Zachariah’s words came back to her. They had been haunting her in the three weeks since he’d spoken them. And in that time, a horrid realisation had come to her.
She wasn’t ready to be anyone’s personal saviour. The very notion made her feel suffocated.
She had her own life and mission. A greater cause than one person.
Anyhow, in the weeks since the evening of the ball, she’d seen near to nothing of Alex. He spent most of his nights away. It was hard not to picture him cutting a swathe through his other women like a rutting tomcat.
He didn’t need her. He had plenty of females eager to attend him. They would stand in line to save him.
And he was going to New Orleans soon.
It didn’t matter.
It didn’t.
They had had their
affaire
. It had run its course with the inevitable ending. She was set to get on with her life. It was something positive. She would only look forward. This book was just the start of her life’s mission. And now she had to search for and find the truth about her father. To clear his name if necessary, because she was sure he would never have been the sort of person who could peddle human souls.
Everything had changed. She no longer feared that Alex would consider it a breach of their contract if she left his house. She’d overheard James speaking with Peter about the progress done on her book. Alex had spent a small fortune on a team of artisans to carve the woodcuts. He had paid many of them to come from Boston and New York just to interview. And then paid them exorbitant wages to work nearly round the clock. Her book was being printed right now, made into pamphlet format to be handed to members of Congress.
Alex hadn’t even cared enough to let her see the woodcuts or the resultant prints.
But James had told Peter he’d seen the sketches. Even he had admitted they were things of intricate beauty and moving emotion. Tears of satisfaction tugged on her; she swallowed them back.
Yes, everything had changed. Her mission was well on its way to being completed.
Today, she would search for suitable, respectable employment. Women like Mrs G the mantua maker lived independent lives, supporting themselves on their talents. She could do the same.
With her hands finally warm, she pulled her gloves back on.
“You look set to go out, Miss Emily.”
She turned to where Cato sat in his chair at her side. He smiled at her and, with his knife, took another swipe at a wooden horse he was carving. He seemed to make hundreds of them, effortlessly. His grandchildren came over on Sunday afternoons and painted them. Then he sold them.
Mrs Webbs said he made a pretty penny from them, too.
There were always opportunities. Emily needed only to find her own.
“I am ready to go out. Have you seen Zachariah?”
He shook his head slowly. “Nope. Never going to see Zachariah around here on a market day.”
“Oh.”
“Got himself a lady friend.”
Emily froze, utterly nonplussed.
Zachariah seemed too unbending for anything so human as sexual congress.
“Does he?”
“Sure does. Pretty little thing. Can’t say who she’s supposed to give loyalty to, but on market day afternoons, she doesn’t give it.” Cato chuckled.
Not really caring much to know more, Emily slowly pulled off her gloves. Apparently she wasn’t going anywhere today.
Admitting that also forced her to admit that she was making the choice to let Alex dictate her actions. She really didn’t understand why, but she couldn’t bear facing him if he were somehow proved right about Green. She wouldn’t want Cato to bear the brunt of it either.
“Now, don’t frown.” Cato set the wooden horse aside. “If you need to go out, I’ll drive you.”
She smiled at him. “You’re too kind, but Alex says I am not to leave unless he is with me. Or James. Or Zachariah.”
He let his mouth gape and tilted his head down and to the side. “What?” He pointed at his chest, at the old-style, frothy lace cravat and waistcoat. “Are you suggesting I can’t protect you as well as those others?”
Her face flamed. She hadn’t meant to insult him. Hadn’t thought about how it would sound. “Goodness, no!”
He grinned and chuckled. “Our Mr Alexander makes things hard on you, doesn’t he?” Cato’s voice rang with sympathy.
She nodded. “I am afraid he does.”
“Well, he’s never been in love before. He doesn’t know how to temper his own feelings. You got to give him time to adjust.”
She laughed softly. “I don’t think he’s in love.”
“Aw, now what would you know about it? You’re just a baby yourself.” Cato chuckled, then pulled himself out of the chair.
Emily noted how slowly he moved. Her forehead wrinkled. “Are you really feeling up to going out?” She glanced out of the window. Grey clouds laid heavy, a low-hanging wool flannel blanket on the horizon to the northeast. “Looks like a storm moving in.”
“Yep. A storm sure is moving in. That’s why you’d better get your business done. If you don’t, you’ll be trapped inside for days.”
Emily glanced at the clouds. He was probably correct. If there was a good job posted, she might miss it.
“We’ll just slip out and get your business done quick and get home ahead of the storm. Mr Alexander won’t be any the wiser.”
* * * *
The afternoon sun seemed to burn with unholy brilliance against the darker wall of encroaching, low-lying clouds. Despite the chilling breeze, market day on Main Street was crowded. People bustled about with an almost fair-day feeling, as if they were determined to enjoy the afternoon.
Still, a nagging disquiet made her pause. She scanned the street and observed soberly dressed Quaker couples. Middling-sort housewives with their baskets stuffed. Roughly clad mariners. Bewigged merchants in their bright scarlet cloaks followed by their equally richly dressed slaves. Finely dressed ladies in their fur-trimmed pelisses with their package-laden servants trudging along in their wakes.
