A Deadly Fortune

by Stacie Murphy

  For Audrey, who taught me about the passage of time, and for Hillary, who persists.

  Fate leads the willing; the unwilling it drags.

  —Lucius Annaeus Seneca

  1

  Late February 1893

  She had him. She was sure of it. Amelia studied the young man from beneath her eyelashes. He perched on the edge of his seat, hunched forward and eyeing the deck of cards as though it were a coiled serpent. She let the weight of the moment hang for another breath, then slid the stack across the table with an abrupt little movement. He flinched. The corner of her mouth twitched, but she smothered the smile before it could emerge.

  “We might try again,” Amelia said, her tone warm and encouraging. “Perhaps the second card will reveal what the first could not.”

  He swallowed hard and reached to cut the deck with a hand that did not quite tremble.

  Amelia gave the cards a final shuffle. Their worn edges, full of tiny nicks and creases, were as readable as labels. With the barest glance, she chose the card she wanted. A practiced flick of her fingers floated it to the top.

  She drew and turned: the Chariot, reversed. She sighed, a hint of regret in the sound.

  His head jerked up. “What do you see?”

  “I’m sorry.” Her face was grave. “The answer is much the same. This is a card of uncertainty. Risk. It implies a journey.” She hesitated. “It’s also a water card, although—”

  He leapt to his feet, knocking his chair to the floor. With a wild look around the room, he rushed for the door.

  “Fate has a plan for us all,” she called after him, half-standing. “All we can do is meet it with fortitude.”

  A muffled curse and a slammed door were the only response.

  Amelia lifted her chin and allowed herself a satisfied grin. Served him right.

  The sound of his exit had barely faded before the door began to open again. Amelia hurriedly resettled herself on the upholstered chair, spreading the skirt of her gown so the green silk puddled around her, shimmering in the gaslight.

  She looked up, her face and posture inviting.

  “What on earth did you do to that one?” Jonas said as he appeared in the doorway. “He lit out of here like the hounds were after him.”

  Amelia dropped her languid pose and straightened with a look of frank welcome. “I told him I saw him at sea during a storm.”

  “Was it real?”

  “The sea voyage is real enough. I saw the top of a Cunard ticket sticking out of his waistcoat pocket when he sat down. As for the rest…” She shrugged. “Storms are common on the crossing. And he’s nervous enough that if there’s so much as a cloud in the sky he’ll see Christ and his angels coming. He’ll think I told him true either way.”

  “So nothing tonight.”

  “No, but the take has been good anyway.”

  “It’s been a while since you had a real one.”

  “Not so long. There was the woman a few weeks ago,” she reminded him, standing. “I told her that her husband was on his way home and she’d best move her new friend out of her bedroom. That one was real.”

  “I’d forgotten about her. It was a footman, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Amelia crossed to the window and pulled aside the heavy drapery. Her skirt rustled as she leaned forward to peer down at the street. The electric streetlights the city had begun installing were still confined to the main thoroughfares, leaving side streets like theirs bathed in the soft glow of gaslight, which danced over a row of hansom cabs in front of the building, horses dozing with their heads down, drivers clustered by the doorway.

  “I’ve been busy so far tonight. How has it been on the floor?” She let the curtain fall and turned to Jonas. He stood before the mirror, brushing invisible flecks off the nap of his jacket.

  “Busy there as well,” he replied, without turning from his reflection. “I’ve been run half off my feet already. And Niehaus is here again. He’s been pestering me all night—at my elbow every time I turn around.”

  “He’s the one doing the statue of Moses?”

  He nodded.

  She snorted. “That’s positively indecent—you as the model for anything biblical.”

  “I know. Isn’t it delicious?” He looked at Amelia and grinned. “He’s raised his sitting fee. I said I’d consider it.”

