Sully sat patiently in the law office of the Honorable Robert T. Morton, Federal judicial representative of Monroe County and the singular source for any and all wrecking licenses. Sully knew the wrecking business of Key West was not only about to explode to the benefit of any wise entrepreneur who was in the right spot at the right time—and thanks to his interest in history, he was—but also that it was about to be seriously regulated. With piracy in the process of being eradicated by Porter and his blasted Mosquito Fleet, the new avenue to wealth and prosperity was the scavenging business.
But to get a piece of that juicy pie, he needed a wrecking license. And that could only be issued by the man whose office he now sat in.
Although he was sure word had spread that a well-known pirate ship was moored in the harbor, anyone would be hard pressed to connect it to him. He had made every effort to look the part of a well-respected Florida businessman this morning. Gone were the knee-high boots and the loden trousers, as well as the long jacket and the wide hat festooned with parrot feathers that kept the sun from his face. Today, he wore pinstriped breeches and a morning coat over a plain white shirt.
A young man, proceeded by a prominent Adam’s apple, opened an interior door and hurried to stand in front of Sully. “His Honor will see you now,” he said breathlessly as if he’d vaulted in through the window and not just emerged from an inside office.
Sully nodded at the nervous young man, collected his hat and walking stick and followed him into the Judge’s private chambers.
Robert Morton was a large man. His belly strained against the vest that seemed cinched tightly to serve as a girdle. Sully always thought it strange when powerful men cared about how they appeared to others.
“Mr. Sullivan,” Morton said, declining to rise from his chair behind the desk, or to offer his hand. The aide scurried out and shut the door behind him without asking if Sully would like anything.
Sully glanced around the large office. The windows were louvered to allow a breeze in, although without a facing window there was no hope of a crosswind. It was late summer and nowhere hotter on Earth.
“Your Honor,” Sully said seating himself in front of the desk.
“What can I help you with, sir?”
Sully affected to look around the judge’s office. Diplomas and plaques lined the wall behind Morton’s head. On the desk was a handcrafted model of a large man-of-war with several decks of miniature cannons. Sully found himself wondering if the man had ever even been on a ship larger than the ferry that must have brought him to Key West.
“Well, Judge, I am new to these waters and looking to expand my business.”
“Which is?”
“I suppose you might say I’m in the reclamation business.”
“Wrecking.”
“Well, now that you mention it, I’ve had some experience with that around the Bahamas and off the Barbary Coast and am hoping to extend my range to the straits of Florida.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“As you may have heard, we’ve had considerable trouble of late with salvagers misrepresenting the true amount of goods they saved from shipwrecks. We are in the process of regulating the industry.”
“Very wise, I should think.”
“As a result of that regulation, we can only allow wreckers with a certificate—issued from the Federal District Court—to salvage ships off the Reef of the Martyrs.”
“Again, I can only see the wisdom in that. I don’t see how that would adversely affect my intention to begin salvaging operations in the Gulf.”
“To be blunt, sir, I am issuing only a very few wrecking certificates. And those will go to men I know and trust to be responsible and honest.”
“I come with references, of course.”
“Which cannot compete with what I know of men by my own experience. I’m sorry, Mr. Sullivan. Perhaps in the years to come, after I have come to know you better, my answer will be different.”
Sully threw back his head and laughed. He really found the old fool amusing. What a charmed, perfect life he must lead! As judge of this province he would have no cause to fear anyone. He shook his head. How he enjoyed being the one to provide the one life lesson that would change all that.
“You have a daughter, I believe, your Honor?”
That stopped the old goat. He looked at Sully, his eyes blinking in disbelief.
“You…you are you threatening me?”
“I’m not sure any court of law would consider a question about your family a threat, sir. She lives with you on Whitehead Street, does she not?”
Sully watched the man grab the edge of his desk, his face growing slowly purple as he puffed out his cheeks.
It’s a new experience when someone hits you below the belt when you’re not used to it, Sully thought wryly.
