Forgiven (7 page)

David pointed. “Walk about four blocks, straight up there. You can’t miss the corner of Jones and Clay.”

I nodded. “Thanks again.”

Neither of us moved.

He coughed. “Are you visiting someone there?”

“Yes.” Now I stared straight into his kind eyes. His shy sweetness was a balm.

“Can I see you, perhaps? That is, can I come to wherever you’re staying and pay a call?”

Pay a call. On me. The first time a gentleman would pay me a call. My heart began to beat faster. Even as the voice in my head said, Kula Baker needs to rise above her station. Needs someone to help to raise her up. This couldn’t be the gentleman for that.

Well. It was just a call. And there was no ignoring my thundering heart and flushed cheeks. “I’d like that. I’ll be at the home of Phillipa Everts.” I hope, I added to myself. She might not take me in.

“Miss Everts!”

“You know her?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “San Francisco is small, in a funny way. Everyone knows everyone.”

My glance strayed back across the street. Those young men reminded me of a pack of coyotes, circling. I wished I could make them vanish so I could stand longer here on this steep hillside with this David Wong. When our eyes met again, my heart took a fair leap and my legs grew wobbly.

But those coyotes menaced. “I should be off. I hope to see you again.” And I did hope. Hope fluttered in my chest and forced roses into my cheeks.

He tipped his hat, and I marched on up the hill. After a long block I looked back. David was standing on the street corner. The young men hadn’t moved, either. I had the feeling my coyotes were being held at bay by a very determined bear.

I walked on another block, pondering my chance encounter. I wondered if I would see that bear again, that David Wong.

Wong! I clapped my hand to my forehead, right there. With the jarring experience of the robbery and my girlish goggling, I’d forgotten everything, every reason I was even in San Francisco. Even if Wong was a common name, perhaps David was of the very same family and knew Ty Wong. Here had been my chance to find my pa’s box, to follow my pa’s plea. I turned right around, but David Wong had vanished.

I cursed myself for losing an opportunity to solve my riddle. This day was turning out to hold a long string of curses.

I continued on up the street and breathed more deeply, and not just from all my stirred-up feelings. San Francisco was built on some honest-to-heaven hills. Had I been at home I would have taken my shoes off, for it wasn’t the winding of breath that bothered me but my sore feet and the thin soles of my toepinching boots on this unforgiving paving. It seemed to take a hundred years and a million unhappy footfalls before I reached the corner of Clay and Jones.

I pulled the note from my reticule again, looked at the address, and up at the street numbers, and then my mouth dropped open so wide I was afraid it would hit my squinched-up toes.

The house hulking above me was a big house in a neighborhood of big houses. Turrets and towers, porches and balconies . . . these only began to describe what looked like a confection of furbelows and curlicues and fancies. It was a giant of a house. This house went up and up, such that I had to tilt my head and squint my eyes to see the whole of it.

Behind the gate was an immaculate garden, dormant now, showing carefully pruned rosebushes laid out in formal beds. I climbed the front steps, shrinking with each footfall. Mrs. Gale hadn’t told me the half of it; her sister-in-law, this Phillipa Everts, was over-the-moon rich. By the time I reached for the doorbell, my heart was pounding. I stood and tried to still it. I tried to remember why I was here.

Pa. Love might not be enough, but it was all I had to go on.

Kula Baker musters up.

Summoning my courage, I pressed the bell.

Chapter
TEN

March 28, 1906

IT SEEMED HOURS BEFORE THE LOCK SNAPPED AND the door opened and a tall, stern-faced man stared down at me. “Yes?”

“I’m here to see Miss Everts, please.” I pulled myself up and narrowed my eyes, not to be daunted by a servant. I knew the ropes. How servants were treated. He didn’t yet know I was here to serve.

But, as if he read my mind and my past, he’d have none of me. “And who are you?”

“Kula Baker. Miss Kula Baker,” I said, with an emphasis on the “Miss.”

He looked me up and down, glancing over my shoulder as if to search for my coach—or my accomplice. “For what purpose are you calling?”

