Rebecca Hagan Lee (9 page)

THE POLICE FOUND
her there—at the Red Dragon—forty minutes later. They arrived to find Lo Peng and three other Chinamen restraining her. Lo Peng hurried over to the officers. “Arrest her!” he cried. “Arrest the crazy missy. She break up my shop. She wreck the place.”

And she had.

Elizabeth smiled with satisfaction. Her hair had come undone from its neat chignon, the pins scattered across the floor. Her bonnet had been ripped loose and crushed in the struggle, and she was missing a button from the bodice of
her dress. But the wrecked interior of the opium den was a sight to behold. Elizabeth had oftentimes suspected that she harbored a first-class virago deep inside her, a virago she kept hidden beneath her calm, capable facade, but she hadn’t been certain of it until she crossed the threshold of that horrid little opium den and began swinging her parasol. It had taken three men to subdue her as she’d overturned berths and gaming tables, crushed paper lanterns, and shattered pipes, bowls, and lamps. Elizabeth had raged through the den of iniquity that had cost Owen his life and felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction at seeing it in a shambles.

But the police had eventually shown up at the Washington Street address and Elizabeth had been summarily dragged kicking and screaming out of Lo Peng’s establishment and hauled to jail with the sounds of a dozen shouting Chinamen ringing in her ears. She was charged with disorderly conduct, assault, and petty larceny, and escorted to the courthouse by the same policeman who had helped her locate Owen’s grave.

She jumped in her seat as Judge Clermont banged his gavel on his desktop and called the next case. “Miss Elizabeth Sadler.”

“Here, your honor.” Elizabeth raised her hand.

“Rise and approach the bench.”

Elizabeth did as she was instructed. After rising from her seat in the third row, she made her way down the aisle to the front of the courtroom. The matron from the city jail went with her and kept a firm grip on Elizabeth’s left arm as they stood before the judge.

“Elizabeth Sadler,” the judge intoned, “you’re charged with misdemeanor crimes of disorderly conduct, assaulting a merchant, and petty larceny. How do you plead?”

Elizabeth bit her bottom lip as she glanced down at the hem of her skirt. Although she was guilty of disorderly conduct and assaulting a merchant, she balked at being accused of petty larceny. She didn’t agree that failing to return a handkerchief given to her to use constituted stealing,
but honesty compelled her to admit that James hadn’t said she could keep his handkerchief, had, in fact, only
loaned
it to her. And, Elizabeth reminded herself, she hadn’t kept the handkerchief because she needed it, she had kept it because she wanted a memento, a tangible reminder of James.

“How do you plead, Miss Sadler?”

She looked up at the judge and blushed with shame. “Guilty, your honor.”

Judge Clermont stared down at the young woman before him. “The court finds you guilty as charged. That’ll be a minimum of fifty dollars or three days in jail and sixty days’ probation. And if I see you in my court again, young lady, I’ll sentence you to thirty days in jail. Pay the clerk on your way out.”

Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open as the judge banged his gavel again and called the next case. She had been tried, found guilty, and sentenced, all in a matter of minutes. Her ordeal was over—except for two small details. She had yet to face the man who had accused her of stealing his handkerchief. And she didn’t have fifty dollars.

“Come on, Sadler,” the matron tugged at Elizabeth’s arm. “You’re done. Pay the clerk and you’re free to go.”

“Free to go?” Elizabeth repeated dumbly.

“That’s right,” the matron assured her. “Once you pay your fifty-dollar fine, you’re free to go.”

“What if I don’t have fifty dollars?” Elizabeth whispered.

The matron studied Elizabeth’s stylish walking dress of brown silk edged with taffeta and her expensive leather boots in a matching shade of brown. “You don’t have fifty dollars?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t even have five.”

“A lady like you? Are you sure?”

Elizabeth nodded. “I only have a dollar and a few cents left. I counted it yesterday long before Sergeant Darnell and Officer Burrows arrested me.”

The matron looked at her as if she hadn’t heard correctly.
“But your dress cost more than what I make in half a year.”

Elizabeth nodded once again. “Too bad I can’t sell it for cash. What will I do if I can’t come up with the fifty dollars?”

“You heard the judge,” the matron said. “If you don’t pay the fifty dollars, you’ll have to serve three days in jail.”

Elizabeth bit her lip to stop its quivering. “Then I guess I’m going back to jail.”

The matron let go of Elizabeth’s arm long enough to reach for the little leather change purse attached to the belt of her skirt. “How much money do you have? Exactly?”

“One dollar and seventy-eight cents,” Elizabeth answered. “But I only have seventy-eight cents with me.”

“I have a dollar left from my pay,” the matron said. “And I can loan you some of that.”

“Oh, no,” Elizabeth refused her offer. “I couldn’t take your hard-earned money.” She drew herself up to her full height, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin a notch higher, then said with a confidence she didn’t feel, “It’s only three days. I can survive three days in jail.”