“I’ll have you…I’ll…”
“Well, I don’t think you’ll have the sweet young thing out front throw me out, with all due respect, Judge. So you might want to hear what I have to say. Probably save you from having a stroke.”
Sully watched the man visibly take himself in hand. He stuck out his chest as if to appear even larger, and narrowed his eyes. “Say your piece,” he growled.
Sully stood. “I have a simple demonstration that I believe should emphatically push me up the list of those men you know well.”
“What kind of demonstration?”
“Come to the western side of Garden Cay on Dry Tortugas tomorrow afternoon and see for yourself. Broad daylight. Bring a friend if you like. Bring two. I don’t care, as I have nothing to hide. On the contrary, I want to show you something that I have every belief will change your mind about me.”
“I believe you are a brigand, sir.”
“Ah, well. Perhaps it won’t change your mind then.”
“And I’ll not go five steps with you until I know the nature of this so-called demonstration.”
Sully hesitated then turned and slammed his fist onto the fragile model of the man-of-war. Splinters shot out in all directions and made the judge jump.
“I have a weapon that has come into my possession,” Sully said, his voice gravelly and low, his face leaning close to Morton’s, “that in the wrong hands is sufficient to destroy every man, woman and child in Cayo Hueso. It is my very great hope that I will be able to hand this weapon over to you tomorrow afternoon in the Dry Tortugas.”
“In exchange for a wrecking license.”
Sully smiled and stood back up. “Just to be safe, why don’t you bring it when you come?”
“You’re a bastard.”
“And you sir, are the father of a very pretty young lady.” Sully reached down and grabbed his balls as he spoke. Shock blanched Morton’s face at the gesture. Sully turned and let himself out of the office.
***
Lawrence sat at the breakfast table across from Adele. He had spent a miserable night alternatingly tapping on his dear girl’s bedroom door—to hisses he wouldn’t attribute to a mad cat—and punching his pillow in frustration in his own bedroom.
Broken our engagement? It can’t be. It just can’t be.
Surely, Ella couldn’t mean it? She loved him. He knew she did!
“Are you alright, Lawrence?”
He looked up to see the worried expression on Adele’s face, a piece of buttered toast poised halfway to her mouth.
“Yes, my dear,” he said, stiffly, forcing a smile. “I’m fine. And yourself?”
“You look so unhappy. I hope that whatever it is, it isn’t something that I’ve done or one of the servants—”
“Oh, no, of course not, Adele. Forgive me. I’m being self-indulgent.”
“Can you not confide in me?” She popped the toast in her mouth but her eyes looked at him with concern.
“Well, you’ll know soon enough, I suppose,” he said. “Ella has broken our engagement.”
Adele began to choke on the mouthful of toast and Lawrence watched her fumble for her cup of tea before she got control of herself.
“Really?” she said, hoarsely. “She broke it last night? When you went to the garden?”
“Yes, exactly. And I’m afraid I’m a little…”
“Of course you are. Dear Lawrence, I am so sorry. Did she give a reason?”
“A reason? Not that I can remember.”
“Well, that is just so strange. To break an engagement without a reason.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? She’s never really been right since she fell and lost her memory.”
“My goodness, what in the world does she plan to do with herself? A woman alone, without family or fiancé? And, you’ll excuse me for saying it but, she is not young.”
“No, quite. I do not know what she plans on doing. I fear she may be mistaken in the belief that she can…take care of herself.”
“Horrors.” Adele got up and moved to the chair next to him. She picked up his hand from the table. “Perhaps I can help?”
“My dearest child,” Lawrence said, with a sigh. “I cannot see how.”
“Well, I have a little idea. I think it might just do the trick. Do you trust me, Lawrence? Can you allow me to take care of this?”
It was all Lawrence could do not to throw his arms around the precious girl and hug her. Could she really remedy this? Would she speak to Ella? Would the engagement be back on soon?
