Thursday's Child (Out of Time #5) (21 page)

Elizabeth felt a wave of guilt. He shouldn't have come in the first place. If they caught him, it would all be their fault. She shook her head; there would be time for recriminations later. Now, they had to get the heck out of here. She took quick measure of the streets. She recognized it. She'd come this way when she'd visited Dr. Walker's. “This way,” she said and they walked as quickly as they could away from the mess they'd made and back to Cypress Hill.

Catherine was waiting for them on the back porch when they arrived. She smiled with relief when she saw them, but it faded quickly. She hurried down the steps and peered out into the darkness of the back yard. “Where's Abraham?”

“We ran into a spot of trouble,” Simon said in that uniquely British way of understating really bad things.

“We'd almost gotten away,” Elizabeth said, “and then these two police officers showed up.”

Catherine stepped forward, her face drawn and pale. “Did they catch him?”

“No,” Simon said. “I don’t think so. We ran and he led them away. Gave us a chance to escape.”

Despite her worry, Catherine smiled. “That's Abraham.”

“He was much faster than they were,” Simon assured her. “I'm sure he lost them.”

“I hope so. If they catch him…” she said and then let out a shaky breath. With an effort, she composed herself and ushered them back into the house. “You should change.”

They agreed and made their way upstairs as quietly as they could.

Once inside their room, they set about shedding their disguises.

“Do you really think he made it?” Elizabeth asked.

Simon nodded, but the worry on his face was plain.

“If he gets caught, we'll come forward,” Elizabeth said. “He won't take the fall for us.”

Simon rolled their dirty clothes into a ball and set them aside. “Yes, but I fear it won't spare him.”

“But if he's—”

“He's a slave, Elizabeth,” Simon said and then sat down heavily on the bed. “If he's caught I doubt it will matter what we say.”

Elizabeth felt like she'd been slapped. She'd been so stupid. How had she not realized that? She'd been so used to thinking of people as people that she still hadn't digested the notion that, here, that was not the case.

“We should never have let him come,” Simon said, the weight of it all clear in his voice.

Elizabeth sat down next to him and took his hand in hers. “Maybe he got away?”

Simon nodded slowly. He patted her hand and stood, then bundled up their dirty clothes. “Maybe.”

Once they'd changed back into their usual clothes and cleaned up a little, Simon and Elizabeth went back downstairs. They found Catherine sitting in the second parlor at the back of the house. She'd lit a single oil lamp and was sitting on the settee near the large bay window at the back of the house. She turned away from her vigil when they entered.

“I'm sure he'll be along shortly,” Catherine said, forcing a smile to her face.

Elizabeth sat down opposite her. “I'm sure.”

Simon remained standing in a posture Elizabeth had come to recognize as “still pacing” — feet shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind his back and a far off look in his eyes. He was replaying it all in his head, just as she was. Self-reproach and worry mixing in equal parts.

Simon might prefer silence's company to mindless chatter, but Elizabeth did not. She couldn't stand the “what ifs” that lurked in the quiet. “How long have you known Abraham?” she asked.

Catherine smiled again, this one genuine and fond. “Nearly all of my life. We practically grew up together.” Her smile faded a bit. “As much as two in our positions can. We were very close until I went away to school.”

Catherine turned away from the window and settled into the sofa. “I'm the youngest and only girl. When my mother died, my father sent me away to finishing school.” Her eyes held a hint of laughter and a little pain. “Apparently, I was unfinished. I think I still am.”

“I'm not sure any of us are ever fully cooked,” Elizabeth said.

Catherine laughed lightly. “You're right about that. I resisted my father's efforts to refine me and I found myself shuttled from one school to another. I finally ended up with my mother's sister in Connecticut where I attended Miss Porter's. One day, I heard Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, no relation I'm afraid, give a speech.”

Elizabeth knew only a handful of names, she thought shamefully, of the women who had fought in the early days for women's suffrage, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one.

“I had friends who'd spoken of the Women's Rights movement,” Catherine said, “but despite my bluster I was still a good Southern girl at heart. I might be able to argue with my father about Euripides or what silver to use at supper, but… I will admit I was afraid of him. But then, Mrs. Stanton said something I will never forget, 'The greatest protection any woman can have is courage.' And so I found myself some.”

