The blood froze inside her. Thomas was dead, she knew it.
Miller tilted his head and waited. When she couldn’t bring herself to respond, he left, closing the door behind him.
The paralyzing cold spread over her, and, for a blessed moment, Anna felt nothing. Then the shivering started, brought her back to the tavern. Anna’s first thought was that her knees would give way before she reached the chair by the fire. She clutched the back of it, her nails digging into the upholstery. When she felt one of them snap, she turned, took three steps, then vomited into the slops pot on the bar.
Better, Anna thought, wiping her mouth. I must be better than this.
Still trembling, but at least able to think, she climbed the stairs to her rooms. She saw Thomas’s good shirt hanging from a peg, and buried her face in it, breathing deeply. She took it down, rubbing the thick linen between her fingers, and considered the length of the sleeves. She stared at the peg, high on the wall, and reluctantly made her decision.
Everything was different in her new shoes. Since she was used to her thin slippers, the cobbles felt oddly distant beneath the thick soles, and it took her awhile to master the clunkiness of the heels. She relied on a population used to drunken sailors to ignore her, relied on the long cloak to conceal most of her blunders. Thomas’s clothes would have been impossible, but she still had a chest full of her father’s things, and his boots were a better fit. Best not to think about the rest of her garb. She needed to confirm what Miller had hinted, and she couldn’t be seen doing it. Anna was too familiar a figure to those whose lives were spent on the wharves, and most of them would be friendly faces. But not if she were caught. If they caught her, so scandalously dressed in britches, well…losing the tavern would be the least of it.
Somehow, her need to know for sure was stronger than fear, than embarrassment, and the bell in the Old North Church chimed as she found her way to Miller’s wharf. The reek of tar and wood fires made her eyes water, and a stiff breeze combined drying fish with the smells of spices in nearby warehouses, making her almost gag.
The moon broke through the clouds. She walked out to the harbor, feeling more and more exposed by the moment…
Nothing on Miller’s wharf that shouldn’t be there. She stopped, struck by a realization. Hook would never lay the murder at his own doorstep.
The urge to move a short way down to the pier and wharf that belonged to Clark, Miller’s detested rival in business, was nearly physical.
At first, Anna saw nothing but the boards of the pier itself. She climbed down the ladder to the water’s edge, hooked one of the dinghies by its rope, and pulled it close. She boarded, cast off, and rowed, following the length of the pier. Though she preferred to be secret, there was no need to muffle the oarlocks; the waterfront’s activity died down at night, but it was never completely silent along the water. Sweat trickled down her back even as thin ice crackled on the floor of the boat beneath her feet.
The half hour rang out, echoed by church bells across Boston and Charlestown, and Anna shivered in spite of her warm exercise.
Three-quarters of the way down the pier, Anna saw a glimpse of white on the water. She uncovered her lantern and held it up.
Among the pilings, beneath the pier, all manner of lost and discarded things floated, bobbing idly on top of the waves: broken crate wood, a dead seagull, an unmoored float. There was something else.
A body.
Even without seeing his face, she knew it was Thomas, his fair hair floating like kelp, the shirt she herself had patched billowing around him like sea foam. A wave broke against the piling of the pier and one of his hands was thrust momentarily to the surface, puffy and raw: the fish and harbor creatures had already been to feast.
Anna stared awhile, and then maneuvered the boat around. She rowed quietly back to the ladder, tied up the dinghy, and headed home.
She brought the bottle of rum to her room, drank until the cold was chased away and she could feel her fingers again. Then she drank a good deal more. She changed back into her own clothing and, keeping her father’s advice in mind, opened her Bible. In an old habit, she let it fall open where it would, closing her eyes and placing a finger on the text. The candle burned low while she read, waiting for someone to come and tell her Thomas Hoyt was dead.
Hook Miller came to the burial on Copp’s Hill. As he made his way up to where Anna stood, the crowd of neighbors-there were nearly fifty of them, for nothing beat a good funeral-doffed their hats out of respect to his standing. Miller’s clothes were showy but ill-suited to him, Anna knew, and he pretended concern that was as foreign to him as a clean handkerchief. He even waited decently before he approached her, and those nearby heard a generous offer of aid to the widow, so that she could retreat to a quieter life elsewhere.
The offering price was still an affront. When she shook her head, he nodded sadly, said he’d be back when she was more composed. She knew it wasn’t solicitousness but the eyes of the neighborhood that made him so nice. The next time Miller approached her, it would be in private. There would be no refusing that offer.
When Seaver came in for his drink later, she avoided his glance. She’d already made up her mind.
The next morning, she sent a note to Hook Miller. No reason to be seen going to him, when there was nothing more natural than for him to come to the tavern. And if his visit stood out among others, why, she was a propertied widow now, who had to keep an eye to the future.
He didn’t bother knocking, came in as if he already owned the place, and barred the door behind him. She was standing behind a chair, waiting, a bottle of wine on the table, squat-bodied and long-necked, along with two of her best glasses, polished to gleaming. One was half-filled, half-drunk. The fire was low, and there were only two candles lit.
He bowed and sat without being asked. His breath was thick with harsh New England rum. “Well?”
“I can’t sell the place. I’d be left with nothing.”
Miller was silent at first, but his eyes narrowed. “And?”
Anna straightened. “Marry me. That way…the place will be yours, and I’ll be…looked after.”
“You didn’t sign it over to Thomas.”
“Thomas Hoyt was as thick as two short planks. I couldn’t trust him to find his arse with both hands.”
Thomas’s absence now was not discussed.
Miller pondered. “If I do, you’ll sign the Queen’s Arms over to me.”
“The day we wed.” Her father had given her the hope and the means, but then slowly, painfully, she’d discovered she couldn’t keep the place alone. She swallowed. “I can’t do this by myself.”
“And what benefit to me to marry you?”
Her hours of thought had prepared the answer. “You’ll get a property you’ve always wanted, and with it, an eye and an ear to everything that happens all along the waterfront. More than that: respectability. This whole neighborhood is getting nothing but richer, and you’d be in the middle of it. What better way to advance than through deals with the merchant nobs themselves? To say nothing of window dressing for your other…affairs.”
Miller laughed, then stopped, considered what she was saying. “Sharp. And a clever wife to entertain my new friends? It makes sense.”
“Those merchants, they’re no more than a step above hustling themselves. We can be of use to each other,” she said carefully. She’d almost said need, but that would have been fatal. “Wine?”
He looked at her, looked at the bottle, the one empty glass. “Thanks.”