Garrett worked his way along Kearny Street, his footsteps aimless. According to the wire, his father had died six months ago. What had he been doing the day Stewart Blackhawk was interned in the family crypt? Garrett wondered. Had he been in South America yet, in the Amazon jungles? Or had he reached Mexico at that time? The memory of one carefree day was gone, no longer a time that he could pinpoint to a particular event or place.
Six months. The delay in reaching him served as a reprieve, no matter how short. Various business interests would supply the excuses he needed to delay a month, two at the most, then he would have to shoulder his responsibilities at Hawk’s Run once more.
He’d tried so hard to outrun them, to distance himself from both the good and the bad. And the whispers.
The rain was more mist than storm, making it a match to his mood. It dampened the streets as much as the wire had dampened his spirits. Coach lamps created glowing fingers of light on the glistening pavement and highlighted where puddles had begun to form in the depressions. The drizzle discouraged even the braver souls from walking the streets. Those men who did scurried for shelter quickly, heading into the warm, brightly lit doorways of various saloons and private gambling clubs, and the more dimly lit and even warmer parlors of the bordellos. A more perfect night for grieving was difficult to envision. If, that is, he could grieve for the man he suspected had not been his father.
Garrett’s legs ate the distance, taking him away from the city proper and into the shadowy lanes that comprised the Barbary Coast. Rain dripped from the bent brim of his hat, dampened the waxed length of his duster, and still he strode on as sure in each step as if he had a particular destination in mind.
His thoughts were thousands of miles away in another land. What were the Salopians saying of him in the local tavern now? he wondered.
Ever since his dark head had made its appearance among the fair-haired residents of Hawk’s Run, there had been rumors concerning his birth. A nursemaid had been dismissed for spreading the tale that he was an elfin child, a substitute left when the brownies stole the true golden-tressed heir. Despite the fact that black-haired ancestors were visibly present among the oldest of the portraits in the family gallery, the levelheaded gentry whispered that he was a bastard, the child Antonia Blackhawk had cuckolded her husband with as his own. Although he’d spent many a rainy afternoon staring at the paintings, Garrett had never recognized his own features among the host of dark ancestral faces.
Matters had not improved as he grew taller and broadened, his form that of a muscled athlete rather than of a fine-boned scholar like his diminutive father. Stewart Blackhawk had been an academician, brilliant when it came to translating ancient Greek poetry, inept and uninterested when it came to running his estate, cooly distant and silent when it came to Garrett’s doubts and questions concerning his birth.
With the family debts mounting, Garrett had left the halls of Cambridge and made his dark features a familiar sight in the meadows of Hawk’s Run. He had worked alongside the tenants for plantings, for harvests. Yet the whispers continued, reviving tales of wizardry that brought fertility back to tired fields.
In the City of London it was no different, for men there jokingly claimed he bewitched weak investments into profitable ventures. It was even said, more seriously, that he had blinded Stewart Blackhawk to the truth, for the man never commented on the validity of his eldest son’s birth, an oversight the grown Garrett recognized as neglect rather than belief. Sometime during his childhood, Garrett had begun believing the rumors himself simply because his father had never eased his son’s mind over his legitimacy.
Members of society read a wealth of mystery and intrigue into Stewart’s silence on the subject as well and whispered all the more. And so, assaulted by suspicion on all sides, Garrett had set out to be exactly what they termed him. He had adopted the qualities of a chameleon, changing with his environment, one moment the mystic who communed with supernatural folk, the next the arrogant upstart who flaunted the Blackhawk name.
He had learned much in playing these parts. He’d discovered he was a natural deceiver, a man who could don the face of an actor, who could adapt to any situation and find something to claim as his own in every outcome.
Or he did most of the time, Garrett admitted silently. In Cairo his so-called powers had been impotent, and Sybil had paid the price for his pride. It had been a tragic and most humbling experience.
He had grown as a result, had learned that he hated what fate had made him. What fate was forcing him to become once more.
He was back to living a lie. The life he had enjoyed as a ragged Bohemian adventurer the past two years had disappeared, leaving in its place a man who of necessity must become the epitome of the unruffled British aristocrat.
In other words, he was going to be a bloody damn hyp-ocrite.
The rivulet inching down his neck grew more uncomfortable. After extended stays in Egypt, along the Equator, and in Sonora, he was used to the unrelenting rays of the sun and had forgotten the chilling trials of a cloud-ridden climate.
Rather than be miserable, Garrett decided in favor of shelter. The saloons of the Barbary Coast were somewhat drier than the streets, although they smelled worse. The company was more rowdy than convivial and the whiskey was vile enough to take paint off a house. It was better than being alone with his thoughts, and being with strangers meant, if he could not check them, at least he could keep those thoughts to himself.
He nearly changed his mind when he entered the nearest door. A combination of scents assaulted him, of which cheap whiskey, cheaper perfume, cigar smoke and sweat were the most recognizable. The whole was overlaid with the taint of mildew.
“Why, hello, handsome,” a woman greeted throatily. She sashayed up to him, hips swinging, breasts bobbing. Her smile was a smear of rouge, and her eyes were fanned with runny streaks of kohl. She posed briefly, one hand propped on a cocked hip. The garish purple of her gown was mirrored in bruised circles beneath her eyes. The smile she gave him was tired, and as falsely brilliant as her brassy-colored hair.
She could easily have been a reflection of his own soul—worn, tawdry and devoid of hope.
“Lookin’ fer a little fun tonight? Somethin’ ta warm yer blood?” she purred.
“A drink, I thought,” Garrett said, making no effort to hide the upper-crust edge of his accent. The need to hit something was strong, and past experience had shown that in a low-class saloon the sound of his accent alone increased the possibility of a brawl.
“A drink, is it?” a man’s voice demanded in a heavy Irish brogue. “Well, squire, ye’ve come to the right place.” A disheveled, extremely wet man launched himself away from the support of the door behind Garrett and staggered forward, making shooing gestures at the woman. “Get along with you, lass. The squire and me’s got business ta discuss.”
Miffed at his interference, the woman turned her shoulder to the newcomer. “Ya’ll remember me, won’t ya, handsome? I’ll be around when this boyo passes out.” She stared hard at the man who stood swaying at Garrett’s side. “He looks like the kind that always does,” she added in disdain before moving toward another prospective customer.
“Cheeky little tart,” the man growled after her retreating form. Beads of water had formed on the rim of his narrow-brimmed bowler. The shoulders of his suit coat were soaked through and the lapels were limply turned up in an effort to keep the rain from further dampening his wilted shirt collar. “Now then, squire. ‘Bout our business.” He pitched to the ide, stumbling over his own feet.
Garrett nearly staggered himself when the Irishman fell against him. “What business might that be?” he asked, steadying the man upright once more. “The return