Couples flooded the ballroom floor, and Blake and Juan wandered off, leaving Sarah by herself. Sarah watched the dancers, fascinated by the glamor and movement. The band moved to its next number, Some of These Days, followed by Memphis Blues. The intensity of dancing increased when Lola’s band hammered out Darktown Strutters’ Ball.
Sarah lost track of which songs and how many the band played until Lola began to sing, I Ain’t Got Nobody. She turned her head and glanced at Sarah, crooning the words, Won’t somebody take a chance with me?
Sarah looked away, blushing—straight into the smirking faces of Blake and Juan where they stood across the dancefloor. Embarrassed and irritated, she stared at her hands.
What am I doing in this place?
The band played another hour before ending their set to enthusiastic applause. Moments later, Lola joined Sarah at her table.
“Hello, darling.” She placed her cheek against Sarah’s before sitting down. From a faux-jeweled handbag she placed on the table, Lola withdrew a package of cigarettes and an ebony cigarette holder.
“I am so glad you came. Well, what do you think of our little ‘musicale’?”
While Lola fitted a cigarette to the holder and lit it, Sarah scrambled to find a safe topic. “The name of your ensemble? The Pythia, is it? Does the name hold significance?”
Lola drew on the long holder and exhaled smoke from her nose. “A great deal of significance, I should think. The Pythia was the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo in ancient Greece. She was a prophetess, also known as the Oracle of Delphi. We chose the name for that reason.”
Lola inhaled, exhaled, blew the smoke away, and coughed to clear her throat. “For a Greek woman of that time, the role of priestess was a means of holding a respected position in society—on her own merits, you see. She had the right to own property in her own name. She earned her own money, lived in her own house or rooms, and went about freely in public. She was not accountable to a husband’s will or defined by his position.”
“Why is this significant to you?”
Lola laughed softly. “Do not all humans aspire to freedom? Does a woman wish for less independence than a man simply because she has suffered the cosmic misfortune of having been born female? Or are you, Sarah, one of those women who requires a man to validate her thoughts, her voice, her choices? Perhaps even her emotions?”
Lola’s words stunned Sarah—they spoke to many of the unarticulated feelings she harbored within her breast.
Lola smiled. “I see I have awakened something in you. But to answer your question more fully, The Pythia of Apollo was the epitome of female independence in the Greek Empire, and she was attended by three other priestesses. Our little ‘ensemble’ as you call it, turns upon my leadership.”
She shrugged. “You could say that I am The Pythia, and Meg, Gina, and Dannie are my attending priestesses. Only musically, of course.”
Sarah’s eyes followed Dannie and Meg as they mingled with friends. Dannie’s appearance on stage had struck Sarah the hardest. Her short hair was slicked back with hair pomade, and she was dressed, head to toe, as a man in evening wear. Meg leaned into Dannie, and Dannie had her arm about Meg much as a man might hold a woman to his side.
“Do Meg and Dannie have a close friendship?”
“Theirs is an intimate relationship. What is called a Wellesley marriage,” Lola remarked.
“I am unfamiliar with that term,” but she comprehended Lola’s meaning. In the Corinth Gentleman’s Club, Sarah had seen two girls turn to each other for comfort, affection, and . . . physical intimacy. They had not, however, dressed or acted as Dannie did.
That would not have been allowed in the male-dominated market.
“I imagine you are unfamiliar with many things in my circle, but I should love to educate you.” Lola laid her fingers on the back of Sarah’s hand and lightly caressed it.
Sarah stared at their hands, understanding dawning on her. “I-I am not like that, Lola. I am not like you—not how you want me to be . . . with you.”
Lola turned Sarah’s hand over and her thumb stroked Sarah’s palm. “Are you not, indeed?”
Sarah jerked her hand away. “No. No, I am not.”
Lola placed her elbows on the little table, rested her chin upon her hands, and leaned very close to Sarah. “And yet I am certain you have no inclination toward the male gender, am I correct?”
