Betina Krahn (18 page)

A strident, slightly nasal male voice rang out over the papery swish and metallic chink of money being counted and the drone of financial whispers. Diamond stood frozen in the middle of the wooden gate that marked the entrance to the bank offices, filled with dread at the sound of that voice and the sight of the man who owned it. The massive lobby suddenly seemed to shrink, bringing her face to face with none other than Louis Pierpont III.

“Diamond! My dear!” He descended on her, grabbing the hands she extended to fend him off and pressing them to his heart. His sallow face melted into such a soppy look of longing that she felt dampened from head to toe. “How wonderful to see you up and about. I called on Sunday
afternoon, but Mrs. Humphrey said you were still indisposed.”

“I’m feeling fine now, thank you.” She tried in vain to withdraw her hands from his. “Hardwell and Hannah insisted that I get out for a bit of— Louis, what are you doing here? At Philip Vassar’s bank?”

“I accompanied dear Mrs. Shoregrove here to help her make certain ‘fiduciary’ arrangements.” He directed her glance with his toward a teller window where a sadly bent old lady stood watching them. He nodded with a huge smile and the old woman smiled back and daintily waved her handkerchief. Louis squeezed Diamond’s hands with excitement.

“She is making a sizable contribution to my city mission. And”—he grew visibly excited—“she has decided to change her will to benefit our combined Baltimore Charity Board.” He looked at her as if he expected her to find the news as enthralling as he did.

“How … good of her,” Diamond said, glancing at the doddering old woman, who was just completing her business and turning toward them.

“I was just about to take Mrs. Shoregrove down to the Harborside Mission to show her the multitude of good works her contribution will make possible,” Louis said, loudly enough for his aged contributor to hear. He dragged Diamond with him as he hurried to offer the little old widow his arm. “Diamond,
you’ve
never been down to the Harborside Mission, either, and you’re one of our most generous sponsors.” He clasped his hands in philanthropic glee. “Oh, what an opportunity … to show you both the great work you’ve made possible. You must come with us, Diamond.” He looked over Diamond’s shoulder and enlarged the invitation. “And you, Mr. Humphrey, you must come, too!”

Before Diamond could think of a plausible excuse, her
arm was captive in Louis’s free hand and she was being pulled discreetly toward the door. Once on the street, it was clear that their only choices for transport were the Wingate coach or a serious test of their shoe leather. Hardwell insisted they use the coach and Louis, citing their courtesy and thoughtfulness to dear old Mrs. Shoregrove, eagerly climbed aboard.

The Harborside mission provided one free meal per day to whoever lined up at the door, entered, and stayed for a brief edifying “message.” The staff opened a dormitory of beds upstairs each night for “clean” indigents and provided used clothing when it was made available by donors.

As the coach rattled along, Louis launched into a list of patrons and sponsors of the mission, pausing after each name to detail each donor’s charitable record. Diamond squirmed as she listened to Louis’s explicit and unmistakably judgmental accounting of Baltimore’s philanthropists. And she couldn’t help noticing that Louis’s sallow face and pious gray eyes took on surprising color and animation as he spoke of the sizable sums he had raised to support the mission and various other charities.

When they entered the bumpy, irregular streets of the waterfront, Diamond and Mrs. Shoregrove reached for their scented handkerchiefs. Dampness, the stench of wood corrupted by brine, the aromas of old fish, burned oil, and stale beer hung over the waterfront district like a pall.

“Only imagine,” Louis said woefully, “having to constantly abide in this foul and corrupting atmosphere.”

They didn’t have to imagine for long. The coach stopped on Hale Street, a broad thoroughfare created by the merging of several narrower streets. They disembarked
in front of a large brick building, before a pair of neatly painted white doors. Above the entrance hung a signboard proclaiming the name of the mission and the biblical quote: “The poor you will have with you always.”

