by Eloise Alden
Verity did her best to feign surprise. “Goodness,” she gasped. Her voice sounded false even to her own ears.
The woman’s voice lowered to a menacing growl. “We’re looking for your china man. Despite his alchemy, he cannot protect himself. We’ll find him.”
Verity sent a quick prayer for Young Lee, remembering to express gratitude that small Asians in capes tend to look surprisingly similar. “This is all very confusing. I didn’t know we were looking for a…a Chinaman, did you say?” Verity looked around at the room: four blank walls, the two tall windows, and except for a bed and a chair, empty of furniture. They’d pulled into an alley and then climbed a back stairway. Given the towering rows of wooden structures they’d passed, Verity knew they were in town, but she didn’t know where. She gulped, acknowledging that she should have been more attentive to back alleys.
“There are just so many of them,” Orson, somewhere behind her, grumbled.
“You won’t have any trouble once he’s found.” The woman said, casting a glance to the back of the room and in that glance Verity read intimacy. Unmistakable intimacy. Orson and this woman had more than a business relationship. Somehow, that changed things. The stakes became different. She couldn’t wound or even escape one without the other.
“Madam? Or should I say Lady Luck?” Verity cleared her throat. “What is Steele to you?”
“A dead man,” Orson rumbled.
Verity heard jealousy. “Claris?” Verity nearly squeaked.
Lady Luck started and then resumed her pacing.
“You didn’t die,” Verity guessed.
Lady Luck gave a tiny shake of her head and continued on her path. “Neither did you.”
“You knew about me?” Verity twisted in her chair as the woman passed from her view. “I got the suicide idea from you. It was rather brilliant. When did Steele find out?”
“He hasn’t,” Orson said. From the sound of the shifting of the bedsprings, Verity realized he’d stood. Is that why Lady Luck hadn’t fled into the hall with the others during the explosions and fake fire? Because she’d known Steele was in the house and she couldn’t risk meeting him?
“But how?”
“When it comes to my dear husband, very little escapes my attention.” Lady Luck paused in front of the window and Verity heard a twinge of melancholy in her voice and noted the stiffness in her spine. Even knowing how heartless he was, could she still care for him?
“You understand why you must die,” Lady Luck said with her back still turned.
Verity pushed that comment out of her mind. She wouldn’t dwell on her near and probable death. She’d fight to the end, no matter how bleak the situation appeared. Although, the situation appeared very bleak indeed. “When did you come to Seattle?” Her voice sounded small and timid. Verity cleared her throat with a loud, noisy grumble.
Lady Luck turned slowly around and Verity guessed she’d followed her husband.
Another thought occurred to Verity. “But wait, what happened to the other Madam?”
Orson rumbled a deep laugh. “What do you think will happen to you? The Sound is bottomless in places.”
“And fish work fast,” Lady Luck added. “Don’t worry. You’ll be beyond feeling by then.”
Fish food? “But why now? You must have had countless opportunities.”
Lady Luck tapped her nose. “I’m a businesswoman and you could have been of value to me as well as others.” She laughed. “You must know how you look dressed as Bo-Peep.”
Verity looked down at the cinched corset and barely there pantaloons.
“Unfortunately, your cunning is much too annoying. I’d never be able to trust you.”
Even though she hadn’t any need or desire for Lady Luck’s trust or good opinion, the words, so closely resembling Trent’s, stung. Verity wondered if she’d ever see him again.
“Burn down the dem building, or something,” Orson grumbled.
Was it her imagination, or did she smell smoke? Not the putrid smell of Young Lee’s fireworks, nor Orson’s fetid cigar, but wood burning smoke. Like a forest fire.
Only they were nowhere near a forest.
CHAPTER 23
To remove the hot chili oil, wash your hands, shake a teaspoon of salt into your palm and work it as you would soap. Rinse and repeat.
From The Recipes of Verity Faye
Trent woke up on the ground and tried to grapple with this new reality. Where was he? How had he gotten here? And how long had he been lying on the side of the road? He rolled to his side and pushed himself into a sitting position.
