“You may put me down,” she said when they reached the sidewalk. “Tell him to put me down, Uncle Tuck.”

Tucker ignored her. He continued to wave his arm in a wide arc to summon their driver, who was waiting with the carriage down the street.

With no help likely to come from that quarter, Comfort applied to Newton. “Please, Uncle, explain to Mr. DeLong that I am fully prepared to stand on my own.”

Hovering close at Bode’s shoulder, Newton heard her and nodded. “Comfort’s prepared to stand on her own,” he said. “But if you put her down, I’ll cut you off at your knees.”

“Uncle Newt!” Comfort felt Bode’s silent laughter rumble in his chest. The threatening glare she gave him was ineffective because he refused to look at her.

Tucker trotted off to meet the carriage and hurry the driver along while Newton continued to hover. Bode repositioned himself to better secure Comfort, and she surrendered to the inevitable and slid her arms around his neck so he wouldn’t drop her.

It wasn’t until the carriage arrived and Tuck opened the door for them that Bode set Comfort on her feet. Newt lowered the carriage step, and Tucker reached out to take her hand. It was then that Bode eased away.

“I’d like to call on her tomorrow,” he said to Newt. “If I may?”

Preoccupied with getting Comfort safely in the carriage, Newt nodded. “Yes, of course. She’ll be at home.”

“I’ll be at the bank,” Comfort said before she realized that her answer made it seem as if she welcomed Bode’s call.

Tucker pulled her the rest of the way into the carriage and poked his head out. “She’ll be at home.” He gestured to Newt to get inside. “Thank you, Bode. Good night.”

Bode flipped up the step after Newt climbed in. He tapped the carriage to alert the driver that it was safe to leave, and then he stood at the edge of the sidewalk, watching the carriage until it turned the corner on Montgomery Street.

“Good night,” he said softly. Hunching his shoulders against the breeze coming up from the bay, he began walking home.

Tucker leaned into the space that separated the bench seats and took Comfort’s hands. He squeezed them lightly and regarded her calm, dark eyes. He still took peace where he could find it, and just now it was in the gentle tightening of her fingers in his.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. “Perfectly fine. It was unexpected, is all.”

Newton knuckled his chin, thoughtful. “For us, too. You’ve never fainted before. Why do you suppose you did?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. And she had. “I bent very quickly to pick up what the gentleman dropped.”

“You did,” said Tuck.

“And then I stood just as quickly.”

“True enough,” said Newt.

“So it was probably just that. The blood rushing in and out of my head.” When Tuck and Newt said nothing, she added, “It was overly warm in the lobby, I thought. And did you notice that every time a gentleman emerged from the cloakroom, a fog of smoke accompanied him? I suspect all of that contributed to my light-headedness.”

Tuck nodded once, released Comfort’s hands, and sat back against the thickly stuffed leather seat. “That seems like a reasonable explanation. Newt? What do you think?”

“Except for leavin’ out the part where she got a good look at that tin, it sounds about right.”

“That tin? What do you mean?”

Tuck and Newt exchanged vaguely troubled glances. “Dr. Eli Kennedy’s Comfort Lozenges,” Tucker said.

Newt added, “The red-and-white tin.”

Comfort’s eyes darted between them. “I don’t understand.”

Tucker frowned. “The gentleman dropped a tin identical to the one you keep at your bedside.”

“No, he didn’t,” she said. “He dropped a glove. I picked up his glove.”

“Comfort.” Newt said her name with a certain amount of reproof in his tone. “It wasn’t a glove.”

“You and Uncle Tuck were standing behind me. I don’t know how you saw anything, but please, ask Mr. DeLong. He was right there. He saw it all.” Comfort maintained a steady gaze. Clearly it wasn’t what they expected to hear. If anything, they looked more troubled.

“It was a tin,” Tuck said.

Comfort didn’t know what to say. “I believe you think so, and even if it’s true, I don’t understand why you think it’s significant. I’ve seen tins like it before. You know I have. Many times. I’ve never fainted.”

Newt pursed his lips and wiggled them back and forth as he considered her answer. “I don’t know, Comfort. I can’t explain that myself, but it seems like something about it is significant. I saw what Tuck saw. You dropped like a stone.”

“You dropped the tin first,” said Tuck. “Do you remember that?”

“I remember dropping the glove. It slipped right out of my fingers.”

Tuck frowned. “I don’t understand this.” He looked at Newt. “You understand it?”

“Nope. Not a thing.”

