Sweet Fire Page 17

  “You’ll come with me, won’t you, Pei Ling?” Lydia asked, getting up from the table where she’d eaten breakfast. “I don’t want to go to Madame Simone’s alone and Mother has a headache this morning.”

  Pei Ling began clearing away the dishes and handed them to the downstairs maid. “You not go alone,” she said. “Mista Campbell go with you. You forget already you have company wherever you go?”

  She thrust out her lower lip and sighed theatrically. “I wish I could forget. Papa has clearly taken a notion into his head and won’t let it rest. Perhaps if you spoke to him.”

  Stricken, Pei Ling quickly shooed the other maid away. She could not meet Lydia’s eyes.

  Lydia was immediately contrite. They had never spoken of Pei Ling’s relationship with Samuel, each preferring to believe the other did not know the exact nature of the liaison. “Of course you can’t talk to him about it,” Lydia said. “It was stupid of me to ask. I did not mean to presume on our friendship.”

  “I already speak to Samuel,” Pei Ling said softly. She raised her dark, almond-shaped eyes to Lydia. They were old eyes in a young face. “I tell him I think he right. Mista Campbell good idea. You wound pride of men that night. Not so easy for men to forget. I happy Samuel hire man to watch you. I do most anything in world for you, Miss Liddy, but I not do this.”

  “I understand,” Lydia said softly. She touched Pei Ling’s satin sleeve. “Tell me, do you love my father?”

  “Only one person I love more,” she said. “You give me everything, Miss Liddy. My life and my love.”

  Lydia wondered if her father knew the depth of Pei Ling’s feelings, and if he did, did he return them.

  “You need anything else?” Pei Ling asked.

  “What? Oh…no.” She came out of her reverie. “No, there’s nothing else. I suppose I shall go to my last fitting with Mr. Campbell in tow. I wonder if those spindle-legged chairs in Madame Simone’s salon can hold him?”

  George Campbell faced the prospect of going to Madame Simone’s with admirable stoicism. At least that was Lydia’s evaluation of his impassive demeanor. She did not find him particularly expressive in manner or conversation, and the ride to the salon was like every other time she was in his company: silent. She noticed his pale blue eyes darted constantly, taking in everything around him and rarely lighting on her except to assure himself that she was still in his presence and unharmed.

  Once they were at the salon Mr. Campbell stayed in the entrance hall and never gave Lydia the satisfaction of seeing him in one of Madame Simone’s delicate chairs. Instead he leaned his massive shoulder against the doorjamb, occasionally glanced toward the street through the window, and sipped tea from a china cup that all but disappeared in the heart of his large palms.

  Lydia forgot about him as she tried on two gowns for final alterations and leafed through pattern books and examined the latest Paris designs. She chose material for an evening gown, a riding skirt, and several day dresses while Madame Simone hovered near her shoulder, commenting on all of Lydia’s choices. The salon’s three seamstresses worked on the alterations while Lydia waited, and when the gowns were finished they were wrapped and boxed in the backroom, then handed to George Campbell to carry. Lydia enjoyed the sight of her giant protector carrying dress boxes to the carriage. Perhaps, she thought, he’d think twice before following her everywhere. What sort of danger had he thought Madame Simone’s held?

  Once she was home Lydia cut the parcel string and unwrapped her new gowns. Lying between them was a small, flat brown-paper package. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands, wondering if she should open it. It wasn’t hers, of that she was certain. She hadn’t ordered any trimming or fabric for herself. One of the seamstresses had put it with her things by mistake, she decided. She was about to toss it aside when she saw the faint writing in one corner. It was her name and it had been scrawled in pencil with an impatient hand.

  “What’s Madame Simone giving me?” she wondered aloud, sitting down on the edge of her bed. Lydia slid the string off the package and unfolded the paper. Her fingers trembled when she saw the contents. She stared, suddenly grateful for her father’s foresight and George Campbell’s constant presence.

