Читать книгу Wicked - Beth Henderson - Страница 12

Lilly stood to one side, waiting until the moment when Hannah McMillan and Galloway parted. Although she had never actually witnessed such an event, she doubted that Hannah’s greeting was that of a bird of paradise to a customer—even a favorite customer.

The woman didn’t resemble the soiled doves Lilly had met during her visits to the Coast. Although flirtatious curls spilled free at the nape of Mrs. McMillan’s neck and around her ears, she wore her copper hair swept up in a prim knot at the crown of her head. Her dress seemed as proper as Lilly’s own, but was a deep emerald green trimmed with brocaded ribbon. Having grown accustomed to the paint that Belle and her friends wore, Lilly was pleasantly surprised to find that the only color in Hannah McMillan’s cheeks was the result of her pleasure in seeing the handsome Mr. Galloway.

The kiss the two shared was over as quickly as it began. “There can be only one reason you finally came to see me, Dig,” Hannah declared, turning an approving gaze on Lilly. “And I must say, if I’d chosen her myself, I couldn’t have found a more perfect wife for you. I approve most heartily.”

Lilly was sure her face turned as red as a ripened apple. “Oh, but—”

Galloway chuckled and put a fond arm around the older woman’s shoulders. “I might well agree with you if my acquaintance with this lady was longer than a few minutes,” he said smoothly.

The compliment implied by his words made Lilly even more flustered, so she was relieved when he rolled right into a brief explanation of their meeting and subsequent arrival on Hannah McMillan’s doorstep.

“Dear me!” Hannah murmured when he’d finished. “Please don’t take offense. As fond as I am of this rogue, it was truly meant as a compliment. But from the adventure you’ve had, I’d say the sooner you have a comfy chair and a cup of tea, the better.” She gestured to the filthy boy who stood observing them silently. “Run down to the baker’s, Otis, and see if he has some nice little cakes. Tell him they are for me, then get something for yourself and your mother, too.”

Although he looked anxious to depart on the errand, Otis didn’t manage to get away immediately. Galloway’s hand on the boy’s thin shoulder held him firmly in place. “Before you go, I think you and I have some business to contract, pardner,” he said, idly tossing a coin in the air.

The flash of silver kept Otis’s feet still while his eyes followed the coin’s arch.

Catching the coin while it was still out of the child’s reach, Galloway bent nearer the boy. “Now then…” he murmured.

Lilly heard no more, for her hostess linked arms with her and led her down the narrow corridor away from the man and boy on the landing.

Before guiding Lilly ahead of her into the apartment, Hannah glanced back. “Oh, and Otis?” she called. “Have our cakes wrapped separately, dear.” She turned to Lilly as she softly closed the door. “Otis is the dearest boy, but, as I’m sure you noticed, cleanliness is not one of his virtues.”

At a loss for words, Lilly let her unusual hostess settle her on a deep red upholstered settee.

“Now you just sit still,” Hannah ordered, patting Lilly’s hand in a comforting manner. “Dig will be with us as soon as he’s given Otis money for the cakes. We’ll wait for introductions until he’s here.”

The suggestion suited Lilly fine. She almost believed she was asleep, caught in a dream from which she hadn’t managed to awaken. The soil on the heel of her leather glove and the tingling on her cheek where she had rubbed too roughly with Galloway’s handkerchief argued for reality.

And yet she couldn’t dismiss the dreamlike quality of the afternoon. Not only had help arrived most opportunely, but the man who offered it was disturbingly handsome, as befitted a hero in a flight of fancy. Of course, it was merely her inexperience with men, not the man himself, that made her nearly forget the horror of Belle’s murder. A more worldly woman would be immune to his casual charm and to the seductive aura of being assisted by him in eluding the harsh-faced man.

Of course, there was probably no woman more worldly than Mrs. Hannah McMillan, and that lady had leaped to such a surprising conclusion when she saw them together. The thought of marriage to a man like Mr. Galloway, while deliciously tempting to contemplate, was enough to recolor Lilly’s cheeks in confusion.

To keep her thoughts away from him, and the terrifying memories she would soon have to relate when she visited the police, Lilly shrugged free of her twin satchels, folded her hands in her lap and looked around at her surroundings.

