by Susan Wiggs
“It’s Lightning Jack!” a boy called. “Lightning Jack!”
They swarmed past Deborah, most of them barely acknowledging her. She discerned immediately that Lightning Jack was well-beloved here in the heart of nowhere. The children badgered him with questions, wanting to know what he had brought from the big city, how long he was staying and whose house would he eat at tonight.
Lightning Jack laughed with an ease and pleasure Deborah had not seen in him during the voyage. “Tenez, les enfants,” he said. “All in good time. First, I need some help with the load.”
By the time they reached the middle of the settlement, he had a group of enthusiastic helpers in tow. Smokey was already basking in the attention of the children. They gathered in front of the trading post, with its tall flat facade and a picket log fence in the front. A carefully lettered shingle blew in the breeze, identifying the building as the Windigo Trading Post. In small letters, it said “Thomas Silver, prop.”
Deborah eyed him in surprise. “This is your trading post?”
“Yeah.”
A dozen other questions crowded into her mind, but with all the activity going on, she knew she’d get no answers. The children who were so eager to welcome Jack were less forward with Tom Silver. They weren’t afraid of him, exactly, but they kept their distance. Perhaps it was his size, but more likely it was the solemn and distant look on his face, a look she did not understand and did not want to question.
She became aware that a number of other people had come out of their houses to see what the commotion was about. They were mostly women, though an old man with his hair plaited in long white braids raised his hand in greeting from a place across the way. The other man wore one sleeve pinned up where he was missing an arm. The women wore bib aprons over sturdy, fading dresses of calico or dimity. Deep-brimmed bonnets shadowed their faces, though thick braids fell down their backs. Bit by bit, Deborah sensed the collective attention shifting to her. Unspoken questions hung like the lake mist in the air. They wanted to know who she was, what she was doing here.
Lightning Jack, his nature growing sweeter by the minute, gestured at her with a Gallic flourish. “Please say hello to Mademoiselle Deborah S—” He broke off. “You must call her Miss Deborah. She has come to stay for a while.”
“Is she Mr. Silver’s bride?” asked a small, loud child.
Deborah felt her cheeks redden. “Certainly not,” she said, but no one heard her answer. The children all started peppering Jack and Silver with questions without waiting for answers.
“My mama said he better get him a woman soon,” another child commented.
“My mama said he’s already got too many,” another countered.
“Where?” his companion challenged him. “We never seen one.” He palmed his tow-colored hair out of his eyes and peered at Deborah. “Until now.”
“I most certainly am not—”
“He keeps ’em in the wilderness somewheres,” another boy suggested. “Or maybe at the Soo Locks.”
“Enough,” Deborah said, embarrassed and exasperated. “I am not Mr. Silver’s or anyone’s woman, for heaven’s sake.”
“Then what are you?” the blond boy asked.
“A visitor,” Tom Silver broke in. He touched his hand to Deborah’s waist and steered her along the plank road. “And with any luck, she won’t be staying long.”
She resented his implication that she was here by choice and shied away from him.
“Nels,” Tom said to the tow-headed boy, “take that carpet bag to my quarters.”
Deborah’s gaze went to the small, snug cabin in the yard behind the trading post. The door was closed and the windows shuttered. She stood frozen, feeling a scream build in her throat, and only by swallowing hard could she stop herself from letting it out. “I can’t stay there with you,” she said faintly.
“Why the hell not?”
“It’s not proper.”
An insolent laugh burst from him. “Why the hell would I worry about that?” He sobered. “Look, even if I trusted you not to do something stupid, you wouldn’t find a welcome with anyone else in town.”
She bridled, her pride stung. “I beg your pardon.”
“You’re a Sinclair, Princess. Just wait ’til folks find out.”
PART TWO
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
—Marcel Proust
THIRTEEN
Until this moment, Tom Silver had not been the sort of man who struck Deborah as having an actual home. The Tom Silver she knew was too wild, too angry, too implacable to possess mundane things like cookware and blankets and furniture, books and hearth plaques and kerosene lamps.
