“Finbar O’Toole. The hero of the hour because he brought Canton Star to port.”
“Indeed. So it’s as I promised. The brave captain hasn’t been in New York for twenty-four hours and, like everyone who matters, he comes to the Dancing Knave.”
“Exactly as you promised,” he agreed, not bothering to add that he had never required much convincing; the club always seemed a likely investment. The loan had been paid back long since, and every week he collected four percent of the Knave’s profits. They had each kept to the exact terms of their agreement. Becoming her lover was something apart from business. Still, there was a special excitement to taking her like this up in the aerie, with the sound of the gambling continuing below. She’d permitted it only twice before, but he had the feeling she might do so again tonight.
As usual, she read his mood. “I shouldn’t go far from the gaming floor on such a busy night,” she whispered, turning in his arms meanwhile. “So what do you think we should do?”
He answered by pressing her hard against the wall, pushing up the skirt of her gown, feeling the red silk slide seductively over her long thighs and narrow hips. Nothing else was required but that he loose himself. Delight was in every detail dressed like a lady. Her pantaloons were the sort worn by the town’s most elegant and respectable women, without a crotch, in the interests of health and sanitation.
Only a few of the substantial number of coins the man who called himself Tintin had brought with him remained on his side of the table. The rest had been shoved across to Finbar O’Toole. It was, however, once more the pirate’s turn. Eh bien. Tintin knew as well as any man alive that everything in life could change on a single throw. He picked up the leather cup, shook it vigorously, then let the dice roll across the green baize surface. Three of the four lamps in the chandelier above his head had burned out. A servant had hurried over to replenish the oil and light them again, but Tintin had waved the man away. Now the single lamp yet lit cast just enough light for him to see that he had thrown a pair of ones, the lowest possible score. “Merde! Tous les saints bear witness! I will give a silver chalice to the Church of Saint Sépulcre if my luck changes.”
“And who might that saint be?” O’Toole had been fortune’s darling for the past hour. Coins were piled in front of him. He scooped the dice back into the leather cup, clapped his palm across the top, then began the up-and-down jiggle that had preceded each of the session’s winning throws.
Tintin took the pipe from his mouth. “You are all heretics here in New York. It is the holy Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Holy Land. Where the Holy Savior was laid in the tomb after the bastard Jews crucified him. Only a Protestant would not know such a thing.”
O’Toole continued moving the dice cup up and down. Slowly. Still not ready to throw. “Careful who you’re calling a Protestant. The name’s Finbar O’Toole, born in County Galway and baptized in the True Faith before my first taste o’ mother’s milk. And have you been to see this Holy Sepulcher Church in the Holy Land?”
“Course not, how would I get there? Jetez les dés! Throw the dice. You win again, of course. But not until you throw.”
“And if you’ve not been to the Holy Land, and don’t know how you’d get there, how is it you’ll be giving this chalice to this church where Our Lord was three days in the tomb? If your luck changes, o’ course.”
Tintin was halfway across the table before the last word was spoken, holding O’Toole’s shirt in a bunched knot beneath his neck, his face only inches from the Irishman’s. “You accuse me of breaking a vow? You will die, man from Galway.”
The Irishman didn’t struggle against Tintin’s grip. “Aye, no doubt I will. But not tonight, you pirate toad.” O’Toole’s right hand came up and hovered close to the other man’s neck. It held a knife. “Let go of me or your blood will be all over Delight Higgins’s table.”
“Delight doesn’t tolerate fights on her premises, gentlemen. You are both newcomers here, but I assure you, the rule is strictly enforced.” The woman’s voice was low and melodious, but it hinted of iron in its sheath of silk. “If you want to fight, you go outside. Let him go Mr. Tintin. And you—Captain O’Toole, is it not? The man who brought Canton Star to safe harbor this very day? Welcome to the Dancing Knave, Captain.” Delight nodded to the chucker-out standing just behind her. “I assure you, Mr. Clifford’s bullwhip is not meant for decoration. Give him the knife, Captain. He’ll give it back when you leave.”
