by A. G. Howard
Julian narrowed his eyes, observing Newton’s sudden preoccupation with the pile of broken furniture and the drawer’s contents littering the floor. “Their being actresses, it was all a front. Just like the rumors said. Sala is the proprietor of their bodies. He employs women who have … special talents. Contortionists, aerialists. And this man has in mind to put Willow to work for him. Lord only knows if they’re actually going to St. Louis. And we’ve already missed the first train. We’ll be over three hours behind them even if we catch the next one. A hell of a lot can happen in three hours. So don’t dare tell me to get a hold of myself.”
The judge’s mouth gaped. “We’ll put in a word to the authorities. We’ll start with the captain.”
“What … tell him my brother who stowed away on the ship is actually my lady, and I’m worried that an Italian prostitute ring has solicited her against her will? Of course he’ll believe in her maidenly innocence. After all, she’s been bunked up with me day and night. And I’m sure, once I confess how I’ve been lying to him all this time, that he’ll trust such an outrageous accusation against one of his highest paying patrons. We’re on our own here. Even the authorities won’t get involved without proof. Everyone will simply think Willow has taken off again, just like she always does.”
“And you’re sure she didn’t?”
The suggestion struck Julian with the force of a slap. His deaf mother was the fortunate one … being protected from the bite of such well-intentioned, tactless sentiments.
Of course Willow hadn’t left him. He relived last night—just as he had a thousand times over—relearning the secrets of her glorious body in his mind. He was the first man to ever give her pleasure. The first man to experience her afterglow … to give her his love. That poignant interlude had strengthened their resolve to be together; they spoke of marriage, the ultimate commitment. She wouldn’t try to escape—not after all of the intimacies they’d shared on this ship. Not after all of the years they’d grown up alongside one another, sharing the same goals and hopes. Anytime she’d ever run off was to be with him … not to leave him. And she would never have abandoned Newton.
No. This had not been her decision.
Her face flashed in front of his eyes—just as she’d looked last night lying naked on the floor, flushed and glistening beneath the moonlight—sweat lining her forehead like a halo of stars. So willing to give him her innocence … so trusting. Yet she had never even touched a man.
To think of someone violating her forcefully, hurting her…
Julian’s eyelids squeezed shut to subdue the rage rising again. He’d be no good to her if he exploded into a thousand pieces. He kneaded his temples to chase away the agonizing speculations.
“Perhaps she followed them of her own accord, to steal back the shoes.” Judge Arlington’s observation brought Julian back to the present. “She did admit to rather enjoying pilfering the costume from the tailor. The lady has a bit of a packrat in her. There’s thievery in her blood, I believe.”
Julian’s eyes snapped open. “Thievery,” he repeated with a whisper, something in the word calling to him. Before he could reason it out, Newton’s little fingers curled inside his. The child’s wide, black eyes locked his attention. He held up a pin-watch he’d found within the rubble then pointed to his shoes, tying it in some way to his sister.
“What did you find, mouse?” Kneeling, Julian took the watch and rubbed the boy’s silky hair, trying to understand the reference to Nadia. The only thing this proved was that Willow had indeed been taken by force. She’d been wearing her watch this morning when he left. She must have fought back when they tried to take her and lost it in the struggle; she would never have taken it off intentionally.
Julian’s jaw muscles tightened. That’s my fiery little acrobat. You just keep fighting until I find you…
He froze then, noting the swatch of torn fabric twisted around the fastening. It was tulle in the glossy hue of an egg yolk. Willow had been wearing a linen men’s shirt this morning … a soft celery shade. In fact, this wasn’t Willow’s watch at all. It was more of a brooch than a pin. By turning it to the back to seek the familiar engraving of Willow’s name, he only found one word: Fontianna.
He recognized it. But from where?
