A PERFECT ROMANCE
By
Alice Duncan (writing as Anne Robins)
Book 2 in the “Titanic” series
A Perfect Romance
Copyright © 2005 by Alice Duncan
All rights reserved.
Published 2005 by Kensington Corp.
Zebra Books
Smashwords edition March 15, 2010
Visit aliceduncan.net
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Chapter One
April 14, 1912
Even after the ship left Southampton, Loretta Linden firmly believed she’d been put on this earth to save it from itself.
Once the enormous liner, the largest ship the world had ever seen, had been sailing through Atlantic waters for a couple of days, her beliefs suffered a dramatic change. It became depressingly clear to her that she wouldn’t be able to save even herself, much less the rest of the world.
When the unsinkable Titanic scraped against the legendary iceberg shortly before midnight on April 14, gashing a 300-foot hole in its side, Loretta’s only reaction was gratitude that the ship’s rolling and rocking had ceased. She actually prayed the cursed ship would sink; at least she’d be out of her misery. Later, this reaction would shock her, as she’d been in the habit of considering herself an optimistic, unselfish sort of person, and not one to wish disaster on anyone.
“Miss Linden!”
Loretta turned over in her berth and attempted to focus on the door, an action that made her head hurt and her stomach lurch. Miss Marjorie MacTavish, the stewardess who had been seeing to all of Loretta’s wants and needs, in spite of Loretta’s best efforts to resist her, stuck her head in the room, looking considerably less serene than usual. Loretta recalled the crunching noise, lurch, and overall ship-shudderings of a few minutes previous, and deduced that Miss MacTavish had come to reassure her that things were peachy with the vessel.
She intended to say something like, “Yes?” or “What is it?”, but could only manage a groan that lifted slightly at the end.
To Loretta’s surprise, Miss MacTavish rushed up to the berth and commenced shaking her shoulder. The sensation was most unpleasant and Loretta frowned at the intruder. If she’d been stronger, she might have struck her.
“Ye mun rise, Miss Linden! The ship has duffed agang an iceberg. She’s foundering and ye mun get to a lifeboat.”
Loretta’s eyelids hurt when she blinked at the woman. The ship had duffed agang an iceberg? She’d never heard Miss MacTavish in so Scottish a mode. “You mean we bumped into something?” She croaked the words, but the stewardess understood.
“Aye! That’s what I’m tellin’ ye! Get up and gang aboon!”
Aha. So that’s why her stomach had quit heaving. How gratifying—although Loretta wasn’t sure what ganging aboon entailed.
With a great effort of will, she said, “Don’t mind me. I’ll just rest here for a little while.” Rather she die now and get it over with than attempt to make it to a lifeboat and resume her dreadful seasickness. Anyhow, Titanic was unsinkable. All the advertisements had said so.
Miss MacTavish’s lips pressed together. Loretta was amazed to note that the stewardess could express anger—and to a first-class passenger, at that. She might have been pleased with this demonstration of humanity on Miss MacTavish’s part had she not then grabbed her by the arm and begun tugging.
“No, please,” Loretta whimpered, fearing for her stomach.
“Stop your fittering and get out of bed this instant, Miss Linden! Quit daidling! You mun come immediately! The ship is foundering!”
“Nonsense. The newspapers all call the R.M.S. Titanic unsinkable.” While Loretta knew better than to believe everything she read in the newspapers, she’d yet become accustomed to regarding the ship as perfectly sound.
Another yank, this one so hard Loretta’s upper body slid off the berth. In order to prevent herself from crashing to the floor, Loretta swung her legs around and braced herself with her feet. “What are you doing?” The question was more or a whine than she’d intended it to be.
“Saving your bluidy life! Rise up and get ye to a lifeboat now!”
Loretta blinked at Miss MacTavish, whom she had never heard use bad language before. She noticed that the other woman’s cheeks were flushed, her hazel-green eyes blazed with some passionate emotion, and her hair, usually impeccably dressed, was falling out of its bun and making her look younger than she generally did.
“Where’s your cap?” Loretta had become well acquainted with Miss MacTavish in the four days the ship had been on the water. She knew full well that the stewardess never went anywhere unless she was scrupulously groomed, complete with starched white apron and chaste white cap.
Miss MacTavish’s hand flew to her head and she patted wildly at her fiery red hair for a moment before she shouted, “Och, what does my bluidy cap matter? Scutter up now or ye’ll croak in your berth, and then who’ll carry Mrs. Pankhurst’s torch?”
When she and the stewardess had first met, Loretta had come away with the impression that she had rather annoyed Miss MacTavish by endeavoring to enlist her in the cause of women’s suffrage. Miss MacTavish, although irked, had not overtly demonstrated the least indication of her feelings. Until this minute, Loretta had not understood that Miss MacTavish could succumb to sarcasm. Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst was one of Loretta’s heroines.
The stewardess’s words stung, but they also served to jar Loretta into an understanding of the present crisis. If Miss MacTavish could lose her temper, something was definitely amiss. Loretta couldn’t make herself care.
“Here!” Miss MacTavish snapped, sounding much less Scots now that Loretta had obeyed her at last. “Don your spectacles. Ye’ll be of no use to anyone if you canna see.”
Be of use. The words sank into Loretta’s fuzzy head and ignited the process of waking up. Be of use. Yes. That’s what was important now; not her seasickness. She might be of use to someone else. Loretta’s primary aim in life, and not merely because it annoyed her parents and her other stuffy relations, was to be of use to her fellow human beings on this earth . . . at least the female half thereof. The males could cursed well take care of themselves.
Hooking the gold eyepieces over her ears, she bucked up minimally. “Thank you.” Her cabin came into such clear focus that she had to close her eyes for a moment and allow her stomach to settle and her head to stop swirling. To her amazement, both cooperated for the first time in two days.
“Here. Don your shoon. It’s frightfu’ bluthrie up there.” Miss MacTavish hurled Loretta’s shoes at her.
“Where are Mrs. Golightly and Eunice?”
Before she had become so very ill, Loretta had decided to make a special project of the poor Yorkshire woman, Isabel Golightly, and her six-year-old daughter Eunice, whom she’d met on the dock at Southampton when Eunice had stumbled and scraped her knee in Loretta’s vicinity. Eunice was a charming girl and an intelligent one, and Loretta judged Isabel to be among the more downtrodden women of the world. She had figuratively rubbed her hands in delight at having such a worthy cause to occupy her thoughts and actions during the voyage to America.