Extending from the open door and well along the fronts of the neighboring buildings was a line of ragged and ill-kempt men, many in knitted caps and battered seamen’s clothes. They watched with scowls and mutters as Louis led Diamond and the others to the head of the line and inside. The austere hall was whitewashed and hung with sayings meant to inspire the mission’s clientele to remedy their dismal situations. At one end of the hall were rows of planking tables and benches and a long window counter through which food was being served. The other end was set with chairs facing a small wooden podium beneath a banner stating: “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”

Deadly aware of her buttercup-yellow dress and elaborately feathered hat, Diamond was ready to head straight back to the coach when Louis took her by the arm and pulled her toward a lean, imperious-looking matron in a black dress and a severely sensible hair net. He introduced the woman to Diamond and Mrs. Shoregrove as the head of the kitchens and a cornerstone of the mission’s program. The woman looked Diamond over with a sniff, folded her hands over her waist, and announced that she hadn’t planned dinner for more than the mission’s “regular trade.”

“We didn’t intend to stay for a meal,” Diamond said in clipped tones. She swept the room with a look. “Well, Louis, I believe I have seen all I need—”

Her gaze snagged on a figure in the food line. It was his hat that caught her eye. Big and black with a tall, neatly creased crown … it looked as though it came straight off the front of one of her penny dreadfuls … or off the
head of a certain heart-stopping Westerner. Her eyes widened as they traveled down a familiar pair of broad shoulders, a lean, muscular body, and long, powerful legs. Their owner looked up and met her gaze with a jolt of recognition.

Behind her, Hardwell gave a grunt of surprise, raised his arm and called out: “McQuaid! As I live and breathe—what the devil are you doing here?”

Standing in line, smelling like a sweated-up steer, and waiting for a turn at the trough
. Bear answered as he stared across the room. He wanted to run for his life but could only stand frozen, trapped in two shocked beacons of memorable blue. Every muscle in his work-sore body tensed and contracted with embarrassment at the sight of her … standing there in her perfect yellow lady dress and feathered hat … looking like a daisy in a damned hog wallow.

What in hell was
she
doing here? It took a moment for him to pull his gaze from her and register the sight of Hardwell Humphrey striding along through the rows of tables with a hand extended to him. He glanced down at his chambray shirt, work pants, and worn boots, then stifled a groan and stepped out of line to meet that handshake.

“What are
you
doing here?” Bear parroted his question, while shaking his hand and scrambling for an explanation for his presence in the soup kitchen.

“Came down with Diamond,” Hardwell said, gesturing to her with one hand while adding in a mutter, “and that damned fool Pierpont.” Then he looked Bear up and down and seemed a little puzzled. “Blame me, if you aren’t the veriest cowboy I’ve ever seen.” He turned to Diamond. “Look here, missy … your friend McQuaid, in his out-West gear.”

“Hello, Mr. McQuaid,” she said joining them, offering
him her hand, and reddening noticeably. “I confess, you’re the last person I expected to find here,”

“Here?” He reddened under her shocked regard, thinking fast as he looked around. “Why, this is the perfect place for me.”

“It is?” She blinked.

“You bet it is.” As he looked around at the mission, his gaze fell on the row of stringy, hardened male faces watching them and a mercifully plausible explanation popped into his head. He jerked a nod at the men shuffling forward in line. “Where better to find workers eager for a fresh start out West?”

Even after he’d said it aloud, it still sounded fairly plausible and he plunged ahead, turning to Halt … who was standing by with narrowed eyes, taking in his familiarity with these nattily dressed society folk and drawing who knew what conclusions. What mattered most, however, was convincing Diamond and her party that he was doing what he had just claimed.

“As a matter of fact … I was just talking with a fellow I found here the other night.” He beckoned to Halt. “Come on over, Finnegan.”

With a rueful glance at the serving window, Halt abandoned his place in line and strode over to join them. Bear now was forced to introduce Halt to a much younger and prettier Diamond Wingate than he had been led to expect.

“Miss Wingate, may I present Halt Finnegan, formerly of Boston … a railroader from way back.” Halt gave him an ominously restrained smile, wiped his hand on his shirt and extended it to meet hers. In the introductions that followed, Bear found himself called upon to elaborate. “A real stroke of luck, finding Finnegan here. He worked on the Union Pacific when they were racing across the country, back in sixty-seven. Since then, he’s been all over the West laying down steel.”

“I am not at all certain it is proper for you to use these premises for recruiting railroad laborers,” Louis Pierpont said to Bear, inserting himself determinedly between Diamond and Bear.

“Not proper?” Bear shifted his weight back onto one leg and leveled a controlled look on the pasty little wretch. “What could be more proper than offering these men a chance for decent work?”

