Reckless
Amused by the youth’s enthusiasm, Garrett Blackhawk smiled as he pocketed the telegram the lad had presented and closed the door of his suite at the Palace Hotel.
The boy was his second welcome interruption of the evening. The visitor sprawled in the comfortable chair by the fireplace had been the first, delaying Garrett’s dressing for the dinner party he wished to avoid. The delivery had delayed Deegan Galloway’s pitch.
“Forgive the intrusion, Dig. You were saying that you’re persona non grata in Frisco?” Garrett asked, drop-ping with careless elegance into another chair, his right leg thrown loosely over the padded arm. He was in his shirtsleeves, evening trousers donned, starched shirtfront and collar in place, tie still dangling loosely around his neck. Although the clock on the mantelpiece was a constant reminder that he was late, Garrett made no attempt to rush his unexpected guest. Instead he reached for the cigarette papers and bag of tobacco on the table at his side and began rolling a smoke.
Deegan sighed deeply and buried his nose in a snifter of brandy before answering. “I was merely hedging my bets, Garrett. There’s no way around it. I’ve got to marry a woman with money or seek employment. Either one will have to be done in another city. Between them, those two women will make it impossible for me to succeed here.”
Blackhawk deftly sealed the edge of his cigarette and soon had obscured his face behind a screen of smoke. He’d heard it said that he fit his name well. Some insisted that, like a hawk, there was a predatory gleam in the obsidian shadows of his eyes, and a hunter’s alertness in the tall, tapered frame of his body. His hair was sable in color, luxuriant in texture, and frequently tousled. Although born an English gentleman, of late his skin had been warmed to a primitive bronze by the sun of three continents. The craggy lines of his face could have belonged to a Spaniard, a Bedouin or a Mayan, and, at one time or another during his travels, Garrett had found it prudent to assume the identity of each in turn. He was careful in his choice of companions, allowing very few to know him well. Deegan Galloway was one of the specially chosen permitted to see the man beneath the mask.
Garrett drew deeply on his cigarette, savoring the taste of tobacco on his tongue, enjoying the slight euphoria of the smoke in his lungs. “You have my abject sympathy,” he assured Galloway.
“Sure and it isn’t enough,” Deegan drawled in an exaggerated brogue, then abandoned the affectation, returning to his normal speaking voice. “I came begging a grubstake as you very well know.”
Blackhawk reached for his own glass of brandy, adding the lush body of the wine to the tally of sensory delights he planned to sample over the course of the evening. His current company was pleasant, and the brisk dampness of the San Francisco air reminded him sharply and depressingly of home. It was one of the reasons he was anxious to leave the city. Business kept him a temporary captive.
A hardwood fire burned on the hearth, efficiently warming the hotel room. It reminded him of nights before the huge fireplaces at Hawk’s Run in Shropshire, only there the heat would have been supplied by locally mined coal. The estate might well be as distant as the moon for all the thought he’d given it over the past two years.
“If you want a position that will take you far away, you’re welcome to become my secretary and take up residence at the Run,” Garrett offered. “It would be a favor that would enable me to stay blissfully distant from the place.”
Deegan chuckled. “Trying to turn me into an Irish peasant? You forget I’m an American, born and bred. My da was the potato eater. Although your largess is appreciated, I’ll stay on this side of the Atlantic. A monetary handout will be more than sufficient, my friend.”
Garrett grinned in response to Galloway’s request. “At least you know your limits. I notice you didn’t ask for a loan.”
“Lord, no.” Deegan swished the brandy in his glass, watching the liquid swirl. “You’d never get it back, and well you know it, old chap.”
Garrett took another soothing draw on his cigarette. Rolling his own had become a habit, one picked up out of necessity during his travels. It made him feel self-sufficient, perhaps a ridiculous affectation, but one he had no intention of giving up. “Did you love her?”
“Who?”
He’d known Deegan long enough to recognize when his friend was evading something. ‘’Whichever. You said there were two women.”
Deegan tossed off the last of his brandy. “Devilish greedy bastard, aren’t I? Most men would be content with winning one heiress.” He reached for the brandy decanter on the table between them. “What makes you think I loved them?”
“Not them, just one,” Garrett clarified. “Do I need more than the fact that you rarely drink?”
