“Excuse me, ma’am, but…” Lizzie had an uncertain look in her eye.
“Yes, go ahead. What do you want to say?”
“It’s a gentleman to see you. He says…”
“Do go ahead, Lizzie. Whatever it is, I won’t get mad.”
“I know your brother’s dead, ma’am, but that’s who he says he is. I put him in the front parlor. Mr. Charles Tinsley is waiting to see you.”
* * * *
Letty paused at the closed parlor doors. Surely there must be some mistake. The visitor couldn’t possibly be her brother. He was dead. Mathew had killed him. Even so, her heart pounded like a hammer as she swung the double doors open and peered inside. Across the room, arms clasped behind him, legs firmly planted apart, a man stood with his back to the fireplace. Tall, lean, with a full beard, he was dressed in the black knit cap and double-breasted peacoat of a seaman. A duffle bag sat on the floor beside him.
Letty stepped inside. No, this definitely was not her brother. She stepped closer. This man was a stranger. She didn’t recognize him at all.
“Hello, Letty.”
That voice. No, it couldn’t be. “I don’t believe I know you, sir.”
“Yes, you do, little sister. Come close and look me in the eye.”
As if in a dream, she crossed the remaining distance to the fireplace, stood before him and peered into the depths of his gray-green eyes. Charles’s eyes. The breath went out of her. She couldn’t talk.
He clasped her arms. “Don’t faint. Yes, it’s me. Are you all right?”
She recovered enough to gasp, “Charles? Where on earth have you been?”
He burst into laughter. “It’s rather a long story. Come sit down and I’ll tell you.”
In the minutes that followed, Letty went from speechless shock, to gradual acceptance her brother wasn’t dead, to the giddy realization that he indeed was alive. He looked older. Lines that weren’t there before crinkled around his eyes, but he looked well, and was surely in control of his senses. She rang for tea. Now they sat comfortably in the parlor, teacups in hand.
“So tell me,” she said. “I’m dying to know where you’ve been all these years.”
Charles smiled thoughtfully. “Where to begin? I’ll start when I was still in Empire and had just brought a sizable load of gold dust from my claim. Garth wasn’t around, but his employee, Mathew Hastings, was. He said he’d take care of my shipment, put it in the hotel vault. That was then I made my big mistake.” He paused and shook his head regretfully. “No, not big. Make that my horrendous mistake. I was tired, hadn’t had a break for months, so when Mathew suggested I come with him to San Francisco, I was tempted. A vacation would do me good, he said. Time for some fun. I could visit my old partner, Thomas Fitzpatrick, who now owned a store on Market Street. I finally agreed, so off we went. When we got to San Francisco, Mathew suggested we have a drink, and I agreed.”
Letty jerked back in surprise. “But you don’t drink.”
“Ah, but for once I did. After all that work, that’s the kind of mood I was in. We went to a couple of waterfront saloons. I remember them still—the Tam O’Shanter, the Goat and Compass where the rum flowed freely and jolly strangers soon became old friends. By the time we got to Thomas’s store, I was pretty well liquored up. After we left, Mathew took me to the Noggin of Ale, a seaman’s bar that sat on a pier directly over the bay. I had another drink or two, maybe more, and then”—his mouth twisted wryly—“that’s all I remember. Next thing I knew, I woke up sick and woozy in a dank, dark place, hardly knowing who I was, let alone where.”
“So where were you?”
“I was down in the hold of the four-masted schooner, Isobel, bound for China with a cargo of grain and fruit.”
Letty sat back in astonishment. “You’d been kidnapped?”
“Shanghaied. That’s the word for it. Ironically enough, we were actually going to Shanghai. I wasn’t the only one. There were four of us down in that stinking hold—raynecks and joskins they called us—hicks and landlubbers who’d been fool enough to fall in the hands of the crimps, those merciless jackals who make their living supplying seamen to short-handed ships. The second mate, a heartless brute by the name of Callahan, was in charge of us. He told me how they’d knocked me out with a dose of chloral hydrate they put in my drink. After I passed out, they dragged me to a back room where they dropped me through a trap door onto a boat waiting below. From there, they rowed me to the Isobel, where they tied a rope around me and hauled me on board like I was a piece of meat. The captain paid seventy-five dollars for the four of us. And the worst of it was…” A muscle jumped in Charles’s jaw. His hands balled into fists. “I learned from Callahan it was Mathew who sold me to the crimp for ten dollars. Mathew! And the whole thing planned in advance. I don’t know what his motive was, but when I get my hands on that little—”
“You needn’t worry.” Letty raised a reassuring hand. “Mathew is dead, and it’s a long story that I’ll soon tell you, but please, do go on. I can’t wait to hear what happened.”
