Forbidden Fire

by Heather Graham

  “Oh, Mary!” she cried, grabbing her friend’s hand. Then she gasped. “Oh, Mary, what has the doctor said? Are you well enough to have a baby?” She couldn’t forget how sick Mary had been in England.

  “Yes, I’m quite well enough, and—I’m having a baby one way or the other, Marissa! Oh, Marissa, be happy for us!”

  “I am happy for you, so very happy!” Marissa promised her. She squeezed her friend’s hand again, then lifted her glass and offered a toast.

  But when she lowered her head to the menu again, she realized almost bleakly that she couldn’t tell Ian the truth now. More than ever before, she had to protect the secret they all shared. Mary was going to have a baby.

  Mary had said that she felt well, but the next Tuesday when Marissa called upon her to come downtown, Mary was still in her nightdress, not feeling at all well.

  “It’s morning sickness, and nothing more! You and Jimmy must stop worrying!” Mary told her.

  Marissa was worried, but she had to go downtown anyway. Darrin would be waiting for her.

  Lee was upset that she wanted to go alone. “John can drive you downtown. You should not go alone.”

  Marissa was surprised. “Lee! I know the area very well now. I’m going to ride down by myself, and I’ll be just fine!” The last thing she needed was to have John Kwan with her, wondering what she was doing!

  Lee was still unhappy, but Marissa smiled and ignored her. She was touched that Lee seemed to care, and pleased with the affection that had risen between them now that Lee knew that Marissa loved her husband—and Marissa knew that Lee did not!

  She rode the small black mare, Jet, that she had taken over for her own. She left Jet in the livery stable by the emporium and visited the store. Ian was not in, she learned. He was due soon, but he was visiting a building site. She stopped by to see Jimmy, and was pleased to see how happy he was among his coworkers and how well he was doing as a buyer and manager. She left him to hurry down and have morning tea with Sandy, and was thrilled when Sandy told her that plans were afoot to open the cafeteria on several early mornings during the week for the orphans.

  It was nearly ten o’clock when she kissed Sandy’s cheek and hurried out to the corner. She glanced nervously up and down the street, hoping that Ian would not come upon her. Then she saw Darrin hurrying toward her along the walk. She smiled and waved. A minute later, he was with her.

  “You’re all alone, Mrs. Tremayne.”

  “Yes, Mrs. O’Brien is not feeling very well.”

  He frowned, and Marissa was both annoyed and amused. “Darrin, I’m quite able to take care of myself, you know.”

  “Sure, I know.” He shrugged. “I put your letter in the post within half an hour last time,” he told her proudly.

  “Then here’s the next.”

  He took the letter from her. “You’ve still got kin in England, huh?”

  “I—I’ve people back home, yes.”

  “That must be nice,” he said. Then he quickly corrected himself. “No, I guess not. Kin lie to you and betray you—and leave you. It’s better just to be on your own, that it is. If there’s anyone you can believe in, it’s yourself, and that’s that, I do say!”

  He took the letter from her. “Good day to you, Mrs. Tremayne.” He walked on and then stopped and turned back. “Take care of yourself, Mrs. Tremayne. We’re not far from the Barbary Coast.”

  She nodded and waved, her heart breaking. She wanted to talk to Ian about the boy. He was such a prickly little lad. Maybe they could find something for him to do up at the house. They could feed him well and give him a good home without offending his pride.

  She started walking idly, unaware that she had turned from the main street into the quiet alleyway behind the shops. She was so preoccupied with thoughts about Darrin that she didn’t pay much heed to the sound of footsteps behind her.

  Then she sensed that she was being flanked. She glanced quickly to the left and right. On one side was a tall man with a dark mustache and a bowler hat worn low over his forehead. On the other was a clean-shaven blond man with a smile that made her skin crawl.

  Too late, she realized that she was in danger. She opened her mouth to scream, but before a sound escaped from her, the mustachioed man caught her around the waist and shoved a soaking handkerchief over her face. She breathed in a sickly sweet smell, and the world began to spin.

