I owe it to Frank to protect you from them.”
As if in agreement, the Continental shuddered, and a deep throb pulsed up through the deck. Allie was tumbling forward, her feet not her own. She landed against something firm and solid—Clay.
His arms came around her, and she found herself against his chest. His gaze met hers, seemed to warm, to draw her in. She couldn’t catch her breath. Once, she’d dreamed of his embrace, his kiss.
Heat flared in her cheeks at the memory, and she pulled herself out of his arms. “You owe Frank nothing, Clay Howard. And you owe me less. If you insist on coming to Seattle with us, you’d better remember that.”
Clay paused while Allegra continued into the salon. In truth, he felt as if the jolt of the ship starting forward had knocked some of the breath out of him. It had been a long time since he’d held Allegra in his arms, and, for the sake of his sanity, it ought never to happen again. Hadn’t he learned by now that he was no match for Boston society?
In fact, it was the suffocating chill of Boston high society that had driven him west, far from everything he’d ever known. He couldn’t regret it. He’d climbed mountains, tops shimmering with snow, ten times the size of Beacon Hill. He’d crossed rivers wider than the Charles and more swiftly flowing. He’d met Indian chiefs with as much pride as his late father, lady prospectors with more presence than his mother. Riding across the vast prairies, he’d realized how small he was and how big the God he served.
It was God’s urging that had propelled him back to Boston when Clay had received the letter telling him about Frank’s death. Like the prodigal son, he’d come to make amends. He wanted to explain to his mother why he’d left, to make sure Allegra was doing all right with Frank gone. He’d taken a room at Boston’s finest hotel, Parker’s; bought a new suit of clothes; even hired a carriage to take him to his family home.
No fatted calf awaited him. Though his father had died several years ago, Clay had hoped his mother would receive him. But the person waiting for him in somber black in the elegant parlor was his cousin Gerald.
“A great deal has changed since you left, cousin,” he’d said, his icy blue eyes staring across the space, every blond hair pomaded back from his narrow face. “With Frank gone, I’ve had to take up the responsibilities you refused to honor.”
Clay’s hands had fisted at the sides of his fancy suit. “I’m here now. Where’s my mother?”
“Indisposed.” Gerald had all but sneered. “And quite unwilling to see you. It is my unhappy duty to inform you of the fact.”
“She has no interest in where I’ve been?” Clay challenged. “What I’ve done?”
“None,” his cousin said. “It doesn’t matter where you’ve been. It matters that you weren’t here. We all know it should have been you in that field near Hatcher’s Run.”
Of course it should have been him. He was the oldest, the better rider, the best shot. He’d had the advantage of a year of military training in a school that specialized in turning willful boys into disciplined men. Frank hadn’t had to attend that school. Frank was the good son, obedient, a friend to all who knew him. He didn’t know why his brother had gone to war, when so many of the wealthy families paid a poorer boy to fight in their son’s stead when their son had been drafted. According to the friend who had written Clay, Frank had gone down protecting others who had been wounded, considerate even to the end.
Clay raised his head. “If you’ve accepted responsibility for my mother and Frank’s widow, I applaud you. Just know that I’m willing to help, whatever they need.”
His cousin’s tight smile was the only answer.
The trip back to the hotel had been mercifully short, for all Clay’s emotions ran higher than the horses on the hired coach. He’d been throwing his things back in his satchel when the bellman came to tell him that a Mrs. Howard was waiting for him downstairs.
Immediately his mind had gone to Allegra, and he pushed past the fellow in his rush to see her. But the woman who perched on one of the scarlet upholstered chairs in the hotel’s ornate parlor was gray haired, her bearing cool, composed in her silver-colored gown trimmed in black lace and jet beads.
“Mother,” he said, going to her.
Gillian Howard’s thin lips trembled, but she did not offer her pale cheek for his kiss. “Clayton. I thought that was you when I looked out the window. You came home.”
Was he mad to hear hope behind the words? “I wanted to talk to you,” he confirmed, sinking onto a chair beside her. “I wanted to see Allegra.”
Before he could continue, she reached out and clutched his arm, fingers tight against his sleeve.
“That’s why I’m here, son,” she said, calm voice belying her hold on him. “Allegra is missing, and you’re the only one who can bring her home.”
She’d gone on to explain her daughter-in-law’s fascination with Asa Mercer’s story about struggling Seattle and the chance of making it a paradise on earth.
“It’s the same ridiculous pie-in-the-sky tale that sent you west,” she’d lamented, dabbing at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief. “You came back...you must know the truth. Tell her this hope in Seattle is a lie. Convince her to come home. Please, Clay, she’s all I have left!”
Her pain had touched him just as Allegra’s had today, yet some part of him hurt that his mother could not consider him part of the family. “I thought Gerald was taking care of everything for you,” he couldn’t help commenting.
She’d lowered her gaze even as she tucked her handkerchief into her reticule. “Gerald has been a great blessing to me. He is very good about seeing that the family carries on. I cannot ask this of him.”
But she could ask it of him. Gerald was a gentleman; Clay had thrown off the label. His cousin might not be willing to do all it would take to retrieve Allegra. His mother obviously believed Clay had fewer scruples. Though Clay liked to think he was still an honorable man for all he’d chosen a different path than the one his parents had picked out for him, he could not argue that he was his mother’s best tool for the job. He was more than ready to do Allegra a service, particularly if it meant saving her from the mistakes he’d made.
Now he snorted. And wasn’t he doing a jolly good job of saving Allegra? Instead of sending her home to Boston, he’d aided and abetted her in running away! Shaking his head at his own behavior, he entered the lower salon. Those passengers who had not yet been assigned staterooms were clustered around a hatch at the end of the room. Allegra and her daughter were looking on, but he couldn’t tell whether they were curious or concerned. He pushed himself to the center, where a pretty, petite blonde was struggling with a brass latch embedded in the floor.
On seeing him, she put on a winsome smile. “Please, sir,” she said sweetly, “would you mind helping me with this?”
The others made room for him, their gazes expectant, as if he were about to open a fabled treasure cave. Clay was more suspicious.
“What is this?” he asked, positioning himself over the hatch.
“Access to
