“Yes, sir.”
“Go now, and let us talk.”
But Clara discovered, once the steamie had departed, there wasn’t too much left to say. She buried her face in her hands and fought for composure.
“And here was I thinking—hoping—you might be proud of me.” Liam’s voice crooned, warm, low, and very Irish. He stood so close she could feel the heat of his body; he pulled at Clara’s every sense, but she struggled for rationality.
Slowly she lifted her face from her hands and gazed into his eyes. “Did you really earn all that money this morning, and not steal it?”
“Steal it?”
“As you did before, that night on the waterfront.”
Something flickered in his eyes, moved like the shadow of deception. At that moment she wondered what she really knew of this man and the secrets behind those eyes.
“You wound me, Clara.” He laid his hand over his heart.
“That’s no answer.” Pulse pounding hard, she held his gaze.
“Aye, well, I might have lifted part of it from a fellow. You would have done the same, in my place.”
“I would not!”
“He was abusing a servant at the time, and never even noticed when I relieved him of his no doubt ill-gotten gains.” He added, unrepentant, “But I earned the rest.”
“I don’t want it in this house.” She began to tremble. She wished she could add that she didn’t want him, but she had not the strength.
“Ah, now, you don’t mean that. Anyway, ’tis already gone. That’s the bit we gave the man for the coal.”
What have I done? Clara wondered quite suddenly and clearly. Brought this man—this unprincipled rascal—into our lives. I should send him away now, cut my losses, and have done.
But her body craved him, her flesh did, her lips and her fingers. More, her soul craved him. She could no more chase him from her than bar him from her bed.
“Sure, when you think about it,” he crooned, his voice curling through her consciousness, “me stealing that money’s no different than you scheming to wrangle that settlement from your grandfather with your deception of a marriage.”
Just so must the devil whisper, Clara thought. Sweet, low, and convincing. Because she couldn’t deny he was right.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Clara, at work straightening her father’s surgery, heard the front door open and Georgina invite someone into the hall. She paused to listen, and the murmur of voices caught her ear.
“Where’s the big Irishman?” Theodore, and not sounding very pleased.
“Out at work,” Georgina replied.
“What?”
“These past three days. Left early this morning.”
“Yes, well, I have news for Clara. But first, Georgina, darling girl, we need to talk—you and I.”
“We’ve said all we need.”
“We haven’t. I broke off my engagement last night.”
Silence fell in the foyer, like a heavy curtain. Clara, now just inside the surgery door, listened shamelessly.
At last Georgina breathed, “You never did!”
“It’s torn my family apart, and my life, but I don’t care. I should have done it months ago. Can you forgive me being a coward so long?”
“You’re mad! Go home and make it up with your family. Likely your fiancée will take you back.”
“No.”
Georgina’s voice, usually so soft, rose sharply. “You think this changes anything?”
“I hope so.”
“It doesn’t change who you are—who I am.”
“I’m the man who loves you. Georgina, say you’ll consider my suit.”
“I should say not! A black wife? It would ruin your career. The world—”
“I don’t give a damn about the world. I know who you are—the kindest, sweetest, gentlest, and most beautiful woman—”
“Theodore, no.”
“I love you.”
“And,” Georgina’s voice carried the weight of heartbreak, “I love you. That’s why—”
Georgina’s voice broke off. Clara, frozen with her hand to her mouth, ached for her friends.
“Georgie,” Theodore whispered, barely audible.
Georgina stumbled on, now sounding desperate, “Just think how hard you’ve worked to establish your clientele. Would you throw all that away?”
“In an instant.”
“We’d be ostracized.”
“So? There’s work in plenty to be had in this city. I may not make a fortune, but I can take the cases other lawyers won’t touch, like the worker who loses an arm in the mill and can find no one to represent him, the mother who’s intimidated by an unscrupulous landlord, all those disenfranchised who need someone to speak for them in the courts. I’ll live what I believe, with you at my side.”
“You paint a real pretty picture, Theodore, but—”
“Not just a picture, Georgie. It’s the life I choose for myself. For us.”
Clara, her ear now virtually pressed to the door, heard what might be a sob from Georgina. “I can’t do that to you, Theodore. I just can’t!”
Georgina fled, her soft steps retreating toward the kitchen. When Clara opened the surgery door, Theodore stood with a wry look on his face and anguish in his eyes.
“You heard all that?”
“I’m sorry.” Clara gestured to the surgery. “I—”
“It doesn’t matter. She wouldn’t listen.”
“She’s overwhelmed, Theodore. She’ll come round.”
“You think so?”
“She’ll reason it out in her head the way she always does.”
“It’s not her head I want to win, but her heart.”
“With Georgina, I suspect you’ll have to win both. Come in. You have news for me?”
“I do, and I’m afraid it’s not good.”
Clara’s heart sank. She pulled out a chair at her father’s desk and indicated a second. “About Liam?”
Theodore nodded. He seated himself, pulled some papers from his attaché case, and reached visibly for composure. When he lifted his eyes to Clara’s, she saw his regret.
