All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy)

by Maureen Lang

  “I’m twenty-four.”

  “Hmm. That old and no husband? You the sportin’ kind yourself, girlie?”

  Dessa shook her head, approaching the bread and other items the woman had left out on the end of the table. She’d just as soon join her as have the woman eating in front of her. Taking a plate from the nearby cabinet, she returned to the table to assemble her own sandwich.

  There was a single slice of tomato left, but before Dessa could add it to her cheese and bread, the woman grabbed it. She ate it in one quick bite, smiling afterward without a trace of compunction.

  Dessa lifted a brow but said nothing, settling for the cheese and bread alone. “How did you hear about Pierson House, Miss . . . ?”

  “You can call me Belva. It’s what everybody calls me here in the city.”

  Dessa wondered if Belva kept her identity a secret to protect a family somewhere, or to keep anyone she once knew from finding out how she earned money. Or was it more personal than that? Sophie had once mused to Dessa that some women might hide their names to protect that secret part of themselves they never wished to sell.

  “Did you find one of my applications?” Dessa poured herself a glass of lemonade from the pitcher Belva had taken from the icebox. “I’ve left them in the kitchens of every house that would let me, but I’m afraid they weren’t very well circulated or I’d have had more response by now.”

  Belva laughed again, though this time it seemed more with derision than amusement. “I heard about them applications. You think any of them you sprinkled here and there actually got passed to the people you want? You know what would happen to a girl who tried to get away from one of them houses, let alone take someone else with her?”

  “I see the girls on the street all the time. They seem free to do as they please.” Sophie had once told her about some foreign women, mainly Chinese, who had been brought in for the Chinese men working on the railroad. Slaves, so it was rumored. But that didn’t happen in other areas as far as Dessa knew. “Aren’t they free?”

  Belva pushed away her napkin, now empty of her own sandwich, then leaned back in her chair as if to find a fuller picture of Dessa. “Is anyone? Free, I mean?”

  Dessa offered a quick, silent, barely noticeable prayer of thanksgiving for the food before biting into her sandwich. Then she allowed another moment of silence rather than acknowledging the question she doubted Belva thought answerable anyway.

  The journal Sophie had left behind, one chronicling information she’d gathered from other institutions that helped fallen women, said that the older the woman, the less likely she was to reform. Dessa didn’t know if that was true, or true in every case, but somehow because of that, she’d never expected someone older than herself to seek her help. Was this a person Dessa could help?

  She pushed away her doubt. Belva was here, wasn’t she? That meant she must want to try what Pierson House had to offer, and Dessa wasn’t about to refuse anyone.

  Besides, it might be that Belva could help Dessa as much as the other way around.

  “How do I reach more women, then?”

  Belva looked surprised by the question. “You want my help? Ha.” But even as she revealed her surprise, she hung one arm on the back of her chair and folded her hands like a swing. She leaned closer, and the ruffle of her bodice fell onto the soiled napkin on the table. “This is what you do, girlie. You pack up and leave. Ain’t nobody gonna come here; you may as well know it right now.”

  “You came. Aren’t you here to stay?”

  Belva laughed again.

  Dessa placed her sandwich on her plate. “But why not? Why would women rather end their sporting career by poisoning themselves with a dime of morphine or throwing themselves from the fifth-floor staircase at the Windsor than come here?”

  “At least either one of those is permanent.” Her words, harshly spoken, were followed by a lift of her brows and a look around the kitchen. “Say, you got anything to drink? Other than that horrid lemony stuff? Like wine? Or better yet, whiskey?”

  Dessa shook her head.

  Belva huffed. “That’s the first thing you ought to do, then. Get something here they want. Strong drink, for one.”

  “I have good food,” Dessa said. “Did you like the bread?”

  Belva dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. “Look, I like you, kid. You remind me of what my own daughter might have looked like, if she’d lived a minute past birth.” Her brows drew together so quickly that the expression of sadness seemed almost unexpected to Belva herself. “It was just as well, I guess. I couldn’ta given her anything but heartache and shame.”

