Passenger (Passenger, #1)(49)

Etta was about to ask what had become of his mother, but he barreled on quickly.

“Hall found me when they came to inspect the house before the purchasers arrived. I was half-dead from hunger, filthy as a stray pup—my mother had told me to stay put and keep silent, and I was much better at following orders then.” Nicholas gave her a wry smile. “He carried me out. Made sure my freedom was legal. It was years before Ironwood came back to that era and learned of me. I trained and traveled for a time on Ironwood’s behalf, but no more. I’ll not leave the sea or my true family again.”

Etta forced herself to move past the thought of him as a young boy, hiding in the dark for days. “What will you do after you finish your business with Ironwood?”

He shifted, absently reaching up to rub at his shoulder. “I need to meet Chase and the others to see to my responsibilities as prize master. Captain Hall will be back in port before the month’s end, and we’ll sail again soon after.”

Of course he had responsibilities. That was his life—it had just so happened to overlap with hers for a few days. Why did Etta feel so anxious at the thought of him walking away? “Is it safe to travel? Will you be all right?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about me, Miss Spencer,” he said as they bumped up against the other ferry landing. “I always manage.”

“You could call me Etta,” she said, smiling. “I’d like that.”

There was a crack in that calm mask—a flash. Etta’s eyes read it as anger, but instinct registered something worse: a painful kind of shock, as if she’d knocked him off the ferry and into the cold river.

“You—” he began, his gaze shifting up to the sky, a small, pained smile on his face. Etta couldn’t look away, not at Sophia, who was calling her name, not at the sails cutting through the blooming dark. He let out a quiet laugh, sounding almost dismayed, his hands pressed hard against his sides. “There are times, Miss Spencer, you defeat me utterly.”

Before she could process those words, he’d moved to the front of the ferry, to assist the other men in securing it. And when it came time to disembark, only Sophia was waiting for her.

“Was he bothering you? Thank God he’ll be gone soon enough,” she said, loud enough for all of the city to hear.

“No!” Etta said quickly. “Not at all.”

Still, Sophia eyed Nicholas as he strode in front of them, blowing past a cluster of women with bright eyes and rouged cheeks. They were nearly spilling out of their low-cut dresses.

“Looking for a place to sleep, love?” one asked, trailing after him. “’Ope the fire didn’t get your pretty house. I’ve got a spot that’s warm—”

“I’m spoken for,” he said, gently removing her hand from his shoulder. “Have a nice night, ladies.”

Spoken for? Etta watched his back, the stretch and bunch of the muscles as he moved.

Sophia then let out a strangled gasp and swore a blue streak as she stepped directly into a pile of fresh horse droppings. Etta’s stomach actually cringed at the way the smell tangled with the smoke. “Of all the rotten luck!”

It was nearly pitch-black by the time Nicholas found Ironwood’s carriage in the chaos of the fire refugees—they were staying, in Sophia’s words, at a “mean little tavern” called the Dove outside of the city proper—outside what Etta knew in her time was the financial district. Cyrus Ironwood had thrown enough money around to convince the proprietor to let his family’s rooms in the attic for three nights, while they and their servants slept in the cellar.

“Why not just buy a real house in the city?” Etta said, thinking of Nicholas’s story. Clearly, the family could afford it.

“Grandfather is making inquiries about available property,” Sophia explained, her voice strained. “He’s decided to subject us to this era for the foreseeable future, so he’ll need more permanent accommodations. For now, he requires us at the Dove, so that is where we’ll go.”

“Not looking forward to all that ‘rustic’ living?” Etta asked, arching a brow.

Their path ran along what the driver had called the Old Post Road. Etta had recognized the names of streets when they were in the thick of this version of Manhattan—Wall Street, Broad Way. But once they were past the commons—a green park crowded with fire refugees, their rescued possessions, and all the soldiers trying to keep them in line—the city turned to farmland.

Empty.

Rolling.

Farmland.

Etta shook her head in amazement.

“I know,” Sophia murmured dreamily. “It tempts one to buy up a few parcels and hold on to them for a few centuries.”

In the city—her city—you got used to moving in the shadows of giant buildings during the day, and sacrificing your view of the stars to light pollution. But out here, the sky was naked, untouched, revealing all of its thousands of glittering lights; there was nothing to see beyond occasional houses, some small, some grand. Etta heard the bleating of sheep and whinnying of horses, the quiet bubbling of what sounded like streams. She missed the rapid pulse of life at home; the way the heat rose off the cement, the sunlight’s reflection in endless glass windows, the crowds; the constant drone of traffic, alarms, trains.

This will be over soon, she reminded herself.