  She fought desperately for reason, fighting the drug that assailed her senses. She had always fought so very hard! And now she could not kick or claw or scratch. She was powerless, and her body was very, very heavy. She could not even scream.

  The street careened before her as she started to lose her grip upon consciousness. She could not even feel the arms of the men who held her.

  She had fought so long and so hard, and now that happiness was hers …

  She could fight no more.

  Her last conscious thought was that there had been no one to see her. She would leave behind no sign of a struggle. No sign at all. She had wandered off alone.

  Then she could think no more. All the world was black.

  But she was not as alone as she had thought.

  Darrin MacIver, suspicious street-smart child that he was, had not walked away.

  He hadn’t thanked her for the clothes, he told himself. Then he muttered out loud that he didn’t need to thank her for the clothes, he was working for her now, wasn’t he?

  But there was something about her that he liked. She was young, and she didn’t seem so awfully much older than he and some of the boys. Yet she seemed to be a real lady, not like that Mrs. Leroux. When Marissa Tremayne talked to him, he felt that she really wanted an answer. He felt she cared.

  And she had changed him, too. Tremayne, the man with the money. Not that he had ever been mean or anything to any of the boys. It had just seemed as if it hurt him to look at them now and again. He’d lost a baby when he lost his wife, Darrin had heard. Funny, life was. A nice rich man with good intent like Mr. Tremayne, and his wife and kid up and die. And down in the brothel, the prostitutes had kids like him in the squalor every damned day.

  He felt a sudden guilt at his language. Neither the good priests nor the brothers had ever made him feel guilty. “I’ll bet she knows a few swear words herself!” he thought, kicking a rock in his path. Oh, she probably knew a few, all right. Just like she seemed to know him, what was in his mind and what was in his heart. And she was so pretty, so beautiful, with all that golden red hair of hers, and those huge green eyes. He liked her. He liked her a lot. She had changed his life.

  He turned, suddenly determined to say something. Thank you, maybe. Something.

  He started to follow her.

  He was just in time to see the two men sweep up Mrs. Tremayne in her elegant green riding habit and shove her into the rear of small black carriage.

  He stood dead still in the street, his mouth open. Then he shouted, “Hey! Hey, you let her go! Hey!”

  The carriage moved into the street. He started to run, then he realized that he would never catch it. He stopped again and looked around blankly.

  He saw the large sign. Tremayne’s. He started to run again. Mr. Tremayne had to be in. He just had to be in by then.

  He started running to the store. He hesitated only once.

  And that was when he saw her, the wicked witch, Leroux. He didn’t know why he paused. He just wanted to know what she was doing where she was, on the sidewalk, coming around the corner. Pulling a glove up her wrist, and smiling. Oh, smiling. With such great pleasure.

  Darrin couldn’t worry about her. Not at the moment. He shoved past her. “Mr. Tremayne!”

  He was shouting the man’s name long before he burst through the doorway.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ian had just settled into the swivel chair behind his desk. He was congratulating himself about Jimmy O’Brien—the Irish lad had proven himself to be an invaluable asset already. In time, he could take over a great deal of the management.
And the more management Ian could hand to others, the more time he had left for architecture and building.

  And Marissa, and a personal life that had suddenly become very important.

  “Hey, there, young sir! You can’t just go barging in on Mr. Tremayne! What’s the matter with you, lad?”

  Ian frowned. His secretary, Arthur Mount, had shouted the words. Through the frosted glass of his office window he could see the silhouette of Mount holding a squirming youngster by the collar.

  “I’ve got to see him! Let me go! It’s an emergency! You let me go or I’ll—”

  Mount groaned with pain. The youngster fell to the floor, then came crashing through Ian’s door. It was the orphan boy, Darrin. He rammed his cap down hard over his forehead. Ian stood, coming around his desk just as Arthur Mount limped in, following the boy.