That was before she’d succumbed to mal de mer, a malady Loretta had assumed she’d be above, since it hadn’t plagued her on the crossing from New York to Southampton several months earlier. Showed how much she knew about ocean travel.
“I dinna know. They’re probably doon aboot in third class.” Miss MacTavish’s voice was hard and she added a sniff to the end of her sentence. She didn’t approve of Loretta’s having deliberately descended into steerage and consorting with the poor immigrant families crammed in down there. She more particularly didn’t approve of Loretta’s interest in Mrs. Golightly and her daughter.
She’d told Loretta—politely, of course—that a woman of her high social standing, even if she was an American, had no business mingling with the hoi-polloi. Loretta had set her straight, or tried to, in no uncertain terms.
Miss MacTavish, being a tough nut and firmly attached to her native British class distinctions, had remained unconvinced by Loretta’s impassioned lectures and her forward-thinking egalitarian principles.
Feeling minutely stronger, Loretta stood. She did so cautiously and braced herself with her fingers on her night table. Her stomach didn’t rebel, which she considered a positive sign. After taking two deep breaths, she ventured another question. “Did the ship really hit something?”
“An iceberg.” Miss MacTavish had gone to Loretta’s small closet. She reached in and grabbed a woolen coat. Turning, she tossed it to Loretta, along with a life preserver. “Put those on and come wi’ me. Get ye some gloves, too. Everything’s tapsalteerie up there, and it fleeful caud.”
“Yes. Of course.” Loretta stuck her arms in the coat and wished ladies were permitted to wear trousers, which must be more serviceable in an emergency than the skirts fashionable in 1912 that bloomed around the hips and narrowed toward the ankles. She had long believed that Mrs. Bloomer had the right idea. She only wished now that she’d acted on her beliefs regarding rational dress and brought some split skirts with her aboard the ship.
If Miss MacTavish was correct, and Loretta saw no reason to doubt her . . . yet . . . the passengers on the “unsinkable” Titanic were in deep trouble. And, while Loretta sincerely doubted that anything truly bad could happen to Titanic, which was brand new and built according to the latest views on safety and sound construction techniques and was equipped with some sort of special hull that could resist anything, she saw it as her duty to assist others, even if that only meant soothing rattled nerves or helping youngsters and the elderly to lifeboats.
“Are ye able to walk?” Miss MacTavish eyed Loretta doubtfully.
Loretta was a trifle doubtful herself, and not merely because of her narrow skirt that made her feel more like a duck waddling than a woman striding purposefully toward her future. “Yes. I believe so.”
“Good. Then come abeen a’ me.”
Miss MacTavish hurried out the door. Picking up her skirt, Loretta followed her and was appalled to see a small trickle of water slithering down the hallway. “Good heavens! We really are in trouble.”
“We’re sinking.”
The words had been uttered as a flat statement that struck Loretta as horrifying. She stared at Miss MacTavish’s back for only a second. Sinking. Titanic? Sinking? Impossible.
She glanced again at the trickle of water. Perhaps it wasn’t impossible. “Are you sure you don’t know where Mrs. Golightly and Eunice are?”
Miss MacTavish had already knocked on the door of the cabin next to Loretta’s. “I have’na idea.” She didn’t wait for anyone to answer her knock, but jerked the door open and leaned inside. “Everyone out! The ship is in trouble. Grab your life preservers and get aboon—er, above, on-deck!”
A rustle and a couple of squeaks greeted this peremptory message. Loretta had met her next-cabin neighbors, two elderly sisters, a couple of times before confining herself to her own cabin.
“Is anyone helping those below in third class?” she called to Miss MacTavish, who had hurried along the hallway to the next cabin door.
Before knocking at that cabin, she turned and cast an exasperated glance at Loretta. “I dinna know. Probably the stewardess and steward. For mercy’s sake, just get yoursel’ aboon and into a life boat!”
But Loretta knew she couldn’t do that. Not until she had determined that dear Eunice and her mother were safe.
“I’ll find Mrs. Golightly first!” she called back to Miss MacTavish.
“No!” the stewardess shrieked, staring at Loretta in alarm.
Loretta paid her no heed. She waved a wool-clad arm in Miss MacTavish’s direction. “Go back to warning the passengers.”
Then, because she’d made it her business to discover how a first-class passenger could descend into steerage, in spite of the White Star Line’s prohibition against intermingling of passengers, she dashed to the service door at the other end of the hall.
“No!” Miss MacTavish screamed at her back once more. “Save yoursel’! For the love of God, Miss Linden, ye canna—”
But Loretta, who had never believed she couldn’t do anything, ever, didn’t wait to hear what Miss MacTavish believed she couldn’t do. She knew she could. And she did.
Chapter Two
October 1914
Fog slithered under the door jamb, adding a dampness to the room and mingling with the odors of thin soup, stale sandwiches, unwashed male bodies, and the vague Ecclesiastical scent of incense that Loretta Linden would forever associate with the Ladies’ Benevolence League’s soup kitchen and the nuns who helped run it.
The subdued murmur of voices provided a counterpoint to the far-off, melancholy warning of the foghorn sounding from its island in the Bay. In short, the room fairly pulsed with charity and benevolence, and even though Loretta was far from popish herself, she loved it. She counted the hours she spent here as some of the most fulfilling in her life. She dipped her ladle into the big iron soup pot, and her heart brimmed with love.
“It was the Moors done it.”
The ladle in Loretta’s hand checked in its forward progress for only a second. She focused more closely on the man holding out his bowl to her. He was a scruffy object, and he looked as if he’d been in a brawl recently. Unfortunately, his appearance wasn’t unusual in the soup kitchen.
“The Moors,” the man insisted. “They was the ones. They come in and took over.” He shook his dirty gray head. “Poor damned Spaniards didn’t have a chance.”
Deducing that the man’s comments were not directed specifically at her and that she didn’t need to respond, Loretta finished filling his bowl and again dipped her ladle into the huge pot of bubbling soup.
The Moor man moved down the line toward another woman who was handing out sandwiches; and the man behind him, who had seemed to be listening intently, nodded as he held his bowl out for Loretta to fill.
