Stealing Mercy (18 page)

Georgina sniffed. Her red pouty lips looked too sweet to be talking about prostitution, her bright flashing eyes were too blue and too round to be taken seriously, but Georgina spoke of her work with passion and steely strength.

“A woman by the name of Dorrie arrived on my doorstep this morning. The dear had escaped from Lucky Island. She could barely walk, could barely speak through her swollen lips, could hardly see through blackened eyes.”

Mercy blinked hard. “Goodness, did she get medical attention?”

“I assume you know Doctor Reynolds? No? He’s a long time friend of your Aunt Tilly. Dorrie refused to see him. She was badly frightened.”

“No wonder. Will she be alright?”

“Physically, I believe so. It’s hard to say. The psychological damage will be more difficult to determine.”

Mercy nodded. “Does she fear all men?”

Georgina shook her head and her blond curls bobbed. “It’s not a man she fears. She’s afraid of the mistress.”

“Lady Luck?” Mercy had heard the dark rumors of the woman running Lucky Island.

“Dorrie had yet to earn her keep. It seems Madam is a harsh mistress.”

“Do you mean--”

“Yes. Dorrie had been purchased and she’d yet to recoup her costs.”

Mercy sunk a fraction in her chair, overcome with warring emotions: guilt, gratitude, fear. She remembered how she’d passed the street walkers in New Yorker without thought or compassion. She thought of how, if not for Aunt Tilly, she might have shared their plight. And then she thought of Belle and Melanie and asked, “Do you worry about repercussions?”

Georgina fastened her blue gaze at Mercy. “I’d be silly not to.”

Despite her cherubic appearance, Mercy knew that Georgina was anything but foolish. She wondered how many people were misled by her petite charm. “What will happen to Dorrie?”

“She’ll rest here until she’s well, and then we’ll attempt to find her work and suitable housing.” Georgina paused. “She described her kidnapper as a handsome, charming man.”

“Dark, tall?”

“No, he’s blond, well built. In fact, she managed to draw a picture. That’s why I invited you here today. Perhaps you’ve seen or met him.” She passed the drawing.

Mercy took it, disappointment welling in her throat. She studied the drawing and something niggled at the back of her mind. She had counted on it being Steele. It wasn’t a good likeness, but it definitely wasn’t Steele. She sighed, shook her head and settled back in her chair.

“Maybe you’ll meet. I doubt he mingles in your social circle, but he might come into your aunt’s shop. Somehow, we must bring this man to justice.”

“Involve the police?” Mercy considered the drawing.

Georgina gave a high pitched laughed that sounded as adorable as her curls. “Goodness, no.” She patted her chest. “We can’t rely on the arm of flesh when we know its weakness!”

Mercy tried to smile in return, but she felt slightly sick. “What’s this mark?” Mercy asked, pointing at the man’s chin.

Georgina leaned forward. “I think it’s meant to be a cleft, or a scar.”

A cleft chin or a scar. Wallace, the man she’d met on the ship, had a cleft chin.

“What can we do?” Mercy asked. They could hardly accost all cleft chinned men they happened to meet.

Georgina raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “God knows and will direct us.”

*****

A light rain had begun to fall by the time Mercy reached the steps of twenty-two Lily Hill. Despite the rain and falling twilight, she leaned against the door, unwilling and unable to face Tilly’s friendly chatter. She liked living with her aunt -- she loved her new home and budding life in Seattle -- she didn’t want to run away. Again.

The memory of the gleaming knife made her shiver. Steele had meant her harm and he had a partnership in Lucky Island, but that didn’t mean he rustled girls, the way some hustle cattle, and sell them. The drawing could be of Wallace and she already knew that somehow the two men were connected. She thought back to the picture, wishing it’d been a better likeness. At first, when she’d seen the picture, the disappointment that it hadn’t been Steele had been overwhelming, but looking back, the likeness to Wallace had been vague. Her thoughts raced as she tried to catalogue all the men she’d met since her arrival. Had she met others with a cleft chin?

She looked out over the lights twinkling in the early gloaming. Lily Hill had a view of Lake Washington to the east and a view of Elliot’s Bay to the west. Boats in the harbor and on the lake sent pale wavering beams of light across the water.
Everyone’s coming or going somewhere,
she thought. She hated the thought of leaving. She had nowhere to go. She thought of the emeralds and the stories her mother had told her of Lord Bren and the elfin bride. They could provide her with a new life.

Such folk tales have guaranteed happy endings, but she had lived long enough and hard enough to know that life didn’t provide guarantees. When she closed her eyes she could almost imagine her mother’s voice, telling her how Lord Bren loved his elf and how she led him home, even when he’d believed he’d lost her to the King of the Elves.

Kings. A pair of Kings. The last time and the first time she’d seen Wallace he’d been playing cards, maybe it was a habit.

“Where were you?”

The voice in the near darkness scared her and she jumped. Trent stood under the light of a street lamp, a tall dark shadow in a circle of shimmering falling mist.
He mustn’t see me flustered,
she thought.

“You frightened me,” Mercy said, her hand to her chest.

“Tit for tat,” Trent said, moving away from the light and in her direction. “Your vanishing act frightened me.”

Mercy attempted to keep her voice light. “You? Afraid? I sincerely doubt that.”

Trent opened the picket gate and moved slowly up the walk. He walked as stealthily as a cat stalking prey. She held her breath, remembering how it felt to be pressed against him. He climbed the step and joined her on the stoop. All she had to do was open the door. Somewhere in the upstairs rooms she imagined Tilly sitting with her spectacles, bending over a workman’s shirt with a needle and thread. She could call out and Tilly would be at the door. Her heart picked up speed, not for fear, she realized, but because of her memories of last night.