Hazy memories came flooding back. The explosions at the brothel, Verity’s kidnapping, Steele’s capture, the gunshot.
He must have fallen off the back of the coach, maybe hit his head. He rubbed his sore knee before pushing to his feet. Slowly at first, he began to run. As his wits and equilibrium returned, he picked up feet.
He smelled smoke. Rounding a hill, he saw why. A black billowing cloud hovered over Seattle.
Soon, his feet were keeping time with clanging fire bells. Wagons, children, women with babies tucked under their arms, merchants with wares piled into wheelbarrows, horses with wild eyes and flared nostrils crowded the street. Beneath his feet surged dogs, cats, birds, rats, and raccoons. Pushing through Main Street was like swimming upstream in a river of animals and humanity.
As the smoke grew thicker, the crowd lessened and changed. Men, grim-faced and already blackened with soot worked in lines passing buckets from one hand to the next. From his vantage at the top of the hill, he could see the bucket brigade lines snaked all the way to the pier. Men, boys, and even some women worked side by side, buckets sloshing with the precious water.
The smoke filled his nostrils and lungs and he could see it pressing down on the townsfolk. He saw the fatigue in the arms, shoulders, and backs of the firefighters around him, but he couldn’t see Verity. And he hadn’t a clue where to look.
Until he saw a woman draped in black emerge from a lone brick building. She pushed her hood away from her face and looked up and down the street, disbelief written across her face. Trent moved into the shadow of a store stoop, hoping she wouldn’t recognize him as the man who tried to invade her coach.
With a hand over her nose, she pulled her hood back up over her head and hurried in the direction of the city jail. She’s looking for Steele, he thought. After she disappeared into the teeming multitude, Trent watched the windows of the building where she’d come from while the crowd surged around him. Like all the other windows on the street, they appeared dark. But then he saw a flicker of movement.
A woman dressed in rags gave him a scowl as if to ask why he was standing still in the midst of a fire war. She handed him a bucket of water which he contemplated for only a moment. Then he threw the bucket as hard as he could at the window of the brick building, perhaps the only building on the street that wasn’t being licked by flames. The water, newly acquired from the Sound, rained down on Trent and the people on the sidewalk. People looked at him as if he was a lunatic, but Trent had eyes only for the window. The bucket, made of wooden slates bound with twine, had had little effect on the window, except to draw the attention of the room’s occupant.
Fleeting, but unmistakable. Orson came to the window and quickly moved out of sight.
Trent bolted up the steps.
#
Verity found she could move almost by accident. When something smacked into the window, it startled Verity such that she jumped in her chair and actually managed to move it by several inches. She was still slightly rocking when Orson turned from the window.
He gave her a slant-eyed look and then, with an ear cocked toward the door, drew his gun.
“We’ll die if we stay here,” Verity said. “It smells as if all of Seattle’s on fire.”
Orson grunted, moved toward the door with his head cocked and slipped his gun back into his pocket.
“I heard it, too. Someone’s on the stairs,” Veri
ty said. “But, that’s not surprising. Everyone sane is leaving.” She paused. “Lady Luck has already gone.”
“Quiet,” Orson barked, turning to the door, hand on holster.
Verity took the opportunity to scoot her chair closer to the window. She gave Orson a wide-eyed innocent look when he turned back in her direction. “We’ll soon be toast,” she told him.
“Not me, you,” he said. “You’re attached to kindling.”
“You should go,” Verity urged. Her plan of throwing herself and her chair out the window wasn’t an entirely fail-safe plan, but it beat staying put and dying of smoke inhalation. Given her current situation, hands tied behind her back, ankles and chest bound to the chair, she wasn’t sure if she could fling herself at the window with sufficient force to break the window, but it seemed worth the try.
Orson stared at her for a moment before giving her a brief nod. Was it a farewell? An agreement? Verity couldn’t read his expression, but she didn’t care. When Orson put his hand on the doorknob and disappeared into the smoke-filled hall, Verity jumped her chair to the window. She rocked back once, twice, and then pushed off with the balls of her feet, rounding her back to protect her head.
