Betina Krahn (5 page)

“Abducted,” he said hoarsely. “When I got there she was gone. Rukart had been knocked senseless, and the
police
were there. They questioned me!”

“The police? You didn’t tell them any—” Her eyes widened as the full impact of what he’d said registered. “Abducted? You mean those men
took
her somewhere? Jeffrey, you have to go and get her back—right now!”

“I can’t.”

“But you have to!” She tried to shove him toward the door.

“I don’t know where she is,” he blurted out. “I don’t have a clue where they might be—I barely even know their names.”

She stared at him, praying that he would burst out laughing and tell her he was joking. When he didn’t, she began to tremble.
They had taken her… he didn’t know where she was…

“She’s been
kidnapped,”
she whispered, horror mounting. “Jeffrey—you have to do something.”

“Yes, but what?”

“You have to find her … get her back!”

“But I told you—I haven’t a clue where they might be.”

“Well, there has to be some way you can locate them. Where did you find these awful men in the first place?”

“My cousin put me on to them,” he said miserably. “I should have known that no good would come from getting involved with him and his Irish mob.”

“Then that’s where you have to go. Your cousin—he must know how to find them—maybe even where they’ve taken Aunt Beatrice.” She pushed him toward the door. “Go and see your wretched old cousin. He
arranged the entire thing—
he’s
the one responsible for this mess. Make
him
find my poor aunt!”

CONNOR KNEW THE
minute he saw Jeffrey Granton standing in the entry of O’Toole’s, that something had gone wrong.

He had just concluded a strategy session over dinner with underboss Charles Murphy and the boys from Tammany Hall. He had been looking forward to calling it an evening and heading home. But there was no avoiding his red-faced cousin.

“Cousin Connor!” Jeffrey called out, hurrying toward him.

Connor rose quickly and steered the youth through a draped rear door. Once in the hallway, out of sight of prying eyes, Jeffrey turned and grabbed his sleeve.

“You’ve got to help me. It’s all gone wrong—she’s missing—and I’ve got to find those two lunkheads you hooked me up with before it’s too—”

“Slow down. What do you mean? Your bride is missing?”

Jeffrey winced. “Not my bride. Her aunt.”

“Her aunt? Dipper and Shorty brought you the wrong bride?”

“No—they were supposed to rob her and I was supposed to happen along—only my mother made me have a sherry with her whist club and I was late. When I got there the carriage was empty and the police were there—and I’ve got to get her back before—”

“Police? Your bride’s family sent police after you?” Connor scowled.

“I don’t
have
a bride,” Jeffrey blurted out. “I’m not eloping—I never was eloping.”

“You weren’t?” Connor braced, seeing in Jeffrey’s anguish something far more serious than mere matrimonial passion run amok. “Dammit!” He’d had a bad feeling about this mess at the beginning and had overridden his own good sense to help the kid—no, if truth be told, to teach him a lesson. “Then just what the bloody hell were you doing?”

Jeffrey looked down. He was having trouble swallowing. Red crept into his ears.

“Pro-o-o”—his voice cracked and he had to clear his throat—“proving how grown up and capable I am.”

Connor bit his lip to keep back an involuntary hoot of laughter.

“And how does hiring two thugs to—” He sobered abruptly. “Just what the hell were they supposed to do?”

“Pretend to rob my fiancée’s stubborn old aunt.” Jeffrey couldn’t meet his cousin’s incredulous stare. “I was supposed to happen along and … rescue her … to show her how brave and manly …”

“Of all the stupid … the same stubborn old aunt who disapproves of you romancing her niece, I assume,” Connor said, recalling the reason Jeffrey had given for taking such drastic action in the first place. The girl’s family was wealthy and powerful. The turmoil in his stomach began spreading to his chest. “Whatever possessed you to come up with such a harebrained scheme?”

“I didn’t!” Jeffrey protested. “It was Priscilla—she made me do it.”