Working in the soup kitchen was often dispiriting, sometimes discouraging, and always interesting. Loretta knew in her heart that it was also vital. These men would have no food at all, unless they stole it, if not for the good ladies of the San Francisco Ladies’ Benevolence League and the nuns from the Sisters of Charity. If the ladies and the nuns left it to the men of San Francisco to feed the poor, the poor would starve.
“The Moors,” repeated the first man. “They was the ones.”
“Yeah,” said the man behind the Moor man as Loretta filled his bowl. “But they don’t serve soup as good as this.”
“It was the Moors.” The Moor man nodded at the man behind him, as if pleased to find someone who shared his opinion.
“This place has good sandwiches, too. Them ladies at the Salvation Army place don’t make good sandwiches.” With filthy fingers, he lifted the piece of dark bread covering the insides of his sandwich. “It’s got meat.” His voice was filled with wonder.
“Damn Moors.”
“Real meat. And cheese.”
Loretta watched the two men shuffle off and sit together at one of the splintery tables against the far wall of the soup kitchen’s dining room. They continued talking around and past each other between bites.
As she filled more bowls held out to her by more dirty, ragged, impoverished men, she wondered what caused some people’s minds to wander so far from reality as the minds of those two men seemed to have done. Had they been touched in the head at birth? Had their brains been ravaged by accident or alcohol? Were the alienists correct, and could miserable childhoods and poverty and violence induce insanity?
Some of the men served by this soup kitchen, she knew, had been laid low by drink, but many more of them, especially those of color, only needed an opportunity. And an education. Loretta deplored San Francisco’s educational deficiencies, even for white children, which sent her mind reeling in another direction.
Her blood boiled when she considered her yellow sisters and their offspring. The Chinese Exclusion Acts were products of the devil, in Loretta’s humble opinion, and fostered terrible abuses and inhumanity, especially, as ever, to female Chinese. If women ever got to take their rightful places in the polling booths, the fat politicians who passed such monstrous legislative acts would be voted out of office in no time at all.
Her indignation caused her ladle to tremble, and she spilled soup on her next customer, who jumped backward. “Jeez, lady, I didn’t do nothing.”
Embarrassed, Loretta murmured, “I beg your pardon,” and refilled the man’s bowl, vowing to keep her mind on what she was doing. She almost succeeded. She only wished there were more people in her great city who recognized the need to rectify society’s wrongs—and who would do so according to Loretta’s school of thought.
# # #
“It gets dark earlier and earlier these days,” Loretta muttered as she struggled to lock the door.
“It is autumn,” Marjorie MacTavish replied in her even, musical Scots burr. “The days are always shorter in autumn.”
Loretta slanted a glance at her secretary. She sometimes suspected Marjorie of veiled sarcasm. “Of course. Help me here. Push against the door, if you will. The recent rains have made the wood swell.”
A pause ensued. When Loretta turned to glance at her companion, she saw Marjorie eyeing her tan gloves in dismay. “Take ‘em off if you’re afraid they’ll get dirty.” Because Loretta truly esteemed her secretary and believed that the woman was not beyond redemption, she tried always to keep her temper, even when Marjorie tried her patience. What did gloves matter, when compared to human lives?
With a sigh, Marjorie sacrificed her gloves and pushed at the door, and Loretta finally managed to get it locked. “Did you bring the Runabout?” Loretta stuffed the door key into her handbag and pushed her spectacles, which had slid down her nose during her struggle with the door, back into place.
“Yes.”
Loretta heard the edge to her secretary’s voice and eyed her slantwise. “I know you don’t care to drive the automobile, Marjorie, but it’s good to do things that frighten you occasionally. Otherwise, you’ll become a mass of nerves and neuroses and you’ll never get better.”
“I know.” Marjorie compressed her lips as if she were holding back a sharp retort.
“I think,” Loretta mused, “that it might be good if I were to make you an appointment with Dr. Hagendorf. He’s an excellent alienist.”
“I dinna need to see an alienist,” Marjorie averred. “I’m’na crazy.”
Eyeing her secretary with reproach, Loretta said, “Alienists aren’t just for crazy people. Dr. Hagendorf can help with your phobias.”
“They aren’t phobias, Loretta. I dinna even believe in phobias!”
“I can’t see that it matters whether you believe in them or not. You seem to have at least one.”
Marjorie huffed.
With a sigh, Loretta wondered if the woman would ever overcome her inhibitions. Two years had passed since that awful, horrid night when Titanic had sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic, taking over fifteen hundred people with it. But Marjorie was as steeped in her terror of the ocean deeps as ever. Her anxiety about driving the Runabout was minor compared to her complete and absolute dread of the ocean.
Marjorie’s case was a sad one, and one that had entailed a complete life change for the poor woman. But Loretta wasn’t giving up on her. She honestly believed that Marjorie would benefit from seeing Dr. Hagendorf, a friend of Loretta’s, and an alienist devoted to the methods of Dr. Sigmund Freud.
Naturally, when Loretta had first brought up the subject, Marjorie had been shocked and had rebelled against doing anything so contrary to her conformist ways. Loretta trusted in her powers of persuasion, however, and she expected Marjorie to cave in to her stronger will one of these days.
The two women had reached Loretta’s Runabout. “Hop in,” she said cheerily, and thought wryly that it would be a cold day in hell before poor Marjorie MacTavish hopped anywhere.
Marjorie got into the machine, however, and Loretta cranked the engine to life. Then, since Marjorie couldn’t be made to hop, Loretta did so, leaping into her automobile as agilely as if she were a child instead of a twenty-eight-year-old spinster lady past her last hopes. Not, of course, that she considered herself thus. That was only society’s opinion. Loretta knew better.
She swerved into traffic, and Marjorie let out a yelp. “There’s no need to scream, Marjorie. I know what I’m doing.”
Marjorie’s only reply was a whimper. Glancing at her, Loretta wondered how a person could accumulate so many disabling terrors during a relatively short lifetime. Granted, poor Marjorie had lost many friends and co-workers, not to mention her career as a stewardess, when that ship had hit the iceberg and sunk, but she still seemed awfully poor-spirited to Loretta.
