by Rose Lerner
The moon was out. Bright and huge, hanging low in the sky, turning the frozen muddy road and the ice-tipped grass beside it white.
It was eerie. And it was beautiful. He felt like he was walking through one of Matthew Brady’s photographs, the topography under his foot foreign and stark.
He walked until his brain was quiet, and then he turned back for home.
In the back alley he didn’t notice the man standing in the shadows until he was almost upon him.
“Jesus! Guy.” James put his hand to his chest, feeling the startled pound of his heart under the weight of his coat. “I didn’t see you.”
Guy stepped back deeper into the shadows.
Not being seen was clearly his intent.
“Why aren’t you inside?” James asked.
Guy made some laughing, pained sound in his throat, but was otherwise silent.
James ducked his ears deeper into his coat. “Well, it’s been a real pleasure, Guy-”
He turned to leave and Guy put his hand on James’s elbow.
“What are you doing?”
“I have to go back inside before Park realizes I’m gone. The night of the red dress, Park likes to have a drink at the bar. Sometimes two. I will take Helen upstairs to her room and stand guard as I always do. But when Park leaves…so will I. She will have until nine in the morning, which should give her a good head start.”
“Head start?” Slowly it dawned on him what Guy was saying. “You’re letting her escape.”
Instead of answering, Guy reached into his coat and pulled out a small leather satchel. “She’ll need this. She won’t want it. She never does after the red dress. Tonight she will want to talk about her mother. And stabbing me in the throat with a broken whiskey bottle. But some time around dawn…she’ll want it again.”
James didn’t want the small case. It was her syringe. He could imagine the small bottles of opium nestled in velvet—red, perhaps. Blue. Their oblivion carefully contained behind fragile glass.
He’d been feeling better, sleeping better. Even eating because he was actually hungry. The cravings had been less sharp. Less pointed.
But reaching for her case, the desire lanced him in a thousand places.
Oh God, do not tempt me like this. I am not strong enough. I’m not.
But he took the case from Guy and fumbled with it as he put it in his own pocket, where it seemed to pulse with a life of its own.
“Why are you doing this?” James asked, but Guy was already gone.
Chapter 8
* * *
The dull hum of the bar downstairs came up through the floor of her tiny room. The noises coming from the bedrooms on the second floor were louder. They all combined to rumble through her body, shaking her bones, making her brain hurt.
The night of the red dress was never easy. She didn’t like the bawdy songs and playing the part of a seductress.
Shame on you, she always wanted to yell at those boys staring up at her with their lust unconcealed.
Shame on all of us.
She’d been prepared to have James in the crowd. Prepared to see him desire this version of her, but it had still been a shock. His face there outside his bedroom filled with a lust he couldn’t quite hide.
But he’d left. He gave her that courtly bow at the door and then he left.
And it was a kindness and a relief.
I should not have kissed him. I shouldn’t have let him in so far. Shown him so much.
She knew that—she did. It was a truth as stark as any. But she found she couldn’t regret it.
That moment, his lips, his body against hers. It was perfectly preserved against all of her regret. All of her guilt.
In fact, it glowed inside of her.
A very small light in a terrible darkness.
And now, as her need for the morphine crept through her body, she clung to his words.
I can try to help you save yourself.
He couldn’t, of course, and somehow she would have to convince him to stop caring for her. Though her feelings for him could not be so easily put away.
She thought of that bow, and it hurt.
Helen’s skin crawled and itched, and she felt a sort of angry panic in the back of her throat. Pacing the narrow stretch between the bed and the door in the tiny room she’d been given, she both longed for Guy and his case of oblivion and hoped he’d slip on the steps and break his neck.
The extremes of her heart were wide and unforgiving.
At the sound of the doorknob turning she whirled, her hunger a mania.
“Guy,” she said, ready before he came in the room. “I don’t want a dose tonight.”
But it wasn’t Guy, it was James coming into her room, shutting the door behind him, moving like a shadow.
For a moment she could not believe his audacity. His sheer nerve. Why had Guy let him in here?
“Are you an idiot?” she asked.
“Undoubtedly.”
“He will kill you.”
“He can try.”
Now. She had to do it now. She had to reject him and make it stick. His feelings were making him foolish. Dangerous.
“I have no interest in you,” she said clearly. Lying, and not very well. Her skin itched. The blood in her veins itched. She couldn’t dig deep enough to satisfy it. “I’m not interested in flirtation or in being saved. I’m not interested in any part of you.”
“You kissed me.”
“A stupid whim. Women have them all the time.”
“You don’t fool me. So stop trying.”
He pulled a leather case from the inside pocket of his coat and set it on the small table beside her bed.
“We can discuss exactly how interested you are in me later. We have more important things to deal with.”
“Where did you get that?” she asked, staring at the case.
“Guy gave it to me.”
She pressed a hand against her head, as if that would help her better understand what was happening.
