Beth Henderson - Reckless

A faint rush of color flooded what was visible of his face beyond his tawny side-whiskers. He’d added a dashing mustache since she’d last seen him. It enhanced his appearance, she thought. When his devilish smile curled beneath it, female hearts would melt en masse. Except for hers.

Deegan’s eyes shifted as he glanced nervously aside. “I mean, I thought you were still in San Francisco. How does it happen you’re aboard the Nereid?”

“I could ask you the same, Deegan,” Wyn said. “More to the point, I’m wondering what you are doing in this dining room. Considering the state of your finances, I would have thought steerage the limit of your travel funds.”

He flinched. “That’s cruel, Wyn, even if I did deserve it As it happens, I’m traveling with a friend of mine.”

“Female, I suppose,” Wyn snapped, incensed despite herself. “I hope she can afford your tastes.”

Deegan actually grinned with pleasure. “Well, he can, at any rate. It is a bit difficult, you and I stuck on the same ship. I swear, Wyn, if I’d had any idea that you were sailing on this pleasure palace, I’d have booked with another line. I chose a Shire ship out of loyalty and affection for your family, believe me.”

It was difficult to be spiteful over his actions after such a declaration. “Thank you,” Wyn murmured, albeit reluctantly. “But I’m sure that you will agree, the less we must deal with each other during the voyage, the more pleasant this journey will be.”

An expression of shifty unease flitted across his face. “Well, there may be a difficulty in avoiding each other. You see…” His voice trailed off as he glanced away, back toward the wide entranceway and the crowd of richly dressed people congregated near it.

Wyn wasn’t to be distracted though. She kept her eyes firmly on his face, determined this time to see the real Deegan Galloway, and not be seduced into thinking him a different man than he was.

“Yes?” she prodded.

“You see,” Deegan bleated, still scanning the crowd for someone. Obviously a party to rescue him from the awkwardness of their encounter, Wyn decided. “My host is a fellow who draws the limelight, and, er, even standing on the outskirts of it as I am…”

Wyn gave an unladylike snort of disbelief.

”…I doubt you and I will be able to escape rubbing shoulders because…”

The interruption didn’t come from among the gathering at the door. It sneaked up on them from the rear.

“Excuse me,” one of the stewards murmured. “Miss Abbot? Might I show you to your chair?”

Wyn jumped at the chance to end her unwelcome conversation with Deegan. “Certainly,” she agreed, rewarding the uniformed attendant with a brilliant smile as she took his arm.

Her smile dimmed considerably when the man addressed Deegan, as well. “Would you mind coming along, too, Mr. Galloway?” he asked respectfully.

Deegan gave Wyn a weak smile of apology before answering. “Yes, of course.”

“We will begin serving shortly,” the steward assured them both, leading the way to the captain’s table. He held Wyn’s chair, allowing her time to arrange her skirts and train before taking the seat. “Is there anything I can get for you at this time?”

Wyn just wished he would leave, taking Deegan with him. “Nothing, thank you.”

The steward turned to Galloway. “And you, sir?”

“Just point out my place and leave it at that,” Deegan said.

The steward looked taken aback a moment, but recovered swiftly. “I’m sorry, sir. I thought you knew. You are, just here.” He gestured to the right.

Wyn’s heart sank.

“We’ve seated you next to Miss Abbot, sir.”

Magnus Finley slipped into the dining room with none of the fanfare a good number of the guests appeared to demand. He, unlike them, preferred his presence to be overlooked. While the price of his passage had given him the luxury of hobnobbing with the wealthy, it had also been modest enough to allow him to go unnoticed by them. His assigned seat was located a decided distance from the captain’s table, yet allowed him an excellent view of the guests gathered there. It had taken a bribe to secure this particular chair, but he felt it well worth the expense, one that would no doubt come out of his own pocket rather than company expenses, since he had decided not to take Captain Kittrick into his confidence. From his observations thus far it was already apparent that, if apprised of his mission, the blustery captain was more likely to make a slip that would tip off the suspect Finley had gone to such trouble to follow all the way from San Francisco. Kittrick wouldn’t have taken kindly to the suggestion that one of the passengers chosen to sit at his table was an alleged jewel thief.

In all honesty, it wasn’t a single passenger that Finley had his eye on. While his own investigation led him to favor one suspect over all others, the reports of various Pinkerton agents had made it advisable to add other names to his list Especially when it was discovered that all of them were sailing aboard the Nereid. It had only been that afternoon that he had learned the suspects would be gathered together at the captain’s table that evening.

The situation led him to hypothesize a new theory: it might not have been a single thief who had lifted jewels in San Francisco, or added to the cache in Boston, but a team of clever thieves, each able to vouch for the other, to cover the other’s tracks when capture threatened.

As the last of the glittering passengers made their way to the tables, Finley kept an unobtrusive eye turned to the table at the top of the room. He hoped to discover a clue—a series of clues—that would allow him to narrow the scope of his investigation before the ocean liner docked in Liverpool. Even though he would be contacting police officials in Britain for assistance in apprehending the thief, if he still had more than a single suspect to follow, Finley doubted he would be taken seriously. Especially since the whole case currently hung only on suppositions, educated guesses based on the fact that these suspects had had the opportunity to commit each of the crimes, rather than on the evidence of a witness to the thief’s escape or of a fence trying to extricate himself from involvement in the series of crimes.

There was nothing solid about the case yet. Nothing that would hold up in a court of law. Unless he had an out-and-out confession, in the presence of witnesses, Finley feared the case would drag on, that the agency’s clients would lose confidence in the Pinkerton office and withdraw, leaving him frustrated with the knowledge that the criminal had been the only winner in the drama.

They all looked like winners now. The guests gathered at the main table were amongst the most glittering. His own tablemates appeared tacky and lacking in both grace and taste when compared to the captain’s chosen few. While the woman across from him was gowned in expensive finery, her dress was too frilled and her gems were of an inferior grade. The man at her side sampled his wine with a shopkeeper’s profit-conscious expression rather than with the appreciation of a true aficionado. The guests on either side of the couple were cut from the same mold, eager to be a reflection of the class to which they aspired and from which they were held back by their own antecedents.

Nearly all the people he watched at the far table belonged to a different breed. The very naturalness of their movements, choices and actions, set them apart even though Finley suspected their bank accounts on the whole were inferior to those of the guests at his own table. It was their financial resources that had occupied him of late as he studied reports for patterns he could use to prove a motive for involvement in the now long series of jewel robberies, or as proof that profit had been gathered from the sale of one of the stolen items.