Another friend of theirs, Isabel FitzRoy, nee Golightly, claimed it was because Marjorie had grown up in Scotland, where class distinctions and strict rules of behavior had been instilled in her from birth, and that Loretta should stop hounding poor Marjorie. Loretta resented that. She didn’t consider her hints and lectures hounding. She was only trying to help.
Isabel had said with a laugh that one person’s meat is another person’s poison, but Loretta couldn’t see what that had to do with anything. She vowed to keep trying with Marjorie. Perhaps one day the woman would emerge from her shell.
They managed to arrive at Loretta’s mammoth Russian Hill abode without hitting anything extraneous on the way. As usual when she traveled with Loretta, Marjorie muttered a brief, whispered prayer of thanks before exiting the automobile. Shaking her head, Loretta entertained a rare uncertainty about her ability to help Marjorie ever loosen up.
It wasn’t until her housekeeper, Mrs. Brandeis, opened the door to them that Loretta remembered the parcel she’d meant to bring home. “Drat!” she cried, stopping short so that Marjorie bumped into her. She turned. “I beg your pardon, Marjorie. I left Eunice’s birthday present at the soup kitchen. I’ll have to run back and fetch it.”
Marjorie said stiffly, “I should fetch it for you, Loretta. I’m your secretary, after all.”
“Fiddlesticks! It was my mistake. I’ll get it.” And that was another thing: She couldn’t seem to convince Marjorie that she was Loretta’s secretary, not her slave. She clattered down the front porch steps and turned to wave at her secretary and housekeeper. “I’ll be back before dinnertime. If the FitzRoys arrive early, tell them I’m sorry and I’ll be home soon!”
She wasn’t certain, but she thought she heard Marjorie mumble something. Fortunately, Loretta couldn’t hear what it was.
# # #
“Blasted lock,” Loretta’s eyeglasses slid down her nose as she set her shoulder against the door, pushed as hard as she could, and tried to turn the key. It didn’t turn. It was as stuck as stuck could be.
It came, therefore, as a shock to her when the door burst open, a hand like a ham grabbed her and slammed her against the wall, her spectacles flew across the room and clattered to the floor, and an arm as big around as a tree trunk pinioned her by means of her throat. She would have screamed, had she been able, but she was being quite effectively throttled by the arm, and she couldn’t. In lieu of other options, she kicked like a mule.
“Damnation! Ow! Stop that!”
She gurgled back, furious, and kicked again.
“Will you stop that?”
The arm withdrew from her throat, and Loretta managed to shriek “Help!” before she was spun around and hugged against a body like a giant redwood tree, this time by two arms like tree trunks. She presumed the second arm belonged to the same man who’d pinioned her against the wall. One of the hands attached to one of the arms covered her mouth. It was so big, it also covered her nose and chin. Scarcely able to maneuver her lips apart, but fighting for her life, she bit into a part of the hand. She didn’t know which part it was, but her action produced another bellow of rage and another spate of swear words.
“Damn it!”
The arms loosened and the hands grabbed her shoulders, uncovering her mouth, which she’d have used to scream some more, except that whoever belonged to the ham-like hands, the redwood-tree body, and the tree-trunk arms started shaking her. Her teeth clanked together and she feared her neck would snap. So she kicked out again, this time a little higher, and her captor might have lost something of value to him if he hadn’t jumped aside. Loretta was very disappointed.
“You damned little cat!” the beast shouted. “Stop that!”
All at once, the room flooded with light, the shaking ceased, and Loretta finally saw the man belonging to the arms, hands, and body. Out of breath and pulsating with terror and rage, she balled her right hand into a fist, and aimed a punch at the monster’s stomach. He caught her fist in the hand with which he’d pulled the light cord and held it. Hard. Loretta now feared for her fingers.
“Who the devil are you?”
Panting, she glared up into two of the fiercest brown eyes she’d ever encountered, including even her own, which could be extremely fierce when she was roused. She was roused now. She wanted to kill this person, whoever he was. “Who are you?” she snarled back. “I belong here! You don’t.”
“Huh.”
Whoever he was, and even without her eyeglasses, Loretta could see that he was brown as the proverbial berry, as big as a house, strong as Hercules, and wore one gold earring that glinted in the light shining down upon them from the single bare bulb on the ceiling. Loretta saw that he also had on a black cape and a cap with gold braid on it. She’d never seen anyone dressed exactly that way before.
She also realized that, although he’d brutally manhandled her, her fear was vanishing fast, perhaps because he was staring at her in so puzzled a fashion. She doubted that a man truly lost to all morality would bother to register confusion before dispatching his victim. He released her hand at last and she stepped away from him, tugging at her shirtwaist and skirt, which had become disarranged in the row.
“Well?” she demanded. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
He, too, straightened. “Quarles,” he said in a voice like rolling thunder. “Captain Malachai Quarles.” He gave her a tight grin. “Your turn.”
Loretta, who possessed a literal mind, wondered only for a second what he meant by that. Understanding struck, and she said, “My name is Miss Loretta Linden. What are you doing here, Captain Quarles? I presume you aren’t a mere cat burglar.” She sniffed. “If you are, you’re a stupid one. There’s nothing in the soup kitchen worth stealing. We serve the poor.”
“Huh.” Captain Quarles turned away from Loretta and stooped to glance under a table. “I got a tip that one of my crewmen might be here.”
“We are near the dock,” Loretta said. With another sniff, she added, “Don’t you feed your crewmen, Captain Quarles?”
He didn’t deign to reply, but continued searching. Loretta was unused to being ignored. While her height was unimpressive, being a mere five feet and a bit, she had a powerful personality and was accustomed to people recognizing her as a force to be reckoned with. Yet Captain Quarles was doing an excellent job of pretending she wasn’t even there. He looked under another table.
“Are you expecting your crewman to have expired from drink? Is that why you’re searching under the tables?” She’d aimed for sarcasm, and was proud of the result.
Obviously unimpressed, Captain Quarles said, “Huh,” again.
Irked, Loretta spotted two gleaming circles lying on the floor not far off, went over and picked up her eyeglasses, and hooked the earpieces over her ears. Now that she could see him clearly, she decided that he bore no resemblance whatsoever, in the least little degree, to her notion of a sea captain, perhaps because of her experience on-board—and off—Titanic. Captain John Edward Smith would forever be engraved in her memory as the epitome of a ship’s captain.