  Lydia lifted the scrap of yellow bloodstained fabric between her fingertips, knowing full well what she held and still not wanting to believe it. Nathan’s attempt at blackmail was obscene and she shook inwardly now, her skin cold and prickly. She had no difficulty recognizing the material for what it was: the bodice ruffle from her yellow ballgown. It was Charlotte’s blood on the gown, but Lydia remembered it had been left in Ginny’s room where she had changed her clothes.

  Nathan had been quick to tell her about returning the borrowed blue gown to Ginny, but he had failed to mention that he was in possession of the hated yellow one. Lydia could think of only one reason for his failure. He had been holding the knowledge in reserve for an occasion such as this, waiting to see if he would need it to bend her to his will.

  “Damn him,” she said softly. “Damn him to hell.” There was a note pinned to the ragged end of the ruffle where it had been torn free of the gown. The note was crisply folded into quarters and Lydia opened it carefully, afraid she might tear the sharp seams. We need to discuss this. Silver Lady. Midnight Thursday.

  Lydia dropped the scrap of fabric back on the brown paper, wrapped it quickly, and stuffed it under her mattress. Today was Monday. She had three days to prepare for her meeting with Nathan, three days to decide how she was going to handle his ugly, underhanded attempt to make her accept his proposal. She walked briskly to the bellpull and rang for Pei Ling.

  “I want you to go to the offices of the Gazette and Herald,” she said without preamble when Pei Ling arrived. “Bring back every issue since the night of my charity ball. Get someone to help you carry them and try not to let Mother or Papa see you bring them into the house.” She thrust a gold piece into Pei Ling’s hands. “I need them quickly, Pei Ling. I need your help and your silence.”

  Pei Ling’s hesitation was so brief as to be nonexistent. She could not fathom why there should be any urgency regarding some old newspapers. It was an odd but harmless request, and Pei Ling never considered revealing it to Samuel or Mr. Campbell. She took one of the kitchen helpers with her and gave him change from Lydia’s gold piece to buy his silence.

  Lydia excused herself from the dinner table that evening after making a halfhearted attempt at eating. She pretended not to see the worried, puzzled glances that her mother and father exchanged. There was nothing she could share with them. They would be far more concerned if they knew why she was so anxious to return to her room.

  Scissors in hand, Lydia cut out every article she found about Ginny Flynt’s death, scouring the papers to make certain she missed nothing. There were only six of them. The longest, most detailed accounts were those in the Gazette, written a day and two days after Ginny’s death. The Herald’s articles did not contain graphic descriptions. Each paper gave a separate notice in the obituaries. They all had one thing in common, however, and it was a surprise.

  Ginny Flynt was not murdered, as Nathan had said. According to the newspapers, she had committed suicide.

  Lydia leaned back against her intricately carved walnut headboard and closed her eyes. The clippings lay on her right, the newspapers were scattered all over the quilted bedspread. She held the sharp end of the scissors in her hand and tapped the other end against her knees as she tried to think, tried to make sense of what she had read.

  It wasn’t true, of course. Ginny had not committed suicide. Lydia refused to believe it. Certainly the death of Charlotte and the baby had been a hard blow, but Ginny had given no sign that she was hurting to the point of complete hopelessness. Ginny was not despondent.

  How would she know? Lydia asked herself, recalling that she had hardly been in a state that night to be aware of another’s feelings. But suicide? Ginny? No, it couldn’t be true. Yet the papers were reporting it as a suicide. S
he had slashed her wrists, cutting them with a razor blade the police found lying on the floor by her bed. The Gazette reporter described the scene with adjectives like blood-soaked, ghastly, and crimson when referring to the bedsheets, and fair-haired, voluptuous, and naked when referring to Ginny. He recreated the grim events of that evening for the reader, using the facts as he interpreted them, making no apology when his imagination filled in the gaps of real knowledge. He related the deaths in the brothel earlier that evening and drew the conclusion that Ginny was grieving for her friend, for the baby, for herself, and suicide presented itself as a natural, even logical escape from the misery of her existence. He described how Ginny must have taken off the blue gown she was wearing so it would not be spattered with her own blood, how she wielded the razor with deliberate strokes, and how she must have lay there, fearful, curious, and somehow satisfied that life itself was leaving her body.

