Gossamer

by Rebecca Hagan Lee

“That’s right,” the matron assured her. “Once you pay your fifty-dollar fine, you’re free to go.”

  “What if I don’t have fifty dollars?” Elizabeth whispered.

  The matron studied Elizabeth’s stylish walking dress of brown silk edged with taffeta and her expensive leather boots in a matching shade of brown. “You don’t have fifty dollars?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t even have five.”

  “A lady like you? Are you sure?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I only have a dollar and a few cents left. I counted it yesterday long before Sergeant Darnell and Officer Burrows arrested me.”

  The matron looked at her as if she hadn’t heard correctly. “But your dress cost more than what I make in half a year.”

  Elizabeth nodded once again. “Too bad I can’t sell it for cash. What will I do if I can’t come up with the fifty dollars?”

  “You heard the judge,” the matron said. “If you don’t pay the fifty dollars, you’ll have to serve three days in jail.”

  Elizabeth bit her lip to stop its quivering. “Then I guess I’m going back to jail.”

  The matron let go of Elizabeth’s arm long enough to reach for the little leather change purse attached to the belt of her skirt. “How much money do you have? Exactly?”

  “One dollar and seventy-eight cents,” Elizabeth answered. “But I only have seventy-eight cents with me.”

  “I have a dollar left from my pay,” the matron said. “And I can loan you some of that.”

  “Oh, no,” Elizabeth refused her offer. “I couldn’t take your hard-earned money.” She drew herself up to her full height, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin a notch higher, then said with a confidence she didn’t feel, “It’s only three days. I can survive three days in jail.”

  THREE DAYS, SEVENTY-TWO hours. It might as well have been an eternity. Seated on an edge of the only cot in the cell, Elizabeth pressed herself back against the bars and pulled her skirts close about her to keep them from coming in contact with the clothing of the women pacing the narrow confines of the holding pen. Elizabeth shuddered, wondering how she was going to survive another seventy-one hours in the company of the women sharing her cell. A cell. Elizabeth Sadler was confined to a cell in the San Francisco City Jail along with fifteen other female criminals. Elizabeth knew there were fifteen other women occupying the small space because she’d spent the hour since she’d been incarcerated counting them—counting the number of blondes, redheads, and brunettes, counting the plump ones, the skinny ones, the ones with visible lice, the ones without, the clean ones, the dirty ones … Elizabeth suppressed another shudder and held her breath as long as she could to keep from gagging. The smell of the place was overwhelming. The scent of unwashed bodies, of cheap gin and stale beer, of vomit and urine, and a dozen other odors Elizabeth couldn’t identify, nearly took her breath away. Until an hour ago Elizabeth had never realized there were women who regularly spent time in jail, never realized there were women who lived their lives in such a sordid fashion. But the matrons and the officers in the jail knew her cell mates well enough, saw them often enough, to call them by name and ask about their families. Elizabeth had never imagined she would ever experience anything more shocking than the scene she’d participated in in the parlor at Bender’s Boardinghouse. The women at Bender’s had behaved like harlots. But these women were harlots and worse—some of them were criminals. Criminals. And she was one of them. Elizabeth ground her teeth together to keep from screaming. A criminal. Criminal. This situation was criminal. Her temper mounted with each passing moment as she counted down the hours to freedom. She, Elizabeth Sadler, was a criminal convicted of disorderly conduct, assault, and petty larceny. Unable to pay a fifty-dollar fine and in jail because she refused to go to jail without a reason. Because she refused to allow herself to be arrested for stealing a gentleman’s fine silk handkerchief.

  James’s fine silk handkerchief. James. Elizabeth quivered with anger at the thought of him. James, of the gentle voice and kind eyes. James, who had wiped her tears away with that handkerchief, then had pressed it into her hand to use. He must have been furious with her when he discovered she’d taken his room key and replaced it with hers. He had to have been angry and embarrassed to seek revenge for something so trivial when she hadn’t denied him access to a hotel room. He could have stayed in her room if he needed a place to sleep. And she hadn’t run out and stuck him with her hotel bill, she’d made sure of that. But James would have had her arrested and taken to jail for keeping his handkerchief. Talk about trumped-up charges! She’d never heard of anything so outrageous. No wonder they called it petty larceny. As far as Elizabeth was concerned, her accuser was the pettiest of the petty and he had an awful lot to answer for.

