Corbin's Fancy Read Free

frolicking children, the preparations for departure being made by Mr. Shibble’s ragtag “theatre” company.
    “Last Christmas Eve, my brother’s ship, the Sea Mistress, was at anchor in Port Hastings harbor—”
    Fancy’s heart seemed to plummet to her knees, then shoot up to hammer against the inside of her skull. Oh, God, she thought. God, no. This is the same family!
    Keith stopped, fixing Fancy with haunted, sky-blue eyes. “Do you know where Port Hastings is?” he asked. “It’s near Puget Sound, on the Strait of Juan de Fuca—”
    Fancy nodded, unable to speak. Again, Temple Royce’s ugly, triumphant laughter echoed in her ears.
    “Anyway, Jeff—that’s my brother—was badly burned. He still has scars on his back and along one of his arms, but the worst marks, of course, are inside him.”
    Fancy closed her eyes, bile scalding the back of her throat. Damn you, Temple, she thought frantically. “But he didn’t die,” she said, thankful for that much, at least.
    “No, not quite. Like a lot of the other men, though, he was forced to jump overboard. The water was colder than usual and it was awhile before he was brought ashore. He caught pneumonia and almost didn’t survive that.” Keith sighed, gazing pensively at the decorated apple tree, where laughing children were jumping and scrambling for the gifts and balloons that graced it. The joy of the scene was at terrible variance with the story—the all too familiar story—that he was relating. “Jeff is here—once he recovered he didn’t want to stay in Port Hastings. There is some kind of rift between him and our oldest brother, but neither of them will talk about it and it’s really beside the point in any case. The fact is that Jeff is dying, Fancy, though he should be over the physical effects of what happened.”
    Fancy shivered. “I don’t understand how you think I could help,” she managed to say. “I’m not a nurse—”
    “Jeff doesn’t need a nurse so much as he needs a companion—someone who can spend time with him and bring him out of that inner world where he’s hiding. Between the orchards and my parish, I can’t work with him the way I should, but I love my brother, Fancy, and I don’t want to lose him.”
    “I w–would spend time with him? What would that accomplish?”
    “I’m hoping that you’ll be able to stir some emotionin him—anything. Make him laugh, make him cry, make him mad—I don’t really care.”
    Fancy swallowed and looked down at her skirts. In every fiber of her being, she ached with the shame of what Temple Royce had done to Jeff Corbin and to his family, not to mention the crewmen who had not survived the blast aboard the Sea Mistress. She was not responsible for the attack, of course, but just knowing who was weighted her with guilt. She had not told the authorities what she knew; instead, she had just fled the town to try to forget.
    Now she studied Keith Corbin’s earnest face and wondered what would happen if she told him that it had been Temple Royce who had ordered the charges of dynamite to be laid on and beneath the decks of the ship. In the end, she decided that she did not dare.
    But further worries waited to be dealt with. She had worked as a performer in Port Hastings aboard the Silver Shadow, a clippership converted into a saloon. Suppose Captain Jeff Corbin had seen her there and recognized her now? Worse still, suppose he recalled that she had, at that time, planned to marry Temple Royce—a man he no doubt regarded as his worst enemy?
    Fancy’s predominant instinct demanded that she flee, that she put this town and this family behind her, before one of its members remembered her as she was now remembering them. But she did not have the means to escape, having lost her job, and besides that, a small part of her longed to atone somehow for what Temple had done. “I’m not sure I can help you,” she muttered, plucking at a star on her skirt with nervous fingers, “but