The Seekers (51 page)

Florence knelt down. Put her ear close to Harriet’s mouth. When she rose, tears tracked her cheeks.

She came toward Amanda, hands extended as if to gather the child to herself and comfort her. Gazing past her, Amanda saw the gardener pick up another blanket and cover Harriet’s face.

“Amanda”—Florence could barely contain her misery—“come with me to your room. You mustn’t stay and look—”

Amanda knew then. She knew the second blanket meant permanence—

She tried to rush to Harriet’s body. Florence barred her way. “No, child!”

Amanda’s grief burst out in a wild cry. “Jared?
Jared, come help me
—
!
”

She fell against Florence’s skirt, wailing hysterically.

“J
ARED? WE GOT A
visitor. It’s that damn lawyer.”

Jared barely heard the first words. But the last one struck him like an icy shower. He almost dropped the stack of untrimmed sheets as he deposited them on the pallet behind one of the thumping flatbed presses.

He straightened up, the sound of his own breathing loud in his inner ear. His heartbeat quickened as he turned toward the open front door. Snow swirled there. He’d been too busy to notice when it had started falling from the dull Saturday sky.

He scowled, recognizing the short, portly man just closing the door. In one hand the man carried a valise Jared had seen before.

“You’d better fetch Mr. Pleasant,” he whispered to the pressman who had spoken to him.

The pressman reached for a rag to wipe his inky hands. Jared grabbed the rag, flung it aside. “Right now!”

The pressman didn’t protest being ordered around by a fifteen-year-old boy. He knew there was trouble looming. The presence of the well-dressed gentleman surveying the first floor work area charged the atmosphere with tension.

Jared felt that tension with mounting intensity. His temper had flared when he spoke to the pressman. That mustn’t happen again. He had to stay calm until he learned the reason for the lawyer’s call—

Instantly, his resolve was threatened. He could feel anger starting to simmer. A dull ache spread across his forehead as he studied the lawyer’s expression. Smug. Disdainful—

One by one, the four other presses stopped. Two apprentices who had been cuffing each other quit suddenly. The pressman raced for the stairs.

The portly gentleman continued to scrutinize the room. Lanterns hung from the ceiling beams stretched Jared’s silhouette across the floor as he walked toward the front. He recalled with bitter clarity the last time the man—and his infernal valise—had been on the premises. A large, empty section of floor space was a constant reminder of that visit.

“Good afternoon,” the portly man said. His gaze jumped past Jared’s shoulder, a deliberate affront. The boy reddened.

“What do you want?” Jared demanded.

The portly man condescended to look at him again. “I’ll communicate that to the manager, if you don’t mind.”

“You’ll tell me first! My aunt’s the owner.”

The portly man was amused. “Not any longer, I’m afraid.”

A knot twisted in Jared’s midsection. Surely he hadn’t heard correctly—

The man brushed by and strolled down the aisle between the presses. Jared almost grabbed him, then literally fought his hand back down as the man passed. The lawyer seemed unperturbed by the hostile stares of the men and boys on both sides of the room. Jared thought of the pistol he’d gotten in case something like this happened again—

No. Forget the pistol.

Only hours after buying the secondhand weapon, he’d decided the purchase was rash. He’d gone to the gunsmith’s when the first press was taken, gone there with an almost drunken feeling of fury. But then, with the gun in his possession, he’d realized his mistake—

For weeks, up until the lawyer called the first time, Jared had consciously struggled to keep a check on his temper. To disprove, through new patterns of behavior, his old fears about himself. He hadn’t succeeded completely. But he had made large strides, and he took pride in the fact. Then the lawyer arrived—and afterward, he bought the gun, and stored it in a niche up in the second-floor warehouse section.

That’s where it must stay,
he said to himself now.
Don’t even think about it
—

Footsteps hammered on the stairs. No one moved save the portly gentleman, who propped his valise on one of the rails separating the central aisle from the work areas. The man opened the valise, fished out papers.

Franklin Pleasant appeared on the stairs, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his cravat undone. The pressman who’d gone to find him was right behind.

Wary, Pleasant approached the portly man. “I trust you’re not here to attach more of our equipment, Mr. Elphinstone.”

“I’m flattered you remember my name, Mr. Pleasant.”