O’Toole couldn’t turn his head, but he could see the huge man standing behind Delight Higgins. Sweet Savior and all the saints, it was the man as had come to the dock to collect Gornt Blakeman’s ebony chest. This time the long leather thong hung free, ready to snap. And Vinegar Clifford wasn’t wearing a proper cutaway and a stovepipe as he had that afternoon; a black singlet and leggings showed every bulging muscle.
“Mr. Clifford, help the gentleman in the eye patch to sit down. Then take Captain O’Toole’s knife out back to be sharpened and shined.”
Clifford put his bearlike hand on Tintin’s shoulder. The Frenchman shoved it away, but at the same time he released his hold on O’Toole’s shirt and sat down.
“Excellent,” Delight said. “Now, the captain’s knife, if you please, Mr. Clifford.”
The whipper took a step forward. O’Toole handed over the knife.
“Thank you,” Delight said. “I truly appreciate your cooperation, gentlemen.”
A crowd had gathered when it seemed there would be blood spilled. They were openly disappointed.
O’Toole still held the dice cup. Delight took it out of his hand, at the same time leaning forward so her breasts were inches from the Irishman’s face.
He swallowed an excess of spit. God Almighty, make any man’s mouth water she would. Her tits were practically under his nose, magnificent, and the color of golden honey.
“A wager, gentleman,” she said. “To add spice to the evening’s entertainment. Everything on the table against this.” She unclasped her diamond brooch and laid it between the few coins scattered on the Frenchman’s side of the table and the coins in tall stacks in front of Finbar O’Toole. The grumbling voices of the customers surrounding them quieted and faded away. She had everyone’s attention now. “One throw each, my friends. Highest roll takes it all.”
“Fine for you and me,” O’Toole said. “This one,” he nodded toward Tintin, “doesn’t have a big enough stake to make the wager credible.”
A man stepped out of the crowd. O’Toole blinked. Holy Virgin and all the saints. “If the gentleman will permit, I’ll stake him.” Gornt Blakeman flipped a gold ten-dollar piece onto the table in front of Tintin. “You agree, sir?”
Tintin glanced at the coin, then turned his single eye toward Blakeman. “To what? This is not much of a stake, monsieur.”
“It will stand for a thousand. I’ve an auction to take place tomorrow on Pearl Street worth many times that, as most of the town knows. If you happen to have missed that local gossip, I assure you Captain O’Toole here can warrant it’s true. He brought my ship to harbor.” Blakeman looked at the Irishman for confirmation.
O’Toole hesitated. Blakeman and Tintin might be strangers, and then again, they might not. Could be they were somehow in league against him. Why else would Gornt Blakeman be involved? At the moment he had less need than most of Delight Higgins’s diamond brooch. The thrill of the wager then? Didn’t Finbar O’Toole understand that! Still, it didn’t seem to fit Blakeman’s character.
“No question about it,” he said, giving in to the need in his belly, the lure of the gamble. “After tomorrow Mr. Blakeman can back his wager with cash money.”
“Eh bien,” Tintin said, leaning back, tapping the stem of the pipe against his yellowed teeth, his good eye staring straight at the other man, and nothing to be read in it but the calculation of the moment. This wager linked the three of them, Blakeman and the Irisher and himself. And the half-breed bitch. He’d seen hundreds of her sort on the block in t
he caves where he and Lafitte and the others divided their plunder and sold the live treasure for which they had no use. Hands tied behind their backs, stripped naked, waiting to see who would buy them and how they were to be used. Would she look so proud then? Certainement non. But it was Blakeman who was to be dealt with now. Perhaps the bitch would come later. “And if we win, monsieur? Maintenant, now, you stake ten dollars and I have not much, but at least four times that.”
“If we win,” Blakeman said easily, “I add my thousand to the pot, and you and I split equally.”
“And if we lose?”
“We lose.”
Tintin nodded. “D’accord, monsieur. I agree. But I roll the dice.”
“I’ve no quarrel with that.” Blakeman took a step back, into the shadows, away from the glow of the single lamp overhead.
Delight went first. She rolled a four and a three. There were loud calls of approval from the onlookers.
