“Were you really planning to open a brothel in the church parsonage?”
Daisy saw her own horror reflected on Peter’s face. Somehow they managed to get inside the house. Their maid greeted them with a tear-stained face.
“They been out there since right after you left. They pounded on the door and wanted to know was you here, and I told them to leave, but they didn’t. They give me this.”
She handed them a newspaper. The headline said, “Brothel in Church Parsonage.”
“It wasn’t at the parsonage,” Peter said, outraged by the error. As if that mattered.
“I won’t stay here if it’s a brothel,” the maid said. “I’m a good girl!” No one paid her any heed.
Daisy peered out the window at the crowd. “Are they all reporters?” Not all. She saw one familiar face. “Matthew is here.”
“Matthew? Why would he be here?” Peter asked just as the doorbell rang.
The maid, who was now openly weeping, admitted Matthew Honesdale. He held several newspapers and wore a disgustingly satisfied grin. “What on earth have you two been up to?” He turned the newspapers so they could see the one on top, which said, “Minister Recruiting Prostitutes.”
“Nothing!” Daisy said, furious. “Where could they have gotten this information?”
“And it’s all wrong,” Peter said. “We haven’t even opened the brothel yet.”
“Is that what you wanted Knight’s house for?” Matthew asked, still enjoying himself far too much.
“You did this,” Daisy said. “You betrayed us!”
He seemed genuinely shocked by the accusation. “I didn’t tell them this.” He pointed to the newspapers. “How could I? I didn’t even know about it. Besides, why would I betray you?”
Daisy could think of many reasons, but all of them would require that Matthew knew she’d turned on him and tried to frame him for the blackmail. But how could he have known that? She and Peter were the only ones still alive who knew that.
Someone started pounding on their door again. Peter actually screamed.
“Don’t answer it!” Daisy called to the maid, who was now sobbing in the kitchen.
“Police!” a voice shouted from the front porch. “Open up!”
“Why would the police be here?” Daisy cried in panic, looking first to Peter, which was a waste of time, and then to Matthew.
“Have you done something illegal?” he asked with interest.
They couldn’t be here about the brothel. They hadn’t even gotten the girls for it. No one even knew about it. She thought of the blackmail, but no one could have known about that, either. “Not yet.” Not recently at least.
“Is there anything incriminating in the house?” Matthew asked. “You’ll want to get rid of it before you let them in.”
“What would be incriminating?” Peter asked, nearly hysterical now.
“I don’t know. Documents of any kind? That mortgage, maybe. It would tie you to the house if that’s really where you were going to open the brothel. I just wish you’d consulted with me first, though. That’s a terrible location—”
“The mortgage!” Daisy ran to Peter’s study and quickly opened the safe while the police continued to pound on the door.
By the time she pulled out the mortgage documents, Matthew had caught up to her. “Is that it?”
“What should I do with it?”
Matthew shrugged. “No use hiding it. They’ll search the entire house. You should probably burn it.”
Daisy cast about for something to use. Matthew sighed and pulled a matchbook out of his pocket. “Here.”
The pounding continued and her hands were shaking too badly to even tear out a match. Matthew took everything from her and easily lit a match and held it to the corner of the documents until they caught. Only when he dropped the last, black ash onto the floor to keep from burning his fingers did Daisy happen to wonder if burning the mortgage was really a good idea.
“You can let the police in now,” Matthew called to whoever might want to follow his orders. “I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you, Daisy. I’ll just go out the back. I don’t really want to speak to any policemen today. I wish you the best of luck.”
Before she could think, Matthew had slipped away and the police were swarming everywhere. Someone grabbed her and locked her hands behind her back in handcuffs.
“You’re under arrest,” a snaggletoothed fellow in a cheap suit told her.
“For what?” she tried, using her haughtiest voice.
“Procurement. I was really surprised by how many whores claimed you’d drugged them and sold them to a brothel,” he said with a leering grin. “You should be ashamed.”
Procurement? They weren’t arresting her for opening a new brothel at all, which made sense, because they hadn’t actually done that. But who knew about her past?
No one but Peter and Matthew.
As two uniformed officers dragged her down the hall to the front door, she saw Peter still standing in the parlor, tears streaming down his face. “No! You can’t have her!” he cried when he saw them taking her away.
“Hire a lawyer for me!” she called to him, but she didn’t think he’d understood.
“My father is here,” he called back, his horror at the thought plain on his tear-ravaged face.
And sure enough, Nathan Honesdale nearly collided with her and her escorts as he barreled in the front door. “Peter, what has this Jezebel made you do?”
* * *
• • •
“SO THAT’S WHY THEY ARRESTED DAISY,” ELIZABETH TOLD Priscilla the next morning. She’d known Priscilla would have heard—the scandal of a minister’s wife being revealed as a former procuress and madam was being covered in every New York newspaper, in addition to being passed along what was normally the church’s prayer chain—and would want to know the whole story.
“What a horrible woman. How on earth did she end up married to Peter Honesdale?”
