A Summer Affair

by Susan Wiggs

  He acknowledged his father with a growl and jerked open the pantry door. “We’re out of graham gems,” he said, ambling through the arched doorway to the dining room.

  “I’ll send a news wire to the San Francisco Examiner.” Blue lightly touched the samovar on the sideboard to see if there was the slightest hope of warm coffee left in the urn. But, of course, the flame under the samovar had burned out while he was cleaning up the surgery after treating his mysterious gunshot victim.

  With the air of a starving martyr, Lucas flung himself into a chair. “I don’t see why we’re always running out of things to eat.”

  “Because you eat everything in sight,” Blue said. “You’ve been doing it for years.” He drew a sludgelike substance from the samovar and took an experimental sip. Cold and bitter. Truth be told, he hadn’t had a decent cup of coffee in ten years. Mrs. Li was a brilliant cook, but had never mastered the science of making coffee. Mrs. Riordan, the housekeeper, probably made excellent coffee, but Mrs. Li protected her turf, right down to the flame beneath the coffee urn.

  Lucas clunked his elbows on the table. “I wake up starving and there’s nothing to eat—”

  To shut him up, Blue stuffed the abandoned, half-eaten muffin in the boy’s mouth. “You know, in some aboriginal cultures, the eldest son goes out into the bush and hunts for the family’s food every day.”

  Chewing and swallowing, Lucas nodded at the scene outside the big picture window. Huge houses with formal gardens stretched as far as the eye could see, and the roadway was jammed with hacks and a straining cable car. “I’ll get right on that,” he said. “Afterward, we can start on the ritual scarring.”

  Blue watched his son with equal measures of exasperation and affection as he followed Lucas to the kitchen. The boy grabbed a steel milk can from the icebox and washed down the muffin, drinking straight from the can.

  “Where did you learn that?” Blue asked.

  Lucas found another muffin and consumed the whole thing in one bite. “Mrph,” he said.

  Blue marveled at his capacity to consume food at a furious rate, like a wild creature preparing for winter.

  He had Byronic good looks, with wavy dark hair spilling over a noble brow. The shining hair framed an olive-toned face so like his mother’s that sometimes Blue found it hard to look at him. Every reminder of Sancha was a stab at his heart.

  Today, the boy was wearing rugged dungarees and a threadbare shirt with the sleeves rolled back. He looked more like a ragpicker than the son of a doctor.

  “I hope you’re not planning on going out in public like that,” said Blue.

  Lucas threw him a long-suffering look. “I’m working on the grounds of St. Mary’s today. Father Jock needs help with the mowing and pruning.” He took another drink from the milk can.

  Blue immediately felt guilty. He had a bad habit of assuming the worst about his son. It was true that Lucas always seemed to be in trouble, though. During the school term, his teachers complained that he cared more for mischief and pranks than study and books. Over the course of the summer, he and his gang of rowdy friends trolled the city hills like sailors on shore leave.

  This streak of altruism was as welcome as it was unexpected. “Oh. I didn’t realize you’d volunteered for the church,” Blue said. “In that case—”

  “Do not drink straight from the can.” Mrs. Li’s sharp-toned voice cut through the kitchen as she came bustling in through the back door, her arms laden with parcels and her daughter June in tow. “Use a glass.”

  “Can’t.” He tipped the can, showing her. “We’re out of milk.”

  “There is no delivery until tomorrow,” she scolded. The cook’s lacquered hair was done up in a rudderlike arrangement that bobbed in agitation as she spoke. Blue wondered idly if she slept with her hair in that complicated coiffure. It must be damnably uncomfortable.

  Lucas wiped his sleeve across his mouth and grinned, but not at Mrs. Li. All his attention was focused on the cook’s daughter.

  Seeming to shrink into the shapeless broadcloth sacque she wore, June averted her gaze as rose-tinted blotches bloomed on her face. At sixteen, she had reached that peculiar stage of almost unbelievable beauty, when the sweetness of girlhood collided with the frank, sensual appetite of womanhood. There was, of course, a physiological explanation for this transition, but Lucas didn’t know that. He thought it was magic.