“Be that as it may—”
“I am glad you admit to it.”
“I am not hiding it,” Sarah retorted. “I have told my friends that I shall not marry.”
Lola continued to consider her. “When I look at you, I see a freshness, a purity in your mien more suited to a woman some years younger than your age. That wholesomeness is what attracted me to you initially. I see now that you are a much more complex woman. Tell me, Sarah, are you as innocent as you seem?”
Sarah stared back. “No.”
Oh, I could tell you tales that would dash that image of my purity to dust, Lola—but merely asking about my past does not entitle you to my trust.
“Ah. You have secrets.”
Sarah sighed. “I appreciate your invitation this evening, but I should be going. Would you take me home, now?”
Lola seemed surprised. “We have two more sets to play. The party does not usually break up until near three in the morning.”
“What? Three in the morning? But Blake assured Miss Rose that you would have me home by midnight.”
Lola laughed. “Oh, my dear—what was he thinking? I do apologize, but Justin’s parties are only warming up at midnight, as Blake knows full well. Perhaps he thought it wiser to ask forgiveness than permission.” She gave a little flip of her hand. “Please do not fret yourself. I shall hire a taxi for us and see you safely home after our last set.”
Sarah said through clenched teeth, “I am sorry to inconvenience you, Lola, but Miss Rose is expecting me at midnight.”
Lola leaned back, placed a fresh cigarette in her holder, and lit it. As she drew on the holder, the cigarette’s ember glowed a bright red. She inhaled slowly, seductively, then released the smoke through her parted lips. All the while, she considered Sarah.
“I am a bit perplexed, Sarah.”
Mesmerized, Sarah stared at the smoke coiling around Lola’s features, how she sucked it back into her mouth and caused it to swirl out her nose once more.
“Uh, perplexed? About what?”
“Why, about you, of course. I had thought you a grown woman, an adult.”
Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “You are playing at word games, attempting to provoke me.”
“Provoke you? No. Plumb the depths of this person known as Sarah Ellinger? Yes. I want to know the authentic person you are, Sarah, and so I probe and ask questions.”
Her mouth pulled on the ebony holder. “I said I had thought you a grown woman—an adult who makes her own choices. After all, the mark of maturity and independence is found in knowing one’s own mind, making one’s own decisions, and living with those choices, is it not?”
Sarah knew what Lola was implying. “I know my own mind, and I do make my own choices. To be clear, I have chosen to live within certain limits and restrictions—for my own safety and for my spiritual growth and health.”
“Safety? Spiritual growth and health? You have given this Miss Rose a great deal of authority over your life. Forgive me for saying so, but how does this further your independence and happiness?”
Lola again drew on her cigarette and exhaled the smoke. It was a slow and practiced process, one from which Sarah could not take her eyes.
“I do not live for my own independence and happiness, Lola.”
Lola caught a signal out of the corner of her eye. She waved her acknowledgement and stubbed out the remainder of her cigarette.
As she stood, she smiled at Sarah. “Dear me. As fascinating as this is, it is time to play again. I hope we can continue our conversation during our next break.”
Withou
t warning, she leaned toward Sarah, brushed a kiss across her cheek, then spun on her heel and returned to the stage. The band commenced their next set, and Sarah noted Lola watching her, an enigmatic smile playing about her mouth, her eyes questing, seeking for something.
Sarah swallowed and touched the spot where Lola’s lips had met her skin.
Chapter 10
Sarah tore her attention away from the band and from Lola; the room seemed to pulse with music, movement, and raucous laughter. Her head pounded with the noise and chaos. Even her eyes throbbed, and she rubbed them with her forefinger and thumb.
I want to go home.
She stood, gathered her shawl and reticule, and began to push and thread her way through the crowded dance floor to the other side of the ballroom where she had last seen Blake. It took her ten minutes to find him, standing behind a pillar with Juan. She turned her eyes away from what they were doing before she spoke.
