Part 16 (1/2)
Voices rose among the s.h.i.+p's crew as they prepared for docking. Wood creaked and water slapped. Liam leaned against the railing in a pose about as easy as that of a jaguar waiting to spring. ”You did well on the journey, Mac. Better than I expected.”
Interesting. Such a compliment must have taken considerable effort on his part. ”Your expectations were never very high,” she said, ”but thank you, anyway.”
”You survived the jungle,” he went on, ignoring her sally, ”but civilization can be a far deadlier place. G.o.d knows where you'd end up if you were left to fend for yourself. That isa”” He looked back, gray eyes pinning her like a specimen on a board. ”That is unless you have someone to go to.”
He meant Perry. Mac casually joined him at the rail. ”I don't know anyone in this San Francisco.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. ”Of course not. So you'll be entirely alone in a strange city.” He put his back to the railing, gaze hooded. ”I find I can't just leave you here as we agreed. If something happened to you, Mac, I doubt I could live with myself. I do owe you my life, after all.”
His words were merely badinage, and yet her heartbeat insisted on responding to the rough purr of his voice. ”What did you have in mind?” she asked cautiously.
”Nothing improper, I a.s.sure you. The least I can do is see you settled comfortably so that you have all you need toa find your way home.”
”You'll find me a place to stay?”
”More than that, Mac. Money, clothinga”whatever you need. You'll be well taken care of.”
”And what's the catch?” she blurted out.
”No catch at all.”
That Mac seriously doubted, but she thought better of pressing him. Play it by ear. That was all she could do, and at the moment things were going as much her way as she dared to hope.
She and Liam stood side by side, within touching distance yet miles apart, and watched the s.h.i.+p glide among other steamers and great sailing vessels, lumber schooners and hay scows and swarms of smaller boats. Masts rose like a forest of small, bare trees. The wharf was chaotic with wagons and carriages and piles of crates and barrels and shouting stevedores.
Mac's tension drained away as she took in the exotic sights and sounds. It was better than a movie, better than the best book. And she was right in the middle of it. San Francisco, greatest port city on the Pacific Coast. Born of the Gold Rush, fed by the Nevada silver strikes, made exotic by the Barbary Coast and Chinatown and over two hundred thousand souls of every race and heritage.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the s.h.i.+p's captain appear, and she heard Liam consult with him about dealing with customs and baggage and other details related to his s.h.i.+pping business. But her attention was wholly caught up in the miracle of the past. A past that was now her present, one which she'd soon become an actual, improbable part of.
A much bigger part than she wanted. If only she could figure out how to go about putting history back on course, maybe she could relax and enjoy ita ”Your bag, miss.” Mr. Harvey thumbed the brim of his cap and set the carpetbag down on the deck.
It held all she owned in this time: her backpack, the spare set of Liam's oversized clothes, a pair of boots Liam had bought for her, along with the bag itself, during a brief stop in Guatemala City. Her jeans already had holes in them, obtained during the trek amid endless jungles, over mountains and through wild and largely unpopulated country. They weren't going to last much longer.
With any luck they wouldn't have to.
”We've arrived, Mac,” Liam said, disconcertingly close to her ear. ”Unless you prefer to stay on board.”
”I'm coming.” She swept up her bag and followed him down the gangplank to the bustling pier. The wood under her feet was anch.o.r.ed on landfill, packed down over the skeletons of Gold Rush vessels abandoned by gold-hungry crews; the pier was lined with rickety wooden offices and warehouses, signed with faded paint and crusted with salt spray.
Beyond the pier the wharf was thick with carriages and drays and wagons, sailors and pa.s.sengers disembarking from vessels up and down the wharf. Pigs and dogs scurried between the legs of men shouting the names of hotels, boardinghouses, and restaurants eager for the business of new arrivals. Mac nearly tripped twice over the hem of her cloak as she tried to take it all in.
Liam caught her elbow. ”One would think you hadn't seen an American city before.”
”Not like this.” Not blessed with women in gowns that brushed the cobbles and pinched the waist to an impossible circ.u.mference, men in bowlers and top hats, steaming deposits of equine leavings, and a sky that reached much too close to the ground.
He tugged her toward a line of carriages waiting along the wharf like horse-drawn taxis. ”Then pay attention,” he snapped. ”And pull up your hood.”
”I'd like to see you in my city.”
