Aching for Always (19 page)

He looked at this slip of a girl, hardly more than twenty. “You run this?”

She shifted. “I try. It's something I do to try to honor my mother.”

No. The flicker in her eyes gave the lie to this fabulous tale. “You'll pardon me if I don't believe it—the company, the maps or the dead mother.”

She stood up, furious, and jerked his arm hard enough to turn him. Before him hung a small but beautifully illuminated map of Surrey. Beneath the frame hung a plaque that read:

IN HONORED MEMORY OF MY MOTHER,
WHO INSPIRED US WITH HER DEDICATION AND SPIRIT. WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOUR LOVE OF MAPS.

—JOSS O'MALLEY

When he turned back to Joss, her eyes were wet.

“Do you believe me now?” she said, and wheeled back to the chest of drawers.

He felt a rush of shame that took him back to the days when his brother would have boxed his ears for such an impertinence. What had he become?

“I-I regret my words about your mother. They were
most ungentlemanly. You honored me with your confidence, and I betrayed it.”

She made no sound.

“I feared your words were a way to get me to open up about my brother. For that, I am quite ashamed.”

Her shoulders relaxed a little. She brushed a wrist past her nose, sniffing, and toyed with the magnifying glass.

So the mother was true. He looked again at the inscription. He wondered if the daughter was capable of inspiring as much feeling as the mother. The little he'd seen so far suggested the answer was aye.

And then he noticed a detail drawn over Redhill Brook on the Surrey map. “Hang on. What's this?”

She turned, reluctant, and looked where he was pointing.

“Sheep. They're meant to indicate pastureland. Sheep for pasture. Upside-down Ws for hills.”

“But I know that stretch of land. That's marsh. Nothing but mud and weeds. Completely unusable.”

“Perhaps it
was
pastureland”—she checked the year of printing—“in 1701.”

He shook his head. “No, I can assure you. That piece of land has been marsh since time immemorial.”

She shrugged, an unapologetic curve rising at the corner of her mouth. “Surely you didn't think maps tell the truth?”

“Aye. Indeed, I did.”

She laughed. After his misstep, the sound was as sweet to him as the soughing of wind through t'gallants.

“Disabuse yourself of that notion,” she said. “Maps don't tell the truth. Maps tell the story the mapmaker
wanted to be told. Look at this.” She pointed to a map of the world on the opposite wall. “This is a Mercator projection map. It's convenient and mostly accurate for those of us who live between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, but look at Greenland. It's one-eighth the size of South America in square miles, but you'd never know it from that map. Nonetheless, the Mercator projection is a damned convenient way for eighty percent of us to view the world.”

“But how would it help anyone to believe a piece of land is pasture when it's marsh,” he said, returning to the rendering of Surrey.

“Perhaps the mapmaker owned that stretch of land. Or the person who commissioned the map. And perhaps that person was eager to sell the land to some unsuspecting farmer. What would make the land appear more valuable—little sheep capering over the terrain or a bunch of cattails and horseflies?”

He was stunned. “But maps are supposed to be accurate—as accurate as possible. Why, I use navigational maps and sometimes contribute to them. The men who make those maps pride themselves on the level of accuracy they provide.”

She laid the white paper over the topmost map on the chest and picked up the stack. “Let me ask you a question. Do you fish? Or hunt?”

He narrowed his eyes. Did tailors fish or hunt? “Aye, I fish. Occasionally.”

“Do you have a favorite place?”

“There are maps which show where the shoals and banks are located, which are usually the best source of fish.”

“I didn't mean the maps. I meant you. Do you have a favorite place?”

He thought of the inlet off Brest, where he could almost always count on a score or more of tuna, enough to feed his crew for a week. “Aye.”

“And did you tell your mapmaker friends about it, so they could put it on their maps?”

“Well, no. These are personal things. Each man has his own places.”

She laughed. “So you see, the maps your friends make lie in a different way, though it is through no fault of their own. The maps your friends make leave out relevant and perhaps critical information.”

“But that's—”

“How maps can mislead. They put sheep in; they leave fish out. There are two questions you need to ask yourself about any map: Who made it, and what story were they trying to tell?”

Maps can also distort when they disappear
, he thought, but pushed the notion aside so he could admire the gleam of passion in her eyes. “Brand must have loved this room.”

“No, actually. He had little regard for maps.”

He gazed at her full-faced. There was no hint of dissembling anywhere in that open visage. What would induce her to say what she'd just said unless she truly had no knowledge of the theft? “Indeed?”

“He considered nothing of much interest unless it made money, and the money the maps made was beneath his notice.”

That disinterest had stung her. Hugh wondered why.

She went to the next drawer and pulled out another set. “Are you a sailor?”

He started. “Pardon?”

“You said you fish. You use navigational maps. Are you a sailor?”

“Not much of one,” he said cautiously. “My brother was.”

“Was he really a sailor? I mean, you said he was a bookkeeper, but then again, you also said you were a tailor.”

He heard the pique in her voice and felt another wave of shame. “There are things I have to do,” he said stiffly. “I apologize if you feel you've been misused.”

She snorted.

“I wasn't lying about the chiton. You looked lovely in it. Truly.” He saw the faint gooseberry stain that worked its way up her cheeks. “In truth,” he said huskily, “making your acquaintance has been quite satisfying, and despite what's happened, I should very much like to—”

“Go to hell.”

The heat of her words surprised him. No, there would be no easy peace between them, and it had been foolish of him to try to broker one. He gave her a cold, unapologetic look.