The condition of the building hadn’t prepared her for the oasis Hannah McMillan had created in her crowded apartment. Rather than cracked and broken plaster, the walls were covered in a tasteful wallpaper featuring clinging red roses against a background of soft, sage green. Rose damask drapes were swagged back at the single, tall, narrow window. The sagging floor was covered by an Oriental rug, the yarns used by the weavers in creating a medallion design ranging from a lush green to a warm sand color. There was barely room for Hannah to move without brushing her skirt against a piece of furniture, yet she managed to maneuver through the maze with a grace Lilly knew her sister Vinia would envy.

The pieces Hannah had chosen were quite lovely, the carving on the breakfront and on the topmost dresser drawer depicting bunches of grapes, the vines trailing symmetrically away from the fruit. A small cookstove was situated so that heat from it warmed both the parlor and the bedroom beyond. As in Lilly’s own home, softly draped tea tables vied for space near the settee and before a grouping of two high ladder-back chairs and a comfortably upholstered wing chair.

Light from the window drew Lilly’s gaze to the large portrait of a slimmer, younger Hannah reclining on a chaise, her image resplendent in a low cut gown of gold. Below it, she noted with pleasure, the dressertop was covered with dozens of framed photographs rather than trinkets. Before she could take a closer look, the click of the latch closing behind her drew Lilly’s attention away from her surroundings and back to the enigmatic Mr. Galloway.

She felt unprepared for his entrance, since his approach down the hallway had been curiously silent. Lilly recalled only too well the sighs and creaks the boards had made beneath her own feet. Whatever the secret to his stealthlike passage was, he seemed unaware of having accomplished what to her was a remarkable feat.

“Ma’am,” he said. Briefly, his gaze slid over her.

Lilly felt every inch of the quick appraisal. When his lips curved ever so slightly, she was sure he was amused to find her seated on the edge of the sofa, her back ramrod straight, looking like a cornered calico cat about to take flight.

Galloway set her camera aside carefully on its gangly tripod legs. “If Otis should encounter your curious friend while abroad, he has promised to become addle brained,” he said, his voice, as well as the words, soothing Lilly.

Addle brained. It was certainly how she was feeling at the moment. And not entirely as a result of her unwelcome adventure. “You must tell me how much you paid Otis to forget,” Lilly insisted. “I will reimburse you and—”

He waved the offer aside as he removed his hat, tossing it over the spindle of a ladder-back chair. “A mere pittance. Think nothing of it. It was my pleasure to assist you.”

Knowing she shouldn’t accept, yet couldn’t afford to pay even a pittance, Lilly pondered how best to continue.

Galloway ran a hand through his tawny hair. If he meant to smooth it, the action was a failure. The thick, wavy locks tumbled in tousled elegance over his brow. Galloway seemed unaware of the strikingly romantic figure he cut as he leaned negligently against the door and gazed with pleasure on the cozy, middle-class comfort of the room. “This is nice, Hannah,” he said at length. “I was afraid you might have frittered away at a roulette table the money I sent.”

Already busy at the warmly glowing stove, Hannah barely glanced at him. “Is that how you made it?” she asked, filling a kettle with water and setting it on to boil.

“Does it matter?” he countered.

Hannah bustled about, taking delicate china cups and saucers from the breakfront. “No, of course not,” she said as she arranged things on a tray. “But this poor young lady probably thinks we have no manners, since you haven’t introduced us yet.”

“A shocking lack, what?” he murmured, his voice taking on the stilted tone Lilly had once heard an upper-class English character in a melodrama use. She doubted real Englishmen spoke in such an exaggerated fashion. The fact that Galloway had assumed the mannerism so easily, just as he had that of an Irish immigrant earlier, led her to wonder if he was an actor by trade. He certainly had the face and form to please a female audience.

She herself was certainly mesmerized when he stepped away from the door. “Shall we mend our manners immediately?” he asked, and bowed deeply before her. “My dear wren, as you no doubt have fathomed, the charming lady of this household is not only an angel of mercy to those in need, she is my dearest friend, Mrs. Hannah McMillan.”

Falling in with his theatrical manner, Hannah gestured grandly toward Galloway. “And this gentleman is not only my banker, he is as dear to me as a son,” she said. “May I present Mr. Dig—”

“Deegan Galloway,” Galloway interrupted smoothly.

