Gossamer

by Rebecca Hagan Lee

  “A genteel governess wielding a parasol to destroy the notorious Lo Peng’s in a fit of temper?” Suddenly seeing the irony in her situation, Elizabeth began to laugh. “I’m afraid you’ve made a poor bargain, Mr. Craig. You wanted an exemplary teacher for your children and you’ve gotten an execrable one instead.” She stared up at him, her eyes shimmering with mirth. “Are you sure you’ve made a good bargain with the judge? Are you certain you really want me?”

  Her question gave James momentary pause. She’d stirred up a major hornet’s nest by wrecking the opium den. Lo Peng and the Tongs would not be pleased, and Lo Peng’s displeasure with Elizabeth could ultimately affect James’s rescue work, but at the moment none of those things seemed to matter. As he stared down at her, at the shining expression on her beautiful face, her plump pink mouth, and her laughing blue-green eyes, and felt his body’s immediate response, James was very much afraid that he would never want anyone more.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “Cross my heart.”

  Seven

  “YOU GOING OR staying, Miss Sadler?” Sergeant Darnell swung the cell door back and forth in a small arc to call attention to the fact that Elizabeth stood half in and half out of the cell.

  Having forgotten the policeman was still in the room, Elizabeth and James both turned to face him.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath to steady herself, then stepped over the threshold of the holding pen and said, “I suppose I’m going, Sergeant Darnell.”

  Nodding an affirmative, Darnell closed and locked the cell door behind her.

  She glanced over at James. “Provided the salary and the terms of my employment are acceptable.”

  James breathed an audible sigh of relief at the sound of the key turning in the lock—keeping Elizabeth out instead of in. “Just name your price.”

  Elizabeth gave him a mischievous smile. “Shall we start with fifty dollars a day and go from there?”

  James bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud at Elizabeth’s audacity. If he agreed to pay her fifty dollars a day, Elizabeth could repay her fine in one day—with his money—and be on her way. “Why don’t we start with twenty-five dollars a month, plus room and board, and go from there?” he countered.

  “You did say I could name my price,” she reminded him.

  “I expected you to suggest a reasonable price.”

  “How very shortsighted of you,” Elizabeth continued, filled with a sense of recklessness that had nothing to do with her recent adventures and everything to do with the handsome man standing before her. “Expecting reason from a woman who took on the notorious Lo Peng and his little band of foot soldiers and single-handedly demolished his disreputable establishment.”

  James fought to conceal his amusement and retain control of the situation with a businesslike manner. “Are we agreed on the reasonable salary of twenty-five dollars a month during the sixty days of your probation?”

  “I don’t know.” Elizabeth hesitated. “Fifty dollars a day is so much more appealing, especially since it means that one day I could be a lady of independent means.” She didn’t mean to sound mercenary or greedy. But Elizabeth had learned a lesson about money. And the lesson she had learned was that she never wanted to be without it again.

  She wasn’t being coy, James realized, as he studied the expressions mirrored on her face. Nor was she a true mercenary. The corners of his mouth turned up and into a smile. Elizabeth was a bit naive and perhaps too optimistic, but not greedy. There was nothing wrong with a woman in Elizabeth’s position trying to become a woman of independent means. He just hadn’t expected her to have the brass to ask him to underwrite her journey to financial independence. “How much cash do you have?” he asked, abruptly.

  “Enough,” she answered, attempting to hang on to her last vestige of pride.

  “How much?”

  Elizabeth turned to him and asked sweetly, “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s rude to ask a person how much money she has?”

  James laughed. “My mother’s family name is Cameron. The Camerons made a fortune in banking, mostly by loaning money to Edinburgh merchants. My mother always asks how much money a person has. Banking’s in her blood.”

  James’s laughter surprised her. She hadn’t expected a millionaire like James Cameron Craig to have a sense of humor. Elizabeth had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at her own expense. She should have remembered that the Camerons were known for having built considerable banking and shipping fortunes, first in Scotland and later in the British crown colony of Hong Kong. After all, she came from a banking family as well. A much poorer banking family, but a banking family all the same.

  “Well,” Elizabeth replied with an air of snobbery she didn’t feel, “someone should have taught the Camerons, and your mother, in particular, that it’s rude to ask a person how much money she has—unless she’s sitting inside a bank describing her collateral.”