“Thank you, Adele,” he said. “From the bottom of my heart, if there is anything you can do, thank you.” He turned away from Adele, his spirits much improved, and picked up his fork. Suddenly, the fried eggs and kippers looked extremely tempting.
***
Daisy hated to meet Georgie here in this place. It was filthy and the men looked at her like she was a floozy. But Georgie was right, too. If not here, where? He could hardly come to the judge’s house, and Georgie lived with six other men in a shack on Eaton street.
The pub was noisy on the inside and Daisy wouldn’t have dared to step foot in it. She sat on a long, rough wooden bench outside, a chipped mug of grog in her hands. She hadn’t heard from Georgie in two weeks and hated herself for how happy she was when he sent the message to her earlier that morning to meet him here. Those had been two hard weeks. Her courses had stopped long enough to throw the fear of God and all his minions into her. They started back up, though, saints be praised.
And then Georgie came back to her.
“Alright, luv?” Georgie sat next to her. A long, lanky boy with greasy yellow hair and spotty skin. He’d contracted and survived the yellow fever the year before, and in many ways had never gotten his full health back. It didn’t matter. He was a miracle to her just the same.
“Yes,” she said. “Just glad to see you again. You’re looking well.” That wasn’t true at all. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in two weeks, or slept. She noticed his eyes kept darting to the front of the pub as if he were watching for someone. He didn’t act as if he’d been longing to see her again as he’d said in the note.
“And yourself,” he said without looking at her.
“Is everything all right, Georgie?”
He finally looked at her for longer than a few seconds and she could see the hunted look in his eyes. She was surprised she hadn’t been able to smell it. He was in trouble.
“Remember that brig I told you about last time I saw you?”
“The one you helped scavenge? Yes, I remember.” She remembered he’d said it would be the making of him and then she hadn’t heard from him for two weeks. “You were going to get a big share of the pot?”
“The bastards cheated me,” Georgie said, a nasal whine creeping into his voice. “I got less than I’d make sweeping up the Rose and Gill! And you remember me telling you I broke a rib on that wreckage?”
“Yes, I do. Is it better now?”
Georgie waved away her question. “Me sis came down with the fever right around the time I last saw you—”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“And I had to get the medicine to make her well. I had to.”
Daisy had a bad feeling start in the pit of her stomach. “Of course, you did,” she said softly.
“I borrowed money on account from some fellows.” He was back to watching the front of the pub again. Daisy started watching, too. “They said, I don’t pay ‘im back by week’s end, they’ll kill me, Daisy.”
Daisy swallowed past a large lump in her throat. She didn’t need to ask if he was serious. Half the men on the wharfs seemed ready to kill for a lot less provocation. “You know I don’t have any money, Georgie,” she said.
“I know, girl, I know. That’s not what I need from you.”
Daisy’s back stiffened. It suddenly seemed very clear to her what he did need from her. She’d been a fool to allow him his way with her. Now he thought she was a whore. He was asking her to let his creditors take their money out of her body. Her fingers felt numb and cold and she didn’t speak.
“Daisy? Can you help me, girl?”
She stood and realized her knees were weak. She locked them to hold her upright. “I’m sorry for your trouble, Georgie,” she said, not looking at him. “But I’m no trollop. I’m sorry you thought I was.” She turned to go but he shot a hand out and stopped her.
“No, Daisy, never!” he said. “Never, my love. I’d die first.”
She turned to him and her heart softened at the sight of his obvious despair.
“But…if I have no money,” she said, “and it’s not my body, how can I help you?” She sat back down and he took her hand and held it in both of his.
“I need you to…” He shook his head and started again, his voice pitched low. “These fellows I owe, they want the judge’s daughter.”
Daisy started. “Miss Adele?”
“Shhh! Mind your tone, Daisy. The walls have ears, so they do.”
“Kidnapping is a hanging offense. What you’re asking me to do is worth my life.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. But if you don’t do it. If you won’t help me…help them take her…they’ll kill me, Daisy.”
