Full Steam Ahead (15 page)

Darius inhaled a steadying breath and braced his feet. He’d have only one shot at this.
God,
you closed the mouths of the lions for Daniel. Please
do the same with this snake.

He leaned forward, his eyes glued to the boy’s middle. His fingers spread slightly in readiness.
One. Two. Thr—

Thwack!

A small blade pierced the snake’s head and pinned it to the ground. A precision shot.

Together, Darius and the lad turned in the direction from which the throw had come.

His intrepid secretary stood glaring at the rattler, her face flushed, her breathing heavy, and her outstretched right hand in perfect post-throwing position.

N
icole gulped air into her lungs, doing all she could not to bend over and brace her hands on her knees. Even with the loose lacing she’d always preferred, she swore she could feel her corset compressing her lungs. But she dared not show any weakness. With the snake out of the way now, the boy might try to take off again.

When Mrs. Wellborn had cried
thief
, Nicole’s heart plummeted to her stomach. Had Will and Fletcher paid the boy to ransack the house while they’d all been away at church? It wouldn’t be hard for the boy to pick her room out from the others. How much time had he spent inside before they’d come home? Enough time to search the few drawers and under the mattress and realize that the Lafitte Dagger must be hidden elsewhere? Had he been clever enough to notice the uneven floorboard? He was a small lad, his eyes closer to the floor than a man’s.

Most likely the boy was simply looking for a few baubles to pawn, but she couldn’t be too careful. Her family’s future rested on that dagger. If even the slimmest chance existed
that this boy had it, she’d chase him all the way to the Gulf. She needed to see his cache.

She turned to address the lad and found two pairs of eyes staring at her as if she’d just sprouted a horn in the middle of her forehead.

“Gadzooks, lady! Where’d you learn to throw like that?” The awe in the boy’s tone brought heat to her cheeks.

“A pirate taught me,” she snapped, stomping forward to reclaim her blade. For heaven’s sake. Did
all
males assume women to be helpless creatures incapable of fending for themselves? Pressing her shoe against the snake’s neck, she held the lifeless rattler down and yanked the knife free. There wasn’t much blood, but still, she couldn’t exactly lift her skirts and slip it back into the sheath strapped to her thigh with Darius and a child looking on in rapt attention.

“A pirate, Miss Greyson?” Darius regarded her with a raised brow, obviously not as awestruck as the gaping boy at his side.

She sighed. “All right, so my father was an ordinary seaman, not a pirate. But I used to imagine him a pirate while we had our lessons.” She tossed a wink at the boy. “Made it so much more fun, you know. My father ensured I was proficient with pistols, too, but I preferred the blades. So much more elegant and lighter weight. Much better suited to a lady, wouldn’t you say? Pistols are dirty things, what with all that black powder and the flash from the flintlock every time one pulls the trigger.” She gave a little shudder, and the boy cracked a smile.

Now was as good a time as any, she supposed.

Gesturing toward the odd-shaped lump bulging around the boy’s middle with a tilt of her head, Nicole kept her tone light, nonthreatening. “Care to show me what you’ve got hidden beneath your shirt?”

The boy’s arms wrapped tentatively around his belly, and his gaze dropped to the ground. His shoulders slumped. “I guess it’s only fair I give it back. Since you saved me from that rattler and all.” He tugged his shirttails free from his trousers and cupped his hands beneath to catch the loot.

Loot that amounted to a round loaf of bread, a jar of jam, and a small wedge of cheese.

He extended the offerings to her, the thinness of his wrists evident as they stretched past the ends of his too-short sleeves. Nicole’s heart twisted into a painful knot as she stepped forward to accept the stolen items from him. Moisture collected at the back of her eyes.
She
felt like the thief, taking food from a boy so obviously in need of nourishment.

“Where are your parents?” Darius asked in a voice carefully devoid of recrimination as he stepped closer and placed a hand on the lad’s shoulder.

The child flinched, but whether from Darius’s touch or his question, Nicole couldn’t decipher.

“Dead, sir.”

“And your guardian?”