  James looked down at Elizabeth’s lovely oval face and recognized the humorous glint in her aquamarine-colored eyes. “I’ll mention that to my mother,” he said, “the next time I see her.”

  “Come along, folks,” Sergeant Darnell interrupted, motioning James and Elizabeth away from the cell and toward the door leading back to the precinct headquarters. “We need to finish Miss Sadler’s paperwork and return her belongings.”

  James stood beside a long wooden bench set against the plaster wall, a discreet distance away from the desk where one of the jail matrons was returning Elizabeth’s crushed bonnet, her battered parasol, and her reticule, taking care to display the contents and count out the money Elizabeth had had in her possession at the time of her arrest. He had done his best not to eavesdrop, but the matron’s voice carried and James couldn’t help but hear every word she said. “Seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight cents. Is that correct, Miss Sadler?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth confirmed.

  “Anything missing from your personal belongings?”

  Elizabeth pushed her hair back off her shoulders. “Only my hairpins.” She blushed as she glanced down at the bodice of her dress. “And a button. But I suppose they’re scattered all over Lo Peng’s establishment.”

  “Probably,” the matron agreed, returning the money to Elizabeth’s change purse. “Sign here and you’re free to go.” She produced a form, a pen, and a brass inkwell and handed them to Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth signed her name to the form and returned it, along with the pen and ink, to the matron, then reclaimed her bonnet, purse, and parasol.

  “Good luck to you, Miss Sadler,” the matron said.

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth replied quietly, frowning in concentration as she attempted to reconnect the broken string on the handle of her misshapen parasol.

  The matron smiled. “I heard you did a real good job on Lo Peng’s with that dainty little thing.” She shook her head. “Who’d have thought it? A lady like you. And with a parasol …”

  James stepped forward and took Elizabeth by the elbow before she could reply to the matron, men whispered in her ear, “You win. I agree to your salary request of fifty dollars a day. But only if you’ll agree to leave it on account until your term of probation is over.” He held up his hand to keep her from interrupting until he finished. “I’ll provide anything you need until your probation expires. And you may pay me back at the end of sixty days.”

  “Why?” Fifty dollars a day, fifteen hundred dollars a month, was a princely sum and an entirely unheard of salary for a governess. Any governess. Suddenly suspicious, Elizabeth turned to look at him.

  “I have no desire to stand in the way of your becoming a lady of independent means, but I don’t plan to underwrite the venture unless you live up to your end of the bargain. I need a governess. And seventy-eight cents isn’t going to get you very far.”

  Elizabeth gasped.

  “Don’t get any more ideas about using that thing,” James warned, warily eyeing the way she gripped her par
asol in her fist.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said primly.

  “Tell that to Lo Peng,” he retorted.

  Ignoring James’s comment, Elizabeth began a thorough study of the dusty toes of her walking boots. “I have other funds,” she continued without meeting his gaze. “I left most of my money at Mrs. Bender’s.” It was true. She’d left a dollar in reserve against emergencies, tucked beneath her mattress.

  “Augusta Bender’s?” It was James’s turn to gasp in shock.

  “Why, yes,” Elizabeth answered. “Do you know her?”

  James gritted his teeth. Every man in the bay area with more than a couple of hundred dollars to his name knew Augusta Bender. Or knew of her. She ran a house on the corner of Clay and Kearney Streets. Ostensibly a boardinghouse for young women, Bender’s had a well-known reputation for housing and supplying some of the more desirable women in San Francisco and providing a meeting place for the numerous day ladies. And Elizabeth had sheltered there. The very idea horrified him. Good grief, but she was such an innocent. He was amazed she had survived the trip west with her reputation intact, much less two nights in a wicked city like San Francisco.

  “I’m acquainted with the madam.” He chose his last word with care, curious to see how Elizabeth would react. “How did you come to know her?”

  “She runs a boardinghouse and I needed a place to stay.”

  “Augusta Bender allowed you to stay at her house?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “She didn’t allow me to stay in her house out of the goodness of her heart. I rented a room and paid for a week, plus a meal a day in advance.”

  “I hope you locked your door at night,” James muttered.