Yet when he led the way through the back of the trading post and across the yard, she found herself face to face with the place he called home. Violating all opinions she had formed of him, the place was not crude or makeshift. It had a porch with two rough-hewn chairs, a woodshed and a fieldstone chimney. It resembled the home of a decent, settled person, someone who cared about the way he lived.
Did Tom Silver care? She had not seen that in his behavior so far. Simply barging and bullying his way through each day seemed to be enough for him.
She stole a furtive glance over her shoulder at him, feeling the presence of his bulk as they crossed the yard. Perhaps she was wrong about him after all. It wouldn’t be the first time her judgment had been wrong about a man.
The surface of the porch was made of split puncheons worn smooth by the years. The front door was not locked. At Silver’s nod, she stepped inside while he went along the porch, opening the window shutters.
Plain muslin curtains made of flour sacks tacked over the windows filtered the sunlight. A musty, smoky smell of spent firewood and disuse hung in the air. Deborah set down the parcel she had been carrying and let her eyes adjust to the dimness. Black iron stove and a ladder leading to a loft. A long plank counter of scrubbed wood with a pump sink. Wooden settle in front of the fireplace. Table and chairs, enameled plates and bowls stacked on a shelf above the sink.
Two of everything.
“You’re to bed down in here,” Silver said, opening the door with his foot. “I’ll take the loft.”
She followed him into a tiny, low-ceilinged room with a washstand and a bedstead covered by a drab woolen blanket. He jerked a thumb to a small exterior door. “Privy’s out there, and you can get water from the kitchen.” He set down the wicker trunk he had been carrying, then turned and left the room.
Deborah stood unmoving, trying to collect her bearings. He meant for her to stay in this house—alone—with him. Day in and day out, until her father came for her. The idea of being alone with any man, particularly a savage giant of a man, should properly terrify her. Instead, it made her angry.
“What am I to do?” she asked loudly.
His footsteps in the next room stopped for a moment, then started again as he came to the doorway. “Do?”
“With my time. What do you expect me to do?”
“I don’t know.” It was too dim to see if he was laughing at her. “Whatever you…debutantes do.”
She sniffed. “I wish you wouldn’t keep calling me that. You have no idea what a debutante is.”
With one step he came close, looming over her, his form blotting out the daylight. With uncaring insolence he skimmed a big rough finger over the crest of her cheekbone. His rude stare swept her from head to foot. “I reckon I do now, Princess,” he said with soft menace in his voice.
Her heart hammered out of control, a painful reminder of her cowardice. When would the fear end? Never, if he kept treating her like the enemy. Pretending disdain and disgust, she tossed her head and stepped back. “Does it make you feel bigger, more manly, when you bully me?” she demanded. She wondered where this streak of aggression had come from. Despite her anger, it pleased her to know she was capable of showing a little backbone every once in a while. “Is that why you do it?�
� she persisted.
He laughed. “Nope. I do it because you’re a hell of a lot more interesting when you’re mad.” He left the room again, this time going to the kitchen door to bring in supplies.
Deborah felt herself dangling just inches from complete despair. She was in the oddest of places, among strangers, with no inkling how to get out of her dilemma. Going to the window, she swept aside the curtain, which was brittle with age and dust. A large brown spider scuttled across the sill. She gave a small shriek and jumped back.
Pressing her fist to her mouth, she staggered to the bed and sank down. She thought she might weep, but knew weeping would not help, so she buried her head in her hands. The ropes strung beneath the mattress creaked with her weight, and when she shifted, she felt a decided something pressing at her. With a frown, she knelt beside the bed and looked underneath.
There, she found a long, flat box with leather hinges nailed on one side. Extra blankets, she supposed. Since they had left the Soo Locks and crossed the waters of Lake Superior, the weather had grown steadily colder. The winter nights were probably brutal here.
