Rebecca Hagan Lee (34 page)

Elizabeth tried to talk to Ruby, but reluctantly gave up when Ruby failed to respond. There was nothing she could do except wait and hope that Ruby would get over her anger and that Portia would eventually reappear. Garnet, however, did not understand Elizabeth’s patient approach. She wanted Portia and she couldn’t understand why nobody could find her. And when Garnet began to cry and beg for the doll, it was all Elizabeth could do not to do the same.

Not trusting herself enough to do battle with Ruby in the
bathtub, afraid of losing her patience and her temper, Elizabeth wisely decided Delia could give Ruby a stand-up bath and put her to bed.

By the time James arrived home from work to continue the adventures of Don Quixote, Elizabeth had retired to her room.

THE KNOCK ON
his bedroom door late that night startled James. The Treasures were all asleep. Even Diamond had had her bedtime bottle. James got up to answer the door and found Mrs. G. standing on the other side.

“Mrs. G., is there anything wrong?” James asked.

She frowned. “I hate to bother you in your room like this, Mr. Craig, but I thought you would want to know that Miss Sadler didn’t come downstairs for dinner again tonight. And she refused the tray I sent up.”

“What?” James had missed dinner himself, but Mrs. G. had brought a tray of roast beef sandwiches to his bedroom study soon after he finished reading the Treasures their bedtime story.

“She’s been upset all afternoon,” Mrs. G. volunteered. “Ever since her doll went missing.”

James was clearly surprised. “What happened?”

“Well,” Mrs. G. explained, “after Miss Sadler returned from her outing with the Treasures in the park this afternoon, she discovered her doll—you know the one that Miss Garnet sets such a store by—had disappeared from her room.”

“Oh, no,” James muttered, anticipating the worst. “Ruby.”

Mrs. G. nodded. “We think so,” she admitted. “But we turned the house upside down, and we didn’t find a trace of Portia. If Miss Ruby’s hid her, she did a real good job of it.”

“What can I do?” James asked.

“Well, you might try talking to Miss Ruby in the morning,”
Mrs. G. told him. “And I think you ought to talk to Miss Sadler tonight. She’s very upset.”

“What do I say?” James wanted to know.

“Just tell her you want to talk to her about the Treasures, about the nursery, anything. But please talk to her, Mr. Craig, because I’ve become very fond of her. And I’m worried.”

“All right, Mrs. G.,” James said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Mr. Craig.” Helen Glenross breathed a grateful sigh. “Thank you so much.”

James waited until Mrs. G. left, then wrapped a leftover sandwich in a linen napkin and stuck it in the pocket of his robe before he walked down the hall from his bedroom to the nursery. He paused for a moment in the Treasures’ bedroom and stood looking down at the little girls all curled on their beds. They were still sleeping peacefully. James smiled at the angelic expression on Ruby’s face. Looking at her like this, no one would guess the chaos she’d caused today. He shook his head. And over a doll! He looked up at the shelves high on the wall, far above the Treasures’ heads. Three beautiful dolls stared down at him. All the dolls were different. One had curly red hair and big green eyes. Another had brown hair and blue eyes, and the last had white-blond hair and blue eyes. He had bought them in San Francisco for Ruby when she was much too young to play with them. So he and Mrs. G. had placed them on the high shelf in the nursery bedroom, and to his knowledge, none of the Treasures had ever paid any attention to them or ever asked to play with them. But today Ruby and Garnet had had a battle royal over Elizabeth’s doll. He glanced down at the bed where Garnet slept, her thumb in her mouth and a frown on her face. James walked to the side of Garnet’s bed, bent down, and gently rubbed the pad of his thumb across Garnet’s wrinkled brow, smoothing out the lines, as if to erase them and the worry that put them there. James stood and blew a kiss to
all the Treasures before he walked silently out of the bedroom.

He knocked on the door twice. “Elizabeth?”

She didn’t answer but James knew she was in there. He could hear the muffled sounds she made as she wept into her pillow. He reached out and turned the doorknob. The door was locked.