  If Blue tried to tell him otherwise, the lad would never believe it. Of course, he didn’t believe anything his father said these days.

  Look at our boy, Sancha, Blue thought with a sudden bright pang of regret. He’s falling in love. Is there something I’m supposed to do about that, some advice I should be giving him? How the devil do I handle this on my own?

  “You go now, shoo.” Mrs. Li made a whisking motion toward the door with her hands. Like Blue, she had detected the crackle that charged the air lately between their children. Lucas and June had grown up together, practically brother and sister, but a few months ago all that had changed. The change coincided with a certain lush ripeness that had come over June in her fifteenth springtime.

  “I’ll be home by suppertime,” said Lucas, snatching another muffin and rushing out the door.

  “Maybe there’s hope for the boy yet,” Blue mused, watching the lanky, loping adolescent hurry toward St. Mary’s with one suspender dangling and the sunlight flashing in his glossy hair. “He’s working in the churchyard today.”

  “Maybe he learn his lesson this time.”

  “How’s that?” Blue frowned.

  June said something in Mandarin to her mother.

  Mrs. Li waved her silent, then pressed the palms of her hands together. “Oh, he did not tell you. This is punishment, not good works.”

  Blue’s pride congealed to disappointment. “What did he do this time?”

  June spoke again in Chinese, an urgent protest. Mrs. Li ignored her daughter. “Steal communion wine from church storeroom. He and his friends, they drink until they get sick. Father Jock found Lucas sleeping in church.”

  “Then the boy had a better evening than I did,” declared Rory McKnight, letting himself into the kitchen without knocking.

  Blue’s best friend was a ball of energy, in constant motion as he greeted the ladies, affording them the same respect and charm he’d offer to a gold-rush heiress. Then he went into the sunny adjacent dining room in search of coffee. McKnight had flame-red hair and an infectious sense of humor. The purpose of his visit was to discuss the Rescue League, which he served as chairman of the board of directors. But thanks to Miss Isabel Fish-Wooten, Blue was running behind, had not slept a wink and would have to reschedule.

  “What am I going to do about Lucas this time?” Blue asked, plowing a weary hand through his hair.

  “Thumbscrews?” Rory asked, sipping his coffee, then wincing. “The rack?”

  Blue folded his arms across his chest and faced the window, scowling in the direction of St. Mary’s. From here, he could see the slender Gothic spire and one side of the church, skirted by a broad swath of greensward bordered by flowers. In one corner, by a stone fence, there was an outbuilding or gardening shed of sorts. There, Father Jock supervised a work crew of ne’er-do-wells, out-fitting them with rakes, scythes and a wheelbarrow.

  “Maybe I should send him to finish his schooling with the Jesuits of Santa Clara,” Blue said.

  “What about military school?” Rory suggested.

  “Good plan,” he said. “That way he’ll be not just an angry, rebellious youth, but an angry, rebellious youth with a gun.” Given his history with the military, Blue wasn’t about to entrust his son to an institution that taught blind obedience through pointless drills and endless marches, run by cruel officers who cloaked themselves in lies.

  Rory studied his manicure, then took out a handkerchief to buff one fingernail with the precise attention to detail he gave all aspects of grooming. “Why is he angry? Why is he rebellious?”

  “Because he’s b
reathing?” Blue suggested.

  “Because he’s fifteen.”

  “That’s not helpful.” But Blue grinned as he said it, his heart lightening for the first time since black drop opium had killed one of his patients. Rory always managed to lift his mood. They’d met as soldiers in the War Between the States. Blue had been shot and left for dead. Then, risking death himself, a young infantryman named Rory McKnight had carried him off the field of battle and rafted him a mile down the river to a hospital tent that more properly resembled a slaughterhouse, where dying men placed bets on the speed with which the barbers could amputate limbs. But there, his luck had held. Rory had taken him not to a field surgeon armed with charriere saw and brass tourniquet, but to the formidable nurse called Delta Beasley.