Finbar O’Toole rolled a one and a two. His jaw went rigid, but he said nothing.
Tintin dropped the dice into the leather cup, shook them, murmured a curse and a blessing, then spilled the dice onto the table. A five and a two.
“A tie!” Delight said. “We two must roll again.” She sounded genuinely pleased, as if entertaining her customers, all now whooping and cheering, was more important than winning the bet. She picked up the dice, shook them, and rolled two fives.
Tintin fixed her with his one eye and leaned forward to claim the cup. “Alors, mademoiselle, comme vous dites, vous et moi…” He scooped the dice into the receptacle, shook it briefly, and tipped it over. Only a pair of sixes or a six and a five would see him the winner. He threw a three and a four.
The crowd exploded in hoots and whistles. Delight wore a silk drawstring bag around her wrist and she loosed it and held it open. Finbar O’Toole pushed the coins inside. Delight picked up the brooch: three leaves and a stem, studded with diamonds and a few tiny pearls. “No flower,” the hawk had said when he gave it to her to mark the first anniversary of their bargain. “Your beauty supplies that.”
She turned to Blakeman. “Will you fasten this in place for me?”
Their eyes met and held for a moment. He smiled and slipped his finger between her breasts to safely fix the jewel to the red silk. “My pleasure, Miss Higgins.”
“No, Mr. Blakeman, the pleasure is mine. Shall I come tomorrow to Pearl Street to claim my thousand, or will you bring it here?”
“I’ll bring it to you personally,” he promised. “Tomorrow evening.” Then he turned and very deliberately stared up at the aerie.
Still in the hawk’s nest, Joyful was convinced he couldn’t be seen from where Gornt Blakeman stood. But the nature of that upward glance had made it a safe wager the other man knew he was there.
“Not you, necessarily,” Delight said. “Blakeman guessed that the balcony was there, a place from which someone could observe the gaming. It’s not an unusual feature in clubs such as this.”
“Possibly,” Joyful said. “But I think we should be very aware of Mr. Blakeman.” It was past three in the morning, and they were in her bedroom. The Dancing Knave was closed, the ladies slept alone in the second-floor rooms, Vinegar Clifford was in the bed that every night was trundled into place by the locked and barred front door, his whip at his side. Delight was eyeing her own bed with longing. Seated at her dressing table, she could see it reflected in the mirror, Joyful stretched on top of the counterpane, still fully dressed. “You’re not tired?” It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask—Will you stay the night?—but it was the only one she permitted herself. She was a fool. She should never have given in to him in the nest. Having eaten his fill, he was no longer hungry.
“A bit tired,” he said. “But I think I’d best sleep on Greenwich Street tonight. I’ve business in the Fly Market tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to be late.”
The previous autumn, when he’d quarreled with his cousin Andrew and moved from Ann Street, Joyful had rented a room at Ma Allard’s boardinghouse. At first he slept there only one or two nights a week—a respectable cover, he called it. During the past three months she could count on one hand the times she had wakened in the morning to find him beside her.
“Why the Fly Market? Is your new profession to be a butcher?” she asked. “Or a fishmonger perhaps?”
“Business,” he said curtly.
“As you wish.” Her tone revealed nothing of her anguish, or the fact that every time she looked at him she saw him as she had in that astonishing moment when he leaned out of the shay to sweep her to safety.
She’d not been sure he was real until he reached down and plucked her out of the street, the shay still thundering ahead, and Delight feeling that she might fall and be crushed beneath its wheels. Her bonnet had fallen off and her hair tumbled free—as it did now when she removed the pins that held it in place all evening—but miraculously she’d managed to hang onto her canvas valise.
“Look,” he’d said when they had cleared Canvastown, “if you’ve no place to stay, we can try to find you a boardinghouse. I know a landlady or two who might not mind being wakened at this hour for the chance to rent a room.”
They were on Broadway by then, at Wall Street, passing by Trinity Church, where every Sunday upright Christian gentleman who made money from the brothels and bawdy houses six days a week nodded in agreement when the preacher railed against them on the seventh. She’d put her hand on his arm, so he had to turn and look straight at her, see her clearly in the glow of the streetlights. “And will one of these obliging landladies be likely to rent a room to me?”
