Deception at Sable Hill (9 page)
“Yet another reason to blame the fair for the downfall of our ladylike sensibilities,” Eloisa teased. “And guess what? Lieutenant Ryan is going to escort me to Hope House on Sunday afternoon.”
“Hope House? What’s that?”
“It’s a refuge for women and children who have nowhere else to go.”
“It sounds like a commendable place. Is it for society ladies?”
“Of course not. For women of the lower classes.”
“Poor doves.”
“I aim to volunteer there.”
“If your parents allow it,” she pointed out.
“No, I’m going to go even if they don’t.”
“Miss Carstairs—”
“Juliet, I know what is expected of me, and I will . . . try. But I also want to do something for my heart and soul. It’s important to me.”
“For your heart and soul,” Juliet echoed. She paused in her efforts to carefully hang up Eloisa’s day gown. “Miss Carstairs, is this policeman the reason for all of your restless nights?”
Looking into her maid’s eyes, Eloisa realized her night terrors hadn’t gone unnoticed after all.
She also realized that she was not going to let anything interfere with her burgeoning friendship with Sean Ryan. Though she hardly knew him, he made her feel safe. More importantly, he also gave her a sense of peace.
And that was something she was not going to give up, at least not without a fight. Especially since he knew—and understood—what had happened to her.
“No,” she said shortly. “But he might just be the reason I survive them.”
“Is there another reason why you can’t sleep?”
For a moment, Eloisa met her dear maid’s gaze. Compassion shone through. And for a moment, Eloisa considered telling Juliet about Douglass’s attack. About how she still dreamed of his hands on her. Dreamed she was trapped.
But if she told Juliet, there was always a chance that someone else in the house could find out.
And she could never risk that.
Crossing to her vanity, she sat down on the cushioned stool and stared at herself in the mirror. “Hurry now, Juliet. I find myself eager to get this evening’s event over with.”
“Oh. Yes. I mean, yes, miss. Of course, Miss Carstairs.” After a pause, Juliet moved behind her and began taking down her hair.
And for the first time in weeks, it seemed that neither of them could think of anything else to say.
T
hough his body was bone tired, Sean was finding that his head, on the other hand, was more than ready to spin at top speed over the day’s events.
He couldn’t control everything. That was the Lord’s job, not his. He knew that. But even knowing that truth didn’t always enable him to resist interfering when he shouldn’t. Even his mother had always enjoyed reminding him about this time and again when he’d attempted to navigate not only his own life but those of his seven siblings as well.
“Ordering people about ain’t going to make them mind ya, Sean,” she always said with a wry shake of her head. “I told you that yesterday, I did.”
He’d nod. Say he understood. But then ten minutes later, he would be trying to get his eldest brother, Connor, to stay out of the pub on his way home from the factory or struggling to convince his next oldest brother, Billy, to stay in school a little bit longer.
Of course, they hadn’t listened. He hadn’t completely believed they would, either. But he hadn’t been able to stop trying to help them follow the right path. Sometimes it was near impossible to take a step back instead of attempting to help the way he saw fit.
As soon as he’d arrived at the station after his visit to Sable Hill, Sergeant Fuller had stopped him in his tracks with the news that his youngest sister, Katie, had taken it upon herself to visit him on her own.
While he tried to process that hard bit of information, Fuller kept talking away, as annoying as a magpie. He told him all about how Detective Owen Howard—their precinct’s very own “gentleman detective”—had ushered Katie off to the side of the front office, chatted with her for a few moments in private, and then allowed her to dart out of there like her feet were on fire when he had offered to escort her back to the train station.
Yes, she’d set off alone, again—even though Sean had told her incessantly to never, ever go anywhere in the city without the accompanying presence of one of her brothers.
For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why his nineteen-year-old sister would have taken it upon herself to travel to the police station to see him at all.
He was still trying to make heads or tails of Katie’s visit when he realized he needed to get to the bottom of why Owen Howard had decided to become so friendly with her. She was no lady, which meant she was far away from anywhere near his usual type of company. And she was a full twelve years younger than Owen’s thirty-one.
