by Carol Arens
Last night Lilleth had not been very smart. Had things not fallen apart when Clark called her Trace Ballentine’s pet name for her, he’d have soon discovered that she hadn’t the knowledge of intimacy that a widow would have.
While not a virgin in the true sense of the word, her one, exceptionally brief sexual experience, born out of pure curiosity, had left her with more questions than answers. Barely out of her teens, she had wanted to know what drove her mother to take man after man into her bed. After the twenty seconds Lilleth had allowed a handsome young fellow under her skirt, she was more baffled than ever.
Last night, Clark had cleared up a great deal of the mystery.
Living in his house had been a sanctuary, and she would be forever grateful. But she had moved out not a moment too soon.
There were things about Clark Clarkly that puzzled her. There was something just below the surface of the man that she should be able to grasp but could not.
Here in her own home she would regain her balance.
“Mary, isn’t this dandy? A place all our own.”
The toddler, sitting on the newly polished floor, banged a spoon on top of a pot. Lilleth sat on the floor beside her. It seemed impossible that it had been little more than a week since the floor had been covered with grime instead of polish.
Lilleth picked up a ladle and banged it on the pot in time with Mary’s spoon.
“Here, like this.” She captured Mary’s round little fist and helped her tap the pot. “I used to open my show with this tune.”
The tempo of the spoon and the ladle made Lilleth tap her knee on the floor to the rhythm. It couldn’t hurt to sing the song softly, just under her breath.
“Mamma,” Mary announced.
“Soon, little lambie. You’ll see your mother soon.”
Tonight, in fact, after she had the children bedded down for the evening, Lilleth intended to venture out. There had to be a way to get to Bethany.
Walking, bold as brass, into the hospital was out of the question. If Alden did suspect that she was in Riverwalk, he would have the staff watching for her.
More than a dozen times, she had longed to ask Clark if he had come across Bethany when he delivered his lending books to the hospital. It would be a comfort to know that he had seen her, that she was coping.
“I can’t ask him that, though, can I, little Mary? Our safety depends upon keeping our secrets.” Lilleth touched Mary’s short curly locks. The hair was so soft she could barely feel it swirl about her fingers. “It’s not that I don’t think Clark is trustworthy, but this is something we’ll have to do on our own.”
“Ba...bo,” Mary cooed, and smiled.
“I know I can you trust to keep silent.” Lilleth stood up and walked to the fireplace. She picked up the poker and urged new life into the flames.
It would be bone-chilling tonight, but probably not snowing. There would be no help for it but to bundle up and venture out into the darkness.
This particular night would be ideal, since there would be no moon. She would be able to poke about the hospital grounds with slim chance of being seen.
Poking about was her only goal for tonight, though. As much as she longed to burst inside to free her sister, like a dime novel gunfighter with weapons blazing, she would have to wait. First, she needed to study the building and the grounds, and then she would figure a way in and out.
Lilleth sat down on the hearth and warmed her back.
“Don’t you worry, baby, you’ll be in your mama’s arms in a bang and a thrash.”
An hour later, the front door burst open, blowing in Jess, Clark and a rush of frigid air.
“The cat got this close, Ma!” Jess tugged off his hat and shimmied out of his coat. He tossed them on the hearth and then spread his arms wide. “Clark says he’ll come to me next time, sure. I can’t rush him, though. It needs to be the cat’s own choice, else he’ll only run away first chance he gets. I’m hungry. Clark brought dinner from the hotel.”
Clark stood beside the closed cabin door, holding several items wrapped in cloth. Steam and the aroma of fried chicken, along with other enticing scents, wafted out of the linens.
She would have to learn to cook, and soon, or the children might starve. She couldn’t expect Clark to feed them every day.
When she took the food from his hands, he looked as nervous as any man she had ever seen.
Or maybe not. Thinking back on last night, which she had done dozens upon dozens of times today, frightened was about the last thing he had looked. Had he not called her Lils, they might have done things in the hallway that were meant for the bedroom.
In the end, that name, that endearment, had startled her out of her haze of passion. Clark’s voice had sounded like an echo of Trace Ballentine’s, older to be sure, but an echo all the same.
“Will you join us for dinner, Clark?” she asked.
“No, but thanks. I’ve got sorting to do in the library.” He straightened his glasses on his nose and shrugged his shoulders, one then the other.
Lilleth set the food on the table.
“Go ahead and eat, Jess. Feed Mary, too, will you?” She settled the baby in a chair and tied her in place with a strip of cloth.
“Clark, I’d like a word with you on the porch.”
“Oh, yes. I suppose the sorting can—yes, Lilly, to be sure.” He followed her outside and she closed the door behind them.
A gust of cold wind ruffled the hem of her skirt. It tugged Clark’s hair and snapped a wavy strand across his forehead.
“It’s about last night,” she said, and wrapped her arms about her ribs for warmth. “What you must think of me. I acted the regular trollop.”
