Night Winds (21 page)

“What was it?”

“Russ?” Her forehead wrinkled in concentration, and she put a hand to it, as if it ached. “No, no. It was Ross. Ross, I’m certain of it.”

“Do you remember anything else
? It could be important.”

“I’m sorry
. Maybe later, when my head stops pounding so.”

He touched her cheek
. “I’ll have Mrs. Kelso come and sit with you. I’m afraid I have t
o
”

“

Don’t go,” she begged. “Promise me you’ll stay safe. Promise everything will be all right again.”

Once more, he embraced her tightly
. “You know I’d like to, more than anything. But I can’t say those words and call myself an honest man.”

When he left the room, some movement down the hall caught his eye
. Justine and John Frindly both waved for his attention. He rushed to meet them.

Justine threw her arms around his neck. “Phillip! You’ve been hurt too!”

How frightened she must have been to leave the house at this hour! Silently, he added her terror to his account.

“I’m fine
. It’s only a cut, but I had to stay out of sight for a bit. Can you forgive me for worrying you and Lydia?” Phillip managed to free his right hand to shake Frindly’s. Deep circles marked his manager’s need for sleep.

Justine kissed Phillip on the cheek, then nodded
. “I can forgive anything, so long as you’re alive. Or at least, anything but myself. I never should have allowed Lydia to leave the house without me. She begged me to go with her, but all I did was try to stop he
r
”

“

Lydia will be fine. She took a hard knock to the head and banged her knee, but I just saw her. She’s a bit dazed but glad we’re both safe now. Why don’t you go and see her? She’ll be so pleased you’ve come.”

Justine shook her head
. “She won’t want to see me, and I don’t blame her.”

“Don’t be absurd
. If you’d gone with her, you might well have been injured to
o
or even killed. The whole idea of running around at night was ludicrous. I’m glad you had sense enough to stay home.”

“I always stay home.” She shook her head, and he could see tears forming in her eyes
. “It’s all that I know how to do.”

The three of them walked back toward the examination room.

Despite his impatience to find Shae, Phillip laid a comforting hand upon Justine’s shoulder. “You’re here now, and that’s what will matter to Lydia. I wish that I could stay, but something else has happened, and Mr. Frindly and I must see to it at once.”

“What is it?” Justine asked.

“It’s Shae. I don’t know how to say this in a way that won’t alarm you . . .”

She took his hand, as if to return the encouragement he’d given her. “Simply say it then.”

Phillip nodded. “Lydia claims her accident was caused by the same men who attacked me. And I have reason to believe they may have taken Shae.”

“Who are they?” Frindly asked
. “If we know that, I know the men to put on them immediately.”

“I’m certain they’re white dockworkers, but I didn’t get a clear view of them
. Lydia thinks she heard a name. Ross, or maybe Russ.”

“Doesn’t sound familiar, but I’ll do some checking,” Frindly told him.

“Why would they have Miss Rowan?” Justine asked. “How?”

“I’m not certain of the details,” Phillip said, “but I must find her before she’s hurt.”

“No! You can’t go out again,” Justine insisted. “You’ll be shot. Call the police, for heaven’s sake. I won’t go through this worry.”

“Would it make a difference if I told you I was going to marry her?”

“You’r
e
you’re
what
?” Justine’s dark brows shot upward. “After all that’s happened with Rachel?”

Frindly, too, looked shocked but held his tongue.

“Rachel betrayed me,” Phillip said, rushing through the words as though to speed away the bitter taste of them. “I am finished with her, and I intend to marry Shae. Mr. Frindly, how many men do we have who would help us find her?”

Frindly frowned as he thought
. “I know several good men, but with all the threats, it’s difficult to know for certain whom to trust.”

“What about the some of George Sayres’s friends, the ones we hired first?”

“If you put those Negroes on the streets to look for white radicals, we both know what will happen.”

Phillip nodded grimly
. Frindly was right, he knew. A renewal of the unrest. Criticism in the papers. Fighting, maybe bloodshed would erupt. Dr. Tuttle had been correct, he realized. He had made a mistake in entering his father’s business. Because he put human costs above his profits.

He considered another cost, that of Shae
. No matter what the other consequences, he couldn’t let her suffer. How could he bear it if she were hurt because of him?

Or killed
. The thought shot through his veins like an infusion of ice water. He knew he had to save her, no matter what.

“I’ll need to get home and pick up some things before I go out looking
. Find someone trustworthy to spread the word,” Phillip told the shorter man. “I’ll give five hundred dollars to the man who brings Shae Rowan safe to me.”

*

As she leaned gasping in the shadowed lee of a rectangular outbuilding, Shae wondered if she might have evaded her pursuers. The whole incident rushed back to her in terrifying flashes: the white horse bearing down, the men’s harsh voices in the darkness, the pressure of a hand grasping her arm.

Had those men been chasing Phillip’s sister when the accident occurred?

Something else came upon her like a thunderclap, something said by the man who smelled of bay rum.
Mr. Lowell will piss vinegar when he hears.
Why would this concern a member of the Lowell clan? Did this mean either Ethan or his father was involved?

She felt sick thinking of it
. Could Ethan have hired men to hurt Phillip because of her? After Phillip interrupted his former friend’s attack on her, Ethan had shouted threats. But it was impossible. There’d been no time to arrange the crime.

