Baroness (36 page)

“Hey, Muggsy.” She ran her hands up her soggy arms. “I…have you seen Guthrie?”

Muggsy stared at her with a frown. “Two hours ago. He left right after the game. Seemed to be in a hurry—he didn't even shower.”

Funny, he hadn't even sent her out a note with one of the players to tell her to go home.

“Do you know where he might have gone?”

Muggsy walked her to the curb, hailed a cab. “I heard rumors of the fellas heading out to the Cotton Club up in Harlem. But you get on home now. The rain is no place for someone in your condition.”

A cab pulled up and he opened the door, settled her into the backseat. She thanked him as he closed it then directed the cabbie to the club.

If he wouldn't come to her, then she'd find him. Drag him home. Remind him that he had a family, a wife who loved him.

She had something to give him now. A child.

But, as she stood outside the club, the bright lights of the marquee listing Duke Ellington's band and the Jubilee Jumpers, she couldn't bear the scene she saw in her mind. Walking into the club, soggy, enormous, angry; while around her, thin, flashy women would be sidling up to him, cooing into his ear. In her worst nightmares, he ignored her, perhaps drew one of the flappers onto the dance floor.

She'd been one of those flappers, once upon a time.

She stared at the patrons standing under the awning, their coats wrapped around them as drivers bearing umbrellas fetched them to their vehicles. Music twined out, and she had no doubt that inside she'd find a back room flowing with bootlegged whiskey.

“Can I help you, ma'am?” A young footman—he resembled Cesar in too many ways, groomed dark hair, Italian-accented English— approached her. “Perhaps hail you a cab?”

She pressed her fingers to her eyes, glad that she hadn't applied much kohl, aware that every day she became larger she lost a little bit more of her glamour. “Yes, please.”

She climbed into the cab and directed him toward Queens, staring out the window as the rain slid down the dark pane, the bright lights of Harlem turning the world fuzzy. What if he never came back? What if she
had
lost him? She knew the stories about other ballplayers, the ones who had a lady in every city. Worse were the ones who quit after their baseball career dried up, unable to face a life without the game they loved.

What would she do without Guthrie? Return home?

She ran her hand over her belly. She didn't care what it took, she'd find a way to win back Guthrie's heart.

The cab pulled up to her brownstone and she paid him, climbed out. The house seemed dark, even unfriendly, the windows unseeing, the porch light off. Her footsteps echoed across the pavement as she climbed the stairs, pulling out her key.

Except…except the door stood ajar, the faintest crack betraying it. She put her hand on the handle, her chest full. “Guthrie!”

She pushed open the door, closing it behind her. Maybe he'd come home to surprise her—he did that once after he'd won, bought roses and scattered them around the house. “Guthrie?”

She flicked on the light.

She slammed her hand against her mouth to press back her scream.

Guthrie lay thrashing on the floor of the foyer on his stomach, one man twisting his hand behind his back, pinning him, another with his knee in his back, his hand clamped to his mouth. Blood dripped from a cut over his eye, his nose bled over his captor's hand.

He shook the man away. “Rosie, get out of here!”

The man wrenched his arm harder, and he yelled in agony.

“Stop—you're going to break his arm!”

“It's not his pitching arm,” said a voice from behind her. She froze.

She steeled herself as Cesar walked out of the shadows. He held a bat—one of Guthrie's—in his grip.

“Hello, Rosie.”

“Leave her alone! This doesn't involve her!”

She glanced at Guthrie. What didn't—

“It absolutely involves her, Guthrie. How stupid are you? This is all about me losing my star.” Cesar stepped up to her, tucked his cold hand under her chin. “I've missed you, Red.”

Then he kissed her. She jerked herself away from him and threw her hand up in defense when she saw him curl a fist.

“Don't you touch her!”

She heard a pleading on the tail of Guthrie's voice that made her want to weep. She dropped to her knees, crawled over to him. “What's he talking about? How did he find us?”

