by Susan Wiggs
Then she let go.
Two huge hands grabbed her by the arms, then went around her waist. Tom Silver dragged her up and over the rail. Without a word, he pulled her along the narrow walkway toward the stern. She dug in her heels and stopped. As mechanical as a locomotive, he swung her up and over his shoulder. Breathless, furious, she was whisked past Lightning Jack, seeing from her upside down perspective a mixture of surprise and concern on his face, and past Smokey, who yapped and followed them down to her tiny chamber.
Tom Silver shoved her facedown on the bunk.
Something in Deborah snapped, unleashing fury. She twisted onto her back, bringing her knee up, slamming it into his groin. He let out a bellow of pain and doubled over. She seized the moment to scramble off the bunk and head for the door. Before he could even straighten fully, his big arm reached out and grabbed her. His face was pale and wet with sweat, contorted by pain. She felt no remorse whatsoever. Who would have thought that a man the size of an ox could have such a vulnerable spot? She must remember that for the future.
Breathing laboriously through his nostrils, he seemed to find his bearings once again. He shoved her back on the bed, driving the breath from her lungs. She spat in his face, arched her back and kicked wildly, and would have scratched his eyes out if she could have reached them. Lord, it felt good to fight like a madwoman. With this insane battle, she shed the last of the polite self-control that had governed every breath she had ever taken.
Tom Silver captured her wrists and pinioned them neatly in one hand above her head. His scent of lake water and sweat swept over her. Something about the pose awakened a deep, horrified fascination inside her. She felt both drawn to him and repelled by him.
His manner was far less equivocal—crude, matter-of-fact. He treated her not as if he disliked her, but as if he simply didn’t care.
Turning her and pushing his knee into her back, he bound her hands behind her. “Damn. You have more gumption than I gave you credit for. Who taught you to fight like that?”
“Let me go, you hideous insufferable lout,” she said. Speaking her mind felt good, too, she realized with a touch of wonder. “Get away from me.”
“Gladly. But first…” He reached into his back pocket.
She screamed, suddenly panicked by the feeling of immobility. In a minute he’d be shoving himself at her.
A folded cloth covered her mouth. He tied the bandana snugly behind her head. Finally, he attached the cord from her hands to her ankles so that she lay completely helpless on the bed. Tears scalded her eyes, but she refused to shed them. Enough of weakness and weeping. They were no help at all in a situation like this.
Tom Silver clearly didn’t give a damn whether she cried or not. He stood back, regarding her with an impassive expression. “I would have let you go today,” he said in a conversational tone. “Lightning Jack and I were discussing it.”
Liar, she thought. You’re only saying that to torture me.
“Yep. Our agreement was that if you behaved yourself, we’d call it quits.”
Liar. If that was the case, you would have told me.
“Maybe you’d be on a train tonight if you hadn’t set off that flare and tried to jump overboard. You’ll never know. But you taught me something, Princess. You are your father’s daughter.”
The brute didn’t know it yet, but today he had banished all thoughts of jumping into the frigid water from her head. She no longer wanted to die. She wanted to live, and make his life hell.
* * *
Tom couldn’t understand why he kept thinking about the woman in the cramped quarters below. He had never been bothered by much of a conscience. It had been the only way of surviving the war without going completely mad. Yet battling his way through the fire, and then taking Deborah Sinclair hostage, had left a bad taste in his mouth. Something inside him had awakened. Something dark and disturbing, out of control.
The sound of the flare going off, and the arc of light overhead, had brought forth remembrances he’d thought long buried. For a brief, horrifying moment he was back on the battlefield at Kenaha Falls, racing hell-for-leather on the back of a sweating mare while Reb missiles streaked past him and bullets plowed up the turf and ripped the leaves from the trees.
