Ladies of Intrigue

by Michelle Griep

  The wind shifted. Rain needled her cheek from the open side of the carriage, as stinging as her misguided pride. The closer they drew to the hospital, the more carriages and pandemonium crowded the streets, despite the late hour. Henry wove through undaunted, shouting bold threats to clear the way.

  She hated to distract him, but the need to know flew past her lips. “Why did Joseph want to help the brothel girls in the first place?”

  He slowed the horse to a halt and tied off the reins. “The rest is for Joseph to say.” He hopped from the carriage and rounded the back of it to her side, reaching to help her down.

  She grasped his big hand—and didn’t let go even when her feet hit the ground. Gas lamps burned on each side of the hospital entrance. A man, leaning heavily on another, staggered out the front door, sorrow etching his face. But at least he was walking. Unlike Joseph. What would she find when she went through those doors?

  “I’m afraid, Mr. Wainwright.” Her voice shook. So did her legs.

  He squeezed her hand. “So am I.”

  Chapter Ten

  Amanda paused in the doorway leading to Joseph’s ward, trying hard not to breathe too deeply of disease and despair, a trick she’d learned to master over the past couple of days. Mortality lived here as insidious as the stains on the white walls. Though scrubbed clean, years of blood and toil marred the plaster with a sickly grey.

  Dr. Beemish, frocked in a knee-length lab coat, strode down the center aisle toward her. “Good day, Miss Carston. I hope you know what a welcome sight you are. Your care for Mr. Blake and the others is commendable.”

  “All I have to offer is a listening ear or a hand to hold. Not much for those who were so horribly injured.” She shuddered thinking of the disfigured gentlemen she’d comforted, then searched the doctor’s face, pleading for a morsel of good news. “How is he?”

  The doctor clasped his hands behind his back. “I shall be frank with you, my dear. If Mr. Blake doesn’t wake soon, I fear he might not at all.”

  She stared at him, dry-eyed. She’d cry if she had any tears left. But nothing remained. She was a shell, a husk. Held together by skin alone, for her emotions had checked out that first night she’d seen Joseph lying on white sheets, bloodied bandages swaddled around his skull. Deathly still.

  “But take heart in this.” Dr. Beemish reached out and gripped her arm, imparting strength. Or maybe courage. Hard to tell, for despite his action, she felt none.

  “The rest of Mr. Blake is sound and whole. Body functions are normal. Reflexes without flaw. Should he regain consciousness, recovery will be swift.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” She used her confident voice, but it was fake. Everything about the last forty-eight hours had been a ruse of backbone and pluck on her part. Lies, all. Though she’d labeled Joseph as such, she was the liar.

  Once Dr. Beemish swept past her, she let her shoulders sag. Walking the aisle to Joseph’s bed, she trembled from the coldness inside her soul—then froze, jaw dropping.

  Two beds over, dark brown eyes stared into hers.

  “Joseph!” She darted ahead and sank to his side, afraid to hope. What if this wasn’t real? “You’re awake?”

  “Apparently.” Voice raspy, he cleared his throat. “Water?”

  She grabbed a pitcher from the bed stand and poured a glass, hands shaking. Oh God. Oh please. Oh, thank You! Cradling Joseph’s bandaged head, she lifted the water to his mouth. Most dribbled down his chin, darkened by two days’ worth of stubble, but even so he offered a weak smile when he finished. “So good.”

  Replacing the glass, she leaned closer to study him. Purple bruised the skin near one temple. A cut on his chin scabbed over in a jagged line. But he was alert. Aware. And all the more handsome because of it.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Been better.” He reached to finger his bandages, and did such a poor job of concealing a wince, she couldn’t help but smile.

  He reached for her. “You’re here.”

  “I am. I—” Her voice cracked, and the dam broke. Elation, gratitude, sorrow, grief—too many emotions bubbled up and flooded her eyes, running down her cheeks and over his fingers.

  “I was so afraid!” she cried.

  “Shh.” He fumbled his thumb across her cheek, wiping away tears. “Help me sit.”

  She sucked in a shaky breath. For his sake, she had to pull herself together. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she took his hand in both of hers, lowering it to his side. “You’ve only just awakened. Do you think it wise?”

  “Wise or not”—he grunted as he tried to push up on his elbows—“I must.”

  Stubborn man. Beautiful, stubborn man whom she could not live without. Fighting a fresh round of tears, she tugged up the pillow behind him and helped him settle upright. Seeing his gaze, soaking in all the love she read in those brown depths, she blurted out everything that’d been bottled up inside.

  “Oh Joseph, I’m so sorry I jumped to conclusions. I didn’t expect the best out of you, but instead ascribed the worst.” She pressed her knuckles against her mouth, stopping a cry.

  “All’s forgiven, love.” Battered and beaten, likely in pain, he used such tenderness that it hurt deep inside her. “You didn’t know.”

