Of Gold & Blood Series 2 Books 1 & 4

by Jenny Wheeler

  “We only need a couple more weeks and we’ll have got ourselves a nice little bonus. No one need ever know.” His fingers tapped out a tense tattoo rhythm on the table edge.

  He watched as de Vile dismissed the girl and settled back in his chair, his posture rigid. He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed.

  “Knowing when to say no is as important in business as knowing when to say yes,” he said. “I hope greed isn’t leading you to confuse the two.”

  Martens shook himself to dislodge the prickling irritation he felt at de Vile’s condescension. He’d managed to win de Vile’s confidence with a couple of small real estate deals he’d proposed, and they’d come to an arrangement which gave Martens a finder’s fee and a generous cut of the profits for any deals he brought about which de Vile accepted. He’d become a freelance middle man for the merchant baron and liked to think he was on his way to big things.

  But Martens was becoming frustrated with de Vile’s cautious approach, and it wasn’t long before he began pitching more ambitious schemes. Ambitious and dirty. It had been Martens’s suggestion that they work the Ruby Mine on the sly behind the bereaved French widow’s back, after he’d gleaned the situation during a drinking session with Octavius Weavers. It was his idea, too, to encroach next door into the Ophir tunnels.

  De Vile had seen no harm in it. Anyone in his situation would have done the same, he’d justified. Until Vance Pedersen’s violent death. That was when he started to get cold feet. Martens knocked back his whiskey and slammed the glass down for a refill.

  After Pedersen died, de Vile had become obsessed with some damn report Pedersen was supposed to have put together for Eustace Mountfort, noting the incursions into the Ophir claim. He wanted to know whether it had been completed and delivered before Mountfort died. If it had, de Vile reasoned, it wouldn’t be long before that Castellanos chit—or her protector John Russell—would be onto them. Martens couldn’t see why he needed to worry. So what? They couldn’t pin anything on them.

  He watched as de Vile drew a cigar out of his pocket and lit it with a flourish. The man was clearly buying time, making a point that he wasn’t going to be pushed into doing something he didn’t want to do. Belatedly, he thrust a second Havana across the table to Martens. “Try one. They’re good.”

  He held the smoke in his mouth, savouring the smooth mellow tingle. One day…

  De Vile leaned towards him. He rested his elbows on his thighs and fixed him with a commanding glare. The smoke from his cigar grazed Martens’s right ear.

  “You’ve got a week, Martens. I want that Pedersen report on the Ophir in my beautiful hands”—he grinned and waved the cigar provocatively in Martens’s face—“by this time next week. It’s dangerous to have it lying about out there for anyone else to find. I see no reason to buy trouble. Understand? No more trouble.”

  *****

  Later she could never remember whether it was the dream or the desperate cries of the servant that had woken her. She lay in the deep feather bed in her elegant room and even the heat trapped under the rafters from the afternoon sun couldn’t thaw the chill that gripped her. Moonlight spilled over the peacock bedspread, and she could see the hands of the mother-of-pearl clock on the bedside table. 3 a.m.

  She’d dreamed she was floating amongst the trees in a pine forest, hovering halfway up their towering trunks. Beneath her she saw a black yawning hole like a cave opening in a canyon wall. As she watched, a white wolf emerged, paused at the cave entrance, raised his head to the stars, and howled.

  She had the weirdest feeling he was calling her, and that she was supposed to answer, but her throat was stiff and dry, and she could not have opened her mouth even if she’d wanted to. She was as inconsequential as mist and as frozen as the snow-covered landscape below her.

  Suddenly, a man stepped out from a vantage point above the cave and lined up a rifle on the big alpha male. Her throat was raw as she tried to force sound out, to warn the wolf he was in danger, but the only sound was the thunderous report of the gunshot.