  “I tried to stop the little hoodlum, Mr. Tremayne, I did! Give me just a minute and I’ll box his ears and—”

  “No, no, that’s all right, Arthur,” Ian said, somewhat amused by the belligerent boy and the indignant, limping secretary. “There must be some serious problem for Darrin to be so anxious. What is it, lad? Can we help you?”

  “They’ve got her!” the boy burst out. And suddenly the toughened street kid was stuttering. “They—they’ve taken her. Mrs.—Mrs. Tremayne. Two men. Outside on the street corner. I met her like I was supposed to, and I turned away. And they had her. Two men. They rode off in a carriage.”

  Ian stared at the boy blankly for a moment, unable to assimilate and unwilling to comprehend his words. “What?” The single word exploded from him like a rocket; he gripped Damn’s shoulders in a vise, staring at him hard. “What?”

  “Two men.” Darrin was thinking fast, desperately. He still trembled inwardly, but he gritted his teeth. “One tall with a handlebar mustache. Dark. Pin-striped suit, red vest. The other was blond, not as old as the other guy, maybe about twenty-two. No hat. No whiskers. They took her in a small black one-horse carriage pulled by a small bay, and rode down from the corner eastward—”

  “Barbary Coast,” Arthur supplied.

  “Chinatown, I think,” Darrin said, his wide eyes solemnly on Ian.

  Ian dropped the boy’s shoulders and headed for the door. “Call the police, Arthur. Get someone here quick. I mean quick!”

  He went out onto the street, ran the length of the store and tore around the corner. There was no sign of anyone there. No sign of a scuffle, nothing. Frantically he stared down the alleyway, feeling as if cold fingers had clamped down hard around his heart. The boy had made the whole thing up, he tried to tell himself. But he hadn’t. Darrin was beneath her spell, Ian had seen that easily enough. The lad adored her.

  He swung around. Darrin was there now, he had followed behind him, close, hopeful.

  “From here?” Ian demanded. “They took her from here?”

  Darrin nodded.

  “All right,” Ian said. “Get my horse from the livery stable. Then wait at the store and tell the police everything that you told me. Everything. Any little detail might be important.”

  Darrin fled to do as he had been told. Ian stepped out into the street. There were tracks everywhere, but he could just barely discern where a small carriage had been pulled in close to the buildings in the alleyway. Chinatown. He knew where they were heading. Into the brothels and opium dens, where beautiful women definitely had a price.

  Darrin was already coming down the street with his horse. He stared at the boy and he knew they both realized something.

  Marissa had to be found quickly, or she would never be found at all. That was the way when a woman was shanghaied.

  “Meet the police,” he told the boy. “And find Mr. O’Brien in the store. Tell him to get hold of John and Lee Kwan. Perhaps they can discover something. I’ll be in Chinatown.” He leaped quickly upon his horse. With a nod, he raced down the alleyway, heedless of traffic.

  The news of Marissa’s kidnapping spread like wildfire. She was the wife of one of San Francisco’s most prominent, affluent and respected men. Also, one of its most popular and charming, for in his days as a widower he had both shocked and excited the mamas of the society belles who would have gladly become his wife by his escapades in the dance halls of the Barbary Coast. Wickedly handsome in evening attire, he was apt to leave an opera for a late show and more decadent companionship. He was loved for his passion for certain ethics—and his total ignorance of others.

  In her mansion on Nob Hill, Grace Leroux heard the news from a neighbor with shocked distress.

  Then she turned into her doorway and smiled.

  Down near the waterfront, in the Barbary Coast, Lilli Reynolds heard the news, and her heart went out to Ian. Few people knew how deeply he had already been hurt.

  She called a special employee to her room.

  He was a man with a long scar down the left side of his face. He had small eyes, a cavernous face, and was surely as ugly as sin.

  But no one knew the dens of the Barbary Coast as well as he. His name was Jake Breed. He’d been in the Barbary Coast as long as anyone could remember. He didn’t work for Lilli because he needed money, but because she was the only person he had ever loved.