“Pardon me, Blake. It is near twelve o’clock. Would you kindly take me home?”
Juan, who was glued to Blake’s side, pursed his reddened lips and tittered. “Oooh, tell us, dear Sarah, are you the Cinderella to our little soirée? When the clock strikes midnight, will you flee the ball and lose one glass slipper? Will your coach turn into a pumpkin and your coachman into a mouse?” He raked his eyes over Blake. “Because I can tell you that this coachman is no mouse. No, indeed.”
Juan growled low in his throat like a cat, and Blake stroked his cheek. “Patience, my pretty.”
Juan pouted. “How can I be patient, darling boy, when you tease me so?”
Sarah forced down the gorge rising in her throat and the nausea that threatened to bring up the contents of her stomach. “Please. Please take me home, Blake.”
Blake raised his brows. “As I told your Mrs. Thoresen, you are, technically, Lola’s guest. She has said she will take you home.” He inclined his head toward Juan, who preened and rubbed his jaw along Blake’s shoulder. “As you can see, I have more . . . pressing obligations.”
“But Lola will not finish for several more hours.”
Blake shrugged. “Then I suggest you enjoy the evening.”
“Yes,” Juan purred, “enjoy the evening. I know I shall.”
Clutching her shawl about her, Sarah turned from them and forced her way past the couples along the edge of the dance floor, making slow progress toward the ballroom entrance. When she had cleared the press of dancers, she searched for one of the house servants.
There. Outside the double doors.
She approached him. “Excuse me,” she shouted over the noise of the music.
“Yes, miss?”
“Could you call me a taxi?”
“Yes, miss.”
Sarah had a sudden recollection of Blake handing the taxi driver a wad of cash.
“No. That is, wait one moment, please.” She dug in her reticule, knowing before she reached her coin purse that she had exactly twenty-five cents in it. She opened it anyway.
The servant observed her frantic search and smirked. “Do you still wish me to call a cab, miss?”
“No. Thank you.”
I do not have the money for a cab. What can I do? Who could I call? Lord, please help me!
One name, one less-than-desirable—albeit, acceptable—solution, came to mind, but she dreaded the repercussions.
You must swallow your pride, Sarah, she told herself. You have no other option.
Sarah straightened and composed herself. Addressing the servant again, she said, “Please show me where I might use a telephone.”
“This way, miss.”
He led her farther down the hallway to a lobby furnished with upholstered settees and low coffee tables. A man and a woman, locked in passionate embrace, occupied one of the divans.
The servant cleared his throat. “Pardon me.”
The couple broke apart, the woman breathless and laughing. Without a word, they sauntered from the room, hand in hand. Sarah could hear the woman giggling as they meandered away.
“The telephone is just there, miss.”
He indicated a cozy niche in the corner of the room occupied by a petite table and padded stool. Sarah spied a gilt-and-ivory telephone and exhaled her relief.
“Thank you.”
She sat down on the stool and did not raise the telephone’s receiver to her ear. Instead, she folded her hands and stared at them. “Lord, I am sorry I came tonight. Miss Rose was right to feel concerned, and I should have heeded her wisdom . . . I should have heeded you in the cab, and I should have gone home then. I am, therefore, in a predicament of my own making, but I am asking: Please. Please grant me favor.”
Sighing, she lifted the receiver. When the operator came on, she said, “Keystone 4672, please.”
“I shall ring that number, ma’am.”
From a far distance, Sarah listened to the rings.
One. Two. Three.
The telephone was in the kitchen. Was it loud enough to awaken them? Would anyone answer?
Four. Five. Six. Seven.
The line crackled and a sleepy voice croaked, “O’Dell here.”
Sarah swallowed. “Mr. O’Dell, this is Sarah Ellinger. I am very sorry to ring you so late—”
“Is it Mother Rose? Is she all right?”
“She is well, Mr. O’Dell. I am not calling about her. It is I . . . who am in need of assistance.”
