“I do not think it is the dog that interests him,” Bo says cheekily.
“What do you mean by that?”
“See for yourself.”
A young lady leans over and attaches a leash to the dog, spilling her minky hair into her face. Guess I’m not the only first-class lady slumming it with the poor. She’s not dressed as flashy as the other nobs—a cheerful suit in butter yellow and pearl earbobs—but she has the kind of pretty face, with soft brown eyes and strawberry-pink lips, that causes men to drop their jaws and women to drop their stitches. Jamie says something, and her patrician nose crinkles becomingly. They’re . . . conversing?
Olly stretches far over the rail. “Who’s she?”
Bo pulls Olly back by his collar. “White ghost means trouble. Jamie should avoid her.”
The Chinese can be suspicious of foreigners, who rarely do them any favors.
“She’s a fetcher,” says Wink, who then steals another glance at me. “I bet she smells like marmalade.”
Olly breaks free from Bo. “And butter.”
“Why would you think that?” I ask.
“Jamie said those are the best smells.”
Clearly, they know him well. Mum made us biscuits with marmalade and butter whenever we had money to spare, which wasn’t often.
Jamie climbs the stairs, not as spryly as I remember, but rather as if each step requires a separate thought. I marvel at how he has filled out his wrapper. New muscles mean better acts, faster moves. Acrobatics came naturally to him, unlike me. I always had to work twice as hard, especially after I started rounding out. Though he isn’t tall by English standards, five eight at most, there is a brightness around Jamie that commands attention, even from first-class girls with poodles.
He bounds over to us, a high flush on his golden cheeks. He nods at me. “Ma’am.”
I almost laugh out loud, but suck it back in. The first class does not waste their breath responding to commoners.
“Make a new friend?” Bo asks him.
Jamie gives his coat lapels a sharp tug. “Miss Charlotte Fine of New York City.”
Miss Fine? I snort hard enough for my veil to ripple. Jamie glances at me, but Charlotte waves a pretty gloved hand at him, then makes her poodle wave its black paw. Jamie returns the wave.
“Her poodle slid off the deck during that one dip, but I caught her. She sure is clever. She can beg and play dead and everything.”
This time, I can’t hold back. “The girl or the dog?”
Jamie’s eyes—narrower than mine but a richer brown, like Mum’s—snap to me. He stares hard at my veil, but unlike the others, he knows the face on the other side. Knows its heart shape as well as his own, with our same tendency to stick up our chins as if perpetually checking for rain.
His mouth splits into a half grin, half grimace. “I don’t bloody believe it.”
I raise my veil long enough for him and his crew to get a peek. “Believe it, Jamie, because here I am.”
5
Though I cannot afford to attract more attention than I already have, I embrace my brother. The familiar scent of milk biscuits and trampled ryegrass, now dusted with coal, puts a lump in my throat. “How about you? Shoveling coal shored you up.” I give his solid shoulder a thump.
Despite his new density, his face is still youthful with fine bones and cheeks you can cup your hands around. He looks like a pretty boy, and I look like a boyish girl. “They said you were in E-16, but someone named Fong shut the door in my face, and I thought you didn’t make it after all, and you have no idea—” It’s hard to string words together when you’re trying not to blubber.
“Sorry about that. Fong’s a suspicious old boot. We exchanged rooms because he didn’t want Room 14.”
The Chinese avoid the number four, which sounds like the word for “death” in Cantonese.
“What are you doing here, Val? And why are you dressed like that?”
“It’s a bit of a story.”
His mates stand by, sporting various states of confusion. Olly stares openly, his eyes flitting to the short fan of feathers on my hat, which somehow survived my perilous journey aboard. Wink places a thin hand on the back of the bench and lifts himself up onto his toes, as if to get a better bead on me, his expressive eyes jittery. Bo leans his sturdy frame against the rail, chewing his lower lip. With or without his scowl, he charms the vision, his dark brows standing out against clear skin, his guarded eyes the color of oolong tea steeped to just the right smokiness.
“Jamie, how come you never told us you had a sweetheart?” Olly blurts.
I let go of my brother with a loud guffaw. Jamie slaps my back harder than he needs to. “Everyone, this is Valora. My twin sister. So no one get any ideas, because she’s off-limits.”
Wink and Olly snicker, proof that they are not the ones Jamie is worried about. Bo glares up at the docking bridge, as if he can’t be bothered to look at me anyway.
Olly ties his thin arms into a knot. “Why didn’t you ever tell us you had a twin?”
“Does no one know about me?” Well, that is a knife to the gut. I tie my own arms together.
“You never told us you were rich, either.” Wink reaches out a finger and touches a bit of lace on my sleeve.
Jamie slaps his hand away. “We call this one Wink. He blinks a lot, but nothing gets past him.”
Wink puffs up his bony chest and lifts his nose.
“And this eager fellow is Oliver. When I first met him, he didn’t have two words to rub together, and now we can’t shut him up.” Jamie pushes the lad away by his bony forehead. “They’re our boiler monkeys, sweeping up coal, fetching water. But mostly they just get underfoot.”
The lads protest, but Bo knuckles them on the head.
I’d imagined the men of Jamie’s company would be, well, men, grizzled and hard-boiled, like Fong. Certainly not this young. Jamie rarely mentioned his mates in his letters. Yet, as I watch them horse around, I can’t help thinking that these lads are more than mates. They’re behaving like brothers. Why keep them a secret from me, and me a secret from them? I am not only his twin, but also his best friend. At least, I was.
“This classy gent is Chow Bo Wah.” Jamie claps Bo on the back. “He’s a fireman like me, but he shovels coal twice as fast. The muscles are all an act, though. Inside, he’s a kitten.”
Bo scowls. “You are a fool.”
Jamie laughs. “Now out with it. Why are you here and not with the Sloanes?”