“Trouble,” said Jack, with a hissy giggle.
“And ya look like shit, too,” Mack provided.
“A turd on legs,” Jack said.
“Gentlemen?” Augustus Pons had turned his face away from Toy’s spoon. The young man kept trying to slide the spoon into Pons’s mouth, but his efforts were waved away. “At least,” Pons said with an air of superiority, “Mr. Spade’s current hues are somewhat restrained. He wears no orange.”
That brought a drunken laugh from Cesar Sabroso and a fleeting smile across Minx Cutter’s face. But no joy from the land of the Thackers.
“Shut your hole, ya fat-assed buck!” growled Jack, who leaned toward Pons with the seething glare of murder in his eyes. Matthew was quite familiar with it.
“Mind yourself!” The voice of Mother Deare was indeed motherly, if one’s mother could hammer a spike through your forehead with two words. “We are a civilized gathering, sirs! And madams,” she added, for the sake of inclusion. “We are all brethren here, and we should act in accord with that. Understood?” She glared at the Thackers with eyes that might cut steel. And repeated the word to their silence: “Understood?”
Jack was the elder if one counted minutes and gray hairs, but the younger Mack seemed to be the more intelligent and diplomatic for it was he who nodded and said, “We do understand, Mother Deare.”
“Is my ass so very fat?” Pons asked Toy, with a stricken expression.
The young man frowned and offered the spoon and said, “Oh, no! It’s just perfect!” To which Pons gave a satisfied smile and accepted the offering.
Those at the table quietened down. Indeed, some sort of rough semblance of civility came upon the gathering. Most were silent, but for Pons and Toy who whispered to each other and an occasional winey laugh or exclamation directed into the air by Cesar Sabroso.
“But you’re feeling all right now?” Aria Chillany had come back to life. She placed her hand upon Matthew’s arm. She stared imploringly at him, the sapphire eyes wide with the just-asked question and her fingers squeezing his flesh.
“I am, yes.”
“Such a fall you must’ve taken!” She made it sound like a hero’s journey.
“Fortunately,” Matthew said with a quick tight smile, “I was able to save myself from serious injury.”
“Very fortunate.” Minx was regarding him over the rim of her glass. “Nathan, you seem to have somewhat of a charmed life, don’t you?”
Matthew heard Adam Wilson clear his throat down the table at the sound of the name, but he paid no heed. “Charmed? Not sure of that. But I suppose I am lucky.”
“The Devil’s luck,” said Mack, into his stewbowl.
“Hell wouldn’t have him,” said Jack.
“Spat him out,” Mack offered.
“Shat him out,” was Jack’s correction.
“You two,” said Madam Chillany, “make not an ounce of fucking sense.” She kept her hand on Matthew’s arm, and now began to do a little rubbing. Matthew noted that both Minx and Fancy took note of this action, before they pretended not to.
The dinner went on through platters of steamed clams and grilled swordfish to its conclusion of rice pudding, sugar cookies in the shapes of various sea creatures, and offerings of sweet sherry and golden port. During this procession of edibles and potables, Aria Chillany drew herself nearer and nearer to Matthew, at one point rubbing his leg with her own while she drank her weight in wine and began to burble about that bastard Jonathan Gentry. It seemed to Matthew that Jonathan Gentry, for all his faults, might be missed by at least one person at this table, and the sudden sadness that leaped into the sapphire eyes was a pity to behold. But it didn’t stay very long, for Aria was surely a woman of the moment, and Gentry’s moment—even if it was brief and lackluster—had passed in a long sigh between bottles. Then her fingers found Matthew’s arm again and her foot taunted his ankle beneath the table, and her laughter at Pons’s gallant little attempts at joking was forced and strident and carried the note of a woman terrified of sleeping alone for fear her bedtime companion might awaken with a scream behind her teeth.
Matthew had trouble looking her in the face; in fact, he had difficulty looking at any of them, but all through the dinner he felt the eyes of Minx Cutter and Fancy upon him, one set of eyes perhaps carving him up into small pieces the easier to digest, the other set wondering what freedom would taste like in the brave new world he might present to her. At last Matthew finished a final seahorse, which he crunched noisily for the benefit of those who knew, and then excused himself from the table with a word of goodnight to Mother Deare, who seemed to rule this particular roost. It was a difficult chore getting out of Aria’s claws, and she looked at him despondently over her umpteenth glass of wine. He turned his back on her and walked away from the gathering and up the stairs.
To be joined within seconds by Minx, who grasped his arm and pressed to his side and asked quietly, “What really happened to you?”
“Stairs,” he answered. “Fall. Unfortunate.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
“If you lean on me any harder, I may fall down these stairs as well.” He continued his ascent and she kept beside him.
“I need you,” she said.
His eyes widened. “Pardon?”
“To go with me in the morning. I want to show you something. Back where the whales play. It’s important. Will you meet me at the stable? Say…eight o’clock?”
“Fuckin’ impossible!” hollered Jack Thacker, and a wine glass died a shattered death upon the floor.
Matthew kept going without a backward glance, and Minx with him. They went through the corridor of sea-skeletons toward the main staircase. “I’m not sure I can get a horse,” he told her.
“Why not?”
“I’ve been a bad boy.”
She frowned. “What’re you talking about?”
“Only that I’ve offended someone here, and I may not be able to get a horse.”
“That’s more bullshit. If you need a horse, I’ll get one for you.”
“All right, then.” He stopped at the foot of the central stairs and regarded her with a neutral expression. “Yes, I’ll meet you at the stable at eight. What’s this about?”
“It’s about…” She glanced left and right, to make sure no one was near. Then she suddenly leaned into him and kissed him on the mouth. It was a long, lingering kiss, and though Matthew was amazed by this unexpected action he did not draw away.
“Well,” said Matthew when the kiss had ended and Minx was staring at him with her slightly dewy golden eyes. “May I guess it’s about…us?”
“Eight o’clock,” she said, and she started up the stairs without waiting for him. A few risers up, she paused and turned toward him once more. “Unless,” she added.
“Unless?” he asked.
“Unless I see you before then,” Minx held his gaze for a few seconds longer, and then she continued on her way and out of his sight into the second-floor hallway.
Matthew’s lips were burning. Now this was the damnedest thing! he thought. Who could have seen this coming? The princess of blades, attracted to him? He was a dull knife in this company. Still…he did have youth, and manners. He was quite simply stunned. Therefore he was doubly pole-axed when he started up the stairs and a soft feminine voice behind him said, “Nathan?”
He turned to face Fancy, who came up to stand beside him.
“I have only a minute,” she said, but calmly as was her hidden spirit. “They’ll be after me. I want you to know…when I saw you go into the water today…I knew I had to help you. I don’t know why. I just…had to. I don’t know who you are, or why you are here, but…I want to thank you for thinking you could help me.”