  “I couldn’t,” Elizabeth replied. “The door to my room didn’t have a lock.”

  James groaned aloud. Wasn’t she aware of the danger she’d been in? “Let’s hope the money you left at Bender’s—if you left money there, which I sincerely doubt,” he said, noticing the way Elizabeth’s even white teeth worried her full bottom lip and the way she refused to meet his gaze, “is there when we arrive. That part of town is rife with bedchamber thieves, panel thieves, and fences.”

  Elizabeth blanched at the thought of any of the women she’d met at Mrs. Bender’s or any of the constant stream of gentlemen who had made their way up and down the stairs during the night and the early morning hours, rifling through her personal belongings, stealing from her in order to sell her possessions to unscrupulous businessmen who didn’t bother to ask if the person doing the selling actually owned the goods.

  James took a good look at the expression on Elizabeth’s already pale face and could have bitten out his tongue for causing her additional worry. A woman, with seventy-eight cents to her name couldn’t afford to lose any of her cherished belongings. He eased his grip on her arm and softened his tone of voice. “Let’s go see what we find and worry about handling the details once we know what we’ve got to handle.” He urged Elizabeth forward toward the doors leading from the cells and property room of the police station to the main station room where most of the police business was conducted.

  The matron stopped him. “Lo Peng is raising a ruckus up front. He’s insisting Miss Sadler pay for the damage to his place. It might be better if you take her out the back way.” She pointed to a door at the back of the property room.

  James hadn’t yet asked Elizabeth Sadler why she’d taken her parasol in hand against Lo Peng. He had no idea whether she’d meant to destroy Lo Peng’s particular establishment or if her choice had been random. Either way, he didn’t look forward to confronting Lo Peng when the man was in a temper, but James didn’t care to sneak out of the back of the police station like a thief just to avoid him, either. He expected trouble with Lo Peng sooner or later, and the sooner Lo Peng understood that Elizabeth Sadler was under James’s protection, the better off he and Elizabeth would be. The Tongs under Lo Peng’s control might attempt to cause trouble later on if James didn’t meet Lo Peng’s demands for payment for the damages Elizabeth had caused, but facing Lo Peng or not facing Lo Peng wasn’t his decision to make. James deferred to Elizabeth. “It’s up to you, Miss Sadler. Do we go out the back to avoid Lo Peng?”

  Elizabeth pushed her hair back from her face, lifted her chin, and gripped the handle of her parasol tighter. “I’m not afraid of Lo Peng.”

  “You should be,” James told her as he pried the parasol out of Elizabeth’s grasp. “He controls over half of San Francisco and most of the high country’s Chinese labor force. No one in his right mind would willingly make an enemy of him.” He glanced over at Elizabeth and found her glaring at him.

  “I’m not sneaking out the back door,” she replied stubbornly. “I came in the front door and I intend to leave the same way.” Pulling against his grasp, Elizabeth started for the double doors.

  “If you’re determined to face him,” James said, “you’d better be prepared. You’ll be at a disadvantage if you allow Lo Peng to see you as you are.”

  Forgetting the damage done to her hair and clothes during the disturbance at Lo Peng’s, Elizabeth demanded, “What’s wrong with the way I am?”

  James’s heart thumped against his chest and his gaze held a curiously tender expression as he gestured toward her. “You look as if you lost the battle.”

  “I didn’t lose,” she said, a gleam in her eyes as she recalled the shambles she’d made of the dirty opium den.

  “I know that,” James answered. “And that’s why it’s important you don’t appear as if you lost. Come here.” He led Elizabeth over to the wooden bench that occupied a section of the wall opposite the property room. James leaned her parasol against the bench, then took a handkerchief—another monogrammed silk one—out of his pocket and searched the hallway for a water cooler. Locating one, he drew a cup of water from it and dipped a corner of his handkerchief into the tin cup.

  Elizabeth eyed him warily as he returned to the bench.

  “Look up,” he instructed.

  “Why?” she countered.

  James took a deep breath, then let it out in slow calming ones. The expression on Elizabeth’s face reminded him of Ruby. And just like Ruby, nearly everything he said to her led to a battle of wills. “You have dirt on your face.”