“C'mon, pet, I read the paper. Guthrie made all the headlines when the Giants bought him.” He tapped the bat in the palm of his hand. “Perfect timing too, because my ace at the Yanks had started to dry up.”

She shook her head.

“Do the math, sweetheart. You cost me a hundred grand in bookings. I need recompense. Guthrie here agreed to throw a few games, work off your debt.”

She stared at him. He looked away from her.

Oh, Guthrie. So that was why he couldn't bear to talk to her. She'd turned him into a cheat.

“Except for today, see. Today, he decides to win. So I had to remind him just what he had to lose.”

Guthrie howled as Cesar's man twisted his arm.

“Leave him alone! I'll get you the money—I have the money. Please. Don't hurt him.”

Cesar crossed the room in one step and grabbed her by the hair, yanking her to her feet, putting his face in hers. “I know you do.” His breath bore the stench of whisky. She turned away from the spittle on the sides of his mouth, and he dropped her back on the floor. “You've got two days.” He tapped his enforcer on the shoulder, and he released Guthrie.

Guthrie turned over, and she saw the fury in his eyes. She grabbed his hand, pulled him to her. “You'll have it, Cesar. I promise.”

“Good.” Then he crouched next to her and pressed his hand on her belly. “Because we wouldn't want anything to happen to Junior here.”

Guthrie lunged at him, but the muscle behind Cesar landed a kick on his jaw, slamming him back into the wall.

Cesar smiled. Held up his fingers. “Two days.” He touched her on the cheek. “You're still so beautiful, Red. Such a shame.”

Then he got up.

As soon as the door closed behind him, she pounced from the floor and locked it.

She began to shake as she turned. Guthrie sat against the wall, his face battered, his shirt ripped, breathing hard. He looked up at her with eyes that apologized.

“I don't understand. How did this happen?” She fell to her knees, catching herself on the floor, scrabbling over to him.

Guthrie looked away. “You were right, Rosie.” Then he cupped his face with his hand, covering his eyes. “I should have listened to you.”

“How long have you been throwing games?”

It seemed he couldn't look at her. “About a month.”

She did the math. Right about the time he'd seen her with Dash.

“And not every game—just the ones Cesar told me to. He found me after a practice one day, told me that if I didn't work with him…”

“He'd kill me.” She sat back, hearing her nightmares play in her head.

Guthrie took her hand. “We can leave. Disappear. I don't have to play baseball. I can farm, or work on the docks. Maybe become a fighter—”

“Stop. Guthrie. Please.”

“No, listen to me, Rosie. I got a little stashed away. See, I figure that Cesar wasn't the only one who could make good off me. I figured it out that every time I threw a game, he bet against the Giants and made a bundle. So…I did the same. I…used the pearls left from your necklace as seed money and created a little nest egg.”

He tried a smile. “I figured he had it coming.”

Oh, Guthrie. She pushed herself off the floor, held onto the wall as she made her way to the kitchen and dug out a rag. Wetting it, she returned to where he sat on the floor then pressed the rag to his nose, his eye. The welts on his knuckles. “How much do you have?”

“About five grand.”

Five thousand dollars? “That's a lot of money.”

He brushed her hands from their tending. “I know. It'll get us to Chicago, maybe even out to California. We'd be safe there.”

How she wanted to believe him. He had electric eyes, the kind that could spark her own hope, the eyes that made her believe she could run away with him, marry him, live happily ever after. But, “I know Cesar. He'll find us. And kill us all.” She pressed her hand over her womb. “Charlie needs his father. And his father needs baseball.”

“I don't need baseball. I have you.” He drew her down to him. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you.”

“I thought you were angry about seeing me with Dash.”

She heard his chuckle deep in his chest.

“I have no fear of Dashielle Parks.” He pressed a kiss to her head. “I just wish I had the money to keep you safe.”

But, see, she did.

* * * * *

So this is what it felt like to want to go home. Lilly stood at the rail of the S.S.
Majestic
as the fog cleared the New York Harbor. Lady Liberty gleamed under the cast of morning light, rose gold and orange, as if a torch guiding them home. She raised her face to the salty wind, breathing in the taste of the sea, the cry of the gulls over the ship. How could it have been only four years ago that she had stood here detesting Oliver, blaming him for stealing her future, ripping her out of Rennie's arms?

