“There she is, in the corner.” The woman Mrs. Wright pointed out had curled herself into a ball up against the scarred wainscoting, as if she wished to retreat as far as possible from her surroundings. And who could blame her? The very idea of existing here twenty-four hours a day turned Clara hot, sick, and desperate.
Mrs. Wright led them past a woman raving to herself and another who sat weeping. She called in a strident voice, “Nancy? Nancy McMahon?”
The woman huddled in the corner looked up, and Clara saw she was devastatingly pretty, despite the circumstances and the dirt and tears marking her face—with great, wide eyes and soft, fair hair.
Liam’s wife.
The pain of it shot through Clara like a mortal blow. He had chosen this woman when he possessed the facility for choosing, before death stole his memory, before ever he knew of Clara, with her child’s body and her unnatural ties, forged by whatever power she carried inside. This woman, mad or not, surely represented Liam’s heart.
“Mrs. McMahon,” Theodore said gently, “do you remember Miss Allen? Your employer.”
Bastard, Clara thought silently; she knew they played at a role, but how could he seek to deceive this poor creature whose confusion screamed aloud? The pools of her eyes, haunted and desperate and so utterly lost, reproached and accused Clara.
Clara said to Mrs. Wright, “Is she able to speak with us, to communicate? She looks…” Clara had no words to complete that thought.
Mrs. Wright cast a glare at the steamie. “Here, you—come and get her up.” She herself swept her skirt away from Nancy as she might from the puddle on the other side of the room. “She has days when she is able to speak rationally. On others she retreats. But,” Mrs. Wright added, as if proud of it, “she no longer screams.”
“Perhaps there is some place better for us to speak with her?” Theodore suggested. “Somewhere private.”
“Every inch of this facility is in use. We are severely overcrowded and understaffed.”
“You might lend us your office for a few moments.”
Mrs. Wright sniffed.
Theodore hastily drew his wallet from a pocket. “And you will allow me to make a small donation for the benefit of your patients—toward their holiday meal perhaps, next month.”
“We don’t celebrate holidays. They tend to bring back too many memories and stir up intense emotions. But I will put this in the clothing fund. We can’t keep them in clean clothes.”
Clara shuffled aside to let the servant, which leaked steam badly, in closer. But when it reached down to seize Nancy’s delicate wrists, which Clara saw were already covered with bruises, she reacted involuntarily.
“No, let me—please.”
She circumvented the steamie and bent to Nancy as she might to one of the children at home, Jimmie, perhaps, when he had one of his nightmares, or little Cassie. Nancy shrank from her, but Clara drew her up anyway, and into the circle of her arm.
“It’s all right.” A rampant lie—nothing could be right in this terrible place—but Nancy’s eyes, with their wide, dark pupils, moved to Clara’s and clung. She felt like skin and bone, fragile as a bundle of sticks. Clara’s compassion rose in a staggering wave.
Nancy whispered something.
“What?” Clara bent her ear closer.
“She said ‘Tommy,’ ” Mrs. Wright interpreted coldly. “It was the name of her infant son that died.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nancy clung to Clara with one hand and to the arm of the chair with the other, head tucked well down. If the woman had a third arm, Clara did not doubt she would have covered her head with it.
Mrs. Wright, who quite properly, so Clara had to admit, had remained in the room, now stood at the door. The office, not overly large, felt stifling.
Clara had looked once into Theodore’s eyes when they sat down. Full of distress and uncertainty, their expression made it unsurprising when he said, “Clara, I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
It would be difficult, Clara admitted, to have the conversation she needed, with Mrs. Wright present—or possibly any conversation at all.
She leaned toward Nancy and said, “Are you all right? Are they treating you well here?”
Mrs. Wright, her back against the door, stiffened in indignation, but said nothing.
Nancy looked into Clara’s eyes, and Clara’s heart clenched at the pain she saw.
“Want to go home.”
Ah, and Clara should have anticipated this. Had she been bunged up here, it would be her first request also.