She pulled out the box, bringing with it a roll of dust motes and cobwebs. Lifting the lid, she peered inside and found a collection of boy’s clothing—dungarees and knickers, checked shirts and a thick flannel nightshirt—a tin cigar box containing a dead butterfly, a buckskin bag filled with glass marbles and a slingshot and a copybook filled with penmanship practice.
Deborah felt a mixture of wonder and confusion. These were probably things from Tom Silver’s boyhood. It was hard to think of him as a boy who’d had a mother who loved him.
At that moment, he returned, bringing a cloth-wrapped parcel. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She flinched at the bite of rage in his voice. “What is all this?”
In two strides he had crossed the room. With a flick of his wrist, he slammed the box shut. “That’s private.”
“So is my life,” she shot back, “but that didn’t stop you from abducting me.” Forcing herself to brave his temper, she opened the box again, filling the air with a cedary smell. “These are a child’s things,” she said. “A boy’s clothes and books and…keepsakes.” She held up a jar that contained a collection of fossils. “What a lot of pressure a delicate leaf exerts to imprint itself into the very flesh of the rock,” she said, studying the ancient patterns. “Who would have thought something so fragile could cut so deeply into a rock?”
“Never thought about it,” he muttered.
“Were these yours?”
“No,” he snapped.
“Then…do these belong to your child, Mr. Silver?” she asked. “Where has he gone?”
For the second time, Silver slammed the box shut, then shoved it under the bed with his foot. Striding toward the door, he said, “Your father killed him.”
* * *
Tom figured he’d given the woman something to think about while he took care of business. Ernie Sivertsen, maimed and disfigured in the accident, had minded the post in Tom’s absence, but there were plenty of chores waiting for him. Business was always slow this time of year, toward the close of the season. Folks were packing up, getting ready to go to the mainland for the winter. Some of them moved house completely, taking everything that wasn’t nailed down, even their big iron stoves. Tom had to pack and store the things he’d be leaving behind, tally up accounts for the season and do an inventory.
Thanks to Arthur Sinclair, some would not be back. Their menfolk—husbands, brothers, fathers—had died, and the women and old folks left behind couldn’t carry on the fishing or logging.
He was stacking canning jars when Ilsa Ibbotsen stopped in, a sleeping baby cradled against her bosom. The minister’s wife, she was the closest thing the island children had to a teacher, and on foul weather days, she gathered them in her kitchen to read the Good Book and do sums.
“Welcome back, Tom,” she said. “Wasn’t the same without you.”
“Thanks, ma’am.” He liked Ilsa. She had the large-boned, Nordic good looks of a woman suited to north woods living, with a nature as generous as her physique. “What can I do for you?”
“I need some clove oil,” she said. “Baby’s teething. And can you send over some kerosene? The days are getting short.”
He nodded and found the oil on a small, high shelf of apothecary goods. “Has fishing been good for the pastor?” Tom asked, to fill the silence.
She nodded. The baby fussed a little, then settled again on her shoulder. Tom didn’t usually pay much mind to babies, but he found himself studying the child’s chubby hand, trustingly clutched into Ilsa’s shawl, and the pink lips pursed in sleep. “Hope this’ll fix what hurts,” he said, setting the clear bottle of oil on the counter.
She nodded her thanks, then hesitated before speaking again. “Folks are wondering about your visitor, Tom.”
“I guess they would be.” He and Lightning Jack had told no one they had gone to Chicago. The Suzette’s normal run was to the Soo Locks, no further. He took a deep breath. Ilsa and the others in the settlement weren’t going to like what they learned about Tom’s captive, not one bit. He’d have to explain himself sooner rather than later, and he might as well start with the pastor’s wife. Though she had lost a brother-in-law in the disaster, her sturdy Lutheran principles seemed to help her bear the grief.
“Lightning Jack and I went down to Chicago to settle the score with Arthur Sinclair,” Tom said.
“Is that so?” Ilsa dropped her voice to a shocked whisper. “Tom, you shouldn’t have done that.”