The back of the chair bounced off the window with a smack. The impact jarred her but had only cracked the window.
Fortunately, she’d landed the chair back on its legs. She took a deep breath and inhaled smoke. She’d die if she stayed and even though a tumble out of a second-story window would hurt much more than an ineffectual bounce, she had to try again.
Bracing her shoulders, she rolled onto her toes and jumped. Again, she punched the window with the back of the chair. She tumbled to the floor and landed on her side. The window shattered with a crack and glass showered over her. A warm breeze circulated through the room, and although it still reeked of smoke, it felt like freedom. Verity lay on the floor, stunned. The smoke wasn’t as thick on the floor and she took a deep breath. All around her, she heard the snap and crackle of the fire, but then she heard another sound.
Her name.
#
Trent flung open the door and it stopped suddenly. It only took him seconds to understand why. The doorknob had caught Orson in the groin.
“Whoof!” Orson’s knees buckled when Trent pressed into the hall. Trent jammed a fist into Orson’s belly and followed it with an uppercut to the jaw. When the big man fell, Trent stepped over him and hurried up the stairs. Verity had to be in one of the upstairs rooms. He took the steps two, sometimes three, at a time. The smoke grew thicker as he climbed. On the second floor, he saw two doors. He went in the one where he heard a loud noise and found Verity tied to a chair, lying on her side and trying to saw through the strips of linen binding her wrists with what appeared to be a piece of glass.
Trent let out a moan of sympathy and rushed to her side. Bending beside her, he ripped at the linen strips tying her to the chair. When she was free, he gathered her into his arms and pressed her face into his shoulder.
Verity blinked back tears. “We can’t stay here,” she told Trent in a raspy voice. Gently, he pushed her away from him so he could inspect her: the glass in her hair, the red-chafed skin where she’d been tied, the ridiculous Little Bo-peep corset and pantaloons.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
Verity nodded. “Let’s go,” she urged, taking his hand.
#
In the hall, Verity could barely see for the smoke. Still stiff, she stumbled after Trent. She didn’t see what had caused Trent to reel back and knock her off her feet.
Verity bounced down the steps on her bottom and landed on the ground with a thud. Orson and Trent circled each other, throwing fists pell-mell. Flesh connected with sickening thuds, splattering sweat and blood. Verity, underfoot, happened to look down and notice a jagged bit of glass tucked in the folds of her pantaloons. She pulled it out, climbed to her feet, and when Orson drew close, she managed to drive the glass into his cheek.
Orson howled in pain and crashed into the stairwell. Under his weight, the steps collapsed, and exposed fire burning in the cellar below. Orson fell into the flames with a curdling scream.
Transfixed and horrified, Verity stared at the hole of fire until Trent pulled her down the steps and out the door.
A hopeless bucket brigade lined the sidewalks. The citizens that had fought with water and vigor now mostly watched as the flames devoured the remainder of the city. The dogs loping up the hill seemed to have a greater sense of purpose and destination than the crowd milling the streets, overwhelmed by the fire’s magnitude.
Trent led Verity up the street and paused at the gates of Denny Hill Park. “I have to go and help,” he said, turning to her and rubbing his thumb across her cheek. “Can you get home?”
Verity nodded. “I’ll go to Georgina’s and make sure the girls arrived safely.”
“Unlike you.”
Verity shrugged. “Hopefully, they found the road back safer than mine.”
“I have something for you.” Trent reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black, velvet bag.
Verity’s voice caught. “How?”
Trent poured the sapphires into the palm of his hand. They sparkled and winked in the sun and reminded her of the stories her mother had told of the battles that had been fought and the wars that had raged. We each have our own story, Verity thought, and this is mine. In time, it won’t be any less miraculous than any of the others.
“You were…amazing today,” Trent said, taking her hand and pressing the Bren jewels into it.
“So were you.” She smiled up at him and closed her fingers around the jewels.