“Are they looking after you properly?” she pressed. “Giving you enough to eat?”
“Food is offered,” said Mrs. Wright. “We cannot force her to eat.”
“Please,” said Theodore, “if we might have a few moments alone.”
“So you can trump up allegations of abuse? We’ve had all that before. There is neither enough money nor enough staff. We do the best we can.”
Clara asked, not without anger, “Then why is she covered in bruises?” She had not expected to feel protective toward Liam’s wife, this woman whose loveliness cried aloud despite her stained clothes and tangled hair. But her every instinct now sat up and howled in defense.
Mrs. Wright replied waspishly, “The others do become violent from time to time, and they tend to bully her. She rarely fights back.”
“Like hens in a henyard,” Theodore contributed unexpectedly. “But, Mrs. Wright, it’s your duty to intervene.”
“Do not come in here and attempt to tell me my duty. We do intervene, of course, as soon as possible.”
“She needs to be placed in another ward, then,” Clara pressed.
Mrs. Wright gave a hard laugh. “All the wards are the same—overcrowded. They keep telling us conditions will be better when they open a women’s ward at Mr. Richardson’s new facility. But that may take years yet.”
Years. Clara couldn’t endure this place for hours.
Theodore got to his feet. When his chair scraped the floor, Nancy flinched. Clara tightened her grip on the woman’s hand comfortingly.
Theodore said to Mrs. Wright in a low voice, “If I make a larger donation to your clothing fund, perhaps we might prevail upon you to stand outside the door just for five minutes?”
Mrs. Wright took the money without protest and went out. Theodore nodded at Clara. “Go on, but for God’s sake be quick.”
“Nancy, dear, I need to ask you a few questions about your past.”
Nancy looked at her from beneath the tangle of soft, blonde hair. Her lips, shaped like a perfect bow, parted, and she moaned.
“I am a friend of your husband’s.” Now, there was a lie. Friend, bed companion, recipient of pleasure. By some act of will, Clara held Nancy’s gaze.
“Dead,” Nancy whispered.
“Liam?” And how could she know that? She’d been locked up in this hellhole since before Liam was arrested, and surely Maynard wouldn’t have put out word of Liam’s demise.
But Nancy whispered, “Tommy.”
“Tommy? That was your son? Liam’s son?”
Nancy began to weep. The tears spilled over from agony-filled eyes, and she disregarded them. “Burned. In the fire. Ah, ochone!”
The lament, pure Irish, rent the stale air of the room, rampant with pain.
“I am sorry, so sorry.” Clara was. She’d never birthed a child of her own, but she knew how she felt for those under her roof and her care.
“My fault.” Nancy gasped it. “I tipped the lamp. Quarreled with my husband.”
“Liam?”
“Yes, Liam was there.”
“Liam—your husband, Liam McMahon.” Clara needed to establish that; it was the whole reason she’d come.
“Out drinking. He was always out drinking,” Nancy said earnestly, her tortured gaze clinging to Clara’s. “Left me home with Tommy. I sat up, waited, with the lamp lit.”
“Yes?”
“He came home drunk, drunk again. No mo
ney for food, and he drank what he earned.”
Clara’s heart sank like an anvil. Not her Liam, who was out working even now.
But he was not her Liam. He belonged to this poor woman.
“And you quarreled?” So might Clara have done, in the same circumstances.
Nancy nodded. “We quarreled, and he stormed out—left us again. I was so angry I followed him out into the night. But my elbow must have caught the lamp.” She drew her fingers from Clara’s and covered her face with both hands.
Clara shot a desperate look at Theodore. This was not the news she’d wanted. Better Liam not recall such a terrible thing.
“Tommy,” Nancy moaned.
“Did he perish, then, in the fire?” But the ship’s manifest said William and Nancy McMahon had sailed with an infant.
“His cot caught fire. So badly burned.”
Clara turned sick inside.
“’Twas my fault!”
“No, Nancy, listen to me—it was an accident.” Surely others had told her so. But she remained locked in a place no assurance could reach.
