Pearl on Cherry (15 page)

She opened her eyes. “I thought you said it was fine, that you were coping well?”

Leo entered the room, and Miller jerked his hand off her face, then wore a guilty expression.

She tucked the blanket under her chin.

“Water—drink,” Leo said, sitting on the side of the bed, crowding out Miller. He cupped the back of her head, helped her sit up a little and made her sip it.

The water was refreshing, and her stomach seemed content to have a little something in it now.

Maybe it was that cabbage? Or maybe it was rejecting food since it hadn’t had any in days?

She was unaware of such things.

“Thank you.” She sighed.

“You’re welcome. I’ll go get ready for bed, and I’ll let Miller read to you since he likes to practice before he retires.” Leo smiled, but then cast a warning look at Miller.

The front door opened a moment later, and she knew he was headed to the water closet to relieve himself.

“Do you think someday you’d like to work at something other than the rail station?” she asked.

He bit his lip for a second, then released it. “Honestly, I used to want to be a paper man. But I’m not—”

“Oh, but you can!” She tried to sit up, but he set his bad hand on her shoulder, and she immediately complied, laying back down so he wouldn’t hurt himself on her account. “You must do what you love. What else is there in this world than honing one’s talents?”

“There is friendship. There is this,” he said, his hand caressing her face once more.

She took a shuddering breath, but not because she liked it. “You probably should not do that.”

“Why?” He bent over, and before she knew it, his lips were on hers.

She squeaked and pushed him away. “No!”

“Oh I . . . I’m sorry. I was overcome.” He shifted away from her and then got up, retrieving his Bible sitting on top of the dresser in the corner.

“Overcome by compassion since I’m sickly and frail?” she tried to offer this excuse for him.

“Yes, yes, that was the way of it.” He cracked the book open and read from Isaiah.

The words were complicated and a few times he asked her for help.

Something about a man asking her for tutelage made her glow a little inside.

William would never need her help with anything other than being a hole to shove his cock into. And he already had Lenora and various other streetwalkers for that.

She blinked a few times when he asked for help with another word. Her vision was blurring.

“I think . . . I think I must sleep now,” she whispered.

“Okay, little miss. Take a sleep. You’re too knackered to read with me. Or do other things with
me
.” He smiled, but it looked a little predatory.

She tucked the blanket up a little higher, yawned and fell straight to sleep.

* * *

William couldn’t find her. He interviewed everyone in the crowd, searching for some clue of Clarissa’s whereabouts, but no one seemed to know her.

What if she was in that explosion?

He gripped the closest police officer. “Please—I am looking for my sister. She has long, curly, chestnut hair with blue eyes. She’s twenty one years of age, and she’s about this tall.” He placed his hand up to his shoulders. “She’s very curvy, and she sings really well.”

The officer gave him an incredulous look.

Yes, William, they do not need so many fine details. Why don’t you tell them what she smells like and how she sounds when she’s climaxing beneath you, too?

William pulled out some money. “I beg of you! Have you seen anyone of that description? Was she involved in this fire? She lives in this tenement.”

The police officer took the money discreetly and tucked it away in his trouser’s pocket. “Yes, in fact—I have. But she was not in the fire. She asked me all about it, but then she left. I think she was too frightened to stay and wait for the fire men to come and handle it.”

“Did you see which direction she went?” William’s voice went up in pitch, and he finally dropped his hands.

“No, I did not, sir. And if you’ll excuse me—I’m rather busy.”

William passed him some more money. “Point a direction. That is all I ask, good man.”

The police man pointed in the southerly direction.

“Thank you! Thank you!” William took off at a gallop and raced down the street in search of her.

“Sir, I have your car,” Samuel said, honking next to him on the road.

“Yes, yes! Good!” William shoved him over and took the wheel.

As they fled the street, sirens blazed behind them, entering the block and ready to take care of the charred remains of what had been Clarissa’s temporary home.

For hours he and Samuel looked for her.

Each church he contacted said they were full to capacity and hadn’t seen anyone like that anyway.

He even tried orphanages and hospitals.

The parks were his next avenue, but they yielded nothing.

“Pardon me, sir, but what about her cousin’s home?”

“She wouldn’t go there. She was removed due to Billings.”

Samuel gave him a look that said, “No—not Billings. It is because of
you
she was placed out of her home.”

William’s throat constricted around what felt like a formidable lump. “Yes, let’s go there. Leo may know where she is.”

“Would you like me to speak to him, since he’s met me before?”

“Yes,” William said through a dry, scratchy throat.

Twenty minutes later, they rolled to a stop outside Leo’s tenement on Cherry Street.

William stayed with his motorcar, grimacing as a man several feet ahead relieved his bowels on the street.

Good God, that was repellent.

Samuel strode up to her door, looking supremely comfortable and confident. How was his skin not crawling from this foul place?

Every time William passed through here, his heart sunk for her that she had to deal with this kind of filth and degenerate people.

She didn’t deserve to be trapped with these vermin—and those were just the men.

The women were worse.

Samuel knocked on the door for a second time, and Leo answered it.

Ah yes . . . Leo, her faithful cousin with the dirty blond hair, gray eyes, pointed chin and strong nose.

They stood chatting for a few moments, and then out of nowhere, this strangled shriek from a woman rose in the air.