Charles took a calming breath and continued, “It wasn’t easy. One minute I was a free man, successful, contented with my life. The next, I was bound for China on a ship whose captain believed the slightest infraction of the rules deserved a good flogging. I worked like a dog on that ship. The food ranged from bad to revolting. Greasy pork, hard biscuits, cockroach-laden molasses. I choked it down, though, did the best I could. What choice did I have? I figured when we got to Shanghai, I’d jump ship but changed my mind when I learned the Isobel would pick up a load of tea and head for home. Awful though it was, I decided to stick with the ship until I got back to San Francisco.” With a wry smile, he added, “Only my plan didn’t work.”
“Did you get to Shanghai?” Letty was listening with rapt attention, hanging onto every word of her brother’s astonishing tale.
“The Port of Shanghai…what a place.” Charles closed his eyes, remembering. “Nothing more than a wide bend in the dirty Whangpoo River. Streets teeming with men, all with long, black pigtails hanging down their backs. And where were the women? The few I saw were a pitiful sight, shuffling around because their feet had been bound since childhood and they could hardly walk. One visit on shore was enough. I expected we’d pick up a load of tea right away and head for Frisco, but the ship sat in the harbor waiting for a cargo that never arrived. Days went by, then weeks. Turns out a war was starting. A Chinese thing. A bunch of rebels were trying to take over the city. The fighting upset the Chinese trade routes, so tea growers couldn’t ship their tea down the river. So there we were, stuck in China, no cargo in sight. Finally, the captain decided to forget tea. He took on a load of silk and next day was headed for England. I can’t tell you how desperate I felt. All I wanted was to get home, but even if everything went well, I’d have another five or six months just to get to England. After that, somehow I’d have to get myself back to America, and right then I didn’t know how. I hadn’t been paid, so I had no money. What could I do?”
Letty shook her head at her brother’s incredulous story. “Tell me you found a way.”
“My story gets worse. The harbor was crowded with ships. I heard that one, the clipper ship, Adventurer, was leaving for San Francisco next day. So I made up my mind to jump ship, swim to the Adventurer and hope they’d take me on. In the middle of a moonless night, I jumped into the water”—a momentary look of disgust crossed his face—“believe me, not the cleanest in the world, and swam to the Adventurer, or so I thought. Turns out, I made a mistake and swam to the wrong ship. Only after I was on board did I realize, but by then it was too late. They were short a seaman and wouldn’t let me off. Before I knew what was happening, I was sailing out of Shanghai harbor on the Morgan, a three-masted whaler headed for the South Seas.”
“Good God,” was all Letty could think to say.
Charles nodded wearily. “Can you imagine? More than anyone, you know my love for all natu
re’s creatures, but for three years, I worked on a ship that hunted and killed the most magnificent beasts in the world. But that’s behind me now. I’ll never talk about it again.”
“Did you say three years? That seems so long.”
“It’s nothing. Many a whaler is at sea longer than that. Finally, we went round the Horn to England with a full load of whale oil. From there, I caught a ship back to Boston, only to discover another family in our house. I went to the bank and talked to Mr. Winston. It was then I learned our account was closed, Mother had passed on, and the rest of my family gone to California. He gave me your address. I went across the Isthmus—there’s a train now—so here I am, your long-lost brother showing up at your doorstep.”
For a long moment, Letty sat in silence, overwhelmed by the story he’d just told. She could only imagine the hardships and horrors her brother had gone through. With a gentle softness in her voice, and a heart full of gratitude, she uttered the words she never dreamed she’d ever say. “My dear brother, welcome home.”
THE END
Meet the Author
Shirley Kennedy was born and raised in Fresno, California. In her early career as an author, Shirley wrote traditional Regency romances, one for Ballantine, the rest for Signet. Later on, she branched into other genres. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her older daughter, Dianne, and Brutus and Sparky, her two editorial assistants who love to nap in the sunshine next to her computer while she works on her next book. Please visit Shirley at www.shirleykennedy.com, or follow her Twitter account @ladyk360, or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/shirley.kennedy.52.
Table of Contents
Cover Copy
Books by AUTHOR
Gold Rush Bride
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Meet the Author
Gold Rush Bride Page 24