“Of course. What is it, Miss Ellinger?”
“I-I am in a bit of a quandary, Mr. O’Dell. I find that I cannot get home.”
His voice sharpened. “It has gone midnight. Where are you?”
She did not recall the address, so she answered, “The Polk-Stafford estate.”
The chastising silence from the other end of the line told Sarah that O’Dell not only knew her location but likely what kind of “quandary” she found herself in.
Very softly, Sarah asked, “Mr. O’Dell? Could you come get me?”
“Yes. It will take me twenty or thirty minutes. Will you be all right until then?”
“I think so.”
“Where shall I look for you?”
Sarah recalled the sloping drive and the gate at the bottom of the hill. She did not relish walking down the drive in the dark nor waiting alone outside the gate, but neither would O’Dell be allowed through the gate without an invitation.
“Just outside the gate.”
“Is the gate manned?”
“Yes.”
“Stay near the guards, Miss Ellinger. Let them know you are there and waiting for me. They will watch over you until I arrive.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sarah thought he was going to ring off but, following a breathy pause, he added, “We shall talk after I see you home.”
Sarah carefully replaced the ornate receiver and stood up.
Twenty or thirty minutes. I could wait here for half of that.
No, a voice whispered to her. Leave this place.
It may as well have been the Lord’s voice speaking to Lot.
She did not argue. “Yes, Lord.”
She gathered her shawl and reticule and walked down the long hallway, past the ballroom, toward the doors by which she and Blake had entered.
SARAH WAS SHIVERING with cold and pain when O’Dell’s Bergdoll came into view.
She had left the house and found her way down the drive in the dark, but had, at one point, been nearly run over when a departing driver careened around a curve. The lights of his motor car had illuminated Sarah just in time, and the driver had jerked his wheel over. Nevertheless, Sarah, seeing the car veering toward her, had leapt to the side of the road and stumbled, twisting her right knee as she fell. When she landed, she had cut her knee upon a sharp rock and torn a hole in her dress—skinning the heels of her hands into the bargain.
Sarah had hobbled the rest of the way to the gate and made herself known to the two guards.
“You are limping. Are you all right, miss?” one asked.
“Y
es. Thank you for asking. I took a little fall, but a friend is coming to escort me home.”
The other muttered under his breath, “I would not mind escorting you home.”
“Shut your filthy mouth, Jones.” The first guard jerked his chin toward the open gatehouse. “You can sit out of the wind in there, miss.” He handed her a handkerchief and glared at the other guard. “He won’t be bothering you none, I promise.”
Sarah had tied the kerchief about her knee and taken the chair in the musty gatehouse. She sat for what seemed a long while until her throbbing knee forced her to walk about. Her delicate shawl was no match for the buffeting winds, however, and her teeth were chattering by the time O’Dell arrived.
He pulled to the side of the gate and climbed out. “Miss Ellinger?”
“I am here, Mr. O’Dell.”
“You are freezing!”
“I-I shall be a-all r-right.”
He helped her into the car, draped a blanket about her shoulders and tucked one across her legs, then took his own seat and turned the motor car around. Sarah studied his profile in the dark, but they were silent until they reached Palmer House and he turned off the engine.
“Miss Ellinger, are you all right?”
Sarah sighed. “I shall be.”
O’Dell’s observant eyes had not missed the ragged tear in her dress. “Tell me the truth: Were you assaulted?”
“No. I fell while walking down the driveway, and I scraped my knee.”
“And can you explain why you were at such a place?”
“I was misled, Mr. O’Dell. I believed I was going to a concert. Well, a musicale.”
He snorted. “A ‘musicale’? At Jason Stafford’s house?”
“I did not know where the event was to be held, nor would the address or location have meant anything to me.” She pulled the invitation from her reticule. “My friend said she was a pianist, one of this evening’s musicians. She gave me this.”
Sarah Redeemed Page 13