Daisy sat perfectly still, her hand snug in Georgie’s, the only man—the only person—who had ever treated her gently, who had ever professed to love her. And an image came to mind of Adele slapping her, accusing her of stealing, threatening to have her arrested, sold into slavery even though she was white. Yes, she hated the little bitch and whatever these bad men had in mind for her wouldn’t bother Daisy one bit.
She tried to imagine her life without Adele Morton in it. Surely, the judge would let her stay on. She could cook and clean as she did now. Likely he would even let her marry one day, maybe even give her a cottage out back on the place to live.
She looked at Georgie, who was looking at the door of the pub. When she followed his gaze, she saw two men standing there now looking back at them. One was tall and black with a menacing scar that traveled from his chin to disappear into his hairline. The other was short with long greasy hair held back by a scarf. Even from this distance she could see the evil in him, the pleasure inflicting pain gave him.
She squeezed Georgie’s hand but he didn’t look away from the men.
“I’ll do it,” she whispered. Instantly she watched the unspoken message get relayed to the two men who nodded and entered the pub.
When Georgie turned back to her, he drew her into his arms and held her. Daisy leaned her cheek against his chest, feeling his shoulders shake, and felt the joy and the power of the gift she had given him.
***
Although the sun was blistering hot, Ella spent the entire morning in the garden. It was cooler in the shade, but mostly she was there because Lawrence was not. She’d managed to avoid him at breakfast and was determined to slip back into her room for a bath—good Lord it was hot in the Keys with no air conditioning!—without running into him.
The garden by day was a pleasant and orderly refuge full of ficus trees, traveller’s palms, and ginger blooms. The scent of a working fireplace made her look skyward to see that some madman had a fire going somewhere in the house. Unbelievable! It was so hot you could fry clams on the cobblestones out front.
Deciding she would never get used to how the people in 1825 behaved, Ella couldn’t help think that she’d been optimistic to believe she could stay the rest of the week in the house. After her bath, she’d go check out what 1825 Key West had in the way of hotels.
Then she would put her mind to getting back to her own time, although how she was going to begin to do that she had no clue. A finger of fear traced down her spine at the thought of remaining in 1825. Was Adele right? Would they really lock her up for being different?
She shook the pessimistic thought from her head. She needed to set her mind to addressing her problem of getting back home—not clutter it up with fears that may be groundless. And as far as she could remember, home was Atlanta.
If I’ve done it once, surely it can be done again. Her best bet seemed to be to track down a shaman or witch doctor of some kind—she had heard Adele talking about a fortune-teller who worked the harbor—who might be able to give her some enlightenment.
She wasn’t at all sure it was possible but she had to do something.
She opened the back door that led from the garden to the house and peered inside. She could see the maid, Daisy, dusting something in the hallway, but there were no other sounds. The judge was probably still in town at his office. Both Lawrence and Adele should be in the far library, which they used for her lessons.
Ella crept inside and gently closed the door behind her. The maid turned at the sound, her duster held high and smiled at Ella as if they were friends.
Which is very weird when you consider she’s the only likely candidate for whoever has been lurking around outside my bedroom door in the middle of the night, Ella thought, as she hurried up the narrow wooden stairs to the bedrooms.
As she approached her room, she saw that the door was open. If Daisy is downstairs dusting, then who is in my bedroom? In two steps, she stood in the doorway and watched as Lawrence stood with his back to her tossing the contents of her valise into the fire he’d made in her bedroom fireplace.
“What the hell are you doing?” She gasped as she ran into the room and grabbed the valise from his hands. It was empty. “What have you done with my things?” She looked into the fireplace in time to see the photo of the woman and baby curl up and dissolve into flames.
“It’s for the best, my love,” Lawrence said. But he backed away from her all the same.
She turned on him, her eyes blazing. “What have you done with my jewels, you bastard?”
“Ella, dearest, please mind your lang—”
She reached out and slapped his face as hard as she could. “My letters? The dog tags? What have you done with them?”
