Sweet Fire Page 2

  Nathan thought about that. He wondered if Miss Ondine had been surprised while she was sitting at her desk, answering an invitation or writing a letter to her lover. He wondered if she had tried to fend off her attacker with the opener and found it turned against her. He banished the thoughts with difficulty. “Let’s go,” he urged again.

  “All right.” Brigham’s arm dropped away from Nathan and he started for the window. “Blow out the candles. Darkness will help cover us. I’ll go first.” Brigham raised the window and put one leg over the sill. He turned to see what was holding up Nathan and caught the sheen of tears in the boy’s clear gray eyes. “Ye wanted to go,” he said harshly. “Let’s go. Don’t turn soft-hearted and cotton-headed on me now.”

  “She could ’ave been me mum,” Nathan said softly, rooted to the spot.

  “Or mine. She was a whore after all.”

  Nathan was moved by Brigham’s bitterly cold tones. Sucking in his lower lip and bracing his shoulders, he stayed by the bed long enough to cover Beth Ann’s lifeless body with a sheet, then he followed Brigham out of the room. At street level the boys disappeared into the shadowed, dangerous alleys that were their home.

  Twenty-three days later the peelers nabbed Nathan while he was working the crowd at Vauxhall Gardens. It would have ended with a light jail sentence if it hadn’t been for the cameo brooch they found concealed in the heel of his shoe. They recognized the quality of the ivory cutting, the fineness of the gold filigree, and knew it fit the description of a particular piece of jewelry missing from the home of Miss Beth Ann Ondine.

  He was tried at an assize in London for the murder of Miss Ondine. Some days he saw Lord Cheyne sitting at the back of the crowded courtroom, trying to express disinterest in the case when it was obvious, at least to Nathan, that his lordship was a broken man. Beth Ann was loved, he thought, and he wanted to scream from the stand that he hadn’t killed her, that he was wrongly accused. Yet he said nothing of his innocence, protesting it not to his solicitor or to the jury. There was no question of ever raising Brigham’s name as his accomplice and Nathan did not expect Brigham to step forward and clear him.

  Yet that was precisely what Brigham attempted to do and for his pains was clapped in irons and tried for his part in the robbery. His sentence was four years. Nathan got twenty. They were both sentenced to hard labor in Australia and thus exiled from England forever.

  “Looks like we napped a winder this time,” Brigham said, using the slang expression for transportation. He raised himself to the iron bar window of the cell he shared with Nathan and looked at the scaffolding in the courtyard. “Goin’ across the world, we are. Under it, too. Van Dieman’s land I ’ear it called.”

  Nathan knew what his friend was seeing beyond the confines of their cell. He had watched men work on the gallows while he was waiting for his trial. Without Brigham’s help he might have been taking the walk to the noose himself. Transportation was not as popular as it once was and the crime of which he was accused was particularly heinous. The jury had had no doubt he was guilty, but perhaps the judge had. All things considered, the sentence was a reprieve of sorts.

  “Why did ye do it?” he asked, moving out of the shadow Brigham cast across the damp stone floor.

  “Ye’re me friend, ain’t ye?” Brigham answered simply. “Couldn’t let ye go to the bay alone, could I? Who’d look after ye if I wasn’t around?” He lowered himself to the floor again. A smile touched his mouth as he tilted his head at a rakish, cocky angle. “Besides, there’s gold ta be ’ad in Botany Bay, or ain’t ye ’eard?”

  “I ’adn’t ’eard.”

  “Well, I ’ad. Jimmy Faughnan got ’imself sent off as soon as the news came in. No shame in that. He’ll do his time then ’ave the last laugh when he strikes it rich. Just the way we will.”

  Nathan said nothing. He had wondered how the cameo found its way to his shoe and why the peelers singled him out at Vauxhall Gardens. Now he knew.

