Jamie looked annoyed. “You’re his boys’ nanny, miss, not mine, and I’ll thank you to remember it.”
Maggie could not afford to offend, not at this juncture, in any case. “I’m sorry,” she said, and though she seldom resorted to artifice, she let tears pool along her eyelashes and bit her lower lip as she tucked her head.
Jamie clearly wasn’t fooled, but he did come and sit down beside Maggie on the bed. She wasn’t sure whether that was bad or good. “I’ll see you get to Reeve, love—no worries. But I don’t want you to tell him that you met up with me, understood? Reeve would be in grave danger if he found out about me now.”
“But—”
The brogue was back, and a tiny muscle in Jamie’s jawline leapt and then went still again. “I’ll deal with Reeve in me own way and me own time, without you interferin’, woman. If you do, never mind that me brother’s bigger’n me, I’ll paddle your sweet little rear end!”
Maggie swallowed. She believed him. “Well, let’s go then,” she said bravely, making to rise off the bed.
But Jamie caught her arm gently in his and tugged her back. “Not tonight,” he said. “Your dapper gentleman friend ’as probably gathered ’imself an army and started lookin’ up and down the street for us. I can ’andle ’im, and ’is driver, but I ain’t up to a scrap with ’alf a dozen dockmen in the bargain.”
The awful gravity of the situation began to dawn on Maggie. “You expect me to spend the night here, in this room, with—with you?”
Jamie was making a great production of pulling off his boots. If they were that tight, he ought to get new ones. “Aye, love, I do. Lay down.”
Maggie tried to rise off the bed in a huff, only to be firmly pulled down again. “Of all the nerve—”
Jamie turned to her with laughter in his eyes. “Speakin’ of nerve,” he said, and Maggie thought it wasn’t a good sign that he was still talking in a brogue, “you ’ave some yourself, love, leapin’ out of a carriage that way, then flingin’ yourself into the arms of a total stranger.”
Maggie knew a hopeless situation when she saw one, and the truth was that she’d much rather take her chances with Jamie McKenna, in this seamy little room, than risk encountering Duncan outside. She squinted at the medallion that Jamie wore around his neck and saw that it was just like Reeve’s.
“What is that?” she asked. Reeve had been secretive about the talisman; maybe Jamie wouldn’t be.
“It’s called a beggar’s badge,” Jamie answered, unbuttoning his shirt.
Maggie gulped and averted her eyes. “A b-beggar’s badge? What on earth is that?”
Jamie’s arms went up as he pulled the talisman off over his head. Unlike Reeve’s, which hung on a chain of real gold, Jamie’s was affixed to a string of leather. He handed it to Maggie in silence, apparently choosing to ignore her question.
She studied the writing on the coinlike piece carefully in the flickering lamplight. It said BLESSED IS HE WHO CONSIDERETH THE POOR. ST. PATRICK’S PARISH, DUBLIN.
“With that,” Jamie said in a faraway voice totally devoid of the brogue, “a man could beg for his daily bread without being arrested.”
“Beg?” Maggie couldn’t imagine Reeve begging for anything, ever. “You were beggars?”
Jamie shook his head. “It didn’t come to that. I was transported for pinching a gentleman’s watch, and Reeve came out here as a cabin boy on a whaler.”
“It’s odd that you’d wear something like this,” Maggie observed, frowning. “But I’ve never seen Reeve without his.”
Jamie sighed. “He’s a rich man now, Reeve is. I imagine the beggar’s badge reminds him of leaner days and makes him thankful for all he’s got. Now, lie down and get some sleep, Maggie-girl. I promise I won’t lay a hand on you.”
Maggie would never have believed that had it come from Reeve, but from Jamie it had a ring of truth. She wriggled over close to the wall and lay down with her shoes still on and her dress, torn and dirty now, twinkling in the lamplight. “Very well. I just hope you’re a man of your word.”
Jamie chuckled and stretched out on the bed beside Maggie with a sigh, leaving the lamp to burn.
A dreadful thought struck Maggie, and she bolted upright. “What were you transported for again?” she demanded.