  From her settee Lilli lit a long cigarette and indicated the outside world. “Mrs. Tremayne has been taken. The police seem to imagine that she’s in Chinatown somewhere. She was taken by two men.” Lilli gave him the description Darrin had so meticulously given to Ian and then the police. “Find out what you can.” Lilli hesitated only a moment. “I have a feeling that this was no accidental job.”

  “I won’t come back without something,” Jake told her.

  Lilli offered him one of her warm smiles. “I know that.”

  Marissa awoke very slowly, the drug seeming to take a long, long time to fade. She was aware first of a sweet scent in the air. Then she came to realize that she was lying upon silk. She could feel the elegance, and the softness, and for long moments, the feel of that silk was deceptively comforting.

  It was difficult to open her eyes. When she finally managed to do so, she was stunned to realize that she was looking up a very long way at a very fat man.

  His hair was straight and black, and he had a long, straight black beard, and a mustache that fell over the beard with the same astounding length. He wore a Chinese coat and dark trousers, and he studied her, rubbing his bearded chin so that the long strands of hair shook.

  “Green eyes,” he murmured. Then he turned to someone behind him. “Yes, she is worth much. But you are overanxious—and greedy. We will discuss the price. I will send for tea and a pipe, and we will finish our business.”

  The price. They were talking about her. She wanted to leap up and rip out that black beard by the handful. She still couldn’t move. She could barely keep her eyes open.

  She decided to close them and try to fight off the sick dizziness that remained. She heard whispers.

  “The price doesn’t matter! We’ve already been paid!”

  “Right, damned right, so whatever we make now is pure profit, and I want some of it!” came the response. The first voice had been deeper. Marissa was certain that it belonged to the dark-haired man who had seized her. The second voice had been higher, more youthful. The blonde.

  And then the large Chinese man returned. She heard him ordering someone around, and heard the sound of liquid being poured into cups. She smelled something, a cloying, sweet scent, and she wondered if it was opium.

  The Chinese man gave her two abductors an offer for her. Apparently, it was shockingly low. “You must be insane! Not only has she green eyes, but she has golden hair! She’s young and beautiful. She has superb lines, wonderful breasts—” the blond man began.

  “And the word is on the streets as to who she is. The police are seeking her already.”

  “Ah,” interrupted the darker of her abductors. “But you have the resources to get her on a ship within the next hour. And once she is gone …”

  The Chine
se man haggled. Marissa slitted her eyes, desperate to survey her surroundings.

  She was in the corner of a large room. There were only two windows, and those were beyond the men who were haggling at a low round table. Straight across the room from her sat a woman, her head low, her back bowed in absolute submission. She was beautiful, a little China doll. She was there to serve the tea, to light the opium pipe, Marissa thought.

  She would not be difficult to elude.…

  But the men were there. If she tried to rise, to escape, they would be down on her in seconds. Carefully, unobtrusively, she tried to gain strength, flexing her fingers, then her toes. The feeling was coming back to her. She stiffened an arm, then a leg, then relaxed them. She started to inch over to the window. They weren’t paying the least bit of attention to her. If she were not too high up, perhaps she could jump out. And if she were high up …

  At least she could scream. She had to do something!

  They had come to some kind of an agreement. The men were rising. “They will take her to the ship right now. You will wait for your payment below until she is safely on the ship,” the heavy Chinese man said.

  Now … right now. They were coming for her now. They might drug her again, and she would be helpless, unable to protest.

  Marissa could afford no more finesse. She leaped to her feet and raced for the window.

  The blond man shouted and jumped. He was almost upon her. She turned and kicked him with all her strength. He bellowed in pain and fell to the floor. Marissa reached the window. She tore open the drapes.

  She was high, very high. On the third floor. If she jumped, she would kill herself.

  But the streets were crowded. The citizens of Chinatown pulled their little wagons through the street, or walked quickly, some with their papers, some with carts of vegetables and meats.

  Some were criminals.

  And some were good people.

  A hand touched Marissa’s shoulder.

  She leaned out the window and screamed. “Help! Help me! Oh, dear God, somebody help me!”

  She was wrenched into the room with such force that she fell, stunned, upon her back.