Rebellious and Perilous, page 2
“Still coming to the fancy dress party?” one said, as did everyone who had seen her that day. The party was all she could think about until she saw the countess’s matinee idol friend.
“Of course,” she answered with a laugh. “I’m counting on you for my costume, don’t forget.”
“How could we forget that?” the sailor said with a wink, making her laugh even harder. He was handsome, with blond curls and broad shoulders, and like all his mates was fun company to play cards and shuffleboard with on the long voyage. Yet when he teased her, flirted with her, it didn’t make her even a fraction as flustered as one look from “Ramon Novarro.”
She gave the sailors a jaunty wave and hurried on to the cabin she and Meggie now shared with Eliza and Charli at the end of the corridor. She had to shove hard at the door since someone’s hatbox was in the way, and inside the same scene of chaos she’d left a few hours ago greeted her.
The four narrow bunks were unmade and strewn with dresses and silky slips and combinations, with shoes shoved underneath haphazardly. Pots of lotions and tubes of lipsticks were scattered across the one table bolted beneath the small porthole.
In the meager, grayish light that came in through the thick glass, Jessica saw that Charli hadn’t left her bunk. She was huddled underneath her blankets, her nose buried in a book. Her carrot-red hair, brighter than Jessica’s strawberry, which they had persuaded her to bob with Eliza’s sewing scissors, was tousled, her spectacles perched on the end of her nose.
Eliza stood at the small basin, rinsing out a shirtwaist. The smell of Persil soap, flowery and rich, hung in the stuffy air.
“Eliza, we told you—no more washing up! You aren’t really our maid.” Jessica stamped across the cabin to tug the blankets off Charlotte’s knees. “It’s a lovely day outside. Come up on deck and play mah-jong with us.”
“Horsefeathers! I just need to get out this one spot...” Eliza muttered.
“And I need to finish this chapter!” Charli argued.
“No, and no.” The cabin was so small Jessica could snatch away both the wet shirtwaist and the book with only two steps. “It’s time for fun now. Come on!”
Charli still tried to protest, fun being so new to her, but Eliza got into the spirit of things and caught the book from Jessica’s hand to keep it away from her.
“Mah-jong, and no more arguments!” Jessica cried, twirling away. “In half an hour, in the salon.”
Before anyone could make another protest, she skipped out into the corridor and slammed the cabin door behind her. The narrow hallways were deserted now, all the crew off on their duties and all the passengers resting up for the fancy dress party. All that silence, the roll of the carpeted floor beneath her feet, the faint, far-away roar of the ship’s engines, made her feel restless again. Giddy. She took off running, leaping up the stairs in exactly the way her mother had always scolded her not to.
She swung around a corner—and almost tripped to a sudden standstill. The devastatingly handsome man she saw with the countess earlier stood near the railing, talking with another man, one in the uniform of a crew’s officer.
There was nothing wrong with that, of course. Jessica talked to the ship’s crew all the time. But she didn’t know this officer at all, and something about that man, the matinee idol in all his silver-screenish glory, made her freeze in her headlong dash. She slowly backed up and ducked around the corner before they could spot her.
She carefully peeked at them, wishing she could hear what they were saying. The crew member had his back to her, but she could see the handsome stranger’s profile under the brim of his hat. There was a darkly intent look on his chiseled features, a tautness that almost looked like barely leashed—anger. His hand, with its long, elegant fingers, was curled into a fist on the railing.
One of the reasons Jessica wanted to be a reporter so badly was the simple fact that people were so fascinating, and so—so weird. Ever since she was a kid, she carried around a notebook to jot down things people said or did that she could puzzle over and decipher later. She loved hearing people’s stories, discovering their secrets.
And she would bet that “Ramon Novarro” over there had a doozy.
She stared, watching as the two men went on talking in low, barely coherent voices, words that were snatched away on the sea breeze. Their glances between themselves were not what she would call friendly, either. What could be going on there?
Jeepers, but she wished she had her notebook with her!