When Newton pointed to his shoes again, an epiphany hit Julian like a blinding burst of lightning. The stolen shoes … the stolen gown. They were Fontianna creations. That was the name of the designer. The tailor had said as much … along with his description of this very brooch. And this brooch belonged to Louisa … Medusa. Julian remembered her glancing at it for the time that night while she preoccupied him so her accomplices could steal the phantom shoes. She wanted those shoes to go with the dress … they needed the costume complete for it to be worth the fortune it once was.
Julian couldn’t believe he had overlooked the obvious for so long. He slapped his forehead. “Of course!”
Newton bounced up and down, feeding off of Julian’s excitement.
The judge plopped himself onto the lone chair left standing and mopped his face with his handkerchief. “Have you both gone mad?”
Julian patted Newton’s shoulder then stood and held up the brooch watch. “Those ladies are no more prostitutes than I am a wet nurse. But I can see why their special talents appeal to our Italian friend … so much so he would abduct the girls in their youth and continue to train them.”
Still baffled, the judge sighed. “I’ve no inkling to what you refer.”
“Remember how the article about the stolen shoes and dress mentioned that all of the locks and window panes were undisturbed at the museum? There were speculations that the shoes and dress walked out on their own, right past the night guards posted at each door.”
The judge shrugged, still not following.
“I’m unsure how the thieves got out,” Julian continued, “but I think I know how they got in. What if they visited during the day, when the museum had been opened to the public? What if they found a way to hide in the ceiling or in small spaces, waiting for the doors to close, for the lights to go out? Like bats bide in the rafters or mice in their dens, until darkness comes to cloak their scavenging.”
Judge Arlington perked up. “Circus talents.”
“Precisely. Louisa, when I met her in Sala’s cabin yesterday … she mentioned that I had something that belonged to Sala. Something far more personal and consequential than a pair of shoes.”
The judge nodded, loosening his tie. “The ground plans.”
Julian tucked in his shirt and headed over to the mess he’d made, searching for his most recent Threshold—the special edition highlighting the World’s Fair. “What about those plans made them so consequential, other than the location he’d marked with pinholes?” Having found the magazine, Julian flipped through several pages until he landed on an article Newton had dog-eared days earlier after trying unsuccessfully to tell Julian something about it.
Julian held up the feature about a priceless set of silk screens being displayed in the Japanese Pavilion. The prints were rumored to come to life beneath the light of a full moon, the screens having been made from the hair of a Japanese majo—or witch.
“You’ve known all along, haven’t you little mouse? You know who originally stole the latchet shoes, the entire Fontianna costume for that matter. I’m guessing they also stole that enchanted knife Sala used to cut meat the day we lunched together. And you know what they’re planning to steal next. This is why they want to be at the rehearsal the night before opening. The grounds will be all but abandoned. Those girls aren’t actresses or anything untoward, other than thieves. Specialty thieves.”
Newton nodded, then pointed to his feet.
“Nadia was one, too?”
Newton nodded again, a cloud darkening his tiny face.
Relief slowed Julian’s pounding heart. He no longer had to worry that Willow would be prostituted; but she was still in danger. Why would Sala want her now, after all this time? The
only thing he could figure was that Louisa must’ve seen Willow’s tattoo that night he exposed it on the promenade deck. She must have told Sala about the mark, and he instructed Willow be abducted, realizing it was the child that escaped him so many years ago. Perhaps he simply wanted his property back.
Fresh panic detonated the pulse in Julian’s neck. After helping Newton into his coat and hat then putting on his own, he took the mouse’s hand, grabbed their luggage, and started for the door. He glanced at the befuddled judge then at the mangled room. “If you could pay for the damages and loan me enough funding for an extra train fare … I will see you get a twenty percent increase on your intake of the profits from the park this summer.”
The judge struggled to stand, rolling from one hip to the other until his belly was centered between his knees to give him leverage. He grunted upon rising. “What of Willow’s brother? You said he was meeting her in London.”
“I’ll send a missive to the hotel; apprise him of Willow’s fate, of our destination. I saw some Hansom cabs waiting to carry passengers from the docks to the city. We’ll hire one to take us to the depot.”