THREE DAYS, SEVENTY-TWO
hours. It might as well have been an eternity. Seated on an edge of the only cot in the cell, Elizabeth pressed herself back against the bars and pulled her skirts close about her to keep them from coming in contact with the clothing of the women pacing the narrow confines of the holding pen. Elizabeth shuddered, wondering how she was going to survive another seventy-one hours in the company of the women sharing her cell. A cell. Elizabeth Sadler was confined to a cell in the San Francisco City Jail along with fifteen other female criminals. Elizabeth knew there were fifteen other women occupying the small space because she’d spent the hour since she’d been incarcerated counting them—counting the number of blondes, redheads, and brunettes, counting the plump
ones, the skinny ones, the ones with visible lice, the ones without, the clean ones, the dirty ones … Elizabeth suppressed another shudder and held her breath as long as she could to keep from gagging. The smell of the place was overwhelming. The scent of unwashed bodies, of cheap gin and stale beer, of vomit and urine, and a dozen other odors Elizabeth couldn’t identify, nearly took her breath away. Until an hour ago Elizabeth had never realized there were women who regularly spent time in jail, never realized there were women who lived their lives in such a sordid fashion. But the matrons and the officers in the jail knew her cell mates well enough, saw them often enough, to call them by name and ask about their families. Elizabeth had never imagined she would ever experience anything more shocking than the scene she’d participated in in the parlor at Bender’s Boardinghouse. The women at Bender’s had behaved like harlots. But these women
were
harlots and worse—some of them were criminals. Criminals. And she was one of them. Elizabeth ground her teeth together to keep from screaming. A criminal. Criminal. This situation was criminal. Her temper mounted with each passing moment as she counted down the hours to freedom. She, Elizabeth Sadler, was a criminal convicted of disorderly conduct, assault, and petty larceny. Unable to pay a fifty-dollar fine and in jail because she refused to go to jail without a reason. Because she refused to allow herself to be arrested for stealing a gentleman’s fine silk handkerchief.

James’s fine silk handkerchief. James. Elizabeth quivered with anger at the thought of him. James, of the gentle voice and kind eyes. James, who had wiped her tears away with that handkerchief, then had pressed it into her hand to use. He must have been furious with her when he discovered she’d taken his room key and replaced it with hers. He had to have been angry and embarrassed to seek revenge for something so trivial when she hadn’t denied him access to a hotel room. He could have stayed in her room if he needed a place to sleep. And she hadn’t run out and stuck
him with her hotel bill, she’d made sure of that. But James would have had her arrested and taken to jail for keeping his handkerchief. Talk about trumped-up charges! She’d never heard of anything so outrageous. No wonder they called it petty larceny. As far as Elizabeth was concerned, her accuser was the pettiest of the petty and he had an awful lot to answer for.

He could start by offering her an apology.

And Elizabeth meant to collect it—just as soon as she got out of jail.

“
YOU’RE FREE TO
go.”

Elizabeth recognized Sergeant Darnell’s Irish brogue, but she pointedly ignored him by rising from her seat on the cot, lifting her chin a bit higher, and turning to face the wall away from him.

“Did you hear me, Miss Sadler?” Sergeant Darnell asked, his voice full of concern. “I said that you’re free to go.”

“She heard you.”

Recognizing
that
voice as well, Elizabeth whirled around to find James standing beside Sergeant Darnell. There was so much she wanted to say to him, so many angry words she wanted to fling at him, but Elizabeth couldn’t give voice to the words. Torn between fury at James for putting her in this situation and tremendous relief at having him come to get her out, she was suddenly shaking with reaction. Her knees threatened to buckle, and because she wasn’t sure she could cross the few feet to the cell door without falling, Elizabeth simply stood there staring at him, drinking in the sight of him.

“I came as soon as I could,” James told her, taking a step closer to the cell.

She didn’t reply.

“I meant to leave my home early this morning, so I could be in the city when the police located you,” James
continued. “I should have gotten here in plenty of time to drop the charges, but things got a bit out of hand at home this morning—” James shrugged his shoulders. “My housekeeper couldn’t handle things alone and unfortunately I was unavoidably detained.” He knew he was rambling, but he couldn’t seem to stop the flow of words, nor could he seem to drag his gaze away from her. He was seeing her for the second time and again at her worst, but James realized that Elizabeth Sadler’s worst was better than most women’s best. She was astonishingly pretty. Much lovelier than he remembered. And those extraordinary blue-green eyes of hers … James felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. He knew it wasn’t the time or the place, but he had the incredible urge to kiss her, to feel her against him.

Elizabeth studied James as carefully as she had studied her cell mates. She took note of the whiskers darkening James’s unshaven jawline, his rumpled shirtfront, his mussed and hastily tied tie, and what appeared to be a blotch of strawberry jam on the front of his waistcoat. She smiled at the reddish stain on his impeccably tailored garment and found herself wanting to stick out her finger and touch it. Then to lick the tip of her finger to taste it. To see if it was, indeed, strawberry jam. Elizabeth couldn’t explain why she felt the way she did. James’s slovenly appearance should have put her off, should have helped to fan the flames of her anger, but it didn’t. Far from it. For some inexplicable reason, his untidiness made James even more handsome and appealing than before, and Elizabeth had to force herself to remember why she was so angry with him.

“Elizabeth, believe me,” James told her, “I never meant for things to go this far.”

“You had me arrested!” The accusation, ripe with pain and suppressed anger, seemed to burst forth of its own accord.

“From what I hear, you got yourself arrested for destroying Lo Peng’s place on Washington Street.”

“But you started it. You meant to have me arrested for stealing a handkerchief you gave me! You had me put in
this place!” Suddenly regaining her ability to move, Elizabeth waved her hand, gesturing at the interior of the jail, and narrowly missed backhanding a cell mate whose foul body odor was enough to make the strongest man gag. “You would have let them bring me here and lock me up with these people for no reason. At least I gave them reason!”