She mustn’t forget, though, that Ethan had already betrayed his friend by then
. Hadn’t he stolen Phillip’s fiancée? Had that act somehow urged him to violence?

Despite her predicament, she nearly laughed aloud to think that the two men had, in essence, swapped fiancées
. She imagined Ethan’s father, who had always particularly disdained her, heartily congratulating him for coming off the better in the trade. Pompous old prig. He and that overstuffed dilettante he had married were two more reasons to be grateful she had destroyed her chance to marry into Lowell-ness.

Right now she had no way of knowing what Ethan’s part might be in these attacks
. But as soon as she found Phillip, she must tell him what she’d overheard.

After recovering her breath, Shae decided she would trade all her paints and brushes for a long drink of fresh water
. She hurried around the building’s other side to look for an outdoor pump. But the water that she found wasn’t what she had in mind.

Her foot sank into a cool puddle
. Gleaming in the moonlight, a shallow blanket of water stretched over both this yard and several others she could see.

She’d lost her bearings as she ran
. She must be closer than she thought to the peninsula’s gulf beach. The lower areas often flooded during storms.

She peered into the September sky, and foreboding rippled through her
. Thousands, maybe millions, of stars sparkled around the face of the full moon. Why on earth was water standing now, when it hadn’t rained lately?

Still keeping to the shadows, she sloshed into another yard and found a pump
. After slaking her thirst, she decided to find someplace to hide until it was safe to look for help.

The nearest building, elevated somewhat above the standing water, seemed a likely prospect
. Judging from the large door, she decided it must be a carriage house. The windows were dark in the two-story frame home beside it, but still she peered toward them nervously. Could someone in the house be watching her, ready to grab a gun if she opened the outbuilding’s door?

She trembled, then steeled herself against that fear.

There was already enough to frighten her, without imagining more trouble.

Her skirts had quickly wicked up mud and moisture enough to make her feel as if she’d gained fifteen pounds
. Gathering a wad of the soaked material in one hand, she stepped toward the large door and pulled it open.

The moon’s dim light touched on a jumble of shapes that might be old harnesses and tools hung along the right wall
. The left side was stacked with bales of straw. Shae hoped the lack of a buggy meant the family that lived in the house was out of town.

Grateful for her luck, she stepped inside and closed the door, then shuffled carefully toward the row of bales
. Unless they’d seen her enter, the two men who had followed her would never find her here.

She climbed atop the straw and sneezed at the chaff that she’d disturbed. Her skin prickled with the unaccustomed scratchiness, but here at least she could wait out the men who might still be in pursuit.

Her hands shook with weariness as she squeezed water from her skirts. Fatigue numbed her brain like laudanum, though her body throbbed with her exertions.

She tried in vain to picture the two men who had chased her, tried to imagine them deciding that they’d call it a night
. As if her wishes might exert some influence. As if they could assure her it was safe to go to Phillip now.

Somewhere in the darkness, she heard a skittering across the wooden floor
. Something gnawed at a wall not far away. Shuddering, she thought of rats. Shae drew her feet atop the bale and tucked them under her, then tried to ignore the sounds.

Eventually, she lay down on her side
. Since she had to wait here, she might as well take whatever comfort she could from this rough mattress of straw. By willing her shaking body into stillness, she somewhat eased the ache of her exhaustion. Within a few short minutes, in spite of her anxiety, the gentle lapping of water against wood lulled her like one of her mother’s Irish melodies.

Nature, with equal mind,

Sees all her sons at play;

Sees man control the wind

The wind sweep man away.

Matthew Arnold

From
Empedocles on Etna
, Act I, Scene 1

Saturday, September 17, 1875

When Shae snapped suddenly awake, the dark inside the carriage house was relieved only by dim light seeping through the narrow spaces that surrounded the wide door
. Morning. . . could she have really slep
t
and for so long? She shivered, not so much with cold as with the realization of where she was and what had happened earlier.

So much . . . so much
. She thought of Lucius’s home and of all that had occurred there. Making love with Phillip, accepting his proposal . . . She tried to fix on his face, to focus on her love, but her worries, too, woke quickly, then gnawed insistently as rats.

Sitting up, she brushed chaff from her clothing and tried to shake the worst of it from her loose hair
. As she wrapped her locks into an informal knot, something that sounded suspiciously like rain tapped a frenetic rhythm on the rooftop.

Her mind turned back to Lucius and the evidence that her father would kill to keep his secret
. She remembered once more how King struck her, how he’d reacted to her accusations.

In spite of everything, she still couldn’t quite believe he’d meant to hurt her
. Couldn’t quite believe he might do worse.

Still, she wondered if she’d been a fool to rush off to confront her father on her own
. She had Phillip now to help her through this, just as she would help him solve his problems. Between the two of them, there should be no secrets. Alone, neither of them stood a chance in Hell.

She roused more fully, realizing that the liquid sound she heard did not fit her location
. Unfolding her legs, she lowered her feet over the side of the straw bal
e
and into cool water that reached halfway to her knees.

Her first impulse was to pull her feet out of the water
. The thought of rats and others creatures swimming in the near-darkness made her hesitate to set them down again. But what else could she do here but wai
t
and for what? For the owners to return and find her camping in their carriage house? Or the tidal overflow to reverse its course? Wading out of this was the only option that made sense.

Cautiously, she made her way toward the door’s dim outline, then tried to push it open
. But instead of swinging easily, it remained as motionless as if someone had nailed it shut from the outside.