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 the coal bin, sir,” she replied. “I was told by Mr. Mercer to open it immediately when we set sail out of quarantine. He said it was very important.”
Clay couldn’t understand why anyone needed to see into a dark, dusty coal bin, but he had to admit to curiosity as to why Mercer had thought it so important. He bent to haul on the ring, and the hatch opened. People leaned around his arm, peering into the gloom. He could see Allegra and her redheaded friend exchanging frowning glances.
“It’s safe now, Mr. Mercer,” the blonde called into the void. “You can come out.”
Allegra stiffened in obvious shock, while others put their hands to their mouths. Coal-dusted fingers waved above the edge of the hole, and Clay bent to tug Asa Mercer to the floor of the salon. He was a slender man, not yet thirty, with a solemn face and a brisk manner. Now his curly reddish hair and whiskers were speckled with black, his long face striped with grime. He tugged down on his paisley waistcoat and beamed at those around him.
“The coal is well stored and sufficient for the first leg of our journey,” he reported as if he’d merely climbed into the bin to inspect it. “It appears we are under way. I look forward to a fine voyage, a very fine voyage.”
Allegra stared at him a moment, then turned her gaze to Clay’s. Very likely, they’d reached the same conclusion.
She had no one to rely on but him, and she had every right to be concerned.
* * *
It was not the most auspicious start to their journey. While many of the women welcomed their benefactor, Allie couldn’t shake the image of Mr. Mercer rising from the coal bin. This was the man in whom they’d placed their trust?
Catherine evidently had similar concerns. “I’m greatly disappointed in him,” she confessed as they all went to find their staterooms. “He paid his own passage, but it seems as if he promised space to anyone who asked. When it became clear not everyone would be allowed aboard, he hid to avoid telling them the truth.”
Allie glanced into one of the rooms they were passing. “I don’t understand it. There can’t be more than one hundred passengers aboard, and there seems to be room for at least three times that. What happened to the other people?”
“Perhaps they saw those wretched reports in the papers,” Catherine mused. “The ones claiming we’d be eaten by bears or enslaved by savages.”
Perhaps. The editorial articles had nearly made Allie change her mind. But Mr. Mercer had seemed so earnest, his vision of a settled Seattle so clear. She knew she wasn’t the only woman who’d put her faith in him. Was he actually a coward? And what about the money she’d paid him? Was he a terrible cheat and liar as well? Or was it the mismanagement of the steamship company that was to blame? She’d read stories in the Boston papers about how ruthless Ben Holladay could be in business dealings.
“I don’t care how many rooms he has on this great tub,” Maddie proclaimed, “so long as we each get a bed.”
Catherine smiled at her. “I’m sure we’ll each have a bed, even though we’ll likely have to share a room. I’m just glad you and I could produce our tickets, Madeleine.”
Maddie stopped at a door at the end of the lower salon and grinned at Allie. “And would you lookie here now! It seems you and me will be together in this room, Allegra, my dear.”
“You and I,” Catherine corrected her, pausing to peer inside the room, then at the number on the door. “Number thirty-five. As I am number fifteen, I must be on the upper deck. Shall we meet for supper?”
Maddie wiggled her fingers at Catherine. “La-di-da—do you think those of us on the lower floor will be welcomed above our stations?”
Catherine tsked. “I cannot imagine anywhere you would not be welcomed, Madeleine dear.” She bent to kiss Gillian on the cheek, then straightened. “I shall see you all shortly.”
Maddie sighed as Catherine strolled away. “Not an unkind bone in her body, so there isn’t. But she’s mad to think I’ll be welcomed at her table.”
As they’d waited for the ship to sail, Allie had learned a great deal about both her friends. Catherine came from a small town outside Boston, the daughter of a prominent physician. Maddie had been quieter about her background, but Allie knew she had journeyed from Ireland as a child with her father, only to meet prejudice on America’s shores. She seemed to expect it now wherever she went.
“The good ship Continental is not New York,” Allie informed her, leading Gillian into the little room. “We’ll be spending a quarter year together. The sooner we learn to live in peace, the better.”
“Just you remember that,” Maddie told her, “when that handsome Mr. Howard comes calling.”
Allie refused to dignify the comment with a response. Instead, she set to work making the room their home.
The cabin was a cozy, white-washed space, with two berths stacked one atop the other along one wall and surrounded by flowered chintz curtains. A narrow padded bench sat opposite with room underneath to stow their trunks.
“And look here,” Allie said, leading her frowning daughter to the tall slender wooden cabinet between the bunks and the bench. “There’s a mirror on top so we can tidy our hair, and a desk that folds out for writing letters.”
Maddie pointed to the wood railing around the top of the cabinet. “And that’s to keep our belongings from tipping over when the sea rocks the boat.”
Gillian’s frown only deepened.
Allie forced a smile as she hung her cloak on a hook on one side of the cabinet. Gillian was used to much finer things, a room three times the size of this one, fancy dresses, fine food, but she was also used to being bossed about every second of her day under harsh discipline no child should have to endure. Changing that situation was more than worth lesser accommodations.
So, she showed Gillian how to make up the berths with the bedding they’d brought, hung a few of their things in the little cabinet, tucked the letters Frank had written her carefully in the back of the trunk. The only time she truly felt a pang of regret was when she arranged her two favorite books and Bible on one end of the bench for easy reach.
She and Frank had devoted one room of their home to a library. How they’d loved to sit and read aloud by the fire or share insights from their private reading. All she’d had room to carry were Ivanhoe and Pride and Prejudice. Both she could one day share with Gillian.
As they finished setting the room to rights, Maddie stood back and nodded. “Just like home. And we even have a sheet and blanket left over to be charitable to Mr. Howard.”
Allie had been stowing her trunk under the bench. Now she paused to glance up at her friend. Because she’d had to sneak away from the Howard mansion, their belongings consisted only of what could fit in the trunk that she had convinced a footman to hide in the carriage house for her.