He didn’t look up, but concentrated on calibrating the oil in its container. “I didn’t. The whole city was on fire when we got there.”
“The mail boat brought news of the fires,” Ilsa said.
He finished pouring the oil and made himself look at her. But in his mind, he was seeing Arthur Sinclair in the foyer of his mansion, blank-faced as Tom took aim. Why had he hesitated? The man’s careless greed had taken seven lives, yet Tom had paused a mere second too long, and Sinclair had escaped.
“It was chaos in the city,” he explained. “He got away, but I figured out a way to make him pay for what he did.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the cabin. “The woman’s name is Deborah Sinclair,” he said. “She’s Arthur Sinclair’s daughter.”
“Oh, Tom—”
“Wait, hear me out. We sent word that Sinclair is to come fetch her here.” Tom took a dark satisfaction in envisioning the moment. Sinclair kept his hands clean by paying others to do his work for him. This once, he would be forced to see what he had caused.
“Supposing he does come. Rich man like that—he’ll bring armed guards, wouldn’t you think? Enough blood’s been spilled on this island.”
“We’ll settle with him then, gain restitution for the families of the victims.”
“You mean, pay us.” Ilsa’s pale face turned implacable and she pressed her lips together. “There’s no payment can make up for a loss like that.”
“I know, Ilsa. But the insurance hearing declared it an act of God so there’s to be no settlement. Folks have to eat, have to live day to day. That’s what the money’ll do.”
“Have you considered what the money won’t do?” she asked, a quiet challenge sharpening her voice.
Tom felt the brutal ache of Asa’s absence. “Of course I have.” Ever since abandoning the plan to murder Arthur Sinclair, he had been searching for another way to find justice. He wanted to see Sinclair face to face. He wanted him to see where people had died. That could only be accomplished by forcing him to come to Isle Royale.
“After the accident, my sister had to move off island to Duluth.” Ilsa’s voice trembled. “She’s a saloon girl there, Tom. She…sells her body at the Immigrant House and drinks herself senseless every night.”
The news drove an icy wind through him. “I’m sorry, Ilsa. Maybe the restitution will help. If she doesn’t have to work for a—” he wasn’t sure what
to call it “—a wage, then she might settle down in a…quieter manner.”
Ilsa leaned back against a stack of feed grain. “Maybe,” she said softly. “Maybe. But folks aren’t going to like it. They aren’t going to like knowing his daughter’s here.”
“With luck, it’ll be a week or less. She’s his only child. He’ll come for her.”
With one arm cradling the sleeping infant, she reached around and signed the credit chit on the counter. “You know,” she said quietly, “it would be a fine tribute to the Lord if we were to get a proper church on the island. Our little parlor’s getting crowded.”
* * *
“Are you sure this is the way he went?” Deborah asked, eyeing the steep serrated ridge of the hillside.
The boy named Nels nodded vigorously. “Cross my heart and hope to die. He comes here a lot.” He shaded his eyes against the late afternoon sun and pointed. “If you stay to the right, the going’s not too hard.”
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s lucky you happened by.” She had encountered the boy walking home from a nearby pond with a bait bucket and a creel of fish. Nels swore he knew where she’d find Tom Silver.
She never thought she would find herself in search of her abductor, yet here she was. After stunning her with the news that he had a boy who’d died, he’d left her to speculate all afternoon. Determined to find answers, she had gone to his trading post. Through the back door she had seen him talking with a woman holding a baby. She suspected they were discussing her, and she had lost her nerve.
Nels stared at her openly.
“What?” she asked. Surely a boy wouldn’t notice her unfashionable dress.
“They said you were the devil’s daughter.”
“Who said that?”
“Folks in town,” he replied vaguely. “So…are you?”
“Do you believe that?”
The tips of his ears turned red as he grinned. “You don’t look it.”
She smiled back to hide her distress. Her father was a hated man here. Everyone would assume she was cut from the same cloth. She had no idea how to face that hatred.