On the point of refilling his goblet, Deegan halted. Garrett blew a series of smoke rings while his friend struggled silently within himself.
Deegan set the decanter down and pushed his empty glass away. “It’s the situation, not the woman. Besides.” he insisted lightly, “you know I love money more than I could ever love any woman.”
It was interesting how a man could lie to himself, Garrett mused as he drew on his cigarette. Interesting how he could believe the lie. “Tell me about her anyway, Dig,” he urged.
Deegan slumped deep into the cushions of his chair, stretched his legs out and grinned. “Not believin’ me, are ye, laddie,” he said. “The lady’s not for me. Knew it the moment I set eyes on her. She’s so beautiful, so graceful.” The artificial lilt dropped from Deegan’s voice, replaced by a quality that could only be described, Garrett felt, as dreamy. “It was like seeing an angel to watch her dance,” Deegan continued. “She glides, my friend. Glides. And when a man waltzes with her it’s akin to floating right in the clouds.”
Garrett smiled faintly. “Sounds to me as if Cupid’s sunk his arrow deep.” He drew a final lungful of smoke and leaned forward to toss the butt of his cigarette into the fire.
“Hmm,” Deegan murmured thoughtfully. “Doubtful, my lad. How could I be when she deserves someone like you?”
Caught exhaling the smoke, Garrett choked. “Bloody hell, Dig,” he gasped when he could breathe once more. “You don’t have to kill me to get into my wallet.”
“My point exactly. I get by on my wits…”
“Such as they are,” Garrett grumbled, uneasy at the turn the conversation had taken.
“But you, my friend,” Deegan insisted with a wry grin, “have the magic touch. You seem to make money by merely thinking about it Little did I know when I rescued you from that strumpet in Sonora…”
Garrett got to his feet with languorous grace. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and listen to your insults,” he said, leaning toward the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece and turning his attention to the involved process of fixing his tie. “You rescued me? That isn’t how I re-member the event. If memory serves, there was a lynch mob after you when you barged into my bedroom.”
“All in your perception, my friend. As I was saying…”
“And loving the sound of your own voice,” Garrett dded under his breath. It had been a decidedly nasty hock to have Deegan turn the conversation on him. If here was something he didn’t need in his life right now t was a beauty with ethereal habits. That kind of woman welonged to the life he abhorred, the life that would claim him once more in the distant future.
Gliding and floating. Garrett fumed silently as he looped the narrow band of black silk into a crisp bow. Deegan may claim he wasn’t in love with the woman, but he wouldn’t convince anyone else with talk like that.
Deegan was listing the physical attributes of his goddess now. Garrett wished he hadn’t drawn the man out. If only he’d turned Dig away earlier instead of welcoming him as a savior. If only he’d made a stir when the telegram had arrived, the whole mess would have—
Telegram.
“You remember where I put that blasted wire?” Garrett demanded, interrupting Deegan in midsentence. Something about hair of spun gold.
“In your pocket,” Deegan supplied. “Now her eyes are…
Garrett stopped listening again. “Why do I have such cursedly abominable taste in friends?” he asked.
“You mean me,” Deegan said, far from insulted. “It’s your money, laddie. It attracts rogues like myself.”
“Meaning if I had my wits about me, I’d stop finding ways to make more of it,” Blackhawk growled. The paper he’d received from the bellboy was creased from his own careless handling. Absently Garrett smoothed it out. “You might be interested in this, Dig. I’ve been waiting to hear from a man in Cheyenne. I’m thinking of investing in a cattle ranch in Wyoming Territory.”
“Spare me,” Deegan pleaded. He reached for the cigarette materials and was soon tapping tobacco along the length of the small square of paper in his hand. “No doubt a week from now you’ll be camped in some forsaken spot staring deeply into a complacent cow’s brown eyes. Cattle.” He signed in resignation. “Who would ever have believed a civilized Englishman would prefer the face of a longhorn to that of a beautiful woman?”
“I don’t,” Garrett said, at last opening his message. “Beautiful women always rank ahead of a cow, although the cow will give me less trouble.” He scanned the telegram quickly, then read it again more slowly before crumpling it in his hand.