  He could start by offering her an apology.

  And Elizabeth meant to collect it—just as soon as she got out of jail.

  “YOU’RE FREE TO go.”

  Elizabeth recognized Sergeant Darnell’s Irish brogue, but she pointedly ignored him by rising from her seat on the cot, lifting her chin a bit higher, and turning to face the wall away from him.

  “Did you hear me, Miss Sadler?” Sergeant Darnell asked, his voice full of concern. “I said that you’re free to go.”

  “She heard you.”

  Recognizing that voice as well, Elizabeth whirled around to find James standing beside Sergeant Darnell. There was so much she wanted to say to him, so many angry words she wanted to fling at him, but Elizabeth couldn’t give voice to the words. Torn between fury at James for putting her in this situation and tremendous relief at having him come to get her out, she was suddenly shaking with reaction. Her knees threatened to buckle, and because she wasn’t sure she could cross the few feet to the cell door without falling, Elizabeth simply stood there staring at him, drinking in the sight of him.

  “I came as soon as I could,” James told her, taking a step closer to the cell.

  She didn’t reply.

  “I meant to leave my home early this morning, so I could be in the city when the police located you,” James continued. “I should have gotten here in plenty of time to drop the charges, but things got a bit out of hand at home this morning—” James shrugged his shoulders. “My housekeeper couldn’t handle things alone and unfortunately I was unavoidably detained.” He knew he was rambling, but he couldn’t seem to stop the flow of words, nor could he seem to drag his gaze away from her. He was seeing her for the second time and again at her worst, but James realized that Elizabeth Sadler’s worst was better than most women’s best. She was astonishingly pretty. Much lovelier than he remembered. And those extraordinary blue-green eyes of hers … James felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. He knew it wasn’t the time or the place, but he had the incredible urge to kiss her, to feel her against him.

  Elizabeth studied James as carefully as she had studied her cell mates. She took note of the whiskers darkening James’s unshaven jawline, his rumpled shirtfront, his mussed and hastily tied tie, and what appeared to be a blotch of strawberry jam on the front of his waistcoat. She smiled at the reddish stain on his impeccably tailored garment and found herself wanting to stick out her finger and touch it. Then to lick the tip of her finger to taste it. To see if it was, indeed, strawberry jam. Elizabeth couldn’t explain why she felt the way she did. James’s slovenly appearance should have put her off, should have helped to fan the flames of her anger, but it didn’t. Far from it. For some inexplicable reason, his untidiness made James even more handsome and appealing than before, and Elizabeth had to force herself to remember why she was so angry with him.

  “Elizabeth, believe me,” James told her, “I never meant for things to go this far.”

  “You had me arrested!” The accusation, ripe with pain and suppressed anger, seemed to burst forth of its own accord.

  “From what I hear, you got yourself arrested for destroying Lo Peng’s place on Washington Street.”

  “But you started it. You meant to have
me arrested for stealing a handkerchief you gave me! You had me put in this place!” Suddenly regaining her ability to move, Elizabeth waved her hand, gesturing at the interior of the jail, and narrowly missed backhanding a cell mate whose foul body odor was enough to make the strongest man gag. “You would have let them bring me here and lock me up with these people for no reason. At least I gave them reason!”

  James heard the horror in her voice, saw the shimmer of unshed tears in her beautiful blue-green eyes, and grudgingly admitted understanding Elizabeth’s flawed, but honorable, logic. She was right. It was all his fault. He was to blame for Elizabeth Sadler’s situation. She had every right to be angry with him, to despise him, to refuse to help him. He had meant for the police to detain her, not throw her into a cell. But here she was locked in a cell amidst the dregs of womanhood. Because of him. And now it was up to him to explain his reasons for doing what he did and, if possible, to make amends. “I was desperate.”