“Picking a gentleman’s pocket, love.”
Maggie lay back down. “Oh. Did you pick a great many pockets, Jamie McKenna?”
He smiled and cupped his hands behind his head. “As many as I could get my fingers into, miss. But never you fear, I’ve reformed now. I’ve got sheep and a property of my own.”
“Where?”
Jamie got up from the squeaky, lumpy bed to put out the lamp, and in the moments before he reached it, Maggie saw the long scars that crisscrossed his back. At some point Jamie McKenna had been savagely whipped. “You don’t really think I’m going to tell you that, do you, and have you running to my brother with the news?”
Maggie sighed. “He loves you,” she said into the darkness.
She felt Jamie’s weight on the mattress beside her. “Aye,” he said in a tone that indicated no emotion at all, and before Maggie could formulate another question, he was snoring.
Chapter 14
THERE WAS A SPLINTERY CRASH.
Maggie, sound asleep only a moment before, bolted upright on the bed she’d shared with Jamie McKenna. She felt him roll off the mattress, but it was the darkest hour of the night and she could see nothing save the outline of several hulking men filling the open doorway.
Too frightened to scream, Maggie simply tugged at her bodice to make sure it hadn’t slipped while she was sleeping, and peered into the darkness.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of a match striking, and then the lamp Jamie had extinguished earlier was relit and she could see all too clearly.
Jamie was crouched on the floor beside the bed, a huge, savage-looking knife glinting in one hand. Duncan stood beside the lamp, and there were four enormous men with him, crowding the doorway, leering at Maggie and smiling toothless smiles.
“Take the girl outside,” Duncan ordered.
Jamie rose slowly to his feet, the lethal knife still clutched in his right hand. “I wouldn’t advise you to try it, mates,” he said in a low voice that rumbled like lava forcing its way upward through solid rock.
One of Duncan’s hooligans drew a gun from the inside pocket of his ragged coat and brandished it. “That blade ain’t much use against one of these, now, is it?”
Maggie was inching toward the foot of the bed. She was ready to plead with Jamie. “Don’t. They’ll kill you!”
“Maggie!” Jamie warned, but she was out of his reach, awkwardly climbing over the brass bedstead to stand upright on the floor.
One of the thugs immediately grasped her already-bruised arm in a filthy hand, and she flinched. That tiny motion distracted Duncan from Jamie for the first time since the lantern had been lit.
“Take your hands off her,” he said in a lethal tone, and the foul-smelling man let go of Maggie with a scowl. Duncan reached out and caught her around the waist with one arm, slamming her against his side.
“Leave this room with the woman, mate,” Jamie warned Duncan in a calm voice, waggling the knife slightly, “and you’ll go out wearin’ this.”
Maggie’s heart stopped beating and then started again. “Duncan,” she pleaded, knowing that Jamie meant what he said.
Duncan favored her with an icy smile that sent chills skittering up and down her back. “So at last you use my given name.” He sighed. “Too late, alas—you’ve definitely fallen from grace.”
In the next second Maggie was flung toward the door. She was still trying to recover her balance on the landing outside when she heard the hissing sound of a knife slicing through the air, followed by a sickening thud as it punctured flesh.
Duncan cried out, but then he staggered through the doorway and grasped Maggie by the hair with one hand. The knife was protruding from his left shoulder,
his shirt was wet with blood, and Maggie felt bile rush into the back of her throat as her captor forced her down the outside stairway.
“What do we do about the sheepherder?” one of the scoundrels called after them.
In the first glimmer of dawn Maggie could see that Duncan was white with pain, but still he propelled her toward his carriage and thrust her inside. “Whatever you like,” he groaned in response. “The bastard’s all yours.”
Maggie, flung onto the dirty floor of the rig, felt sick. Reeve had spent all those years looking for his brother, and now Jamie was about to die because of her. She screamed as Duncan lurched, half conscious, into the carriage and slammed the door. He back-handed her so hard that she tasted blood on her lip, and then moaned, swaying on the seat.
The carriage was rolling, and in the distance Maggie heard the sound of shattering glass. She prayed that Jamie had gotten away.