Elizabeth smiled. “And you went to Seneca Falls?”

“I did and then returned home to drive my father crazy.”

Suddenly, Simon moved and stepped toward the window. “Thank God,” he said.

Catherine spun around and then practically ran to the back door. Elizabeth and Simon weren't far behind. Catherine pulled the door open just as Abraham was about to reach for the handle and threw herself into his arms.

Abraham's face was slick with sweat and covered with confusion. He held his arms out, not daring to return the bear hug Catherine was giving him. Finally, she released him. “Thank heaven. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” he said and looked to Simon and Elizabeth with questioning eyes.

“We are as well,” Simon said. “Thanks to you.”

“Good, now I don't—”

The sound of a throat clearing from the stairway stopped the rest of the words. They all turned to find the Colonel, wrapped in a robe and deep displeasure. “What,” he said, lingering over the word, “is going on here?”

Elizabeth did her best not to look guilty and was sure she did a poor job of it. The Colonel's eyes shifted from one of them to the next, pausing at each and silently demanding an answer.

“We thought we heard something, papa,” Catherine said quickly. “Someone in the yard. Abraham chased them away.”

The Colonel's eyes shifted from his daughter to Abraham and then back again. His usual sour disposition masked any hint of whether he believed them or not. He cast a quick accusing glare at Simon and then Elizabeth that clearly said, this is your fault, but he merely grunted and let them squirm under the pressure for a moment before saying, “I see.”

“You best go to bed now, Abraham,” the Colonel continued.

“Yassuh.”

“I will speak with the rest of you in the morning,” the Colonel said before turning and starting back upstairs. “Do not wake me again.”

Chapter Eighteen

The following morning over breakfast, Simon and Elizabeth did their best to dissuade Catherine from becoming further embroiled in their mission. After last night's near disaster, the last thing Simon wanted was someone else to worry about, but Catherine Stanton was not the sort to stop her flag carrying because of a hurricane force wind.

“I wonder what they're hiding,” Catherine said as she buttered her toast.

“Maybe it was an honest oversight?” Elizabeth said with a quick glance to Simon.

“I think that's likely,” Simon agreed, although he and Elizabeth believed quite the opposite.

Catherine chewed her bite of toast ferociously as she thought. “Maybe we should go to see Dr. Walker? Confront him.”

“Are you ill?” the Colonel said as he joined them in the dining room.

“No, papa.” Catherine took another bite of toast and, thankfully, had enough sense not to explain further.

“Good,” the Colonel said as he sat down at the end of the table. “If you are, you're not to see that charlatan. Dr. Parish or Smith, anyone else.”

The Colonel opened his newspaper as one of the servants came in with a fresh cup of tea and put it in front of him.

“Really?” Elizabeth said and looked to Simon for an encouraging nod. “I saw him the other day and he seemed quite nice.”

The Colonel snorted and unfolded his newspaper. “To women with more in their purses than in their heads, perhaps.”

Simon arched an eyebrow in disapproval and the Colonel amended, although a little reluctantly, “Present company excluded, of course.”

He lifted his newspaper and Elizabeth stuck out her tongue at him.

Catherine choked on her tea.

The Colonel put down his paper and frowned at her. “Are you sure you're not ill?”

Catherine shook her head and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin.

“I don't know,” Elizabeth said. “He volunteers at the orphanage and I understand he's the one who examined the body of that poor woman they found the other day, for the police.”

The Colonel harrumphed. “Walker's only charitable cause is himself. The man is a degenerate and a gambler. Losing money he can ill afford,” the Colonel said with repulsion. “He makes an appearance to impress the town widows and loosen their pocketbooks.”

“At least he makes an appearance,” Catherine said not so quietly.

The Colonel glared at her. She'd told Elizabeth that she'd tried again and again to get her father to volunteer there. The boys there would make perfect little soldiers, she'd said. Besides, he was always looking for someone to boss around and the boys would be far more willing victims than she was. Somehow, that hadn't won him over.

