Blind Trust (29 page)

So Darcy now had a way to clear her name, and Edward's, and even Artemis Hinkle's. She would bring Anne Hinkle back with her to New York, and they would threaten exposure of Dargent, whoever he was, in exchange for silence. They could do it, she felt sure of it.

She had only one obstacle in her way: Tavish. He had sworn to avenge his friend's death. But if Dargent went to prison, all of their secrets would be revealed at the trial. Tavish had to understand that stripping Dargent of his power would have to be punishment enough. How could they hurt so many to put him behind bars? Perhaps it was womanly logic, but it made sense to Darcy. At least it had last night.

She had an uneasy feeling that Tavish would not agree at all. So she would have to move behind his back.

Julia sighed. “At least let me get a good breakfast into you. And I'll have Annamarie pack my warmest things. Are you still determined to leave the city?”

“Yes. I must. Until my friends here are able to help me.”

“Tell me, Darcy, how do you think you will go? The ferries could be watched.”

Darcy slowly walked back to the armchair and sank down in it. “I hadn't thought of that. Do you think that's true, even in this weather? How could the police pass the information along downtown, Julia? All the telegraph and telephone lines must be down, surely, all over the city. I've seen them all on the streets.”

“That's true. But they could go from precinct to precinct …” Seeing Darcy's stricken face, Julia added quickly, “Perhaps it will be safe. But keep a careful eye out, Darcy. Claude Statton is an important personage. You would be a great prize to the New York City Police Department.”

Darcy felt the color drain from her face. “I suppose so,” she said.

“Oh, my dear. I didn't mean to frighten you. I just want you to be careful, that's all. I'm sure the storm has disorganized everything. Come to breakfast.”

Julia took her arm and led her downstairs, where Darcy was served potatoes and eggs and corned beef and coffee. After breakfast Julia gave her a thick wool dress, black, good for traveling, and added a black coat with a lambswool collar. Darcy would be warmly dressed, but she would not look too rich, too noticeable. She would blend in with the rest of the women in their black traveling dresses. Julia also gave her a small grip with toilet articles, another warm dress, an extra pair of boots, a nightgown, and fresh underthings.

They went downstairs together, arm in arm.

“Godspeed,” Julia said, impulsively drawing her into a hug. “And don't worry about things here. I never saw you. The servants will be discreet as well. My father,” she said wryly, “has always insisted on that.”

“I shall never be able to repay you for this,” Darcy said. She opened the front door and turned to look at Julia one last time. She looked like a Rubens painting, all pink and lush feminine curves. But she stood in the icy draft from the door, the wind blowing her hair slightly, and she didn't flinch or shiver from the cold.

“You will always be in my heart,” Darcy said. Then she shut the door on Julia's quiet smile.

Luck was with her. She found a sleigh. An enterprising young man had borrowed an old one of his uncle's and was searching for passengers when she hailed him on Forty-ninth Street.

“Joe Heron at your service. Excuse me if I don't tip my hat, ma'am, but I just might lose it if I did.”

“I wouldn't dream of asking you to, Mr. Heron.”

“Where will you be going, ma'am? Home?”

“Yes. I'm leaving the city.”

“Leaving the city!” he said, astonished. “There's no trains going out of Grand Central, ma'am, if that's what you're thinking.”

“I was thinking of the ferries. The one to Jersey City. I'm heading for Pennsylvania Station.”

Joe considered this. “That might be running. I heard the Hudson ferries were running.” She thought he frowned, though it was hard to tell, since his drooping mustache had iced over. “But I don't think the trains would be running from Pennsylvania Station. No trains running for a hundred miles, maybe. Hard to tell, with all the telegraph lines down. And I wouldn't want to go on a ferry ride today, no sir. Not in this wind. Where are you headed, ma'am?”

“I'm heading for … Philadelphia.”

“I'd stay put if I were you, ma'am. If you don't have friends or money for a hotel, I could … maybe my sister could help… she has an extra room.”

Darcy hung onto the sleigh, thinking. She had to get off Manhattan Island, she knew that. Another day of waiting would be too late for her. But if Joe Heron was right, she could be trapped in Jersey City just as well. The days were gone when one could escape the law in Jersey City, as Jim Fisk and Jay Gould had done in the Erie scandal, living in splendor in a hotel room away from Manhattan justice.