Trent held her hand and folded his fingers together so that she held the jewels, and his hand engulfed hers. “Most women…most men, would have been—”
She didn’t get to hear the compliment. She didn’t get to hear what Trent said because suddenly all she could hear were her own screams and the crack of gunfire.
Trent fell forward, crashing into her. She stumbled under his weight and sunk to the ground with Trent’s body cradled in her arms. His labored breath blew hot across her neck and his blood soaked the front of her corset. Settling down onto the dirt path, she rolled Trent so that his head nestled onto her lap. The dirt beneath her bare skin felt cold and gritty. She tried to inspect the bullet wound, but blood pumped beneath her shaking fingers and she could only see the charred and ragged edges of his shirt and the spreading blood. Trent’s ashen-face stared up at her, his eyes begging questions she didn’t know how to answer.
Dimly, as if playing on another stage in another universe, she was aware of running footsteps and cursing. Lector and Sherriff Calhoun appeared near the north gates, thundering after Steele and ordering him to stop.
Verity stretched out her leg and pinched a strip of the Bo-peep pantaloons and tore. The pantaloons came apart in her hands and she took a wad of fabric and held it against the red pulsating wound with shaking hands.
Another gunshot, coming from another direction—Steele fell face forward onto the bricks. A pool of blood grew beneath his chest. Lector and Calhoun ran in circles around the park, rather like lost dogs in search of misplaced bones. They didn’t see the black cape disappearing behind the Huntington obelisk.
Verity watched as Lady Luck slipped through the gates of the park. Even though her face hid beneath the hood of the cloak, Verity saw the grief in the set of her shoulders as she turned a corner and then disappeared into the fire-fighting melee. Finally catching sight of the shooter, Lector and Calhoun bounded after Lady Luck.
“Verity?” Trent’s voice sounded something between a croak and a rasp. His lips chapped and bloody. His face smeared with soot. Red streaks of blood crisscrossed his chest and arms, and the wound in his shoulder pumped with blood. Still, she had an irresistible urge to kiss him. Bending, she buried her face in his shoulder and ran her lips along his neck.
His hair, coated in ash, looked gray and she had a sudden vision of
him as old. She saw the man he’d become, if God would be so kind, in fifty years and she knew she wanted to be there beside him for all of those years. Home, it occurred to her, wasn’t a place, but people, and for her, one particular person. Verity brushed the hair off Trent’s face and he shifted and attempted to sit up.
“Stay still,” Verity whispered, running her fingers through his hair.
“Bossy,” Trent said, settling against her. “Will you always be so?”
“Forever,” Verity promised. “Come on, let’s get you home.” Looping her arms around him, she helped him climb to his feet and hailed a passing carriage.
“Sir! Can you help us?” Verity asked the man with a long mustache driving the carriage. “We must see a doctor.”
“No,” Trent gasped. “The doctors will be busy with burn victims. Take me to the ranch.”
“Who’s being bossy now?” Verity teased.
“I’m afraid he’s right,” the man said, giving a Trent a critical once-over. “If he can get medical attention outside of the city, he won’t need to wait in line that could take hours, if not days. Where’s this ranch?”
Trent gave him directions.
“You’re in luck,” the man said. “I’m heading that way. I would be happy to give you ride.” He clambered off the coach and stuck out his hand. “I’m Murphy Doyle, by the way.”
The two men shook hands and Murphy helped Trent into the coach. Verity settled beside Trent while Murphy repositioned himself in the front and picked up the reins.
They rattled through the town, passing the beleaguered and weary firefighters with the soot-stained faces and sagging shoulders. Women and some men stood on the corners with tears wetting their cheeks. Dogs loped down the street.
Verity clutched Trent’s arm when they passed Lady Luck negotiating with a sailor near the wharf. “I wonder where she would she be heading?”
“Could there be other brothels up and down the coast as you had guessed?” Trent grew a shade paler, something Verity wouldn’t have believed possible if she hadn’t seen it for herself.