  Lydia dropped the scissors and held her fingers to her temples, willing herself not to be sick. It didn’t matter what the papers reported. Ginny hadn’t killed herself; she would never believe it was true. Nathan hadn’t believed it either. He had never even hinted that the accounts called it anything but murder, and Lydia wondered about that now. Had he based his knowledge on his brief acquaintance with Ginny Flynt and his assessment of her character, or had he another reason for naming her death a murder? In spite of his words to the contrary, was he the murderer?

  There was no mention in any account of a certain yellow ballgown, bloodied and crumpled, lying in one corner of Ginny’s bedroom. There was only one reason the Gazette reporter had failed to make something of it and that was because it hadn’t been there when he was. Nathan had dropped the blue gown when he left, but he had obviously seen the yellow one and taken it. Instead of destroying it, he’d kept it. Perhaps he had never really considered how it might be of use to him. Indeed, if Lydia had agreed to his marriage offer, she might never have known he had it. But she had humiliated him, made an enemy, and he was showing her now what that meant.

  Dazed by her discovery, Lydia slid off the bed and built a fire in her fireplace. She put the clippings in the drawer of her nightstand, but she burned the newspapers and eventually the package Nathan had sent her. The damning reminder that she had also been in Ginny’s room the evening of her death disappeared in light and heat and a curl of smoke. She went to bed then, wondering if she should meet Nathan, wondering if she dared.

  In the end, she felt as if she had no choice. She bought a gun. George Campbell helped her choose one, a nickel-plated derringer that she could hold easily in the palm of her hand and keep concealed in her reticule. Lydia couldn’t tell if he was secretly amused by her purchase or a little bit hurt that she thought he couldn’t protect her. Lydia decided it was best she didn’t know. She had no intention of telling him that she was plotting her escape from Nob Hill.

  “Where to now, Miss Chadwick?” he asked as they walked out of the gunsmith’s. He opened the door to the carriage and helped her inside.

  “The cemetery on Russian Hill,” she said.

  Campbell’s craggy features were perfectly still. He gave the driver directions and followed Lydia inside the cab. “The cemetery?” he asked when they were beyond the driver’s hearing. He glanced at the roses on the seat beside her. “That’s why you took those from the garden?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking…the gun, the flowers, the cemetery…it’s not my funeral you’re planning, is it?”

  Lydia was so startled by his unexpected conclusion that she burst out laughing.

  George Campbell was not particularly comforted that she didn’t answer his question. He received his answer at the cemetery itself. Lydia walked up and down the rows of headstones until she came across the ones she was looking for. They were side by side, just beyond the umbrella shade of a weeping willow. The ground on top of the graves hadn’t settled yet and the tufts of grass were uneven in their sprouting. George looked at the headstones as Lydia bent to arrange the flowers at the base of the first. Charlotte Adams and Child. At Peace. And the second: Virginia Flynt. She Touches Heaven’s Gate. The stones were newer than even the graves, unmarked by last night’s rain. He wondered about the women she was mourning, and why, if they were close friends or relatives, she wasn’t wearing black and why she had difficulty finding the graves. He wondered why there were no dates on the stones.

  Lydia straightened and stepped back from the graves. “We can go now, Mr. Campbell. I’ve made my peace.” The stones were exactly as she had requested and she silently thanked Pei Ling for taking care of the things she could not. She felt George Campbell move closer to her back as another carriage wound its way up the hill and a man on horseback appeared above them at the crest. Lydia found his precaution disconcerting when there was nothing remotely sinister about the presence of other mourners in a cemetery. The horse and rider disappeared and the carriage stopped long before it reached them. Lydia wanted to chide her bearish protector but didn’t. She remembered how simple Nathan had found it to reach out to her through Madame Simone. This very night she would be on her own and perhaps she would have reason to regret incautious words.