Their genuine concern was more troubling to Comfort than her fainting had been. She tried to think of something that would ease their minds, but short of admitting that she’d picked up a tin, nothing came to her. It was tempting to retract her story and tell them what they seemed to want to hear, but the thought of lying, even with good intention, settled uncomfortably in her belly.

Comfort chose to stare out the carriage window instead, thus avoiding the worried expressions they wore all the way home.

She’d made the decision the night before that she wasn’t going to argue with Newt and Tuck about going to the bank. Not distressing them further influenced her decision, but it didn’t explain it in its entirety. There were things Comfort wanted to learn for herself, and to make certain she could do it, she had to reach Beau DeLong before her uncles.

Since they expected her to remain at home, she thought it was safe to assume they would open the bank and visit the exchange before going to the Black Crowne Shipping Office. More immediately concerning was the likelihood that Suey Tsin would follow her if she got wind of what was being planned.

To allay her maid’s tendency to be suspicious of any change in the routine, Comfort followed what had been established as normal for those infrequent occasions that she was feeling under the weather. That meant she didn’t bathe or dress her hair and was uncharacteristically snappish each time Suey Tsin crept into the room to check on her.

On the third such inspection, Comfort played possum and garnered herself enough time to wash at the sink, plait her hair, and manage the strings that flattened the front of her simplest day dress. She chose a large straw hat trimmed with a black grosgrain bow that sat on her head like a mushroom cap. To make it plainer, she snipped off the ribbon streamer and removed the tiny tuft of field flowers that decorated the top. Instead of a jacket, she selected a thin brushed cotton shawl that had only a few hand-painted red poppies on it to recommend it as fashionable. She left her parasols in the stand. An elaborately decorated parasol was just the sort of accessory that would draw the notice of someone who coveted the money or status it would bring.

She timed her exit to coincide with the household help gathering in the kitchen for breakfast and their daily meeting and had no difficulty walking out the front door. When Suey Tsin realized she was gone, the maid would assume she’d sneaked off to work. Comfort hardly felt a twinge of guilt for her deception.

Black Crowne Shipping occupied a building set a block back from the wharf and south of Pacific Street. Unlike the warehouse, which abutted the lawless frontier known as the Barbary Coast, the shipping office where business was regularly conducted had not yet been swallowed up by the vice and violence of that district. It was, however, close enough to give a woman on her own reason to worry. Comfort clearly remembered Mr. Tweedy’s reluctance to venture through the area and knew his concerns were not without foundation. She also recalled what she’d told him to ease his fears.

The Coast was quiet, at least relatively so this early in the morning, but in a few hours it would be a hive of activity. That was no different than it had been when she was younger and new to the city, although no one had yet called it the Barbary Coast. She’d known it by the name “Sydney Town,” and for a brief period of time, it had been home.

There were mostly tents then. And shanties. Rough wooden pallets in the open air were what passed for boardinghouse accommodations, and the men who paid for the privilege of sleeping there were glad to be off the ground. After a hard rain, the mud was so deep in the streets it could suck in a horse. Sometimes it trapped a rider as well. Miners lived hand to pan and hand to mouth. All of them had dreams of the rich strike that would take them home on a golden ship. The ones who became successful, though, were hardly ever the ones panning the streams and digging out ore. Those that realized wealth got there by recognizing other opportunities and making the miners pay.

It wasn’t much of an exaggeration that a man with three shovels, a couple of pickaxes, and a pound of nails could sell it all off and make enough money to open a hardware store. An enterprising merchant from Pennsylvania brought enough flour, salt, and bacon grease with him to start a cookery and, later, a dry goods emporium. There were men who sold rivets to repair dungarees, and who understood eventually that there was even more money in making and selling the denim trousers. And so it went for the men who had entrepreneurial skills, although perhaps no one was as committed to the success of their endeavors as the gamblers and whoremongers.

Newt Prescott and Tucker Jones came to banking the way a bear comes to be trapped in a pit. They fell into it on their way to somewhere else. Unlike the bear, they didn’t try to get out. Once they understood their good fortune, they worked hard to make certain they’d earned it.

Comfort knew that Newt and Tuck believed it was her presence that was responsible for the trust other miners showed them. Children were so rarely seen that miners occasionally offered her uncles money just to ruffle her hair. They’d offer more to hear her laugh.

Newt swore they never took so much as a mote of gold dust in response to these offers. Tuck said it was because she would have bitten off the fingers of a man who dared touch her hair, and she laughed so infrequently that they would have been taking the money with no hope of keeping it.

What really seemed to engage the miners’ trust was how close Comfort stayed to her uncles and how much regard they showed for her welfare. The first miner who asked them to hold his small bag of gold because he feared being rolled and robbed on his way to his claim discovered they could be counted on to return what they’d been given and a little something else besides.