Just as her neck was starting to get sore from craning around the corner, the crew member gave an abrupt nod and stalked away. She had a quick glimpse of his craggy, bearded face as he passed her hidey-hole, and he definitely looked angry. Angry and, astonishingly, scared. Scared of what? Her mind raced with all sorts of wonderfully lurid possibilities. Gambling debts. Rum-running. Blackmail. Quarrels over a beautiful showgirl.
No, not a showgirl. Not for “Ramon Novarro,” surely. She didn’t like that thought at all.
“You can come out from there now, if you like. It can’t be very comfortable pressed up to the wall like that,” the matinee idol suddenly said. He spoke quietly, calmly, but his faintly accented voice carried to her all too well on the salty wind. He sounded amused.
To her shame, she felt a hot blush flare across her face to be caught eavesdropping like that, and by him of all people. But really, who was he to make her feel like a chastened child about to be sent to bed with no supper? She was Lady Jessica Hatton, daughter of an earl, and a soon-to-be famous reporter, too.
She stood up so ramrod-straight her old deportment teacher at Mrs. Greensley’s would be proud, tossed her head back, and marched out of her hiding place. He glanced over his shoulder at her, and she saw that the corners of his mouth looked as if he was just about to smile, but other than that he didn’t look as if he moved at all.
And up-close she saw he was even more breathtakingly handsome. The real Ramon Novarro should worry about losing his job to pale blue eyes and cheekbones that could cut glass.
“I didn’t want to interrupt what looked like a private conversation,” she said haughtily, trying to mimic her mother’s best “countess” tone. She felt totally ridiculous, though.
What was it about this man that made her feel so wrong-footed? All those debutante balls, tea dances, even curtsying to the queen, should have knocked shyness out of her.
He turned to fully face her, and that tiny, secret smile turned into a full-blown grin that almost knocked her back a step it was so gorgeous.
“I should go,” she said, the “countess” voice totally gone. “My friends are waiting.”
She spun around, away from the sight of him, but it was no good. She could still feel him watching her with those pale, sea-colored eyes. That smile.
“Are you coming to the dance tonight?” he called, and she suddenly recognized that accent. It sounded Russian, like all the refugees from the Revolution who had flooded into London’s ballrooms in the last couple of years. That only made him even more intriguing, damn him.
“I shall have to check my calendar. It is rather full at the moment,” she said airily, rather proud of how calm she sounded now.
He ruined all that by laughing. Laughing! Even worse, his laughter sounded delicious, like the slide of a first sip of fizzy champagne.
She dashed away, but even as she ducked into the salon like it was her last sanctuary, closing her eyes against the day, she could still hear that laughter in her mind. That accent...
“Jeepers, Jess, but what happened to you?” Meggie cried. “You look like a ghost chased you down the deck.”
Jessica opened her eyes to see her friends were all gathered around the table already, the mah-jong tiles spread in front of them. They all stared up at her curiously, Charli squinting a little without her specs.
Flustered, Jessica pushed herself away from the door and shook her skirt back into place. She would probably tell them all about the Russian matinee idol, but not now. Tonight, in their cabin, when it was dark and she didn’t feel so horribly shaken-up. When she could think rationally about the mystery of him.
For now, though, he was just her little secret.
“I just took a wrong turn belowdecks and got lost,” she said with a laugh. “Come on, are we playing mah-jong or not?”
****
Durak! Nicolai Dimitriovich Romanov-Markov, now known by everyone as Frank Markov, watched the red-headed sprite of a girl dash away like a bright butterfly in the gray day. He had seen her before, standing on the ship’s railing with her arms flung out as if she would fly and racing around the decks laughing with her friends. It had made him laugh, too, just to see the sheer, raw exuberance of her. Had he ever been that young? He didn’t think so anymore.
And it had been far too long since he laughed at anything at all.