“Help me,” Duncan mumbled, “please—”
Blood soaked the carriage seat, Duncan’s clothes, and Maggie’s as well. She groped her way onto the seat and saw that the knife had gone into his shoulder, almost to the hilt. She held down another surge of sickness and reached for the stained handle. Only then did she notice that she was clutching Jamie’s medallion, still on its rawhide string, in her hand. Hastily, she dropped it into her bodice. “I’m not sure I’m s-strong enough,” she managed to say.
Duncan’s flesh had turned a pallid gray. “In the name of God, Maggie, try,” he pleaded, and then he fell forward, kneeling on the carriage floor, his upper body sprawled across the opposite seat.
Trapped beneath him, Maggie had to squirm free. “We need a doctor!” she screamed out the window to the driver.
“No,” Duncan rasped, “no doctors—oh, God, Margaret, please help me—”
As far as Maggie was concerned, this man was a murderer, among other things, but she could not ignore his pleas for help. Kneeling beside him, muttering a fervent and insensible prayer, she grasped the handle of Jamie’s knife in both hands and pulled as hard as she could.
Duncan screamed as the dagger sawed its way back out of his shoulder, and then he slumped over, unconscious. It would have been the perfect time to escape, except that he’d fallen on Maggie, effectively pinning her to the floor between the carriage seats. Wriggle and fight though she did, she wasn’t able to get out from under Duncan’s weight, and she was freed only when the carriage came to a halt at the rear of the Kirk house, in the alleyway. The driver hauled Duncan out, supporting him by drawing one of his lifeless arms around his own shoulders.
Maggie’s first instinct was to run, but she realized she couldn’t do that as Bridget O’Malley, red hair flying free, came bounding down the path from the rear door of the house to help bring Duncan inside. Where could Maggie flee in a torn and rumpled dress splattered with blood? Besides, her things were still in her room. She might have left most of them behind, but she couldn’t go without the little photograph of her parents; it was all she had left of them.
Bridget, wearing only a nightgown and wrapper, shot Maggie a killing look as she fell into step beside her and the carriage driver, who were supporting a moaning, delirious Duncan between them.
“What in the name of God happened?”
No one answered Bridget’s question; instead, Maggie offered one of her own. “Where are the boys?” she demanded calmly. It would never do for them to see such a bloody spectacle as this, she thought grimly.
“Still sleeping,” Bridget said tersely as they entered the kitchen. “Let’s put him in my room,” she told the driver.
Maggie bounded up the stairs while they were about the task of getting Duncan into bed. Moving more quickly than she ever had in her life, Maggie pulled the beggar’s badge from its hiding place in her bodice and stripped off the once-beautiful dress that she’d worn to Government House. She poured water into a basin from the china pitcher on her dressing table. Frantically, she washed every trace of Duncan’s blood from her body, and when that was done, she put on her own ugly gray woolen dress and snatched her reticule from the floor of the armoire. Into the valise went the medallion Jamie had worn.
The tentative rap at Maggie’s bedroom door made her stiffen and bite her lower lip. If she didn’t call out, perhaps whoever was there would go away.
Instead, the door squeaked open. Jeremy was standing there in his nightshirt, his green eyes wide. “I saw them bringing Papa in, miss,” he said without preamble, “and you, with your dress all bloody—”
Maggie went to the child, put her hands on his shoulders. They quivered, warm and slight, beneath her palms. “There was an accident,” she lied gently. The story she’d tell the police, of course, would be quite different.
Jeremy slipped out from under her hands and approached the discarded gown, still lying in a garish blue and crimson heap on the floor. “Did you get hurt in the accident too?”
Maggie sighed and sat down on the edge of her fancy bed, folding her hands in her lap in an effort to still their trembling, and Jeremy sat beside her. “No,” she answered. “I wasn’t hurt.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, Maggie was conscious of the bruises and scratches that covered her body, but of course she said nothing about those injuries. They were minor, and any mention of them would only confuse Jeremy.
The boy glanced at the reticule sitting on a table, its top open. “You’re leaving?” he asked in a small voice.
