by A Wanted Man
“I’ll relieve you in an hour or so,” Will told him.
“Take your time,” Jack replied. “Put in an appearance in the grand parlor. Our regulars are beginning to wonder what’s become of you. Get acquainted with the Pinkerton detectives.”
“They’ve arrived?” So much had happened since Julie had taken her parasol to his front window on Saturday morning, Will had all but forgotten that he had wired Denver for Pinkerton agents he knew to be completely trustworthy, the only agents Murphy O’Brien had included on the list he had sent to his younger brother for consideration.
“Earlier this afternoon on the Denver train,” Jack confirmed. “I gave them their duty assignments and arranged their schedules. I also took the liberty of paying the previous ‘Pinkertons’ and releasing them from their obligations.”
“Thanks, Jack.” Will extended his hand in friendship. “I couldn’t have managed without you.”
Jack grinned. “That’s why you hired me, Will. To handle the things you need help handling. Or things you don’t wish to handle.”
“Speaking of which . . .” Will paused for effect. “If I am not mistaken, there is a meeting of the San Francisco Saloon and Bordello Owners’ Association Wednesday morning at the Lotus Blossom.”
“You are not mistaken.”
“How would you like to go in my stead? To represent the Silken Angel Saloon?”
“I would be delighted to go in your stead, Will, but I am sure that my presence there would not be tolerated or allowed.”
Will knew where the conversation was headed, but he was enjoying this bit of sparring with Jack. It was comfortable. It was normal. It was the way the two longtime friends and colleagues dealt with the strain of their dangerous endeavors. “How so?”
“The name of the organization whose meetings you are obligated to attend is the San Francisco Saloon and Bordello Owners’ Association. You are the owner. I am but a barman in your employ.”
Will chuckled. “And a finer barman never lived.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Jack warned.
“I’m not likely to,” Will retorted. “Not with you reminding me at every turn.”
“You’re already deciding how to handle Madam Harpy’s presence at the meeting on Wednesday.” Jack was serious.
“How am I going to sit beside the woman and pretend everything is business as usual when I know she ordered that”—he spit out the word as he nodded toward the bed—“done to that girl lying in my bed?”
“I don’t know,” Jack told him. “But I’ve no doubt you will do whatever you have to do to manage it. Because as far as Madam Harpy is concerned, it is business as usual. Ugly, deadly business,” he added. “And, Will?”
“Yes?”
“Do me a favor and get one of those Italian ices when you take your walk. But leave the hunt for Typhoon Julia’s assailant for a later time.” Jack knew as well as Will did that the beat cops tended to congregate at a coffee shop next to the Italian ice shop on the wharf. “You are exhausted and in no shape to confront anyone. And I prefer you free and in one piece. I’m sure Typhoon Julia would agree.”
“He won’t keep the marks she gave him much longer,” Will protested. “I need to locate him now, while he still has them.”
“There’s no guarantee he still has them,” Jack argued. “And you’ve a better way of finding him than prowling the streets at night.”
Will muttered a curse beneath his breath. “Madam Harpy.”
“’Fraid so,” Jack commiserated.
“I don’t know if I can stay in the same room with her without revealing my contempt for her.”
“Too bad,” Jack reminded him. “Because she’s going to want to demonstrate her particular fondness for you.”
Chapter Nineteen
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
—GALILEO GALILEI, 1564–1642
Someone was reading aloud. Julie lay with her eyes closed and listened to the cadence of the voice. It took her a few seconds to identify the owner and the story he was reading. It was Will Keegan, and he was reading Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame in French.
“Interesting choice.” Her voice was stronger. It wasn’t back to normal yet, but she was no longer relegated to a mere whisper.
Will closed the book and looked over at her. Her eyes were open, although it was impossible for her to open her swollen and bruised eye completely. “My library here is limited. But you knew the work, so I assumed that meant you liked Romanticism.”
His voice was hoarse, and from his place in the story, Julie suspected he must have been reading aloud for quite a while. Reaching up, she traced the sutures above her eyebrow with her fingers and grimaced. “I enjoyed the story, but I never aspired to resemble Quasimodo.”
Will set the novel aside and gave her a reassuring smile. “Dr. Stone had to sew you up in a few places.”
She wasn’t normally vain, but the thought of being scarred for life frightened her. “On my face?”
He heard the alarm in her voice and read the panic in her uninjured eye. “And your shoulder.”
“Oh.” Julie reached up to touch her shoulder and felt a bulky bandage beneath the silk of the garment covering it.
“It took ten stitches to close the wound,” Will explained. “But not to worry: Dr. Stone was very careful. He took tiny stitches. If there is a scar, it will be all but invisible.”
“You said he sewed me up in a few places,” she reminded him. “How many others?” She gingerly circled the area around her swollen eye and cheekbone, searching for more sutures.
Will slid to the edge of his chair, leaned over, and gently ran the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. “Here.” He touched the first stitch, and then the other one. “And here.”
His gentle touch sent a shiver of longing—or perhaps belonging—through her. Something about this particular man made her feel special. As if he saw something in her that no one else had ever seen.
Julie ran the tip of her tongue across the wound. “That’s all?”