Frank turned away from the sight of her and rubbed his hand hard over the back of his neck as he muttered another curse. With her bright hair and vivid spirit, she reminded him too much of another such shining spirit. A girl who once spun through the gilded ballrooms of St. Petersburg, drawing him out onto palm-shielded verandas with her laughter and the scent of gardenias in her hair. Before she sent him off to war with just such a flower pressed into his hand.
But that girl was long-gone now, along with all of his old life in Russia. He couldn’t afford to lose himself in this woman’s radiance, no matter how deeply tempted he was to run after her now. To demand to know her name, to make her tell him what she laughed at. She was obviously a lady, with her fine accent and manners, despite her bobbed hair and free laughter.
He had a mission now, and where he was going no one could follow. Especially not aristocratic butterfly girls like that redhead.
“Did you speak to him?” someone said suddenly in Russian.
Frank turned to see his aunt, the Countess Markova as she was now known, standing at the railing behind him. That she had been able to creep up on him like that was another bad sign of his distraction. Her beautiful face smiled, but he saw the hardness behind it.
“He will do it,” Frank answered in the same language. In that instant of coming face-to-face with the laughing girl, he’d almost forgotten why they were on the Empress of India in the first place. The mission that had taken them from Siberia to Paris and London, and now to New York, where they would finally end things. Finally have their revenge.
He wouldn’t forget again.
A brittle smile curved the countess’s pretty, pink-rouged mouth, but her ice-blue eyes were flat and opaque. “Excellent. The more allies we can find the better.”
“Allies? Or mere greedy minions?” he said with a bark of humorless laughter.
“Does it matter? As long as they are useful to us.” She took a step closer to him and laid her gloved hand on his arm. Her touch was light, but in it he felt all the iron weight of their past. The blood-stained snow. The screams.
“You have surely not lost your resolve?” she said.
“Nyet,” he answered brusquely. “I will never forget. You know that.”
“Good. Not when we are so close to the end.”
She tugged at his arm, and he let her lead him toward the smoking salon. She was right. The end, which they had schemed and plotted and killed for, was finally within sight. He would never give it up for anything. He had vowed that to his lost family.
But he couldn’t help one glance back, just to see if there was still one last glimpse of strawberry-red hair. But she was gone.
Chapter Two
“I feel so melancholy since cutie went away! I know it’s folly that makes me feel this way. Oh, I feel like Romeo once fell for Juliet, I’ve got that wild lovin’ that you never will forget...’”
Jessica could hear the music before she even reached the open doors of the ship’s grand ballroom. It swept down the wide, carpeted corridor like a twist of sparkling sun, the sound of pure joy and happiness on the rumble of dancing feet.
She spun around herself, laughing. It was always that way when Meggie sang. Her voice didn’t seem to match her exuberant, blonde-ringleted self. It was a dark, low, throaty velvet, as rich and delicious as chocolate cake, and it always made everyone around long to either dance or sob with raw emotion.
Jessica twirled to a stop just outside the doors and caught a glimpse of herself in one of the wall-length, gilt-framed mirrors. Eliza’s magical needle had done its work on the sailor’s white, baggy uniform, and now the linen trousers and tunic fit her slim figure like a glove. The taken-up hem revealed her silver sequined dance shoes, the only part of the costume not nautically approved. The white hat sat perched on her bobbed hair.
She tilted it to a jaunty angle and slipped into the crowded ballroom.
Meggie stood onstage in her absolute element. The spotlight gathered and caught on her, shining on the silver satin Eliza had made into a goddess’s toga. Her blonde curls were twisted up with glittering strands of tinsel, but it didn’t sparkle as much as her smile as she held up her arms and sang. In the shadows behind her, the ship’s band played the song, Wild Romantic Blues, their instruments flashing in the darkness.
Jessica stayed to the edge of the room for the moment, studying the crowd as if she was writing a scene. This was the best part of any party, gauging the atmosphere, the mix of people. This one wasn’t too crazy yet. Couples spun around the checkered, lighted floor in a foxtrot to Meggie’s song, a blur of satin and velvet costumes, swaying fringe and sparkling beads. But there seemed to be a hum in the air of anticipation, a burst of fun just barely held in check.
