Betina Krahn (9 page)

The young women, Millie, Jane, Pansy, Eleanor, Annie, Tessa, and Diedre, represented the entire gamut of female form and appeal. Millie was buxom and sturdy and offered up a corset and drawstring chemise of the sort worn by tavern wenches. Jane—blond, ladylike, and elegant—had brought a seductive open pelisse of Mediterranean blue moiré. Pansy—dark, chatty, and ebullient—had brought a lace-drenched dressing gown
as purple as the corset and stockings she wore. Eleanor was a golden-eyed sphinx who spoke with a French accent, and insisted Beatrice wear her shimmering iridescent chiffon made in the old empire style … which bared the breasts entirely. Annie was a tough and boisterous westerner whose deerskin bustier and boots fascinated Beatrice—though not to the extent that she would consider wearing her bottom-baring buckskin chaps and western boots. Tessa was another exotic—from the West Indies—with black eyes, dusky skin, and a sultry Creole accent that was harder to resist than the leopard-print dressing gown she suggested Beatrice wear. And Diedre, a tall, severely beautiful brunette with a dangerous look in her eye, offered to share her black leather gherkins, body harnesses, and glistening thigh-high boots:

“In my experience,” Diedre declared in crisp, authoritative tones, “congressmen need to be shown who’s in charge.”

Her comment unleashed a torrent of advice on handling men of power and importance. Story followed upon story; the brigadier who insisted his partner wear a saddle, the alderman who had to wear a corset, stockings, and rouge in order to perform, a Protestant preacher who fancied nuns in wimples, and a Roman bishop who insisted on ravishing Puritan lasses. Some men insisted on being in charge; others were more than pleased to put control in a knowledgeable woman’s hands. Some wanted to be pampered, others deprived. Some came to indulge themselves; others came to purge.

Beatrice sat on the chaise, wrapped in a sheet of toweling, staring at them. These were the “scarlet women” she had heard pitied, condemned, lamented, and derided by the moralists and thinkers of the day … even by the women in her own women’s rights organization.
These were the females who were alternately labeled victims and opportunists … sometimes declared products of immorality and sometimes denounced as the cause of it.

As they talked about their trade and the peculiarities of the men who patronized them, it became clear to her that they did not consider themselves the “oppressed sisters” of femininity any more than they perceived themselves as wicked and depraved. They were surprisingly matter-of-fact in their approach to their trade, and had strong opinions on hygiene, health, and the worth of their particular specialties. But most of all, they knew men … had studied them even as they pleasured them.

It struck Beatrice that she shared something with these women: both she and they knew men in ways that most women did not. She knew men as they were among themselves; competitors, cronies, opponents, resources, allies. And these women knew them as creatures of passion and need, as revelers in the sensual. For a brief, insightful moment, she wondered how much more there might be to know about men. What other sides were there to be studied?

As she surfaced from those astonishing thoughts, Mary Kate leaned close and chuckled. “Men ain’t so tough,” she explained to Beatrice. “You just got to figure out what it is they really want. I spend half my time listenin’ to ’em talk … about how their wives spend ’em blind and how their kids hate ’em and how their competitors is eatin’ into their profits … and about how they ain’t got a single soul to talk to about it all.”

“Men,” Annie sagely summed up their observations, “are just like ever’ body else. There’s some worth their weight in gold and some not worth th’ powder an’ lead to blow ’em up.” She grinned. “An’ we get both kinds here.”

“Problem is, you can’t alwus tell which is which,” Pansy said with a thoughtful frown. “It ought to be a law or somethin’ that a man has to look like what he’s really like inside.”