“That’s all,” he confirmed, gently stroking the area between her bottom lip and her chin. “You bit through it.”
“Oh.” That frisson of awareness shot through her once again. There was no doubt about it: Will Keegan made her feel sensations she’d never felt before. She smoothed her fingers through her hair and noticed the new bandage on her wrist. “Is it broken?”
Will shook his head. “I’m happy to say that my diagnosis was incorrect. He twisted it enough to sprain it. Not enough to break it.” He made a face. “I’ll wager it hurts the same, though.”
She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Only a bit.” She glanced over to his shaving stand. A length of toweling was draped over the mirror. “Thank you for that. I must look a fright.”
Will had covered the mirror after shaving that morning to prevent the light from the lamps and the fire from reflecting off it and into his eyes as he sat reading. He hadn’t thought to cover it to keep Julia Jane from waking and seeing herself, but he was willing to let her think it. “You look like a beautiful, brave, and clever woman,” Will told her. “You look like a survivor.”
She blushed once more, and this time the brighter reddish-pink color was visible beneath the dark red-and-violet bruising. “You look tired, Mr. Keegan.”
He shrugged his shoulders in a graceful gesture. “I’ve been unable to claim my bed.”
“For how long?” she asked.
“Four nights. Beginning with the night you arrived,” he answered.
She was stunned by the sacrifice he’d made on her behalf. He had given her his bed and his bedroom, and the other upstairs rooms were occupied by the Chinese girls. Where was he sleeping? Other than on that terribly uncomfortable-looking wing chair. “I’ve been in your bed three days?”
“I was happy to give you the loan of it.” He smiled, the dimple forming in his cheek. “And un
der the circumstances, I think it more fitting that you call me Will.” His warm sherry-colored eyes twinkled. “We have shared a bed, after all.”
“Concurrently?”
“I’m afraid not,” he admitted. “To my very great disappointment, I was a complete gentleman and respected your privacy.” It wasn’t the absolute truth; there had been moments when he’d held her when she was caught in the throes of fever and nightmares. He’d glimpsed different parts of her body over the course of her illness, but he and Jack had done their utmost to protect her modesty. And although he’d been present when Dr. Stone had conducted the intimate examination of her to determine whether she had been violated, the doctor had covered her lower half with a sheet to ensure her privacy, and Will had voiced his appreciation for Stone’s thoughtful gesture.
“Thank you for giving me the loan of your bed and bedchamber, and for taking care of me.” She stared up at him. “I presume you’ve tended to my . . . personal . . . needs.”
“I didn’t do it alone,” he told her. “The doctor treated your wounds. Jack and I simply saw that you received the care and the rest your body needed in order to begin healing. We took turns sitting up with you.”
“You and Jack?” She was mortified by the idea that two men had seen to her most intimate needs without her knowledge. It was bad enough to think of Will Keegan tending to her alone, but to have his barman tend to her as well . . .
His eyes twinkled once more. “I gave you my word I wouldn’t peek. I honored it. Jack did as well.”
“Weren’t there any women available?”
“I’m afraid, Miss Parham, that you chose to collapse after hours in a business and a residence inhabited entirely by bachelors.” A half smile played on his lips. “I thought you’d want us to keep your secret and preserve your reputation as well as your well-being.”
“There were ladies at the mission . . .” she ventured.
“And saloon girls here during working hours, but we didn’t know who was trustworthy and who wasn’t,” he said. “And it’s safer for you if we keep your presence here to ourselves.”
“What about the Chinese girls you purchased?”
He shot her a strange look. He thought about denying that the girls were ever in residence, but decided to tell the truth. “The girls are no longer here. They left a few hours before you arrived.”
“Where did they go?”
“Someplace where they won’t become prostitutes. Someplace where they’ll be free of Madam Harpy and anyone else who wants to prey on them.”
“Oh.” Julie couldn’t keep the note of disappointment out of her voice.
“You sound dismayed I didn’t succumb to my baser instincts and ‘slake my passions’ on the Chinese girls.” He was chagrined by her inability to accept that he had no designs on the Chinese girls.
“It’s not that,” she murmured. “I know better than that now. I know you only want the best for them. . . .”
“Since when?” he demanded.
“Since I—” Julie caught herself in time. Before she admitted that she trusted him and felt safe when she was with him. Before she admitted that she liked him and believed he was special, that he was the kind of man she’d thought he could be when he’d carefully checked her for injuries after finding her on the floor of his washroom. When she realized that the only reason she’d taken her parasol to his storefront had been because she was so angry at him for buying the Chinese girls. “Since I woke up to find you reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame to me in French.”
“I’m glad to know that my appreciation for Monsieur Hugo’s novel and my classical education have changed your opinion of me.” Will couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
She didn’t flinch outright, but the barb found its mark. “Vous parlez très bien français,” she said.
“Merci,” he said. “My father would be pleased to know his French lessons weren’t wasted.”
“Je suis désolé que j’ai mal jugé vous,” she said softly.
Will recognized how hard it was for her to apologize for misjudging him. “Why were you disappointed to learn the girls are no longer here?”