While the miner worked his claim, Comfort accompanied Newt into town, where he bought three pounds of nails. She helped him sell the nails in smaller quantities, sometimes one at time, and when they returned to the mining camp, they had parlayed the miners’ trust into gold and interest and a modest profit for themselves.

That was the beginning. After that, Comfort assisted Newt every time he went into town. She stood at his side and helped him hawk whatever he decided to purchase that day. Sometimes it was apples or eggs they got from a farmer before he could bring them to market. They sold wheat flour and salt pork, tea and coffee, and occasionally loaves of stale bread and slices of cheese. Whether they sold the wares on muddy corners or went from tent to shanty to tent again, at the end of the day they had gold to show for it.

Tuck accompanied them, but he didn’t have the temperament for selling. His role was to follow them around and protect their investment. Neither he nor Newt considered that it was the gold.

Eventually they earned enough to set up a storefront, where they lent money for very little interest and offered to manage accounts for a small return to their customers. They lifted their first safe from an abandoned ship in the harbor, and it was good enough to survive the fire that leveled the town a few years later. They rebuilt, this time with a grander vision in mind, and began to make real investments in property, the Pacific trade, and the mining companies that were moving in. In 1859, when the Comstock Lode was discovered on the eastern slope of the Sierras in Nevada, they were among the backers of the quartz mills and mining machinery that eventually opened up the greatest veins of gold and silver anyone had ever seen.

Jones and Prescott became millionaires.

They never got entirely used to it, but occasionally they enjoyed trying. They built a house on Nob Hill as grand as any that existed at the time. Newt wrote to each of his four sisters back in New York and asked for their advice about books for his new home, especially those suitable for the edification and proper deportment of the odd little girl, now fourteen, whom he and Tucker wished to raise as a lady. And, he wrote on, recommendations for two old soldiers who were now required to stand toe to toe with society’s best-heeled mavens and industrialists would also be welcomed. His sisters were helpful in all aspects of the venture, and he purchased over two hundred books to begin their library. Tucker put in a conservatory, not so much because he was interested in rare or beautiful plants, but because he wanted a room that opened to the sky.

That was how Comfort left Sydney Town with its cruel brothels and treacherous gambling houses. Newt and Tuck had done their best to protect her from the vices, but it had been a long time since they’d experienced the world at the eye level of a curious child, and when they needed to make certain there was shelter for her, they had all lived for a time at the rear of a saloon that was no more than a large tent with rooms cordoned off by blankets hanging over a hemp line. Some games of chance went on in those rooms, but mostly it was drinking and whoring, and while the girls who worked the rooms were always kind to her, the customers were not always kind to the girls. Comfort learned the difference between the moans they made when they lay with a man and the moans they made when a man laid them out.

Lost in reflection, Comfort almost passed the unassuming office for Black Crowne. She did miss the doorway and had to stop and back up a few steps. The tinkling of a bell fastened to the door announced her entry. She stood just inside, but no one came from the back to greet her. A long counter and the gate attached to it split the room in half. The gate was closed, an obvious attempt to keep the customers in one area and the clerks in another. At least temporarily. Rather like the lions and the Christians, she thought, and wondered which she was.

After several minutes of waiting, she approached the counter and rapped hard on it. She thought she heard something, but no footsteps followed the rustling, and that caused her to wonder about wharf rats. There was not very much that made her squeamish, but rats could do it. She gathered her skirts a little closer and pressed against the counter.

There was a spindle filled with notes at her side. For want of something better to do, she began to leaf through the messages. When that proved uninteresting, she counted the cubbies on the wall behind the counter and tried to guess at which ones contained important documents such as bills of lading and passenger manifests and which ones were the repository for things forgotten about long ago, like a schedule for a ship no longer making the Pacific run.

There was a small stove on the clerk’s side of the counter whose warmth would have been welcome this chilly morning if someone had thought to tend to it. The clerk was obviously more warm-blooded than she. Rubbing her hands together—she hadn’t worn gloves because she had none sufficiently plain—Comfort took a slow turn about the room. There were no chairs, no stools, no amenities for the customers. For the first time she wondered if the business was done by appointment. She felt a little better about being ignored after that and was able to stretch her patience all of five minutes. When rapping on the counter did not provide her with assistance and opening and closing the door several times was equally ineffective, Comfort opened the gate and stepped into what she was sure now was the lion’s side of the room.