  Amelia knew she was pretty, if unremarkably so. Jonas, though. He had already been sculpted twice and painted more times than she could count. Tonight’s midnight blue coat matched his eyes and emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. Coal-black hair curled over his collar. An adolescent break had left him with a slight crook to his nose. It made him snore terribly but saved his face from dull perfection.

  He looked her over. “I was right about that color. It suits you. You should wear it more often. I came up to see if you want to watch Lina’s last show. She’s on in a few minutes, and you don’t have anyone else waiting.”

  She stretched. “All right. I could use a break.”

  They crossed to the doorway and started down the corridor. The private gaming rooms were full, if the haze of cigar smoke and the waiters gliding in and out delivering drinks and small plates of delicacies were any indication. A lucrative night all around.

  “Why didn’t you tell that fellow he’d reach port safely?” Jonas asked. “Why did you let him leave so upset?”

  Amelia grinned. “I heard him talking in the hallway before he came in. He made a rude joke about Tommy,” she said, referring to the club’s Black doorman. “I decided he deserved to sweat a little.”

  Jonas glanced down at her and grinned back, his left cheek dimpling.

  They reached the balcony overlooking the main floor, and Amelia peered over the rail at the noisy throng. “Sabine’s in her parlor?”

  “Yes, and my sympathies to anyone who has to ask her for anything tonight,” he answered. At her raised eyebrow, Jonas explained. “She tried one last time to convince Lina not to leave. It didn’t go well.”

  It wouldn’t have. The pretty young woman had announced she was leaving for San Francisco with one of her regulars, an older man who swore he would marry her—though Amelia had her doubts about that. Annoyed at the prospect of losing one of her most popular girls, and perhaps even genuinely concerned for Lina’s welfare, Sabine had not taken the news well. The resulting shouting match had fairly scorched the walls, and Lina had required soothing to convince her to stay for a series of farewell engagements.

  Now the girl received a raucous welcome as she took the stage for the last time, wearing a feathered satin dress that revealed a scandalous length of perfect leg. As Lina began a teasing dance to the accompaniment of the piano, Amelia surveyed the scene below and marveled—not for the first time—at how fortunate she and Jonas had been to find a place here.

  Two years earlier, they’d been standing on a street corner, Amelia telling fortunes while Jonas watched over her and entertained passersby with quips and sleight of hand. Sabine had waited for a lull in business and approached Amelia with an offer.

  “I own a club off Washington Square. You two should think about coming to work for me. I’m always looking for pretty girls. And pretty boys.” She cast an appraising look at Jonas. “You could—”

  “I’m not a whore,” Amelia interrupted, accustomed to fending off such proposals. “I don’t—”

  “That’s fine,” Sabine said. “I have plenty of others who do. You put on a good show. If I get you cleaned up and properly dressed, you could do well.” She nodded at Jonas, who, as usual, stood far enough back not to loom, but close enough to intervene if needed. “Your man there…”

  “My brother,” Amelia told her, more or less truthfully.

  Sabine ran a skeptical eye
over the large, black-haired man before turning back to Amelia’s own petite blond form. “Well, whatever he is, he has a way about him. I can always use that. At any rate”—she raised her voice to address the pair of them—“I’m willing to try you out for a few months; then we’ll see where we are.”

  Amelia and Jonas exchanged a look. They hadn’t survived by ignoring good chances. And they had plenty of experience getting out of bad situations.

  Sabine was as good as her word. After those first few months, they’d moved into a set of small rooms in the old carriage house behind the club. Jonas worked the floor, appearing whenever he was needed to charm new guests or eject those who became unruly. Amelia held séances and told fortunes. And if her unreliable gift rarely showed itself, she’d long ago learned to compensate.

  She had her seer’s crystal, useless lump of rock though it was. And she had the cards, with their intricate swirls of color and stylized pictures. They were ink on paper and nothing more, but they were pretty. The clients liked them. And when the clients were happy, the coins flowed like water.