James knocked again. “Please answer the door, Elizabeth.”

Still she didn’t answer.

“You didn’t eat dinner. Are you all right?

Elizabeth let go of her pillow at the sound of James’s voice and sat up in bed.

“I’m very sorry about your doll, Elizabeth,” he said softly. “I’m sorry about Portia.” James let go of the doorknob and walked away—back to his room.

Elizabeth rolled off the bed and went to the vanity. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was red from crying. She didn’t want James to see her when she’d been crying over something so foolish as a doll. But she didn’t want to miss seeing him, either. She walked to the door and turned the key in the lock. She opened the door and stepped out into the hall, but it was too late. James was gone. He’d already walked away. Again.

Elizabeth closed the door, then crossed the bedroom and unlocked the French doors that opened onto the balcony. She dragged the chaise longue from her bedroom to the balcony, then sat down and waited.

“My father gave her to me the day my younger brother was born,” Elizabeth said soon afterward, when she heard the scrape and smelled the acrid sulfur odor of a match, seconds before she saw the flare of a blue-orange flame as James lit a cigarillo. “Other than at Christmas and my birthdays, Portia was the only gift my father ever gave me.

“Then I’m doubly sorry she’s missing,” James answered, crossing from his end of the balcony to stand just a few feet away from where she sat on the chaise. He was
shirtless and barefoot, as he’d been the first night she met him, wearing only his favorite silk robe and a pair of trousers. And he didn’t appear to be the least bit surprised to see her. James took a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe and handed it to her.

Elizabeth stared at it, searching in the dim light for the initials she knew were embroidered on the corner. J. C. C. “Am I going to jail again if I accept this?”

James shook his head. “No, but if you don’t take this”—he stuck his hand in his other pocket and removed a bundle wrapped in a linen napkin and gave it to her—“I may consider it.”

Elizabeth unwrapped the bundle and found what smelled like a slab of roast beef sandwiched between two thick slices of bread.

“Dry your eyes and eat your sandwich,” James instructed.

“I’m acting like a baby,” Elizabeth sniffled. “Crying over the loss of a doll like this.” She took a bite of the meat and bread and then another.

“I’d say you’re entitled,” James replied. “First Owen, and now, this.”

Elizabeth looked surprised by his mention of Owen’s name.

“I know about Owen, Elizabeth. I did some checking around,” he admitted. “I know where and how Owen died. And why you used your parasol to destroy the interior of the Red Dragon.”

Elizabeth let out a breath. “That’s a relief,” she told him. “I was afraid you might think I intended to crusade against other dens of iniquity and make a habit of destroying other people’s property.”

“Opium dens are legal,” James reminded her. “They may be dens of iniquity, but by law, they’re allowed to operate. Your brother was over twenty-one. He made his choices.”

“I know. That’s the sad part. People like Lo Peng operate businesses that thrive on other people’s weaknesses.
Owen was
barely
twenty-one. He was young and he was weak-willed, but I loved him anyway and he didn’t deserve to die or to have his body dumped on the side of the street like so much trash.”

“So you struck out against the Red Dragon.” James shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” He glanced around for a place to sit.

Elizabeth shrugged. “What was there to tell? Owen’s dead. His body was dumped in the street. I can’t change those facts.” She curled her legs beneath her to make room for James to sit on the end of the chaise.

James sighed. “I know it won’t lessen your grief or the pain of knowing what was done to Owen, but dumping your brother’s body in the street wasn’t personal, Elizabeth. I’m not saying that it isn’t horrible, and I’m certainly not defending the practice. I’m just saying that Lo Peng considered it a necessity. You see the Chinese in this country don’t have many legal rights. They’re forced to cross the street if a white man walks down the same sidewalk. They can own and operate businesses, but they’re always in danger of being harassed by local police and the citizenry. The owners of opium dens and gambling houses are at greater risk because men can and do get killed in fights, or die from overindulgence in the poppy.” He took a puff on his cigar. “When a Chinese dies, nothing much is said or done about it, but when an occidental dies, for whatever reason, a great deal is said and done about it. Chinese merchants have been accused of murder and of poisoning customers, and lynched for having a white man’s body on their premises.” James sat on the end of the chaise longue and blew out a puff of cigar smoke.