“My agents have been working to trace the movements of William T. McMahon from the ship’s manifest forward, here to Buffalo. They’ve located his wife.”
****
“She’s alive?” Had Clara truly wished otherwise? She gripped the edge of her father’s desk so tightly she half expected her fingers to snap. She knew if she didn’t grasp hold of something, she would tumble down.
“She is, though it seems the infant son perished during their journey—most likely in Montreal. They’re still investigating that detail.”
Detail. Surely a child’s life proved more—a son, Liam’s son.
“How unfortunate,” she said, her voice distant as a stranger’s. “The wife is still here in Buffalo?”
“Yes.” Theodore scowled. “Surely you see what this means, Clara? He lied to you. He never told you he had a wife, and he has obviously been running his own con, trying to fleece you out of your inheritance. I’m sorry,” he added. “I know you’ve become…attached.”
What to say? Dare Clara confess all the truth to Theodore and involve him in her mucky vortex of doubt and secrecy, perhaps watch the liking for her she saw in his eyes fade? Would he think her a freak, a witch?
“Tell me about his wife,” she said instead.
He consulted his papers. “One Nancy McMahon—age twenty-four. They’ve been in Buffalo less than a year, entered the country via Niagara Falls. During that time they had a number of residences, both in South Buffalo and near the waterfront.”
Nancy. Liam’s wife, mother of his child. The woman he slept with, the woman who had a right to him.
“Where is she staying now?” The poor woman must be frantic, believing her man still imprisoned, or dead.
“The women’s hospital on Porter Avenue. It’s a psychiatric facility.”
“What?”
Th
eodore raised his eyes to Clara’s. “She was committed two months ago.”
Clara lost all her breath in a gasp. “Are you sure?”
“Very. My investigators spoke with the landlady at her last residence, a boardinghouse over on Carolina. She says Nancy was out raving in the street before being hauled away. They also spoke with the administrators at the hospital. The woman is definitely there.”
Clara parted suddenly dry lips. “Where was Liam? When she was taken in, I mean. Why didn’t he try to get her out of that place?” She’d heard tales of the hospital on Porter, and the kinds of things that went on there. Everyone had.
“Landlady, a Mrs. Kraus, says Nancy’s husband was seldom home, worked a job and spent most nights at the boozers, drinking and brawling. Failed to pay the rent. Typical Irishman, so she said.”
Clara stiffened with indignation. Could that be the same man who even now insisted upon working to support her?
She drew an unsteady breath. “I want to see her.”
“What?”
“Nancy McMahon. I want to meet her face to face.”
“Oh, Clara, no. Not a good idea.”
“You don’t understand, Theodore.”
“I think I do.” Theodore glanced at the door, beyond which was Georgina. “You’ve fallen for him. Don’t try to deny it. I suppose it was inevitable, but the fellow’s a lout, and you’re a smart woman.”
“The man I’ve come to know isn’t the man you describe. That’s why I need to see her, Theodore, and ask her—”
“What makes you think you’d get any sense from the woman? Raving, the landlady said.”
“Surely she’ll be better by now.”
Slowly, Theodore shook his head. “It would be irresponsible of me to allow you to enter such a place.”
Clara clasped her hands and leaned toward him. “It would be irresponsible of you not to accompany me. Because if you don’t, I’ll go, with Dax, on my own.”
****
As soon as they disembarked from the steamcab, Clara could hear the screaming. It trailed through the sharp air of the cold afternoon the way one of the new fire sirens might, and sent a frisson of horror up Clara’s spine. The building, large and with a corner turret, had many windows, all of them barred.
She looked at Theodore uneasily. He responded with a wry grimace. “These places should be shut down,” he said, “and many will be, now that the new psychiatric facility on Forest Avenue is up and running. State of the art, that is—unfortunately, they don’t allow women there yet. Perhaps someday.”
Clara made no reply. Pedestrians passed by in both directions on the busy thoroughfare, none sparing so much as a glance for the place, and she shivered. Were such screams so commonplace that they attracted no attention?
“I still believe this to be a bad idea,” Theodore pronounced in a grim tone.
Quite suddenly, Clara’s courage flagged, and she agreed with him. She didn’t want to enter that place of potential misery, but need must take her even there.
She reached out and clutched Theodore’s arm. “We’re here now, and I have to know.”
The front steps were steep and led to an ill-lit hall that smelled of boiled turnips and something else Clara couldn’t immediately identify. The screams were louder here, much louder—they echoed through the building and were accompanied by other sounds: moans, plaintive cries, and hysterical laughter. Clara faltered.
It was Theodore who led her through the doorway on the left, marked with a placard that read “office.”
Inside, behind a desk, sat a woman of late middle years, gray hair pulled into a pile atop her head and spectacles perched on her nose. She looked up at them in surprised inquiry.
“May I help you?”
Theodore spoke. “We’re here to visit one of your patients, a Mrs. Nancy McMahon. We’re acquaintances of her husband.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Liam, hard at work polishing the outside of a plain pine coffin, heard voices in the outer shop and wondered if Mr. Hengerer had another commission. Liam’s new employer dealt fairly with his customers and kept his prices so reasonable he already had a large backlog of orders. But the old German and Liam agreed on one thing: no one, rich or poor, deserved to be laid to rest in a shoddily-constructed coffin. That was why he kept smoothing the pine surface with loving hands even while what sounded like an argument erupted between Hengerer and his unseen visitor.
