Darby: Bride of Oregon (American Mail-Order Bride 33)

by Bella Bowen

  She closed the door on their protests and begged them to keep quiet. Then she hurried to her wardrobe, changed into a dark blouse and skirt, good sturdy boots, and a deep blue cloak. She crept out the kitchen door closest to the carriage house, then moved from shadow to shadow until she was inside. There was one horse in the stable. She only hoped it was a gentle one.

  Saddling seemed to take forever, and as each moment passed, her fingers shook harder and harder. Twice, she had to take some deep breaths and console the horse, since it could sense her fear. Maybe it could smell it on her.

  Finally, she felt confident the saddle would hold, and climbed on. She draped herself along the animal’s back so she didn’t get scraped off as it carried her out the small door. She braced herself for an attack or a gunshot. But the animal cleared the yard and ran swiftly down the drive with no prompting necessary.

  The horse seemed to know the way well enough, so she gave it its head while he carried her back and forth down the mountainside. Though she was exposed on the road, she couldn’t have cut through the forest without scaring herself to death. The shadows of the trees were intimidating enough. If their branches reached out for her, she’d be a crying, screeching mess and her horse would leave her to the wolves.

  Ten minutes later, she was clattering across the bridge leaving Cookie and Jenny behind to who knew what dangers. She had to remember to send help to them as soon as she found someone she could trust. But she’d only been in town a couple of times since her wedding day. And she would never be able to find the Phantom’s lair unless she repeated the ritual from the last time.

  Though it went against her instincts, she turned south. The stock yard couldn’t be hard to find, and hopefully, the toothless fellow was still on hand to help her.

  As she moved through the darkening streets on the far side of the river, the sway of a lantern caught her eye. With fewer trees and tall buildings, the wind, stirred by the flow of the Willamette, blew freely in that part of town. The lantern hanging at the side of the small house swung back and forth of its own accord. But the stoop it lit was familiar.

  It had to be the house where she’d changed into men’s clothing, then taken the hack to Jezebel’s brothel. Her husband’s people would be inside. There was no need to find the stockyard after all!

  She turned her horse and urged it into a trot. She passed no one in the length of the block and she would have thought the area deserted if it weren’t for lit windows here and there. She wrapped her reins over a post ring and hurried up the steps. She knocked as she’d knocked before. Twice. Then once. Then four times.

  The door swung open and a familiar face greeted her. Foster, he’d been called. He’d been the nervous man standing guard at the door when she’d found Rand’s leg sliced nearly to the bone.

  He urged her inside, peeked at the road, then closed the door.

  “I need to find my husband,” she explained. “And I need to send help to the house. My maid and cook are holed up inside. The guards have been... The guards are gone.”

  “And Elton?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  He seemed to be the only soul there. The rest of the small house was quiet. But one man couldn’t find help for the women and lead Darby to her husband. “Is there anyone else who can take me to Rand? So you can get help to the house?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll take you to your husband, and along the way, we’ll find the help we need. Don’t fret now.”

  He took a scarf from a peg and told her to cover her hair. Then he led her back out to her horse where he mounted and reached down for her hand.

  “Aren’t we supposed to catch a hack from here?”

  “No time. Rand will understand.”

  She doubted it. But at least, when she got into trouble, she wouldn’t have to take all of the blame. The important thing was to make sure Beauregard was safe. Nothing else mattered—certainly not the contract they had yet to negotiate.

  Harrigan had been toying with her, trying to scare her. Had he wanted her to go searching for her husband? Had she walked right into his trap? She couldn’t know. But everything inside her screamed to find Rand Beauregard. If they were together, she could face whatever treachery Harrigan had planned.

  Her heart lurched with painful understanding. Heaven help her, she’d fallen in love with her husband.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Foster took Darby back the way she’d come. Once they were over the bridge, they traveled only two blocks before he turned to the left and moved parallel to the waterfront. The further they went, the more clearly she remembered the smells from when she’d scurried through the tunnels behind the crippled man called Nero.

  Foster turned the horse down an alley and suddenly they were at the rear entrance to Jezebel’s brothel, The Port Queen. After leaving the horse to its own devices, he led her around to the far side and through an old door. Obviously, he hadn’t seen the need for the pretense of climbing up and down two flights of stairs.

  They moved quickly but silently through hallway after hallway until she was sure they couldn’t be in the same building they’d started in. She just hoped, when they opened a door, that Rand would be on the other side of it.

  Finally, Foster stopped at a door and pushed it open with only a faint squeak. They ducked inside. No Rand.

  Dim lighting from the hallway allowed Foster to find and light a lamp, then he closed the door. The taste of dust was thick in the air. “There should be some whisky,” Foster said, “at the end of the bar there. I could use a shot.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. We have to wait a few minutes, you see. Three knocks. Then we’ll know it’s safe.”

  Three knocks. She just hoped the cavalry would hurry.

  She walked to the bar and reached for the whisky bottle. The dust was thick, but there were marks on it, as if it had been pulled from someone’s hands.