“Hello?” she called, entering the back room. “Is anyone—” She stopped because it was plain to her that there was no one around. It was a large room, much of it taken over by the storage of boxes and barrels and crates. There was one open corner with a desk and several chairs positioned directly in front of it. The surface of this desk had nothing in common with hers. It was clear of everything except a pen and inkstand, an oil lamp, and a blotter. She suspected she’d found where Bode worked.

Knowing that he had his own rooms somewhere in the building, Comfort began picking her way around the stacks. It was considerably more challenging than a garden maze. Even when she stood on tiptoe, she couldn’t see over the top of or around most of the pyramids. She followed a course that she hoped would take her to a set of stairs at the back or to the rear exit and a set of stairs on the outside of the building.

What she found were steps so steep they might well have been a ladder. She recognized them as something that would have served that purpose on a ship’s gangway and probably had done so at one time. “Ridiculous man,” she said under her breath. Grasping the rope railings on either side of the stairs, Comfort began to climb.

One corner of his mouth lifted, tempering his frustration with humor. Slippery. She should be without friction, without resistance. She should be . . .

He began to furiously erase the changes he’d made in the last hour.

Comfort didn’t know if she was expected to knock on the hatch or throw it open and then announce she was aboard. Courtesy dictated her response. She knocked.

Lost in thought, Bode mistook the direction of the sound and glanced up at the skylight overhead, expecting to find a gull pecking at the sash. When the sound came again, he correctly determined the source of it.

“I told you I don’t want to be disturbed, John. Handle Mr. Roman’s complaint yourself. If you can’t manage that, I don’t see the use of employing you any longer.”

Feeling rather sorry for John, and hoping that managing Mr. Roman was what explained his absence from the front office, Comfort decided she should show herself. She pushed open the hatch wide enough to poke her head through. She felt rather like a prairie dog cautiously gauging the safety of leaving his hole.

“You won’t get many visitors here, Mr. DeLong, although I understand that might be part of the appeal.”

Dropping his pencil, Bode swiveled around and stared at Comfort. “What are you doing here?”

She pushed the hatch open wider and raised herself up another step. “That should be obvious. I’ve come to speak to you.”

Bode slid off the stool and crossed the room quickly. He threw back the door, reached down to take the hand she extended to him, and helped her up.

Comfort was aware that she did very little of the work herself. He practically hoisted her out of the hole. When he set her down, she straightened her bonnet and shawl and smoothed the front of her dress. She gave a little start when he let the hatch slam shut.

“Well,” she said, striving for a brisk, businesslike tone. “This is unexpected.”

He frowned and pinned her in place with a narrow, steely look. “I think you have our lines confused. That’s what I should be saying.”

“Oh, I wasn’t referring to the fact of seeing you as unexpected. How could it be? I came looking for you.” She waved a hand airily about the room. “No, I meant this place. Your quarters. They are quarters, aren’t they? As on a ship. The gangway. The hatch. Shipmaster’s quarters.” She bent a little sideways to peek around him when he didn’t move. “It’s quite large. A stateroom, I believe. I didn’t expect that. It’s not as big as the entire floor below, but that would be excessive. You have several rooms, I see. Cabins. Is that what you call them?”

“I call them rooms.” Bode shifted and planted a foot firmly on the floor when she tried to step around him. “Who knows you’re here?”

She shook her head. The look he gave her occupied the range between incredulity and fury. Knowing that she deserved at least some part of it, although perhaps not with the intensity of his present expression, Comfort found the grace to look sheepish. It wasn’t her fault, she thought, that he believed she was being disingenuous.

Bode put his palm directly in front of her face. He was satisfied when she flinched. Good. She deserved to be a little afraid of him. “What about your maid?” he asked. “Suey Tsin.”

Comfort’s eyebrows lifted, surprised he remembered Suey Tsin’s name. “She probably thinks I’m at the bank.” She disliked talking to his hand but was loath to nudge it aside. Touching him did not seem to be advised, and in truth, she was averse to the idea on general principle. The general principle being that she didn’t put her hand in fire.

Bode lowered his palm. “And where do your uncles think you are?”

“At home.” She watched him close his eyes briefly and supposed he was dipping into his well of patience. When he looked at her again, she surmised the well wasn’t very deep. “I’m certain they will try to visit you sometime today. I thought it was better if I arrived first.”

“You mean I can expect that they will find you here?”

“No. No, I don’t mean that at all. Not unless you continue to ask questions that delay me from explaining the point of my visit.”

By God, she was taking him to task. “By all means, explain yourself.”

She exhaled softly. “Well, I’m sure it will seem that a lot of fuss is being made about a misunder—” She broke off. “Can’t you invite me in?”

“You are in. I dropped the hatch, didn’t I?”