  “But neither did I trust! I let self-pity blind me. I couldn’t see that you weren’t trying to thwart me. You were merely working on a more urgent plan than mine. I treated you abominably, without waiting like you asked—” She froze as a stunning realization hit her. Hard. Her mouth twisted into a rueful pinch. “Just like I do to God.”

  “God knows I’ve done the same, yet He’s always there to pick up the pieces.”

  She shook her head. How could such goodness, such kindness be understood? “I don’t deserve it. Nor do you deserve how I treated you.”

  “You may not think so when I tell you everything.” He reached for her hand again. “I have much to say.”

  His face paled.

  Was this too much, too soon? “Joseph, please rest. It can wait.”

  “No, I’ve waited long enough.” He entwined his fingers with hers. “Too long.”

  The warmth, the intimacy of Amanda’s palm pressed against his was as right as finally telling her the full truth—more right than the agreement he’d made with his aunt.

  “As you know, I own the Grigg house,” he began. “Or did, until the day you discovered the deed.”

  “You … you don’t own it anymore?”

  He shook his head. Bad idea. The dull throb beat harder, pounding against the inside of his skull. Shifting on the pillow, he pushed up a bit more, easing the ache and allowing him to continue. “I transferred the title to my colleague, Reverend Bond, in Chicago. When you first came to me about the Grigg estate, I knew you’d be successful at sleuthing out who it belonged to, for such are your keen abilities.”

  A pretty red flushed her cheeks, deep enough to shame a spring rose.

  “So I unloaded the deed.” Two beds over, a fellow patient moaned—and the sound resonated deep in his gut. How to explain this? “It’s all so complicated. I hardly know where to begin.”

  Amanda patted his hand. “Let me help. Your friend Henry filled me in on most everything, but not all. He told me about your plan to provide a way for women to escape from Hannah Crow’s—which, I might add, is quite a reckless and noble thing for a city attorney to do.” Sunlight slanted in through the window above his bed, creating a golden halo around her head. Her smile shined even brighter. “But the thing I don’t know is why? Why take on such an endeavor in the first place?”

  “Elizabeth,” he breathed out, then clamped his jaw. Could he do this? Of course he should, despite his aunt. But how to say the words that would blight his sister’s memory in the eyes of the woman he loved and tarnish his family’s reputation?

  Amanda’s brow puckered. “Your sister? What has she to do with this?”

  He stood on the edge of a riverbank—the wild, raging river of the past
. It was either step back now or jump in whole and possibly drown from the truth.

  He jumped. “While it’s true that Elizabeth died in California, the circumstances are not what my aunt allows everyone to believe. My sister didn’t die in childbirth. She died in a brothel. Elizabeth was a woman of ill repute.”

  He expected the gasp. The look of horror. But when Amanda’s face softened and she rested her palm against his cheek, he never predicted such tenderness in her gaze.

  “I am so sorry. For you. For her. She must have been desperate, indeed.”

  “Desperate?” He grimaced, then winced from the pull of scalp against bandage. “That and more.”

  “What happened?”

  “There was a man—Peter Gilford. Elizabeth loved him, yet Father would not grant his blessing. He went so far as to forbid her to ever see the man again. It was an ugly affair. Peter ran off to California. Elizabeth followed, headstrong to a fault.” He deflated against the pillow, awful memories weighing heavy, wearing his spirit to the bone. “Father was right about Peter. He was a shiftless fellow, leaving my sister penniless on the streets of San Francisco.”

  “How awful!”

  The clack of heels on tile entered the far end of the ward. Amanda glanced up at an attendant who rolled in a cart on wheels. The smell of some kind of stew spread throughout the room. “Looks like lunch. You must be famished. Finish your story later. I promise I will not leave your side.”

  Ahh, but that was good to hear. Aunt had said no respectable woman would have him if the truth of their family was known. For the first time ever, he wondered what other false views Aunt had convinced him to adopt, but with the attendant approaching nearer, he’d have to save that line of thought for another time.

  “I am nearly finished. Elizabeth wrote, asking for money. Father refused, telling her to find her own way home. She did the only thing she could to earn her fare—and it was the death of her. She was trying to get back here, that’s all. She just wanted to come home.” Grief and guilt burned his throat, leaving a nasty taste at the back of his mouth. The smell of the stew turned his stomach. “If only I’d known at the time, but I was off at school. I failed her, Amanda. I failed my sister.”

  “Ahh, love, in your own words, you didn’t know.” She squeezed his fingers. “And you came up with a way to save others like her. She wouldn’t think you a failure. She’d be proud of you, as am I.”

  The admiration heating her gaze burned straight to his heart, and he squeezed her hand right back. “You were wrong, you know.”

  Her nose scrunched up. “How’s that?”

  He lifted her knuckles to his lips. “I am the one who does not deserve you.”