The boy’s face blared mutiny, his lips a thin line, his eyes narrowed. “I ain’t tellin’ ’cause I ain’t goin’ back. Not ever.”

Nicole met Darius’s gaze over the youngster’s head. What atrocities had the boy suffered that made scrounging around on his own preferable to living with his guardian? Her heart broke for the little warrior, his arms crossed over his bony chest, his determination not quite hiding the fear in his eyes.

They couldn’t turn him over to the law. He’d be forced to return to his guardian or sent to a workhouse. What kind of life was that for a young lad? He’d only taken food, nothing of monetary worth.

As if Darius had read her thoughts, he hunkered down in
front of the boy. “My name’s Darius Thornton, and I own the house back there.” He tipped his head in the direction of Oakhaven. “I’m a very busy man with important work to see to, and chasing you out into this field has inconvenienced me greatly.”

The boy hung his head, his spirit draining out of him. Nicole gritted her teeth and surged forward to intervene, but Darius stopped her with a look.

“There might be a way you could make it up to me, however.” He paused, not saying more until the boy met his eye.

“You see, it occurs to me that I might be able to get even more of my important work done if I had additional help around the place.” He leaned close and lowered his voice as if imparting a secret. “Wellborn, the other fellow back there? Well, he’s a bit of a dandy, always dressed to the nines. Hates to get dirty. So half the time, I’m the one mucking the stalls in the barn when what I should be doing is researching steam pressure and boiler plates. You ever muck a stall, boy?”

The lad eyed him speculatively. “Yes, sir.”

“Know how to saddle a horse or harness a team?”

“I done it a time or two.”

Darius thumped him lightly on the shoulder, then pushed up to his feet. “Excellent! I thought you had the look of a lad who knew his way around a barn. I bet you can even milk a cow.”

“Shoot, mister. I been milkin’ cows since I was big enough to carry the pail without spillin’.” A light of understanding suddenly lit the boy’s eyes. His arms uncrossed in a flash, and he bobbed around in front of Darius like a dog waiting for his master to throw him a ball. “I can feed chickens, too,” he said, “and collect eggs. And I know the difference ’tween a weed and a carrot top. I used to help my ma out
in the garden back home. I bet I could save you all kinds of time, Mr. Thornton.”

He glanced guiltily at the food in Nicole’s hand.

“I don’t eat much. Honest. That would have lasted me several days. And I could bunk in the barn. I’m used to sleepin’ outside. I wouldn’t even need a blanket or nothin’.”

Darius sharpened his gaze on the lad. “Now see here, young man. If you come to work for me, I expect you to eat every morsel placed in front of you. You’re scrawny enough as it is. I don’t care to have walking skeletons on my payroll. They’re too fragile.”

The boy stood tall. “I’m strong, mister. I swear. I won’t be lettin’ you down. No, sir. I’ll clean my plate every night, just like my mama taught me. You’ll see.”

Nicole suppressed a smile. “You better promise the same for breakfast and noon, as well. Mr. Thornton can’t abide waste.”

The boy’s jaw slackened, as if he couldn’t quite imagine such bounty as three meals in the same day. Then he closed his mouth with a snap and nodded like a soldier accepting orders. “Breakfast and noon, too.”

“And when I set up your cot in the tack room,” Darius continued, his tone serious, “I expect you to make it up every morning, no matter how many blankets there are. Understand?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“And when I pay your wages at the end of the month, no running off to town to fritter them away on candy if there’s still work to be done.”

“W-wages?” The poor boy looked completely overwhelmed.

Darius did, too, though he did a better job of hiding it. There was a definite shimmer of compassion in his eyes, and
his voice had gone rather thick. In fact, he had to clear his throat before he continued.

“You heard me,” he said gruffly. “Wages. I’m from the north, boy. I don’t believe in slavery. What I do believe in is respect, hard work, and integrity. Give me that, and we’ll get along just fine. So what do you say? Will you come work for me?”

The boy nodded, his eyes still a bit glazed. “Yes, sir.”