Comfort supposed his intention was to remind her that he could have dropped her through it. That he could still drop her through it. Her legs felt a little wobbly. “May I sit, then? You can put the stool right here. I won’t move. I promise.”

Bode didn’t answer immediately. One corner of his mouth flattened as he pushed his hand through his hair, thinking. “You can sit over there,” he said, stepping aside at last and pointing to the ball-and-claw-footed upholstered bench beneath a pair of windows. “I will hold you to your promise not to move.”

Comfort was careful not to brush him as she crossed the room. She paused briefly at the drawing table, curious, but Bode’s back-of-the-throat growl was like the sharp point of a stick in the small of her back. She kept moving.

Sitting down, she pressed the dove gray fabric of her dress over her knees and managed a small smile. “The walk here took longer than I expected.” She shrugged. “But that is not—”

“You walked here?”

Bode’s well wasn’t merely shallow, she realized. It was bone-dry. “I did.”

“Christ.”

His language surprised her. The fact that he didn’t apologize for it did not.

“Do you have any idea what might have happened to you?”

She looked pointedly at his eye patch. “I think I do, yes.”

He tapped his eye. “This is the least of it. How far did you venture into the Coast?”

“Not far.” She ticked off her route on her fingers—and all the reasons she considered her journey not to have been as dangerous as he supposed. When she was done, he was sitting as well. She folded her hands in her lap. “The important thing is that I’ve arrived safely. There’s no point in reviewing all the things that might have happened. They didn’t, and because the hour will be later when I return, I intend to hire a hack. I made certain I brought enough money with me to do that.”

Bode swore again, this time so softly that it was hardly satisfying. “I won’t let you leave here in a hack without an escort.”

“Then maybe your clerk can accompany me. John, is it?” When he looked at her oddly, she explained, “You thought he was the one at the hatch, remember?”

Bode wondered if anything ever escaped her notice. “Mr. Farwell has another matter to occupy him. I’ll take you back.”

“That’s very kind, but not necessary.”

“I was going to call on you today.” He added facetiously, “Remember?”

“Yes, but by then my uncles would have met with you, or if they hadn’t been able to get away from the bank, they certainly would have cornered you upon your arrival, and I would have to hear all about it secondhand.”

“What you just said made sense to you?”

Comfort gave him a withering look.

He didn’t smile, but he appreciated that she had regained her footing. Now it was up to him to do the same. “Very well,” he said. “What is the nature of this discussion that I am apparently going to have with your uncles?”

“They’re going to ask you for your recollection of last night’s events.”

“I don’t suppose they’ll be inquiring about the third act of Rigoletto.”

“No. They had already figured out that Gilda would be murdered. It’s their contention that operas don’t end well. I’ve told them that . . .” Her voice trailed away when Bode cocked an eyebrow at her. She hadn’t expected that it would be so difficult to come to the point. It made her wonder if she was really as confident of what Bode would tell her uncles as she had supposed. Her palms were clammy and her heart had begun to thrum uncomfortably. She did not think she was going to faint, but she hadn’t known it was going to happen the last time either.

“Miss Kennedy?”

The change in his voice from contemptuous to concerned brought her around. She blinked. “I’m sorry. I think this was a mistake.” Offering a wan but apologetic smile, she began to rise.

“Sit. Down.”

Comfort sat.

“That’s better,” he said. He stood and crossed the room to the sideboard, where he measured out a finger of whiskey. He carried the tumbler to her and pressed it between her folded hands. “Sip.”

She did.

Bode stayed where he was, watching her until some color returned to her ashen face. “All right,” he said when he returned to the stool. “I agree that you being here is a mistake, but since you’ve come rather late to that realization, you might as well carry out your intention. What is it in particular that Newt and Tucker will want to know?” A small crease appeared between his eyebrows. “Do they think I said or did something that caused you to faint?”

“No! No one said anything like that.” Her dark eyes widened a fraction, and she asked softly, “You didn’t, did you?”

“No.”

She nodded. “That was my recollection also.”

“Reassuring,” he said dryly.

Comfort watched Bode plunge his fingers through his hair again. Sunshine from the skylight directly overhead gave his hair a metallic copper sheen. She realized she was staring when his eyebrows lifted a fraction. Rather than quickly look away just as if she’d done something wrong, Comfort took a careful sip of her drink.

“The gentleman in front of us,” she said after the whiskey slipped warmly past her throat. “The one helping the woman with her train. Do you know him?”

“No. Is that what this is about?”

“Perhaps. I’m not certain.” She drew a shallow breath and released it slowly. “Do you recall what it was that he dropped?”