She dropped the maps on the chest. “You're an asshole.”

“Oh?” he said carefully. “No ‘
par excellence
'?”

He watched the realization wash over her. It had been only a snippet of conversation, but he'd recognized her voice when it joined the other coming from the ceiling. He had no doubt she'd been the instigator of the commands.

He had never faced down a woman who'd forced him out of his clothes before. It was an interesting feeling, he had to admit, and more than a little satisfying. He was beginning to discover the twenty-first century offered more than noise, height and blather.

“I-I—”

“I shall take your silence as an apology.”

She made no response, though a number of emotions stirred on her face.

“That is,” he said with new interest, “unless it indicates something more?”

The volcanic rumbling she labored to stifle was, in itself, payment for the injury.

“'Tis no matter.” He made a low bow. “I am satisfied with the apology.”

She turned on her heel and dropped into her chair. “You have a lot of nerve thinking
I'd
apologize after what you did to me.”

“Gloves?” he inquired.

She flung them at him.

He sighed and retrieved them from the floor. With effort he managed to fit the tips of a finger and thumb in and used these to page through the maps.

“Here. This one,” he said upon reaching the third. It was a map of London—not the map he sought, but he recognized the lettering and highly stylized marginalia. Fiona had shown him a map done by the same mapmaker when she'd first purchased his participation in this adventure. And, more important, it was just like the one he'd seen on the islet. Who could have guessed that he'd be hired, twenty years later, to find the very same map?
“This is the mapmaker, but 'tis not the map. Come. Look at it.”

Joss walked over, fury oozing from every vein.

“Do you recognize the mapmaker?”

She gave him a long look. “Of course I do. It's my mother. Though I wonder what it's doing here with the antique ones.”

He blinked. “Your mother? That's impossible. 'Tis a map from the eighteenth century.”

“It appears that way, doesn't it? But it's not. That was my mother's gift, you see. She could make maps like they did in the old days. Aged paper, quills, hand-mixed ink. But it is the beauty of her designs that make them so wonderful. Look at the cartouche.”

He was still lost in trying to sort out how a modern map could look so like the ones he had seen before. “Cartouche?”

“This piece here.” She pointed to the fantastical shield-shaped inset in the lower right corner. Decorating the cartouche were two Scottish Blackface sheep, one of those medieval towers called a pele that one stumbled upon occasionally in the countryside, a hawk, a bare-toothed hunting dog and a wild boar.

“Is a cartouche like a legend? Legends I know. Even nautical maps have those.”

“No,” she said curtly. “A cartouche is different. It holds the title of the map, and it can also tell you for whom the map was made, the name of the mapmaker and even the purpose of the map. It is a story in itself, almost all told through symbols. ‘Start with the cartouche,' my mother used to say. ‘It's where the story is hidden.'”

“And in this case? What story does it tell you about this map of London?”

“I don't know.”

“Joss,” he said.

“I don't. My mother was a very good storyteller, though she rarely shared the stories behind her maps. I know a few things—not as many as I'd like. She stopped making maps before I was born. I suppose she was too busy working. But I know the meaning of this.” She tapped the wild boar. “That's on the crest of the O'Malleys. It's the symbol my mother used for herself.”

The hair on Hugh's neck rose. “O'Malley? Is that not the name of the map company?”

“Brand O'Malley, yes.”

“Was O'Malley a partner of Alfred Brand?”

She laughed a short, bitter laugh. “I suppose you could say that. My mother is Margaret O'Malley, and she was married to Alfred Brand.”

Hugh felt the ferocious spin of a maelstrom, worse than even the one sailors fear off the coast of Scotland. Joss was the daughter of Alfred Brand, the man he had sworn to destroy. And she was also the daughter of Maggie Brand, the only mother he had ever known and the one woman he would protect, even at the cost of his life.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN
 

One day, the dark, handsome man decided to see if he could find the gold the old man had thrown in the river. He said he would follow the river as far as it took him. The mapmaker was sad for her husband. She knew once a man fell in love with gold, there was no way to stop him.

—The Tale of the Beautiful Mapmaker

“How did we miss this?” Hugh demanded sharply.

“It says Brand had one daughter—Josephine.” Fiona waved the paper the publican had given her. Nathaniel smoked his pipe silently at the tailor shop's small counter.

Hugh growled. “Joss
is
Josephine.”

“Joss, Josephine. What difference does it make?”

Nathaniel blew out two quick rings and met Hugh's eyes with a look of careful concern. Hugh had not told Fiona everything about his brother's murder. She knew Bart had been a bookkeeper, but she was not aware Bart had been a much-decorated captain in the Royal Navy and the reason Hugh himself had gone to sea as a boy after the death of their parents. Nor was she aware that the islet to which she'd hired Hugh to take her was an islet
he'd visited once before, on a fateful stormy night, when he was ten. But Hugh knew that neither of those facts was the reason for Nathaniel's present concern. Nathaniel had witnessed enough of Hugh's feelings for Joss to see the emerging stress points in the vessel of this mission.

“She is still the daughter of Alfred Brand,” Fiona said, “which makes our objective here all that much clearer.”

“We are here for the map and the map alone.”

“That's a lie and you know it. I don't care what we agreed. The man who gave me your name said you'd been asking questions about Brand. He said there was a fire in you he'd seen in no other. Did you think I didn't know you intended to murder Brand? Did you not think that's why I hired you?”

Hugh gazed at her, speechless at this revelation. What other missteps had he made? “What if I had intended it? Brand is dead.”