  The club was a world unto itself, where the strict social hierarchy that ruled outside the doors was temporarily suspended. No few of Mr. McAllister’s Four Hundred were frequent guests of Sabine’s. They mingled with artists and drank with actors and conducted liaisons that would have gotten them struck from invitation lists throughout the city were they to become publicly known. To that end, various city officials received envelopes fat with cash each month. In return, they happily turned a blind eye to the misdemeanors taking place beneath Sabine’s roof.

  The moral crusaders were another matter. Tommy managed them. He stood guard at the front door each night, as immovable as St. Peter. He turned away temperance advocates, anti-vice crusaders, and other assorted Comstockian zealots, as well as the rowdier university students and anyone else who looked likely to make too much trouble—although Sabine believed a little trouble kept the place lively.

  Onstage, Lina finished her performance with a final flourish and blew a kiss to the cheering audience. The girl leaned down to accept an enormous bouquet of roses from a woman with a mannish haircut and a severely tailored suit. She whispered something in Lina’s ear, and the girl laughed and shook her head.

  Although the men and women who worked for Sabine weren’t technically whores, nearly all of them were willing to entertain offers. Lina, it appeared, had just declined a final overture from a former client.

  “Sabine’s right. She’s making a mistake,” Amelia said, as Lina’s would-be suitor turned away with an air of resignation.

  Jonas was scanning the crowd with an avidity Amelia recognized from recent experience. Looking for Sidney. Amelia suppressed a sigh. Jonas was selective, but he often took advantage of the offers that came his way. He’d left a trail of broken hearts and lightened wallets in his wake. He’d always been diligent about preventing attachments from forming—on his side, at least. But this most recent entanglement left Amelia on edge. She’d seen the young man once or twice from across the room and hadn’t been impressed. But Jonas seemed to like him. They’d even met away from the club, although Jonas still thought she didn’t know about that.

  “Maybe,” he said finally.

  “Maybe?” Amelia turned toward him. “Lina’s giving up her freedom, her ability to make her own money. And for what?”

  “Maybe she loves him.”

  Amelia snorted. “More fool her, then.” She pushed away from the railing. “Come on. We have to get back to work.”

  * * *

  Hours later, after a particularly lengthy reading, Amelia stood with a groan as Jonas entered the room. She cast a baleful look at the sparkling chunk of quartz on the table. “Enough. I can’t look at another card or stare at that blasted thing any longer.”

  He crossed the room and began to massage her temples as she leaned against his chest. Eventually she sighed and pulled away.

  “Let’s see if there’s anything left in the kitchen and call it a night,” Amelia said. “I want something for this headache, and I want my bed.”

  They made their way down the staircase and through the front room. The crowd had dwindled, although a few people still sat finishing their drinks and pulling out wallets and purses to pay what were certain to be, in some cases, truly enormous tabs. Tommy stood by the front door, ready to help inebriated guests into waiting cabs.

  They passed the shining oak bar at the back of the room and nodded to one of the bartenders as he wiped glassware and whistled to himself.

  “We had a good night,” Amelia said. When Jonas didn’t respond, she turned and found him scanning the thinning crowd once more. He stiffened when he saw her watching.

  She couldn’t stop herself. “Sidney wasn’t here tonight?”

  “No.”

  She couldn’t think what to say, so settled for: “Are you sure it’s—” in as neutral a tone as she could manage. It was not neutral enough.

  “Don’t. You’ve been clear about what you think. I don’t need to hear it again.”

  Stung, Amelia let it drop as they entered the kitchen. The staff were cleaning with the manic energy of people who’d already worked all night and knew they needed one final push before they could leave. Jonas wove around busboys carrying dirty linens and stacks of clean plates, Amelia in his wake.

  “Lina was here earlier,” Jonas said, reaching a side table where a paper sack sat beside a roll of fabric. “She was giving away most of her things. Said she’s getting a whole new wardrobe when they get to California. I snagged this for you.” He shook out the cloth bundle to reveal a heavy velvet cloak. “It’ll be long on you, and it’s got her name stitched inside, but you can pick that out,” he said. “It’s quite a bit nicer than yours.”