“A tin. The kind that’s sold in drugstores. I didn’t get a good look at it. Is it important?” Apparently it was. There was the faintest tremor in Comfort’s hands. He thought about taking the tumbler from her but decided against it. Perhaps clutching it was all that was keeping her upright.

“You’re not mistaken? It wasn’t a glove?”

He disliked quashing the hope in her eyes. He held up his hands, turning the palms over in a helpless gesture. “It was a tin.”

“Oh.” She nodded slowly and sighed. “I remember a glove.”

“What do Tuck and Newt remember?”

“A tin. The same as you.” Leaving what remained of her drink in the glass, she set it beside her on the bench. She pressed her palms against her knees as she’d wanted to earlier. “I was so convinced it was a glove that I think my uncles began to doubt what they saw.”

“Which is why you suspect they’ll want to speak to me.”

“Yes. I invited them to. For confirmation.” And then for confrontation, she thought. They would have to say something to her. No matter how distasteful they would find the chore, it couldn’t be helped.

She looked forlorn. That troubled Bode. “Do you want me to tell them it was a glove?”

“Would you do that?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

She smiled a little at his answer. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to. They saw what you saw.”

Leaning to one side, Bode rested his elbow and forearm on top of his drawing on the table. “How do you account for remembering it differently?”

“I can’t. I still see the glove. You can’t imagine how disturbing it is to learn I can’t trust my eyes.”

“I don’t think that’s the problem. You can trust your eyes. It’s your memory that’s failing you.”

“Thank you for clarifying, but the distinction hardly makes it any less disturbing.”

“I understand.” He rolled a pencil back and forth with the tip of his index finger. “What I don’t understand is the importance you and your uncles are attaching to it. You haven’t explained that.”

Comfort supposed that she hadn’t, not really. “I have a tin like the one the gentleman dropped. You remember the color?”

“Red and white.”

“And what was written on it?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t study it. You had it in your hand a moment, dropped it, and I picked it up. I barely glanced at it before I returned it to the gentleman. There was candy in the tin, I think. Maybe cough drops.”

“Lozenges,” she said. “Newt and Tuck recognized it at once. Dr. Eli Kennedy’s Comfort Lozenges.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I’ll have to take them at their word.” Bode considered what she told him. “Is that why you have a tin like it? Because of the name?”

She hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“The name. It’s a little like yours, isn’t it? Kennedy. Comfort. Do you have a middle name? Eli, perhaps?”

“Elizabeth.”

“Close enough.” He picked up the pencil and waggled it between his fingers. “I would have collected a tin like that myself, supposing it was named Dr. Beauregard DeLong’s Royal Lozenges, or some such thing.”

“Is that your middle name? Royal?”

“No. Crowne. My mother’s maiden name. I thought Royal sounded better. For a lozenge, that is.”

Comfort smiled. It was a slight one, and in the end, slightly sad. “I didn’t find and keep the tin because of the name. I have my name because of the tin.”

Bode’s fingers stilled; the pencil stood at attention. “How is that again?”

“I was holding the tin of lozenges when Newt and Tucker found me, so they named me Comfort Elizabeth Kennedy. Elizabeth was a name they attached later. That was Newt’s idea. Tucker is credited with having thought of the other.”

“All right,” he said, nodding slowly. “That explains one thing.”

“You have other questions, I imagine.”

“I do, but you tell me what you want me to know.” When Comfort stood, reneging on her promise not to move from the bench, he didn’t stop her. He let her wander and pretend interest in her surroundings while she considered what she wanted to say, and more importantly it seemed, got over her reluctance to say it. She was quiet as she passed from one area of his stateroom to another. There were no walls defining the interior, but she recognized the flow and function of the space. Bode had an area for study, for conversation, for eating, and for cooking. The part of his home that was closed off to her by doors, she assumed was for storage, sleeping, dressing, and bathing. He could have lived in a mansion on Nob Hill with dozens of rooms, some of them larger than the one he occupied now, but he’d chosen this. She glanced at the hatch, remembered what she’d said on arrival, and realized she’d been right. Bode wanted to be alone. She wasn’t as sure that he liked it.

“Newt and Tuck aren’t really my uncles,” she said. She picked up one of the ebony knights from the chess set on the dining room table and rolled it lightly between her palms. “They explained to me early on that I could tell people whatever I liked about how I came to be with them, but if I didn’t want to say anything, they were prepared to let on that I was their niece. Newton drew up a family tree that we all learned to explain our connections.”

“The devil is in the details.”