“I’m the . . .” Oh. I hadn’t thought this one through. What was I to Mrs. Gale? Her servant. I sought the least-humbling truth. “I’m in the employ of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Gale. I’m carrying a letter of introduction.”

He raised his eyebrows. He was as starched and pinched as a too-small collar. “Mrs. Gale?”

“Yes.” Exasperation filled me. “Mrs. Hannah Gale. Of Bozeman, Montana?” Something was amiss, surely. “This is the home of Miss Phillipa Everts?”

He eyed me up and down. “Wait here.” And he shut the door in my face, leaving me on the front porch with my mouth agape.

What if Phillipa Everts’s relationship with Mrs. Gale was strained? What if she wouldn’t allow me in? I’d have no choice: I’d have to board the next train back for Bozeman.

If I left right this second, I’d be home in three days. I’d be away from this thieving, miserable city and back under my big skies. Just the thought of standing in the cool shadows of tall pines slowed my breathing, stilled my trembling hands. Maybe I could find some other way to help Pa.

But I knew that if I left San Francisco, I would not be able to help my pa. He had sent me here for a reason. I had little money and no idea where to go if I was refused at the house of Phillipa Everts. If I didn’t stay here, God knows, there would be no help for Pa.

My pa would hang.

And I would be at the mercy of Josiah Wilkie.

I tightened my grip on my reticule, fussing with the drawstrings like a squirmy child in church. I couldn’t help my tumbled-down hair except to push it back from my face.

After a minute the door opened again, and without a word my gangly friend stood aside to let me enter.

“Thank you.” I tried to keep my voice from wobbling. I untied the ribbons of my small and (now I knew) unfashionable hat, removing it as I followed him into a drawing room the size of Mrs. Gale’s entire first floor, and I halted in my tracks, my mouth dropping open like a baby bird’s.

My Montana skies might be bigger than those of California, but houses surely were bigger here in San Francisco. And the decoration of those San Francisco houses was almost beyond the pale.

Ornaments covered every surface. The room in front of me was a trove of tiny treasures: small inlaid boxes, standing frames of photographs, glass-domed still-life scenes—birds on branches, dried flowers—and vases filled with living flowers. Thick tapestry carpets were thrown one on top of the next such that they made a cushion under my aching feet. The furniture was big and dark and upholstered in green-colored velvet. The walls, from floor to ceiling, were papered with art. Oil, watercolor, landscape, still-life. Portraits of grinning dogs. Portraits of frowning old ladies. Portraits of rotting fruit and drooping flowers.

This was quite a house. I froze and let my gaze drift from corner to corner.

“What do we have here? Are you a nincompoop? Come here, girl. Don’t stand in the doorway with your mouth hanging open.”

She sat in a chair by the fire, looking for all the world like a monarch. Her gray hair was piled high upon her head in waves and folds that must have taken hours of someone else’s time; her voluminous dress was of such a fine gray silk that it scattered light; lace lay across her shoulders and knotted over her bosom.

Phillipa Everts peered at me, her lips pursed in a manner that suggested distaste. Or, as I observed her more closely, what might suggest confusion.

She was quite the opposite of my dear Mrs. Gale.

I squared my shoulders. “Miss Everts. I’m pleased to meet you. My name is Kula Baker. Mrs. Gale—”

“Hannah,” she interrupted. “You are employed by Hannah Gale?”

“Yes.”

“She sent you?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. It was a triumphant smile. “Well, well, well. My dear Hannah. Finally come to beg.”

“Ah, well, I . . .”

“Oh, come, now.” Miss Everts rose. “She’s finally broken, alone, poor—probably penniless—and now that Edward is dead, she’s desperate to reconcile.” Miss Everts went to the window. Swished to the window. “What does she want? My money? My love? My forgiveness?” She turned to me, her back as stiff as a lodgepole. “Well?”

The breath was knocked clean out of me.

“For pity’s sake, girl. What message did she send me?”

“None.”

“None?” Miss Everts drew back.