Jessica caught a glass of champagne from the tray of a waiter passing by and slowly circled the dance floor. Along the carved gilt walls were long, white damask-draped buffet tables covered with tiered trays of smoked salmon, caviar on blinis, stuffed mushrooms, lobster patties, and luscious, glossy French chocolates, all watched over by an enormous ice sculpture of Poseidon with his trident.
Besides the glasses of champagne, a bartender was busy mixing up sidecars and pink ladies, their bright colors almost luminous in gloved hands. High above her head, fairy lights glowed from the coffered ceiling. It was all as grand and elaborate as any London debutante ball her sister Lulu’s friends would host.
And it was just like what she was trying to get away from by running to New York. But there was something in the air that night on the sea, something sparkling and reckless that made her feel like being wild, too. Like taking a chance on something, anything new.
Her glass of champagne was empty, and she glimpsed a pyramid of full glasses on the buffet table. She gave a waiter her empty one and reached for another, but just as her hand stretched out someone reached out in front of her. Someone with long, elegant, sun-bronzed fingers and an impeccable French cuff fastened with ebony studs.
Jessica realized with a hot-cold thrill that she remembered those very hands resting on the polished deck railing earlier.
“For you, mademoiselle?” he said, offering her the glass. She could hear the smile in his voice, in that light, lilting accent.
The champagne, so fizzy and golden-delicious, gulped down so fast, had already gone to her head a bit. She felt dizzy and a little silly. Or maybe that was just him making her feel that way.
She turned and looked up into his eyes, so blue they didn’t seem real. His hair was brushed back in a glossy wave from his sharply sculpted face, and she saw that there was actually a cleft in his square-cut jaw. She giggled as she realized she wanted more than anything to press her fingertip just there. Deep enough for a girl to fall in and swim in it.
She knew she shouldn’t do it, but something made her take the glass from his beautiful hand and gulp down another sip.
“Somehow I don’t think you’re French, monsieur,” she said.
He laughed, and it sounded startled, almost rusty, as if he very seldom laughed. “No,” he said, a hint of that intriguing laughter still in his voice. “I am not French. But tonight everyone is what they want to be, yes?”
That was why Jessica always loved a masquerade ball. The chance to cover up real life in all sorts of disguises, to slip away just for a few hours and try something else.
He was right. Tonight was about being whatever she wanted, and just like that her mind was made up. “Yes,” she said with a decisiveness she was far from feeling. She drank down the last of her champagne and put down the empty glass. “And what I want right now is a dance.”
He glanced past her to the dance floor, the stage. Meggie had left, and now the band played a quickstep. That was a dance she loved, so full of life and fun. It made her feel bold all over again, bold and scared and excited all at the same time, and she knew that was the kind of life she was seeking.
“Very well,” he said, giving her a low, old-world kind of bow. “Would you honor me with a dance, then, mademoiselle?”
In answer, Jessica stepped closer to him and slid one hand over his shoulder, taking the other lightly against her palm. He was taller than she, hard and warm under her hands, and she felt the smooth fineness of his wool evening coat. He was stronger and broader than any of her London Etonian dance partners.
He moved with her into the flow of the other dancers willingly enough, but his body felt stiff against hers, as if he held himself cautiously. Jessica impulsively tugged him closer and was rewarded with one of those glorious laughs. She laughed, too, even though her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears she could hardly hear the music. Only years and years of dance lessons kept her moving in the right pattern, feet to the left, feet to the right, spin around, skip.
That, and the fact that her mysterious matinee idol partner was a sublime dancer. He led her so easily, so gracefully, she barely had to think of where to move next.
Jessica rested her cheek on his shoulder and closed her eyes just to feel that one moment. The music swayed, quick, quick, slow, and she let the tune wind around her just like the warmth of his hand at her back, his strong body.
He was such an intriguing stranger. She spent her life in stories, writing them, reading them, dreaming them up, and she had never wanted to know a story more than she wanted to know his.