“Precisely. My mother was Tucker’s sister. Newt was my father’s older half brother. That was to explain the difference in our last names.” She glimpsed Bode’s mouth twitch. Hers did as well. She felt lighter in the moment and set the chess piece down. She’d never thought of their story as any kind of burden, yet saying just one small part of it aloud made her feel as if she’d shed a weight.

“I’ve never told anyone. No, not even Bram. And I feel confident that Newt and Tucker have been silent as well. In some way, I suppose we’ve come to believe what we invented. Certainly, we’ve lived as if it were so. The truth is that I don’t know who my parents were. I have the tense right, though. What I do know about them is that they’re dead. I was part of a wagon train heading west that was attacked and robbed in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I was the only survivor. Newt thinks I crawled off on my own sometime during the raid. We can’t be sure, because I don’t remember any of what happened before Tuck found me wedged between some rocks.”

Comfort smiled a trifle crookedly. “Actually it was Newt’s mare Dulcie snuffling around that made Tuck investigate.”

“Newt reminds you and Tuck of that, I take it.”

“He hasn’t for a long while,” she said. “But in the beginning, yes. Frequently.” She walked over to the table where Bode sat and studied the drawing under his arm. She said nothing about it, picking up the thread of her story instead. “We think I was five. I told them I was. It was about the only thing I would, or could, tell them, and they chose to accept it as fact. There was some discussion about whether they should take me with them. Apparently there was a trading post a ways back. If they’d been willing to retrace their steps, they could have left me there. They didn’t really argue about it, not that I remember. It was mostly Tuck who decided and Newt who went along.”

Bode had tried not to ask any questions, allowing Comfort to set the pace, but he was afraid she wouldn’t mention the thing that had brought them to this point. “How does the tin figure in this?”

“I was clutching it, and I wouldn’t give it up. I had no interest in anything they brought me from the wagons. Dolls. Combs. Books. Newt said that if I recognized any of it, they couldn’t tell.”

Bode nodded, understanding. After every battle, there were soldiers who couldn’t have recognized their own mothers. They barely knew that the hand at the end of their arm was their own. “I saw it sometimes,” he said. “During the war.”

“I wasn’t like that, Mr. DeLong. I was hiding. I didn’t see the shooting. I didn’t see bodies. Newt and Tuck buried everyone before they found me.”

“You don’t know what you saw. You don’t remember.”

Comfort returned to the bench at the window and sat. “No,” she said. “I don’t. That’s at the very crux of the matter, isn’t it?”

“He dropped a tin,” said Bode. “A red-and-white tin.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed them with her thumb and forefinger. “I can’t see it.” Unwelcome tears suddenly pressed against her lids. She didn’t have a handkerchief.

“Here.” Bode pushed one corner of a handkerchief into the center of her fist.

The ache in her throat prevented her from speaking. She simply nodded and accepted the gift.

Bode returned to the stool. “Perhaps you’d like to finish your drink?”

Dabbing at her eyes, she shook her head.

“All right, then I want to ask you about a week ago Monday night.”

“Monday?”

“Yes. Bram broke his leg earlier in the day.”

“Well, I certainly remember that.”

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And you fell asleep in the parlor waiting for me to return from speaking to my mother. I chose to let you sleep because it was clear you were exhausted. I didn’t wake you because you were dreaming. I woke you because you were terrified.”

“I’m sure you’ve had nightmares. Everyone does.”

“Not like that. At least not since I was a child.”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t recall it anyway.”

Disappointed, Bode shook his head. “This is the first time since you’ve arrived that I don’t believe you.”

“I can’t help that.”

“You could tell the truth.”

“You told me I could tell you what I wanted you to know.”

“I didn’t ask you to tell me what the dream was about.”

Comfort twisted the handkerchief. “Very well. Then, yes, I remember some of it. Not everything.”

“Do you have it often?”

“No.” She hesitated and then admitted, “I had it again last night. I didn’t wake during it, but I know it happened while I slept. This morning I woke thirsty.”

“Thirsty?”

“Yes. I always need something to drink when I wake after I’ve had that particular dream. You gave me sherry.”

“You only sipped it.”

“That required a great deal of restraint, I assure you. Before then, my throat couldn’t have been dryer if I’d swallowed a handful of sand.”

“You could have asked for water. Tea. Whatever you liked.”

“No, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to resist drinking my fill, and that would have put your eyebrows at the level of your hairline. It was better that you didn’t see.”

Bode didn’t smile, but nevertheless, his blue-violet eyes softened. “Have you ever tried Dr. Eli Kennedy’s Comfort Lozenges?”

It surprised her that she actually shivered. “No. It never occurred to me.”