“My fault he’s dead.”
Clara fought the impulse to gather the poor, broken creature into her arms. “Nancy, listen to me. I need to know about Liam.” Clara swallowed hard. “Your husband. He is your husband, is that right?”
Nancy lifted empty eyes.
“You sailed together from Ireland. From Galway. Before that you were in Dublin.”
“He’s dead, Tommy—”
“You’ll get no sense from her,” Theodore said softly.
Desperate, Clara clutched both Nancy’s hands. “Is Liam McMahon your husband? Did you travel here, to Buffalo with him?”
“Liam? He’s out working. Why doesn’t he come home?”
Because he’s been in jail, he’s died, and come back again into my arms. Into my bed.
At that moment Clara thoroughly despised herself and all she’d done. Not that she could have prevented Liam’s death at Maynard’s hands. But she’d raised him for purely selfish reasons, and she wanted to keep him even now, even when she saw how terribly this woman needed him.
“When,” she asked gently, “did your child die?”
And just like that, Nancy began to shriek. She withdrew her hands from Clara’s, threw them in the air, and howled like a banshee.
Clara jumped. Theodore swore; the door flew open, and Mrs. Wright surged in.
“That’s enough. You’ve upset her. It will take us hours to get her quieted.”
“I’m sorry.” Clara fought the desire to cover her ears.
The steamie came through the open door, puffing badly.
“Gather her up,” Mrs. Wright told it. “Take her to the isolation room.”
“What?” Clara began to question.
“You know what to do,” Mrs. Wright told the unit.
Theodore tried to protest. “I must object.”
“You know nothing about caring for these patients. And you’ve done enough harm. She’ll get them all stirred up, and it will be nearly impossible to calm them again.”
“I’m sorry.” Clara looked at Nancy, whose face, now red, showed no signs of sanity. “Nancy, please listen—”
“I’ll have to ask you to leave now.” Mrs. Wright’s tone brooked no argument. Clara felt Theodore seize her arm and urge her away.
They could still hear Nancy shrieking when they went through the outer door and, very faintly, when they stood in the street.
“My God!” Theodore breathed, heartfelt.
“What a terrible place, Theodore. What an awful, sinful, nightmare of a place.”
“Yes.”
Clara turned and looked at her companion. “I want to get her out of there, as soon as possible. I want to take her home.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Someone trailed Liam through the newly-fallen late November dark—possibly two someones. He’d deliberately delayed leaving Hengerer’s shop until he had some cover from the ensuing night, just in case a watch was being kept on the area, and he’d left by the back door through the alley that opened onto Fargo Avenue. Still he’d picked up company before walking half a block.
Now, heading down Fargo toward Virginia, he cursed the overcast, which seemed to smother the light cast by the steam lamps. On the corner of Hudson, he passed an upscale tavern and considered turning in—if those who tailed him meant mischief, he’d be safer in a crowd.
But the house on Virginia Street called him. Clara did. Home. Strange to say, when he had lost nearly all his past, but he did feel a sense of homecoming there—not from the place but the woman.
Clara’s presence had become his home, and where he wanted—no, needed—to dwell.
He sped past the boozer and glanced over his shoulder as he angled across towards Tenth. The dark seemed to close around him, and the pursuing footfalls sounded louder.
Not steamies, then, not this time. Steamies rolled, though a well-constructed one had the ability to ratchet itself up steps. This sound denoted hard leather on pavement.
He walked faster, gauging the distance to decent cover and the best route. These could be common footpads. He had his day’s pay in his pocket, and times in this city were lean for some folk. Or the pursuit could be far more sinister.
He quickened his pace to a half lope, and the pursuing steps sped up also. Definitely more than one man, and definitely not about to let him lose them. He ducked off Tenth and into an alley, heading for the west arm of Virginia Street. Still a good many blocks before home.
At the corner of Eleventh and Maryland, under a streetlight, they caught him and came at him from two sides. He didn’t know how they’d managed it, unless they’d separated and one had sprinted ahead.