It was a day he had not thought of in years. Yet Deborah Sinclair’s act of desperation had reminded him. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was that flare against the bright sky. But more likely, a deeper spark was ignited by her unpredictability combined with her will to live, to survive. She made him remember the impulsive youth he’d been when he had first enlisted. Having been raised by Lightning Jack in the north woods, Tom had known nothing of soldiering. But he was young enough, bored enough and ignorant enough to plunge himself into danger. Impatient with the endless drills of the enlisted men, he had eagerly volunteered to ride courier for General Thaddeus Whitcomb. The old man had rubbed his sidewhiskers thoughtfully while studying the skinny sixteen-year-old. Then he’d said, “If you’re stupid enough to volunteer, then I’m smart enough to use you where I need you.”
His missions became one reckless dash after another, galloping underfed army issue mares into the ground, riding across unknown terrain in the dark of night or in the smoke of battle, never knowing when a shell or bullet would strike. He sensed that same unpredictability and volatility in Deborah Sinclair. Now, a distance of ten years from his own youth, he understood that recklessness was not the same as courage.
He steered clear of his hostage after the Milwaukee incident, sending Lightning Jack down to release her from her bindings as soon as they were well away from the city. The next leg of the voyage, to the narrow Straits of Mackinac and through the locks at Sault Sainte Marie, promised to be long and uneventful. He planned to avail himself of the telegraph station there, but he had little hope of a response from Arthur Sinclair. According to the accounts he had read in the Milwaukee Sentinel, the city of Chicago was in chaos. He would simply have to stick with his plans to drag the woman to Isle Royale and wait for Sinclair to come. Let him claim his daughter on the same bloody ground where his negligence had claimed seven lives.
Yet none of these thoughts brought Tom the heat of vindication. He craved the clean feeling of justice done, but each time he thought of the woman, guilt nagged at him. True, she was treacherous. She was her father’s daughter. She would as soon stab him in the back as knee him in the groin.
But when he had held her in his arms, something swift and intense had passed between them. It was more than an embrace and a kiss designed to keep her from shrieking bloody murder to passing ships. He had dreamed afterward of her taste and the softness of her body pressed to his. Try as he might, he could not deny the elemental pleasure of holding her in his arms. Her delicacy. The scent of her. The pressure of her small hands pushing at him, her soft mouth protesting his kiss. She made him feel both excited and brutal at the same time.
She had not reacted as an ordinary woman should have. She had neither surrendered helplessly nor drawn back and slapped him in righteous outrage. Instead, she had gone into a panic, beating at him, her fists raining blows at his chest. Her frantic response confused him. He knew damned well he was a man of few refinements, but he’d always thought kissing a woman to be one of his particular skills.
Of course, before today, he had never attempted to kiss the likes of Miss Deborah Sinclair.
TEN
No amount of threatening, weeping and pleading moved Tom Silver to set Deborah ashore at any point during the long, frightening voyage, though she tried her best. Once they had left Milwaukee harbor, he had given her the run of the ship, knowing full well that escape was impossible. And guessing—correctly—that she was too cowardly for suicide. Surrounded by nothing but water and fog, the Suzette steamed into a wilderness so thick and mysterious that they encountered no other boat for days.
The incident in Milwaukee had changed things between them—for the worse. Deborah didn’t regret for a moment setting off the distress fla
re, but she should have been prepared for Tom Silver’s immovable wrath, and for the cold fury he awakened in her.
It was strange, though. Even the most egregious captive state, bound and gagged upon her damp bunk, felt eerily familiar to her. With nothing to do but lie there and think of things, she had reflected that captivity took many different forms. A woman under the domination of her father or husband was as much a prisoner as a hostage on a boat. She had merely traded one form of servitude for another.
Lucy Hathaway, her best friend, would have applauded the radical thoughts that passed through Deborah’s mind. She would have urged Deborah to act on them, proclaiming her independence from all forms of bondage. Ordinarily, Deborah did not trouble herself with social justice, having been taught at an early age that her opinion didn’t matter. But being trapped on this steamship liberated her mind and unleashed a vibrant anger. Or maybe it was having to live in close quarters with an aggravating, bullheaded clod like Silver.