“That is, she sent her respects. I have a letter of introduction from her. She wishes you well. And said that if you could see it in your heart to take me into your employ—”

“I don’t need an employee. What of an apology? That’s what I want! In fact, a grovel would be more like it, but I’d settle for a simple and gracious apology.”

“I’m sorry . . .”

“That’s a start.” She smiled.

I was so confused I must have looked like a fish out of water, my mouth opening and closing. “I don’t think you understand my meaning, ma’am.”

“We’ll discuss it no further. You must return to her with a message from me.”

I stepped forward. “But . . . I have to speak!”

“And so you have.”

Was she mad? “But I haven’t. I’m not here for Mrs. Gale. I’ve come for my father.”

“You’ve lost me, girl. I do not have your father.”

“Please!” All the emotion that I’d been bottling inside bubbled up like a hot spring. It had been a feckless day, a day of ruin and catastrophe, and I was boiling over with it. My mouth ran, and there was no use my trying to stop it. “My father has sent me here. He’ll die. I have nowhere else to turn. I’ve been robbed of all my things, every last blessed thing, including all my clothes and my only gown, and it was blue velvet, too, and I was lost in Chinatown, and saved by a young man to whom I owe everything, except I don’t know how to find him, and the only thing I know now is I have to find a man named Ty Wong—”

“Ty!” Her hand flew to her mouth, and Miss Everts whirled away from me. She stood like that for some minutes, while I fought to recover my own self. When she turned back again, she seemed a different person. Now her voice was sharp, firm, her eyes fixed on me like polished gray gemstones. “Are you sure about that name?”

I shifted my feet. “Yes—Ty Wong.”

She crossed the room, returning to her chair. She sat and placed her chin on her fist and stared at the floor for some minutes. When she spoke again, it was to the floor, not to me. “Well, girl, you have sent me into a tizzy, and no mistake.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” I picked up my nerve, which lay in pieces on the floor. “I’m here because if I don’t find Ty Wong, my pa will hang. That’s all I care about in San Francisco. He may hang anyway. But I can’t leave this terrible place until I discover what my pa needs me to find, because it may be the only thing that will save him.” I straightened. “All I ask is a room, for which I’ll work hard. For the rest, I’ll make my own way.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Well!”

That was it, then. She meant to throw me out. Kula Baker knows when she’s not welcome. That was that, I’d failed.

I turned my back on Phillipa Everts and marched across that vast space and was almost out the door when I heard her voice again.

“Girl! You!”

I turned.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Kula Baker.”

She looked puzzled. “Baker. Well, we’ll see about that.” She came to me, and took my chin between her two fingers, turning my face from side to side. “You have a touch of the exotic.”

I felt my cheeks grow dark.

“You are quite a handsome young woman.” She let my chin drop. “Who are your people?”

“My people?” My cheeks grew hot, now, fairly burning. “My name is Baker. Kula. My given name was also my great-grandmother’s.”

“Hmph.” Her lips pursed. “What’s this about your being robbed?”

I cleared my throat. I tried to clear my confusion. “I was robbed by a boy who picked me up at the railway station.”

She raised her eyebrows. I met her stare.

“He said he would deliver me here. But he dropped me in a dreadful place. And then I had a problem in Chinatown. Had it not been for another young man who came to my aid there on the street, I might be in Chinatown still.”

“Took everything, did this robber? Was there anything of real value?”

I lowered my eyes. “My clothes. My books.”

She sighed. “The books—you might console yourself with having aided his education. But the clothes . . .” She waved her hand dismissively. “Inconsequential.”

I drew up. “Not to me.”

“We can replace the clothing, Miss Baker. The soul is another matter.”

“The soul!”

“Yes, the soul. Your soul, I will assume for the moment, is intact. The young thief’s soul, not likely. He is sadly duped by the idea that material gain is all that matters. That possessions are of utmost importance. He would be wrong. Possessions, my dear girl, are meaningless.”

This woman twisted my mind round like a vane in a high wind. She had possessions aplenty, that was beyond doubt. So what was this talk of soul and meaningless possessions?

“Now there’s another issue. Your father. He’s about to hang, is that what you said? Men don’t hang for no reason.”