Betina Krahn (6 page)

At one end of the salon, overseeing her employees and patrons with the aplomb of a royal overseeing a cotillion, sat Mrs. Charlotte Brown, the proprietress. She was dressed, as usual, in a lavish crimson gown that matched her henna-enhanced hair and provided a vivid contrast to her powdered white shoulders and abundant bosom. Her elaborately coiffed hair was decorated with red and white ostrich feathers, and for jewelry she wore sumptuous strands of pearls. In her younger days, she had been an actress of fiery beauty and somewhat incendiary reputation.

Charlotte Brown saw the services her Oriental Palace provided for the elite of the city as something of a civic duty. Furnishing discreet, private pleasures to men of power allowed them—drained of bothersome urges—to focus their public attentions on weightier matters. The
wealthy and powerful men of the city were happy to accommodate her reasoning and had long afforded her a quiet protection.

Even now, two of the city’s aldermen were seated to her right, dallying with two of her prettiest girls. One alderman spotted Connor, and the other followed his gaze. Connor’s jaw clenched. It seemed like everything he did these days had a damned audience.

Charlotte rose to meet him and extended her hand.

“Why, if it isn’t the next congressman from the Fourth District,” she crooned. “It’s been too long, Congressman Barrow.”

Connor hoped his wince would pass for a smile as he drew her close and whispered for her ears only: “I understand you have an unwanted guest.”

“You? You’re the—” She drew back slightly, tension showing through her smile as she caught the warning in his eyes. “Well, then, we’ll just have to catch up on all your doings, dearie.”

She slipped her arm through his and chatted pleasantly as she steered him out the door and toward the grand stairs. The minute they were out of view of the grand salon, she dropped his arm and turned on him.

“You’ve got a heap of explainin’ to do, Barrow.”

“I can’t really … I’m not at liberty to—”

“Who the hell is she?” Charlotte jammed her fists on her hips and dropped all pretense of ladyhood. “Besides a screechin’ demon from the backwaters of hell itself?”

“It’s best if you don’t know. I’m here to take her—”

“Look, you.” Charlotte advanced and began to punch his shirt and the chest beneath with one long, red-tipped
fingernail. “She’s all but deafened Punjab … disrupted my trade … an’ generally behaved like a devil on holiday! How dare you bring that earsplittin’ baggage into my—”

“Me?” Connor shrank back as far as the railing behind him would allow and tried to shield his chest. “I had nothing to do with it!”

“Right. And my old granny died a flamin’ virgin.” She advanced again, choosing another spot, nearer his stomach to punch. “My girls all vow they have no idea who she is or where she came from, and I don’t believe a word of
that
either. Who is she? Some lightskirt you’re tryin’ to shake?”

“I don’t have lightskirts.’ And it’s better for you if you don’t know.”

“Yeah. My innocent ears. Connor sweetie”—she smiled suggestively—“you ought to know by now that there ain’t no part o’ me still a virgin.”

Under the heat of her stare, Connor became aware of the sweat popping out on his face. He could see that Charlotte had noticed it, too.

“Suffice it to say—she’s important. And it’s critical that she be returned to her home safe and sound. And
soon
.”

“Oh?” Charlotte’s kohled eyes narrowed cannily.

When he scanned the doors of the nearby hallway and tried to sidestep her, she blocked the way and folded her arms under her ample breasts, thrusting them up even farther.

“If she’s as important as you say, she could bring a heap of trouble down on my head. That damned ‘Purity League’ would like nothing better than to hear I’m keepin’ a society woman prisoner in my house. She’s not
goin’ anywhere until I learn who she is and get her promise she won’t report me to the police.”

Connor studied Charlotte’s determination, seeing in it some part defensiveness, and some part pleasure at being in on a scandal of sorts. Damn. Why had those two idiots chosen to deposit their victim on the one woman in all New York who used iniquity and indiscretion as her own private currency?

“Her name, Barrow.” Charlotte advanced on him and he again retreated. “Or she’ll be my guest ’til you can’t tell ’er tits from ’er liver spots.”

She had backed him into the corner of the stairway landing.

“Dammit, Charlotte.” He ran his hands down his face. “All right. She’s Beatrice Von Furstenberg.”