“I wanted to speak with them.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” Will told her. “You could barely speak at all, and they don’t speak English.”
“No matter,” she assured him. “I speak Can—” Julie could have bitten her tongue off at the slip. It was no secret that the Salvationist movement did its best to teach its missionaries Cantonese and Mandarin, but it was rare to find a missionary who spoke the languages like a native. When she’d hit upon the idea of becoming Jie Li, the laundry girl, she’d thought it best to keep her ability a secret so no one would suspect that Julie Parham and Jie Li were one and the same.
“Cantonese?” He pinned her with a penetrating look. “And Mandarin, perhaps?”
She looked down at the coverlet and began pleating it between her fingers.
“You mentioned that you grew up in Hong Kong,” he continued. “Most British citizens in Hong Kong have a working knowledge of Cantonese. If only to instruct the servants.”
“What do you know of Hong Kong?” she asked, without meeting his gaze.
“A fair amount,” he told her. “I grew up there.”
She looked up at that. “You grew up in Hong Kong?”
“Imagine my surprise when a girl from the old neighborhood shows up at my door, masquerading first as a missionary and then as a Chinese peasant girl,” he said, with more than a touch of irony. “The missionary smashes my saloon window because she despises me and everything for which I stand, and the Chinese peasant, half-strangled, stabbed, and bleeding, comes to me for sanctuary.” Will gave her that mysterious half smile once again. “Forgive me if I’m a little confused and intrigued by the contrast.”
“I’m masquerading as a Chinese laundry girl,” Julie told him. “I joined the Salvationists. I am a missionary, even if I lack the normal missionary zeal.”
“My storefront window begs to differ.”
Julie couldn’t help but smile, despite the two stitches in her lip. “I’m also masquerading as my cousin, Jane Burke.”
“Burke?” He lifted one brow in query. “Have you a cousin named Jane Burke?”
“I haven’t any cousins at all,” she replied, her voice weakening, becoming hoarse.
“May I ask how you chose the surname?” he asked.
“You know how,” she said. “I became Jane Burke when I realized a policeman had followed me from the Christian Ladies’ Benevolent Society tea to the Russ House the night I was attacked.”
More intrigued than ever by the fact that she had chosen his middle name as the surname for her new identity, Will reached over, poured her a glass of water from the carafe on the bedside table, and handed it to her, encouraging her to continue. “You went from being Julia Jane Parham to Jane Burke at the Russ House?” He shook his head. “How did you manage that?”
Julie took several sips of water, thanked him, then handed him the glass and picked up the thread of her tale where she’d left off. “You said Madam Harpy hired a policeman to kill me. When I realized one had followed me from the Christian Ladies’ Benevolent Society tea, I ducked into the shop of Evangeline Dumond, dressmaker and milliner, two doors up from the hotel, and changed from my Salvationist dress into a lovely and very fashionable jade green serge walking dress and a matching green bonnet with a netted brim Madam Evangeline had made up, along with brown false fringe and brown sausage-curl hairpieces beneath my bonnet to hide my red hair. Then I purchased additional hairpieces in blond and black, and another ready-made gown, and hired a cab to take me to the hotel. But when I got there the policeman was talking to the doorman, so I had the cabbie take me to Ghirardelli’s.”
He had to smile at that: a woman fearing for her life fleeing to San Francisco’s premier chocolate shop. “And after Ghirardelli’s?”
“The cabbie took me back to the hotel.” She looked up
at Will. “I thought I was safe, because the policeman was gone by the time I returned, but . . .”
“He didn’t leave,” Will guessed. “He was waiting in your room when you entered.”
“No,” she said. “Because I entered Jane Burke’s room.”
“What did you do after you entered Jane’s room?” he asked, completely caught up in her account of what happened to her.
“I spent nearly an hour arranging, rearranging, and moving my belongings from Julie Parham’s room to Jane Burke’s room, making certain all the Salvationist things were in Julie’s room and that Jane Burke’s room contained the new dresses, my laundry girl disguise, and enough of my regular clothing and personal items to make it seem that the room was occupied. And I didn’t see anyone.” She pinned Will with her gaze. “I was in both rooms. Nobody else was in either room.”
“How did he get in your room?”
“I don’t know,” she told him. “I fell asleep, and when I woke up, he was there.”
“In Julie’s room?” Will asked, following her logic and separating her identities.
“Yes,” she replied. She began to shiver in reaction. “He was in Julie’s room.” She looked up at Will. “I thought my disguise would protect me, but it didn’t fool anyone except the desk clerk.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Will was thoughtful. “He might have simply chosen Julie’s room first. Had you not been there, he might have gone to Jane’s next. How many people know about Jane Burke?”
“Not many. I created her on the spur of the moment because I didn’t want to give the cabbie my real name. And then, when the hotel desk clerk didn’t recognize me as Julie, I told him I was Julie’s cousin, Jane Burke, and asked for a room.”
“Nobody else knows that Jane is Julie’s cousin?” he asked.
“Nobody.”
“You’re sure? Was there anybody in the lobby who might have heard you tell the desk clerk?”
“No. There wasn’t anyone else in the lobby,” she recalled. “The only person I told was the desk clerk.”