  After the war, Rory and Blue had shared quarters as each finished his schooling. Did Lucas have a friend like this? Blue wondered. Did he have someone he could count on, no matter what?

  Rory folded the handkerchief in measured lines and tucked it into the pocket of his frockcoat, leaving exactly a half-inch margin showing. When they’d shared quarters as university students, Blue used to tease McKnight about his fastidious habits, but Rory clung to them without apology. He was a man of humble background and remarkable accomplishments. Given the boyhood he’d endured, he felt entitled to treat himself well.

  As a child, he’d been rescued from the ghetto known as Five Points in New York City. The Children’s Aid Society had sent him west aboard one of the famous so-called orphan trains to a family in Nebraska. Having no taste for farm life, McKnight had headed for San Francisco. He’d made the most of every opportunity offered, from being a charity student at the Pacifica Latin School to a full-tuition scholar at Yarmouth College. He was now a skilled criminal lawyer in the city.

  “Remind me never to have children,” Rory said.

  “And you’re so good at taking my advice.”

  “I am when you’re right. But you’re rarely right.” Rory set a case of legal briefs on the table. “I, on the other hand, am frequently right. You should’ve remarried long ago, my friend. Raising Lucas with the help of a wife would have been far easier than going it alone.”

  “You sound like my stepmother,” said Blue. “Eliza’s a big believer in rescuing widowers with troubled offspring.”

  “I rest my case,” said Rory. “Eliza changed your father’s life. His heart. His whole world—”

  “I don’t need to change my life or my heart or my world. Just my son.” To avoid the never-to-be-resolved topic, he said, “You mentioned having a rougher night than my wine-stealing son.”

  “I certainly did. One of my clients dragged me out of bed in the wee hours. There was a shooting down at the waterfront, and he was called in for questioning.”

  Blue felt a hum of awareness, as though he already knew what he couldn’t possibly know. “Was he involved in the shooting?”

  “Not this time,” Rory said, “but he’s always been a favorite of the police.”

  “So what happened?”

  “It was a shoot-out of some sort. Over an opium shipment, of course. After all, what would the opium trade be without violence? I’ve never known importers to be so reluctant to pay their duty fees. For a perfectly legal substance, it certainly does cause a lot of trouble.”

  Blue knew why that was so, and it wasn’t just the money.

  Rory made another attempt with the coffee but abandoned it in disgust. “A police officer was shot,” he said. “The gunman, too, but he escaped.”

  Blue felt a chill that quickly escalated to icy apprehension. “Did— Is the policeman dead?”

  “No, but I understand he could be, soon. He’s at Mercy Heights Hospital. Let’s hope they keep him alive long enough to identify the scoundrel who shot him.”

  Four

  Sometimes when she first awakened, she made herself lie very still, with her eyes closed. For a few precious minutes, she would try to remember who she was. Then she would decide who she would be this day.

  She had so many different masks, she sometimes forgot which one she was wearing. Like now.

  The burning sun cleaved through the vision, splintering it into bright shards. She became aware of dry, earthy smells and distant sounds of traffic. Some object rough with rust leaned against her. She sensed a confined space, cluttered with cobwebby equipment.

  She drifted, watching harsh slants of light through the planks in the wall of a… She couldn’t quite recall what sort of abandoned building she’d staggered into. Some kind of storage shed.

  A fecund aroma hung in the warm air. Through the dimness, she could make out the iron skeletons of tools—a rake, perhaps, and some type of bladed, long-handled scythe. She watched a spider spinning her web, patient and noiseless in the unmoving hot air.

  Then she remembered. She had not been able to put much distance between herself and the doctor’s house. She recalled seeing a vast greensward that reminded her of the grassy expanse of Windsor Castle’s Home Park, surrounded by cut stone and shadowed by a slender steeple. A garden in a churchyard seemed as safe a place as any, and she’d holed up in a little outbuilding in order to rest, perhaps regain her strength. But, uncounted hours later, she didn’t feel stronger in the least.

