He dismissed her with a shrug. “We’ll be leaving at dawn. No more delays.”
“I’ll be ready.” She held out her hand. “Shall we let bygones be bygones, O’Shea? Until we reach San Francisco?”
His laugh was caustic and brief. He grabbed her hand, the calluses on his palms and fingertips rough on her skin, enveloping her in warmth and strength.
“Peace,” he said. “Until San Francisco.”
And then, my friend, Mac thought, all bets are off.
* * *
Part Two
Love, all alike,
no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months,
which are the rags of time.
—John Donne
* * *
Chapter Ten
It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times.
—Charles Dickens
San Francisco, mid-September, 1884
THE DAY WAS incredibly, brilliantly clear. No trace of fog lingered over the Bay; Mac could see everything, every detail of the city she’d lived in all her life.
Except that it wasn’t her city.
Enfolded in a dark woolen cloak Liam had bought from a fellow passenger, Mac stood on the deck of the steamer as it passed through the Golden Gate.
There was no red-painted span stretched between the Marin Headlands and the Presidio. No TransAmerica pyramid to mark the skyline, no Coit tower, no Bank of America building, no skyscrapers. The silhouette of the city was strangely squat, frighteningly alien. And as the ship rounded the promontory, the vastness of the Bay itself spread before her: Alcatraz island rising bare and rocky out of the choppy waves, the hills of Berkeley and Oakland golden brown and almost unmarked by man, steamers and barges and ferries and great-masted clipper ships plying the unbridged water.
It could still shake her, the knowledge that all this was real. She’d had proof enough during the journey here—in the Guatemalan port where she and Liam had caught the steamer, aboard the steamer itself. But this surpassed everything else. This she felt like an adrenaline rush through her body, so that she had to grab the railing on the deck to hold herself upright.
This was San Francisco, and the year was 1884.
Mac leaned over the rail and watched the water rushing alongside the hull of the boat. At least she hadn’t been seasick. Considering the length of the voyage and the journey before that, by foot and mule through the jungles and mountains of Guatemala to the port of Champerico, she had done pretty well.
Especially considering that Liam O’Shea had been as good as his word. He’d brought her, all right, but he’d kept his distance, which had been just fine with her.
Fernando had been enough company until they’d left him behind at Champerico, and she’d proved to Liam that she could keep up. In the end, he’d given her grudging respect.
But no more, except to provide her with this cloak to cover her peculiar clothing, and securing her a tiny cabin to herself on the steamer bound for San Francisco. They’d been in luck that one had been due in port only a few days after their arrival, and that they’d been able to get cabins. The steamer had limited room for passengers on its voyage up from South America. It was only later Mac learned that Liam was part-owner of the shipping company, and he could command more than any mere passenger.
Just a first indication that they were coming into Liam’s world—a world where he was a wealthy man. A world where he knew the rules and she didn’t. In the jungle they’d been equals, two people in a vast wilderness. But here…
“Miss?”
She turned. The captain’s lieutenant, a pleasant young man with a darkly tanned face, touched the brim of his cap. “We’ll be docking soon. Mr. O’Shea wishes to speak with you.”
He looked at her expectantly. He wasn’t the only one to do so on those few occasions that she’d left her cabin; she’d nearly gone stir-crazy with confinement, but she thought it better not to raise too many questions in such close quarters as the ship allowed.
They were all curious about her, the crew and small complement of passengers. Well they might be. Liam had put out some sort of story about her being the daughter of an explorer friend, and that she’d been ill and needed quiet and privacy. The only times he’d come near her were when he brought meals or other necessities to her cabin.