Aching for Always (20 page)

“But his daughter is not.”

“We are not going to harm her.”

“Who are you to set the limits of my vengeance?”

He crossed the room with such fury, she backed against the wall, and he brought his nose almost to hers. “Damn you! You know nothing about the limits of vengeance. Brand murdered my brother. Murdered him in cold blood. And if I find myself willing to stay the hand of vengeance with this girl, then you will, too. 'Tis my ship, and without it you will spend all of eternity on that accursed rock, clutching a map that will never be filed with the Lord Keeper. Do you understand?”

It took a moment before the anger in him subsided enough to see her surprise. And then he realized what he'd said.

“Your brother . . .?”

“Aye.”

“Oh, Hugh.”

He held up a hand to stop her, too agitated to speak, and clutched the timepiece in his pocket.
His blood for yours. A brother's promise.

“Hugh, don't you see? Finding that map is more important than ever. Joss Brand possesses it. You said so.”

“I said she possesses a map that looks like the map of Edinburgh you have in your cabin on the ship. You've seen it yourself.” He gestured to the London map done by Maggie Brand he'd taken from the map room, much to Joss O'Malley's dismay. He did not wish for Fiona to know the connection Joss's mother had to him and his brother—he was still trying to come to grips with it himself—so he had said nothing to her about the identity of the mapmaker. “'Tis not the map you seek. 'Tis of London, not East Fenwick.”

“There are other maps there!”

“We looked at them all.”

“I know you believe that room represents all she possesses, but, Hugh . . .”

He didn't respond. Fiona picked up the London map. “'Tis exactly like the one of Edinburgh. . . . With the same scroll at the bottom right.”

“'Tis a cartouche,” he said. “It tells the story of the map—or, rather, it tells the story the mapmaker wants to tell of the map, though sometimes, it seems, the story is only for the amusement of the mapmaker.”

“It is most amazingly detailed,” Nathaniel said, breaking his silence. “A menagerie of animals of which Noah
could be proud. What are these?” He pointed to an unusual series of vertical, horizontal and angled dashes that were woven through the designs along the border.

“I don't know,” Hugh said. “A background design of some sort, I suppose.”

“'Tis odd that it's printed in a bolder ink than anything else. If it were meant to be a background design, wouldn't it be in a lighter shade?”

“Wait,” Fiona said. “What's this?” She had flipped the sheet over. “It's a note—but not in English.”

Hugh took the map and examined it. The words were in a backward-slanted script, but it did not look like Arabic, and some of the words went right off the page, as if the person writing hadn't seen the end of the paper.

Nathaniel, who had been looking at the words as well, broke into a smile and tapped him on the shoulder. “Leonardo,” he said.

Hugh shook his head.
Of course.
He held the paper up to the mirror on the wall. Immediately, the words popped to life.

“I think,” Nathaniel said, “the writer used the map for a blotting paper, perhaps unintentionally.”

Hugh looked closer. Only parts of the note were visible. “‘. . . she has hidden it, though I cannot think where . . .'; ‘. . . perhaps it doesn't matter. After all, we have come this far . . .'; ‘. . . I grow impatient with her silence in this as in all things . . .' and ‘. . . the map that set things to right must never be found. . . .'”

“Is it in Brand's hand?” Nathaniel asked.

Hugh thought of that ornate
A
in
Alfred
, as large as a
walnut on the framed statement, and the
A
in
After
all
on the paper in front of him. He nodded reluctantly.

“‘. . . she has hidden it,' he writes!” Fiona pointed excitely. “
She!
Don't you see? Joss must know where the map is. Her father said so himself.”

“She is not the woman of whom he speaks.”

“What other woman could it be?” Fiona's eyes narrowed. “What do you know of Brand you haven't told me?”

Nathaniel tapped his pipe.

Hugh sighed. “Brand's wife was an accomplished mapmaker.”

“What are you saying? That a woman from the world in which we stand now made maps that traveled all the way back to the eighteenth century?”

“Perhaps she wasn't a woman from this time.” Hugh thought of the woman he'd first met on his brother's ship, forced to endure the most miserable of husbands. Hugh had never thought about it in these terms, but it was true that, personalities and Brand's clumsy accent aside, there had been a sense of something odd or ill-fitting about Brand that one never got from Maggie. Was it possible she'd been a woman from Hugh's own time, not, as he had always believed, a traveler from the future who had been an unwitting companion on her husband's nefarious journey? Had Brand been in England long enough to woo and marry an eighteenth-century woman—and to father a year-old child by the time Hugh met him?

Nathaniel said, “If I may ask, Fiona, what did Phillip Belkin, the man who knew your grandfather, tell you about the East Fenwick map?”

“He said my grandfather commissioned the map
showing the new property lines, then delivered that map and the deed of intent to his neighbor, James Brand, the other party in the transaction, who was to deliver it to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal to execute the transfer. And the transfer was executed—until Brand found a way to go back in time to stop it.”

Nathaniel's eyes cut to Hugh's for an instant before he spoke again. “I can understand how you believe Alfred Brand changed events, m'um—we have seen the unexecuted deed of intent, Brand was clearly a man of wealth, and he certainly used the passage to travel to the past—but how can you be certain the transfer you say Brand reversed ever took place. By your own explanation, once Brand changed events, everything changed for everyone. How could you know? How could
anyone
know?”

Oh, Nathaniel, what intelligence you hide in that sailor's thoughtful stare.
Hell, it had taken Hugh two retellings, one with figures representing the key characters in their current and former lives drawn on paper, before he'd thought to ask the question.