On the other hand, Captain Smith had allowed his ship to smash up against an iceberg and had died for his mistake, along with most of his crew and the passengers, so perhaps her notion needed revision.
Tabling the captain issue for the moment, she stamped up to Quarles, grabbed one of his massive arms, and tried to turn him around to face her. The tactic didn’t work, as Captain Quarles was approximately as malleable as a granite statue.
Since she couldn’t budge him, she decided to pester him instead. “If you’ll condescend to tell me who your crewman is and why you think he’s here, perhaps I can help you locate him.” It sounded reasonable to her. She wondered if the captain would agree with her.
He seemed to. Straightening, he squinted down at her. He was a tall man, although not exceptionally so. Loretta judged him to be about six feet tall. But he was built like a monument. He also had curly dark hair that was longer than need be, eyebrows that didn’t arch but tilted slightly upward at the outer edges, giving him the look of a pagan idol, and full lips. And then there was that earring. Loretta swallowed, thinking it would be easier to stand up to the man if he were a shade less alarming.
“What do you have to do with this place?” he asked. His voice rumbled like thunder even when, as now, he wasn’t speaking loudly. He’d nearly deafened her when he’d roared at her to stop kicking him.
“I am a volunteer.” Loretta said it proudly. The irrelevant thought that she might look better if she hadn’t replaced her eyeglasses flitted through her mind, and she swatted it away as if it were a pesky fly.
“Huh. I figured you for a do-gooder.”
“That’s a disparaging term and one I do not allow to—”
He interrupted her, waving her explanation away with a powerful hand, as if he didn’t care what she allowed or didn’t allow. “I’m looking for Derrick Peavey. You know him?”
“The men who avail themselves of our services don’t normally give us their names,” she said, outraged at having been thwarted while delivering a lecture.
“Yeah? Can’t say as I blame them. What’s that room there?” He pointed.
Irate, but unable to think of a reason to deny him the information, especially since she didn’t expect he’d be deterred by her silence, Loretta growled, “The kitchen.”
“Huh.” Captain Malachai Quarles strode toward the kitchen door, his cape swirling around his booted feet, and bringing to Loretta’s mind tales of swashbuckling pirates and adventurers and so forth. She hated when her mind did that. She tried so hard to keep it under control, too. Peeved that he wasn’t deferring to her, she rushed after him.
He didn’t seem to notice. Opening the door, he looked right and left, found what he was seeking, and pulled the chain. Another bare bulb, this one illuminating the kitchen, flared to life. Loretta heard the captain grunt, and then he vanished into the room. She hurried inside. Unlike the captain, Loretta, who prided herself on her nerves of iron but was tender-hearted in spite of herself, uttered a gasp of consternation.
Captain Quarles knelt beside a man huddled on the floor before the kitchen counter. The man’s head rested in a small pool of blood, and several small, shiny yellow disks lay scattered around him. Ignoring the disks, Loretta ran over to Captain Quarles and gazed down at the victim, aghast. Then she recognized him. “Why, it’s the Moor man!”
The captain glanced up at her, and she detected antipathy on his hard face. “Peavey isn’t a Mormon, for God’s sake. He’s a sailor!”
Vexed, Loretta knelt beside the captain. “I didn’t mean that he’s a Mormon, although I don’t know why a Mormon can’t be a sailor. What I meant was that he was talking about the Moors this afternoon when he came in for his soup and sandwich.”
“Ah.” Captain Quarles nodded as if this information came as no surprise to him.
He didn’t enlighten Loretta, who took his silence amiss. “Well?” she demanded. “Why was he talking about the Moors? He wasn’t making any sense.”
The captain had opened Peavey’s coat and shirt and was pressing his ear to the man’s chest. He scowled at Loretta, who correctly interpreted this as a signal for her to keep still so he could verify that his crew member still lived. Loretta was beginning to seriously dislike the brusque captain. It came as a surprise to her when his harsh features softened, and he heaved a huge sigh.
“He’s alive.”
“Thank God.”
“I doubt that God had much to do with it. More likely it’s Peavey’s hard head.” The captain reached for the mentioned head, and made as if to lift him.
Concerned, Loretta leaned over to grab his arm. “Don’t raise his head! He might have a concussion.” Her bosom pressed against the captain’s arm, and she felt heat flow through her body from the point of contact to her nether limbs. She’d never had such a reaction to a man’s touch before, and it embarrassed her. She tried to pretend nothing was wrong.
“What do you suggest I do?” the captain asked with sarcasm which, unlike that of her secretary, was unconcealed. He didn’t seem one bit interested in Loretta’s bosom, either, which was perhaps more mortifying than the fact that her bosom pressed against his arm in the first place. Abruptly she released him and sat back on her heels. Her breasts felt as if they had been branded.
Sucking in a deep breath and telling herself not to shout at the boorish man because she didn’t want to be one bit like him, Loretta said, “I shall call a physician friend of mine. He can tell if it’s safe to move him and what should be done for him. This man might have to be hospitalized.”
“Huh. Peavey won’t like that.” The captain frowned at his fallen employee.
“Nevertheless, if he has a concussion, great care must be taken before moving him.” It irked Loretta that she sounded so prim and stuffy. She was accustomed to numbering among her friends all of the most liberated and forward-thinking individuals in San Francisco. Neither she nor they were stuffy. The captain brought out her very worst characteristics, and she disliked him for it.
She wondered if he’d be nicer to her if she wasn’t wearing her spectacles. Then she swore at herself for so much as thinking about so trivial a matter under the circumstances.
“All right. Call the damned doctor.”
With a huff, Loretta stood and patted her skirt down. “There’s no need to swear.”
He rolled his eyes, and Loretta stomped to the telephone, which was in the back room of the soup kitchen. First she dialed her friend, Dr. Jason Abernathy, who ran a clinic for the poor in San Francisco’s Chinatown district. Dr. Abernathy said he’d be right over.
Then she called the police. Anticipating indifference at best and refusal to assist at worst, she wasn’t surprised when the person who answered the telephone at the police station didn’t seem interested in a brutal attack upon an individual the policeman considered a derelict.
“I demand that you send a team to investigate this matter,” Loretta told the policeman in her sternest voice. “This man, whatever his position in life, was attacked inside the Ladies’ Benevolence League’s Soup Kitchen on Powell Street. He’s still alive, but that may change, in which case your department will be investigating a case of murder!”
