the touch of his first lover’s hand?

  An image of Clara swam before his mind’s eye. Annoying, irresistible, fey lass. Not the sort that had ever attracted him, but he was hooked now, like a salmon on a gaff. He should go home to her.

  Nay—he should go to the next tavern and get an answer to his question.

  ****

  Something brought Clara awake—she never later knew what. She’d been drowsing beside the parlor fire, which had gone out, her chin upon her chest, after trying to think through the maze of difficulties that surrounded her, and roused abruptly as if someone called her name.

  Was it one of the children? Sometimes they had nightmares; then she or Georgina would go to them, hold them if necessary, and let them weep. But no, now she heard only silence, remarkable enough in this household.

  Liam. His name and the idea of him blossomed in her mind. No question but most of the problems that plagued her revolved around him. She fought the desire to be with him and then convinced herself she should just look in on him and make sure he was all right.

  Following the irresistible urge, she tiptoed up the stairs and eased his door open. For an instant her eyes refused to believe what they saw: a rumpled, empty bed.

  Hastily, she glanced about her father’s room. The window stood wide open, curtains fluttering in the chilly breeze. Her heart dropped to her feet. He was gone. Wandering out in the city, in the night, not knowing who he was. The fool. Breath caught, she hurried to Georgina’s room, where she awakened her friend. “He’s gone.”

  ****

  “This is madness, the two of us down on the waterfront in the dark,” Georgina lamented, not for the first time. “We’ll be robbed, or worse.”

  “I brought my father’s pistol,” Clara said, feeling for it in her pocket.

  “If it will still fire, and if you dare use it.” Georgina tugged the hood of her coat more closely around her face. Already one inebriated gentleman, taking her for a doxy, had propositioned her. She added unhappily, “What makes you think he’s here?”

  “Where else would he be?” Clara returned. She just knew, as if a string connected her and Liam, and he—or his activities—now tugged on it. “He’s here somewhere.”

  “In this maze of boozers. Does this city ever sleep?”

  “Not this part of it.”

  Men—and a small number of women of doubtable virtue—wandered everywhere, talking, laughing, arguing, staggering. It truly made a quite
distressing scene, one into which Clara had never before ventured even for the benefit of her children.

  Georgina edged closer to her. “Which—?”

  Bedlam abruptly broke out two doors down, where bright light spilled into the street. Cries arose, and people fled the doorway before two men tumbled out, engaged in an intense bout of fisticuffs.

  “Oh, my sweet lord!” Georgina exclaimed. “That’s—”

  Indeed, it was. Clara recognized his hair even before she glimpsed his face, fixed in a snarl, and the white bandage affixed to his throat.

  What to do? The brawl had spilled onto the doorstep. Folk gathered round, some exhorting the combatants and some, by the look of it, making wagers. Liam grappled with another brawny fellow, whose red hair made a splash of color. The sound of fists striking flesh assaulted Clara’s ears.

  Another man emerged from the tavern. He was large, wore an apron, and had his shirtsleeves rolled up over brawny forearms. He carried what Clara recognized as a portable steam cannon sidearm, all heated up, by the look of it, and ready to fire.

  One of those could blow a man’s head off—or leave him looking worse than poor Woodrow. How many steam burns had her father treated?

  “All right, you two,” the bartender cried. “I’ve called for the cops. Stop now, or you’ll wind up in the hoosegow.”

  Clara’s stomach wobbled. The last place Liam should be. If the warden saw him there again, she’d be undone.

  “Wait!” she cried.

  Somehow amid all the fuss, Liam heard her. He stopped whaling on his opponent and looked up. His gaze found her with an almost audible click.

  Clara drew a breath and, fingers clutching the pistol in her pocket, waded in.

  Chapter Ten

  Liam’s opponent looked dead. Blood trickled from one corner of his mouth, and he lay unmoving as a sack of spuds.

  Liam hurt all over but especially his hands, which felt as if he’d been busy pounding them against a brick wall. He shook his head, trying to clear the confusion.

  Clara stood over him, arguing with the barkeep in clear, even tones. Her voice penetrated Liam’s ears and seemed to seep into his soul.

  “I assure you, sir, this man is my husband. He has been unwell. The last thing I wish to do is involve the police.”

  Liam slid his gaze up her body to her face. She stared at the bartender in appeal, an earnest lady beseeching reason. He fixed his stare on her eyes, which glowed uncannily green. She had looked at him once—a burning glare—and then dismissed him completely.

  By God, what had he done? Details came back to him through a whiskey-induced haze. Gone looking for information, found an argument instead. One thing had led to another.

  The coppers were on their way.

  That was a terrible bad thing, though he could not quite remember why. If he got hauled off to jail—

  Jail. A noose. This blank wall in his mind.

  Clara.

  He reached out slowly and grasped her wrist. The backs of his fingers were smeared with blood. She flicked her gaze to him and away again.

  “If it’s a matter of damages,” she told the bartender, “I will be happy to pay.”

  She couldn’t afford to pay—at least not given that vile grandfather of hers. He, Liam, should go and smother the grandfather in his bed. Ninety-nine was an indecent age.

  Anything to make her happy.

  It occurred to him she wasn’t happy now because of him.

  That thought sobered him as much as anything could at this moment. He struggled to his feet.

  “Listen to me.”

  “Hush, please, Liam.”

  “I can explain.”

  “I think you’ve said enough, don’t you?” This time her glare scorched him to his soul.