“It seems he was one of her, uh, customers.”
Priscilla was suitably shocked. “Which one of them thought up the blackmail scheme, do you think?”
Elizabeth was pretty sure it was Daisy, but she didn’t want to let Peter off the hook. In any case, Peter was equally guilty of killing DeForrest Jenks. “We’ll probably never know. The important thing is that they won’t be blackmailing anyone else.”
Priscilla sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that . . . But no, it’s too much to hope for, I’m sure.”
She was thinking about her lost fortune, naturally. Elizabeth wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right, but she hadn’t heard from the Old Man yet, and if there’d been any kind of glitch, she didn’t want to give Priscilla false hope.
The doorbell rang.
“Who could that be at this time of day?” Priscilla wondered.
Elizabeth wondered, too, but she didn’t dare get her own hopes up, until the maid announced Gideon Bates.
As always, her heart beat a tattoo against her ribs when he stepped into the room. He was already smiling, and he smiled even more when he saw Elizabeth.
“Miss Miles,” he said with mock formality once he’d greeted Priscilla. “I thought you might be here.”
“Did you?”
“Well, I hoped you would, at least. I knew you’d want to be present when I shared the happy news with Mrs. Knight.”
Priscilla invited him to sit down, and when all the social niceties had been dealt with, she said, “What happy news have you come to share with me, Mr. Bates?”
“I assume you’ve heard that Mrs. Honesdale has been arrested.”
“Yes, I think everyone in New York knows by now, and Elizabeth was just telling me what wasn’t in the newspapers.”
“Yes, we were fortunate that several of the women Daisy Honesd
ale had forced into prostitution stepped forward and accused her.”
“Very fortunate,” Elizabeth said knowingly. Who had known about them and who had convinced them to charge Daisy? But Gideon didn’t acknowledge her unspoken question.
“We were hoping to bring Reverend Honesdale to justice as well, but the only thing we could accuse him of was the blackmail of Mr. Knight, and we couldn’t do that without damaging your own reputation.”
“I know, and I appreciate your discretion, Mr. Bates. Still, it’s difficult knowing he will go unpunished.”
“I’m not sure that’s entirely true. We knew the scandal would mean he would have to give up the ministry, but that didn’t seem like enough weighed against what the Honesdales did to you.”
“No, it didn’t,” Elizabeth said, remembering how Peter had also helped murder Priscilla’s beloved husband. They hadn’t told Priscilla this and never would, but Priscilla still had many reasons to hate them.
“Sometimes a higher power takes a hand, though,” Gideon continued. “It seems Peter Honesdale had some kind of breakdown when his wife was arrested, and his father has seen fit to put him into an asylum.”
“An asylum?” Priscilla said. Such things rarely happened to people like the Honesdales.
“Yes. He didn’t see fit to pay for Peter’s care, either, and since Peter couldn’t pay for himself, he has fallen on the mercy of the state.”
“The state’s mercy tends to be rather harsh, doesn’t it?” Elizabeth said.
“Indeed it does, and the Reverend Mr. Nathan Honesdale’s desire to prevent Peter from causing any more scandal is even harsher. I’m very much afraid Peter Honesdale will never be released from this asylum.”
Elizabeth waited for Priscilla’s reaction. If she felt sorry for Peter, she would be forced to reveal how Peter had killed DeForrest Jenks.
But Priscilla simply shook her head. “At least he’ll never be able to hurt anyone else.”
“No, he will not. Neither of them will. And I am also happy to report that we were able to recover the money that they and Endicott Knight stole from you.”
Priscilla’s reaction was everything they could have wished. “Recovered? How on earth . . . ? What did you do? How did you persuade them?”
Elizabeth exchanged a glance with Gideon and was happy to see the sparkle in his dark eyes.
“We didn’t exactly persuade them,” Elizabeth said.
“And you needn’t worry about the details,” Gideon added quickly, “but I wanted you to know that I saw Mr. Renfroe this morning and deposited almost eighty thousand dollars in your account.”
“Eighty? But that’s even more than DeForrest left me.”
Elizabeth held her tongue, anxious to see how Gideon would explain it. He cleared his throat. “We also recovered some of the money Knight had paid them as well, which should have been yours as his widow.”
“That’s . . . wonderful,” she managed a little breathlessly.
“And I am also happy to tell you that the mortgage Mr. Matthew Honesdale once held on Endicott Knight’s family home has been forgiven.”
“What does that mean?” Priscilla asked.
“It means you have a free title to that house, and you can do whatever you want with it.”
“You mean I can sell it?”
“Yes.”
Priscilla’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Gideon, how can I ever thank you?”
“Don’t thank me at all. I had very little to do with any of this.” He glanced at Elizabeth again, but she saw no trace of bitterness or anger or even disapproval.
“But you were the one who—”
“I only told a few people that you needed help. You have many friends.”
“Then who should I thank? I feel like I owe them that at least.”