“Too bad you don't live in Brooklyn,” Joe said good-naturedly. “I hear the East River is frozen over, right by the Brooklyn Bridge. A chap I just picked up told me so. He spent the night in the ferry building there. You could walk right across it, pretty as you please.”

Brooklyn. At least she'd be off Manhattan Island. And maybe she could find someone to take her to the Long Island Sound ferries.

“The East River it is, then,” she decided. “I'll try for the Sound ferry, and then get to the railroad from there.”

“Are you daft?” Joe exploded. Then recollecting himself, he shook his head. “Excuse me, ma'am. I don't know if you'll get a ferry across the Sound, and even so, how would you get to a railroad station, and what would you do when you got there? I've heard trains are stranded all over … All right, all right—to the East River it is. Thirty dollars, then.”

“Thirty dollars! I don't want to buy your rig, Mr. Heron!”

“Weeeellll now, perhaps you should catch a horsecar then, ma'am. I'm sure they'll be one coming along in a day or so.”

The young man was a rogue, no doubt about it. Darcy almost smiled. “Ten dollars,” she said firmly. “Not a penny more.”

“Twenty.”

“Sold. Can you give me a hand up, Mr. Heron?”

Darcy watched the ten dollars—the balance would be due when he dropped her at the ferry building—pass from her gloved hand to his with misgivings. She didn't have much money, just what she'd taken from Claude's desk, about fifty dollars. She had adamantly refused Julia's offer of money. What she had might not last too long. But it had to get her to Denver.

The snow held off on the journey downtown, but the wind was fierce and it felt even more bitterly cold than yesterday. The temperature must have been near zero. The wind picked up the snow on the ground and flung it in their faces, pelting their cheeks like tiny nails. Darcy ducked under the fur robe in the back. She couldn't believe she was out in this weather again. But Joe Heron was cheerful.

“I'll get you there, never fear!” he shouted over the roar of the wind and the sharp ringing of the bells on his reins.

He got her there, all right. But they got stuck in drifts six times, and it took them an hour and a half. Joe pulled over at Madison Square and went over to the Fifth Avenue Hotel to fill a flask with hot tea for her. Darcy sipped it, noticing that the abandoned horsecar next to her had been taken over by a group of jolly passengers who passed a whiskey bottle up and down the line. They were burning scraps of cardboard in the coal stove in the rear to keep warm. They toasted her silently across the white polar expanse of Fifth Avenue, and she raised her mug to them.

Joe remained impossibly good-natured through it all. Perhaps it was the money he was making. Whatever the reason, he kept her spirits up. Darcy wanted to knight him, but she settled on a small tip when he pulled up in front of the East River ferry terminal at nine-forty with a great cry and a ringing call for a passenger back uptown.

Darcy climbed out of the sleigh, thanked Joe one more time, and pushed her way to the pier. It was crowded with would-be ferry passengers thwarted by the ice, but a holiday mood prevailed. Some intrepid souls were already on the ice, taking a stroll to Brooklyn. They looked like tiny black dots near the Brooklyn side. Dogs cavorted and skidded. Crowds on the Brooklyn Bridge cheered them on.

“Why, it's frozen over,” Darcy said aloud.

“Not really ma'am,” a man standing next to her replied. “It can't freeze over completely because of the tides. It's just a big ice floe you're seeing, a harbor master. Very dangerous to be crossing, I'd say. Them folks could get swept out to sea if they're not careful. And I'd hate to see what happens when the tide changes, whenever that will be.”

“I see,” Darcy gulped. She looked down the river and saw that the man was right; she could see now that the ice only appeared to be an even expanse over the river. Actually, it was one giant floe and some smaller ones.

Darcy looked out at the great expanse of ice and her heart sank. She fervently hoped that the rest of her would not follow suit.

She went toward the ladder at the end of the pier. A man in a cap was standing at the head of it, helping someone climb up. “Fifty cents to go down, miss,” he said.

“Don't let her, man, can't you see the tide is changing?” a man in a fur overcoat said. He put a hand on her arm, but the man in the cap disengaged it with such a look in his eye that the other man turned away.