She neatened the tiny quarters, creating a space for herself, and spent the days reading—Silver and Lightning Jack kept a surprisingly extensive library aboard—and staring out at the fog, plotting escape attempts. Lightning Jack had bought her a sewing basket, a comb and some hairpins in Milwaukee. Sometimes she would sit and comb idly through her hair, thinking how foolish it was to have a maid perform such a simple task. And yet all her life, someone else had washed her hair and combed it. Someone else had mended the hems and tears in her gowns. She wondered what Kathleen O’Leary, her maid, thought about as she did Deborah’s hair. Did she think Deborah was as mindless as a dressmaker’s dummy? Did she resent spending her time fixing someone else’s hair?
Silver ignored Deborah, even when she stared directly at him. This was something she caught herself doing far too often. She’d watch his big, rough, hardworking hands and remember what his embrace had felt like. She’d study his mouth, think about the way he had tasted and relive the explosion of panic his kiss had ignited. When it came to his touch, she felt a nearly insane desire to fight back.
On a leaden gray morning, the Suzette churned past a series of channel markers, and the blast of foghorns filled the air. Deborah went out on deck to see what was happening, and she encountered an unsmiling Tom Silver.
“We’re coming up on the Sault Sainte Marie,” he said. “Go below and wait until we get through.”
“I prefer to stay on deck and watch.” She walked to the forward rail and craned her neck to look ahead as the ghostly images through the fog resolved themselves into a churning waterway. The rapids between Lake Huron and Lake Superior formed a strange, watery hill marking the difference in depth between the two lakes. The current boiled and surged, tossing the steamer up and down like a cork. The sudden violent motion hurled Deborah forward against the gunwale.
She heard herself cry out. A fragmented whirl of hissing water, leaden sky and thick forest sped past. The small dog exploded into a barking frenzy. Her arms flailed and she grabbed a stay wire. Unable to support her weight, the wire gave way, strand by slender strand. She screamed, dangling helplessly over the icy water. Then she felt a jerk and heard a tearing sound. Something broke her fall before she went into the rapids.
“Woman, you just can’t stay out of the water, can you?” Tom Silver said through gritted teeth. “I ought to let you drown.”
“Reel her in, mon gars,” called Lightning Jack in an amused voice. “That is the best catch you’ve had in days.”
In mere seconds, Tom Silver had dragged her back over the side. She slammed against him as her feet hit the deck, and at first she was too shocked to be alarmed. But then the warmth of him, his sheer size and his smell of lake wind and wood smoke overwhelmed her. She inched away. “Thank you—” She bit off the rest. The oaf had only rescued her because he wanted the ransom.
“I ordered you to go below,” he snapped.
“I want to watch,” she insisted.
“I can’t stand around playing nursemaid to you when there’s work to do.” He grabbed her arm, and she immediately grabbed it back.
“Tom, I need your help here,” Lightning Jack called from the pilothouse. “The rapids, they begin just ahead.”
Deborah frowned dubiously at the marbled swirls of water below the bar. “You mean we aren’t in the rapids yet?”
“Hardly.”
A thrill shivered through her. “I’m staying on deck,” she said.
Something in her expression made him stare at her keenly for a moment. Perhaps a twitch of amusement lifted his mouth. “Stay away from the side and hang on, because you’re in for a hell of a ride,” he said gruffly. He grabbed her hand and clamped it around the wheelhouse ladder. “If you go over again, I won’t be around to save you.”
She forgot to be alarmed by his touch. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll look after myself.”
“You can stay above until we get to the canal,” he said and went off to work the trawler with Lightning Jack. Deborah turned her attention to the scene that lay before her. Every once in a while Jack would call out, explaining the sights as if she were a guest on a pleasure cruise.