Both were out of breath now—big men with cloth caps pulled well down so he couldn’t see their eyes. He didn’t have to; their posture revealed their intent, and he braced himself, ready when the first fist came at him.
Ah, and his instincts took over then. His fists came up and his shoulders squared, and he went in swinging. Not averse to brawling, he knew to his soul every punch counted.
“McMahon?” the first fellow demanded even as Liam ducked his fist and got in a solid blow to the man’s midriff.
The other man waded in behind, and there, beneath the dirty light of the steam lamp, an ugly battle began.
Liam used everything he had, from teeth to elbows, but these lads—two on one—didn’t fight fair. One remained always at his back. Liam, delivering kicks and jabs as he could, knew that if once that man seized him from behind the other—with fists like iron—would pummel him until he was senseless or dead.
“Maynard send you?” he snarled as he landed a punch that hurt like hell but provided a satisfying crunch to his opponent’s cheekbone. “The fecking murderer.”
A foolish thing to say, he knew it the moment it left his lips. For it proved he had dangerous knowledge of Maynard’s guilt. And he could no longer doubt Maynard had loosed these vicious hounds.
He shrugged the man at his back off yet again, turned, and caught a fist on the temple from his original opponent. For an instant the world around him, all dirty, garish light, blinked out, and he swayed.
If he fell, would these two drag him off to Maynard? Would he ever see daylight again, see home?
Clara.
The need for her flared so brightly inside him, it nearly consumed his doubt. He drew a mighty breath as she became his strength, and he kicked out with his heavily-booted feet. For one blinding instant he thought he would get away. Then a merciless grasp seized his arms from behind and wrestled with him, even as he saw the first man wind up for a blow meant to take him out.
“Liam McMahon? Is that you, Liam?” The eldritch screech tore through the gloom. A terrible figure emerged into the light; for an instant Liam could not tell it for friend or foe. Bulging with muscle and wearing a pair of blue coveralls, it had wild hair that flew as it tossed itself into the fray.
The next
few seconds became very interesting. Liam’s newly-arrived ally waded in like a stevedore on a bender, and Liam picked up his own fight with a certain measure of enjoyment. Almost before he knew it, his first opponent lay senseless at his feet and the second man, at whom Liam had never really got a good look, fled unsteadily into the darkness.
Liam sucked in a painful breath and looked up into Ruella’s broad face.
“To what,” he gasped, “do I owe the pleasure of your presence?”
“To the luck of the Irish, no doubt. I was just on my way from my rooms on Palmer Street to Clara’s to deliver some information.”
“Can’t say I was ever happier to see an Englishwoman. Thanks.”
Ruella scowled and nudged the fallen man with her toe. “You know him?”
Liam had never seen the ugly brute before. He shook his head, which hurt.
“You suppose Maynard sent him?” Ruella asked. “He say anything?”
“Just my name.”
“Help me drag him into that alley—he’ll make an ugly surprise for some housemaid tossin’ the trash if he don’t come to before morning.”
Ruella’s muscles bulged as she bent to the task, and Liam eyed her with incredulous admiration. The Limey was quite a woman.
“Remember his face,” she advised as they hauled the senseless lump from beneath the street lamp.
“I’m not likely to forget. Here, hang on a moment, lass.” At the edge of the light, Liam rifled the man’s pockets, came up with a number of coins, a lucky piece which he tossed into the shadows, and then a billfold stuffed with cash.
He squinted at the information within. “Name’s Ignatius Krull. And this must be his pay.”
Deliberately, he extracted the wad, divided it in two, and handed Ruella her half. “A profitable night’s work,” he said even as a large, unbeautiful smile split Ruella’s face. “Worth a few bruises. This will pay for the rest of Clara’s coal.”
“Her welfare’s all you think about, innit?” Ruella asked abruptly. “She’s a lucky girl.”
“She isn’t,” Liam said seriously. “I’ve a past following me, and those two lads were part of it. Worst part is, I don’t even know what, though I can guess why.”
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