  Epilogue

  Two weeks later

  A few stubborn oak leaves let loose and skittered to the road in front of the carriage. Amanda admired the way the horse high-stepped along the cobbles, then turned her face and admired the driver even more. The bruises had faded to a faint shade of yellow around Joseph’s eye, hardly distinguishable now, especially in the twilight. The cut on his chin still stood out, though, and would leave a scar, but the mark would ever remind her of how close she’d come to losing him.

  “You study me as if I might vanish.” Pulling his gaze from the road, he grinned down at her. “Go on. Ask me again. You know you want to.”

  She flattened her lips. Ought she be annoyed or thrilled that he knew her so well? She peered closer, and concern won out. “Are you certain you’re up to this? Maggie will understand if we don’t make her house party.”

  “I’m far better than Tam Nadder. That poor fellow has a long haul of it, learning to walk with crutches for the rest of his life. I’ve got a banger of a headache still, but that’s all.” Reaching his arm along the back of the cushion, he tucked her closer to his side. “And besides, we won’t stay long. I don’t want you turning into a pumpkin, and I promised your father I’d have you home at a decent hour. I’m surprised he allowed me to take you unchaperoned in the first place.”

  She leaned back, resting her head against his arm. She’d never tire of the feel of him. “I think Father’s changing, in a good way. Not that convention isn’t still important to him, but I’m starting to think I might be important to him as well.”

  “Why the change?”

  Exactly. Why? She’d turned that question over like a furrowed plot of earth these past two weeks. “While he didn’t lose any close friends in that explosion, he did know some of the men who died and many who were injured. I really thought that my position as chairwoman would be the thing to impress him, but turns out my simple act of continuing to visit those men even after your release impressed him more. And in a smaller way, perhaps he realized how empty the house will be without me when we marry.”

  “‘When we marry.’ I like the sound of that.”

  So did she. She closed her eyes, soaking in the blessing of the man beside her. For a while they drove in the silence of naught but the wheels on the road and the occasional rattle of branches in the wind. Anytime now and she’d hear the crunch of the Turners’ drive—but the carriage lurched sideways onto crackling twigs and weeds.

  Her eyes flew open. “Hey, this isn’t the way to—what are we doing here?”

  Joseph flashed her a smile as he guided the horse up the overgrown Grigg drive. “Close your eyes.”

  She narrowed them. “What are you up to?”

  “I’ve got one last secret to reveal.” He tapped her on the nose. “Now close your eyes.”

  With a frown, she obeyed. The carriage halted, then canted to the side as Joseph hopped down. His footsteps rounded the back then stopped. A warm hand engulfed her fingers, and he guided her to the ground. What was he up to?

  Ten steps later, he stopped. “All right. You may look.”

  She blinked open her eyes. There, in the fading light, a freshly painted sign hung on the weathered post of the Grigg front porch. Black letters spelled out: Carston Blake Academy.

  Her jaw dropped, and she turned to him. “What’s this?”

  “Here is your building for your new school. There’s no need for a safe house anymore, now that Hannah Crow’s has been shut down for good. Not that other brothels can’t open up, I suppose, but with Craven run out of town by the angry wives of club members, I don’t think that will happen for a very long time. And besides”—he flashed her a smile—“I couldn’t very well let you go to that Ladies’ Aide Society meeting on Monday and take yet another beating from Lillian Warnbrough, could I?”

  The tenderness in his voice, the depth of emotion in his brown eyes, and the warmth of his mouth as he pressed a kiss to her brow turned the world watery. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she nuzzled her face into his chest. “You know what I love about you, Joseph Blake?”

  His chuckle rumbled against her ear. “That I always do the right thing?”

  “No.” She shook her head, loving the strong beat of his heart. “Everything.”

  Michelle Griep’s been writing since she first discovered blank wall space and Crayolas. She is the Christy Award-winning author of historical romances: A Tale of Two Hearts, The Captured Bride, The Innkeeper’s Daughter, 12 Days at Bleakly Manor, The Captive Heart, Brentwood’s Ward, A Heart Deceived, and Gallimore, but also leaped the historical fence into the realm of contemporary with the zany romantic mystery Out of the Frying Pan. If you’d like to keep up with her escapades, find her at www.michellegriep.com or stalk her on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

  And guess what? She loves to hear from readers! Feel free to drop her a note at michellegriep@gmail.com.

  Check out more books by Michelle Griep!

  The Innkeeper’s Daughter

  by Michelle Griep

  Officer Alexander Moore goes undercover as a gambling gentleman to expose a plot against the king—and he’s a master of disguise, for Johanna Langley believes him to be quite the rogue … until she can no longer fight against his unrelenting charm.

  Paperback / 978-1
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  The Noble Guardian (June 2019)

  by Michelle Griep

  Cynical lawman Samuel Thatcher arrives just in time to save starry-eyed Abigail Gilbert from highwaymen. Against his better judgment, he agrees to escort her to her fiancé in northern England. Each will be indelibly changed if they don’t kill one another … or fall in love.

  Paperback / 978-1-68322-749-6 / $14.99