Nicole’s chest felt near to bursting, not only for the child so in need of a home, but for the tender heart of the man offering one for the lad’s use. Not exactly what she expected from an obsessive scientist, even one with a noble purpose. For despite his arguments to the contrary, she expected having the boy underfoot would hinder more than help, at least at first, as the boy learned his way around. But Darius was willing to take him on anyway. Even after the lad had stolen from him. She couldn’t imagine many of the men she’d met in Galveston or Boston taking such charitable action.

Before the dreamy sigh rising up in her throat could escape, however, Nicole clamped her lips shut and forced her attention away from her employer. Going soft for the man would do neither of them any favors. She was on her way to New Orleans to find a husband, an heir for her father. And no matter how good a man Darius Thornton was, or how his smiles made her heart skitter, she couldn’t lose sight of her mission. He might know the inner workings of a steam engine, but that wasn’t enough. Her father needed a man who knew the shipping business in its entirety: from hiring crew, to managing inventory, to selecting trade routes, to generating new business contacts. Losing her heart to a man who could never be her father’s heir would be a disaster.

She needed to leave. Sooner rather than later.

“What’s your name, son?” Darius asked, gesturing for the boy to walk beside him back toward the house. Nicole made no move to follow the twosome. Distance was what she needed now.

“Jacob.”

The pair moved past her, and despite her pledge to keep herself distant, Nicole couldn’t suppress a grin as Jacob mimicked Darius’s stride, matching right arm to right arm and left to left as they walked. She remembered doing much the same thing when her father would take her sailing—imitating his wide stance on deck, the angle of his jaw as he shouted orders, even ducking her head as he did when they entered his cabin despite the fact that there was about as much chance of her hitting her head on the crossbeam as there was of the Gulf running dry.

Hanging back to get her reaction under control, she wiped her knife on the edge of her petticoat, then angled her body away so she could raise her skirts enough to slip the knife into its sheath, taking care not to drop the pilfered food cradled in her other arm. When she straightened, she expected Darius and Jacob to be well ahead but instead found her companions only a few yards away, their far-too-curious eyes riveted on her.

“So that’s where you keep it.” Darius’s attention dropped to a spot halfway down her skirt. “I had wondered.”

Nicole lifted her chin. “Yes, well, I tried carrying it around in one of those lacy little reticules, but it kept getting tangled in the ribbons. Not very practical.” Keeping her eyes averted from Darius’s face, she marched past the gawkers and headed for the house. She’d make her own distance.

Darius watched her sweep past, her head high as a queen. The woman was full of surprises. Who would have guessed
such a beauty not only had the mind of a scholar but the skills of a pirate?

“Your missus is somethin’ else, Mr. Thornton. You think she’d teach me to throw a knife like that if’n I asked her?”

My missus?
Darius balked, yet not as much as he would have expected at such a notion. “Miss Greyson is my secretary,” he quickly corrected, “not my wife. She’s my employee, just as Wellborn and Mrs. Wellborn are, and as you soon will be.”

“So you don’t have any family, neither?”

Darius resumed walking, the boy’s words pricking at his conscience like a stinging nettle. “My family is in New York.”

Jacob, who had been dogging his steps, jerked to a halt. “You just left ’em there?”

The stinging nettles morphed into cactus spines.

“I’m not married, Jacob,” he justified, though the boy looked far from mollified. “I didn’t abandon a wife or children. It is my parents and siblings who are in New York. I’ll return to them when I’ve accomplished the work I came here to do.”

“Your work must be awful important, then.” Jacob started walking again.

“It is,” Darius assured him.

“Still,” Jacob said, a thoughtful expression on his face, “if my folks were alive somewhere, I think I’d find a way to do my work closer to home. Pa always used to say work was easier when you had a family to come home to.”

“Your pa sounds like a very wise man.”

Jacob nodded and fell silent. But the quiet did nothing to dilute the guilt roiling in Darius’s gut. Was that letter from his mother still buried on the desk in his study? Surely he could spare a few minutes to read it this afternoon. Maybe
he’d even jot a note in reply. He hadn’t written them in . . . How long
had
it been? He couldn’t recall.

Needing something to distract him from the shame of that realization, Darius turned his attention back to the boy at his side. “How old are you, Jake?”

“Eleven.”