Pierpont reddened. “Decent work? On the railroads? I have long been of the opinion that railroads have bred an unseemly impatience in the populace … everything moves so quickly, they come to expect that everything should move so quickly. And the workers themselves”—he leveled a quick, faintly judgmental look on Halt—“are widely considered to be rowdy and undisciplined and given to a number of unsavory vices.”

“Vices?” Bear said with a sardonic laugh, watching Louis’s hand move possessively to the small of Diamond’s back. “I’ll grant that railroaders do like a bit of drink now and then. But you’ll not find a harder-working or more charitable bunch of men than a railroad crew. Right, Mr. Finnegan?”

“Right as rain,
Mis-s-ster McQuaid,
” Halt replied.

He was going to hear about this, Bear realized.

“Come, my dear.” Louis took Diamond by the elbow and turned her toward the kitchen doors. “You must see the rest of our mission.”

Diamond was so overwhelmed by her reaction to seeing Bear that it took a moment for her to recover her self-possession. Never in her life had she felt such joy at the sight of someone … not even her father, when he came home after one of his long business trips. Pleasure had welled up in her, carrying with it a flush of heat and an unladylike urge to rush to him … to touch him … to absorb every line and angle of him.

When Louis grabbed her elbow to usher her along, she was too absorbed in containing those startling impulses to protest. And unless she was mistaken, the sight of her had produced a strong reaction in him, as well. She could feel it on the air between them; a resonance, a special tension, a palpable sense of connection.

It was only as they stood in the middle of the smelly, bustling kitchen that she tore her attention from Bear long enough to realize that she was someplace she didn’t want to be. And that Louis was crowding her such that he was practically standing on her feet.

“… piped-in gas, to run the stoves and ovens …” He was droning on.

Hardwell was leaning down to old Mrs. Shoregrove, repeating everything Louis said at a slightly higher volume: “Gas … he says he has
gas!
” The kitchen matron was watching from nearby with her hands propped at her waist. Bear stood with his legs braced apart and his arms folded, watching Louis hover over her. And Bear’s find, Mr. Finnegan, had tagged along and was grinning rather effectively at the woman serving the soup of the day, while she provided him with samples of fresh-baked bread.

Diamond let her gaze and her mind wander toward Bear and he caught her gaze, looked at Louis, and rolled his eyes. It was hard to be too indignant on Louis’s behalf when she was an inch away from slapping him silly, herself. To her credit, she did manage to bite her lip to keep from smiling back.

When Louis had made a sufficient virtue of peeled cabbages, donated potatoes, and greasy ham bones, he led them through the odoriferous storage rooms and up a back set of steps to the dormitory on the second floor. Louis instructed Bear and Halt Finnegan to go first, it being considered ungentlemanly to climb stairs behind a lady. Diamond had never quite appreciated that custom until
she watched Bear’s long, muscular legs working just ahead of her.

She told herself it was the surprise of seeing him in such worn and simple clothing that caused her to stare so intently at him. In truth, it was more the fit of those clothes than the condition of them that absorbed her. His trousers were molded to his big frame, shaped by long wear and numerous washings into a glovelike fit. And his boots, slightly worn at the substantial heels and scuffed at the toes, lent a fascinating air of rough history to his lower half … not to mention a sensual roll to his gait.

By the time they reached the top of the stairs she had made a thorough inventory of his buttocks, thighs, and calves and experienced—curiously—not one drop of shame in the process. Proof that she was corrupted beyond repair. If Louis, clutching her arm so tightly against him, had the faintest notion of what was going on inside her, he would be disillusioned in the extreme.

When they all arrived on the second floor, Louis’s hovering became intolerable. “Diamond, my dearest …” He planted himself directly before her as if trying to harness her wandering attention. It didn’t work.

She saw Bear’s head move and glanced at him.

“My
dearest?
” He mouthed silently.

“Here”—Louis gestured grandly to a sea of wood and canvas cots—“we permit those with no shelter to sleep … providing they adhere to our rules. We permit no smoking, no chewing, no profanity or vulgarity, no liquor—not even the scent of it—and absolutely no talking after lights out. I monitor conduct here myself, most nights … in there.” He indicated a small room a few feet away, furnished in Spartan style, with a bed, a table and straight chair, and a shelf of books.