The policeman remained unmoved. In fact, he sounded a trifle bored. Loretta’s brow creased when she heard his next words.
“My name,” she responded stiffly—she generally didn’t approve of trading on her name, although it was an old and honorable one in the city by the bay—” is Loretta Linden. That’s L-i-n-d-e-n.” She listened to the man’s next question with a wry expression on her face. “Yes. He’s my father.”
Suddenly the telephone receiver was snatched from her hand, and she jumped back with a startled cry. Naturally, the person who had perpetrated the uncivil deed was Captain Malachai Quarles. She pushed her eyeglasses up her nose and scowled at him. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Get someone over here now. This is Captain Malachai Quarles, and the injured man is one of my crew.”
Loretta gaped, infuriated, as the captain listened for a very few seconds, then said, “Good. Right.” and slammed the receiver into the cradle.
He turned and glared down at her again. His face seemed able to exhibit only two expression: sarcasm and anger. “The police will be here shortly.”
Loretta expelled a large breath. “Do you mean to tell me they responded to your command, and they were going to ignore my civil request?”
The captain shrugged. “Didn’t sound like a civil request to me. Sounded more like a demand.” He went back to his fallen employee and again knelt at Peavey’s side.
Frustrated and wishing she could batter the captain, Loretta decided she’d be shirking her duty as a woman and a Christian if she gave vent to her own feelings when a creature in distress lay nearby. Even if he was a man.
Because she’d been friends with Dr. Abernathy for years and had seen him at work more than once, Loretta decided that the best thing she could do for Mr. Peavey was to wash the blood off his face and cover him with a blanket or something. The floor was cold, and she’d learned from Dr. Abernathy that people who had been felled by a blow sometimes went into shock and needed to be kept warm. Therefore, she shrugged out of her woolen coat—Loretta didn’t suffer from her secretary’s delicacy of feelings—and gently tucked it around Mr. Peavey. The captain grunted. Loretta didn’t know if it was a grunt expressing approval or what, but she opted not to pay attention to it.
Fetching a clean dish towel from the drawer where they were kept, she wetted the cloth at the sink and trotted back to Peavey, trying her best to ignore the captain’s piercing eyes, which seemed to follow her every movement. They made her nervous. Unaccustomed to being nervous, Loretta took this, as she so far took everything about the captain, amiss. “Stop staring at me!”
“You’re cold.”
She gave him a withering glance. “I am not.”
He gestured at her bared arm. “You’ve got gooseflesh.”
Blast and hell. Loretta glanced at her rebellious arms. Sure enough, they had gooseflesh. “It’s nothing,” she said curtly.
“Huh.” Standing abruptly, Captain Quarles unfastened his cape and threw it over Loretta’s shoulders. It puddled at her feet.
Huffy as well as embarrassed, as well as stimulated strangely by the warmth of the wrap and the faint scent of the sea and of the captain it carried with it, Loretta snapped, “There’s no need for that.”
“Nuts.” Captain Quarles sneered at her. “Little Miss Ministering Angel. Here, give me that.” He snatched the wet towel from her hands and started carefully wiping blood from Peavey’s face.
“How dare you?” Loretta demanded, trying to keep her voice at a whisper in deference to the injured man, but so affronted that she wanted to scream at the captain. She reached for the towel, but Captain Quarles held tight.
“Will you stop that! I’ll clean him up.”
He gave her another sneer and his gaze raked her from tip to toe, making her blush and, thereby, enraging her further. Loretta didn’t take kindly to being made to blush.
“I thought ladies were supposed to faint at the sight of blood.”
“I,” said Loretta, thoroughly offended, “do not faint at the sight of anything.”
“I’m not surprised. Go look for the doctor, will you, and quit getting in my way.”
Because the captain was so very large, and because she felt it would be more humiliating to fight and be defeated than to submit gracefully to his obnoxious command, she turned on her heel and headed for the door. She had to bunch his cape up in her fist because it tended to drag, being very much too big for her.
Her joy when she beheld Dr. Jason Abernathy exiting the automobile he’d parked on the other side of Powell Street, while not boundless, was nevertheless sincere. The doctor, who shared Loretta’s interest in numberless causes, would be a pleasant change from the captain, with whom she shared absolutely, positively nothing.
Chapter Three
“Jason!” The fall evening was crisp, but thanks to the captain’s cape—curse the man—and her gratitude at seeing her friend, she rushed out the door and over to his automobile, holding the cape up so that she wouldn’t trip on it and go sprawling. “Thank God you’re here. I’m afraid the poor man has a concussion.”
Giving her a friendly hug, Jason said, “I’ll check on him. What happened, for heaven’s sake? People don’t often get bashed in the Ladies’ soup kitchen.”
“I know. And I haven’t an idea in the world what happened. All I know is that I returned to the soup kitchen to fetch— Oh, my!” Loretta slapped her hands to her cheeks, recalling the evening’s dinner engagement, and almost losing her cloak. She grabbed it and held on.
“Don’t worry,” Jason said. “I was on my way out the door to go to your house for the party when you rang me. I called Miss MacTavish and told her you’d be delayed. I’m sure Miss Eunice will understand. Fetching cloak, by the way.”
Deciding to ignore his comment about the captain’s cloak, Loretta chuckled as she pictured little Miss Eunice Golightly, soon to be Eunice FitzRoy, since her stepfather was in the process of legally adopting her. “I’m sure she will. Thank you very much, Jason. I forgot all about the party until right this minute.”
He patted her on the back. “Think nothing of it. I know your mind is generally on loftier matters than mere dinner engagements.”
With a frown, Loretta tried to decide if he was ribbing her, and if she should be offended. Ultimately concluding that she was better off not becoming riled with a friend, and that Captain Quarles was enough of a problem for one evening, she yet frowned. “I’m sorry Eunice won’t get her present until later, though.”
“If anyone in the universe will understand that disappointment is a part of life, it’s Eunice, Loretta. Don’t fret.”
While Jason was absolutely correct, Eunice being something of a genius who already understood more about life than most adults, Loretta still shook her head, feeling not merely sorry for Eunice, but also feeling as if this whole problem was somehow her fault. But that was utter nonsense, and she knew it in her brain. Her heart, which occasionally behaved irrationally, was another matter. However, she chose not to fret, as Jason had suggested.