  “But that’s just it, Belva,” Dessa said. “Wouldn’t it be better to get away from a lifestyle that makes you feel that way?”

  Another disgusted pfff came from her lips. “Listen, them girls don’t want to come to a place that’ll only remind them of the shame. ’Specially the ones who are settled into the choices they made. I know what you do-gooders do best, and that’s dole out the judgment. We ain’t no frail sisters nor fallen angels, because we ain’t frail and we certainly weren’t never any angels.”

  “But I don’t want to ‘dole out the judgment,’ as you say. Who am I to do that? My father died in the war without knowing I was on the way. My mother died the day I was born. My brother was three and we were sent to an asylum. Do you know who gave us the only love we ever knew in that place? Women just like you, Belva. Until the officials sent us away to work. I haven’t any judgment against you, because I might just as well have had to earn my living the same way.”

  Dessa stopped her story far before it was finished, but even that much was more than she’d told anyone since coming to Denver, even Mariadela. Somehow thinking of it reminded her of a lingering cloud she found easy to ignore only when working her hardest. Memories of the day she’d turned twelve and learned her brother had been killed in an accident were darkest of all. Fallen from a hayloft, which shouldn’t have killed anyone, except somehow he’d landed so that his neck had been broken. That was the last day she’d ever dreamed of reuniting with him when they were grown, to live like a real family did.

  Maybe Dessa ought to have known from that day on that she hadn’t been destined for family life. Her own mistake, not many years later, had closed that option for her.

  Belva stood. “I gotta go.” She looked away, perhaps unwilling to see the tears stinging Dessa’s eyes. “Thanks for the vittles.”

  Then she left the kitchen and walked to the door in the parlor.

  Dessa ran as far as the dining room. “But . . . are you sure you don’t want to stay?” she called after Belva. “You’re more than welcome! Always!”

  Belva didn’t even turn back as she walked out the door, leaving Dessa alone with only an urge to cry.

  10

  HENRY DIDN’T KNOW what he was waiting for. He’d chanced to spot Miss Caldwell out at City Park, where he’d taken his brisk constitutional at midafternoon, having been expected at the bank too early to do it before going in. Sitting behind a desk wasn’t to his liking in many ways, a rare negative aspect of the banking career he’d sought nearly all his life. The park suitably answered that need, drawing him as it did many who were more comfortable away from the city.

  Having seen Miss Caldwell lingering, he’d almost approached her. But the circumstances of the luncheon still sat heavily, so he’d walked in the opposite direction and circled back to his carriage. Then he’d waited, reading through an entire issue of the Denver Sentinel while he did so. Obviously this was no pleasure visit to the park for her, no taking in the air or simple enjoyment of the mountain view just beyond the plain. She was waiting for someone. Another drunkard?

  But she never met anyone.

  Despite his better judgment he’d instructed Fallo, his carriage driver, to follow her hired cab. As expected, it took her back to Pierson House. Why he waited any longer he did not know, except for a niggling suspicion he wished to banish. He wanted to be sure the b
usiness for which she’d borrowed money was indeed everything she’d described. That meant women going in and out of this establishment—and no men.

  It wasn’t long before his patience was rewarded. The front door opened, but instead of Miss Caldwell, another woman emerged. Someone he’d not seen before. Henry leaned back in the carriage, out of view from the window, and waited until she’d traveled some distance before deciding to follow.

  He watched the woman walk—strut—down the street, away from Pierson House. From the cut of her gown to the sway of her hips, she was no doubt headed back toward the Line: that row of bordellos along Market Street.

  He bumped his cane on the roof of the carriage and his driver pulled forward, according to Henry’s signal. He would see where this woman went.

