Page 2 of By Any Means

Sour. Leathery. Totally unripe. Crunchy with seed, and not the kind he preferred.

When he spat, it was alarmingly red. He felt a new appreciation for the wisdom of whatever bird it was that ate blueberries.

The whicker of a cold horse sent him to his feet, had him dragging a hand over his mouth. He turned to see hooves and fogged breath come down the south road over the barren’s edge.

No time to run. Two mares moved swiftly before a buckboard wagon occupied by one. The driver—a man in a top hat—spotted him and waved.

Hell. Laurie should’ve gone farther out from the road, headed into the pines, but he hadn’t expected to run into a single soul until he’d gone the opposite way again. Any farm’s surrounding population shrank to almost nil in the off-season.

So, who was this? Someone local? Someone important?

More importantly: who could Laurie be to him?

He waved and walked to the road’s edge. The man reined in his matched mares and tipped his hat.

Laurie’s first impression was of tall, modish slimness and fair, plain looks. The second: wealth, and an excess of it. Besides the horseflesh, the man’s fashionable black overcoat had a velvet collar and a cape, and he wore a puff tie with a jeweled pin stuck through. No fur, thank god. Laurie had seen enough fur for the foreseeable future.

The man stretched out a hand gloved in tan calfskin. “Hello, and good morning. Charles Edward Wright.”

Laurie nearly startled. Ah, damn, he thought as he shook the hand. His target. Really?

At least the man was rich. He didn’t even pronounce half his r’s—and there were a lot of them in that ten-dollar name.

Sam hadn’t completely lost it, maybe.

“Laurie Moore.”

“What luck to have run across you, Mr. Moore. You must be rather uncomfortable?”

“Nah. I like a brisk walk.”

“Brisk,” Mr. Wright said, soft and precise; his breath frosted out in tiny puffs. “It’s the coldest day of March?”

“Is it?”

“It certainly seems so to me. But then, I’m not yet accustomed to a Maine winter.”

Laurie nodded. “New here?” Belatedly he realized he had no idea what would pass for regional vernacular—he hadn’t had time to immerse himself, of course, practically ambushed by his target—but it didn’t matter. The man wouldn’t remember him beyond the day. His type never did, even if Laurie were a memorable sort of man, which he wasn’t.

“I’m from New York. New York City. I’ve only just inherited the farm.” Mr. Wright nodded beyond the evergreen edge.

Of course Gotham. Nowhere else, with that Millionaire’s Row accent. Strange inheritance for a Fifth Avenue type, though. Dead brother. Seriously, Sam?

“What’s in the wagon?” Laurie asked.

“Oh!” Mr. Wright turned halfway around. “Glass.”

“Glass?” Laurie laughed unexpectedly.

Mr. Wright smiled. “Well, it shall be. Right now, it is silica and feldspar.”

“Huh.”

Laurie had… no idea what to do with that. But that smile, tremulous as it was, had made Mr. Wright better looking than Laurie had first allotted him. Strong cheekbones. He was sharp around those, almost malnourished—strange, in the well-to-do. Light-brown eyes shone with fatigue. Life had weighed on the man in such a concave way that Laurie imagined he would age well, tautly; though clearly young, he seemed to have done a lot of it already.

Dead brother, he thought again.

“It is aeolian sand,” Mr. Wright said, gaining enthusiasm. “Wind-deposited and sorted. Hardly any clay at all. Of course, the feldspar is quarried. This is merely a small sample; I wanted to see for myself how it melts—” He stopped. His tentative cheer faded. A different kind of flush came over his cheeks, cherry-bright. He looked away. “Don’t mind my going on.”