“As I already mentioned, that’s a fetching cape, Loretta, but it seems a trifle large for you.”
Unconsciously borrowing vocabulary from the despicable captain, Loretta said, “Huh.” Feeling emotionally unequipped to explain Malachai Quarles to Jason, she added, “They’re in the kitchen.”
“They?” Jason snapped his black bag open as Loretta led him kitchenwards.
“Yes.” She couldn’t repress a sniff of disapproval. “The man is a sailor, apparently, and his captain came looking for him.”
“Ah. Wonder why the man came here if he’s gainfully employed.”
Loretta thought that if she worked for Captain Quarles, she’d do anything within her power to keep away from him, but she didn’t say so. “I have no idea, although his mind seemed to be wandering when he was in here earlier today, and he seems to have a fixation on the Moors’ invasion of Spain.”
Jason’s eyes opened wide. “How remarkable.”
“Indeed. I can’t imagine how he got back in after the door was locked. Or maybe he never left.” She pondered that possibility. Had the man been hiding out in the soup kitchen all day? Why?
As they approached Captain Quarles and his crewman, Loretta noticed that the small yellow disks had vanished from the floor. She frowned at Captain Quarles, but didn’t mention the matter.
The captain rose to his feet and held out a large, rough, and very tanned hand for Jason to shake, which he did without even registering distaste, which Loretta considered faintly disloyal, although she knew she was being irrational. She allowed herself another significant frown, however.
“Captain Malachai Quarles,” said the captain in his rumbling bass voice.
“Aha!” Jason sounded delighted. Loretta glanced at him sharply. “I’m Dr. Jason Abernathy. I thought you looked familiar. I’ve seen your picture in the newspapers. Delighted to meet you, Captain Quarles.”
Loretta’s mouth dropped open and her bosom swelled with indignation. How dare Jason express delight in this wretched man’s company?
“Thank you, Dr. Abernathy. Likewise.” The captain’s gaze sought his stricken employee. “Peavey’s awake, and he seems to be coherent. I didn’t want to move him.”
Again, Loretta felt indignant. “You would have moved him, if I hadn’t stopped you.”
Both men glanced at her and away again, as if she were nothing more than a nettlesome insect whose presence had made itself felt only slightly and, having been judged insignificant, could be ignored.
Jason withdrew his stethoscope from his black bag and knelt beside Peavey. “How do you feel, Mr. Peavey.”
“Got a headache.” Peavey’s voice was rough around the edges, as if he’d had to force it through a space too small to hold it. “Feel like hell.” His gaze, which had been taking in the kitchen and the captain and the doctor, picked up on Loretta’s presence, and he swallowed. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“For God’s sake, don’t mind her,” the captain said. Loretta wanted to bop him one.
As if sensing Loretta’s mood, Jason spoke before anyone else could. “Let’s just see what’s going on here.” After unbuttoning the man’s shirt and shoving his undershirt up, he pressed the stethoscope to Peavey’s chest in several places. “Sounds all right so far.” He folded the scope and stuffed it into his bag. “I’m going to have to palpate your head. I’ll try not to hurt you.”
“Uh-huh.” Peavey braced himself, and the doctor started probing.
As she watched, Loretta winced in sympathy, then sought the captain. He was, naturally, looking at her and had caught her expression, which might be—and undoubtedly was, by him—interpreted as an example of womanly weakness. Drat him. She scowled at him. His sneer altered not. Beastly man. Wretched man.
She was saved by the sound of people at the door. Hurrying out of the kitchen, Loretta saw that the police had arrived. Had they done so at her bidding, she would have greeted them gladly. As it was, she resented them almost as much as she resented Captain Malachai Quarles.
A sergeant of police spotted her and came forward. “Good evening, ma’am. I understand there’s trouble here.”
“Yes. A man named—”
”Excuse me, ma’am, but I understand Captain Quarles is here.”
Loretta felt herself swelling, rather like a hot-air balloon she’d seen recently in Golden Gate Park. Only it wasn’t hot air inflating her, it was pure, unadulterated rage. “Captain Quarles has nothing to do with this!” she said, rather more loudly than she had intended.
“This way,” a voice rumbled at her back.
Loretta shut her eyes and counted to fifteen, ten seeming insufficient to the purpose.
“Sergeant Bowes, Captain Quarles.” The policemen, all with broad smiles on their faces, walked right past Loretta and up to the captain. The sergeant held out his hand, and the captain shook it. “It’s good to meet you. I’ve read all about your treasure ship in the Chronicle.”
As she glowered after them, Loretta’s brain commenced to whirl. The captain had been in the Chronicle? With his treasure ship? What treasure ship? Both the policeman and Jason had mentioned seeing the horrid captain in the newspaper. Had the man done something noteworthy? Loretta read the newspapers, but her interests were political and social. She didn’t pay much attention to other news, most of which she deemed frivolous.
Perceiving no alternative unless she wanted to be left out of the action entirely, she walked after the new arrivals and the captain and into the kitchen. Inspecting the captain from behind, she decided he still didn’t look like any self-respecting sea captain she’d ever seen. He looked more like a pirate. She hated to admit it, but he had quite the swashbuckling air about him.
Jason was still in the process of examining Mr. Peavey, so she stood back, leaned against a counter, and watched. Loretta Linden wasn’t accustomed to being out of the limelight. Nor was she accustomed to feeling left out and ignored. The sensations didn’t sit well with her.
While Jason continued to prod and probe Peavey’s body, the police sergeant began his interrogation of Mr. Peavey. The sergeant’s minions started inspecting the premises, for all the good that would do them, Loretta thought bitterly. She was intimately acquainted with the Ladies’ Benevolence League’s soup kitchen and, except for the body and blood on the floor, she hadn’t detected a single thing out of place.
She remembered those shiny yellow disks and her gaze sought the captain. He was no longer there. Damn the man to perdition, he’d probably escaped with the loot!
A deep voice behind her made her jump, and she whirled around. There he was, all right. He’d sneaked up behind her on the other side of the counter, the repellant, skulking brute. Giving him one of her more magnificent frowns, she hissed, “Who are you?”
His dark eyes gleamed maliciously. “I told you who I am. Captain Malachai Quarles.”
