Josiah's Treasure (20 page)

The woman cackled. “The Anne Cavendish who lives in that house ain’t.”

No wonder Anne had been free to attend class any day Sarah requested; she must work nights. “Do you know if Anne is at home?”

The woman shrugged. “Might be. Saw her man not long ago. She’s usually nearby when he’s around. Wouldn’t want to not be, if you know what I’m saying.”

Daniel resumed pounding. “Hello!”

The door flung open. Anne, hair straggling around her face, stood on the other side. To Sarah’s horror, her left eye was swollen shut.

“What are you doing here?” Anne asked. “You’re supposed to be at the shop.”

“What in . . .” Daniel released a mild oath and dragged Sarah across the threshold, moving Anne aside, slamming the door behind them.

“I’m not at the shop because I need to be here. Obviously.” Sarah’s hands were quick to push back the girl’s hair. A trickle of dried blood zigzagged, like a red-black lightning bolt, along her temple. “Who did this to you?”

“You need to leave, miss.” Her one good eye blinked agitatedly. “It would be a terrible mistake to be here when Frank returns.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Daniel, fetch water and a clean cloth. If you can find one. Do you have tincture of arnica to help the bruising, Anne?”

“You have to leave, Miss Whittier. Don’t you see? Go back to the shop. You’re best off there.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She glanced over Anne’s head toward Daniel, who was slamming open cabinets in the rear room which served as a kitchen, seeking his support. “I’m not leaving you in this condition. Let me have a neighbor summon a doctor. Or send for the police.”

“The police!” Anne jerked away from Sarah’s probing fingers. She winced at the suddenness of the motion. “Do not send for them. Either of you. Frank . . . he’s just been upset lately. Trouble at work. You know how that goes. This . . .” She gestured at her black eye. “He’s never done this before, and he won’t again.”

“He
has
hit you before, Anne, many times. But he won’t any longer because I’m taking you with me. Pack your things. Right now.” Sarah looked around, searching for any belongings worth taking among the threadbare furniture, worn rugs, and faded sketches tacked to the stained plaster walls.

“I can’t. Frank would come looking for me. Take my advice and go back to the shop and forget you saw this.”

Daniel returned, a bowl of water in one hand and a rag in the other. Mutely, he handed them to Sarah. The tin bowl chilled her hands.

“Forget this?” Sarah dipped the cloth into the water, sloshing it against the brim, and began to daub Anne’s face. Miraculously, the girl stood still and let her. “I cannot walk away and forget I saw this.” She tried to settle her trembling and not jab Anne’s bruises.

“You have to forget,” Anne persisted. “Trust me, it’s for the best.”

“I want you to come with me,” Sarah repeated slowly and firmly, as if she were addressing a stubborn child. Didn’t Anne understand?

“You’d have to drag me from here by force because I won’t go. I mean it.”

“Then I’ll just force you. Mr. Cady will toss you over his shoulder and march out of here.”

Anne swallowed, her throat working angrily. “I already have one man who tries to make me do what he wants. I don’t need another.”

Sarah’s hand stopped midstroke. An adamant, cajoling voice
from another time, a different place echoed in her head.
“If you come with me, Sarah, chérie, we can be together. See the world. Go where no person can stand in our way . . .”

“Miss Whittier.” Daniel was at her side, looking down at her. “Do you need help?”

She glanced between him and Anne, forcing herself back to this time, this room. To this young woman whose life was more of a mess than Sarah’s had been when Edouard Marchand’s charms had overwhelmed her judgment. “Frank will hurt you again, Anne. You know he will.”

Her head went up, defiant. “I’ll leave him when I can make my own way.”

“I can give you money now, if that’s what you need, a few dollars left over from the sale of some paintings.” The balance of an unspent bribe. “Find you a place to live.” Find her someplace safe, where she could start over. Maybe even become a new person. Like Sarah had done. She had to be able to cobble together enough money to do that for Anne, whether or not her budget told her otherwise.

“I don’t take charity, Miss Whittier.”

“Mr. Cady, tell her to be reasonable,” pleaded Sarah.

Daniel slipped the dripping rag from Sarah’s grasp, dropped it into the bowl. “She’s a grown woman. You can’t make her do what she doesn’t want to do.”

She trembled, the tin bowl rattling against the metal buttons of her cuffs. “She’s going to be a dead woman if she doesn’t see sense!”

The words hung in the air, suspended like dust motes in a slash of light. Sarah held her breath and wished them back.

“You and Mr. Cady need to leave,” Anne whispered, taking the bowl from Sarah. “I thank you, but please, just go. You’re not safe.”

Daniel reached inside his coat and pulled out a few dollars, stuffed them into the pocket of Anne’s skirt. “This is money for
a doctor. Not charity. I expect you to repay me.”

She nodded. Daniel clasped Sarah’s arm and she had no choice but to succumb to Daniel’s persistent pressure, pulling her toward the door and the street.

“Anne, I expect you at classes and the studio as soon as possible,” she said from the bottom step. “The girls, the shop won’t be half as successful without you.”

“Cora won’t miss me.”

“I will,” Sarah insisted, wanting to run back up the stairs and shake reason into Anne. A young woman who she’d always thought of as the essence of logic and sensibility. “And if Frank does”—Sarah gestured at Anne’s face—“
this
again, you must come to me immediately. Promise me.”

“Good-bye, miss,” Anne replied, not promising. She watched, solemn-faced, from the dark rectangle of the doorway, the bowl clutched to her chest, a pitiful shield. “And Miss Whittier, be careful, all right?”