Lilly thought she saw Hannah glance at him, her eyes widening a bit in surprise. The next minute, she was no longer sure the woman had been disconcerted at all. The warmth of the smile she bestowed on him belied the hesitation. “My dearest friend, Deegan Galloway,” she said, her tone putting a slight emphasis on his name.

“And I am Miss Renfrew. Lillith Renfrew,” Lilly said.

Hannah took a seat next to her on the couch. “Lillith. What a lovely name.”

“Thank you,” Lilly murmured. “I’ve often wished for one less ancient.”

“Nonsense. It suits you,” Hannah insisted. “It’s a name that requires character, and I can see quite clearly that you are such a lady. Perhaps you’ll sit for Deegan now that he’s taken up photography.”

“Ah, but I haven’t,” Galloway said as he took a seat across from them. “The camera belongs to Miss Renfrew.”

“It does?” Hannah grasped Lilly’s hands excitedly. “Then you must be the famous Miss Lilly I’ve heard so much about on the streets.”

Lilly couldn’t stop the pleased flush of color that rushed to her cheeks. “I’d hardly call myself famous,” she demurred. “But, yes, I have been taking photographs of the women and children of the neighborhood for a few weeks now.”

“Absolutely wonderful pictures, you mean,” Hannah corrected. She jumped to her feet and gathered a number of framed photographs from among her collection. “I know they are remarkable because I’ve become the caretaker of quite a few.”

One by one, she passed the mounted photographs to Lilly. Familiar faces trooped by—women like Belle, their beauty faded or destroyed by the ravages of their profession; children like Otis, ill-nourished and wizened beyond their years by conditions in the Coast. Silently, Lilly put names to each face as Hannah related how each of the photographs had come to be in her care.

Lilly ran the pad of her finger around the rough, handmade frame that surrounded one of the likenesses. It showed a woman in profile. They’d taken the shot that way so that her black eye was turned away from the camera. It was more difficult to tell the bruises from the dirt on the pair of little boys with gap-toothed grins, but the story Hannah told was one of true-life melodrama.

“They know I’ll be here when they return,” Hannah said quietly of the people in the photographs, “and that these precious pictures will be cared for while they are gone. Your generosity is wondrous, Miss Renfrew. In many cases, I believe your photographs are appreciated more than the bread and soup the missionaries offer.”

If she hadn’t been covertly watching Deegan Galloway’s face, Lilly was sure she would have missed the slight hardening of his expression at mention of a missionary society. “Please don’t beatify me, Mrs. McMillan,” Lilly requested. “I take pictures for quite a selfish reason. I’m still learning my craft and—”

“Piffle,” Hannah said. “You’re a kind-hearted woman and a credit to your family. Now, while we wait for the pot to boil, why don’t I let you straighten up a bit? There’s a comb, fresh water, a cake of scented soap and a brush for your clothing in the other room.”

Before Lilly could object, she found herself being swept into Hannah’s bedroom and left to repair the ravages her flight and rescue had made on her person.

Hannah closed the door quietly behind herself and folded her hands at her waist. Deegan remembered the stance and wasn’t surprised that her fond smile was temporarily stripped from both her eyes and her lips. “Promise me you’ll return later and tell me all that’s happened to you, Digger,” she said sternly.

“That I will, lass,” he vowed quietly. “I’m sorry I stayed away so long.”

“You should be.” As the kettle began to steam, Hannah picked up a dish towel and lifted it off the stove. “Right now, seeing to Miss Lilly is more important than our catching up. I hate to think what would have happened to her if you hadn’t been at hand.”

“The bastard would have caught her,” Deegan said simply. “Do you think she actually saw this Belle killed?”

Busy pouring hot water into her teapot, Hannah kept her gaze turned away from him. “We’re in the Barbary Coast, Dig,” she answered. “Such things happen here. But, as to whether Miss Lilly witnessed a murder?” Hannah shrugged. “She certainly believes that is what she saw. I’m not as sure you believe it, though.”

Deegan stretched his legs out, digging his hands deep into his trouser pockets. “No,” he admitted, frowning. “I think she saw something atrocious happen to this Belle, but whether it was murder or not, I couldn’t say. Either way, I don’t like the idea of bringing the police in to investigate. You and I both know what they’ll do.”

Hannah nodded and put the now empty kettle aside. “Nothing,” she said, “although I can’t say that I blame them. They’re outsiders in the Coast.” She paused and fidgeted with the lace edge of the cloth covering her tray. “So are you, Digger. You’ve been gone a long time.”