“Why…why would he do that?” Were he and Park drinking in the bar? Sometimes Park dealt faro in other saloons, bankrolling the game, and Guy went with him for protection. But in those cases she always went as well—as distraction.
“He’s not going to be back until the morning.”
“He’s gone all night?” she asked. That could only mean one thing. She fell back, her hand against the wall. “He’s letting me escape?”
James nodded, and for a moment she couldn’t even breathe. She couldn’t feel her feet. Or her head. Freedom. It was happening. Strangely, it made no sense, but she was quite suddenly so scared she nearly reached for the morphine.
And then her heart pounded in one great squeeze and she snapped back into herself.
“I need a horse,” she said. She put her hand to the sleeves of her dress and just pulled, tearing it off her body. The black lace gave away in her hands, beads clattered to the floor. The seams of the red silk strained. “Some money. Food.”
“Helen-”
She opened her trunk. It was cold out. She could feel it downstairs, despite the heat from the crowd and the candles. The edges of the room were chilled, and people came in off the street with red faces and snow on their hats.
She pulled out her warmest dress. The heavy coat. She’d wear all her stockings, because her boots were not very warm.
“Helen, you can’t just rush out without a plan. Take a second-”
“No! No seconds. I have no seconds to spare,” she said. One final yank on the bodice and the dress fell down to her feet. She stood in front of him in her corset and chemise. Her high-heeled boots and black stockings.
“I don’t know where to go,” she said. “East? What’s the closest town-”
“Stop.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to stand still. “Listen to me. We will get you out of here. We will, but in a few hours you will be very sick without the morphine. You can feel it, can’t you? The chills. The hot flashes. The
cramps. The headache. You’re sweating and shaking.”
“A gentleman wouldn’t notice,” she said with a wobbly smile as the sweat ran down her spine.
“You are going to be disastrously ill,” he said.
“Then I will take just enough so that I don’t get sick.”
“Then you will not be able to sit on a horse.”
“I’ll take the stage.”
“Helen. Come with me. I will keep you safe. We will wean you off the morphine.”
“Come with you where?” she asked. “You live in this whorehouse!”
She yelled it, and the stupid fool smiled at her.
“Why are you smiling?”
“I like women who yell. But perhaps it would be best if you saved the yelling for another time.”
“This isn’t time to be charming. I need to leave.”
That sardonic smile of his was gone and he looked at her with all the power of his intelligence. Her skin pebbled up in goose bumps at the intensity of his gaze.
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“No,” she whispered. “Park’ll come after me. After us.”
“I imagine he will.”
“James. If he were to hurt you, I couldn’t live with myself.”
“I do not intend to let him get close enough to hurt either of us. Will you let me help you?” he asked. “On my honor, as a gentleman?”
“I’ve been given the impression you are not a gentleman.”
“I forgot for a while.” He stood, tall and strong. Thin like a blade. In her delusional state she imagined him a sword, protecting her. “You have made me remember.”
Oh, that was quite kind. Quite gallant. And it suited him so well, the rusty chivalry.
For a moment they just looked at each other, and she didn’t know what this current was that drew him to her. Her to him. But the air crackled like lightning might strike them. It wasn’t attraction, or it wasn’t only attraction, as it had been with the boys from before the war.
It was some dark alchemy she didn’t understand.
And so she immediately didn’t trust it.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered. “If it is because you think of that kiss this morning…” She shook her head. “If you imagine some future, you must know…I do not know what is left of me after all this. If I can ever feel-”
“I am not in the habit of imagining anything. Least of all the future. Let’s just get through tonight and tomorrow. You pack what you need. Get…” His eyes swept down her body and he swallowed audibly. “Get dressed and I will pack. Together we’ll go to the livery. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
She couldn’t argue. Her smoldering brain and her panic and her fear made it so difficult to find the words. And moreover—she wanted him to come. In so many ways she was grateful for his offering. Happy that he would come with her.
Selfish, yes. Horribly so. And she could not force herself to do the right thing.
For eighteen months she had survived because there was a fang-toothed monster living in her head, forcing her to fight when she wanted to lie down. She was exhausted and wretched and starved of hope and affection and care.
She sucked in a shuddery breath. And then another.
And the fang-toothed monster lay down for the moment.
“All right,” she said.
* * *
All right. Yes. All right.
James stood there grinning and nodding like a fool.
All right.
This was dangerous. And extraordinarily stupid, considering the weather and what would happen to her as the drugs left her body. But still, he could not stop smiling. This felt remarkably good, good enough that he did not care what he might be leaving behind.
He crossed the room, his mind slowly organizing itself to make lists. The livery. He’d have to pack. A note quickly to Annie. Delilah would have to clean up this mess. He felt guilty for that.
He opened the door and to his surprise, there was Delilah.
And behind her, with a rifle, was Kyle.
The muffled noise of the bar and the bedrooms flooded the room.
“Can we come in?” she asked, a blond eyebrow arched, and without waiting for permission she swept into the room.