“You were lovely, Lilly, and I was an unprincipled devil.” He shoved the hair back from his face to reveal arched brows pushing rows of lines to his hairline.
“The trollop most sincerely apologizes to the devil.”
“The devil most sincerely apologizes to the trollop.” He smiled. A dimple winked at her. “But seriously, Lilly, you are no trollop.”
“Perhaps there was just something in the air.”
“Something that took us both by surprise.” He blinked and nodded.
“We’ll have to be on guard for surprises from now on.”
“Diligently, so they won’t surprise us again.”
“Well, I do feel better, now that we’ve set things straight,” she said, but wondered about the sad little ache in her heart. “Won’t you stay for dinner?”
“The good thing about sorting is that it never complains about having to wait.”
He opened the door. Heat rushed out. Lamplight spilled over the porch to point a finger at the setting sun.
She walked inside and he came in behind her, closing the door on the falling night.
* * *
Trace picked up his ax, swung it over his shoulder and stepped off the back porch of the lending library.
Damn, it was cold. His clothes all but crackled with it.
He wished that he could have remained in Lilleth’s cabin, where heat from the fire, good conversation and a full belly made him linger far later than he should have.
Unlike the night before, where the thing that was in the air had spun him like a top and then smashed him on his head, where passion had beheaded common sense and nearly exposed him, tonight had been a night for comfort and quiet friendship.
And really, friendship had been his and Lils’s bond way back when. Their attachment had been between hearts. Until last night, passion had been an innocent dream of the future. As children, they hadn’t even begun to understand it.
In those days they had shared romantic vows and promises along with one sweet, chaste and heart-wrenching kiss.
Lilleth Preston was his past. Lilly
Gordon was his friend. That’s all there could ever be, and he would learn to deal with it.
By damn he would.
Cooper had left this morning before breakfast and agreed to report to the family that Trace had been bedridden with some illness or another. In return, Trace had vowed to write all night and day. So far his ink bottle remained corked and his page blank.
He and Jess had made good progress with the cat, though.
Clark shook himself. He had a calling and a goal. He would do well to remember that he was first and always an investigative journalist.
That’s exactly why he walked to the mental hospital by way of Mrs. O’Hara’s. The skinny bug-eater presented a mystery...a mystery that Trace had every intention of investigating.
With an icy breeze pushing from behind, it took him only a few minutes to reach Mrs. O’Hara’s. Her red lantern swayed and cast shifting shards of light over the porch and out onto the road.
This late at night most of Riverwalk’s citizens were asleep. The brothel appeared to be just warming up. Music from an untuned piano plinked out a window that was cracked open an inch. Squeals and laughter spilled out as well.
Trace wasn’t sure what crouching in the shadows beside the porch would reveal, but he bent his ear, listening.
Nothing came through the window crack, but it did through the front door.
Mrs. O’Hara’s burly protector, Sims, held the subject of Trace’s investigation by his shirt collar so that the toes of his shoes scraped the porch. He gave the skinny man a shake, then a toss.
The thin man landed bottom-first in the street, a tangle of long legs and awkward arms.
“We don’t take to your sort around here, Perryman,” Sims barked. He slammed the door.
Lantern light swayed back and forth across the man getting up from the dirt.
Trace had discovered some things, after all. One, the man’s name was Perryman. Two, he wasn’t even fit for a brothel. Three, he was a physical weakling. But four, he was all the more vicious because of it.
The swing of light across Perryman’s face showed him smiling at the closed, and probably now locked, door. The next shift of light revealed him snarling, with unnaturally sharp, yellow teeth grinding, top against bottom, back and forth.
After a moment, he clenched his fists, turned and growled as he walked away. Growled not like a dog, or even a wolf, but like a threatened cat, a sick cougar.
Cooper had been right—the man was creepy. What, if anything, could he want with young Jess? Possibly it wasn’t Jess he was interested in; maybe he wanted to devour the poor feline.
In any case, Perryman needed watching.
Trace let him get a good distance ahead before he stood up from his hiding place. He followed him, hugging shadows and watching from behind trees.
Hell and damn! Perryman was taking a back trail through the woods that led to Hanispree.
* * *
With the children asleep in their beds and the fire banked low, Lilleth stepped onto her front porch and closed the door behind her.
The night was black, deep with shadows and secrets. There was one secret that would give itself up tonight: Lilleth would find a way to get to her sister. She might not get close enough to attempt a rescue, but she would figure a way to go about it.
She stepped off the porch and walked through the woods veering off on a trail that split from the path to town. She had never been frightened of the night before. As a child she’d run free in the moonlight, as an adult she entertained audiences by lamplight.
This night, though, was deep, cold and silent. The only sound was the wind scratching bare branches together, with a rasp here and a crack there. If a person believed in the other world, she might see a ghost slip past a tree or a goblin pop up from behind a fallen log to bare his wicked teeth.