Peering through a long brass spyglass, she watched two-man canoes navigating the shoals, one man steering with a pique-de-fond and another dipping netfuls of fish out of the lake. A few skeletal drying frames, draped with cedar strips and whitefish, lined the shore. The Indians and settlers tending smoldering fires paid little heed to passing canoes and ship traffic. Larger vessels used seines and gill nets to lay in huge quantities of whitefish. “My stock in trade,” Lightning Jack sang out expansively, weighing out coins to pay the toll at the locks. “The fish, they are more precious to me than gold.”
Before the canal had been dug, he told her between Gallic curses as he wrestled with the wheel, everything had to be portaged from one side of the Sault to the other in order to avoid being caught in the dangerous cascades, spilling like a wall of glass between the two giant lakes. Through the spyglass, she made out the stately Stone House Hotel on the Canadian side in the distance.
She wrapped one arm around the ladder and gazed with yearning at the lovely, civilized-looking place. She dreamed of a luxurious long bath and fresh clothes, a spacious bed for the night. And more importantly, freedom from the brute who held her captive. But it might as well be as distant as the clouds, with the savage waters stretching endlessly to shore. She saw docks and storehouses, blockhouses and friendly dwellings with smoke puffing from their chimneys. The sight of civilization and humanity filled her with hope. She tried feverishly to think of a way to escape. They had hidden the remaining flares from her, and the torrent of water was too loud for anyone to hear her cry out.
“You’ve seen what there is to see,” Silver said as if he had read her mind. “Get below. Or do you want me to drag you?”
She shot him a poisonous look. But she knew she was defeated—for the time being. With as much dignity as she could muster, she went to her bunk. She heard it latch from the outside. Using the side of her fist, she cleared the fog from the small portal and looked out at the busy waterway. It took all day to navigate the crowded, log-lined canal. She heard the shouts and whistles of the drover to the team of oxen, and felt a dizzying lurch when the water level changed through the locks.
It occurred to her that she was having an adventure. Deborah had never had an adventure before unless she counted meeting President Grant on her eighteenth birthday. This was a true, honest to goodness adventure, complete with unscrupulous villains, physical danger, wild places. If it wasn’t all so hideously frightening it might be fun. Something to tell her friends when she got home. But the way things were going, home grew more distant with each passing moment.
Finally they moored somewhere above the rapids, in a secluded spot a good mile offshore.
In the early evening Tom Silver came into her tiny chamber, Smokey the dog tucked under one arm. He always carried the dog as if it were a heap of dirty laundry. He set it down, and it scrambled up on the bunk with
her. Then he turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” Deborah asked. But she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t explain himself.
“I’m locking the door from the outside again.”
She rushed for the exit. “No. Please, I swear I won’t—”
The thunk of the bolt made her flinch. The bunk was too cramped to allow for pacing, so she sat on the narrow boxlike bed, drew her knees to her chest and idly stroked the dog’s scruffy head. She had no candle or lamp, so she couldn’t set the room on fire to attract attention. Besides, she might burn to death before help arrived. She could find nothing to use as a weapon to attack Tom Silver with when he returned. She tried calling out to Lightning Jack, who seemed a bit more softhearted than Silver, but he merely took out his harmonica and played a tune to drown out her yelling.
Frustrated, Deborah lay down on the bunk. It was too dark to read, so she stared at the wall and hated Tom Silver with every bit of her heart.
* * *
From the ruined black gash of Huron Avenue, Arthur Sinclair surveyed the blackened rubble that had been his home. The grounds, scorched and scarred, still exuded an acrid warmth, a deadly echo of the fire. The heat traveled up his legs, past his heart and through the top of his head. The trout pond had boiled away; the carriage house and all the outbuildings had disintegrated to blackened pits. Yellow-gray wisps of smoke rose from the charred skeleton of the house. But it wasn’t a house anymore. It was a dead thing, empty, its insides seared away to nothing.
Since late Monday night, when a timely light rain had signaled the end of the great fire, his hired agents had fanned across the ruined city in search of his daughter.