  Her eyes were closed, but she was spinning. Time passed, and she was lost again. Was she on the deck of the ship? The tea company clerk called Mr. Leland had promised her a first-class billet. Seven beautiful days at sea, her destination the Sandwich Islands, a paradise she’d seen only in dreams, but one she’d always longed to visit. She smiled, envisioning white sugar sand and deep turquoise water, orchid forests and native feasts and ceremonies.

  Outside, the sounds of the city rushed past—shouts in a variety of languages, the clop of hooves on brick pavement, whistles and shouts from drivers and draymen, clanging bells and the grind of commerce. Seagulls squabbled and dogs barked.

  Slowly, through a mind made sluggish by fever and pain and reluctance to face facts, realization broke through the airy fantasy.

  There was no ship, no billet, no civilized and prosperous tea company. There was only an opportunistic thief, her own gullibility and someone who was an even better liar than she.

  How had everything gone so wrong, so quickly?

  The answers spun away like clouds in a windstorm. She dragged her mind back to ponder the more immediate problem. She needed to remember where she was, and she needed to find a way to stay alive.

  She had been doing so ever since the day her mother had abandoned her at a London workhouse. Escaping horrors she refused to think about, she’d pulled a new identity out of thin air and created a life for herself. She was Isabel Fish-Wooten, lady adventurer. With the speech and manners of an aristocrat, a convenient talent for gambling and a deadly accurate aim with any firearm, she traveled in grand style, from Europe to the Middle East to North America. She’d seen four of the seven wonders of the world. She’d sailed three of the seven seas. For the past year, she’d been touring the vast United States of America. The rollicking, high-rolling spirit of the wild land and ambitious people suited her perfectly—until last night.

  After so many years on her own, she was supposed to be good at survival. Yet only this morning, she’d nearly thrown herself into the jaws of the enemy. Dr. Calhoun had patched her up beautifully, and she had actually begun to feel safe, up until the moment the nurse had sent her fleeing for her life.

  I guess we’d best report this shooting to the police.

  She tried to put together what had happened last night. Fragments of memory swirled around her. She snatched at them as they drifted past: the sizzle of danger in the night air, a drunken man calling out.

  She had gone to the shadowy waterfront district in order to reclaim her stolen fortune. Instead, she’d encountered a worse crime in progress. A police officer was being shot at like a wharf rat. Some inexplicable, latent sense of decency had compelled her to intervene. She’d deliberately drawn fire to herself and nearly got
herself killed.

  That wasn’t like her. She was supposed to be a survivor, not a hero. She was only good at saving herself, not other people.

  She was also supposed to be good at disappearing without a trace. The talent had saved her skin more than once. Of course, it was troublesome to disappear unobtrusively when you were shot in the back.

  She’d never imagined being shot would hurt so damnably bad. After the life she’d led, one would think she’d be prepared to endure every sort of hurt, but a gunshot wound was a new and ghastly revelation. It had felt like the blow of a sledgehammer, slamming into her back. Her lungs had emptied and stayed that way for several horrifying moments as she’d lain facedown, blood pulsing from the wound in surges she could actually feel as she pondered an increasingly bleak fate.

  As she lay bleeding on the wet brick pavement, she remembered hearing an argument—had it been a lovers’ quarrel? She recalled a woman’s pleading followed by a man’s voice: Dear God, what have you done? And a chase or scuffle, perhaps. She couldn’t be sure. Then a brief firestorm and a surprisingly cultured male voice slipping like a shroud over her. Leave that one. Have him taken to a place he won’t be found.

  Her valise containing all her worldly possessions had been ripped from her hand. She didn’t know who had taken it or why, but she did know the valise contained a world of secrets that could ruin her if they ever came to light.

  Remembered fear caused her head to pound as she recalled the rough grip of a pair of low criminals. Someone had paid them to dispose of her. Thank God Dr. Calhoun had happened upon them and paid them again—this time for her freedom. They probably thought they were selling the good doctor a corpse.

  Perhaps they had.

  She’d always had an unerring instinct for self-preservation. But also, it seemed, for trouble. Calhoun had repaired the damage, yet an offhand comment from the nurse had shattered her illusion of security. She was in terrible trouble, and even the truth wouldn’t save her.