Digger O’Rourke had been gone a good while, Deegan admitted. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t melt back into his old surroundings. Hadn’t he, out of habit, avoided stepping on every weak floorboard in the hall? The years hadn’t dulled his memory of what it was like to be part of the Coast, nor had time weakened the talents he had honed growing up there.

It was impossible to keep his lips from curving in a wicked grin. He hadn’t felt this alive in months. “Know this Belle, do you?” he asked Hannah.

She continued to fuss with the arrangement of things on her tray. “There are lots of women calling themselves Belle in the Coast. But I think I heard one of Karl Severn’s women say she was going to celebrate her birthday. Not many want to after a few years in the profession.”

It wasn’t only the prostitutes who tried to forget the day they’d been born. Once his mother died and he’d gone off with Trusty, Deegan had stopped remembering his own birthday.

“Severn?” he asked. “The name’s not familiar. Who is he?”

“Someone I’ve made it my business to avoid,” Hannah answered. “And so should you.”

“If he’s the same hound that was chasing our little wren, I totally agree with you,” Deegan said, then got to his feet. “Watch over her for a bit, will you, lass? I want to back trail Lilly and see what I can find.”

Hannah knew better than to try to dissuade him. “Be careful. If Miss Lilly did witness a killing, even bribing Otis, as I’m sure you did, will not keep a man like Severn from finding out who she is.”

“Then do me a favor, darlin’, and see if you can’t come up with a simple disguise for her to wear. I’ll get a closed cab and see her directly to her doorstep before I return, but she’ll still have to run the gauntlet from here to its cozy interior,” Deegan said, leaning over to kiss Hannah’s cheek. “I’ll be back before you can miss me.”

“Impossible,” she whispered, cupping his face between her hands. “I miss you already. Watch your back, Digger. I couldn’t bear to lose you twice in one lifetime.”

Hannah was worrying needlessly. If there was one thing Deegan had learned over the years, it was how to sidestep the devil. He had no doubt hell would be his just reward one of these days, but he was just as sure that he would be taking that inevitable trip in the far distant future.

There was a lightness in Deegan’s step as he took the stairs, and the memory of Miss Lillith Renfrew’s lovely eyes in his thoughts. She was an enigma—both an easily embarrassed innocent and a determined woman of spirit. It was amusing that Hannah had mistaken the wren for his wife. Odd that she had approved of Lillith for the role at first glance. As alluring as her eyes were, as stalwart as her spirit seemed to be, Miss Renfrew wasn’t exactly the type of female he fancied as a wife. He’d been pursuing wealth for so long that looking past a woman’s prospects to her virtues had never occurred to him.

Lilly was definitely a damsel worth rescuing simply for the thrill of the adventure, though. He had a suspicion that when she chose to award it, the brilliance of her smile would be a fitting reward for any man. She probably had a staid junior clerk saving his hard-earned coin in anticipation of a wedding day. She was that kind of woman, a proper little homebody.

Or was she?

What kind of woman left the safety of her obviously middle-class environment to tote a heavy, bulky camera and its plates into a neighborhood as notorious as the Barbary Coast?

Perhaps he would never know. He would find the unknown Belle, no doubt badly bruised but alive, and return to Hannah’s with a report on the prostitute’s welfare. After that, the memory of the adventure they had briefly shared would fade within a few days as they went about their daily routine.

He would be left with no reason to see her again.

Deegan wondered why that thought bothered him.

The breeze no longer felt as bracing when he left Hannah’s building and retraced his steps down the alley to the street. He paused a moment, listening for the telltale commotion that always followed the discovery of a body, whether dead or unconscious. He heard only the clip-clop of horses’ hooves in the street, the muted shouts of men in a nearby saloon, the clarion voice of Reverend Oliver Isham on the corner as he extolled the fire and brimstone that awaited unrepentant sinners.

Deegan would give the wren the benefit of the doubt. As Hannah had said, death by unnatural means occurred frequently in this neighborhood. Lilly had certainly been terrified when she’d nearly bowled him over earlier. He doubted she had traveled far in her flight. Chances were a soiled dove like this Belle would have stayed close to her crib rather than meet Lilly in the open. Deegan wished he’d thought to ask Otis if he knew the young prostitute’s direction. No matter how many answered to the name Belle, if the boy was anything like he had been at the same age, Otis not only knew where to find specific doves, he knew which ones catered to men with jaded tastes.

