George Martin - Fevre Dream

And when the chandeliers were lit by night, the mirrors all up and down the main cabin gleamed brilliantly and crowds of finely dressed reflections came to life on either side of them, and danced and drank and played cards just like the real folks in the real saloon. Abner Marsh, night after night, found himself looking into those mirrors. Joshua was always there where he was supposed to be, smiling, laughing, gliding from mirror to mirror arm in arm with Valerie, talking politics with a passenger, listening to Framm’s river yarns, sharing private talks with Simon or Jean Ardant; each night a thousand Joshua Yorks walked the Fevre Dream ’s carpeted deck, each as alive and grand as all the others. His friends cast reflections too.

That ought to have been enough, but Marsh’s slow, suspicious mind was still disquieted. It wasn’t until Donaldsonville that he hit on a plan to stop his fretting. He went into town with a canteen, and filled it up with holy water from a Papist church near to the river. Then he took aside the boy who waited their end of the table, and gave him fifty cents. “You fill Cap’n York’s water glass from this tonight, you hear?” Marsh told him. “I’m playin’ him a joke.”

During supper the waiter kept looking at York expectantly, waiting for the joke to get funny. He was disappointed. Joshua drank down the holy water easy as you please. “Well, damn,” Marsh muttered to himself afterwards. “That sure ought to settle it.”

But it didn’t, and that night Abner Marsh excused himself from the grand saloon to do some thinking. He’d been sitting up on the texas porch for a couple of hours, alone, his chair leaned back and his feet up on the railing, when he heard the rustle of skirts on the stairway.

Valerie drifted over and stood close beside him, smiling down. “Good evening, Captain Marsh,” she said.

Abner Marsh’s chair thumped back to the deck as he pulled his boots off the rail, scowling. “Passengers ain’t supposed to be up on the texas,” he said, trying to hide his annoyance.

“It was so warm down below. I thought it might be cooler up here.”

“Well, that’s true,” Marsh replied uncertainly. He didn’t know quite what to say next. The truth was, women had always made him feel uncomfortable. They had no place in a steamboatman’s world, and Marsh had never quite known how to deal with them. Beautiful women made him even more ill at ease, and Valerie was as disconcerting as any fancy New Orleans matron.

She stood with one slender hand curled lightly around a carved post, looking off over the water toward Donaldsonville. “We’ll reach New Orleans tomorrow, won’t we?” she asked.

Marsh stood up, figuring it probably wasn’t polite to be sitting down with Valerie standing. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We ain’t but a few hours upriver, and I mean to steam in sparklin’, so it won’t take hardly no time at all.”

“I see.” She turned suddenly, and her pale, shapely face was very serious as she fixed him with her huge purple eyes. “Joshua says you are the true master of the Fevre Dream. In some curious way, he has much respect for you. He will listen to you.”

“We’re partners,” Marsh said.

“If your partner were in danger, would you come to his aid?”

Abner Marsh scowled, thinking of the vampire stories Joshua had told him, conscious of how pale and beautiful Valerie looked in the starlight, how deep her eyes were. “Joshua knows he can come to me if he’s got trouble,” Marsh said. “A man who wouldn’t help his partner ain’t no kind of a man at all.”

“Words,” Valerie said scornfully, tossing back her thick black hair. The wind was in it, and it moved about her face as she spoke. “Joshua York is a great man, a strong man. A king. He deserves a better partner than you, Captain Marsh.”

Abner Marsh felt the blood rushing to his face. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” he demanded.

She smiled slyly. “You broke into his cabin,” she said.

Marsh was suddenly furious. “He told you that?” he said. “Goddamn him anyhow, we had it out over that. It ain’t none of your never mind, neither.”

“It is,” she said. “Joshua is in great danger. He is bold, reckless. He must have help. I want to help him, but you, Captain Marsh, you only give him words.”

“I don’t have one goddamned idea what you’re talkin’ about, woman,” Marsh said. “What kind of help does Joshua need? I offered to help him with these damned vam-with some troubles he got, but he didn’t want to hear none of it.”

Valerie’s face softened suddenly. “Would you really help him?” she asked.

“He’s my goddamned partner.”

“Then turn your steamer, Captain Marsh. Take us away from here, take us to Natchez, to St. Louis, I don’t care. But not to New Orleans. We must not go to New Orleans tomorrow.”

Abner Marsh snorted. “Why the hell not?” he demanded. When Valerie looked away instead of answering, he went on. “This here is a steamboat, not some goddamned horse I can ride anyplace I got a notion. We got a schedule to keep, folks who’ve taken passage with us, freight to discharge. We got to go to New Orleans.” He scowled. “And what about Joshua?”

“He’ll be asleep in his cabin come dawn,” Valerie said. “When he wakes, we’ll be safely upriver.”

“Joshua’s my partner,” Marsh said. “Man’s got to trust his partner. Maybe I spied on him once, but I ain’t goin’ to do anything like that again, not for you and not for nobody. And I ain’t goin’ to turn the Fevre Dream around without tellin’ him. Now if Joshua comes to me and says he don’t want to go on to New Orleans, hell, maybe we can talk it over. But not otherwise. You want me to go ask Joshua about this?”

“No!” Valerie said quickly, alarmed.

“I got a good mind to tell him anyway,” Marsh said. “He ought to know that you’re plottin’ when his back is turned.”

Valerie reached out and took him by the arm. “Please, no,” she implored. Her grip was strong. “Look at me, Captain Marsh.”

Abner Marsh had been about to stomp away, but something in her voice compelled him to do as she bid. He looked into those purple eyes, and kept looking.

“I’m not so hard to look at,” she said, smiling. “I’ve seen you look before, Captain. You can’t keep your eyes away from me, can you?”

Marsh’s throat was very dry. “I…”

Valerie tossed her hair back again in a wild, flamboyant gesture. “Steamboats can’t be the only thing you dream of, Captain Marsh. This boat is a cold lady, a poor lover. Warm flesh is better than wood and iron.” Marsh had never heard a woman talk like that before. He stood there thunderstruck. “Come closer,” Valerie said, and she pulled him to her, until he stood only inches from her upturned face. “Look at me,” she said. He could sense the trembling warmth of her, so near at hand, and her eyes were vast purple pools, cool and silky and inviting. “You want me, Captain,” she whispered.

“No,” Marsh said.

“Oh, you want me. I can see the desire in your eyes.”

“No,” Marsh protested. “You’re… Joshua…”

Valerie laughed; light, airy laughter, sensuous, musical. “Don’t concern yourself with Joshua. Take what you want. You’re afraid, that’s why you fight it so. Don’t be afraid.”

Abner Marsh shook violently, and in the back of his mind he realized with a start that he was trembling with lust. He had never wanted a woman so badly in his life. Yet somehow he was resisting, fighting it, though Valerie’s eyes were drawing him closer, and the world was full of the scent of her.

“Take me to your cabin now,” she whispered. “I’m yours tonight.”

“You are?” Marsh said, weakly. He felt sweat dripping off his brow, clouding his eyes. “No,” he muttered. “No, this ain’t…”