  Part I

  San Fancisco

  Chapter 1

  April 1869

  She was dead tired. There was no question about that. It showed in her bowed head and in the intermittent slowing of her steps. Puddle water splashed the hem of Lydia’s gown and soaked her right shoe. She sighed wearily and took the time to skirt the next shallow pool of water. Lamplight from the dance halls and gambling palaces was reflected on the rain-glazed street. It shimmered and flickered beneath Lydia’s feet, an effect that went unappreciated until she turned into the alley behind the Silver Lady.

  Lydia hesitated, standing at the edge of the dark alley, wondering if she dared take it. Common sense dictated no. Anything, anyone, could be in the black shadows and recesses behind the gambling hall and hotel. On the other hand, she thought, she was going to be late for her own party. She hadn’t taken a carriage because she hadn’t expected to be gone more than a couple of hours, and by leaving home on foot she had been able to avoid the inevitable questions. She didn’t have fare for a cab, and though her parents would have paid for it, again, there would have been questions.

  Those questions were the reason Lydia Chadwick took the alley. A few short cuts, shaving minutes here and there, could get her home before she was missed by anyone but her maid. Pei Ling wouldn’t raise the alarm unless it appeared that Lydia was going to miss her first guests, and Lydia wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Darkness and Lydia’s active imagination played an equal role in prompting her to hurry. She kept to the center of the alley, prepared to dart for safety in any direction. She knew her senses were heightened by her circumstances. It was as if she could hear each individual raindrop as it splattered on the cobblestone, or see shadows separate from the vacant doorways. Her breathing roared in her ears and fear was a dryness in her throat.

  Yet when she first heard the footsteps behind her, she denied they existed. An echo, she thought, an echo of her own steps. But when she stopped, the sounds went on a beat too long. Worse, there was more than one pair of feet. Anyone had the right to come this way, she reasoned. Anyone. She told herself she was being unnecessarily cautious to suppose she was being followed.

  No one behind her could know she was Lydia Chadwick. No one could suspect by her dress or her manner, by the fact that she was on foot, that her parents were Madeline and Samuel Chadwick, that her home was a granite-and-glass mansion on Nob Hill, and that someday she would inherit one of the greatest fortunes in San Francisco. Her presence behind the Silver Lady, a location she would have avoided in daylight without an escort, encouraged Lydia to believe that whoever was behind her now wasn’t there because of who she was. There was a modicum of comfort in that.

  Raising the hem of her gown a few inches in one hand and securing her shawl in the other, Lydia picked up the pace again, daring to glance behind her one time. She saw two dark figures, large enough that they could only be men. They were walking closely together and they didn’t pause when she turned her head to see them. She felt them match her steps, then, when she faced forward again, she heard them break rhythm, lengthening their stride and closing the distance between them quickly.

  Lydia started to run. Her shoes were heavy with water and the wet cobblestones made the going slippery. The restrained coil of her sable hair loosened from its anchoring pins and fell down her back. Rain-slick strands were matted to the crown of her head and dark tendrils fell across her eyes, blinding her momentarily. When she reached to brush them away she lost her grip on her shawl. The fringe caught on the brooch she wore at her throat while the rest of the plaid garment fluttered behind her. She tried to recover it, but the hands that finally gripped it were not her own.

  Lydia screamed. The large hand clamped over her mouth smothered the sound and her breath. Lightheaded, she struck out at her assailants with her feet and managed to catch one of them on the shin. She heard a grunt, but it was small satisfaction as pain shot from her toes to her leg. Lydia clawed at the hand covering her mouth as she was backed into a doorw
ay. It was only after she was cornered, blocked by the door behind her and by the pair of men in front of her, that she felt the pressure on her mouth ease.

  Sucking in air, tasting blood on her inner lip, Lydia leaned weakly against the door and stared widely at her tormentors, trying to make out their features in the darkness. She smelled spirits on their breath and sensed a certain wildness in their eyes as they unashamedly returned her scrutiny. She reached blindly behind her for a doorknob and was immediately pushed to the other side of the door.

  “None of that, missy,” one of the men said in a low tone. “We only want a look at your wares.”