  She wrapped her hand around it just as three clear knocks sounded at the door. She turned to find Foster standing with his knuckle poised for knocking, a grin on his face.

  Was he teasing her?

  Foster shrugged, his eyes bright with glee. “He’s spared no expense to make certain you get the full tour of the city.”

  Darby grabbed the bottle to throw it at the man but the floor fell out from under her and her fingers slipped from the square of glass that had been permanently attached to the bar. Her elbow hit the edge of the trap door as she dropped. She caught and held her breath just in case she landed in water, but she didn’t.

  Her feet struck something firm but soft, and her momentum bent her forward. She rolled arse over teakettle down a slope of what felt like mattresses and finally stopped on a hard brick floor.

  “Upsie Daisy,” a man’s voice said from her left. She was caught by both elbows and lifted to her feet. Then the two shadowy figures hurried her forward so quickly she could barely keep her feet beneath her. She considered resisting, but the way her arms were being pinched promised pain.

  “Unhand me, ye bastards. Or I swear I will feed ye piece by piece to the Phantom himself!

  They laughed, both of them. Like maybe they planned to feed her to someone…piece by piece.

  She lost track of the turns. Right, right, left. Then right and right again? The smell suddenly worsened and she knew they were getting close to water. She could feel the wet against her skin. She must have lost the cloak in the fall.

  If she survived the night, Beauregard would kill her himself. She wasn’t supposed to come across the river after dark. Hadn’t she promised?

  She would have to point out the fact that she had yet to sign any contract. She only hoped she’d have the chance to see his angry face again in order to do just that.

  Her escorts spun her around a corner and gave her a shove. She was free of their grasp, but not free at all. Her chest slammed against a wall and a metal gate crashed behind her, catching her in a tiny cell too small to even sit in. Her captors
held onto the bars and grinned. And though the wall behind her was damp, she preferred to press back against it to gain as much distance as possible from the cheerful bastards.

  So this was one of the cages her husband lost sleep over. She just hoped he was free to check this one before her captors decided to crawl inside with her.

  The walls were solid to either side, and with the two men blocking the opening, she felt suddenly starved for air. So she coughed, then coughed again. But the men didn’t budge until she stepped forward and coughed in their faces.

  “I hope I don’t have the plague or something. Is pneumonia contagious, I wonder?”

  Someone laughed behind her captors and they turned. Though she couldn’t see clearly, and she doubted every one of her senses at the moment, Darby was almost sure she’d glimpsed Jezebel’s face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Rand paced back and forth just inside the door of his lair. If he was sane in the morning, it would be a miracle.

  At a faint sound, he paused to listen. Nero’s whistle repeated.

  About damned time!

  He hurried to the bedroom, checked to make certain his unexpected visitor was still out cold, then barred the door with a heavy pipe just in case. There couldn’t be any loose tongues tonight.

  He slipped outside, locked the large steel door, then slipped the key into the Chinese puzzle box and tucked it out of sight. Only he, Jez, and Shadow knew how to open it. If none of them survived the night, his prisoner might never get out.

  The hack was waiting. One more deal with a devil, and it would be done. He paid the driver, gave the address, and opened the door. Jez was seated inside, waiting.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. The last thing he needed tonight was for her to be staring at him, trying to read his mind.

  “I thought you might like some company.”

  “Tonight? You’re loco.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t want company, but surely you’d like me to help you relax a little, before the fireworks start.” She pressed her leg against his and laid her hand on his knee.

  He looked out the window, even though there was little to see in the dark, and ignored her.

  She rubbed his leg. “You know, it’s not nice to think about one woman while entertaining another one.”

  He lifted her hand off him, then tossed it back at her. “Are you trying to provoke me?”

  Jez grunted and rolled her eyes. “She’s the enemy, Rand. Remember?”

  He shook his head. He just couldn’t make himself believe Darby had betrayed him to Harrigan. Of course there was a good chance she was just as upset with him as he’d been with her. So maybe, in the middle of a temper tantrum, she might have done something stupid. But she wouldn’t intentionally destroy everything he’d worked for and endanger his life. If she were angry enough, the reasonable thing would be to leave him.

  He suddenly remembered a couple of times she’d been unreasonable—in the mountains, when she’d run blindly through the woods, and at Rosemary’s, when she’d been prepared to play the harlot with a stranger.

  However, those were harrowing times. He’d pushed her too far. He understood that now. But he hadn’t seen her for days. He’d done nothing to provoke her since they’d separated at the train station. Besides, the Scot in her might be an emotional fool, but Lady Beauregard would never betray him to the enemy. And somewhere, inside that Scottish girl, was his wife…

  Lady Beauregard had loved him. And damn it all if he hadn’t loved her.

  They passed by the opera house where gas lights still had the place lit up like midday. Something inside the carriage reflected that light into his eyes and he searched the shadows to find out what it was.

  Again, there was a flash. He picked up Jez’s hand again and looked closely at her finger where a ring blinked back at him.

  “She gave it to me,” she said.

  “Darby gave you her wedding ring?”

