“This is important.”
“I don’t feel like talking.” She turned on her heel and marched toward the waiting carriage.
Kit watched her walk away. What had he done?What was he doing? What was wrong with him? Frustrated, he joined Lee, who waited by their horses. The carriage went by and he mounted, feeling like he wanted to ride hard over the hills and away from town, hell-bent for leather. Instead, he looked at Lee.
“What’s wrong with you?” Lee asked.
“Nothing. Come on, let’s go.”
“Kit, wait!” Lee leaned over and grabbed the reins Kit clutched in his fist. “You need to talk to the men about the cargo.”
“Goddammit, I know that!” Kit shouted unreasonably. He jerked the reins out of Lee’s hand and galloped toward the waiting wagons.
Lee pushed his cap back and stared at his friend. “You could have fooled me,” he muttered.
Less than five minutes later the two men were forced to slow their pace by a group of heavy teamsters. Lee eyed him. “You want to talk about it?”
“No,” Kit said.
“That’s good. It’s much better to just let it eat at you. That way when you’re really pissed, you can clamp your jaw so hard that you bust your nuts. That’ll put an end to all your problems. The way I see it—”
“I’m an ass.”
“Exactly what did you say?”
“I called her pigheaded!”
“That was polite of you.”
Kit sighed. “You can cut the sarcasm, Lee, I know I was out of line.”
“Considering what Hallie has gone through in the past few days, I’d say you were more than an ass.”
“I wanted to reassure her that I’d handle everything. I had thought to put her at ease.”
“So you called her pigheaded.”
“It’s just my inflated ego.She doesn’t want to talk to me. I thought she was fine. It looked like she handled her grief real well. There were no tears, and did you see her with those men?” Kit shook his head. “I couldn’t believe the way she handled them.”
Lee halted his mount and he stared, dumbfounded, at Kit.
“What’s the matter with you?” Kit asked.
“Do you really think that Hallie was fine? My God, man, she was ready to break any minute. Every one of Jan’s girls was straining to hold her emotions. The boys are too young to understand, but those poor girls have lost both their parents in less than four years. If you think Hallie’s fine, then you’re an insensitive horse’s ass.”
Kit didn’t respond. Hallie had been pale and tight-lipped. And now that he thought about it, her voice had had no life to it. Like someone who’d gone without sleep for days, it had been dull and tired.
As they rounded a corner, Kit decided he should drop the subject of his rotten handling of Hallie. “Do you want theSea Haven?”
“Why would I want two whalers? TheWandereris enough ship for me. What are you going to do with her?” Lee asked.
“I suppose I’ll see if Smalley wants to buy her, but somehow I doubt it. He seems a bit old to be captain material.”
As they came to a crest on the hilly street, Lee looked out at the clutter of abandoned ships in the harbor. “Doesn’t appear to be a seller’s market for ships right now.”
“That’s changing.” Kit saw the doubt on Lee’s face. “There’s been selling of the water lots. Land speculators have bought hundreds of acres of waterlots and they’re filling them in. The problem is, there’s not enough fill dirt, so they’re using garbage, debris, and some are now buying up the ships, breaking them up and using them as fill base.”
“God, that’s a waste of damn good ships.”