“Yeah,” Annie said, nodding. “Like my hoity-toity ‘banker.’” She raised her chin to a combative angle. “I been savin’ for four years. Got a tidy little sum to buy me a place of my own when my looks go. This ‘client’ of mine … this
banker
… he says he can take care of my money for me. So I dress up on my day off an’ go down to his bank to get me one of his ‘accounts.’ The bastard acted like he’d never laid eyes on me before. Asked me for ref-er-ences. Said he couldn’t accept money from a woman unless he knew where it come from.” Her eyes crackled with righteous fury. “Like he didn’t know where it come from—the slimy little bastard. That was the last time he set foot in my room, I tell you.”

“I told you—you ought to buy gold jewelry with your tips,” Tessa declared, pulling up her generous sleeves to reveal wrists covered in spectacular gold bangles. “You can wear it now and sell it later, when you need the money.”

“Yeah, well you can do that … until some customer three sheets to the wind decides to bash you over the head and make your jewelry
his
retirement.”

There was plenty of nodding and bitter agreement.

“Well, I have my money hidden safely away,” Eleanor said with a superior air. This prompted the others to respond in chorus: “In your mattress!”

Her jaw dropped and the others broke up in raucous laughter.

“I had me three hundred dollars saved up,” Millie declared bitterly. “It got stole out o’ my room by a ‘client.’ Later, when Punjab caught up wi’ him and beat th’ tar
outta him, he said it wasn’t stealin’—since he took it from a whore.”

There was no laughter at that, no smart remark or saucy retort. Silence descended for a time. They knew too well that comfort and security were commodities in short supply for women like them. It seemed that their earnings and savings, while substantial, could prove just as transitory as their youth and charms.

“My next life,” Annie said after a moment, shoving to her feet and striking a pose, “I’m gonna be a banker. An’ every cent that gets put in
my
bank will be one some poor sister earned on her back!”

With the tension broken, the women laughed and began to file out of the room … many of them giving Punjab a teasing pat on the rear as they passed him outside the door.

Beatrice watched them go with a strange mixture of insight and compassion. Who would have thought that in a house of ill repute, she’d find herself surrounded by a bevy of frustrated
businesswomen?

CONNOR ARRIVED AT
the Oriental at eight o’clock that evening, freshly shaved and determined to convince his unwitting victim to forego taking legal measures. He could be very persuasive when the occasion called for it and there wasn’t a woman alive who wasn’t susceptible to a bit of persuasion now and then. A look of admiration, a heartfelt compliment slipped into the conversation, a wayward glance that resulted in an appreciative smile … it was simply a matter of finding the right approach.

Charlotte Brown met him in the front hall, gave him a thorough visual inspection, then told him that her “guest” had been moved yet again. As he turned to follow Punjab up the stairs, she reminded him that she wanted an agreement in writing and produced a document, a pen, and a bottle of ink, which he shoved into his pocket. When Punjab reached the appropriate door, he paused and turned to Connor with a grin.

“Veddy fine bottom.” The giant made a suggestive squeezing motion with his muscular hand. “Veddy fine indeed.”

The last thing he needed in his head as he negotiated with the outraged Beatrice Von Furstenberg was an image of her “veddy fine bottom,” Connor thought. He was having enough difficulty ridding himself of the memory of her breasts spilling from her black satin corset.

Thus, when the door opened and she was standing in the middle of the room wrapped in a voluminous sheet torn from the rumpled bed, his reaction was an unsettling mixture of dread and relief.

“You,” she greeted him.

“Mrs. Von Furstenberg.” He nodded, then motioned to their surroundings. “And in much better circumstances than when we last met.”

She fixed him with a stare.

“They needed the Dungeon.”

He took a deep breath and used it to buttress his good humor.

“Well, I’m sure it’s hard to find a high-quality dungeon these days.” Then he spotted a table set with snowy linen, fine china, and fresh flowers, and strolled toward it with genuine curiosity. “I see we’re having dinner.” He ran his hand down his stomach. “They have an excellent chef here. Brought over from Paris. Does a magnificent Beef Wellington and an unparalleled Trout Almondine.” He glanced up and struck a tone of indignation as he looked her up and down. “Ye gods, is that all they found you to wear? A bed sheet?”