Deegan had almost reached the end of the block when he caught sight of the lanky villain Lilly had branded a killer. Severn, if Hannah had guessed right. The man lounged in the entranceway of the saloon he’d entered earlier. He had a glass of whiskey in his hand, but didn’t appear interested in drinking it. His gaze traveled the length of the street, lingering only a moment longer when he reached the corner where the street preacher harangued a small gathering of disinterested drunks. Deegan was relieved that Severn showed little interest in him.

Rather than move on, Deegan pretended an interest in the reverend’s sermon, all the while watching Severn from the corner of his eye. It was only when the harsh-faced man shrugged away from the bar door and stepped back into the saloon that Deegan continued on his way.

He nearly walked past the next alleyway before recalling it had once been a busy corridor for men in search of crib-heaven. The space between the buildings seemed narrower than it had in his youth, and the condition of the lane was such that Deegan doubted a woman of Lilly’s caliber had the stomach to make it the thirty feet or so to the rear courtyard.

Calling it a courtyard was glorifying what was little more than an air well. Three disreputable buildings backed onto it, but it was the one with the back stoop that he remembered as the entrance used to reach many of the women’s rooms.

Despite the fact that Lilly claimed to have seen a man murder Belle, then set out in pursuit of her, and that the fellow showed no sign of having left the saloon in the short time since Deegan had originally seen him enter it, there should have been a woman’s body lying lifeless and forgotten in the courtyard. There wasn’t one. Therefore, Belle had walked—or crawled—away from the scene.

If indeed this was the scene of the violent act. Deegan had no problem believing the culprit was Severn. The man sounded like the type to regularly beat the various whores in his stable.

“Hi, honey,” a woman called, leaning from an open window two stories up. “You looking for a little lovin’?”

Deegan nudged the brim of his hat, tilting it to the back of his head. “Sure am, sugar,” he shouted, his voice adopting the drawling tones of a Wyoming cowpuncher. “Yer name happen ta be Belle?”

“Is if ya want it ta be,” she answered, proving, at least to his mind, that she wasn’t the woman in question. “That the name of yer girl back home?”

“Nope. Name o’ the lovebird my brother can’t stop talkin’ about since he was in Frisco last,” Deegan said. “He even wrote her a poem. I got it right here ta give ta her.” He fished in his pockets as if looking for a scrap of paper. “Hell, I’ve got it here someplace. He says today is her birthday or something. A pretty girl named Belle. Ain’t a lot, I know, but do ya know a gal that might be her?”

He got his answer when the woman’s smile faded. “Don’t know any dove by that name,” she said flatly, before leaning back in and closing the sash.

This was definitely the right place. What had Lilly said of the alleged murder? Something about seeing Belle holding the cabinet card she’d just been given. Something about dropping it.

There were a number of puddles of standing water—not particularly untainted rainwater, either. If anything had been dropped, it had probably found its way into one of them.

Although he was quite sure Lilly had mistaken the crime, even without a body, he saw no evidence that a woman had been killed there recently, her throat slit. The ground was too muddy to show blatant signs of blood, and Lilly herself had said Belle didn’t fight, an action that would surely have left its imprint in the muck.

Then again, perhaps this wasn’t the site of the violence. Perhaps it hadn’t been fear that had driven the customer-hungry prostitute back into her room at the mention of Belle’s name. The woman could have simply hated Lilly’s Belle—or another woman called Belle—and wanted nothing to do with helping a john find a rival’s crib.

If only he didn’t hear the echo of Lilly’s words in his mind: I brought her a portrait…she dropped it.

He was a fool. Logic told him there was nothing to find, and yet Deegan moved closer to search the stagnate water near the stoop. Refuse, most of it no longer recognizable, nearly filled the puddle. Deegan hunkered down, in no way eager to sort through the soaked mess. Portrait…dropped it.

Portrait…portrait…portrait.

He was about to give up when a damp bit of cardboard caught his eye. From the looks of it, the piece had skimmed over the puddle, nearly missing it before slipping into the shadow of a fallen, broken roofing tile. Carefully, Deegan lifted the cardboard free and turned it over.

The face of a once pretty young woman smiled up at him. There was no doubt in his mind.

He’d found Lilly’s photograph of Belle.