“I—” Jamie begins, but I put a hand on his arm.
“I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Mr. Stewart,” I hear myself say. My whale is a warm lump against my thigh, reminding me to take control of my destiny. “But perhaps I can offer another option.”
33
If Jamie and I are truly charting our own paths now, the way for me must be forward, not back. Ringling Brothers still holds out a hoop, albeit a shaky one. I just need to find a way through it, Valor without Virtue.
Jamie has stopped breathing. Mr. Stewart is rubbing his pocket watch like a worry stone. The Tiffany lamp casts a shine over his scalp.
“We have two younger brothers traveling with us. Wink and Olly are their names. They were the two collecting coins on the well deck after our performance.”
“Yes, I remember them.” He sounds about as thrilled as if I’d offered him a hairbrush.
“Our mother wished that her sons would be sailors.” I send a silent prayer to Mum to forgive me for the ridiculous lies I’m telling with her good name. Something tells me, though, she’s having a good chuckle up there on her cloud.
Jamie coughs. “Where are you going with this?” he asks in Cantonese through his teeth, pasting on a smile.
“I’ll tell you when I get there,” I reply, before returning to English. “She wished to offer a sacrifice to the sea goddess TinHau as a thank-you for the plentiful, er, mackerel harvest that kept her village back in China from starving one summer. So she dedicated her sons to the sea.”
A sigh blows from Jamie’s nostrils, but he props up his expression and nods, his face as earnest as a starched collar.
“Turns out, they have too much of their father in them. Olly has excellent reflexes and would make a good juggler. Wink is naturally small and agile, and with proper training, he could learn to walk the rope, maybe even better than me. You might not have Flying Twins, but what about a Flying Family?”
“But I thought you buried your father alone?”
Belatedly, I remember that Jamie said I took care of Ba by myself. “Er, I was alone. The lads followed after Jamie...” My mind stops spinning, like a pinwheel in a fickle breeze, and Jamie picks up the slack.
“After I found work for them with Atlantic Steam,” Jamie smoothly cuts in, “I sent Valora a letter that she should send them along. After all, the work was honest, and they’d be fed.”
Mr. Stewart’s eyes shift to starboard as he digests our concoction. “Well, what about your mother’s wishes?”
“Ah, well, she has me, doesn’t she?” Jamie thumps his chest and points to the ceiling, as if acknowledging Mum up in heaven.
“Jamie’s the oldest born, which means he’s the most important one, and he loves the queasy seasies.” I slap him on the shoulder a little too hard, forgetting about his injury until he makes a strangled sound.
He absorbs my blow with a good-natured smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sure do.”
Suddenly, the ship seems to grip as if someone stepped on the brakes, and the room leans to port, tossing Crawford onto the bed.
Mr. Stewart raises his eyebrows at the valet. “At least you weren’t carrying the champagne.”
Crawford scrambles to his feet again. “Yes, sir.”
The bed squeaks as Mr. Stewart shifts around. “Well... this Wink and Olly. They’re not acrobats yet. At this point, they’d simply be extra mouths to feed.”
“Your point is taken. But as apprentice acrobats, they’ll work for free for the first six months to give everyone a chance to test things out.” Thanks to our performance, we have enough money to hold us at least a year if we’re frugal, with no rent or board to pay. “If, in the end, you are not satisfied, you will not have lost anything.”
“Except the trouble of getting you into the country.”
“You would’ve done it for the two of us.” I glance at Jamie. “What’s another name or two on the application?”
“Jamie is a more certain bet.”
I snort. “I’m afraid my brother wants to see the stars, not be one of them.”
Mr. Stewart rises, and we stand as well. He gazes at his bowler, now hung on the wall beside us, as if it were a crystal ball. “Ah, this is... quite irregular.”
Crawford creeps next to him and murmurs something into his ear. Is he revealing that I knew his nickname? Maybehe put two and two together and figured out that I was the imposter, Mrs. Sloane.