The Colonel didn't rise to Catherine's bait. “I am far too busy for such things. As to the other business, Walker helping the police,” he said, “I find that highly unlikely.”

“No, it's true papa.”

The Colonel seemed about to reply when his frown deepened. “And just what is your interest in the matter?”

Catherine shrugged. “Idle curiosity.”

Her father pursed his lips. He knew that there was nothing remotely idle about his daughter. “Stay out of other people's business, Catherine.”

He fixed her with a pointed glare and she offered an innocent smile in return. He humphed again and went back to reading his paper. Catherine wiggled her eyebrows over her cup of tea and Elizabeth stifled a giggle.

Between the two of them, Simon was doomed.

~~~

Simon tried to be more discreet than he had the last time he'd traveled down Water Street to Smiley's Saloon. To his knowledge, Elijah Harper had not gossiped about his previous sojourn, but he doubted he'd be so lucky should he be seen a second time.

Simon pushed open the swinging doors and stepped inside. The lower floor was nearly empty with just a few people, all too tired or still too drunk to care about anything. Two saloon girls, including Genevieve lingered at the end of the bar.

“Back again?” Genevieve said with a smile.

“I just need a few minutes,” he said.

The brunette with smeared lipstick next to her laughed. “You and every other man.”

Simon nodded toward a table in the corner. “I only have a few questions.”

“If you need help, honey,” the brunette said as she swayed precariously close, “I'm your girl.”

Genevieve pushed her friend away. “Go, dry up, Sal.”

Sal frowned and pouted but slid down the bar away from them.

Genevieve motioned to the corner table. Out of habit, Simon held out her chair. She looked at him as if he'd grown a second head, then laughed and sat down, shaking her head.

Simon pulled up his own chair and placed a ten-dollar bill on the table. “Just a few questions.” He pulled his handkerchief from his jacket pocket and unfolded it. “Do you recognize this?”

Genevieve leaned forward and picked up the necklace to examine it. Her expression shifted from bored to interested and then quickly to worry. “Where'd you get this?”

“Do you know who it belongs to?”

She shrugged. “It's Alice's. She never took it off. How'd you get it?”

“You're sure?”

“Said it was her mother's or something, from Scotland or Ireland or someplace.”

Simon nodded thoughtfully and put the necklace back into his handkerchief. “Thank you.”

“Why do you care? What's she to you?”

Simon put the folded handkerchief back into his pocket. “Someone who needs help.”

Genevieve slid the ten-dollar bill toward her and stuffed it into her bosom. “Ain't we all?”

~~~

Elizabeth took a few moments to study the girls as they changed their bed linens. While Simon was otherwise occupied, Elizabeth had decided to tag along with Catherine to the orphanage. She'd helped in the kitchen until the cook had practically kicked her out. Catherine was busy teaching the boy's morning class, leaving Elizabeth to her own devices, and so she sought out the girl's dormitory.

The children fluffed and wrestled with their sheets as they made their beds. One girl, bigger than the others sat and watched a little one do the work, until Elizabeth's watchful eye forced her to help. Most of the others tended to their own small beds, except for one little girl at the end of the hall. She still had her nightgown on and sat perched on the edge of a bed watching as another girl worked.

At first Elizabeth thought it was another bullying situation, but she soon realized it was anything but. The girl in the nightgown coughed and shivered and the other put a blanket around her shoulders before getting back to finishing making the bed. She smoothed down the sheets and then folded back the covers. The littler one slid in between the sheets and curled up. Poor little bug.

The other girl handed her something, a doll maybe, and then tucked her in. This was the one Elizabeth would want to talk to — the little mother. She was hardly ten years old, but Elizabeth could tell she was the one who looked out for the little ones. If anyone had taken the time to get to know Mary, it would have been her.

Elizabeth walked down the corridor between the beds.

“Is she all right?” Elizabeth asked.

The girl looked up at her in surprise and back down at her charge with such compassion it made Elizabeth's heart tighten. “She'll be fine,” she said as she petted the little girl's head. “Won't you, Mellie?”

Mellie nodded and curled up tighter, hugging her doll beneath the covers.