Beautiful Lies (5 page)

She didn't seem disturbed by his impudence. “Do you think so?”

“I've made up my mind.”

“And why is that?”

In the most dangerous moments of his life Archer's intuition had always been keenest. That sixth sense had saved Tom in Cuba. Now he sensed that Viola Somerset was a formidable woman, one who would want to know the truth because it would help her plan her next move. This was no shy virgin who expected a devotion no man was capable of. This was a woman who would scheme to get her heart's desire. He just wished that he knew exactly what that desire might be.

“You're going to marry me because we're two of a kind,” he said at last. “I want you because you'll give me pleasure in bed, strong sons and a wealthy father-in-law. You want me because, in trade, I'll give you whatever you want most.”

“And that is?”

“Sorry, princess. But I don't have that part figured out.”

“Then how do you know you can give it to me?”

“Because if I can't, I'll die trying.”

She had a tinkling laugh. “I want to leave Broome and never, ever return. Will you give me that?”

“The very moment I can. Because I want the same thing.”

“I want a husband with property. I want to be the mistress of a station, not a man. Do you have property?”

“I don't have much of anything, but that's going to change, and soon.”

“Really?” Her tone dropped several degrees. “Come back if it ever does.” She lifted her chin, and sweeping the hem of her nightdress away from her feet, she started toward the door.

“Princess?”

She turned her head and stared icily at him.

“My name's Archer Llewellyn. You can embroider bridal handkerchiefs while I'm out at sea.”

“And my name's Viola Somerset. You can dream about me until the day they bury you forty fathoms deep.”

He was laughing when she closed the door behind her.

“W
hale him badfellow. You-me no come-up long pearling grounds.”

Bernard, the
Odyssey
's tender, a massively built Koepanger from Dutch Timor, shook his head philosophically and went to take the tiller to continue steering the little lugger away from the waterspout spraying the waves ahead of them. Tom remained where he was to stare at the unmistakable evidence that the crew was not alone at sea.

“If it's not one thing, it's everything put together.” Archer joined Tom, folding his arms over his chest like a sultan issuing orders to the royal executioner. The boat groaned as Bernard and two crew members adjusted their course.

Silently Tom turned to watch the waterspout growing more distant as the sails of the
Odyssey
snatched the wind. They were well away from the uninterested whale before the lugger changed course and continued toward the pearling grounds. The crew, a mixture of nationalities that stretched from Japan to Malaysia, knew exactly what was
expected of them, and each man worked quickly and quietly at his job, only trading words when absolutely needed.

“Have you ever seen so many thugs and murderers gathered in one place before?”

Tom inclined his head toward Archer. He saw the diversity of the crew as an adventure. “These thugs and murderers can make or destroy us,” he said, quietly enough that no one else could hear. “Best if we try to get along with them, don't you think?”

Archer went on as if he hadn't heard him. “And what exactly do you make of Bernard? Yesterday he and Ahmed argued, and he lifted him three feet off the deck with one hand. Mark my words. He'll gut us while we sleep if he can get the rest of the crew to go along with him. Not that any of them speak English well enough for a mutiny.”

Tom thought the crew communicated well enough, using their own sort of pidgin, to plot any number of heinous acts. But unlike Archer, he doubted they were interested. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Not a wink.”

Tom wasn't surprised. By day the lugger was comfortable enough, but by night it became the playground of a thousand winged cockroaches that dined on the remnants of oyster gristle in the hold and—if they felt the need for variety—on the toenails and calluses of the crew. Every night since he had come on board, he had felt feet skittering and wings whispering over his bare skin. And if that wasn't bad enough, the air below was thick with the smothering odor of rotten fish, Oriental curry and mildew. He and Tom had been sleeping in the mainhold on planks laid over hogsheads of water. The rest of the crew slept on deck beneath an awning.

He turned to Archer, whose scowling face was sprout
ing the beginning of a full beard. “It's only going to get worse. Juan told us we wouldn't want to sleep below. Tonight I'm going to spread my bedroll up here with the rest of the crew. There'll be a place for you, too, if you want some sleep.”

“Sleep up here with cutthroats and murderers? When Juan is sleeping in the cabin?”

Juan Fernandez was the
Odyssey
's diver, indisputably the most important man on board. He had come to Australia from Manila, and although he wasn't the best diver in Broome, his record, measured in tons of pearl shell, was good.

“Go ahead and take the other bed in the cabin, then,” Tom offered. “I'll be just as happy out here in the fresh air.”