“The bloody hell.” Barely audible, the words were rough to the ear. Garrett followed them with a few well chosen curses from three other languages. The crushed telegram shot into the fireplace, caught flame among the coals and was soon reduced to curling black ash.
Deegan halted in the act of lighting his cigarette. “Trouble?”
Garrett’s jaw was stiff with suppressed fury. The future had galloped in on fleeter hooves than he had expected. Mentally he called himself every kind of fool. Had he really believed the burdens he’d carried for so long would remain at bay even for a few more months?
Well, he’d had two years of hard-won freedom. They would have to suffice him a lifetime. A cold, bleak lifetime.
It took a moment for Deegan’s quiet question to register. Garrett remained standing, staring down at the hearth, at the smouldering black remains of the telegram. “My father is dead.”
Silence stretched between them, and the sounds of the hotel around them seemed to magnify. Garrett was conscious of the rattle of a wheeled trolley cart in the hallway, of the sound of running water through the plumbing, the footfalls of a guest in the room above. Outside on the street, a man yelled an obscenity at another driver, wheels rumbled, a horse whinnied.
“Your father. I’m sorry,” Deegan said.
“Not half as sorry as I,” Garrett noted wearily. “It means I have to go back, take on the responsibility of being head of the family.”
More importantly, he knew, it meant facing the accusations again. Dear Lord, it was more than any man should be pressed to endure.
Garrett forced a wan smile. “Why don’t you return at one tomorrow, Dig? I’ll arrange something with my bank for you, but I don’t think I’ll be a very companionable bloke tonight.”
The facade of the carefree adventurer was no longer present on Deegan’s face. “If there’s anything I can do, you have only to ask,” he said. “I’m not quite as shallow as I’m made out to be. I stand by my friends when they need me, Garrett.”
“I know, Dig. I know.”
Chapter Two
Although the day had been sun filled, around midnight the damp chill turned into a cold rivulet of rain that coursed down the back of Garrett’s neck. He had been walking the city streets ever since Deegan left. It had taken but a moment to scribble his regrets to his host of the evening, sending a bellboy off with the message. He hadn’t bothered changing clothes, but had shrugged on, over his evening attire, the long vaquero’s duster he’d worn in Mexico, and added a battered, broad-brimmed slouch hat. His outward appearance blending with a thousand other men in San Francisco, Garrett trudged through the muddy streets, his mind far from his surroundings.
It had taken his solicitors in London months to find him. If he hadn’t become interested in the cattle ranch and contacted them, the firm of Hafner, Horrigan and Long would still be searching. He’d been carefully avoiding them for a long time, but now the ever-restless trace of his journey was at an end. Of necessity he would be in touch with the solicitors frequently, his travel plans limited by the thin binding lines of the telegraph that linked him to their office.
Garrett worked his way along Kearny Street, his footsteps aimless. According to the wire, his father had died six months ago. What had he been doing the day Stewart Blackhawk was interned in the family crypt? Garrett wondered. Had he been in South America yet, in the Amazon jungles? Or had he reached Mexico at that time? The memory of one carefree day was gone, no longer a time that he could pinpoint to a particular event or place.
Six months. The delay in reaching him served as a reprieve, no matter how short. Various business interests would supply the excuses he needed to delay a month, two at the most, then he would have to shoulder his responsibilities at Hawk’s Run once more.
He’d tried so hard to outrun them, to distance himself from both the good and the bad. And the whispers.
The rain was more mist than storm, making it a match to his mood. It dampened the streets as much as the wire had dampened his spirits. Coach lamps created glowing fingers of light on the glistening pavement and highlighted where puddles had begun to form in the depressions. The drizzle discouraged even the braver souls from walking the streets. Those men who did scurried for shelter quickly, heading into the warm, brightly lit doorways of various saloons and private gambling clubs, and the more dimly lit and even warmer parlors of the bordellos. A more perfect night for grieving was difficult to envision. If, that is, he could grieve for the man he suspected had not been his father.
Garrett’s legs ate the distance, taking him away from the city proper and into the shadowy lanes that comprised the Barbary Coast. Rain dripped from the bent brim of his hat, dampened the waxed length of his duster, and still he strode on as sure in each step as if he had a particular destination in mind.