Trent stopped beside her, leaned forward and braced his hand on the door, looming over Mercy. She looked up at him, his face inches from her. He smelled of leather and of something unrecognizable and yet appealing. He exuded warmth and strength. She wanted to trust him, to tell him the sad and sorry story of her parents’ death, her brief infatuation with Steele, the spark of hope, the flash of anger, and the night with the fire poker.

Everyone has a reptilian brain, she remembered a client, Professor Bing, telling her. We are each capable of violence, even murder, he’d said. Violence is but a small price to some, he’d told her. Some would kill for your pastries, he’d said. Professor Bing had been a small man with bottle lens glasses who liked berry tarts. He hadn’t been a man she found increasingly hard to resist.

Could she tell Trent about the fire poker? Would he understand the reptilian brain? For a moment, she felt homesick for Professor Bing and her bakery. With flour, berries and eggs she knew the outcome, follow the recipe and the desired result was inevitable. The problem now, or one of the many problems, was she didn’t know the recipe. She didn’t even know the desired results.

“Why did you disappear?” Trent asked, bowing his head even lower.

Mercy arched her neck to look at him. She turned up her lips in the smile that she’d seen so often on Eloise’s face, the one that had sent half the Seattle male population to their knees with declarations of love. “ I’m here with you now, am I not?”

Trent leaned back, but stepped closer and folded his arms across his chest. “You are here with me, because I’m here.”

Deciding that he could be useful, she reached out and took his arm. “Mr. Michaels, that is, perhaps, one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard.” She took his hand and drew him away from the porch. “I shall have to think about that. You are here, because you are here. Brilliant. Have I ever told you about Professor Bing? He taught philosophy at Columbia.” She led him down the path and she was surprised at how easily he followed.
Thank-you, Professor Bing
. “Shall we leave here? And then we shall be somewhere else?”

He allowed her to tow him and she liked having his solid frame beside her. She would use him to accompany her to the gaming salon.

If he’d let her.

Most of Seattle’s business establishments followed the blue laws and closed for the Sabbath. The gaming salons, taverns, and brothels were the exceptions. Their patrons, Mercy guessed, preferred other forms of worship.

“Is there somewhere else you’d like to be?” Suspicion laced his voice.

“Really, there’s nowhere I’d rather be. I love it here.” She cleared her throat to cover her emotion. “Still, I could use a walk. Will you join me?”

“It’ll be dark soon.” He seemed reluctant to leave.

“Do you mind?” She blinked up at him. Above his head she could see the curl of the pale moon poking through a smattering of clouds.

He looked down at her and she squirmed beneath his stare. “No, but I would think that you might. Or, have you given up on your reputation?”

She hesitated. “Last night --”

“I should apologize --”

She tugged him along. “No. It was my…doing. But, I’m safe with you, am I not?” She paused at the gate. “Really, you must tell me if I’m not safe.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it.

She turned to him, her eyes dancing. “Will you or will you not be a gentleman and accompany me?” She was glad to see him smile because she knew if she told him where they were going, he’d certainly stop smiling.

Trent’s voice dropped to a dangerous octave. “Accompany you where?”

CHAPTER 18

A fairy cake may refer to a cupcake or a poisonous mushroom.

From The Recipes of Mercy Faye

He’d already come this far, he supposed he would continue, but there were times when all he could think of was scooping Mercy up and carrying her home and keeping her there. With him. Away from the men she seemed to have an unnatural and unhealthy obsession with following. It made him crazy. She always danced about an inch away from danger, just beyond his finger tips. They’d taken Main to First, but then just outside the Salon de Chance, Mercy had taken a sudden right. Trent suspected that they were following a man in a dark jacket who had been half a block ahead of them since they’d left the salon.

“I want watch the moon rise over the Sound,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s a smiley moon. The sort that elves and fairies sit upon, curled into the circle.” She smiled as he stepped beside her. She tucked her arm in his and without taking her eyes of the man ahead of them, she began to tell a story.

He watched her face as she talked. Bright eyes, laughing lips, a sense of purpose, direction. He watched the man that they were supposedly not following and wondered why it was always some other man that chose their course. His footsteps slowed as he wondered if he could carry her home. What would she say and do if he slung her over his shoulder?

“My mother’s people were Irish and Lord Bren, my very distant ancestor, fell in love with the princess of the elves,” she told him.

“Does this have anything to do with the man we’re following?”

Mercy tapped his arm with her fingers. “Hush. I listened to your story about Serendip, you can listen to my story. Light elves, such as Ingrid, live in the sky and can be radiantly bright and mistaken as stars. Bren, a fisherman, spent many late nights on the dark sea. When lost, he’d sing to the stars until one would come and light his way home.”

Would she cry out or kick if he picked her up? He looked around at the deserted street. They’d traveled to a rough neighborhood made of wooden buildings hastily constructed to suit Seattle’s rapidly growing population. Many of the weathered boards that made the structures had been recycled and while most of the planks were gray and aged, some had been painted. Green stripes sat next to brown. Even some of the nails looked like they were in their second life—rusty nails hammered beside shiny nails. He watched Mercy’s face lit with animation. She glowed like a shiny pebble in a dirty pool. She didn’t belong in the rough neighborhood.

“He didn’t know he sang to Ingrid,” Mercy continued. “He didn’t know that she lit his way home and that she had fallen in love with him. Ingrid couldn’t resist the pull of his lovely tenor voice. Because he grew more and more secure in his ability to fish on the dark sea, his trips grew longer and longer, and he fished long after the other fishermen returned home.”

Trent watched her lips as she spoke. He loved her voice. He realized he’d grown accustomed, addicted even, to everything about her.

“He grew rich and prosperous and thought of taking a wife, and one late night his song turned to yearning for love. Ingrid, hearing his song, was filled with jealousy and called to Poseidon who brought a storm.”