  Amelia reached for it. “Thank you. Is there supper?”

  He held up the sack.

  They walked out the back door, crossed the courtyard, and climbed the stairs to their apartment in silence, the air between them still thick. Amelia hung her new cloak on the hook beside the door and smoothed the heavy fabric with the back of her hand. The paper sack held a pair of cold meat pies, the flaky crust only slightly toughened after sitting for several hours. After they ate, they took turns using the tiny washroom. Jonas disappeared into his room without saying good night.

  Amelia undressed in her narrow room, pulling off her gown and sighing with relief as she released the hooks on her corset. She tossed both garments onto the spindly wooden chair in the corner, then reconsidered with another sigh and hung up the gown properly. She brushed her hair out of its chignon and wound the honey-colored strands into a loose braid. She climbed into bed in her shift, still troubled. She didn’t like being crosswise with Jonas. They rarely apologized to each other, generally tending to let their disagreements slough away unremarked upon. As she considered getting up to make an exception, Jonas knocked on her door and stuck his head into the room, already in his nightshirt.

  “Would you like to listen to me read for a while?” he asked, his tone casual.

  A truce, then. Something in her chest relaxed. “What is it?” she asked warily. “One of your science magazines?”

  “No, but I can get one of those, if you’d prefer. This,” he replied with a grin, holding up a slim volume with a flourish, “is trash. A novel of mystery, seduction, and ruin. Orphans and waifs and men with bad intentions. Probably someone will die of a broken heart before it’s over, and the wicked will get their comeuppance.”

  “No,” she said through a huff of laughter. “I’ve had more than enough of those. This one is all yours. You can read me the next one.”

  “All right.” He pulled the door closed as he left.

  Smiling, Amelia doused the lamp beside her bed and put her head on her pillow. She was asleep in seconds.

  * * *

  She woke before noon to a gray, lowered sky and a nagging unease in her belly. The apartment was quiet, the only sounds a pair of muffled voices from the yard.
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  Amelia rose and dressed in a plain gray muslin day dress, one designed to be worn with a comfortably loose corset. Jonas was already up and gone, judging from the disorder in the front room. The previous night’s novel sat on the table, the cover speckled with crumbs. He’d probably finished it during breakfast and taken another with him when he left. Or maybe one of his indecipherable journals. Some of the club’s regulars saved their periodicals for him, and he devoured them all—everything from old issues of Penman’s Gazette to the Journal of Metallurgy. He’d been the only street tough she’d ever known who picked pockets looking for a library card.

  Amelia brushed the crumbs off the cover of the book and picked it up. A piece of paper slipped out and fluttered to the floor. She retrieved it, intending to tuck it back into the book, then hesitated. She could not quite stop herself from looking at it.

  The paper was of fine quality. The hand was unfamiliar and distinctly masculine.

  I thought of you when I read this last night. I know you said you needed time, and I want you to take as long as you need to decide, but please do think about it. I’d love to show you Paris.

  —Sidney

  There was a scrap of poetry beneath the signature.

  Alarm bloomed in her chest. This was more serious than she’d realized. It was baffling; Jonas was usually so practical in his affairs. Other lovers had made him promises, sent him gifts. He always showed them to her. They’d laughed together at the idea that anyone could be taken in so easily. But now this rich, idle charmer was offering to take Jonas to Europe. And he hadn’t even told her.

  Amelia shoved the paper back into the book, wishing she’d never seen it.

  Was he really considering— No. Jonas would never be so foolish. But why hadn’t he told her? She thrust away the worry aside as she tossed the book back onto the table. He knew better. Nothing would come of it.

  But the hollow feeling in her stomach lingered.

  * * *

  The club was packed again that night. Amelia took a break at midnight and was about to go to the kitchen for something to eat when Jonas walked in. “I’m starving, have you—” He got no further.