  Not since his youthful days before college had Henry been so beset with foolishness. He knew his suspicions were groundless. Miss Caldwell was an innocent. An idealistic do-gooder. But the thought of her dealing alone with that drunkard—and in the middle of the night, no less—had alternately annoyed and impressed him. Annoyed him for all the obvious reasons. If a lamb ventured into the slaughterhouse, it had no one but itself to blame for its demise. On the other hand, Miss Caldwell had not only chosen to reside within the narrow radius of the state’s most notoriously sin-packed district; she also apparently believed this was exactly where she belonged.

  Evidently this woman of ill virtue was exactly the kind of person Miss Caldwell sought. Why did she seek them? Did her faith blind her to all sensible reasoning?

  When the woman slowed her pace just down the street, Henry leaned forward. Though she did not stop, she paused before a neat, sturdy brick structure. Henry needed only glance at the two finely dressed women lounging on the wide front porch, a little white poodle on each lap, to guess it was a parlor house. Those poodles they paraded with them throughout the city came with such an obvious label that no respectable woman in town dared own one.

  He looked again at the building. It was no doubt a more expensive place of prostitution but offered the same services nonetheless.

  Despite a wave from the women and a friendly yap from one of the dogs, the woman Henry followed kept walking. At last she turned at the second corner, and he tapped the carriage ceiling again—three quick raps for a right. It mildly surprised him that this woman went right rather than left. Her clothing, from what he could tell, was more likely to grace the halls of a two-bit joint than something in the nicer neighborhood she headed into now.

  Two blocks later, she crossed in front of the carriage and Henry gave a quick knock instructing the driver to stop altogether. Then, moving from one side of the carriage to the other, he watched her walk down the lightly traveled street. It was late afternoon, an hour when gambling dens and dance halls were still tightly closed. These streets wouldn’t come alive again until after the sun set, and then they’d be abuzz with activity until nearly dawn.

  There was one place on this street Henry hoped she would pass, but something in his gut told him that was exactly where she headed.

  To the Verandah. Turk Foster’s dance hall, named for its wide balcony spanning the entire facade on the second floor. Neither the name nor the rented rooms upstairs gave a clue that inside was one of the most profitable gambling dens in the city.

  Henry guessed this wasn’t the only business Foster owned, though for public record it was the only one he acknowledged. As a dance hall it was technically legitimate, even though it quietly attracted some of the wealthiest gamblers in the city—patrons of the so-called arts. The variety theater kind.

  But something about this woman didn’t match. Certainly no one employed at the Verandah would dress in such a humble fashion, not even on an errand of her own. So what was she doing, marching right inside as if she lived there? Had she sneaked out to investigate a place like Pierson House for herself? Would she leave behind the splendor of Foster’s and dress in the lowest fashion she’d falsely presented just now?

  Or had Foster sent her for some reason? It made sense that he wanted to keep an eye on what went on in his little corner of hell, a kingdom he undoubtedly ruled—to the extent the other miscreants and the law allowed. But why take any interest in a place like Miss Caldwell’s? It wasn’t exactly his competition.

  Henry shook his head, exasperated as much with himself as with the questions. He rapped on the carriage roof again and the vehicle rolled on, this time in the direction of the city center. He didn’t breathe easily until reaching his own neighborhood, whose residents might visit Turk’s ward from time to time but nearly always refused to admit it.

  “So she didn’t stay longer than that?” Mariadela asked. She and Dessa worked in the kitchen, cutting vegetables for a pickled salad they would serve the following day at another meal, this time a dinner party. The gathering was to be held for those who had donated to Pierson House—far more willingly, Dessa knew, than had at least one guest of the luncheon two days before. And although Mr. Ridgeway had been extended an invitation, Mr. Hawkins had not. He likely would not have accepted anyway.

  “No. She stayed barely long enough to finish her sandwich. The whole conversation was unsettling.” Dessa paused from chopping the carrots in front of her to look out the window with a sigh. “She made it seem as though the girls will never choose to leave what they know.”

  “They’ll come, Dessa. You did the right thing. You told her you weren’t here to judge them, just to offer them refuge.”