All sorts of ideas filled him, none of them especially good. Katie was in need of a talking-to, Owen needed to be reminded that his sister was not available for conquest, and perhaps someone in the Ryan family had given her poor advice. Then, of course, there was
the matter of Owen allowing Katie to run off. Had he upset her in some way?
He needed to get all the answers he wanted as soon as possible, if not sooner. But because that was unlikely, by the time Sean made his way to his desk, which was located directly next to Owen’s, he was in something of an irritable mood.
Owen looked up from the report he was writing and smiled. “Glad you finally showed up. I’ve got news for you.”
“I bet. Care to explain what happened with my sister?”
Owen lifted his chin and stared right back, all trace of good humor vanishing from his dark-brown eyes. “Care to explain why you’re using that tone with me?”
“Sergeant Fuller told me Katie came here to pay me a visit.”
“She did.”
“Fuller also said you took it upon yourself to chat with her. Privately.”
“I spoke with her near a pair of filing cabinets ten steps away from the sergeant, not that Fuller needed to feel compelled to tell you all about it.”
“He seemed concerned.”
“He needn’t have been. I took it upon myself to speak with her for two reasons,” Owen continued, his speech clipped and cultured, and his tone full of icy indignation. “One, since she came here uninvited and unannounced, I was worried about her welfare.”
Sean couldn’t argue with that reasoning. He was worried too. “Yes, well . . .”
With a frosty glare, Owen continued. “Secondly, because I am your partner, I assumed you would trust me with your sister. And that you would know I would keep her safe and take care of her for you.” Raising a haughty eyebrow, Owen looked everything like the wealthy gentleman he was.
The look was also just cold enough to inform Sean that he’d been more than a little rude and ungrateful. “Sorry. I, uh, meant no disrespect.”
After treating Sean to another long, meaningful glare, Owen nodded. “It’s all right.”
“It’s just that I’ve told her over and over not to travel around the city by herself. It’s like she didn’t hear a word I said.”
“No, it’s like she’s a female,” Owen said with a wry twist of his lips. “It used to be a woman wouldn’t enter any establishment without a proper escort. Now they’ll barge into a fancy department store and spend a pretty penny without so much as a by-your-leave. Times are changing.”
Sean refrained from pointing out that the shopping reference only pertained to women of Owen’s station. Girls like Katie? It seemed they only barged into police stations. “So what did she want? Was she upset?”
“Not at all. She came here looking for you, but not because she was upset about something. She said she came here to speak with you about the Slasher.”
“What?”
His utterance was so loud that he imagined more than a couple of men looked up from their desks in the other offices on their floor.
Owen leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “It seems she’s been reading about the Society Slasher in the newspaper.”
“I told her to give the
Tribune
a wide berth.”
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if she’s listening to you about choosing her reading material either, Ryan. I feel the same way you do, of course. Especially since some of the editorials are especially lurid and inappropriate for gently bred females.” He paused. “However, I’m sorry to share that your sister didn’t appreciate my weak attempt to shield her.”
“Katie always was obstinate.”
“She also didn’t appreciate my offer to see her home, or even to the train station. And I did try.”
“I’m sure you did.”
Owen pressed his lips together. “I’m sorry, Sean. But she’s rather a stubborn force of nature.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Thanks again for seeing to her. I should have known from the start that your intentions were true.”
“If she were my little sister, I’d be protective too. She’s lovely.”
“She is.”
“She’s rather lively too. Definitely no wallflower.”
Sean noticed there was something new in his partner’s voice. “She’s a good girl, Owen.”
“Of course.”
“She’s impulsive, strong-willed. I know that. But she also has my heart,” he warned.
Casting a chiding look his way, Owen straightened. “You might be my superior, but I don’t appreciate your insinuation. I wouldn’t think of being anything less than a gentleman around her.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
Still looking at him closely, Owen said, “Care to tell me how your visit to Miss Carstairs’s house went?”