“As I’d remember any thief’s.”

Elphinstone met Pleasant’s glare with a smug smile. “I deplore your animosity, sir. I am only an attorney, hired by my clients to conduct business on their behalf. I have no interest in removing another press—”

Franklin Pleasant looked relieved. Having lulled him, Elphinstone closed the trap. “I have come to inform you that new owners are taking over this establishment.”

Pleasant gripped the rail, his knuckles white. The ache in Jared’s head worsened instantly.

“You must be insane,” Pleasant said.

“Is that right? Be so good as to scan this document. Particularly the attached note. Signed by Mr. Andrew Piggott in the presence of my clients, and duly witnessed by two residents of the rooming house where Mr. Piggott and my clients were gaming. The document—and the note—will stand up in any court of law in this state. They’re just as legal as the note Mr. Piggott signed in connection with the press.”

Outside, Jared heard wheels grind to a halt. A restless horse stamped and blew. Laughing voices blended with the slam of a coach door. Footsteps approached the front entrance.

Jared didn’t look around. He was watching Pleasant’s face.

The manager leafed through the legal sheets. Fingered a slip of paper waxed to the last one. Pale, he let his hand fall to his side.

Elphinstone snatched the legal-size sheets and began to fold them. Pleasant looked at Jared, but his words were addressed to everyone. “Elphinstone’s right. This time Piggott’s lost the whole place.”

Despite the effort of will that had held him “white-lipped and silent, Jared felt his anger loosed like a flood within him. In a tick of time, his mind swirled with distorted images of Uncle Gilbert. His throbbing head rang with remembered words, the promises he’d made about protecting the Kent interests. A faint inner voice of warning faded as he lunged forward with a shout.

“I don’t believe it!” He seized the lawyer’s collar. “You’re a damned, deceitful liar—!”

Elphinstone squealed as Jared shoved him against the rail. “Take your hands off me or I’ll have you clapped in jail!”

“You’d better do as he says, Jared,” Pleasant warned.

“But that paper can’t be legal—!”

Pleasant shook his head. “The last one was.”

Beyond Elphinstone, Jared saw an apprentice’s head whip toward the front door. The sound of the door opening had barely registered in Jared’s mind. Now he noted a startled look on the apprentice’s face—

And heard a voice that numbed him. “It’s legal, Mr. Kent. You are now working for me.”

Two men, elegantly dressed, stood at the front entrance, framed against the background of a carriage and swirling snow. Jared’s blue eyes locked onto the man nearest to him; the other fellow, older, was a blur.

All Jared could see of the first man was half a face. A glowing brown eye. The young visitor wore a white silk bandana tied around his forehead. The edge of the bandana made an oblique line that ran from the left side of his forehead across his nose and right cheek to the curve of his jaw.

Perfectly relaxed, the visitor used a lacquered stick to knock snow from the brim of a beaver hat in his other hand.

“Mr. Kent and I are old acquaintances,” the young man announced to the goggling employees. “Permit me to introduce my companion—Mr. Walpole, general manager of the Chesapeake Iron Finery, Baltimore. My name is Hamilton Stovall. My family owns the refinery—and now, it seems, a Boston printing house.”

“Jared—”

Pleasant’s voice sounded remote. The boy’s ears were filled with a roaring again, as of a huge wind unleashed. He could have sworn the earth shook—then realized it was only the frantic, heavy rhythm inside his own chest. The scope of the monstrous duplicity began to register—and with it came an overwhelming sense of failure—

I should have killed him. I didn’t, and because I didn’t, this has happened
—

“—who is this person?”

Stovall said, “Why, I’m the fellow who became acquainted with Mr. Kent’s uncle by marriage. Played cards and dice with him—”

“Not by accident,” Jared breathed.

“Oh no, dear boy.” Stovall smiled, tapping his lacquered stick against his flawlessly cut mauve trouser leg. “Ever since my untimely separation from the naval service”—his free hand touched the bandana hiding half his face—“I’ve laid plans for a return to New England. We are trying to secure information on the new modification of the Cort furnace being used in Europe. And it’s impossible to get an inquiry agent aboard an outbound ship down in our part of the country. I could as easily have visited Providence to make arrangements, but I chose Boston for a special reason—which Mr. Kent of course understands.”