Maggie was searching for a way to explain, when her bedroom door sprang open again, this time without a knock to forewarn her. Bridget was standing in the doorway, hugging herself, her wild auburn hair still tumbling loose around her waist. Her wrapper was bloody and her eyes were shooting fire. “Duncan is calling for you,” she said to Maggie in tight, razor-sharp tones.
Maggie was about to say that she wouldn’t go to Duncan no matter how loudly he called when she felt Jeremy’s gaze and turned her head to search his face. If she refused to go to his father now, he would never understand.
With a sigh she stood up. “All right,” she said, and she followed Bridget along the hallway and down the rear stairs into the kitchen. Bridget O’Malley’s room was just beyond.
Duncan lay in the middle of a broad bed, his shoulder neatly bandaged, pillows propped behind his back. The blood had been washed away, probably by Bridget, and his hair had been combed. On the bedside stand was an open bottle of laudanum, which explained the glassy expression in Duncan’s eyes and the idiotic smile on his lips.
“Leave us alone, Bridget,” he said, and his words were only slightly slurred.
Bridget glared at Maggie for a moment, then stomped out of the room, slamming the door eloquently behind her. Duncan flinched slightly, and his grin broadened.
Now that Kirk appeared to be past the worst, Maggie hadn’t a shred of sympathy for him. All her compassion was for Jamie, possibly lying dead on the floor of an ugly little room over a dockside saloon. The moment she left this house, she would go to the police and to Reeve, in that order. Stubbornly, she kept silent.
“My driver tells me that your friend got away,” Duncan said. “Pity.”
Maggie was so relieved, her knees wavered beneath her. She clasped the footrail of the bed to keep from sinking to the floor. “That is good news,” she said coldly.
Duncan was still pale as death, and his chuckle sounded hoarse. “I wonder if it will be good news to Reeve—that you spent the night with a strange man.”
The words struck Maggie with the impact of a blow, and she felt the color drain from her face. Within the space of an instant, however, she had drawn herself to her full height and jutted out her chin. “Reeve will understand, once I explain.”
“So you’re going to him?”
“I don’t see any other option.”
“There is a choice, Margaret. You can stay here and we can pretend that none of this ever happened.”
Maggie’s grip on the bed rail tightened until her hands ached. “That’s madness,
” she breathed. “I won’t spend another night under this roof.”
“I think you will.”
Maggie felt a quiver of fear in the pit of her stomach. “What are you trying to say?”
Duncan gave a dramatic sigh. “I would truly hate to have you arrested for stabbing me in the back, Maggie, but I’ll do it if I have to.”
“You know that’s a lie!”
“Yes, I know it, and you know it. But my witnesses will testify as I instruct them. Prisons are unpleasant places, Maggie—especially for women. But they might put you in an asylum, of course, assuming that only an insane woman would have the strength, let alone the desire, to plunge a knife into the back of a man twice her size.”
“I have a witness too,” Maggie reminded him, but some instinct kept her from revealing Jamie’s name. “You said yourself that he survived.”
Duncan nodded, and his eyes burned into Maggie’s face like green fire. “He did. But will you be able to find him? My guess is that your sheepherder is long gone by now.”
Maggie thought of Jamie’s determination to avoid Reeve and the promise he had extracted from her that she never mention his presence in Melbourne to his brother. Duncan was probably right, though she would have done almost anything rather than admit that. “I won’t stay here,” she said. “No matter what you threaten me with. I can tell Reeve all that’s happened and he’ll take my side.”
“Are you so very sure of that?” Duncan asked, tiring now. He sagged back against his pillows and his eyes were hooded and strangely blank.
Maggie wasn’t sure of anything except that she had to find Reeve and accept his proposal before he changed his mind. She would work on getting him to love her later. “I’m sure,” she lied.
Duncan yawned. “Why act hastily, Maggie? I’m quite harmless in this condition, aren’t I?”
That much was true. Maggie hesitated because she didn’t want to leave the boys so suddenly, nor did she have any desire to go crawling to Reeve, entreating him to take her in. It would be better if she had time to wangle a second proposal. “I suppose you are, but—”
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