  “You were desperate … ?” she sputtered. If she only had her parasol, Elizabeth thought, she’d use it against James the way she had used it to wreck Lo Peng’s place.

  “Yes,” he answered her softly, not offering the word as an excuse, but as a fact. “I wanted—” He stopped. “I needed to find you as quickly as possible. Having the police scour the city streets was the quickest and most efficient means of locating you, but I couldn’t utilize the entire police force unless I had a good reason for wanting to find you. I had to come up with something. And the theft of my personal belongings seemed like a fairly innocuous reason.

  “Blast your personal belongings,” Elizabeth told him. “You didn’t tell them I stole your personal belongings; you told them I stole your handkerchief!”

  James managed a rather sheepish smile. “I couldn’t take the chance that the police would charge you with a serious crime.”

  “Just a petty one,” Elizabeth retorted, meaningfully.

  “Touché,” James said with a grimace. “But I hated the thought of losing that particular handkerchief. It’s special.”

  Elizabeth thought of the carefully embroidered initials, J. C. C., on the corner of the handkerchief. Someone must have given it to him. The woman who’d labored over the beautiful stitches. Elizabeth hadn’t counted on James having a special attachment to something as commonplace as a handkerchief. “Apparently.”

  James raised an eyebrow at her dry retort. “Silk handkerchiefs are expensive. Besides, I used it once, to dry a beautiful woman’s tears. I wanted to keep it as a memento.”

  Unfortunately, so had she. And her desire for a keepsake would have landed her in jail even if her rampage in Lo Peng’s had not. Because she couldn’t allow herself to be swayed from her righteous anger by his pretty words or his sentiment, Elizabeth fixed her unflinching gaze on him and demanded the truth. “Who are you? The mayor? The chief of police? How is it that you could have me arrested for stealing one of your precious handkerchiefs?”

  “My name is James Cameron Craig,” he said. “I’m the owner and president of Craig Capital, Ltd., a railroad, mining, and timber corporation.…”

  Elizabeth gasped as she recognized his name and the name of his corporation. Craig Capital, Ltd., was one of a handful of American corporations owned and managed by men who were members of the Millionaires’ Club. James Cameron Craig was one of them. A businessman worth millions of dollars. A businessman who rubbed elbows and made deals with the likes of J. P. Morgan, Jay Gould, Commodore Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller. “I suppose I should be flattered that one of the richest men in the world decided to have me thrown in jail.”

  “No.” James shook his head. “But you might show a bit of appreciation for the fact that one of the richest men in the world went to a great deal of trouble to get here in time to bail you out.”

  Elizabeth seared him with a gaze of pure blue-green fire. “A bail that cost a millionaire all of fifty dollars. I think that’s the very least he could do,” she replied with a sugary-sweet smile, “since I wouldn’t be in here if it wasn’t for him.”

  “Oh, you’d still be in here,” James told her. “Lo Peng is sure to press charges.”

  “But I wouldn’t have gone to Lo Peng’s if you …” Elizabeth clamped her mouth shut.

  “If I what?” James prompted, patiently folding his arms across his wide chest, waiting for her to continue.

  Elizabeth glared at him.

  “Come on,” he encouraged, biting back the smile that threatened to overcome him when he recognized the spark of pure fury in Elizabeth Sadler’s devastating blue-green eyes. James was surprised to find himself encouraging her, surprised to discover himself attracted, rather than repelled, by her healthy show of anger. He actually liked Elizabeth’s spirited, impetuous side—the one so at odds with the more restrained and rational governess-type demeanor “Spit it out before you choke on it.”

  “If you hadn’t arranged to have me arrested for something so—so—petty. I decided to give the police a real reason to arrest me.”