Fiona narrowed her eyes. Nathaniel coughed and bent low to retrieve the stub of a pencil from the floor.

“It was Belkin. I, of course, knew nothing of what could have been—what
should
have been. But Belkin told me stories, stories of when my family, the McPherson family, was wealthy. When my grandfather was a great man in the village. Belkin's cousin worked my grandfather's land. Belkin knew the people in our neighborhood—when my grandfather had wealth and after Alfred Brand took it away. And Belkin thought what Brand had done was terrible.”

Nathaniel stayed his course. “But,” he said, shaking his head, “how did Belkin know? The same question applies. Begging your pardon, m'um, but being a late addition to this adventure, I may not have all the pieces down properly.”

“He knew,” said Fiona, “because Phillip Belkin was in another time when it happened, like we are now.” And to Nathaniel's raised brow she added, “That's right. When you are out of your born time when events change, you remember the before
and
the after. Otherwise, like the rest of us, you don't. Belkin's the one who convinced me I could do this, who told me where the passage was.”

“And that brought you directly to Captain Hawksmoor and his ship?”

Fiona must have sensed something more in his question, for her answer was fast and fierce. “Aye, I found Hugh. My grandfather rots in debtor's prison, and my father works in the Brand family tin mine, where he's lost an arm and nearly his life. I think I have a right to be impatient.”

“I think everyone understands why this is important to you,” Hugh said. “I have a different question. Belkin says your grandfather commissioned a map, in the time when he thought there would be a transfer. Do we know anything about the mapmaker from whom he commissioned it?”

Realization dawned on Fiona's face. “Aye. He said my grandfather told him it was a mapmaker in London, off the Strand—the oddest mapmaking shop he'd ever seen.”

Hugh looked at Nathaniel, and Fiona looked at Hugh.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“Nothing, probably. Brand might have met his bride in the process of trying to figure out how he could stop his forebear from trading the land. I wonder if she knew
what he was planning when she fell in love with him.” Hugh felt certain she'd known by the time Hugh had met her. Her discomfort with her husband's activities had been obvious. “I think we're forgetting one thing here.”

“What?”

“Rogan Reynolds. What does he know?”

“He was here today,” Nathaniel said.

Hugh's head swung around. “What!”

“Aye, not long after the girl left. He said Joss invited him to see the dress. He asked a number of questions: how long we'd been here, your background as a tailor. And when he left, he walked around the building—twice.”

“He knows,” Hugh said as a cold certainty snapped through his bones. “He knows we're here after the map.”

“Or,” Fiona said with a smile, “he's afraid you're charming his woman out of more than her wedding skirt.”

That was a possibility, of course. Hugh didn't know what, if anything, Joss had told Reynolds about the goings-on in the shop. Until this instant, he hadn't been sure if Reynolds had succeeded Brand as protector of the map, and while he still wasn't absolutely certain—a walk around a building was not proof, after all—he knew from this point forward they would have to take every precaution. For Reynolds, possession of the map meant possession of wealth beyond any honest man's imagining. Even in its dismal financial state, Brand Industries was a vast empire that, with a little luck and good management, could be rebuilt into a king's fortune. Men had killed for far less.

“I think it's a code.” Fiona was gazing at the map.

“What?”

“The dashes in the cartouche. I've seen codes that are
made up of symbols instead of letters. If the note from Brand says she has hidden ‘it' and the ‘it' is the map, then this might be a code indicating where it's hidden.”

Hugh looked at the cartouche again. He had to admit, the odd pattern did give the marks the look of a cipher. “What good does it do, though? Maggie Brand is dead. The key to the code might have died with her.”

“Unless there's someone who knows how to interpret her codes,” Fiona said.

Joss.
“She told me she knew but little of her mother's maps.”

“And I'm sure you haven't considered the possibility that she's lying.”

“She wasn't.” How was he so sure? Or did he just want to believe?

Fiona snorted. “Stop protecting her. She's a Brand. Did she or did she not grow up in great wealth while you grew up without a brother and I grew up penniless?”

He didn't answer. The answer was aye, and Fiona knew it.

“Then she bears the guilt,” Fiona said. “Get her. Bring her back through time with us. She can look at this map and the one in my cabin on the ship. Trust me. She'll tell us what she knows.”

“By my word, Fiona, you will not hurt her.”

Nathaniel said, “She can't be held accountable for the family into which she was born.”

“Like hell she can't,” Fiona said. “And, Hugh, I think you'd better ask yourself if you're willing to do what you came here to do.” She left, slamming the door behind her.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN
 

Joss moved quickly across Smallman Street to the History Center, cursing. Not just because she was late for the party. Not just because she'd nearly twisted her ankle in the high heels she was wearing. But because Hugh had foiled her company's security, stolen her mother's map, and, worst of all, had caught Joss taking what she'd thought had been anonymous revenge on him via the security cam. No, scratch that. The worst part had been the faintest suggestion of a twinkle in his eye that seemed to imply the revenge had been more reward than punishment.

Grrr.

She had no idea if or when she'd see him again. He'd left the offices as unexpectedly as he'd arrived. And now she'd have to explain to Rogan why she wouldn't be wearing the new gown she'd just told him about that morning.

Another thing niggled at her from the map room. She'd told Hugh she'd been surprised to find one of her mother's maps there. But that was a lie. She'd seen her mother's maps there before. What was strange, however,
was that one remarkably similar to the one Hugh had taken, a map of Manchester that usually hung framed on the wall in the map room, was missing.