William knew that voice better than his own—his cherry girl was being attacked.

He launched himself out of the car, blasted past a dazed Leo and Samuel and burst through the door where the noise had come through and then stumbled into their bedroom.

A large man was on top of his girl, his palm over her mouth as he was shoving her skirts up.

She was sobbing, trying to bite his hand and shove him off, but the man was huge.

Without thinking, William yanked him off and slammed him up against the wall. His hands wrapped around the bastard’s throat. “That’s my woman.
Mine
! You think you can touch her?” he yelled in his face, spittle showering the man.

He kneed at William’s gut, but nothing happened.

William used to box at seedy clubs for sport. He was used to being pummeled.

He kept the man’s back pressed up against the wall with his own chest pressing into him, and hissed in his face, “Was it worth it? Forcing yourself on a young, innocent girl? I will end you!”

“No!” Cherry girl scrambled out of bed and threw herself at William, clawing at his hands.

“Clarissa—back up!” William barked at her over his shoulder.

“Don’t hurt him! I’ll go with you—I will,” she pleaded, her eyes red-rimmed from crying when this man had tried to rape her.

Against his better judgment, he released the man’s throat and the color returned to his face.

“She
wanted
me in bed with her,” the man said under his breath, rubbing his raw neck.

Whaaaam!

William kneed the man in the stones and then punched him in the face, blood spurting out of his nose immediately. Next he pounded his ribs, listening for that cracking sound he so wanted to hear.

“No, no!” Clarissa flew at the damaged man, trying to help him.

“Cherry, get up. He does not deserve your attention,” William said, trying to drag her away.

She batted at his hands. “You’ve hurt him!”

“I certainly hope I did.” William pried her off and set her aside. “We will drop him off at the hospital on our way home.”

The man groaned, and his eyes were glassy.

“He cannot afford the fee,” she gasped, covering her mouth and bursting into another round of tears.

Leo was in the room, squawking, and Samuel took silent commands, helping to drag the big burly man out that William had reduced to a sack of bloody bricks.

They shoved him into the motorcar that for some inexplicable reason now stank like the gutters.

When William turned around, he saw the man that had defecated out in the street, finishing peeing on the back of the vehicle. The vagrant waved, then waltzed away.

Good Lord, this place was the sludge that resided at the bottom of Hell.

Sewage was more pristine than Cherry Street. She would never live here again.

“William”—she clutched at his arm—“he cannot pay for a doctor. I will have to mend him here. Bring him back inside.”

William’s heart burst into a thousand pieces. “You will never touch that man again as long as I live. Do not speak of him again. I will pay, and I will see to it he’s mended, but that is all I do for a man that was about to try and take you against your will!”

She cowered away from him, looking absolutely terrified.

He pulled her into his arms and held her.

She burst into a roiling sob.

The nameless man he’d beaten up was unconscious now.

Leo gawked on the side of the street as they drove off without another word.

William dumped the man off at the nearest hospital, gave a quick explanation, handed over a substantial amount of money and then held Clarissa in his lap all the way back to his home while Samuel drove.

She shivered in his hold. Lord—she’d lost some weight.

She was so thin and trembling like a leaf in the frigid wind.

“Shh . . . You’ll be with me now. Taken care of.”

“As what? Your scarlet whore?” Her shoulders crept up to her neck.

He stroked her hair. “Surely, after what I just did to protect you—you cannot possibly think that.”

“What of Lenora? Are you not with her? I thought . . .”

He chuckled. “Good Lord—never. I cannot abide that woman for more than a few minutes at a time, and that’s even when she’s on stage.”

She pulled her head back to look at him. “I do not want to be your mistress.”

“You won’t. I’ll employ you in some manner so you have a say in what you do and how you earn your keep.”

“Still . . . I will only stay tonight, but tomorrow I find lodgings elsewhere.”

“Stubborn woman.” He rubbed noses with her. “Stay. There is room enough. I will give you a roommate if I must so you do not have to worry about me sneaking in during the night like that man did.”

His fists wanted to punch—break more bone, but he was holding her, so he purposefully kept his hands loose around her.

“Miller. That’s his name.”

“Devil to Miller. I detest that man and all that he is.” His eyes hardened.

“He was nice until . . .”

“He was never nice. He was the biggest playactor of all.”

She sniffed. “Leo trusted him, so I did, too. Does that make me foolish?”

“No. It makes you sweet and tenderhearted—all the things I would never change about you—now shush. Let me hold you, and you calm your racing heart.”

She sat up all at once when the car lurched to a stop, jolted out of his lap and surged over to the bushes, then proceeded to vomit up mass amounts of fluids.

He would take care of her. She would see how much he cared.

Chapter 9

Clarissa balked when William placed her in his bed.

Once more, he was silencing her, but this time by placing a finger over her lips.

“I’ll be your nursemaid, not your lover tonight.” He smiled.

She nodded under his finger.

He helped her strip out of her dress. Where were her boots? She was barefoot.

Tomorrow he’d get her a new pair.

Samuel brought him a basin of cool water, some rags and a glass of water for her.

When Samuel was gone, William removed his coat, his jacket, took off his cuff links and rolled up his sleeves as far as they would go.

He dipped a cloth into the cool water, then mopped her feverish brow.