Joyful’s friend Barnaby Carter had made a sound that was something between a snort and a sigh. Joyful held back for a moment, then admitted, “In this part of town, probably not.”
“That’s what I presumed. It’s why I was where you found me.”
She remembered the silence between them, the beating of her heart, and the sound of the horse’s hooves clattering over the cobbles. Joyful spoke: “My name is Joyful Patrick Turner, I’m a ship’s surgeon. My friend Barnaby Carter has a warehouse on Pearl Street. It would do at least until morning.” And when Barnaby protested, Joyful said, “We can’t leave her on the street,” overruling everyone else in that way she would come to know so well.
He took her the first time right there in Barnaby Carter’s warehouse, in the same shay in which he’d ridden out of her dreams and into her life. Barnaby went upstairs to his wife, and Delight turned to Joyful and offered her mouth and he took it, and everything else beside. Quick the first time, slower and better the two times after. “What an extraordinary woman you are,” he whispered when the morning light seeped in under the big doors, reminding them the world remained to be dealt with.
Tell him, a voice in her head had whispered. Tell him how you used to busy yourself doing chores in Clare Devrey’s kitchen whenever he was there, come to visit the sister born twenty-two years before he was, whom he was just getting to know in that first month back in New York after Canton. Tell him how it was back when you were little Laniah stoning the hearth, or scrubbing the pots, listening to him talk about how he’d come home to be a doctor. Dashing out to get more coal or a few logs, and rushing back praying he hadn’t left in the meantime, just so’s you could go on breathing the same air he did. Tell him how not a day has passed since you ran away with his niece Molly that you haven’t dreamed of him. The words wouldn’t come.
They still hadn’t come. Not from that day to this.
Joyful got off the bed and came to stand behind her, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder, as if he were remembering too. She fussed with the stud of her left earring, meeting his glance in the mirror. “Delight…My dear, listen to me.”
“I am listening. But this earring has become troublesome.” Time was when she’d have asked him to loose the stud for her. Out of the question now. For months she’d told herself it was because of Joyful’s need to adjust to life with only one hand, to find a repla
cement for the surgery that had once been his passion, that he had seemed to cool toward her. She could fool herself no longer. Damn him to hell, she didn’t want to. “I’ve been thinking about the night you rescued me.”
“It was a good night. I’ll always remember it that way.”
Her heart plunged at the goodbye in the words. “Oh my, what am I thinking of!” The words rushed out of her, sounds meant to turn back the tide. “It’s so late and I’m so tired. Go on back to Greenwich Street, Joyful. We can talk tomorrow.” She was unable to keep the shiver from her voice, and hated herself for the weakness. “You’re coming tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“Perhaps. I’m not sure. Delight, listen…”
She turned to face him. “Very well. Speak your piece.” At least four times in the last month she’d been sure he meant to say it was over between them, and worked all her wiles to see that he did not have the opportunity to say it. She was tired of that game. Say what you want, Joyful Patrick Turner, and the devil take you. The last man who saw me cry was Jonathan Devrey; I was ten years old and he was fifteen. You won’t be the next one. Say whatever you want.
“I think…”
“Yes?”
There was a pause, as if he’d changed his mind at the last second. “This Tintin,” Joyful said, “I think he may be somehow connected to Gornt Blakeman. I think that business tonight with the wager was somehow for my benefit. If Blakeman comes again, keep a close eye on him. Let me know what you see.”
Relief flooded through her. “Yes, of course I will. I’ll tell Mr. Clifford as well.”
Joyful shook his head. “No, don’t say a word to Vinegar. Not about Blakeman, or about Tintin for that matter. I think the whipper is in league with Gornt Blakeman as well. I know that at least he runs errands for him on occasion.”
“What sort of errands? How do you know?”
“It’s a long story, and as you said, it’s late and you’re exhausted. We’ll save the details for another time. Meanwhile, be your usual clever self and keep me informed.”
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