His thoughts were thousands of miles away in another land. What were the Salopians saying of him in the local tavern now? he wondered.
Ever since his dark head had made its appearance among the fair-haired residents of Hawk’s Run, there had been rumors concerning his birth. A nursemaid had been dismissed for spreading the tale that he was an elfin child, a substitute left when the brownies stole the true golden-tressed heir. Despite the fact that black-haired ancestors were visibly present among the oldest of the portraits in the family gallery, the levelheaded gentry whispered that he was a bastard, the child Antonia Blackhawk had cuckolded her husband with as his own. Although he’d spent many a rainy afternoon staring at the paintings, Garrett had never recognized his own features among the host of dark ancestral faces.
Matters had not improved as he grew taller and broadened, his form that of a muscled athlete rather than of a fine-boned scholar like his diminutive father. Stewart Blackhawk had been an academician, brilliant when it came to translating ancient Greek poetry, inept and uninterested when it came to running his estate, cooly distant and silent when it came to Garrett’s doubts and questions concerning his birth.
With the family debts mounting, Garrett had left the halls of Cambridge and made his dark features a familiar sight in the meadows of Hawk’s Run. He had worked alongside the tenants for plantings, for harvests. Yet the whispers continued, reviving tales of wizardry that brought fertility back to tired fields.
In the City of London it was no different, for men there jokingly claimed he bewitched weak investments into profitable ventures. It was even said, more seriously, that he had blinded Stewart Blackhawk to the truth, for the man never commented on the validity of his eldest son’s birth, an oversight the grown Garrett recognized as neglect rather than belief. Sometime during his childhood, Garrett had begun believing the rumors himself simply because his father had never eased his son’s mind over his legitimacy.
Members of society read a wealth of mystery and intrigue into Stewart’s silence on the subject as well and whispered all the more. And so, assaulted by suspicion on all sides, Garrett had set out to be exactly what they termed him. He had adopted the qualities of a chameleon, changing with his environment, one moment the mystic who communed with supernatural folk, the next the arrogant upstart who flaunted the Blackhawk name.
He had learned much in playing these parts. He’d discovered he was a natural deceiver, a man who could don the face of an actor, who could adapt to any situation and find something to claim as his own in every outcome.
Or he did most of the time, Garrett admitted silently. In Cairo his so-called powers had been impotent, and Sybil had paid the price for his pride. It had been a tragic and most humbling experience.
He had grown as a result, had learned that he hated what fate had made him. What fate was forcing him to become once more.
He was back to living a lie. The life he had enjoyed as a ragged Bohemian adventurer the past two years had disappeared, leaving in its place a man who of necessity must become the epitome of the unruffled British aristocrat.
In other words, he was going to be a bloody damn hyp-ocrite.
The rivulet inching down his neck grew more uncomfortable. After extended stays in Egypt, along the Equator, and in Sonora, he was used to the unrelenting rays of the sun and had forgotten the chilling trials of a cloud-ridden climate.
Rather than be miserable, Garrett decided in favor of shelter. The saloons of the Barbary Coast were somewhat drier than the streets, although they smelled worse. The company was more rowdy than convivial and the whiskey was vile enough to take paint off a house. It was better than being alone with his thoughts, and being with strangers meant, if he could not check them, at least he could keep those thoughts to himself.
He nearly changed his mind when he entered the nearest door. A combination of scents assaulted him, of which cheap whiskey, cheaper perfume, cigar smoke and sweat were the most recognizable. The whole was overlaid with the taint of mildew.
“Why, hello, handsome,” a woman greeted throatily. She sashayed up to him, hips swinging, breasts bobbing. Her smile was a smear of rouge, and her eyes were fanned with runny streaks of kohl. She posed briefly, one hand propped on a cocked hip. The garish purple of her gown was mirrored in bruised circles beneath her eyes. The smile she gave him was tired, and as falsely brilliant as her brassy-colored hair.
She could easily have been a reflection of his own soul—worn, tawdry and devoid of hope.
“Lookin’ fer a little fun tonight? Somethin’ ta warm yer blood?” she purred.
“A drink, I thought,” Garrett said, making no effort to hide the upper-crust edge of his accent. The need to hit something was strong, and past experience had shown that in a low-class saloon the sound of his accent alone increased the possibility of a brawl.