  James grinned at that. “Sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face, isn’t it?” Elizabeth stubbornly refused to reply as James motioned to Sergeant Darnell to unlock the holding pen. “I’ve admitted my guilt and offered my apologies, and you’ve confessed your sins and repented the crime. Now, come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

  Darnell swung the door of the cell open, then stepped into the breach to prevent the other inmates from slipping through the opening. “You can go now, Miss Sadler,” the sergeant told her. “And may I offer my apologies as well. We didn’t want anything to do with this. But Mr. Craig being who he is and all …” Sergeant Darnell let his voice trail off, then cleared his throat and continued, “I just wanted to let you know that if he”—the sergeant nodded toward James—“hadn’t paid your bail and talked to the judge on your behalf, we were going to do it. Lo Peng’s out front swearing out a complaint, but we understand about your brother and Lo Peng’s and all. And the guys in the precinct are taking up a collection for you even as we speak. We wouldn’t have allowed you to spend the night with this riffraff.”

  James cleared his throat and impatiently shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he waited for Elizabeth to exit the cell. “I’m sure Miss Sadler appreciates your kindness and the kindness of your fellow officers,” James told him, “but we’re late and we really must be going. Come along, Elizabeth.”

  James reached for her arm, but Elizabeth recoiled. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “I’m afraid you have no choice,” James said. “It’s one of the conditions of your release.”

  “What?” Elizabeth glared at him through the bars of the cell.

  “I paid your bail.”

  “So?”

  “Judge Clermont agreed to release you into my custody for the duration of your probation or until you’re able to repay the fine.”

  “I don’t intend to remain in your custody for sixty days,” Elizabeth protested.

  “Fine,” James replied, most agreeably. “If you’ll just repay the fifty dollars, plus the two percent interest, you owe me, I’ll be on my way.”

  “I don’t have fifty dollars,” Elizabeth told him. “And you know it. But I’ll repay you just as soon as I can.”

  “And what if I’m not willing to wait to recoup my loss?”

  “You’re worth millions,” Elizabeth accused. “Fifty dollars isn’t going to break you. It won’t hurt you to wait for your money.”

  “That depends on how long I’m required to wait,” James replied.

  “I’ll repay you, with interest, as soon as possible,” Elizabeth told him. “But it may take me some time to find a job.”

  James grinned. “In that case,” he said, “I’m prepared to be magnanimous and waive repayment of the fine and the interest.”

  “In return for what?” Elizabeth hadn’t grown up in a banking family without learning something about the business. Any banker or businessman
willing to waive repayment of a loan with interest wanted something in return—something worth more than the original loan.

  “Your expertise.”

  Elizabeth stared at him.

  “I’m offering you a position in my household,” James said.

  “As what?” Her face turned bright red as she blurted out the question.

  “As governess to my four daughters.”

  She stood completely still as the nimbus surrounding her half-formed dreams and fantasies about James Cameron Craig splintered into darkness. He was married. He had children. Somehow, she’d never really considered that he might be a family man. Somehow, she’d imagined him as being a dashing available loner. Prince Charming to her princess. Now, she realized that if she were released into his custody, she would have to think of him as her prospective employer—as the father of the children consigned to her care. She could never again allow him to be cast as the hero in her girlish fantasies. “You have four daughters?”

  James cast a rueful glance down at his wrinkled shirtfront, at the small buttery handprint visible on his tie, and the strawberry jam smeared across his waistcoat. The Treasures had put up quite a fight to keep him at home once they realized their daddy had been recalled to San Francisco after breakfast. “You’re a woman of some experience,” he said. “Couldn’t you tell?”

  Elizabeth managed a weak half-smile at his attempt at humor.

  “My girls are three and a half, two, thirteen months, and two days old. I returned home from my trip here two days ago to find that, in addition to three toddlers, I had a newborn daughter and no governess.” He turned his most winning smile on Elizabeth. “You mentioned you’d been a teacher at a school.” He shrugged. “I needed a governess and I immediately thought of you. But you left the Russ House so abruptly and I had no idea how to contact you, so I …” He let his voice drift off.

  “You had me arrested because you needed a governess?” She couldn’t believe her ears.

  “I did what was necessary to find you,” he corrected. “I just didn’t expect it to go this far. I never expected—”