“Von Furstenberg?” Charlotte blinked. “Old Mercer’s wife?”

“The same.”

“I don’t mean to limp your timber, sweetie, but are you sure?” Charlotte scowled. “I mean, I knew old Mercer—in the biblical sense—and he was a withered old cod even when he was young. It took me half the night to wring one good twitch out of him. And she hisses and spits and scratches like a she-cat in heat.” She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him down two steps. “Maybe it’s not the same—”

“Come on,”—he pulled her to a stop—“I have to get her out of here.”

“She’s not upstairs.” Her next words struck terror into his heart. “I had to put her in the Dungeon.”

“The Dungeon?” He allowed himself to be pulled along. “Are you crazy?”

“I told you”—she reeled him closer and lowered
her voice—“she was disrupting my trade. Got lungs like a damned set of bellows. Had to put her downstairs, where the noise wouldn’t make my regulars too edgy.”

“But the
Dungeon
…” He groaned, thinking of the one and only time he’d seen that particular chamber. Even three sheets to the wind, he’d been astonished by what passed for implements of “pleasure” there.

“It was either that or the Inferno. And I had a party of the city’s finest scheduled in there for last night. Couldn’t afford to disappoint the boys in blue.”

As Charlotte led him down a set of carpeted steps beneath the main staircase, he tried to think of the effect Charlotte’s pleasure Dungeon must have had on old Mrs. Von Furstenberg’s ladylike sensibilities. Maybe they could drug her and convince her she’d been asleep … that it was all just a nightmare …

They arrived at the forbidding ironbound doors to the Oriental’s Dungeon and reality descended; he’d need both equipment and help. “I’ll need a rope and … a bag to put over her head … somebody will have to help me tie her up and carry her out to the carriage in the back alley.”

“A bag?” Charlotte’s hands were on her hips again. “Honey, she already knows where she is. One of my girls—the blabby little tart—let it slip when she carried in some food and water. Old Furstie’s widow knows she’s in a bawd house and she knows it’s run by me. Your job, Barrow love, is to get in there and convince her to forget both things. She has to agree not to press charges and sign a paper to that fact before she gets out.”

Connor was speechless. “You must be kidding.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life. I don’t know
how, but I have a feeling it was
you
got me into this.” She stabbed that blood-red fingernail into the dent in his shirtfront. “So
you
can get me out.”

“And just how do you suggest I do that?”

“You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?” Charlotte smiled wickedly and jerked her head toward the door and the woman imprisoned behind it.
“Negotiate.”

BEATRICE WAS HUDDLED
with her knees drawn up under her chin, in the middle of a huge leather ottoman that was black, like the other furnishings in the brick-lined chamber. She had a massive case of chill bumps, brought on by both the cool temperature and what the flickering torches in the iron brackets revealed in the room around her. A cage built of iron bars … a huge wooden table with iron shackles at the head and foot … a well-used set of wooden stocks … something that looked like a bizarre hobbyhorse, only with iron hand shackles instead of reins … chains hanging from the walls … and a rack containing all manner of implements of discipline … whips, rods, shackles, harnesses …

She shivered. She was in big trouble … kidnapped by the infamous “white slavers” and held against her will in a house of ill repute. She looked around her again. A
fortress
of ill repute. Complete with dungeon.

Thus far, she’d suffered only deprivations of freedom, dignity, and clothing. She looked down at herself and ran her hands up and down the exposed upper parts of her arms. They’d taken her clothes after she’d managed to dart out a door and down one of the long hallways, nearly reaching what looked like an outside door. But it
wouldn’t be long, she sensed, before the violations would begin as well. She’d had a foretaste of her fate when that monstrosity of a man—Punjab, they called him—had slung her over his shoulder and fondled her bottom as he carried her from place to place.

This was her fourth place of imprisonment. After the nautical room, they had trundled her into a Moorish harem complete with a bathing pool and silken veils. When her screams created a stir there, the turbaned giant carried her to a schoolroom, complete with desks and inkwells, a huge globe and map stands, and a chalkboard and stacks of most unusual schoolbooks. She wasn’t there long enough to do any reading, however. When she climbed up the bookcase, threw open a small window, and screamed for help, that “Punjab” creature had captured and carted her down to this wretched corner of perdition.