  “Put your purse away. I’ll pay.” He dragged the stolen wallet from his pocket and fixed the bartender with a stare. “How much?”

  “You smashed the bar, at least a dozen bottles of whiskey.”

  “Just say how bloody much.”

  “Forty dollars.”

  Highway robbery. Forty dollars would buy the whole shack that housed the pub. But the coppers were on their way.

  He sneered and dug the remaining money from the wallet. It swam sickeningly before his eyes. “There’s twenty-nine here—more than what you have coming.”

  The bartender gave him an appraising look and shot another at Clara, who raised her pointed, little chin.

  “All right. But I don’t ever want to see you in here again, understand?”

  “You need not worry about that.” Clara seized Liam’s arm. “I will take my husband home and see to it he has his medication.”

  The bartender snorted. Liam and Clara stepped over Liam’s fallen opponent—the man still breathed, so he wasn’t dead after all—and turned to the street where, to his surprise, Liam saw Georgina waiting.

  He said to Clara, “You never should have come down here on your own, two pretty ladies.”

  “Clearly.” Beneath his arm, she trembled with rage. “What was I to do? Let you be taken back to jail, where—” Words failed her.

  “No, not that. I quite see—” His head swam. Ordinarily he suspected he had no trouble holding his liquor, but now he thought he might vomit. Sternly, he said, “But don’t ever come here again.”

  She stopped walking, reared back, and glared at him. “Me? You went out the window. You beat a man senseless.”

  “He insulted me. I think.”

  “You are stinking, filthy drunk.” She pronounced the words as he imagined his mother might, but he didn’t remember his mother.

  “You have no idea what ’tis like,” he retorted, “being brought back to life with nothing in me head.”

  “Hush! For God’s sake, can you not watch your tongue?”

  He wanted to put his tongue in her mouth; he still did, despite how sick he felt. Happen she wouldn’t like that.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. “And sorry for—” He was abruptly and messily sick all over the street.

  Clara let go of him and leaped aside. Georgina exclaimed in dismay.

  “Let’s get him home,” Clara cried in disgust. “I swear to God I should have left him in the jail.”

  ****

  His head hurt. Well, that was to be expected, considering what he remembered of last night. He pried his eyes open and then narrowed them against the morning light coming through windows set high in a stone wall. Where the hell was he? Lying on a cot, a basin half full of puke beside him. He stank like a longshoreman after a three-day bender.

  He sat up and cradled his head tenderly between his hands.

  A cellar. She’d shut him in the bleedin’ cellar. No question about it. The rafters of the house stretched overhead, shelves of canned food lay to his right, boxes and pieces of boilers lay everywhere else. The lads must work down here, Fred and—what was his name?—Woodrow.

  He tried to remember what had happened last night. He’d gone searching out the identity of the man who had murdered him. Fallen into a quarrel or two. And then—

  The door at the top of the cellar stairs opened. Clara stood there, framed by light.

  “So you’re awake. You’d better come up.”

  “You shut me down here,” he accused. “Locked me in.”

  “Can you blame me? Please come. We have things to discuss.”

  He clattered up the wooden stairs, his head threatening to burst with every step. He could hear the weans in the dining room, but Clara led him to her father’s surgery and, once they were inside, locked the door.

  She looked unwell, her face too pale, her eyes surrounded by dark hollows. Remorse hit him. He was responsible for that. But hell, he was a grown man and not answerable to a slip of a lass.

  “You had better sit before you fall down,” she advised. Her gaze swept him from head to toe. “Look what you’ve done to your clothing.”

  What had he done? Aye, his new duds were torn, and stained with blood. “Ah, Clara, I
am that sorry. I know these cost you dear.”

  “Never mind that now.” She stood before the chair on which he sat, arms crossed in front of her little breasts, and tapped her foot. “What were you thinking? Do you realize what would have happened if you’d been arrested? The danger to you—to me?”

  He drew a breath to reply. She did not give him a chance. “And where did you get that purse? The money you gave the bartender?”

  It was mad, but he wanted to kiss her. Badly. Even though she stood dressing him down like he was a lad—or maybe because she did. She wouldn’t welcome it, given the condition he was in.

  “Stolen,” he admitted.

  “Stolen!” She paled further, though he wouldn’t have thought it possible. “From whom?”

  Liam shrugged. “Some fellow outside the first tavern. He was in his cups and never noticed. Well-heeled, though.”

  She held out a hand, which trembled, in demand. “Give it to me.”

  “Why? Empty now.”

  “Because I need to see if there is any identification. If there is, I will have to pay back every penny.”

  “Why?” Liam asked again.

  “Because it is the decent, responsible thing to do. Because I”—she waved her arm wildly—“unleashed you on the world.”

  Anger began to gather in Liam’s chest. “Look here. You can’t talk that way to me.”

  “The wallet, please.”

  He dug it out from his pocket and attempted to wipe the dried blood from its surface. She snatched it from him. He watched as she searched its empty reaches in vain.

  “Nothing.”

  “Just as well. You’d have to seek the fellow out. ’Twould be one hell of an explanation.”

  She closed her eyes like a woman in pain, drew a breath, and said, “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

  “Eh?”

  “This arrangement between you and me.” She opened her eyes and speared him with that uncanny, gray-green gaze. “It’s not feasible. I must have been mad to think it was.”

  “What?” Liam’s anger disappeared into a well of loss so deep it terrified him. “You mean—”