“Delilah,” James said, stepping sideways so as to shield Helen as she frantically pulled her blue dressing gown over her body. “While I admit to a certain amount of curiosity as to why you are here, and with an armed guard attached, I must inform you that we have no time for social calls.”
“Really?” Delilah set a bottle of sherry down on the dressing table and two small tin cups beside it. Something about that sherry made James nervous.
More nervous even than Kyle and his gun.
The sherry was only brought out on the worst nights.
“And why is that?” Delilah asked. She poured two glasses and offered one to Helen, who declined. Then she offered it to James.
“No, thank you,” he said.
“Lovely,” she said, and drank her shot and then the other.
“Delilah,” James said, cutting through the idle conversation. “Guy is not here.”
“I noticed.”
“Which means Helen is unguarded and Guy has led me to believe he’ll be gone until morning, which means Helen is leaving.”
“Are you?” Delilah’s blond hair caught the lamplight as she turned slightly to see Helen. “Come on, stop hiding behind the doctor.” She waved her fingers, and from the corner of his eye he saw Helen step forward.
She was pale and sweating, her fingers clutching at the skin of her wrists. But she held her head up high.
“I’m not hiding, you just put me in a room the size of an outhouse.”
“True,” Delilah agreed, and poured two more glasses of sherry. “So you mean to escape.”
“I do.”
“I’m gathering by the look on the doctor’s face he’s going with you.”
“Delilah,” James said. “You’re hardly my mother. We owe you nothing-”
“Ah.” Delilah lifted a finger. “That’s the problem. Should you leave, you would owe me. Two thousand dollars, to be precise.”
“What?”
“Her cut of the buy-in,” Helen said in the manner of one struck dumb.
“Indeed. And I think we can all agree, that is a significant sum of money. And it does not factor in what would undoubtedly be damages from the brawl that will occur tomorrow night if you are not there, as planned and advertised.”
“Or what we would have made in whiskey sales,” Kyle chimed in.
“Or what Park will do should he find his songbird gone. You can see there are far too many risks and costs for me to just let you go.”
“Delilah.” James stepped forward. “Listen to yourself. She is kept a prisoner. Drugged and abused-”
“I know.” Delilah drank, emptying one glass and then another. Behind her Kyle watched, his face set in a stony grimace.
“She has a chance to leave, and you would stop her? Are you really this kind of monster?”
Delilah laughed. “Oh, James, you fucking idiot. I am exactly this kind of monster. And worse.” She looked up at Helen. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Tomorrow, after the poker game-”
“It will be too late,” Helen said. “Park never loses.”
“This is nonsense,” James said, reaching for Helen’s hand, which was cold and clammy in his. “Helen, we’re leaving.”
“You’re not.” From a hidden pocket in her dark green skirt, Delilah pulled out a small pearl-handed derringer. “I can’t let you go.”
Chapter 9
* * *
For a second he couldn’t even believe this was happening. It was some chloroform fever dream.
“You are not going to shoot me.”
“Are you sure?”
Kyle stepped forward, angling himself between James and Delilah in the tiny room.
“You would risk her life,” James spat over Kyle, unconcerned abou
t the rifle. “Her chance for freedom on a card game?”
“Back up,” Kyle said, shoving him with the whole of the gun against his chest, and James surged forward, ready to fight. Ready to fight their way free.
“Stop!” Helen whispered. “Stop. James. Please…”
Oh, that she held his reins in so firm a grasp was surprise. To all of them. She said stop and he stopped.
“Hear me out,” Delilah said. “I have another plan. Go downstairs and put your name on the board.”
“That’s your plan?” he asked, his mouth falling open. “Instead of letting her go, you would have me play cards for her?”
“It’s what you should have done from the very beginning. If you’d been a little less up your own ass about it.”
“And then what?”
“You win her in the card game, and then we will help you.”
“We?”
“Myself. Kyle. Annie and Steven. We will find a way to buy her some time until the drugs are out of her system, and then we can take her situation to the sheriff, and Helen will have her freedom that way. No running off in the night like you’ve done something wrong. Do you understand that?” She was asking Helen. “You get free of him the right way. With the law on your side.”
“And what about Guy?”
“We will handle Guy. We will handle everything here after you win.”
“You really think James is going to win that poker game?” Kyle asked.
“It’s why his family disowned him. It’s how he earned the money for his medical degree,” she said. “He fleeced most of Europe.”
“This guy?” Kyle asked.
“I am very good,” James admitted.
Delilah, cruel and heartless, turned and gave Kyle the radiance of her full smile, and James watched the man suffer with his love for her, just bask in his heartache in the glow of that damn smile.
“Why did you do this?” James asked.
“Women who don’t want to be in cages shouldn’t be in cages.”
“Oh my God.” Helen started laughing. “Get out of my room, you sanctimonious bitch.”
“Trust us,” Delilah said.
“Trust! You are no better than Park! Why would I trust you? You have made sure I cannot leave, so I insist you leave!” Helen spat. “Now. Before I start tearing these walls down.”