Elizabeth shuddered. “It’s still a despicable thing to do.”

“Yes,” James agreed, “it is.”

They sat without speaking for a while, until James broke the companionable silence by asking, “Did you know Owen was addicted to opium? Is that what brought you out here from Providence?”

“A train brought me out here from Providence.” She
managed a slight smile at her weak attempt at humor. “But my own faulty judgment precipitated the journey. I didn’t know anything about Owen’s frequenting of the Red Dragon until I arrived and learned of his death.”

“What happened?” he asked, getting up from the chaise and moving to lean against the balcony railing.

Elizabeth gave a little unladylike snort. “My grandmother Sadler disowned me. She scratched my name out of the family Bible and asked me to leave the house I’d grown up in—and to leave Providence. I didn’t have any place else to go, so I decided to come stay with Owen.”

James didn’t believe Elizabeth could have done anything bad enough to warrant her grandmother’s harsh punishment. “Why did she disown you?”

“I allowed myself to be compromised.”

“I don’t believe it,” James said flatly.

“It’s true,” Elizabeth told him. “At least, that’s the way my grandmother saw it.”

“How do you see it?” He’d already heard enough about her grandmother to know that the lady made moral judgments and set impossibly high standards for the people around her to follow.

“I saw it as taking care of an old family friend who was ill when he arrived in town for his Christmas visit.”

“He?”

Elizabeth nodded. “His name is Samuel Wright. He and my father were schoolmates.”

“Go on,” James urged.

“I’ve known Samuel all my life. So when he arrived for his visit earlier than planned, I didn’t think anything of accompanying him to his hotel room. You see, my mother and my grandmother were out of town. I was staying at Lady Wimbley’s with some of the girls who didn’t go home after term, so our house was closed and the servants were still on holiday. Samuel was feverish and very ill. So I accompanied him to his hotel room and sent for the doctor.” Elizabeth looked down at her tightly clenched fists. “I couldn’t leave him. There was no one else to take care
of him. He was alone and sick and burning up with fever. The doctor suggested I stay until Samuel was better or until …” She let her voice drift off. “And I agreed. I didn’t think about propriety or my reputation or the fact that Samuel was a widower. I didn’t care about any of that. All I cared about was Samuel and the fact that without my help, he might die.”

“But your grandmother did care about propriety,” James guessed.

“Yes,” Elizabeth answered. “My grandmother cared about propriety more than she cared about me or Samuel’s well-being. She cared about propriety to the exclusion of all else. And because I’d spent three days and two nights in the unchaperoned company of an unmarried man, I was compromised.”

“And then what happened?” James asked softly.

“As soon as he recovered his health and realized what had happened, Samuel went to see Grandmother Sadler and asked her for my hand in marriage.”

“She turned him down?” James couldn’t believe it.

“Of course not,” Elizabeth said. “Grandmother was delighted. I turned him down.”

“Why?”

Elizabeth gave another unladylike snort. “He was old enough to be my father. And what’s more, Samuel didn’t love me. Not the way a man should love his wife. Samuel loved me like a daughter. And I loved him like a father. I couldn’t marry him. It wasn’t right. It would have felt too—too—incestuous.” She glanced at James, willing him to understand.

“I take it your grandmother didn’t agree.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “She thought I was crazy. She said I was a fool to turn him down, then she ordered me to rethink my position and to say yes when Samuel asked again. Grandmother knew Samuel would ask again because he felt responsible for destroying my reputation and the only way to repair the damage was to marry me. She knew he would keep asking until I agreed. So when
I refused Samuel’s second most generous proposal, I was ostracized by my friends, relieved of my teaching duties at Lady Wimbley’s, disowned by my grandmother, and asked to leave not only her home, but the town of Providence as well.”