Against the Tide (10 page)

10

L
ydia stood before the dry docks, huddled in her thin cloak, waiting for Bane. The cry of gulls carried on the air as the birds scavenged along the marshy banks of the Charles River. Lydia wondered if they were as cold as she. Bleak November evenings like these made those sunbaked days on Papa’s fishing boat in the Mediterranean seem like another lifetime.

If Bane didn’t have any more translating work, she didn’t know what she would do. The idea of marrying the admiral was absurd. It was like a peasant girl aspiring to become a princess, and Lydia had no such illusions about herself. Despite the tremendous ruckus with Bane, over the past week the admiral had not changed his demeanor toward her whatsoever. He was polite, gentlemanly, and businesslike. He greeted her precisely the same way he had greeted her for the past four years, touching the corner of his eyebrow in an almost salute. “Miss Pallas,” he would say with a quick nod of his head, and then walk straight into his private office.

The thought of losing her apartment was bad, but after last week’s conversation with Bane, her situation was more precarious
than ever. If the admiral left his position to go to Washington, she could lose her job as well.

Ever since learning the admiral might leave, Lydia battled with her nerves. A daily sip of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup eased the headache that throbbed whenever her nerves got the better of her. It was the same medicine the staff at the Crakken Orphanage used to help the children sleep. The label showed a lovely mother spooning a bit of medicine to her delightful baby. Lydia was embarrassed to rely on baby medicine, and whenever she purchased a bottle, she immediately poured the contents into one of her pretty blue bottles so she would not need to see that disturbing picture on the label. Still, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was the only thing that had kept her headache at bay this week.

“You look frozen. What on earth possessed you to stand out in the cold with only a scrap of fabric for protection?”

She turned to see Bane looking as dashing as ever, his blond hair in sharp contrast to the rich black wool of his overcoat. Just once she longed to mess up that exquisite blond perfection. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said through chattering teeth.

Without a word he shrugged out of his coat and dropped it over her shoulders. The heavy wool was deliciously warm from his body’s heat and carried a trace of pine-scented soap. For a moment she allowed herself to bask in the comfort it provided. It was more than just the coat’s warmth . . . it was the casual way he tossed it to her without a second thought. Lydia was unaccustomed to someone looking out for her, and it was oddly comforting.

“Let’s go get something hot inside you,” Bane said as he headed toward the Old Galley Coffeehouse. It took a few minutes for the warmth inside the coffeehouse to thaw her out, but the clam chowder was delicious. “Your trip went well?” she asked. It would be bad-mannered to demand translation work right away.

“More or less,” he said. “Go ahead and ask me if I have any translation work for you.”

Lydia grinned as she spooned another mouthful of chowder down. “And spoil your fun of making me wait for the answer? I’m too considerate for that.”

He flashed her his scoundrel’s smile. “Fine, I’ll make you wait, then.” He leaned back in his seat and contemplated her, his calculating blue eyes assessing her for some unknown reason. “Do you know where most of the poppies in the world are grown?” he finally asked.

Lydia had spent her entire life on either a boat or living along a busy city’s harbor, so she knew virtually nothing about plants. “I have no idea.”

“Turkey. India. North Africa. The opium’s sent to Turkey for processing, then shipped throughout the rest of the world for consumption.”

Lydia broke off a piece of her bread and used it to scrape the remaining bit of soup in her bowl. “Oh,” she said, since Bane seemed to be waiting for some sort of response. “Do you suppose there is any more chowder?” she asked. Normally she would never want to appear so vulgar by shoveling down a second bowl of soup, but she felt perfectly at ease with Bane. Besides, he could practically read her mind anyway, so there was no point in feigning ladylike refinement.

Bane snagged the barkeep’s attention and signaled for another bowl of chowder. “I disapprove of the opium trade,” he said casually. “Every city in this country has disgusting illegal opium dens where people smoke themselves into a mindless stupor. They become useless to their families or themselves. What is even worse is the legal trade, where pharmacies sell syrups that have opium blended into them to unsuspecting customers who spoon it down their children’s throats, even their pets’.”

Lydia was only half listening as she watched the barkeep slide a second delicious bowl of steaming chowder in front of her. The fragrance of freshly ground pepper and smoked bacon rose from the bowl, and she closed her eyes in delight as she savored a spoonful.

“Mm-hum . . .” she said, wondering precisely when he was going to bring the subject around to translating work.

“I want a certain set of laws enacted, and the best way to do that is to put people in office who are friendly to my cause.” Bane turned, and the cold, ruthless expression on his face almost stopped her heart. “I will work toward that goal for the rest of my life, but I’m not willing to wait for the laws to be changed. That could take decades. I know who controls the illegal opium routes in this country, but I need to find out who his suppliers are. I want to choke the problem off at its source.”

Bane went on to explain that opium was cheap to produce, but the American government stamped a ten-dollar tax on every pound shipped into the country, almost quadrupling the price. That meant greedy men were eager to smuggle the drug to avoid those taxes. Smugglers sold the cheap opium to be blended into medicines sold in pharmacies all across the nation. It was because of the illegal opium trade that the medicines sold in pharmacists’ shops were so inexpensive.