Thinking about how beautiful Eloisa had looked in her morning gown, the way she’d taken his arm in her gardens, and the earnest look in her eyes when she’d revealed that she wanted to visit Hope House, his throat felt tight. “She didn’t have anything useful to add to our investigation.”
“But how did your visit go?” Owen pressed, something new glinting in his eyes.
“Like I said, uneventful.”
“No, you said—”
“Let’s review what we have on the Slasher so far. Anything new?” Impatiently, Sean brushed a stray chunk of hair away from his eyes and reached for the report Owen had been writing when he’d arrived.
Owen lifted a handful of letters, each written on exceptionally fine-looking stationery. “Beyond the latest batch of angry correspondence, demanding that we become miracle workers and apprehend the man, oh, yesterday? No.”
Though it was difficult, Sean did his best to put all thoughts of his sister and everything that had come to pass with Eloisa behind him and concentrate on what everyone in the city was counting on him and Owen Howard to do: locate and apprehend the Slasher before another innocent got hurt.
They’d spent the rest of the day at the station, focusing on the case. Time really was of the essence, and that meant that no matter how difficult and frustrating it was, they needed to go over all of their information again. And then again.
It was only by chance that he’d learned Katie was staying with Maeve that evening, and Maeve had already invited him for supper. Since he also needed to speak with Maeve about Hope House and Eloisa, Sean took both as signs that his evening would be exponentially more productive than his day had been.
Because any time spent in Eloisa Carstairs’s company was not only a foolish idea and a prescription for trouble, but also a waste of investigative time. When he was with her, his work seemed to disappear.
I
t took Sean forty-five minutes to get to his sister’s home from the precinct station, but by the time he was halfway there, his body began to relax and his dark thoughts started to lift.
Instead of expansive lawns like the ones on Sable Hill, with each large, imposing home framed by well-manicured and meticulously maintained lawns and gardens, Maeve’s neighborhood was composed of lines of neat row houses built of red brick and limestone. Instead of sparsely filled streets where elegantly appointed carriages toured behind matching horses, the narrow lanes were filled with children as their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers watched over them while gossiping over mugs of coffee and hot tea.
The contrast to Eloisa’s world was as clear as night from day. It was also more than a few steps above where he and his seven siblings had grown up on Haversham Street. Where his mother and Connor still resided with twenty-year-old Mary Patricia and Katherine Jean, who’d only recently become all of nineteen.
No matter how many times he, Billy, Maeve, and Michael had encouraged them to move, his mother and eldest brother refused. They would never hear of the idea that the three youngest girls in the family would be better off somewhere other than the ramshackle area.
Instead, Connor would remind them that their father had worked tirelessly on the canals and tunnels and construction that built the city of Chicago, then in turn rebuilt it after the Great Fire. And that their neighborhood had been good enough for him, and therefore it was good enough for them all.
It seemed to look worse every time Sean visited. More than once he’d attempted to talk his mother into moving even a few blocks to the north. Maeve and Michael Thomas had done the same thing. But their mother had always refused, saying it was home and that Connor would protect them. Sean knew Connor would protect them. But he also knew Connor would encourage their mother to stay there out of sheer stubbornness rather than a real fondness for the place. No matter what, Connor was determined to show the rest of them that he knew best, even when he was being uninformed and narrow-minded.
Obviously, Katie wasn’t the only Ryan with a stubborn streak a mile long.
Now, as Sean turned the corner onto Maeve’s street, he felt the weight of a dozen pairs of eyes watching his arrival. He’d long ago stopped being surprised about the varying degrees of curiosity and contempt for his chosen occupation. His job on the police force was a source of talk in the neighborhood where they’d grown up, and here in Maeve’s as well. A varied combination of suspicion, pride, and disdain was directed at him, especially given his success in his job.
When he saw his sister’s neighbor, he tipped his hat. “Afternoon, Mrs. Henry. I hope you’re doing well this fine evening.”