Archer's sour expression dissolved into something more pleasing. “If one of us doesn't take the space, someone less deserving will. After all, we're the ones who open shell.”

Two mornings ago, just before their departure, John Garth had given them a quick lesson on shipboard life. Like the other pearling masters, John had made it a point to hire men of many differing backgrounds. A crew with inbred animosities and no common language was less apt to band together against a captain's interests. So the lugger had a Manilaman diver, a Koepanger tender, a Chinese cook, two strong young Malayan boys to pump air when Juan was down below, and an old sailor from Japan whose years as a diver had left him nearly deaf and blind in one eye.

And despite the fact that all the crew had extensive experience on pearling vessels, when decisions had to be made, Tom and Archer, who were brand-new, were in charge.

“What do you suppose it's like underwater?” Tom said. “Juan's a lucky bastard, don't you think?”

“Lucky? You had a good look at Toshiharu? That's what diving will do to a man. I don't know why Garth put him on this crew. He can't hear. He can barely see. He stumbles and trips every time something gets in his way.”

“He's here because he was John's diver on his first voyage, and John feels responsible.”

“The skipper's not much of a businessman, is he?”

“You would do the same.” Tom had lost sight of the spout, and he wondered idly where the whale was headed. “I know there are dangers down below, but I'd gladly take my chances.”

“Ask Juan, why don't you? Maybe he'll let you take his place.” Archer wandered off in search of a more active way to spend his time.

Juan came up from the hold, swaggering with a rolling, bowlegged gait, as if practicing for the long hours he spent on the ocean floor. An hour out of Broome he had abandoned his trousers and shirt in favor of the more practical sarong. His only other adornment was a gold cross around his neck.

“What is it you looking at out there?”

Tom already liked Juan, a deeply religious man who had erected an altar to the Virgin Mary in his cabin. “Eternity.”

“Too many men seen eternity here.”

“Tell me what it's like down below.”

Juan was of average height and dark-skinned, with cropped hair as shiny and sleek as the pelt of a mink, and long-lashed, languid eyes that took in everything around him. Now his eyes grew dreamy. “Below's not so lonely as this. Lot of fish. Lot of company. Up here a man keep looking for something but find nothing. Me, I think of home up here, but down below I think of nothing but shell.” Juan wandered away, too.

Tom had thought of home hardly at all since he and Archer had left the United States. He wrote his parents regularly, but he had only received one letter in his years away. His father had demanded that he return immediately or lose his inheritance.

Tom had never shared his father's infatuation with wealth. He was happier now than he had ever been as the heir to a great California fortune. He needed very little to stay alive, and he couldn't think of any reason why that would change. The Van Ness Avenue mansion his parents called home was as close to a prison cell as he ever hoped to come, and the chic young heiresses who'd bid for his attention had, for the most part, been dull or shallow.

He thought about the woman who was neither of those things, the woman who, even as he stared at the horizon, was probably preparing for her bridal journey to a small village in China.

He tried her name out loud. “Lian.”

Tom was still surprised at his own strong response to the young Chinese woman. He had seen her only twice. And the second time, on the morning he had gone to pick up the laundry, she had been carefully watched by her father, Sing Chung, a hollow-eyed old man with a scraggly queue who had shivered convulsively on a stool in the far corner.

She had been even more beautiful at their second meeting, her tunic freshly ironed, her face unflushed by heat. She had pinned her hair high on her head with an ivory comb, but he had missed the seductive length of it lying against her breast.

“Did you stay up late to do our clothes?” he had asked in greeting.

She didn't meet his eyes. “It was no trouble.”

He lowered his voice so her father wouldn't hear. “I'm sure it was. Thank you.”

She nodded, her eyes downcast.

“Your father seems very ill.”

“He will not rest today.”

A torrent of rasping Cantonese issued from the man in the corner, and the young woman blushed. “I must take your money.” She named the price they had agreed on.

Tom took his time finding the right coins. “I'm leaving this morning, and you'll probably be gone by the time I return. Will you at least tell me your name so I'll know what to call you in my mind?”

She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Why would you think of me?”

He didn't respond directly, because the answer eluded him. “My name is Tom. Tom Robeson.”

She hesitated.

He turned his pocket inside out as if he were still searching, although by now the money was cupped in the palm of his hand.

She met his eyes quickly, then looked away. “Lian.”

“Lian.”

“In English, I am a tree. A willow.”

“Willow.” He grinned. “How well it suits you.”