Emily glanced down. The wind blew the sable trim on her crimson pelisse. She turned. About three steps behind her, Cato seemed to hobble painfully along with his cane.
She bit her lip.
He smiled broadly beneath his black, tri-cornered hat, the wind blowing the snow-white locks of his curled wig as he hurried to catch up with her. “Is something the matter, Miss Emily?”
“I am going to Mason’s bookstore and I shall be in there for at least an hour, I am certain.” She took several dollars from her reticule. She stared at the money, wondering at how, just a short while ago, this would have seemed like a lot of money to her. Now it felt perfectly natural always to have at least twenty dollars to spend at her whim. Well, she’d just have to become unaccustomed to that. “Cato, why don’t you go to the tavern for a whisky and a rest while I shop?”
“I don’t know, Miss Eliot.” He stared at the money with temptation showing in his eyes. “I shouldn’t leave you on your own.”
“Oh, go on—I certainly won’t tell.”
“This damp, chilly weather does have my joints hurting.”
“Well, that settles it. You need to get yourself a warm rum punch and a sit-down by the fire. I shall meet you here in no more than two hours, how is that?”
* * * *
An hour and a half later, she trudged along Main Street, her shoulders sagging. The darkening skies seemed to echo the disappointment in her heart.
There were no promising jobs yet to be found.
There were no jobs to be found at all.
She would have to leave Philadelphia—that was all there was to it. Maybe she would go to Boston. Her father came from Boston and she could investigate his past better there. She might even find employment as a governess.
“Pardon me, miss.”
She stopped and turned.
A gust of icy wind blew a cloud of strong, cheap musk into her face. She coughed and focused on the brassy glare of red hair. In the last rays of the too-bright sun from the west, the woman’s face showed the pitted surface beneath the heavy paint.
But there was no denying who she was.
The red-haired barmaid from the Blue Duck. She was dressed in a new-looking purple gown trimmed with gaudy gold lace.
“You’re Miss Emily Eliot, aren’t you?”
Confusion clouded her brain. “What—”
“Yes, child?”
Suspicious alarm wiped away her confusion. “How do you know my full name?”
“Mr Porter told me, sweeting.”
Of course Mr Porter would have told her.
“I knew your father.” Her carmine lips stretched into a smile. “I knew him quite well. There’s something I have to tell you. Mr Richard Green has been spreading lies about him.”
Emily’s heart began to pound in her ears with deafening force. But Green had promised.
He had promised.
“I need to talk to you,” the woman repeated, more urgently this time. She touched Emily’s arm.
Emily stared down at the green velvet glove on her sleeve. “You knew my father? When?”
“In Boston, child. Before the war against the King.”
She glanced back into the woman’s hazel eyes. “But you’re not old enough.”
The woman laughed. “My heavens, how you flatter me, child! I am forty. I assure you, I knew your father well.”
“He wasn’t a slaver.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
Another woman approached. She looked older, with her pockmarked face and too-brassy blonde hair. The scent of unwashed flesh burnt Emily’s nose. A half smile played about the woman’s painted mouth.
“This is my sister.” The younger-looking barmaid said. “She knew your father as well. Come with us. There’s something we need to discuss.”
“Come where?”
“To the carriage.”
Something curled around Emily’s navel. A sick sensation of warning. “No, I am in a hurry now—I have to catch up to my manservant.”
The woman’s grip tightened. “Now just come along. Don’t make this hard.”
“No!” Emily jerked her arm until it came free of the redheaded woman’s grip.
But the other woman stepped up. “Don’t make a sound. Look down, dear.”
Emily glanced down. Silver shone in the sunlight. The woman was holding a knife to her stomach.
“You’re going to come with us now and not a peep out of you or else I’ll cut you.” The woman’s eyes glinted sadistically.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Hush now, and start walking.”
Chapter Sixteen
“What do you want from me?”
Alex Dalton’s little tavern chit asked the question as if he hadn’t just answered her not five moments past. In the dimness of the carriage, Richard Green studied her pale, gamine little face with the too-long nose. She’d looked fetching enough that night in the tavern. He wouldn’t have minded spending a night with her. But right now, she wasn’t behaving as he had anticipated. He’d thought she’d be too overcome with fear to utter a sound. He really had no patience when his plans didn’t go off as he’d envisioned them and his nerves were becoming unbearable.
He ought to have brought some wine.
Still, the girls had done their part beautifully. They had hustled Emily into the carriage without a hitch.
“What do you want from me?” she repeated with irritating firmness.
“I just want a little of your time. No need for you to fear. If you’re a good girl and do as you’re told, nothing will happen to you.”
“Where are you taking me?”
What would it hurt to tell her? “To my office at the docks. You’ll be comfortable there. I have some nice wine.”
“But why?”
Her ceaseless questions were irritating him. “Why? Why? Why? Is that all you women can do, ask pestering questions?”
“I just want to know what you want from me.” Her voice choked off at the end.
It was what he wanted. For her to be quelled by fear. But it also made him feel like an ogre and he resented her for it. He needed her. He couldn’t get Alex alone and vulnerable without her. That wasn’t his fault. He wouldn’t feel badly for using her.