“Apparently not. Was the tin empty when they found you?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps you tried them once before and didn’t like them.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why do you think you fainted last night?” he asked.

Comfort untwisted the handkerchief, smoothed it out on her lap, and began to fold it neatly in quarters. “I thought it was the warmth and the press of people and the fact that I stooped and stood so quickly when the gentleman dropped his glove.” She stopped, hearing what she said, and sighed inaudibly. “Dropped the tin, I mean. After what I’ve told you, I expect you put the same construction on what happened as my uncles. You think it was because I saw the tin, don’t you?”

“Haven’t you seen others like it before?”

“Yes. Exactly. That’s what I told Newton and Tucker. I don’t faint when I walk into Donahue’s Apothecary and see those exact tins displayed behind his counter.”

“I’m sure you don’t. That would have attracted some notice before now.” He picked up the pencil on the table again and started to tap it lightly. “But your hand had a fine tremor in it when you held it.”

“It did?”

He nodded. “I saw it. That’s why you dropped it.” He could see that she’d been unaware of it. Her expression was genuinely nonplussed. “Besides the tin you were holding when they found you, have you ever held another like it?”

“No.”

“Ever purchased the same lozenges?”

“No. There are other kinds.”

“But Dr. Kennedy’s are still popular and have a reputation for effectiveness. I would have recognized the tin if I’d given it more than a cursory glance.”

“Well, I’ve never used them,” she said stiffly.

“And before last night, apparently never held one that wasn’t your own.”

Exasperated with his reasoning, she said, “Then you do think it prompted me to faint.”

“No. It prompted you to let it drop as if it were a hot coal, but that’s not when you fainted.”

“No, it’s not, is it? You caught it and gave it back to the gentleman.”

“That’s right.”

She frowned. “I’m not clear on what happened next. He took it, didn’t he?”

“He did. He thanked me on behalf of himself and everyone who was sitting near him.”

Suddenly agitated beyond her ability to remain in her seat, Comfort jumped up. She put out a hand to stop Bode from continuing. “You don’t have to say any more.” There was an odd ringing sensation in her ears. Her skin began to crawl. “Actually, I’d prefer if you—”

The stool under Bode thudded to the floor as he leaped to his feet. He was quick, but not quick enough. Comfort’s knees folded under her before he crossed half the distance, and she was lying crumpled on her side when he reached her.

Bode bent, scooped her up, and placed her on the bench, knocking the tumbler of whiskey out of the way. He took the shawl from around her shoulders, folded it, and put it under her head. She was already coming around, blinking rapidly against the bright sunlight streaming through the windows. He stood and drew the curtains. The skylight kept the room from being dark.

He removed Comfort’s hat and laid the back of his hand lightly over her forehead. Her skin was cool but not clammy. “Perhaps we should think about other things that could have contributed to your fainting spell.”

“What things?” she asked dully. She tapped his wrist to encourage him to remove his hand. When he did, she placed her forearm across her eyes. “I believe I mentioned the crowd, the heat, the stooping and standing. None of those apply here.”

“You did jump to your feet.”

“I don’t think that was it.”

“All right. What if it is me?”

“It’s not.”

He didn’t think it was, but he was gratified to hear her say it with so much conviction. What he had to say next was more difficult. “Are you carrying Bram’s child?”

Comfort tore her arm away from her eyes so quickly that Bode had no chance to duck out of the way. She hit him in the head with the back of her hand. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. Did I miss your eye at least? Please tell me I missed your eye.”

He’d managed to grab her wrist before she drew it back, and now he held on, surrounding the loose fist she made with his fingers. “You missed both of them,” he said.

The clasp of his fingers was firm and warm. Comfort didn’t try to remove her hand from it. She had the odd sensation of complete calm. Given the question he’d just put before her, it was an unreasonable response.

“I’m not carrying your brother’s child,” she said. “Or anyone else’s.”

“I guessed that when you tried to blind me.”

She started to object and then realized Bode was teasing her. That seemed an equally unreasonable response. “You’re different than I expected.”

“Since I imagine most of what you know about me came from Bram, I hope that means I’ve exceeded your expectations.”

She smiled faintly and nodded.

“Good.”

He held her gaze, and Comfort didn’t look away; she didn’t want to. His eyes no longer reflected the violet-blue spark of light glancing off steel. What she saw were deep, warm pools that invited her to stir their perfect stillness.

Without quite knowing why, she accepted their invitation. She raised her head. Her lips parted. She waited.

She understood what she hadn’t in the moment before he touched her mouth with his.

Bode’s eyes had been the calm before the storm.