Luckily, Lilleth Preston did not believe in those things. If she did she would have been forced to take the wide, level road to Hanispree. Since she could not risk being seen, she took the back road that her landlord had mentioned. She suspected that the timid man’s ears still rang with the lecture she had given him on honesty.
He had been forthright about the trail that twisted through the woods. By day it was easy walking, but by night it was brimming with shadows and imagined threats.
She stepped quickly, anxious to be off the path. Even without supernatural beings spying from the shrubbery, the night air was snapping cold. The wind’s icy fingers continually yanked back the hood of her cloak. After half a mile she gave up on keeping it in place and used her hands to clasp the front of her cloak closed.
“Who-o-o—” A sudden rush of cold air pushed from behind.
“Who-o-o yourself, you old wind.”
One time she imagined she heard footsteps to her left, just off the path. When she looked all she spotted was a bramble bush ticking against a tree.
She hurried down the path, careful not to peer too closely behind trees or fallen logs.
At last she spotted Hanispree. The huge building appeared, then vanished beyond a dense growth of bare-branched cottonwoods. In only a few hundred more yards she would be out of the woods and onto the main road.
All of a sudden, she heard footsteps again. No spectral shuffle, no lithe-footed gremlin; this was a very distinct crunch of boots on the path...following her.
Very well, then. She hadn’t spent her life avoiding the lecherous groping of men to simply be caught in the woods.
“Oh! Ouch!” she exclaimed, sounding helpless, injured. She bent over and grasped her ankle with both hands. “My foot!”
Crunch, step, crunch, silence. A shift of fabric warned her that the man was at her back and reaching forward.
By the saints, this was too easy. The idiot had presented her with a perfect target.
She clasped her fingers together, forming one big fist, and in the same instant locked her elbows. She spun about. Swinging upward, she landed a blow to the man’s throat.
“Ugh!” He toppled backward, landing in a prickly bush. The miscreant grasped his neck, gasping for breath.
“Why you...you great—” She drew back her boot, aiming for every man’s tender spot. “Clark?”
“Ugh!”
“Clark!” She dropped to her knees beside him. “Are you hurt?”
“Yes.” His voice sounded it, all raspy and raw. She helped ease him to a sitting position, then plucked a burr from his jacket.
“Well, you were about to get hurt a whole lot worse.” She loosened his fingers from his throat and looked at the red welt she had left. “Just give it a minute or two. You’ll be all right. What were you doing out here, anyway?”
“Protecting you.” That sounded a bit better, a wheeze instead of a gasp.
“From what? Things that go bump in the night?”
“You were being followed.” He stared at her oddly, while he rubbed his throat. She couldn’t quite tell if the look was reproach or admiration. At least his voice was nearly normal now.
For an instant his remark about her being followed shook her. Not a soul knew she was coming out tonight. And Jess thought he had been watched the other day.
Still, anyone on the path might look like a stalker to a librarian.
“So, you just happened to be on this path at midnight, carrying your ax, and by chance, happened to be behind me. And saw someone else following me?” She shook her head. “Really, Clark, that seems a tall tale.”
“Not tall enough.” He stood up, yanking a sticker from his trousers. “Lilly, are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No, of course not!” This was a conversation she was not going to have.
“What are you doing out here at this time of night, then?”
“That was my question to you.”
“Fair enough. I’ll
tell you what I’m doing if you tell me what you are doing.” He stuck out his hand to confirm the deal with a handshake.
She accepted the shake. To be fair, it turned out to be less a shake than an embrace of hands. It lingered too long and his fingers caressed her wrist.
“You first,” she said, to break the spell that might be once again ready to lead them to risky behavior.
He let go of her hand.
“I’ve noticed, when I deliver books, that on occasion the inmates of the hospital go without fires to warm their rooms. I’m on my way to light them.”
Lilleth glanced at the cold, dark windows of the huge building. Was poor Bethany shivering inside even as they stood outside? Worry made Lilleth’s stomach sag within her.
“How often is ‘on occasion,’ Clark?”
“As far as I can tell, nightly.” He turned and retrieved his ax from the ground. “Your turn.”
“You, Clark Clarkly, are a very good man.”
“I hope you’re not trying to flatter your way out of your confession.”
“There’s really not much to confess. I couldn’t sleep.” That was the truth. She’d barely had a solid night’s slumber since Bethany had been incarcerated. “I went for a walk.”
He squinted at her. Well, here was something odd. Clark was not wearing his glasses, and yet he seemed to be seeing just fine.
“Just for the record, Lilly, I know you are making that up.” He swung the ax over his shoulder. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
“You most certainly will not!” And she was not the only person making things up. She would keep quiet about those missing glasses and just see if he bumped into anything. “I’d never live with myself if those poor folks inside froze while you walked me home.”
“You can’t walk all that way alone.”
“That may be, but I’m not going home. I’m going with you.”
This was the most unbelievable luck. When she’d stepped out of the cabin she hadn’t dreamed that she might actually get inside the mental hospital.
“They say it’s haunted,” he warned.