Again Pleasant whispered,
“What’s he talking about?”

“I—”

Jared licked his lips, trying to still the shaking of his hands at his sides.

The pistol. Remember the pistol
—

Without thinking, he glanced at the stairway. Stovall noticed. Jared forced his eyes back to the young man with the stick, saw him for a moment as a blurred image. He had to leave the pistol where it was.
Had
to, or he’d only compound the damage he’d already done—

But reason’s voice was faint, its promptings overwhelmed by humiliation and guilt. Jared watched lawyer Elphinstone sidle along the rail, out of his reach. He clenched his fists so tightly they ached.

Pleasant was waiting for an answer. Jared finally finished the sentence: “I served with Mr. Stovall aboard
Constitution.
He was sixth lieutenant.”

“Tell them what happened,” Stovall said affably. But there was hate in his glaring eye. “Tell them how you caused me to fall against a cannon that broke loose during the action with
Guerriere.
How my face came in contact with the heated barrel. My face and my hands—”

Tucking his stick under one arm, he showed his palms. Jared and the others saw the ruin of puckered scar tissue.

“Even having recovered, I’m no longer welcome where I was welcome before. Hostesses—young ladies—decline to invite me to their levees—” Despite an effort to control his voice, it grew louder. “Thanks to you, Mr. Kent, I’m disgusting to look at. Do you wonder I planned to return to Boston from the first moment I awoke in the hospital?”

“You can also tell them why we had trouble,” Jared said.

“That’s not neces—”

“He talks about young ladies but he fancies men and boys.”

The older man, Walpole, spoke at last. “Take your stick to the young liar, Hamilton!”

Stovall rapped the lacquered wood against a scarred palm, a heavy sound.

“It’s a shotted stick, Mr. Kent. It could ruin you for life—as you’ve ruined me. However, since my family now controls this company, I have a duty to behave as befits an owner. To put a curb on my temper, no matter how filthy and false your accusations. I’ll deter physical punishment in favor of what’s already been exacted—”

He started forward, a slow, languid walk that held every eye in the room. “I readily admit I thought of hiring men to waylay you, Mr. Kent—I can’t be imprisoned for a thought, can I? I decided that was entirely too coarse. Too quick. I wanted something more lasting. It struck me nothing could be more suitable than destroying you by destroying your family. I entertained various means. But a few inquiries in the local coffeehouses showed me one that was ideal. The stupid sham gentleman who married your aunt is rather notorious. More to the point, so is his passion for gaming.”

“So you made his acquaintance—”

“Actually,” Stovall cut in, “a sharp we hired made his acquaintance first. The sharp—shall we say—tested Mr. Piggott’s skill at cards? The sharp was the chap who won the press. When he reported Mr. Piggott to be the soul of gullibility—especially after a few rounds of rum—Mr. Walpole and I contrived a seemingly accidental meeting at the Exchange—”

“Contrived to cheat him too, I don’t doubt!”

Hamilton Stovall smiled. “That, my dear boy, you’ll never know.”

“Of course Piggott was cheated,” Pleasant fumed. “Marked cards. Weighted dice—”

Stovall waved. “Immaterial. The games are over. What remains is—this—”

The stick shimmered as Stovall tapped the legal papers in Elphinstone’s hand.

“Our proof of ownership. It was quite easy to tempt Piggott into his last, excessive wager. Plenty of that strong drink I mentioned—a few apparently spontaneous suggestions during the heat of the betting”—
slap
went the stick against the paper—“and Kent and Son belongs to the Stovalls.”

From behind Jared, Pleasant burst out, “We’ll fight you, by God! Our attorney Benbow—”

“He’ll be able to do nothing.” Elphinstone waved the document. “Nothing!”

The pressman who’d run upstairs stalked to the rail. “Damned if we need any lawyers to settle this—”

Stovall spun and rammed the ferrule of his stick against the pressman’s throat.

The pressman gasped, his right hand flashing up to the stick as other employees started forward, fists ready.

“You had better restrain yourself, my friend”—again Stovall jabbed with the stick, the pressman turned scarlet, grabbed the stick at the midpoint—“else you’ll rot in jail for assault.”

“It’s not an idle threat!” Elphinstone exclaimed. “I’ll see to it!”