  Wares? “I’m not selling anything,” said Lydia. The men exchanged glances and burst out laughing. Lydia recoiled from the raucous noise and the nauseating odors.

  The man sporting a mustache, the one who had held his hand over her mouth, stopped laughing first. He placed a hand on the curve of her neck and shoulder and forced her chin up with his thumb. “Give me a light here,” he said. In short order a match was struck and the meager light was thrust in Lydia’s face. Her features were illuminated, revealing a heart-shaped face, grave, rebellious eyes, the sulky lower lip of her widely cut mouth, and a glowing rain-washed complexion.

  Lydia blew out the match. After a stunned silence, both men laughed again. “She’s not so bad as I first thought,” the mustached man said to his friend. “A little plain, perhaps, but in the dark one cat’s not so different from another.” He leaned closer to Lydia. “I’d say by the way you pucker those lips, you have something worth selling.”

  She blanched, realizing now what they had meant by her wares. “You’re mistaken,” she said quietly, forcing a calm she didn’t feel. “I’m not what you think.”

  The clean-shaven man, the brawnier of the two, chuckled deeply and managed a touch of sarcasm as he spoke. “And I suppose we just didn’t follow you out of Miss Bailey’s?”

  “Well, yes, perhaps you did, but I—”

  “But you don’t know what Miss Bailey’s place is,” he suggested, patently skeptical. “Is that it?”

  “No...of course I know, but you don’t—”

  “Enough chatter,” Mustache interrupted. “I still want a taste of those lips.”

  Lydia ducked, averting her face, and pushed out between the men at the level of their waists. Surprise was on her side, for neither of the men anticipated her escape. Sprinting toward the lights from the cross street that intersected the alley, Lydia yanked up her skirt and petticoats and ran with her head bowed against the wind…and came to a breathless halt when she ran full tilt into a wall.

  At least she thought it was a wall until it reached out to steady her. She struggled against the arms that held her upright, supporting and imprisoning her in the same embrace, but they were like ribbons of steel across the small of her back. Lydia twisted, butting the hard chest with her head. She heard a soft groan as her captor rocked on his feet and was forced to take a few stumbling steps backward to regain his balance. Just at the moment she thought she was free, Lydia felt herself spun around, her arms crossed in front of her and held in a basket carry that locked her elbows and secured her wrists in a viselike grip.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” The grating whisper just behind her left ear was punctuated by a rough little shake that demanded her full attention. The voice raised itself a notch and addressed the other men in the alley in clear, even tones. “You’re not going to hurt her either, are you, gentlemen?”

  Lydia looked up and faced the men who had cornered her moments earlier. They were slowly backing away. Good, she thought, they’re afraid of this stranger. Then she wondered if she had more to fear from him as well.

  “Never were going to hurt her,” the broad-shouldered one said. “Just having a little fun. No harm in taking a kiss.”

  “There is when it’s not given freely,” the stranger replied. “Now get out of here before I decide to let her go and settle the score with the two of you.”

  The pair seemed to measure the threat and decide it was a real one. They turned quickly and ran back the way they’d come, kicking up raindrops in their wake.

  The hold on Lydia didn’t loosen right away. Panic welled inside her and took the form of a hard knot in her throat. She made a tentative move against the hands that held her wrists.

  “Easy now.” The words were said softly and meant to gentle. The grip was eased. “Are you all right?”

  Lydia freed herself completely and stepped away, rubbing her wrists. She didn’t bother answering the question. The man was distracted, looking past her and into the depths of the dark alley. For a moment Lydia thought the others had returned. She moved closer to the stranger for safety.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “But you thought you saw something.”

  He didn’t deny it. He’d seen something, and he hadn’t lied. It was nothing. A soft hiccup drew his attention. “You’re soaked through,” he said. Thanks to holding her against him, so was he. “Let’s get out of this rain.”