“Perhaps. My mother told me I must always bend.”

Tom thought about the life that awaited her and hoped that she would be able to bend without snapping in two.

The old man barked hoarse orders at his daughter again. She released a breath that was almost a sigh. “I will take your money. You must go.”

He held out the coins. He didn't know what else he could say. There was probably no life for a girl like Lian in Broome except servitude or prostitution. Perhaps it
would be better for her to return to her homeland, where at least her place in the community would be respected.

“May your voyage be successful,” she said as she took the money.

“May your future be happy,” he responded.

She looked up at him, her eyes clear but sad. They stared at each other for a long moment until the old man began to shout sentences punctuated with shallow gulps.

Tom lifted his laundry from the table, turned and left without looking back.

Now he
was
looking back. He wondered at his own strong reaction to Lian when he was so unmoved by women of his own background. He certainly pitied the girl, and he admired her beauty. But his feelings were stronger than either. He had been tempted in that moment when they stared into each other's eyes to reach across the table and touch her cheek. Hell, he had been tempted to grab her and pull her outside into the sunshine and a future with him.

Instead he had walked away. Now he wondered if he would walk away again if he found she was still in Broome when he returned. He was not impulsive like Archer, nor did his passions run as erratically, or as deep. But in that moment, staring out at an unknown sea, he wished he could sail back to Broome.

“Willow,” he said, trying the name softly. The woman who must always bend would remain Willow in his mind for the rest of the voyage.

 

Archer had never done a job he despised more. Just days after leaving Broome with their own private flock of seagulls in tow, the
Odyssey
had arrived at coordinates off the Eighty Mile Beach where the crew had been success
ful earlier in the season. Juan was anxious to try the area again, and Bernard, whose job was to keep the lines free as Juan drifted below scouting for shell, believed the area was both safe and potentially fruitful.

The take had been small at first, which was just as well. After removal from the ocean, the shells were left out on the deck at night, where they gasped for air as the temperatures cooled. The next morning Archer and Tom practiced using tomahawks to scrape away the sea growth that clung to them; then, with thin-bladed knives, they learned to cut out the oysters without damaging an undiscovered pearl. The first day Archer had felt the thrill of adventure every time he gouged the oyster from its shell. The next step, palpating the slimy mass with his fingertips, had been like searching for buried treasure. A pearl could be lodged there, anything from a tiny misshapen baroque pearl, worth little more than the time it took to discover it, or the huge, perfect pearl of a century.

Now, three weeks later, there had been no pearls at all, nothing more than a few blisters attached directly to the shell, which would probably prove to be hollow and worthless when removed by a more expert hand than his.

The thrill had vanished quickly, and all that remained was a stinking, filthy job that left his hands slimy and tainted no matter how thoroughly he scrubbed them.

The lugger had been transformed, as well. Strips of drying, malodorous oyster muscle adorned the rigging to be bagged and sold later in Singapore. In the hold, the cockroaches seemed to double in number and size each night, and the stench of the pearl shell reached above deck and infected every breath of air.

The constant rolling and creaking of the ship. The enforced inactivity. The boredom. Everything added to Arch
er's feeling that life was passing him by. While he ate, slept and worked with heathens who spoke in tongues he didn't understand, his dreams, like the Australian coastline, seemed to move farther from reach.

Strangely, Tom, who had been Archer's friend and champion since the war, seemed not to understand his feelings. Tom was thriving on the pearler's life. He had made a place for himself on board, and the crew both respected and liked him. Even now, as Archer stood to one side, the crew was gathered around him. Tom, thanks to Juan's generosity, was going below for his first dive.

Tom looked up at that moment and grinned. “Hey, Archer. Come over and give me a hand.”

Tom didn't need his help, of course, and Archer knew it. But he ambled over because there was nowhere else to go. “You're sure you want to do this?”

“By and by him go,” Bernard answered for Tom with a shrug of his massive shoulders. “So him go-long now.”

Every one of the crew members was a fatalist, unlike Archer, who believed a man made his own fortune. But he could see that the men believed Tom was destined to try his luck under the water. Tom, who had talked of it often, had convinced them.

“It's a good time to give it a try,” Tom said, as he allowed Juan to begin wrapping his chest and abdomen in flannel. Although it was scorching on deck, the ocean would be cold. “There's no shell to speak of here, so I'm not wasting time Juan could use productively. And it'll be tomorrow before we can sail to different grounds. So I might as well use this time.”