  That’s when she woke to the sound of panicked banging on her bedroom door. She reared up like she herself was in danger of being shot. The servant who’d been detailed to keep an eye on Minette was standing there, wailing in Chinese. Seeing the bewildered look on Graysie’s face she abruptly stopped crying, took a deep breath, and keened, “Bebe gone… bebe gone…”

  Seven

  Friday, July 3

  Madam Moustache’s rubbery lips curled in indignation. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make sure things happened as you wanted,” she whined. “It costs to have other people do your dirty work.”

  Hector de Vile contemplated the stag’s head on the wall above them and imagined the Madam’s in its place as she droned on.

  “She was supposed to be delivered sedated. Fat chance! I’ve been up half the night. I had to dose her with laudanum. Wonder she didn’t wake the whole hotel.” Her lizard tongue flicked in and out, reminding de Vile of a venomous reptile.

  They were seated in one of the Exchange Hotel’s small private bars, designed for just the sort of confidential meeting they were conducting. He didn’t want it known that he and the Madam did a lot of business together, and she’d locked the door from the inside just to be sure they would not be disturbed.

  “I’m doing my best, but I’d hate for word to get out. Wouldn’t look good for either of us.” She gave him a sly sideways grin.

  Hector de Vile was the silent, majority shareholder in the Exchange, and though few knew of his business dealings with the Madam, he was regretting he’d ever laid eyes on her. She was a former dance hall girl who’d seduced a silver baron she’d later married when his first wife died. The Madam had fallen on hard times when her husband died, leaving his estate to a son who had no interest in the hotel. De Vile had bought it for a song, the son so keen to quit the place.

  The miners had nicknamed her Madam not because she ran a brothel—though she turned a blind eye to what went on when it suited her—and not out of affection for her eccentricities like the snappy little lap dogs that went everywhere with her and the tooled leather double holstered gun belt slung on her hips.

  She was Madam out of the fear she aroused with her ruthless instinct for wheedling out secrets from loose lips. Many a man had awoken with a crippling hangover to find he’d gambled or sold his latest promising claim in a drunken stupor the night before, with no memory of who to or why, but with the uneasy suspicion the Madam and her free-flowing booze had fuelled the exchange.

  There was no doubt about it, the Madam knew how to run a profitable business, keeping the liquor supplies filled and staff in check, intimidating drunken miners with her readiness to draw. She’d been grateful for her twenty percent share and a job, and she’d repaid de Vile handsomely by maintaining the Exchange as the town’s premier meeting place, tarting it up with velvet curtains and fancy artwork, and overseeing the installation of gilded foyer mirrors and a chandelier above the stairs.

  Today, however, she’d committed the cardinal sin in business—attempting to renegotiate a deal after they’d agreed on terms. She’d got cocky because she knew he couldn’t afford to call her bluff and risk exposing how the child had come to be in the hotel. De Vile tapped his fingers impatiently on the edge of the table.

  Unfortunately she was in a strong position. She knew about the skeletons in his closet and she was shameless. He knew for sure this wasn’t the first young child she’d seized and sold for personal gain. He shuddered involuntarily as he considered what it would cost him personally if even a hint of those dealings ever became public, and then forced himself back to the present.

  “The deal was you would take the child, hide her, and then make her disappear when I said so,” de Vile reminded her. “I am not talking about harming her. Plenty of homesteaders need an extra pair of hands. I’m just reminding the Castellanos woman how perilous life can be out here in the mountains without a protector.”

  The
Madam fondled the rat-faced pooch nestled against her rounded belly. Her dogs were the only thing he’d ever seen her show any affection to, and despite himself he felt a pang of pity for the child in the basement.

  “I need more than you’re paying. It’s not easy passing on a kid these days. What am I supposed to do with her?”

  He shook his head, his face stony. “You know the score. You’ve been there before.”

  She blushed at the coldness in his voice. The Madam had always been accommodating with her ‘extra services’. She employed enforcers to ensure things went her way, and heaven help a man if he stood up to her.