“A drink, is it?” a man’s voice demanded in a heavy Irish brogue. “Well, squire, ye’ve come to the right place.” A disheveled, extremely wet man launched himself away from the support of the door behind Garrett and staggered forward, making shooing gestures at the woman. “Get along with you, lass. The squire and me’s got business ta discuss.”
Miffed at his interference, the woman turned her shoulder to the newcomer. “Ya’ll remember me, won’t ya, handsome? I’ll be around when this boyo passes out.” She stared hard at the man who stood swaying at Garrett’s side. “He looks like the kind that always does,” she added in disdain before moving toward another prospective customer.
“Cheeky little tart,” the man growled after her retreating form. Beads of water had formed on the rim of his narrow-brimmed bowler. The shoulders of his suit coat were soaked through and the lapels were limply turned up in an effort to keep the rain from further dampening his wilted shirt collar. “Now then, squire. ‘Bout our business.” He pitched to the ide, stumbling over his own feet.
Garrett nearly staggered himself when the Irishman fell against him. “What business might that be?” he asked, steadying the man upright once more. “The return of my wallet and watch, perhaps?”
Rather than take offense at the accusation of theft, the man grinned widely. “Yer’ve been snaffled afore, have ye, squire?”
“By better men than you,” Garrett said. “Shall we adjourn to the bar and see which of us pays for the drinks with my purse?”
The man chuckled. “I like you, squire. ‘Struth. Oh, look will you, I’ve mussed the front of yer lovely coat.” He brushed hastily at Garrett’s duster, removing imaginary soot. “Perhaps I could put yer right of a special little brew. Highly recommend it.”
The barkeep probably did store a “special little brew” behind his counter guaranteed to knock a customer out, Garrett mused. If a man accepted, he would wake up at sea, shanghaied more efficiently than any man who’d ever been impressed by the Royal Navy.
“Whiskey,” he said when they reached the bar. “Neat.”
“I’ll have the same as me friend here,” the dripping man declared. While waiting to be served, he leaned back against the scarred bar top, the heel of one shoe hooked companionably on the brass foot rail, and grinned widely on one and all. His clothing created puddles on the floor, the runoff sending out small rills that fed into the spittoon channel beneath the bar rail.
Garrett waited until they’d been served and his damp companion had unabashedly paid for the drinks from the wallet he’d lifted from Garrett’s pocket. “That’s the most atrocious accent I’ve ever heard,” he said.
“It’s dead to rights, my lad,” the other man vowed, his voice pitched low, the brogue abandoned. “Buzzed it from me da himself.”
Garrett studied the smoky glass the bartender had slid before him and the strong liquor within it. He wondered briefly if he’d been smart to follow the western creed of allowing a man his anonymity when it came to the past. Particularly when it came to the man who had become his traveling companion over the past few months. “Why are you following me, Dig?”
Another man pushed next to them and called for a bottle. Deegan shrugged back into character and reached for his own tumbler. “Tis a mortal sin fer a man to be forced to drink alone, squire.” He took a sip of his whiskey and grimaced. “Holy Saint Patrick! But that’s a fine elixir,” he declared hoarsely.
Since Deegan’s eyes had begun to water, Garrett ordered soda water before sampling his own shot.
Deegan toasted the other patron as he moved away from the bar, then turned back to Garrett. “If you had another friend handy I would have left you to your own bloody devices,” Deegan continued in an undertone. “But you don’t. That leaves you a choice. We can make a night of it in this charming little groggery or find a more appropriate setting to get soused. Either way you’re going to tell me what’s bothering you.” He held up a hand, halting any attempt Garrett might make at a rebuttal. “And don’t tell me it’s your dear old da’s demise.”
Garrett stared at the whiskey in his glass, considering his words. It would be so much easier to let Deegan remain nothing more than the companion of his Mexican adventures. With the loss of two heiresses in a single day, and dwindling finances, Galloway had his own problems.
In a corner a man shoved to his feet, angrily upsetting a table over his companions. A woman shrieked as one of the men leapt forward to seek revenge.
Garrett ignored the building melee, no longer in a mood for a fight. “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested. “I warn you, Dig, it’s an ugly tale. Melodrama at its worst.”