When the discussion ended at last and Franz Hengerer appeared in the doorway of the dusty workroom, Liam looked at him in inquiry. He liked the man with his gray hair and large, drooping moustache and, after only three days, trusted him. He hoped Hengerer felt the same.
“Someone asking after you,” Franz announced abruptly in his heavily-accented English.
Liam stiffened. How could that be? He’d spent the past three days squirreled away here among the tools and wood shavings. The only people he’d seen, besides Franz and his plump wife, had been dead.
“For me? You sure about that?”
“Ja, sure.” Franz eyed him with shrewd, hazel eyes. “Called you by name. Also told the look of you.”
Liam straightened slowly and dropped the linseed-soaked cloth he held. “What did you tell him?”
Franz leaned against the door jamb and eyed Liam frankly. “Are you in some sort of trouble, William?”
Liam hesitated, and Franz went on, “Because he had the look, this man, of a hund after a brock. To tell you truly, I did not like the appearance of him. I have seen men chased down before, in old country. I did not like that either.”
“My situation is complicated,” Liam said simply. “Let me just say I would rather not be found by that man, or anyone.”
Franz nodded decisively. “I must ask you one thing: you have not sinned against your Gott?”
“That’s a big question.” Was bigamy a sin? Adultery definitely was. What of loving a woman more than life itself, when married to another?
“I’ve killed no one,” he told the old man, “if that’s what you’re asking. But I may not be who I seem.”
“Ach, we all put on different coats from time to time. I would hate to give you over to the authorities—on general principle, see. Me, I do not like the authorities. Besides, you are a good worker. Why is this man after you?”
Liam thought about that. The hund might have been sent by Clara’s grandfather. Then again, he might have been sent by Maynard. Had it been playing on the warden’s mind, what he’d seen at Sterling House? Had his suspicions been further raised by old Van Hamelin’s agents asking questions at the jail?
It was worth Maynard’s career, if not his life, to keep hidden what had been going on in the jail yard.
He said to Franz, “I have a past following me, one I’d rather outrun.”
Franz seemed to weigh that a moment before he said, “Most men have things they would rather forget. It is part of why we came to this country, ja? You are good with your hands, and I have many orders for customers who cannot wait long.” He gave a grim smile. “And you have a wife to support, you say, and kinder?”
“Yes.” At least one wife.
Franz shrugged. “Then you keep working. That coffin, it is done? Help me carry it out so Mr. Pfister can come collect it before dark. He wishes his wife to lie in his parlor this evening.”
Liam nodded, and then caught the old man’s arm. “You think he believed you when you said I wasn’t here, this hund?”
Franz widened his eyes and spread his hands. “Do I look like a man to lie? You just wait until dark, William, before going home. You want to get there safely, nein?”
Liam did; he wanted to see Clara so badly he ached, longed to gaze into her eyes and take her in his arms.
He wondered what she might be doing now, whether she longed for him also, or thought of him. And he wondered, in despair, how he would ever make his future come right.
****
The interior of the hospital stank. As soon and Clara and The
odore left the front office, the odor assailed her nostrils, though the woman who led them—Mrs. Wright—did not even seem to notice.
Mrs. Wright had identified herself as the administrator of the facility. She displayed no pride in doing so, nor should she; she did, however, seem curious about them.
“Mrs. McMahon has had no visitors since she arrived here—none, that is, except her husband.”
Clara struggled not to look at Theodore. He, bless him, remained calm and businesslike, and explained, “We have only just discovered she is here. She used to be employed by my companion, Miss Allen, who has come out of concern.”
Mrs. Wright turned dispassionate eyes on Clara. “Was she in your employ when she fell ill?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are familiar with some of the details of her malady.”
Clara was saved answering when Mrs. Wright unlocked a door and admitted them to what must be one of the wards. The malodor, much increased, struck her in the face in a wave.
The room—large and high-ceilinged—nevertheless had a stifling air. Tall, bare windows and a scuffed, ruined floor caught Clara’s attention, all clotted with women—old, young, moving, motionless, babbling, silent, and in various states of dress and undress.
It looked, Clara thought, very much like a version of an all-female hell.
A woman with wild white hair stood at one of the windows—which was both cracked and barred—shrieking at intervals like an eldritch. Another paced like—well, like a madwoman—muttering words impossible to catch. A single steam unit, in worse condition than Dax when Clara and Liam first appropriated him, trundled about in a decidedly helpless fashion, one side of its chest caved in.
Clara’s heart dropped like a stone. Which of these poor creatures might be Nancy McMahon? Liam’s wife. The woman with a prior claim on the man Clara loved.
“Clean that up,” Mrs. Wright said to the steamie, and Clara looked where indicated to see one of the patients, with a bare bottom, standing in a puddle of fresh urine.
She made a wordless sound of protest, and Theodore took her arm.
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