The Arrangement

Chapter 2-1

2

“You are woolgathering today,” his sister Emma remarked as Jeremiah sat in her parlor.

“Am I?” he responded. For some reason, his gaze kept straying to the window, as if he somehow thought that exotic stranger would come wandering down Leroux Street. Which was patently ridiculous. Of course she would stay in the more public areas on San Francisco Street and Aspen Avenue. She had no reason to come down here.

None at all.

“Yes, you are,” Emma said. “It is a good thing the children are all still in school, or they would surely think there was something wrong with their uncle.”

No more so than usual, he thought grimly. But he did not respond, only lifted the teacup Emma had set before him and took a swallow. The tea was quite strong, the way he liked it, although after the whiskey he’d drunk at the hotel’s bar, it tasted insipid.

“Perhaps it is the time of year,” his sister went on. Her dark eyes, so much like his, were narrowed slightly as she regarded him for a moment. Then she retrieved her own teacup from the table before them, although she didn’t drink, only held the fine bone china cup in her long, graceful fingers. “It has been almost exactly a year, hasn’t it, Jeremiah?”

“Yes,” he replied, wishing she had not brought up the subject.

She was the only one he had confided in. Even now, after so many months had passed, he found himself barely able to speak to Samuel. Jeremiah put on the best face he could when the children were present, but he saw no reason to reward his brother with any sort of courtesy when they were alone. Not when he had nearly murdered Robert Rowe, had almost brought the wrath of the Winfields down upon them.

Almost broken Danica’s heart.

But Jeremiah had told his sister the truth of what had happened. Emma was wise enough to keep her own counsel. Although she loved her husband dearly, her first loyalty was to her brother as primus, and to this fledgling clan he led. She had never revealed Jeremiah’s confession to anyone else.

In that moment, though, he rather wished he had not confided in his sister. Those long-lashed dark eyes of hers missed very little. Although he had said nothing of the regard he’d begun to feel for Danica, Emma was able to guess well enough what he’d hidden in his heart.

“A year, and yet you still have not forgiven Samuel.”

The words were spoken calmly enough, and yet Jeremiah could still sense the smoldering anger within him begin to flame into something much more brilliant…and dangerous. “He is not worthy of my forgiveness. His hotheaded ways could have sent us all to ruin.”

“Perhaps,” Emma allowed. At last she drank some of her tea, then set the cup back down on its saucer. She folded her hands, the new sapphire and pearl ring Aaron had bought her for their anniversary gleaming on her middle finger. “And you know I will make no apologies for him. But…we’re family, Jeremiah. We’re all the family we have. If you allow this animosity to continue to fester, then it very well may create a rift that will continue into the next generation. Would you want Jacob to look down on Samuel’s children, and treat them as lesser, simply because his father bore a grudge toward his uncle?”

Wise words. From time to time, Jeremiah wondered if perhaps he had made a mistake in declaring himself the leader of this clan, rather than allowing Emma to be its prima, the way tradition would have dictated. But then, he’d never cared much for tradition. And as much wisdom as Emma might possess, she was not a strong enough witch to keep their clan safe. Her healing powers did very well to keep them all hale and hearty, but she would never have been able to fend off an attack from a hostile witch family.

“No, of course I would not want that,” he said harshly, and made himself drink some more tea, although in that moment he wished for something much stronger.

“Then be mindful of what you do, Jeremiah,” Emma said, “for you know that Jacob sees far too much for a boy his age.”

That he did. No doubt those powers of observation would serve Jacob well when he became primus, but in the meantime, they were just as likely to get him into trouble. “I will try,” Jeremiah replied.

Emma nodded, and an uneasy silence fell. Jeremiah hoped that she had let the matter of Danica go, for his sister seemed to have been sidetracked by the discussion about their brother Samuel. But then she said, “I wonder now that I did not see it, for she did have something of our look about her. But of course I would have had no reason to think of such a thing.”

Perhaps Jeremiah might have wondered the same thing himself. However, there were many dark-haired women in the world, even ones with tresses as coal-dark as Danica’s had been.

Including the woman he had seen entering the San Francisco Hotel. Everything about her, from the jaunty black-plumed hat on her head to the merest peep of the shiny black boots beneath her skirts, spoke of someone with a good deal of wealth. What was such a woman doing, traveling alone? Surely she must know that she would be a target for the sorts of predatory men who would not scruple at making her their prey.

Then again, something about the glint of her eyes and the curve of her mouth seemed to indicate that she would spot such mountebanks from a mile away.

“You’re doing it again,” Emma remarked as she retrieved her teacup.

“Woolgathering?”

“I’m afraid so.”

At that point, all Jeremiah could do was shrug. He certainly would not tell her about the woman he had seen, for doing so would only make Emma smile sadly and then tell him that he should get the stranger out of his mind as best he could.

Unfortunately, he feared it would not be quite that easy.