“I’m sure they’ve been adequately repaid,” Elizabeth said quite truthfully. The Old Man would certainly complain that in the end he’d only cleared the ten thousand he’d bilked Daisy out of for the bogus furniture delivery, but he’d had very few expenses, too. She also knew he’d thoroughly enjoyed involving Gideon in a con. And helping a widow would earn him some credit on Judgment Day. He’d have to be satisfied with that.
* * *
• • •
GIDEON HAD BEEN WORRIED ABOUT HOW HE WOULD GET Elizabeth to leave Priscilla’s house with him, but she graciously accepted his offer to see her home. When they were on the sidewalk, he said, “Why don’t we go to my house instead? We can tell Mother what happened.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, so long he was afraid she would refuse, but she said, “All right. I haven’t seen your mother in a long time.”
“She missed you in church last Sunday.”
She did not reply to that. The walk to his house was only a few blocks, and Gideon let the first one pass in silence. Then he said, “I was angry when I realized your father had tricked me into holding the key to the box.”
“You had every right to be. I had no idea he was going to involve you at all.”
“Maybe I should say I was angry at first. Because I thought he expected that he could get me to break my word and compromise my sense of honor by opening the box for him.”
“Could he have done that?” she asked with genuine interest.
“I didn’t think so, but you’ll notice how easily the Honesdales accomplished it.”
She pressed her lips together, and he could see she was trying not to smile. “But you said you were only angry at him at first.”
“Yes. When I realized the key they’d given me didn’t fit the box, I understood everything. He’d never intended to ask me to open the box at all.”
“The Old Man may be morally corrupt, but he’s not a fool.”
They had reached his door, and he ushered her inside. The maid came to help them with their coats.
“Would you tell my mother that Miss Miles is here?” Gideon asked her.
The girl frowned. “Mrs. Bates is out, sir. She told you she would be at breakfast this morning.”
Found out, Gideon felt the heat rising in his face, but when he glanced at Elizabeth, he saw only an amused smile.
“I’m sure Mrs. Ordway has something to say about this,” she said, strolling into the parlor instead of slamming angrily out of the house, as she should have done. “Perhaps she has a chapter on how to avoid seductions that I missed.”
“I’m not going to seduce you,” he said, carefully leaving the parlor door open.
“That’s disappointing. What are you going to do now that you have me in your clutches?”
A very good question, and Gideon realized he wasn’t quite sure himself, although he knew what he wanted the outcome to be. Sadly, he had no idea of exactly how to get there. “I wanted to talk to you.”
She sat down on the sofa, leaving plenty of room for him to sit beside her, so he did. “All right. What did you want to talk about?”
“I told you a lie the other night.”
That had the desired effect. “You did?” Was she surprised or delighted? Perhaps a bit of both.
“Yes. I said I hoped we could be friends, but I don’t want to be friends with you.”
“I don’t want to be friends with you, either.”
Not the reaction he’d expected, but he soldiered on. “I knew I had to apologize to you. I’d treated you very unfairly.”
“I treated you unfairly, too.”
“You did?”
“Yes. I expected you to change who you are.”
“And I expected you to change who you are, too.”
“Yes, well, who I am is sometimes illegal.”
He smiled at that. “I thought you said you’d completely reformed.”
“That was probably a lie, too. You see? You can never trust me.”
“I’d tru
st you with my life.”
Her beautiful eyes widened in shock. “You would?”
“Of course I would. I’ve never known anyone more faithful or more loyal and determined to see justice done. Look how you fought for Priscilla.”
“I thought you didn’t approve of how I fought for Priscilla.”
“I didn’t. At first,” he added when she frowned.
Now she was suspicious. “When did you change your mind?”
“I don’t know exactly. It was a long process.”
“All right, then why did you change your mind?”
He hadn’t really thought about it, so he needed a moment to figure it out himself. “The reason I love the law so much is because I love justice, and I finally realized my sense of justice was too limited.”
“Probably because you’re a man.”
“You may be right. Because the world is different for women than it is for men. For example, I’ll never have to worry about my spouse dying and leaving me penniless and helpless.”
“That’s why the Old Man taught me the grift, you know.”
“It is?” he asked, although he remembered a conversation he’d had on this very subject with the Old Man himself.
“Yes. He didn’t want to, but if he did, I’d never have to depend on a man to take care of me.”
And she’d never end up in a brothel, but he didn’t say that. It was too painful to even contemplate. “Is that why you wanted to help Priscilla?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t stop to think about it. I just wanted to help Priscilla because she needed help and it was the right thing to do.”
“Even if you had to break the law to do it.”
He loved the way her eyes sparkled when she was angry. “Yes, even if I had to break the law to do it.
“And that’s why I changed my mind. I finally realized that if justice is what we’re fighting for, then we shouldn’t be afraid to break a few rules along the way, especially if following the rules means there’s no justice at all.”
Now her eyes were just sparkling, because she didn’t seem angry anymore. “Do you really mean that?”
He had to smile. “I never lie.”
City of Secrets Page 29
