Prologue
New York City, 1882
“Johanna.”
The voice was unmistakable, though the name, almost, was not.
No one called her Johanna any longer. To everyone who thought they knew her, she was Rose. Mademoiselle Beaumont. The Rose of New York. Any of those would do.
She had not been Johanna to anyone other than herself in years.
She stiffened, a dull throb of foreboding blossoming to life in her gut at the familiar face and form before her. Unexpected and yet as recognizable as the back of her own hand, despite the intervening years.
“What are you doing in my hotel room?” she demanded, her voice trembling, betraying her.
She was confident in her talent as an actress, but some fear was far too real to be disguised. He looked much older now, his blond hair thinning. More like their father than she could have imagined.
He smiled, as if this were a pleasant visit. As if he were a welcome guest. “I have my ways.”
Of course he did. Drummond McKenna was a powerful man, as Michael McKenna had been. Leader of the Emerald Club. Scion of great wealth and great misery. The mere sight of her brother was enough to remind her of the stinging lashes she had endured for her disobedience.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked.
“The Rose of New York?” He sauntered toward her, and she realized he was holding a framed picture in his hands. “Your face is everywhere, Jojo. Handbills, the papers, hell, nearly everycarte de visitein the city has you on it.”
“Do not call me Jojo,” she bit out, eying the picture he held once more. She recognized the frame, for it had cost her a small fortune. But the price she had paid to buy it was no comparison to the picture it held.
That picture, the only one she possessed of Pearl, was priceless.
“Why not?” He glanced down at the burled walnut frame he held. “It is your name, sister.”
The hated pet name from her childhood reminded her of everything she had spent all the years since trying to forget. “I am Rose Beaumont.”
Rose Beaumont hailed from Paris.
She was fashionable. Sought after. An enigma. Rose Beaumont was the woman Johanna wished she were. A chimera, it was true. Another role she played.
“You will always be Johanna McKenna to me,” Drummond told her. “Just as you will always share my blood.”
“Tainted blood,” she dismissed. “I have no wish to claim it. I have done everything in my power to take myself as far from the man who sired me as possible.”
Her mother was an innocent. Siobhan McKenna had died shortly after bringing Johanna into the world, leaving two children behind to face the tyrannical wrath of a man who had drowned his grief in whisky.
“Hate Father as you must, but I am your brother, Jojo, and I need your help.” Drummond paused, then held up the picture. “She looks like you when you were a wee wisp, you know.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as a rush of profound grief hit her. “She did.”
He inclined his head, studying her, expressing no hint of compassion. His face was, in fact, cold as stone. “She is dead.”
Three stark words. Unfathomable and yet true all at once. Unlike the lashes on her back from so long ago, however, Pearl’s death was a wound that would never heal.
Johanna flinched. “Yes.”
“This picture is precious to you, then,” Drummond said, still holding it in his hands.
“It is the only picture I have of her,” she admitted, before she could think better of the confession. But her mind and heart were one, desperate for him to give it back to her. “Please, Drummond. Do not—”
He dropped it onto the floor. The crack of the glass was like a dagger piercing her heart. She cried out and rushed forward, dropping to her knees, uncaring about the glass, whether she cut her fingers. She was single-minded in her need to rescue that photograph, to keep it from further damage or harm.