  Although Dessa had told Mariadela that Belva seemed convinced a bed in Pierson House automatically came with judgment, she hadn’t talked about the rest of the conversation. Some memories were best forgotten, even ones that had been not only pivotal in her willingness to help Sophie with her vision but the reason she’d been chosen to do so in the first place.

  “Besides,” Mariadela added, “she wasn’t the woman with the red flower in her hat; you said so yourself. Perhaps that one will show up on your doorstep any moment now.”

  “I hope so.” Dessa sighed again. “Being unable to draw women here will jeopardize future donations; it could end them altogether if the rooms upstairs are empty much longer. It was hard enough to garner the amount of money we raised in the first place.”

  “Every mission takes time to get established.”

  Now Dessa paused over the vegetables to frown. “I worry about the Plumsteads’ not accepting tomorrow’s invitation.”

  “Stop worrying! They simply had another engagement, and besides, it gave you the opportunity to invite Reverend Sempkins and his wife instead. They’ve brought in more donors than anyone else we know.”

  Dessa didn’t want to worry, but she couldn’t deny how desperately she depended upon the Plumsteads’ support. Without their monthly pledge, she’d be unable to meet her regular payments to the bank. And until proving Pierson House a success, it would be impossible to attract new donors. She must fill those beds!

  “Listen, Mariadela.” Dessa’s heart thumped with anticipation to share an idea Belva’s visit had ignited. “What if we expand our expected clientele?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Belva reminded me that older women in the brothels aren’t apt to come to a place like this. And I’ve been going through Sophie’s journal again, where she mentions what she thought were the failures of other missions like this one. Things she wanted to avoid.”

  “You’ve already made clear on the applications that Pierson House is a place of refuge for all women in distress, regardless of past or present circumstance.”

  Dessa nodded. “But what if we sought the youngest girls? Ones who haven’t yet taken up the sporting life but might be tempted to it because of the money? The ones who are working at a factory for pennies a day, either on their own or with families who can barely afford to live? Or . . . what if we found a way to reach those who’ve been brought to such a life against their will? Sophie interviewed more than one woman who started out by being tricked into such a lifestyle.” />
  “That’s fine, Dessa,” said Mariadela, although her tone sounded anything but inspired. “But how would we find these girls, except the way you’ve already tried? By distributing the applications to the very spots such a girl would show up—at the back door of every brothel or crib in town.”

  “I plan to go to the factories, too, where girls are paid so little.”

  Mariadela nodded. “A good idea. I’ll send my boys with you to help.”

  “And then there are the Chinese women who’ve been brought here as slaves. We could—”

  “Stop right there.” Mariadela set aside the peas she’d started shucking and stared grimly at Dessa. “For one thing, white society doesn’t mix with the Chinese—like it or not, that’s the way it is. The quickest way to stop donations is to interfere in a culture we know nothing about. A culture that, rightly or wrongly, was blamed not all that long ago for taking jobs from whites when they crossed the railroad workers’ picket lines. You weren’t here during the riots with the Chinese. I was.”

  “But what do girls who have been brought here as slaves have to do with all that?”

  “No, Dessa.” Mariadela’s tone and gaze were stern. “It’s too dangerous. Listen to me on this. You know it’s hard enough to find support for the kind of women you want to help. How much easier it would be to raise funds for anything else—orphans or men still disabled from the war . . . or even abandoned puppies. But Chinese women? You may disagree, but your Mr. Hawkins won’t be the only one wanting foreclosure on this house if we take in women from Hop Alley; I guarantee you that.”

  Dessa heaved the deepest sigh yet. Why, Lord, is life so unfair?

  11

  HENRY STARED at the oblong sign Tobias held across his lap on the carriage seat opposite him. Carved from one of the many pines Colorado was known to grow so well and etched with the words Pierson House.

  “How many people do you suppose will be attending tonight?” Henry asked. He already regretted agreeing to go along. Hopefully there would be enough guests that he could ignore those who would readily ignore him in return.