“They found me something else. I’d rather wear the sheet.” She faced him with her arms crossed to hold her covering in place. “It’s not going to work, you know. Plying me with luxury. Trying to bribe me to forget the pain and indignity I have suffered.”

Her irritability only fueled his determination to bring her around.

“I assure you, Mrs. Brown is not so naive as to expect that a few comforts could erase the unpleasantness of the last two days. She simply means to see to your welfare, to treat you courteously … while an understanding is reached.”

“While an underhanded business scheme is being carried out, more likely! While you are holding me here, my stocks may be plummeting, my boards may be splitting and selling off assets, my competitors could be stealing my markets, and my futures contracts could be withering away. The longer I am here, the more damage can be done to my fortunes … which, I am coming to think, may be the whole purpose of this outrage. But bear in mind: the more I lose, the more liability your Mrs. Brown will have to bear.”

“Plots and schemes. You have a suspicious mind, Mrs. Von Furstenberg.”

“A pragmatic mind.”

He skimmed her swathed form with a look and gave her a wry smile. “I’m certain your ‘stocks’ are in fine shape.”

“You won’t mind if I don’t take your word for it,” she said, tightening the tuck of her arms, “Mister—or should I say ‘Congressman’—Sullivan.”

His body went taut and his senses came to a razor’s edge of alertness.

“I am not a congressman,” he said, racing to imagine how she could have learned his name and that he was running for congress, and what kind of trouble this was going to cause. “Where did you hear such a thing?”

“One of the girls who works here told me. She seemed quite confident of your ability to carry the upcoming election.” She tilted her nose. “The question is: Who will you be carrying it for? Whose man are you?”

“An unpleasant assumption,” he said as calmly as possible.

“Sullivan is Irish,” she declared. “Tammany Hall, perhaps? Are you their man? Their—what do they call it—
mouthpiece
?”

“I am no one’s man, Mrs. Von Furstenberg, except my own.”

“And Mrs. Sullivan’s.”

“There is no Mrs. Sullivan.” Spurred by her superior air he added: “Nor a Mrs. Barrow. The full name is Connor Sullivan
Barrow.
”

“Barrow?” She frowned, searching her memory. “No relation to Hurst Eddington Barrow, the dean of New York’s bankers, surely.”

“My grandfather,” he said, fighting a fleeting temptation to claim the right of condescension that went with a blood connection to one of the richest families in banking. “However, he relinquished all claim to me some years ago. Since then, I have made my own way on my own merit.”

She studied him openly.

“You’re part Irish.”

“The
best
part Irish,” he said, letting the Gaelic in him surface to speak for itself. “The part that works hard, lives free, laughs often, and loves well. The part that lives on honest terms with all other men and gives respect and allegiance where it is due … especially to this fine, fair land that has sheltered so many of the beleaguered and starvin’ children of Erin.”

The lilt and the passion that crept into his voice were all too genuine. The United States had saved a million shattered Irish lives during the famine, and the refuge the Irish had found in America was a subject on which no son or descendent of Ireland could remain unmoved.
After a moment’s pause, he relaxed enough to give a self-mocking chuckle.

“I do get exercised on the subject. But enough of politics. I’ve always heard it said that any business done on an empty stomach is bad business. And I do not intend to do ‘bad business’ tonight.”

He pulled out a chair at the table and waited for her to take it. She hesitated, frowning, still contemplating what he had said, but after a moment, accepted. He seated himself opposite her and lifted the cover of the largest dish on the food cart.

“Ahhhh.” He smiled as he inhaled the aroma of slow-roasted beef. “There’s only one chef in New York that can begin to compare with the Oriental’s Pierre. You know, of course, who that is.”

He uncovered the bread and butter, then a bowl of cold raspberry salad and put it down before her with a wave that indicated she should serve it.

He had lured her to the table and if he could get her to cooperate at dinner, he might just succeed in getting her to cooperate in other ways.