“I…the little beaded tag necklace I assume to which you refer I threw into the harbor. No one will be buying you adornments except me. The letters and photographs were inducements to remember another life, which was making it difficult for you to adjust to this one.”
“And my jewels? Were my jewels making it easy for me to adjust to life without you?”
“Adele advised me, my dear, and I must say it made absolute sense.”
“Absolute sense because without them I can’t leave, you mean?”
“I…well...but it’s for your own good. We are engaged.”
“We are bullshit, and what you have done is against the law.”
“It isn’t, actually. As your fiancé, I have every right to control your finances, not to mention your state of mind—which the Morton’s family doctor can confirm—is not stable.”
Ella stared at the smoldering fireplace, her passport and photos now ash. She didn’t see the jewels, but if he’d thrown the dog tags away earlier he probably didn’t have the gems on him now. She was trembling with rage and knew that was a state where she did not do her best thinking.
She turned and left the room, the sound of him calling her name ringing in her ears and ran down the stairs and out the front door. She had no hat, no purse, no money and nowhere to go. Blinded by the fury of what Lawrence had done, she ran without thinking in the direction that Adele had once warned her about.
The heat pounded her uncovered head, prompting a solid, unrelenting headache before she had walked ten minutes. When she calmed enough to look around, she was satisfied that Lawrence wouldn’t think to have gone this direction to find her.
The next thought came into her brain like a searing lightning bolt. It was accompanied by an excruciating longing that made her stop and grasp the side of a brick walkway that bordered the road.
Somewhere in this world, she had a child.
The thought came to her from the depths of her anger and shot to brain central as accurately as her next breath.
She was someone’s mother. She leaned against the brick and her hand went to her abdomen. There was no physical way of detecting the difference. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought her breasts were a little larger than they had been. But in the whirling vortex of all her new experiences, she hadn’t spent much time thinking about it.
Now, without any evidence to support it other than her own undeniable belief, she knew she had a child.
So what am I doing in 1825? Is the baby back in 2013? Is he… A smile came unbidden to her lips. It’s a boy. I have a little boy. How I know that I don’t know, but I know it. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked with the joy and wonder of her new knowledge.
I’m a mother!
She took two more steps and thought, the photo in the valise. And then the anger returned because Lawrence had destroyed the photo—her only picture of her child. When she realized that, she thought for a moment that she might be able to go back to the house and murder him. She took a long steadying breath and set her shoulders.
I’m never going back. There’s nothing for me there now but ashes.
She walked toward the harbor, as it was now clear this was where the street was leading. The gulls were closer, and the topmasts of the ships in the harbor were visible over the clapboard and brick houses that lined the street.
Where am I going? No money. No friends. No idea of how to get home. No idea of where home is…
“Oy, matey, take a look at ‘is one! Here’s one don’t look like she’s had too much!”
“I seen her first! Hullo, luv. We ain’t got money but we can promise ye a long hard ride!”
Ella slowed her steps as she approached the men. There were two on one side of the street and one on the other. They looked rough, dirty and scarred. The one nearest her had most of his teeth missing.
“Take ‘er in the alley. Us three first. Grab ‘er! She looks like she can run fast!”
Ella swiveled to dash back the way she’d come. One of the men had already started to run for her and she feared his arms were long enough to snag the tail of her skirt, but it was either run or—
She slammed to a stop to avoid the two men who had been creeping up behind her. Now there were five. Before she could think which way to bolt, she felt a strong arm snake around her waist from behind and jerk her off her feet. She arched her back to try to break his hold and reached behind to grab for anything she could—eyes, hair, nose. He jerked his head away from her and swung her over his hip where she could do no damage.
“Back off, mates,” he said firmly. “This one’s mine.”
It was the voice more than anything. As soon as she heard him speak, a once-familiar image came charging through the mists of confusion and fear and the adrenalin-charged jumble of terror. She twisted around to see his face, but she knew before she laid eyes on him that it was him.
“Rowan!”