The judge’s forehead furrowed. He still had questions.
“I’ll explain more on the way. We have to catch the next train. We’ve two days to get to the fair in time for that rehearsal. We’ll go to the fairgrounds the moment we disembark.”
The judge waved for Julian to exit the room in front of him.
Julian squeezed Newton’s hand as they stepped into the corridor, guilt burrowing deep into the marrow of his bones. Willow would despise him for what he was about to do. But he didn’t have a choice. She meant more to him than anything in this world. To rescue her, he would have to bargain with the one thing which could stop Sala in his tracks: his only son, resurrected from the dead.
Willow awoke to the rumble of a train shuddering through her legs and thighs. She wriggled on the cushioned bench beneath her, her buttocks stiff from being in the same position for too long. Even with her eyes open, blackness swallowed her. She blinked, and the satin tugged at her lashes where a blindfold grated against her soul like the knotted ropes chafing the tender skin of her wrists and ankles.
She stretched her interwoven fingers out on her lap, and began to recount the events which had landed her here. When she’d stepped out of the water closet in the stateroom, she found the judge and Newton gone. In their place was Louisa, accusing Willow of withholding Newton from his father. The woman said she had Newton in her cabin in the ladies’ quarters, and threatened to go to Mr. Sala unless Willow accompanied her.
Willow had sensed foul play. She knew it was a one-way trip, and if she went, she might not see Julian again. He wouldn’t know where she was … might even assume she had left on her own so he couldn’t send her back to London. As much as it pained her to think of him feeling hurt and betrayed, she couldn’t bring herself to risk the chance that Louisa’s threats were real. So she’d left with the woman without too much fuss, although she did manage to feign tripping and discreetly ripped off her captor’s brooch. She’d tucked it in the desk drawer in the hopes Julian would find it and realize who had her.
When they’d stepped into Louisa’s stateroom, two other women came at her with a gag and bound her in ropes. Forced into the dark depths of a trunk, she folded her body to the most comfortable position and sought out Julian’s scent on her clothes. Immersed in him, she wove a placid net of memories … tempering her impulse to panic. Her captors had warned her not to make a peep or Newton would be handed over to his father. Though she hadn’t seen any sign of the little widget, she had no choice but to bide their rules. So she endured being dragged up a bumpy staircase and loaded onto a hackney stage in silence.
She became a child again in that trunk, a child equipped with the cruel wisdom of a woman. For this time, she no longer had a doll to hold, or a bag over her head, and her mind’s eye could see with vivid clarity the horror awaiting her. Throughout the ride, her tattoo flitted along her back—a taunting reminder of what she had been marked to become.
But somehow, during that painful interim, she remembered the wandering song from her youth. She drew courage from the melody, from the words, determined not be powerless. She would not allow the beautiful intimacies she’d shared with Julian to be tainted by a forced tryst with a stranger … or lose her innocence to some bastardo stupratore—for any man who used women so thoughtlessly was a rapist whether he paid or not. She was an aerialist, a contortionist, and a master of escape. She would find some way out of this, away from Sala, just as she had when she was a broken little girl whose parents were murdered before her eyes.
Now, freed from the trunk and seated inside this private couchette compartment, she was no longer hidden away. Just thinking upon her Italian nemesis—the giant faceless shadow she had yet to meet face to face—a nervous tremor rushed through her body, as if she were sliced open beneath the train instead of riding in it. As if her veins formed the rails on which the razor-like wheels ground and spun.
Sucking on her lower lip, she tugged at her bindings to find them even tighter than before she’d slept. She fought the urge to writhe upon the bench and demand her freedom. Earlier, when the girls first pulled her from the trunk, her rebellion had won her nothing but a blindfold and a dose of bitter tea that promptly cast her into a world of dreams—dark and disturbing. She’d awakened from time to time, yet never fully until this moment.