  Some of de Vile’s best gold finds had come through whiskey-fuelled boasts at the Exchange. Like taking candy from a baby, she always joked. Until today. Now Moustache was saying the price they’d agreed on for her to arrange to take the child and make her disappear wasn’t enough—she needed double. The child was “all wrong” she said; too old for adoption and too young to work.

  “Just take care of it. I don’t want to hear anything more about it.” De Vile picked up the hat that sat on the table beside him and reached out to stroke the piece of fluff the Madam had propped up in front of her. The ratty little mongrel bared its needle-like teeth and snapped, narrowly missing his fingertips. He pulled his hand back with a jerk. He’d seen enough of the mistress and her dogs for one day.

  He watched as she took a large iron key that hung from a chain at her waist and unlocked the door. Her breathing was labored, her fleshy jowls too bright under the heavy rouge she wore. She was old and expendable.

  As he strode up Main Street he mused. Should he get tough and threaten to turn her over to the law—accuse her of child trafficking? It wouldn’t matter how much she protested that they had an arrangement—no one would accept her word against his. Or should he just shut up and pay up to get rid of a problem? And what would that mean for their future business arrangements?

  By the time he reached his carriage and driver he’d decided. He gave a satisfied sigh as he settled himself on the leather seat. Moustache might be good at her job, but she had to learn that nobody was indispensable.

  *****

  The Castellanos woman was breathtakingly beautiful, even if she did look wan and distracted that morning, Hector de Vile thought as he strode into John Russell’s dining room, where the table was still spread with remnants of breakfast—dry toast in the toast rack, cold scrambled eggs and uneaten bacon in the silver serving dishes. Come to think of it, he preferred her as was this morning—docile and defenseless—over the confident performer of a week ago.

  He paused to read the room. Pania Hayes and Sir John sat on either side of the singer at the table. You’d think there’d been a death in the house, the blanket of melancholy was so heavy. A warm surge of satisfaction filled him as he realized that the disappearance of the child was biting deep, not just with the woman, but also, it seemed, with her host and the opera star. John Russell was stroking Graysie’s hand and making comforting noises as de Vile gave a perfunctory knock.

  “I know it may not the best time, Miss Castellanos, but I need an answer to my proposition. Your week is up.”

  De Vile swivelled to meet Sir John eye-to-eye and saw Mrs Hayes half rise from her chair, darting a hard look at Sir John as she did so. “It most certainly is not the best time,” she said with determined authority. “In fact there couldn’t be a worse one.” She shot another look in John’s direction, this time one of appeal. “I really think…”

  John let go of Graysie Castellanos’s hand and stood as well. “I don’t think Miss Castellanos wishes to see anyone just now, Hector. You can understand that.”

  De Vile spread his hands wide, palms up. “So the gossip down in the village is true. I thought it was just wild talk… The orphan has been nabbed.”

  Graysie Castellanos jerked to her feet and swung to face him, her eyes blazing. “Of all the insufferable…” She stopped and let out a long breath, swallowed hard, and began again. “Mr. de Vile, the last time I saw you we had a domestic emergency. Today we have another. Kindly see yourself out. And for your information, Minette is not ‘the orphan’. She is a much loved child.” Her voice faltered over the last words, but she stood erect and unflinching.

  “My apologies,” he said with a slight bow, knowing he did not look in the least apologetic. “But I did give you a week to make up your mind and that week is up. You seem to endure a succession of ‘domestic emergencies’ but that’s hardly my concern.”

  She glared, as if she couldn’t believe anyone would be so rude and uncaring, and he blatantly returned her gaze.

  After a long silence he said. “One week. It’s up tomorrow. I need an answer.”

  “I have not decided what I am doing about my shares, but I can tell you definitely as of this minute that I won’t be accepting your offer. I may end up selling them, Mr. de Vile, but it will not be to you.”

  She flashed him a cold smile that said more clearly than words, Not if you were the last man on earth. He stood his ground in the doorway. A tense silence had replaced the earlier melancholy. Sir John’s expression darkened, and de Vile wasn’t sure if it was because of his behavior or hers, and he didn’t care.