She looked down at her hands. Her palms were red and fingers were sore and puffy from pounding on doors and walls. Then her gaze slid to her half-bared breasts and she realized with horror that her black satin corset with its pink ribbons and her white silk knickers were an appalling match for the garments the unfortunate females imprisoned in this place were forced to wear.

Well, she thought, hugging herself, they might be able to make her look like the others, but they’d never make her behave like the others. She’d die first. And if she died, she was determined to take a few of her captors with her.

The sound of a key scraping in the iron lock sent her bounding up from the ottoman. The prickles on the back of her neck told her that the time she dreaded had finally come. She looked wildly around for a place to hide.

The door swung open just enough for one person to
enter, then closed again with a bang. But it was not the bottom-fondling giant nor one of the corseted unfortunates who’d been imprisoned along with her; it was a man in a gray business suit. Tall. On the younger side. Her relief rebounded into anxiety. If he wasn’t part of the staff, he was undoubtedly one of the patrons. Here was her first abuser!

Looking about for something with which to defend herself, she spotted that rack of fiendish disciplinary implements and grabbed a leather whip in one hand and a bamboo cane in the other … reasoning that they could be wielded in a defensive manner as well as an offensive one.

“Stay right where you are.” Every word had to be forced through badly strained vocal chords. “Don’t you dare come near me.”

The man blinked, seeming shocked by the sight of her brandishing a whip and a rod. Apparently, he had expected to be the one wielding the weapons.

“Don’t move a muscle,” she ordered.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I mean it! If you move, I’ll flay every inch of skin from your body!”

Intent on proving herself a force to be reckoned with, she advanced two steps, stopped, and braced with her feet apart and her weapons poised to strike. In the pause that followed, as she stood there, prepared for battle, she could feel his gaze roaming her half-naked body and taking in every exposed mound and crevice. Humiliation washed her skin crimson. There were far worse things than being naked, she told herself, forcing her chin up. Being ravished, for instance.

“Perhaps I have the wrong dungeon,” he said, recovering.

“Undoubtedly.” She raised her whip and cane another inch, frustrated that she couldn’t shield herself from his gaze and maintain her grip on them at the same time. “The Inquisition is down the hall.”

His eyes widened briefly and his mouth twitched at one corner. Her gaze fixed on that suppressed smile, and details flooded her mind in distracting waves. A full mouth. Strong, square chin. Face framed on high cheekbones. Dark, curly hair. Deep-set eyes … crinkling just now at the corners. Apparently he found the notion of her defending herself amusing.

“I was looking for the Dungeon with a ‘Mrs. Von Furstenberg’ in it.”

He knew her name. Panic threatened to bloom as she tried to think what it meant. Whoever was responsible for abducting her must have sent him to … When he took a step forward, she lurched back.

“Stay where you are—don’t you lay a hand on me!”

“Really, Mrs.—you are Mrs. Von Furstenberg, are you not? You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am here for some nefarious purpose. I assure you, madam,”—he raised and spread both hands—“you are in no danger.”

“That depends on what you call ‘danger,’” she said, her volume increasing with each word. “I’ve already been abducted and stripped of clothing and imprisoned in chambers furnished for depraved carnal assignations. That certainly qualifies as danger in my book. Not to mention being carted bodily from place to place and fondled rudely by that menace in a turban!”

“Punjab?” He allowed his smile to escape. “I assure you, madam, Punjab is not equipped to inflict the sort of harm that you seem to fear.”

“He’s as big as a mountain,” she insisted.

“He is also a eunuch.”

The pronouncement startled her so that she lowered her whip and cane.

“Really?” She’d read of such things … harems, eunuchs, and the like … but never imagined running into them in person. “Are you quite certain?”

“If you mean, have I made personal observations, no. But, I have been reliably informed by several of the ‘employees’ here that Punjab is physically powerful, but—alas for him—not the least bit potent.”

His knowing smile and the way his eyes kept dipping to her corset aroused both disbelief and outrage. Up came the whip and cane again.

“If you didn’t come to ravish me, then what are you doing here?” she demanded, advancing another step.