Connor ran a hand through his hair. He was embroiled in a plot hatched by a love-struck sixteen-year-old chit and bungled by an eighteen-year-old clot who tripped over his own ballocks and was just too gullible to live.

“Who is she—this ‘Priscilla,’ who beguiled you out of
every shred of your common sense?” When the boy drew back and looked uncertain whether he should divulge such a weighty secret, it was all Connor could do to keep from strangling him.
“Who the bloody hell is she?”
he roared.

“Priscilla Lucciano,” Jeffrey whispered.

Connor found his anger oddly cheated. Not an Astor, a Vanderbilt, a Morgan, or a Cabot. A Lucciano? What the hell was a “Lucciano”?

“Never heard of ’em,” Connor was relieved to be able to say.

Jeffrey took his reaction as something of an insult.

“Her aunt is
Beatrice Von Furstenberg
.”

There it was; the kick in the gut Connor had dreaded. Beatrice Von Furstenberg. To describe her as rich would be a gross understatement. In wealth she was right up there with the Morgans and Astors! He scratched his head, trying to recall what he’d heard—other than the fact that she was old Mercer Von Furstenberg’s widow and that she was reported to have improved upon his already shrewd business practices.

“Dear God.” It was something of a prayer. Only divine intervention could save them now. “You sent Dipper and Shorty to pretend to rob Beatrice Von Furstenberg … so you could impress her by rescuing her?”

The boy nodded.

“But now she’s
gone
?”

His nodding became desperate. “They must have taken her somewhere. You’ve got to help me find out what they did with her and get her back.”

Connor stared at his young cousin, putting one and one and one together and coming up with “catastrophe on the way.”

“You’re a lunatic, Jeffrey Granton. And a doomed one. Condolences to your dear mother on your upcoming demise.”

He turned on his heel and was at the door to the main dining room before Jeffrey realized he was being abandoned.

“Wait—stop! You have to help me!”

Connor paused and looked over his shoulder. “You got yourself into this, Granton. Prove just how ‘capable’ and ‘manly’ you really are … get yourself
out
of it.”

“B-But you can’t just leave me—leave her—”

“Watch me.” Connor turned and parted the curtain that covered the doorway.

“I’ll tell mother!” Jeffrey said, lurching after Connor. “I’ll tell the police! I’ll tell them it was all
your
fault!”

Connor froze. Police. He had forgotten about them. The implications of legal involvement now struck him forcefully. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—if he didn’t do something the damage would just keep spreading!

He turned back, sorely tempted to thrash Precious Jeffrey within an inch of his worthless, overindulged life. Not a jury in the world would convict him. But on second thought … a trial for assault, following allegations that he had helped kidnap one of the wealthiest women in New York, could conceivably dim his chances for election to Congress.…

Then he caught the quiver in the boy’s chin. Precious Jeffrey was trembling all over. Manfully blinking back tears. He was terrified.

“Dammit,” Connor muttered. The kid had landed them both down a privy hole and
he
was going to have to get them out. He’d have to find old Mrs. Von Furstenberg and see that she was returned home
safely … without revealing Jeffrey’s ridiculous plot and his own boneheaded participation in it. First, he had to find those idiots Dipper and Shorty.…

He stalked back to an office door, shoved it open, and ordered Jeffrey inside with a furious gesture.

“Get in there and wait—no matter how long it takes.”

“But I have to be home soon. Mother will expect—”

The I’m-a-heartbeat-away-from-murder look on Connor’s face apparently made Jeffrey reconsider his priorities. Now seemed to be as good a time as any to start acting like a man. He stepped inside the office, but panicked one last time when Connor started to shut the door.

“Wait—what are you going to do?”

“Locate your victim,” Connor declared furiously, “and save your worthless hide.”

BEATRICE HAD LOST
all sense of time and location. Shushed and trussed and upended over a shoulder for what seemed an eternity, it was all she could do to simply continue breathing. Blood had pooled in her head, and her hands and arms were going numb. Worse yet, the gag had wicked up every drop of moisture in her mouth and she was half crazed with thrist. By the time her kidnappers carried her into a building of some sort, she was in no condition to resist.