She should throw herself at his feet and thank him. Too easily she'd seen the life from which he saved her. Hollowed out from too many careless nights like Presley, or pregnant and abandoned like Hadley, Hem's wife. No doubt, Rennie would have broken her heart too many times over before Lilly realized the truth.

She belonged in New York, with her family. With Oliver.

Never know what a father will do for the daughter he loves.
Presley's words had embedded inside her, and since that moment, as she'd steamed across the Atlantic on the
Majestic
, she'd suddenly seen everything— Oliver presenting her with pearls on her eighteenth birthday, arriving in Spain, fury on his face, his head in his hands, weeping as Esme died.

“It's just you and me now.”

Oliver and his cry of pain outside her hospital room in Wyoming.

“Why is it so hard for you to believe that I love you?”

Because she didn't belong to him. She wasn't his flesh and blood, his responsibility. His real daughter.

But perhaps it didn't matter. He'd adopted her—nearly against her will—and then committed to loving her. Despite her anger. Despite her rebellion. Despite the fact that she'd spent so much time running from his love.

The ship parted the fog, rolling it back as they entered the harbor. She waited until they docked then returned to her stateroom, where she instructed the porters to deliver her cases to Oliver's chateau— no, her
home
—on Fifth Avenue. Then she caught a cab and headed to the
Chronicle.

She wanted to see him. To knock at the door and enter his office and have him look up when for the first time—probably ever—she would greet him with kindness.

Like a daughter would.

She never thought she'd miss the sounds of the
Chronicle
— the newsies who greeted her as she entered the round entryway, the linotype machines, the rumble of the presses, the acrid pinch of the chemical baths from the photo department. She climbed the stairs and didn't even bother to stop at her office, just headed right to Oliver's suite.

His receptionist greeted her, turning from her typewriter to face her. A little older than she, Madeline, with her dark, pinned-back hair, her steely eyes, had a way of dressing down someone with a look, making sure they had a sound reason for disturbing her publisher.

Lilly debated, then headed right for his door. She was his daughter, after all. “Is he in a meeting?” She reached for the handle, her hand raised to knock.

“He's not here.”

She stilled, turned. “What?” Oliver never took off time from work— he practically lived at the paper. “Where is he?”

“I don't know, ma'am. He told me he'd be out of the office all day.”

Lilly pressed her hand on his door, then, “I'm going to check his appointment book.”

Madeline found her feet as Lilly opened his office and stepped inside, but she didn't chase her. Lilly closed the door behind her.

Once upon a time her mother had shared this office with Oliver. Lilly well remembered doing her studies on the tufted leather sofa against the wall, or listening to her mother and Oliver argue about headlines and print runs. She made a point of not entering after her mother's death, the memories too rich to taste. Now, she could almost see Esme, regal and tall, standing at the round window overlooking Chronicle Square, watching the pigeons roost on the arms of the statute cast of August Worth, Lilly's grandfather. She would be wearing a simple shirtwaist, perhaps with a vest or sweater, a dark skirt, her blond hair piled upon her head, or caught at the nape. Sometimes at home, her mother let her hair down, and it flowed like a river of gold. If only Lilly had been born with her heiress beauty. But she'd taken on her father's features—coal-black hair, matching eyes. She looked more like her grandmother, a descendant of the Crow.

Lilly went around Oliver's massive desk and stood at the window, staring down. In this spot, she could almost imagine her mother's voice.

“Whatever happens, honey, don't forget who you are. Don't forget the blessings God has bestowed upon you. Don't forget your name and where you belong.”

But, she had. She'd forgotten everything that made her who she was. She'd forgotten the courage born from her mother, the compassion of her grandmother, the honor of her birth father.

Most of all, she'd forgotten the blessings He'd left her with.

Oliver.

Paris had made her remember. She could thank Rennie for that much, perhaps.