  Russell cleared his throat. “Probably not a good time, old boy. You’ve got a son, haven’t you? Surely you can understand?”

  At the mention of Alexander, de Vile felt his stomach clench, a reminder of the many nights he’d lain awake worrying that some hand would reach out from his son’s past and reclaim him; disappear him just like he’d arranged for this child to disappear. He gave his shoulders a light shake as if to dislodge the thought.

  “Yes, yes, I do have a son. Doing very well learning the business, too. I tell him that, despite what the Good Book says, more often than not the race does go to the swift and the battle to the strong.” His gaze settled on Graysie Castellanos. “I do hope you don’t live to regret your hasty decision, Miss Castellanos. You may not get an offer that will better mine—not after I’ve finished spreading the word, anyway. But you have other things on your mind, I am sure. Good luck with finding the child.”

  He raised his hand in a light mock salute and turned and strode out into the warm sunlight, feeling pleased with his morning’s work. Let her stew. He doubted she’d be around town for much longer.

  Eight

  When Nathan thundered into the Gold House dining room a few minutes after de Vile’s departure, his older brother and his guests were sitting in stunned silence.

  “What’s going on? Apart from the obvious, I mean,” he said as he took a seat opposite Graysie. “It’s awfully quiet in here.”

  She shrugged. “We just had a most unwelcome visitor. But never mind that, how is the hunt going?”

  She was white faced, a tracing of fine lines around her eyes evidence she was close to exhaustion. The fine-boned hollow in her throat pulsed with urgency, and despite the unflinching set of her shoulders, she appeared fragile. He wanted to hold her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be alright.

  “The search is well underway in this area. If she’s wandered off, we are certain to find her, it’s just a matter of time…” The certainty in his tone faded to something more tentative. “While John’s men focus near the house, I thought I might trace the side roads back towards town.”

  Graysie had a blank expression, as if she wasn’t taking in what he was saying. “She’s so little. She might be attacked by a bear, or step on a snake, or be stung by a scorpion. She must be getting hungry… She will be terrified out there alone. And she’s still getting over losing her mother. It’s all too much…”

  Her voice trailed off, and she put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes, as if trying to wake herself from a bad dream.

  Nathan could sense she was steeling herself, willing herself to hold on.

  “I just don’t know what could have possessed her to leave the house. She has never done anything like this before. And she knows where my room i
s if she’s frightened.”

  Graysie’s eyes were beseeching. “I can’t just sit here. She might be hiding because she’s frightened. If she senses I am near she might come out.”

  Nathan nodded. “Why don’t you get a wrap and we can take a drive around the area. You might have the best idea of the places she’d be likely to go.”

  The thing he didn’t say yawned open before them. In his heart of hearts, he didn’t believe the child had wandered off in the middle of the night either. He feared something a lot more sinister was afoot.

  *****

  Graysie and Nathan had spent a discouraging couple of hours driving to the end of every mining track wide enough for a pony trap near Gold House, looking for any tell-tale signs of Minette, calling her name. They’d found nothing.

  Her heart ached, but it was such a beautiful summer’s day that if they hadn’t had this chilling search underway, it would have been a day for celebration. They were there in Grass Valley, and the way was open for her to push on with her plans for the Ophir.

  The irritation she’d felt at Nathan’s take charge attitude had transformed into deep gratitude at his unquestioning willingness to back her one hundred percent in the search. He had the right to feel annoyed at her attitude, and she wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d got on with his own business and left the search to John’s men.

  She shivered despite the warm day and wondered whatever had possessed her to think she could provide and care for a four-year-old on her own. After they’d traced the fourth narrow mountain road to a dead end with no result, Nathan suggested they continue on into town and have a cool drink at the tea shop near the Exchange.

  “You’re looking really pale and tired.” He took her hand in his and squeezed it gently. “You need a break.”