“Come on, miss, just fifty cents it is, and you can tell your grandchildren about it. You can just go down, have a look around, come right back up again. Don't listen to that gentleman there. It's perfectly safe, other ladies have been up and down all morning.”

Darcy hesitated. She glanced back toward the ferry building—perhaps the ferries would be running later this morning. And then she saw the policeman, standing, bored, by the shuttered ticket window. Waiting to see if it opened.

Quickly, she took fifty cents from her purse and paid the man. He steadied the ladder, and she climbed down carefully, hampered by her skirts. Her foot hit the ice. It felt firm as a rock. She'd be just fine. She'd be in Brooklyn in a matter of minutes, and they'd never find her. All she needed was a bit of courage and nerve.

She felt almost gay, starting across the ice. This was historic. Wasn't it true the British soldiers had crossed like this during the Revolution? And they'd made it to a man, hadn't they?

She was a little over halfway across the ice when the tenor of the noise on the bridge changed. The shouts of glee were now high-pitched, insistent, anxious. She looked up and saw what looked like a hundred people on the bridge—surely there couldn't be so many—all waving their arms and shouting to those still on the ice. They were pointing …

Darcy looked out to sea. The tugboats were beginning to move. So was the ice. She saw a huge floe break away and move toward open sea. A group of men and boys were on it. One fell to his knees, praying. She saw one tall man put his hand on the shoulder of a boy, probably his son.

Now she could hear the cracking noise, and it was horrible. Darcy picked up her skirts with both hands—thinking crazily that this was totally against any rule of etiquette; skirts were to be picked up by one hand only—and moved faster, afraid to run for fear of falling. It was hard to hold her small suitcase against her skirts, but she couldn't dare leave all her clothes and money behind. As she moved, she felt the ice move.

She thought she had felt fear yesterday, standing over Claude's dead body. But that was tame compared to this. She tried not to think of the cold water closing over her head. She couldn't swim, of course, not that she'd be able to. She'd be crushed by the shifting floes of ice first …

Darcy concentrated fiercely on moving, one step after the other. She could hear the people screaming from the piers on the Brooklyn side, and now she could hear the ice groaning against the piers as it moved.

The wind was behind her back, thank God, and it pushed her along. Then she saw the first crack in the ice ahead of her, saw the open sea, gray and cold as a gravestone, and she didn't hesitate, she jumped across it to the next floe with a tremendous burst of energy fueled by fear.

Her feet hit the ice and she didn't slip; she kept moving. The people on the pier were urging her on, waving and calling for her to hurry. And then she was at the end of the drifting floe. The ladder was ahead of her. But so was two feet of cold gray water. Darcy stopped. The ice moved even farther away from the ladder. She was paralyzed. She stared at the iron rung. It seemed impossibly far away.

Someone was scrambling down the ladder then, a young seaman by the looks of him, with a beard and a dark blue short coat and cap.

“You're going to have to jump miss. Leave the bag.”

She shook her head. She couldn't leave the bag. Her money was in it.

“Throw it to me, then. Throw it now.”

She threw it. He caught it with one hand, scooping it against his body. Then, bracing himself against the ladder, he tossed it up to the pier in one sweeping motion.

“Jump,” he said. His voice was calm. “Now. I'll catch you, don't fear. Jump, miss.”

She jumped. Her boot hit the bottom rung and slipped. Panic shot up from her belly. The crowd up above was screaming, but she didn't hear. Her fingers were scrabbling for the top rung. One hand hit it, the other missed, but her wrist was grabbed by the young seaman and pulled with such strength and power that she found herself, cheek against the iron ladder, secure, safe, and sobbing.

“Come on, now. Come on. You don't want the floe to crush you.” His voice was still calm though urgent. Darcy began to climb. She was helped up the last step by a group of arms and hands thrust at her, and she landed on her hands and knees on the wooden slats of the pier, congratulated and patted, a flask up to her lips and some voice urging her to drink. She drank the burning liquid and coughed and looked across the ice. She could see more water than ice now, most of the ice moving out to sea, quicker than before. A tugboat was rescuing a group of men on one floe. One fell in the water but was fished out again. She saw the group of men and boys on another tug, heading for the Manhattan shore.