She blinked against the gaslight of a hallway filled with foreign smells … a strange perfume … expensive floral covering an earthy musk mingled with cigar smoke. A woman’s voice directed her kidnappers and they labored up a set of steps with her, then down a dim hallway lined with flocked red wallpaper, heavy gilt-framed paintings, and doors … lots of doors. At the end of the hallway, they trudged up another set of stairs—narrower, with two landings.

It was on one of these landings that they paused to
tie her feet together and she caught a glimpse of the woman in charge. She could have sworn the creature was wearing nothing but a corset, silk stockings, and a shawl.

Moments later she was trundled through a narrow doorway, heaved onto a bed, and left without light or explanation. At least the bed was well sprung and smelled of clean linens. She was able to turn so that she lay on her side with her head on a pillow. Her initial panic subsided and her mind began to work.

She’d been abducted by common hoodlums because she wouldn’t hand over her purse. Why, when the police approached, hadn’t they just taken her valuables and fled? Why had they taken
her’?
It didn’t make sense … unless … something or someone else was behind it … someone wanted her abducted. But who? A business rival? Could George Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Harry Winthrop, J. P. Morgan, or Archibald Lynch be capable of such underhanded dealings? She went through the list of her current business projects and couldn’t think of any competitors desperate enough to engineer a kidnapping.

Some time later, when the door opened and light bloomed around her, she found herself in a sizable room that was decorated in a nautical motif. There were portholes, an oversized captain’s bed, replicas of a mast, rigging, and a ship’s wheel … all set against a length of railing with an ocean painted behind it.

Standing over her, dressed in a corset and stockings and holding an oil lamp, was the young woman she’d glimpsed earlier.

“What’s that idiot gone an’ done now?” the girl muttered in what sounded like an Irish accent. Then she pulled the handkerchief from Beatrice’s mouth.

“Wa-ter,” escaped Beatrice on a parched moan.

After helping her drink, the girl untied the scarf used to bind her feet. Beatrice was able to sit up and rub circulation back into her limbs.

“Let me go. Untie my hands—free me—and I’ll see you’re not charged with anything criminal,” she croaked out.

The girl set about lighting a hanging lantern overhead, apparently untempted by Beatrice’s offer of clemency. She seemed perfectly comfortable walking about in her corset, black silk stockings, and high-button shoes, showing everything the Almighty had given her. When she came back to the bed, Beatrice noted kohl around her eyes and rouge on her cheeks and—Dear Lord!—the tips of her breasts!

She’d heard whispers of such things. Standing before her, Beatrice realized with deepening shock, was one of New York’s legendary
filles de flaisir
—a genuine soiled dove. Glancing wildly about, she sensed that the strange decor must have something to do with the woman’s shameful profession—though, honestly, it was hard for her to imagine how a ship’s wheel and a cargo net might be pressed into salacious duty.

Then it struck her: She’d been brought to a house of ill repute! Why on earth would they bring her to such a—unless—

Dear God—she’d been kidnapped by white slavers!

For the second time that night, she filled her lungs and began to scream.

THE NEXT EVENING,
Connor Sullivan Barrow emerged from a cab half a block away from the Oriental Palace and walked the rest of the way.

He entered through a side door reserved for gentlemen who required more discreet access to New York’s premier house of pleasure. After handing off his hat to the ancient butler, he headed up the steps and through the busy card room, nodding to acquaintances along the way.

In the main salon, wine-colored velvets and shimmering brocades imported from France draped long windows, chaises, and sinuously curved banquettes. Gilded mirrors reflected and re-reflected scenes of sensual dalliance bathed in subdued golden light, producing an illusion of endless pleasures. In an atmosphere laden with expensive cigars and Scotch and even more expensive perfume, a bevy of scantily clad females entertained the well-heeled pleasure seekers of New York with receptive smiles, provocative poses, and the promise of delights to be had for a price.