  Leaving the house was not terribly difficult. Mr. Campbell had gone to his own home hours earlier once Lydia assured him she was not going out for the rest of the evening. It was not strictly a lie, she told herself, since it was now Thursday morning, or at least it was after midnight. Nathan had chosen a poor time to request the meeting since Lydia’s father was only just retiring at that hour. She would be late for her appointment at the Silver Lady, but she would be there.

  She had no choice but to walk, but she did have the foresight to wear clothes she lifted from her father’s wardrobe. A pair of his mining dungarees that should have been given to the rag picker long ago were belted around her waist with a cord from her drapes. She wore a baggy flannel shirt, three pairs of woolen socks to fill out the shoes that were already stuffed with paper, and a slouch hat low over her forehead. Her hair had been pulled into a tight knot on the crown of her head and stuffed under the hat. She also wore a navy blue woolen jacket with large pockets to hide her hands, the derringer, and the check she had drafted from her own account at the Bank of America.

  Keeping her head low, she walked through Chinatown and Portsmouth Square unmolested and sauntered through the lobby of the Silver Lady as if she had every right to be there. She knocked briskly on the door of Nathan’s suite and barely heard the sound above her heart knocking against her ribs.

  The door opened quickly, without warning that anyone was approaching it, and Lydia was unceremoniously hauled inside. She found little comfort in the knowledge that Brigham was as stunned by her appearance as she was by his.

  “You!” she said, yanking her wrist free of his grasp.

  “What are you doing here?” He was wearing evening clothes, a black-tailed coat, white satin vest and shirt, and black trousers. His sandy hair was touseled and his face a bit flushed as if he had been exerting himself moments earlier.

  Brigham made no attempt to retake her arm. His green eyes darted over her, taking in her odd attire. Her shapeless form didn’t fool him now. He had touched her breasts, had felt their fullness. He knew the smallness of her waist and the silky thickness of her sable hair. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking her plain, as he had once upon a time, but he knew better. Her grave cobalt blue eyes drew his attention. He smiled. “My, you are resourceful, aren’t you? There are unexpected depths to you, I’m thinking. May I have your hat? Take your coat?”

  Lydia shook her head. “Is it both of you then? Is that why you’re here?”

  “Both of us?” Brig reached behind Lydia, turned the key in the lock and pocketed it.

  She tried not show the confusion his action caused her. “Both of you,” she repeated, looking around the suite for Nathan. “The note…the gown…never mind.” Had she said too much? Brigham was studying her with a cool, remote glance, his tawny e
yebrows slightly raised. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here to see Nathan. Where is he?”

  Brigham pointed to the bedroom. “Nath won’t be much company,” he said. “He’s passed out, I’m afraid. Almost drowned in his bath water. I only just put him to bed. We’ve been out this evening, drinking since after dinner, but I stopped a half dozen shy of Nath.”

  Lydia frowned. Brig didn’t smell as if he’d been drinking and she was standing close enough that she should have been able to tell. She glanced uncertainly in the direction of the bedroom.

  “Go on,” Brig said. He laughed shortly. “You can stop looking at me as if you expect to get tossed on your head—out the window.” He followed her in. A lamp was burning on the bedside table. “If I’m going to toss you at all, it’ll be on that bed.”

  Her head snapped up. Brig’s tone held not a whit of humor. His voice was low, resonant with suppressed anger and echoing danger. She tried to duck under his arm and go back to the sitting room, but he blocked her path easily.

  “I think you said you wanted to see Nathan,” he said. This time his smile did not reach his eyes. He caught her shoulders, spun her around, and pushed her further into the room.

  Nathan was there. He was lying on his side in the bed and deeply asleep. A sheet was tangled around the length of his bare legs. It covered his buttocks and the lower half of his chest, preserving modesty but leaving no doubt that he was naked beneath it. He didn’t stir as Brig prodded Lydia forward by placing a hand at the small of her back.

  “I’ve seen enough,” said Lydia. “There’s no reason for me to stay. I must have been mistaken about tonight.”

  “No mistake,” Brig said, blocking her way again. “Why don’t you sit there…on the corner of the bed?”