  “Oh.” She blushed bright red and rubbed at her face with the back of her hand.

  “Allow me,” James said as he lifted her chin with the tip of his finger and used the dampened handkerchief to clean the dirt from around a nasty-looking scratch that ran from the corner of her mouth up her right cheek toward her ear.

  “Ouch! That stings,” Elizabeth protested as he scrubbed the beads of dried blood off her face.

  “Looks like somebody scratched you.”

  Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. “That would be the big ugly guy. He pulled my bonnet off and hit me in the face with it. My hatpin must have done it,”

  James sucked in a breath. A ten-inch hatpin could do a lot of damage. Elizabeth’s had missed her eye by a mere inch or so. “There,” he pronounced, when he had finished wiping her face with the wet handkerchief. “Now, let’s see what we can do about the rest.”

  “I haven’t a comb,” Elizabeth told him. “And I lost my hairpins.”

  Smiling, James reached inside his jacket and removed a tortoiseshell comb from the inner breast pocket. “Voila!” James patted the top of the wooden bench with his hand.

  Elizabeth reached for the comb, but James shook his head. “Sit down.”

  Realizing his intent, Elizabeth sat at an angle to allow him complete access to the hair hanging down her back.

  James stood behind her and began gently working the comb through the tangles in her thick waist-length hair.

  Elizabeth tried to keep her spine ramrod stiff, but the wonderful feel of the comb soon worked its magic. It had been so long since anyone had combed her hair. The feel of it brought a rush of childhood memories of sweet happy days when her mother had brushed and braided her hair e
ach night. Elizabeth closed her eyes and allowed her body to relax against James as he pulled the comb through her hair.

  Her hair was thick, but soft and silky. It slipped through the teeth of the comb and curled around his fingers. James loved the feel of it. It had been so long since he’d enjoyed the privilege of combing a woman’s hair. He dislodged a couple of stray hairpins caught in the tawny strands of her hair, then watched as the pins slid down her back and settled on top of her bustle. James left the hairpins where they lay, then combed Elizabeth’s hair back from her forehead, neatly separated the silky strands into sections and fashioned it into an elegant French braid. “Hold this while I find something to secure it.”

  Elizabeth stared down in wonder at the end of the neat braid he had fashioned from her mass of thick tangles. “How?”

  James winked at her. “I have four daughters. Three of them have hair.” Reaching over her shoulder, James removed Elizabeth’s crushed bonnet from her lap. He ignored the gold and tiger-eye hatpin stuck through the fabric at the back of the crown and ripped the decorative cording, the wide grosgrain ribbon, and a rosette from around the band and tossed the bonnet onto the bench. James tied the end of her long braid with the cord. Then he looped the length of hair under and secured it at the nape of her neck with the remaining grosgrain ribbon so that the rosette was artfully displayed at the base of the chignon.

  When James finished with Elizabeth’s hair, he turned his attention to the button missing from the top of her bodice. Since he couldn’t replace the missing button, the best he could hope for was to hide the fact that it was missing. He reached for Elizabeth’s ruined bonnet again. This time, the gold and tiger-eye hatpin caught his attention. James removed it from the crumpled hat, then pulled Elizabeth to her feet.

  “Pardon me,” he said, just before he pushed the hatpin into the fabric of her bodice slightly below the empty buttonhole.

  Elizabeth gasped as he worked his fingers beneath the high neckline of her dress. She could feel the rasp of the hair on the back of his hand and the warmth of his skin against the underside of her chin. Elizabeth found it hard to breathe. And she couldn’t tell if it was because the neckline of her dress was pulled so tightly against her throat or because James’s face was so close to hers and because his long fingers kept brushing against the lace of her chemise. James. She mustn’t think of him as James. He was Mr. Craig, her new employer. He had promised to pay her fifty dollars a day to be governess to his children. And she must begin to think of him not as the stranger who had held her in his arms while she cried herself to sleep, but as the man who would soon be paying her salary. She had to remember that his touch wasn’t personal. He was simply helping her present a proper, respectable appearance—one befitting a governess. But even as she reprimanded herself, Elizabeth felt the brush of his hand against the hollow of her throat as he bent the shaft of the hatpin and buried the sharp point inside the fabric of her dress away from her tender flesh.