  “She did. I swear it. She said, Here. I have something that belongs to you. Then she put this in my hand and said goodbye. Maybe she thought we would never see each other again. I mean, maybe she already planned to betray you.”

  “When did she give it to you?”

  “In the carriage…”

  His chest tightened. “When were you in a carriage with my wife, Jez?”

  She turned on him. “You mean your Scottish wife?”

  “Yeah. That one. Tell me. When were you two in a carriage together?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was at the brothel. Maybe at your house, in the library. It’s dark in the library.”

  “You know exactly when and where it was, Jez. And if you don’t tell me all of it, you can get out right now.”

  She huffed out her breath. “Fine. It was in her carriage, after you two got off the train and went your separate ways. Your telegram was cryptic. She’s Scottish. That’s all you said. So I had to go see for myself. So I got in a hack and chased Jacobs down. I climbed into her carriage so no one would see us talking. And I asked her. That’s when she gave me the ring. And that’s all.”

  “That’s all? Jez, you’re a fool. It wasn’t Darby who gave me away to Harrigan. It was you!”

  The guilt that appeared and quickly disappeared from her face told him all he needed to know. Jez had known, or at least suspected that she was responsible for the current disaster. And she’d led him to believe it was Darby.

  If and how he would ever be able to forgive Jezebel would depend entirely upon how the rest of the night went. If she was smart, she’d start repenting right away.

  His relief must have been easy to read, because Jez started pouting again.

  “She thinks you love me, by the way. Did you get that? That’s why she gave me the ring.”

  “Yes. I got it. And just so she understands perfectly, I’m going to give it back to her.” He held out his hand and waited.

  Jez gasped in pretended outrage he didn’t begin to believe. He just wiggled his fingers.

  “You love her, don’t you?”

  “I guess I must.”

  “Scottish and all?”

  “Scottish and all.”

  “So you’ll give her the ring?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will that be before or after you sell her to the captain?” She pressed the ring into his hand. He tucked it away in a pocket, then turned to face the window again. The shadows were closing in on him.

  “Well?”

  “The monster must be fed,” he said, and was relieved when that turned out to be answer enough.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Darby’s legs couldn’t do it anymore. And she couldn’t stomach touching the damp wall again, so she turned and leaned against a side wall and bent until her knees pressed against the one opposite.

  She would suggest to the proprietors that they supply a chair to their next guest.

  It occurred to her that the cell she occupied seemed ancient. Rand had told her, once upon a time, that the tunnels and their barbaric uses had been around for half a century. And she was pretty sure she was standing in an original. But if Rand destroyed the cages in order to buy some time, maybe he didn’t know about that particular cage. Maybe he wouldn’t know to even look for her there, if in fact, he knew she was missing.

  Another possibility niggled at her. And there, in the dark, frightened out of her mind, she was ill-equipped to ignore anything.

  What if… What if he’d never destroyed any of the cages because…he really was the monster he tried to convince her he was? What if the Phantom really did sell innocent people to the sea captains?

  What if that house had been purchased from all the wealth he’d accumulated over the years, catching people in the traps below Jez’s brothel? They’d been together for a long time…

  Jenny’s words came back to her. And those he didn’t sell…he ate?

  The idea was so ridiculous, she laughed. But what about the rest? Was it so unlikely? Was he anxious
to be Governor to clean up the coastline? Or to spread his influence? With Oregon and Washington almost a straight route across the ocean from China, he could monopolize the slave trade…

  She could see that Harrigan fellow plotting such an evil scheme. But Rand? Was it only a coincidence that Hardy Jacobs, her closest ally in Portland, had suddenly been sent down the coast on business?

  And what Foster had said, just before he opened the trap door, that he had spared no expense? Just who was he? Harrigan or her own husband?

  ~ ~ ~

  Rand couldn’t help but notice how Jez fidgeted beside him. She worried at her lip. She rubbed the finger where the ring had been. Her toe tapped. And since Jez was rarely nervous, he knew something was wrong.

  “Tell me, Jez. How did Darby take it when you explained the plan tonight?”

  She shrugged and looked out the dark window. “She wasn’t too happy to be lured into the city, if that’s what you mean.”

  “She never questioned your note? She left as soon as it was delivered?”

  Jez nodded.

  “And she wasn’t frightened? To be involved in something this dangerous?” He wished he hadn’t asked, dreaded the answer. He’d been beating himself up for not explaining it all to her himself, but with Harrigan watching so closely, he hadn’t dared get close to her without showing his hand.

  Jez laughed. “The lass was joking with the Jeppsons when I left her.”

  His stomach plummeted. He took Jez by the shoulders and shook her. “She was still awake? Are you insane? She was supposed to be unconscious before she went in the cage!” He considered turning around and going back for his poor wife, but they might never know peace if he didn’t go through with his plan. Harrigan had to be stopped—tonight!

  Jez shook her head. “She’s a Scotswoman. A fighter. I offered her the drink but she didn’t trust me by then. And I wouldn’t worry about the Jeppsons. They open that cage, she’ll eat them alive.”