  The suggestion startled Lydia. “Oh, no. I couldn’t go anywhere with you.” She bit her lip, belatedly realizing how ungrateful she sounded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…I’m in a hurry, you see. I have to get home. My parents will be worried.”

  “They’ll be more worried when they see you like this. Your dress is ripped.” He lifted his hand and pointed to the base of her throat.

  Lydia’s fingers flew to her collar. Her brooch had been torn away and the lace trimming along the high, modest neckline was hanging raggedly. “My shawl,” she said, looking around for some sign of it. “It caught on my brooch and—”

  “I think I see it over there.” He took her hand and pulled her back into the pitch-black center of the alley.

  He must have eyes like a hawk, she thought as he scooped up the shawl. She was certain she couldn’t have found it. Lydia waited for it to be thrust into her hands.

  “It’s filthy,” he said.

  The trace of disgust in his tone, as if he didn’t like having his hands soiled, brought a smirk to Lydia’s lips. “I’ll take it,” she said. “I don’t mind a little dirt.”

  The stranger’s grunt was noncommittal, leaving Lydia to wonder if she had correctly divined his thoughts. “You can’t wear this home,” he said. “Come with me and I’ll wash it out for you. I have a room above the Silver Lady. We can be there in a few minutes.”

  Lydia held back, digging in her heels when the stranger made to pull her along. She shook her head vigorously, appalled by his suggestion. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said firmly. “I don’t even know your name.”

  His rare, beautiful smile was wasted in the darkness. Amusement, however, was rife in his tone. “Circumstances have rather played hell with propriety, haven’t they?”

  She was silent, unable to find the situation as funny as he obviously did.

  “Nathan Hunter.” He dropped her hand and made a small bow. “Now may we get out of the rain?”

  “Mr. Hunter…I really don’t think—”

  “You’re not the only one with somewhere to go this evening,” he said. “I myself was on my way to an engagement when I came across you and those two thugs. Now, I could have gone on and left you to fend for yourself, but I didn’t. I’m going back to my room, change my evening clothes, and attempt to start this night over. You can come or go as you wish, but if you have a care for your health or what you’re going to tell your parents, you’ll come.”

  He turned to go, seemingly uncaring of her decision. That decided Lydia. She followed.

  In the lobby of the hotel and gambling hall, Nathan slipped out of his evening jacket and put it across Lydia’s shoulders when she sneezed. It was damp but warmer than nothing. “This way,” he said, pointing to the wide center staircase. “I’m on the third floor.”

  Lydia kept her head lowered, hoping no one coming or going from the gambling hall would see her. She’d never been inside the Silver Lady before
, but she could think of at least a dozen men of her acquaintance who frequented the place.

  They mounted the carpeted stairs quickly, their tread soft. Water squished between Lydia’s toes and through the leather seams of her ankle boots, leaving a trail of wet footprints. Nathan extracted a key from his vest pocket and unlocked the door to his suite, pushing it open and ushering Lydia inside.

  Lydia was having third and fourth thoughts as she entered. She immediately put what she hoped was a safe distance between herself and Nathan. Crossing her arms in front of her, warming her hands close to her body, she nervously studied the man who had helped her.

  She measured most men against the man who raised her, who called himself her father even though he had no claim to her blood. He was the man she loved best in all the world, the man she knew better than all others, and the only man she knew who didn’t care anything about her money, since it was his in the first place.

  There was nothing about Nathan Hunter that brought her father to mind. He was taller, leaner, darker, and harder. Lydia’s sweeping assessment gave her pause. She wouldn’t have come with him if she could have seen him clearly in the alley. She would have turned away in the lobby if she hadn’t been so concerned with hiding her face and avoiding his scrutiny. Now it was too late.

  One corner of Nathan’s mouth turned up in a sardonic smile. “I’m not a white slaver, you know.”

  It wasn’t very comforting that her thoughts were so transparent. He looked, if not like a white slaver precisely, then a pirate at the very least, or the way she imagined a pirate might look. He had the eyes of a predator, wolf’s eyes, icy gray edged by a ring of dark blue.