She wrapped her suddenly cold fingers around her bowl of soup, seeking the warmth of the hot pottery, unaccustomed to seeing this earnest, serious side of Bane. “And where does my translating fit into this?”

“For over a year, I’ve known that Boston is now the major port on the East Coast through which opium is being smuggled, and I want it stopped. The ships carrying the smuggled opium use code words in their shipping records. Those shipping records would point me to the American smugglers who are transporting the
opium. I need someone who can read those documents. Someone who reads Greek, Turkish, and Albanian. I have a contact inside the Custom House who has been collecting those documents for me, and I’ve been funneling them to you as I get them. I need to move faster. I want you to come with me into the Custom House down by the central wharves, and we will go office by office looking for the person who is smuggling the opium. So this won’t be a conventional translation job. The hours are terrible, the work is unpleasant, and it might be a tiny bit dangerous. But it pays well.”

If he had suggested he wanted her to join the navy, she could not have been more surprised. It sounded risky and frightening and completely outside her comfort zone. “You want us to
break in
to the Custom House?”

“Please, credit me with a little more sophistication than that,” Bane said. “I am friendly with someone on the evening cleaning staff. He will let us in.”

Lydia’s jaw dropped. “Is this kind of thing legal?”

“Cleaning offices? Of course it is.”

“But you are suggesting looking at records on people’s desks, in their files.”

He pierced her with that blue gaze, assessing her. “Lydia, sometimes there is a difference between things that are legal and things that are moral. I’m looking for smugglers, that’s all. Most of the opium in the market is being brought in by a smuggler working in the Boston Custom House. Trying to find him is a worthy goal.”

He continued to outline how the operation would work. All ships arriving from overseas had a cargo list in their native language. As soon as a ship pulled in to port, an American cargo inspector created an English-language inventory of everything as it was offloaded. Copies of both documents were supplied to Custom House officials for the proper collection of taxes. Any discrepancies
between the original foreign cargo list and the English inventory would likely reflect smuggled goods.

Usually Bane was a relentless flirt. He teased her mercilessly and swaggered about with a confidence that was oddly endearing. But tonight he was different. His face was tightly earnest as he leaned across the table toward her, and it was hard not to get swept up in his enthusiasm. Although Lydia admired adventurers and risk takers, she had always walked a very safe path in life.

The question she wanted to ask Bane was so intrusive, so terribly personal, and entirely none of her business . . . and yet, given what Bane was asking her to do, she had a right to know. “Were you addicted to opium?” she asked. “Is that why it is so important to you?”

A bleak smile tilted the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were infinitely sad. “No. I wish my involvement was that innocent.” He drew a heavy breath and kept his gaze locked on hers. “I care because for years I was one of the worst opium smugglers in the country.”

Lydia’s eyes widened. She was shocked by his confession, but Bane was not finished speaking. “The illegal opium trade in this country is controlled by a man named Professor Van Bracken. I became associated with him when I was very young, and he taught me everything he knew.”

Lydia felt like a steel vise was wrapped around her chest, and she found it hard to breathe. Bane had suddenly become a stranger, and it frightened her. “Why are you telling me this?”

As if he sensed her fear, he leaned across the table and met her gaze. “I’m not that person anymore,” he said urgently. “I learned that salvation is possible, even for a nasty sinner like me. I learned I had the freedom to make a choice about what sort of person I wanted to be.” He gave an ironic smile that was more of a grimace than a smile. “Since the hour I became a Christian, the sun has
not set on a single day in which I have not schemed or worked or fought to unravel the damage I have done in this country.”

Lydia had always thought Bane seemed a little more devilish than angelic, but he was unabashed and sincere as he spoke. “I was as foul and as rotten as they come,” he continued. “I was one of those vicious children who would have stolen your blanket while you slept in the orphanage. I was still an adolescent when I learned how to smuggle opium, and I latched on to it like a dog clamps down on a piece of meat. I was
proud
of my association with the Professor and how fast I rose in the world. By the time I was sixteen, I was making more money than the mayor of Boston. I had more power too. I controlled an army of henchmen to intimidate people and make them obey me. Sometimes I preferred to carry out the dirty work myself. People tended to underestimate me because of my size, but I unfurled a reign of terror on whatever city I had business in, and I loved every moment of it.”

Bane’s beautiful face suddenly looked older, haggard even. “I’m telling you this so you can understand why destroying the opium trade is so important to me,” he said. “When I look in the slum houses and see drooling opium addicts, I blame myself. I was the one who distributed that poison. I was the one who terrorized innocent people so I could smooth the way for my own business.”

“Surely you can’t blame yourself for all the vices of opium.”

His smile was bleak. “I’m not sure you appreciate just how very effective I was in my life of crime.” His voice lowered, and that aching sadness was back in his eyes. His voice was soft and full of pain. “Lydia, because of the horror I caused as a young man, I will be doing penance for the rest of my life.”

The flirtatious, irreverent scoundrel was gone, and Lydia’s heart squeezed at the sorrow in Bane’s voice. Now she understood the motivation behind Bane’s relentless drive, but what could a single
individual do to stamp out such a massive trade? It would be like fighting against the incoming tide each morning.