He grunted something both impatient and unintelligible and signaled to the carriage first in line, a boxlike affair on large wheels. The dark-coated and bowler-hatted driver, perched on a seat above and behind his two horses, looked them over with an indifferent air that became considerably more alert when Liam showed him a handful of silver coins. He grinned and jumped down, took possession of Liam's single trunk and Mac's bag, and opened the carriage door with an ostentatious flourish.
Even with Liam's a.s.sistance Mac's cloak insisted on tangling up around her ankles. She twitched the material aside, giving the carriage driver a glimpse of jeans-clad leg as Liam half pushed, half lifted her into the carriage.
Liam settled onto the seat beside her and rattled off an address to the driver, whose curious gaze lingered until Liam firmly shut the door in his face. Liam's features had taken on a grim cast, and there was a glint of expectation in his eyes and a tautness to his body that hinted that something significant was about to happen.
She ran her hand along the patched leather of the seat. ”What kind of carriage is this?”
”A brougham. Surely you've ridden in a carriage before?”
”Only the horseless kind.”
Interest sparked in his eyes, though his set expression didn't crack by so much as a hairline. ”And when will thesea 'horseless carriages' be invented?”
”Oh, the next year or so, if I remember correctly.”
He adjusted his hat low over his nose. ”Perhaps I should set you up as a fortune-teller.”
”I can think of worse professions.” She leaned forward to get a better view out the window. ”Where should I put up shop? The Barbary Coast?”
He looked at her sharply. ”What do you know of the Coast?”
”What I've read in books. Colorful place. Wasn't it supposed to be the biggest den of iniquity on thea””
His hand shot out to close around her wrist. ”I didn't bring you this far to see you throw yourself into ruin, or worse.”
She was momentarily subdued by his vehement response. It almost did seem that he cared what became of her, which was more or less what he'd claimed on the s.h.i.+p. And that was something Mac still couldn't figure, though the possibility did something warm and fuzzy and unsettling to her insides.
Liam released her with a low grunt and sank back in his seat, arms crossed. ”Put thoughts like that out of your head, Mac,” he said. ”That's not where you're going.”
”And where exactly did you say we are going?” she asked.
”We'll be there soon enough.”
Definitely ominous. Mac had a brief, uneasy notion and quickly dismissed it. Even Liam wouldn't be that rasha”would he?
She steadied herself and searched for street signs as the carriage lurched into motion. No smoothly curved Embarcadero here, only a stairstep succession of jutting piers. Nothing was immediately recognizable. After a few b.u.mpy minutes the driver turned onto a wide thoroughfare, and the wharf area gave way to the city proper.
Market Street. Mac pressed her nose to the smudged gla.s.s. In her own time Market was the central artery of San Francisco, dividing the financial and residential districts from the southern industrial area. So it was now. That was almost the only similarity.
Questions bubbled in her mind like an overflowing pot, but she couldn't get them out. She couldn't even worry much about Liam and his secretive, contradictory att.i.tude or what she was going to do when this ride was over. All her mind would accept was observation, a mute cataloging of everything that pa.s.sed within her view.
Buildings no higher than four or five stories, if that, square and somber and pierced with rows of identical windows. Quaint signs advertising apothecary shops and s.h.i.+p's chandleries and steams.h.i.+p lines. Telegraph offices and cigar stores and buggy companies. Carts and hacks and gigs b.u.mping over the cobbled street, alongside horsecars and cable cars running on rails.
And people. Barefoot urchins hawking newspapers, sober businessmen tipping hats, laborers making deliveries. As the carriage moved away from the Bay, the traffic grew heavier and more women appeared on the streets. Women in dresses that could double as cruel and unusual punishment, complete with bustles that made shelves of their posteriors.
It looked like something out of Masterpiece Theatre. Only those were usually British productions, except for that Edith Wharton adaptation. The one about the American girls who'd gone to England to find husbands. About the right time period, tooa ”d.a.m.n it,” Liam snapped. ”What's taking him so b.l.o.o.d.y long?” He pounded on the side of the coach. ”Come on, man!”
The carriage moved no faster. Vehicular traffic had thickened, and Mac found herself fascinated by the aftermath of a minor mishap between a produce cart and a carriage driven by a nattily dressed man. A crowd had gathered in the middle of the street to witness flying curses and vegetables.
At least in this era, caught between the ”wild west” and the twentieth century, no one was likely to pull out a gun to solve the argument.