Sarah’s head rested awkwardly on Daniel’s shoulder, and the short tuft of feathers sprouting from her hat tickled his right ear, but he wouldn’t move her for the world. Wouldn’t accept any amount of money to withdraw his arm from around her shoulders. In fact, he wished he could tuck her nearer, fold her tight against his chest. Protect her.

As he held on, her tears began to subside. And somewhere, deep inside, an emotion stirred.

No, no. Not her. Not now.

“I was a little stupid back there, wasn’t I?” Sarah asked, her words muffled by the sleeve of his jacket, sounding weary to the core.

“You want to help Anne. It’s not your fault the situation’s too thorny to fix.” He couldn’t protect her from the heartache; he had enough difficulty protecting himself.

She sighed and moved out from beneath his arm, scooting along the bench to lean against the rear wall of the cable car. A draft of chill air replaced her warmth.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been crying on you and now I’ve ruined your vest.” Sarah wiped at the damp spots on his chest with the edge of her cuff. “I hate to cry. It serves no purpose.”

“I think it’s a situation worth crying about.”

“Do you?” She lifted her eyebrows and blew her nose into her handkerchief, stashing it away when she’d finished. “Crying won’t solve Anne’s problems. Won’t solve any of my girls’ problems. I just wish I knew what to do for her.”

The car shuddered to a halt, Daniel steadying his feet against the floorboards for balance, to deposit two men in frock coats and top hats at the corner. One more block and they would be at Sarah’s stop.

“You did the best you could by offering her someplace safe to go,” he said.

“The best for Anne would have been to drag her from that hovel, no matter how much she protested, and put her on the earliest train to anywhere several hundred miles distant from that Frank fellow.”

“He’s the sort who sounds like he’d hunt her down and make her pay for running off. China or India might not be far enough. All you’d gain by sending Miss Cavendish away is trouble for yourself.” He hadn’t rescued her from drowning to have some vengeful lover of one of her girls decide to wring her neck.

“I don’t care about trouble for me.”

“That
is
the problem with you, Miss Whittier.”

Her eyes narrowed. “We’ve already discussed this before.”

At the pond. He knew. He remembered.

His jaw twitched. “You need to take care of yourself if you want to help anybody. Be more careful.”

Sarah scoffed and tossed her head. “Don’t make it sound like you care about my health and well-being.”

He stared back at her. “You might not believe it, but I do care.” More than she could imagine or he liked.

Did she inhale suddenly? Blush a little? Hard to tell in the checkered shadow and light within the cable car.

“Then prove it,” she dared, her chin going up, any chance to see if she was flustered by his admission lost in her defiance. “Invest in the shop.”

“Maybe I will.”

Sarah laughed. “I would like to believe you, but I suspect that’ll never happen.”

Never say never, Sarah.
“We’ve arrived at your stop.” He stood as the cable car glided to a halt.

Sarah scrambled to her feet. “Wait. Did you mean it? Might you invest in the shop?”

Daniel didn’t know what he had meant. Any more, his brain didn’t think clearly around her. “Let me help you down.”

He took Sarah’s arm and assisted her down the steps and onto the street. Daniel set a brisk pace but Sarah kept up.

“You weren’t serious. I knew it.” She frowned at him. “It doesn’t matter. We have our backers, so I don’t need your money. But what you could give me is Josiah’s house.”

“Not sure I can help you there.”

“Too many promises, Mr. Cady?” she asked, holding tight to her hat as she hurried alongside him.

“In general, I try not to make them, Miss Whittier.”
Because promises are too often broken. I learned that lesson from you, Josiah.
“Aside from the promise I made to Lily and Marguerite, that is.” And to his mother.

“It’s just as well. I rarely believe promises,” she responded, laughing lightly to mask what might have been unhappiness in her voice.

They reached the house. Ah Mong, perched on the topmost step, caught sight of them and jumped up. “Miss Sarah, you are home early.”

“I left the shop so we could go check on Anne. She didn’t come to work today.” Sarah turned to Daniel before climbing the steps. “Thank you for going with me to Anne’s and showing me home, but I’ll be perfectly fine from this point forward.”

“Do you want me to check on Miss Cavendish later this afternoon?” he asked. “The Occidental isn’t all that far from her house.”

“And risk having Frank return and find you, a strange man, in his house?” She looked at him like he was daft. “You’re the one who needs to be careful if you’re going to do something so foolish.”

“Not one of my better ideas, perhaps.”

“You’ve had a few interesting ones today.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Yes, I have.”

She smiled. How bright her eyes were, sharp, intelligent, the tears and self-pity in them long gone. Abruptly, she raised up on her toes and kissed him, an innocent, feather-light brush across his cheek. The scent of rose water filled his senses. “Thank you. You didn’t need to claim you might invest in my business. More importantly, you didn’t need to help with Anne, and I’m grateful that you did. Thank you for being the sort of man Josiah would have been proud of.”

Before he could react, she spun about and bounded up the steps, skirts held high, sweeping through the front door without looking back.

Sarah stared up at the ceiling above her bed. Had she never noticed before the faint crack that meandered like the stream back in Ohio, a ragged line advancing from the corner toward the center of the room? Likely not, because tonight there was moonlight to compete with the purpling sky, a rare enough occurrence when usually fog descended like a veil to shroud the houses and trees and yellow hills. It was also a rare occurrence that she was sleepless and staring at the contents of her bedroom, fretting
over Anne. Fretting over Daniel.