Dead water - Barbara Hambly [18]
“That's Weems.” Granville pointed, and January turned to see a small, dapper gentleman in a full-skirted coat of rust-colored wool and a very unfortunate silk waistcoat of purple and mustard. The bank manager was arguing about something with the pot-bellied owner. The slender steward intervened, consulting his notebook, pointing up at the staterooms that ranged both sides of the upper, or boiler, deck. “Here's the sample of his handwriting you asked for,” Granville told January.
January pocketed the folded note the banker offered him, to compare against the labels of every trunk and box in the hold, if and when he could manage to sneak down there. That this would be difficult, he guessed—that sleek, efficient young steward might prove to be either venal or careless or both, but somehow January doubted it. Nor would he know until he was on board how many ways there were into the cargo-hold, and whose work-stations overlooked them. Through hard experience he had learned that trying to plan ahead without information led only to madness, especially in a situation with so many tiny variables.
He could only take his ticket, get on board, and see what the situation was.
“As I suspected,” sighed Rose, “they don't have cabins for colored. I expect I'll have some company on the deck.” She nodded as a Junoesque matron in severe dark bombazine ascended the gangplank, a diminutive maid in tow, and behind them a train of trunks that would have embarrassed Marie Antoinette. “Unless of course she's the sort who likes to have her maid sleep on the floor beside her bed.”
January gritted his teeth at the thought of Rose sleeping on the deck with the servants. “I'll come down and join you whenever I can.”
“Bring food,” said Rose unsentimentally, and raised her face to kiss him. “Oh, good Heavens,” she added, cutting in over Granville's embarrassed apologies and effusive thanks, “Hannibal's found a girl-friend already. . . .”
January rolled his eyes, snatched up his and Hannibal's luggage, and strode to intercept his friend, who had indeed entered into what appeared to be a flirtation with a dainty blonde in a fantasia of silk rosebuds and lace. The young lady flung up her hands and trilled with silvery laughter: “Oh, Mr. Sefton, you will turn my poor little head!”
“My dearest Miss Skippen, how could Paris hold himself back from complimenting Helen?” Hannibal offered his hand to help her around the two massive crates that were just being off-loaded from a dray. She leaned on his arm, blond curls brushing the shoulder of his coat. “How could Petrarch remain silent when Laura passed him by? Nymph of the downward smile and sidelong glance/ in what diviner moments of the day / art thou most lovely? A man would have to be more, or less, than man, to—”
“You get your hands away from her, pig of an Orangeman!” bellowed a voice just as January reached them. A man came storming down the gangplank of the Silver Moon, nearly January's height and, like January, massive through the shoulders beneath the blue pea-jacket of the vessel's pilot. “I know your like!” The red ruff of his side-whiskers bristled almost straight out from the flushed red moon of his face. “Sneerin' bastards—and you!” he added, whirling on the blond lady, who had both lace-gloved hands pressed to her rosebud mouth in guilty shock. “Onto the boat with ye, and don't you go believin' the likes of a cozening Orangeman who'd rob old women of their bread, an' turn orphan children out into the road! You keep away from her.” He thrust a savage finger almost into Hannibal's face. “You keep away from her or, Kevin Molloy's tellin' you now, it'll be the worse for you!”
The bespectacled owner of the boat had already leaped down from the deck and was hurrying to break up what looked like a serious affray, but the pilot turned on his heel, seized the blond girl by the arm, and shoved her away in the direction of the boat, followed by three porters hauling trunks, hatboxes, and valises,