Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,23

she reached for his hand and kissed each finger. Her lips slid down past his knuckle. He sighed, contented.

She eased the ring off his index finger, slid it onto her own, then looked into his eyes.

“I heard Samuel Stratton is looking for you. I won’t let him have you. We’ll run away, to New York. There’s a ship tomorrow night.”

He sat up. “Let us go now! I can find a horse—”

“No, be patient. I must keep them from you forever. Can you trust me to do that? I have a plan, and will come aboard the ship at the last minute, just before it sails.”

He stared at her, then dropped his head in agreement. “Anna, you must take care. If anything should happen to you, I’d die.” He held his hand over the flame of the candle, until a blister raised. “I swear it.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “I understand. But you must trust me.”

“With my life.”

She found the bottle she’d brought with her and offered it. “Drink to it, then.”

As Anna left, Bram was still and silent. She hadn’t realized what hope did to a person, until this moment. Unrealistic expectation coupled with … something. Optimism.

It was terrible. She wept as she found her way back to her room.

The next day, Anna returned to Boston and the Queen’s Arms, and found it much the same as before she’d left for London, in the care of her man Josiah. As welcome as its familiarity was, the tavern’s walls seemed to press in around her, leaving her breathless.

All was well, but not yet to her liking.

If she had given up Bram, not willing to relinquish the small fortune and cupful of power she’d carefully amassed, neither was she ready to return to drawing beer and measuring rum. By choosing to thwart Browne and Seaver and Stratton, she’d chosen more.

There was no certainty in life. She’d learned the power of social barriers in London, but she’d also learned how laws could be winked at, and yet public esteem maintained, by the respectable whore in the Eastham church.

So more it must be, and by her will, rather than certainty.

But carefully, carefully. She would never be free of Browne and Seaver, but she might learn to work … in their margins. Alongside them, if not beneath them.

In the next days, she went to the merchant Rowe about the purchase of a piece of his land outside the city. They shook hands after negotiating; he had a faint smile on his face. Hers was quite determined. It would be the first of many such purchases she’d make. She had plans of her own now.

She sat at her desk, entered the transaction in her ledger, then drafted a note to the lawyer Clark, giving him instructions about the purchase and asking him to find a secondhand copper still for her. She considered who she would employ in her future enterprises and drew a list. It was short, but every one reliable.

There was a knock at her door; the taproom boy was there, announcing a visitor. His eyes were wide.

Seaver? It might be a short career, then, if he discovered her betrayal. She looked to the little blond manikin and asked, “Dolly, what is the right lie?”

The caller was Clarissa.

The girl looked much better for a change of air and a change of dress. Fresh-scrubbed and the gray under her eyes replaced with roses, she was the picture of modesty. Better, she was unrecognizable, even in Anna’s blue velvet cloak.

“Mr. Munroe took my absence well?” Anna asked.

Clarissa laughed.

Anna shrugged, surprised at how little she felt now, only glad her plan worked. “But he won’t be back?”

“Oh, no. He won’t dare come to Boston, now that he believes you left his ring at the site of the fire for Mr. Seaver and Mr. Stratton to find. He cursed you, roundly and foully. Even threatened to kill you—I wasn’t sure I’d escape his rage—but the money you paid the captain was enough to keep him on board, while I slipped back ashore. He won’t show himself here.”

Anna nodded, trying not to look at her battered Bible. There was a slight gap between the pages in the middle, where she’d hidden Bram’s ring. “Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out.”

“What’s that?”

“From Proverbs. You can read?”

Clarissa nodded.

Anna hesitated. The girl owed her much and was clever enough. Perhaps she would do.

“Start with this, then.” She handed Clarissa a new Bible. “You’ll need to read, if you’re to work for me,