From the scent of breakfast seeping beneath the door, she surmised she’d missed an entire day and night. She hadn’t eaten for hours, but her nerves squelched any hunger pangs. By tomorrow morning, the train would reach St. Louis and whatever depraved plans her captors had for her would be realized. Shoving aside her anxieties, Willow turned her senses to the cues around her, trying to assess who guarded her now.
She’d made mental notes of each of the four girls when they first captured her on the ship and when they’d taken her out of the trunk here in their car. She tied their names to their mannerisms and scents much like Julian’s blind grandfather used to categorize the different parts of a watch by their shape and the metal which formed them. She decided, if he could build a watch in utter darkness, she could piece together a person’s identity.
Louisa was the oldest and the leader, without question. Willow had immediately recognized her voice as the dominant woman outside the door of Julian’s stateroom when she and Newton had first taken Nadia’s shoes—the brazen Medusa Julian had almost kissed on the deck of the ship before Willow intervened. Louisa moved with such confidence that her skirt rustled harshly with each step as if it murmured aspersions against her. She radiated seduction when she spoke, a provocative cushion of words, and Willow imagined the woman could charm a famished snake not to strike at an overweight rat. Her scent brought to mind gardenia blossoms planted in the midst of a strawberry field.
Gwenaviere moved like a sparrow, nervous and flitting—which led Willow to deduce she was the thinnest one. Her shoes patted the floor like bared palms smacking flat stones. She cleared her throat constantly—an allergic affliction which inflamed and annoyed both Josephine and Louisa. Each time Gwenaviere was in proximity, a flourish of damp oak and molding moss put Willow in mind of a stroll through a rain-slogged forest.
Josephine was the voluptuousness one, judging by how her petticoats slapped her hips when she moved, sounding much like the flapping parapets high atop the poles within Julian’s amusement park. The woman loved coffee, indicated by the drink’s pungent scent upon her skin, so strong Willow wondered if she bathed in it. Her speech had a jolly slant, and she laughed most of anyone in the group, though to Willow she had been nothing but indifferent.
Now, Willow measured the traits of her present company. Her warden’s breathing—rhythmic and whistling—along with the delicate scent of citrus and cinnamon, told Willow all she needed to know. It was the youngest of the girls, Katherine—the second woman Willow had heard speaking outside of Julian’s stateroom door da
ys ago.
Willow’s heart gave a small leap. She’d been waiting for this opportunity, praying the others would leave them alone together. Katherine had a sweet nature, gentle and curious. She had stood back in the corner of Louisa’s stateroom on the ship as the others bound Willow. Her frown grew longer with each knot her companions tied. It was also Katherine’s soft voice Willow had heard demanding the men be careful when they were unloading Willow’s trunk from the stage to place it on the train.
Willow supposed such compassion was considered a weakness by Louisa, judging by how she constantly reprimanded the girl. Willow was surprised the others would risk leaving her with Katherine unsupervised. She imagined they’d gone to eat and assumed their captive would sleep until they returned.
They had assumed wrong.
Willow forced a gasp, as if she’d just awakened. “Hello?” Another drag of air through her lips. “Is someone there … please … I’m afraid of the dark. Please … I … I need light.”
“Shhh … shhh. I’m here with you.” The delicate swish of a hem crossed the floor toward her. No footsteps echoed the movements, validating Willow’s theory. It was indeed Katherine, for she was the only one who liked to lounge about with her feet unshod—a preference that bore holes in her stockings and won scalding admonishments from Louisa. Of all the girls, Willow had the most in common with Katherine, rendering her an easy read. She planned to use this to her full advantage.
“I suppose it shan’t hurt to unveil you,” Katherine soothed. “If you promise to behave.”
“I do … please…” Willow felt Katherine nudge the knot on the back of her head. Now all she’d need was to figure a way out of the ropes. “Please tell me,” Willow said as the fabric started to loosen from her eyes. “Do they have Newton?”
Katherine paused, her hands stalled on the ties, keeping Willow’s eyes covered. “They never had him. You are the one Louisa wanted all along. Ever since she saw the mark on your back.”