She knew he was toying with her. She hated him for it. “You know very well what I mean,” she said, giving a broad gesture that almost cost her the warmth of his cloak. She clutched it to her bosom, still frowning. “All these men seem to know you from the newspaper. What did you do? Murder someone?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” the captain said snidely. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Miss Linden. These gentlemen have read about me in the newspapers because I am captain of the ship Moor’s Revenge, and my crew and I have recently discovered a sunken Moorish ship off the coast of a small, unnamed island in the Canaries, along with a king’s ransom in old Moorish and Spanish coins and other ancient treasure and historical artifacts.”
Merciful heavens. “Oh.” Her mind raced. “Is that why Mr. Peavey was raving about Moors earlier in the day, when he was taking luncheon with us?”
“I suppose. His mind goes off on tangents sometimes.” The captain shrugged his mammoth shoulders.
Loretta wished she hadn’t noticed his shoulders. They were at present straining the fabric of his fine lawn shirt as well as her feminist principles. She rather wished she could inspect those shoulders more closely. She also wished she hadn’t noticed the fineness of the cloth out of which his shirt was made, since she believed she ought to be above such things.
Curse her eyeglasses! She was sure that if she weren’t wearing them, she wouldn’t be so keenly aware of the captain’s manly charms. She also suspected the captain wouldn’t be treating her in this offhand, not to say ungentlemanly, way, if she weren’t wearing them. Captain Smith, of the doomed Titanic, had been the soul of courtesy. Then again, Captain Smith was dead.
Mentally smacking herself, Loretta brought her brain back to important issues. “Yes. I suppose that explains it, then.” She recalled the shiny yellow disks. “Is that what you picked up from the floor? Those golden coins? Were they part of the Moorish treasure?” She sniffed to let the captain know what she thought of people who stole from the incapacitated.
His eyes narrowed. “You saw the coins?”
“Of course, I saw the coins! I’m not blind, even if you did knock my spectacles off.”
“Huh.” One of his big brown hands lifted, and he stroked his chin. Loretta had a mad impulse to take over the operation from him.
Whatever was the matter with her? She’d never had these impulses before, not even with men whom she liked. She abominated the captain. “Well? Were they Moorish coins? Or Spanish coins? And did you steal them from Mr. Peavey?”
With a glower that was ever so much more magnificent than any she could produce, curse the man, Captain Quarles snarled, “I don’t steal. Yes, they were Moorish coins. Now will you be quiet about them? I don’t want the whole world to know about this!”
Loretta considered the possibility of a person exploding from an excess of built-up bile. “Well, you can jolly well tell me about them, Captain Quarles, because your employee was blackjacked in my soup kitchen! I’ll not let the matter rest,” she warned him.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” the captain muttered under his breath. “All right. If it’ll keep your mouth shut, I’ll tell you about it.” And with that, he reached across the counter, snagged Loretta’s arm in a grip like iron, and dragged her toward the kitchen door.
Only out of deference to the ill man, Loretta didn’t shriek with rage. “Stop that!” she whispered furiously.
“Huh.” He didn’t alter his path or lighten his grip on her arm, but led her relentlessly from the kitchen. After he’d shut the door behind them, Captain Quarles released Loretta’s arm. She had to command herself not to rub the bruised place—but she wouldn’t give the unmitigated animal the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her. “Sit down.”
“I prefer to stand.”
He eyed her evilly. “Suit yourself. And don’t go blabbing about this, Miss Linden. It’s not for public knowledge. If the press gets hold of it, God alone knows what will happen.”
“I,” said Loretta through tightly clenched teeth, “do not blab.”
With a look of utter disdain, the Captain said, “All women blab. But you’d better not this time.”
“Why, you insufferable lout! I’ll have you know—”
“Do you want to hear this or not?” demanded the captain. “If you do, quit blabbing.”
Irate that the captain should consider her legitimate concerns blabbing, Loretta perceived no way to alter his opinion without confirming it. In spite of herself, she obeyed him, shutting her mouth with a clack of teeth and wishing for the first time in her life that she carried a gun. Even a small one would result in satisfying pain to the overbearing captain. She said through her teeth, “Tell me.”
“I’m in partnership with William Frederick Tillinghurst.” One black eyebrow lifted over a devilishly dark eye. “You’ve heard of him, I suppose?”
“I know him. He’s a business associate of my father’s,” Loretta conceded, wondering as she spoke if she was unconsciously attempting to impress the captain with her social status, damn her ego to perdition.
If her ego had been seeking to undermine her egalitarian principles with snob appeal, the attempt failed. The captain said, “Tillinghurst is my partner in the treasure hunt. He provided the funding, along with Stanford University and the Museum of Natural History, and I provided the ship, the crew, and the expertise. We found the galleon, and my divers raised most of it. It was an incredible find, and of tremendous historical and monetary value.”
“You,” Loretta said in a scathing tone, “are primarily interested in the historical properties of the find, no doubt.” She gave him a sneer of her own. Not having had much practice, she feared her effort paled in comparison to any one of his sneers.
She was right, as she noticed immediately when he sneered back at her. “As surprising as I’m sure you find it, yes, that is my primary interest. I don’t need the money.”
How fascinating! Again borrowing from him, she said, “Huh.”
He went on, “The ship docked in San Francisco a week and a half ago. I’m surprised you haven’t read about it in the newspapers, because there was a lot of publicity. Tillinghurst likes that sort of thing.”
He frowned, leaving Loretta to deduce that Tillinghurst’s partner was not, unlike Tillinghurst himself, a publicity hound. She almost wished he was, because it would give her one more good reason, not that she needed another one, to hate him.
“About three days ago, some of the treasure disappeared, along with two of my crewmen, including Peavey.” He gestured at the closed kitchen door. “I don’t want it to get out that we’ve had any trouble of this nature, because it will reflect badly on my operation.”
Loretta sniffed. “Perhaps it will reflect the truth,” she said, taking venomous glee from the fact that her words made the captain wince.
“I’ve worked with Peavey and Jones for years. They’re both good men. I can’t believe they had anything to do with the missing artifacts.”
“There were those coins on the floor,” Loretta reminded the captain.
He didn’t appreciate the reminder. “Yes. I saw them.”
“Yet you still exonerate Mr. Peavey?”