Brigham raised one brow. “I could slit yer throat easy enough.” Then he laughed lightly, putting his arm around his young accomplice’s shoulders. “But where’s the profit in that? Ye’re still the best, Nath. None of the other boys can ’old a candle to ye.” He felt the stiffness ease out of Nathan’s thin frame. “That’s better. If it’ll make ye feel more the thing, it’s not a dagger at all. It’s for opening letters.” He pointed to the escritoire in the far corner. It was littered with correspondence.
Nathan thought about that. He wondered if Miss Ondine had been surprised while she was sitting at her desk, answering an invitation or writing a letter to her lover. He wondered if she had tried to fend off her attacker with the opener and found it turned against her. He banished the thoughts with difficulty. “Let’s go,” he urged again.
“All right.” Brigham’s arm dropped away from Nathan and he started for the window. “Blow out the candles. Darkness will help cover us. I’ll go first.” Brigham raised the window and put one leg over the sill. He turned to see what was holding up Nathan and caught the sheen of tears in the boy’s clear gray eyes. “Ye wanted to go,” he said harshly. “Let’s go. Don’t turn soft-hearted and cotton-headed on me now.”
“She could ’ave been me mum,” Nathan said softly, rooted to the spot.
“Or mine. She was a whore after all.”
Nathan was moved by Brigham’s bitterly cold tones. Sucking in his lower lip and bracing his shoulders, he stayed by the bed long enough to cover Beth Ann’s lifeless body with a sheet, then he followed Brigham out of the room. At street level the boys disappeared into the shadowed, dangerous alleys that were their home.
Twenty-three dayslater the peelers nabbed Nathan while he was working the crowd at Vauxhall Gardens. It would have ended with a light jail sentence if it hadn’t been for the cameo brooch they found concealed in the heel of his shoe. They recognized the quality of the ivory cutting, the fineness of the gold filigree, and knew it fit the description of a particular piece of jewelry missing from the home of Miss Beth Ann Ondine.
He was tried at an assize in London for the murder of Miss Ondine. Some days he saw Lord Cheyne sitting at the back of the crowded courtroom, trying to express disinterest in the case when it was obvious, at least to Nathan, that his lordship was a broken man. Beth Ann was loved, he thought, and he wanted to scream from the stand that he hadn’t killed her, that he was wrongly accused. Yet he said nothing of his innocence, protesting it not to his solicitor or to the jury. There was no question of ever raising Brigham’s name as his accomplice and Nathan did not expect Brigham to step forward and clear him.
Yet that was precisely what Brigham attempted to do and for his pains was clapped in irons and tried for his part in the robbery. His sentence was four years. Nathan got twenty. They were both sentenced to hard labor in Australia and thus exiled from England forever.
“Looks like we napped a winder this time,” Brigham said, using the slang expression for transportation. He raised himself to the iron bar window of the cell he shared with Nathan and looked at the scaffolding in the courtyard. “Goin’ across the world, we are. Under it, too. Van Dieman’s land I ’ear it called.”
Nathan knew what his friend was seeing beyond the confines of their cell. He had watched men work on the gallows while he was waiting for his trial. Without Brigham’s help he might have been taking the walk to the noose himself. Transportation was not as popular as it once was and the crime of which he was accused was particularly heinous. The jury had had no doubt he was guilty, but perhaps the judge had. All things considered, the sentence was a reprieve of sorts.
“Why did ye do it?” he asked, moving out of the shadow Brigham cast across the damp stone floor.
“Ye’re me friend, ain’t ye?” Brigham answered simply. “Couldn’t let ye go to the bay alone, could I? Who’d look after ye if I wasn’t around?” He lowered himself to the floor again. A smile touched his mouth as he tilted his head at a rakish, cocky angle. “Besides, there’s gold ta be ’ad in Botany Bay, or ain’t ye ’eard?”
“I ’adn’t ’eard.”
“Well, I ’ad. Jimmy Faughnan got ’imself sent off as soon as the news came in. No shame in that. He’ll do his time then ’ave the last laugh when he strikes it rich. Just the way we will.”
Nathan said nothing. He had wondered how the cameo found its way to his shoe and why the peelers singled him out at Vauxhall Gardens. Now he knew.
Part I
San Fancisco
Chapter 1
April 1869
She was dead tired. There was no question about that. It showed in her bowed head and in the intermittent slowing of her steps. Puddle water splashed the hem of Lydia’s gown and soaked her right shoe. She sighed wearily and took the time to skirt the next shallow pool of water. Lamplight from the dance halls and gambling palaces was reflected on the rain-glazed street. It shimmered and flickered beneath Lydia’s feet, an effect that went unappreciated until she turned into the alley behind the Silver Lady.
Lydia hesitated, standing at the edge of the dark alley, wondering if she dared take it. Common sense dictated no. Anything,anyone,could be in the black shadows and recesses behind the gambling hall and hotel. On the other hand, she thought, she was going to be late for her own party. She hadn’t taken a carriage because she hadn’t expected to be gone more than a couple of hours, and by leaving home on foot she had been able to avoid the inevitable questions. She didn’t have fare for a cab, and though her parents would have paid for it, again, there would have been questions.
Those questions were the reason Lydia Chadwick took the alley. A few short cuts, shaving minutes here and there, could get her home before she was missed by anyone but her maid. Pei Ling wouldn’t raise the alarm unless it appeared that Lydia was going to miss her first guests, and Lydia wasn’t going to let that happen.
Darkness and Lydia’s active imagination played an equal role in prompting her to hurry. She kept to the center of the alley, prepared to dart for safety in any direction. She knew her senses were heightened by her circumstances. It was as if she could hear each individual raindrop as it splattered on the cobblestone, or see shadows separate from the vacant doorways. Her breathing roared in her ears and fear was a dryness in her throat.
Yet when she first heard the footsteps behind her, she denied they existed. An echo, she thought, an echo of her own steps. But when she stopped, the sounds went on a beat too long. Worse, there was more than one pair of feet. Anyone had the right to come this way, she reasoned. Anyone. She told herself she was being unnecessarily cautious to suppose she was being followed.
No one behind her could know she was Lydia Chadwick. No one could suspect by her dress or her manner, by the fact that she was on foot, that her parents were Madeline and Samuel Chadwick, that her home was a granite-and-glass mansion on Nob Hill, and that someday she would inherit one of the greatest fortunes in San Francisco. Her presence behind the Silver Lady, a location she would have avoided in daylight without an escort, encouraged Lydia to believe that whoever was behind her now wasn’t there because of who she was. There was a modicum of comfort in that.
Raising the hem of her gown a few inches in one hand and securing her shawl in the other, Lydia picked up the pace again, daring to glance behind her one time. She saw two dark figures, large enough that they could only be men. They were walking closely together and they didn’t pause when she turned her head to see them. She felt them match her steps, then, when she faced forward again, she heard them break rhythm, lengthening their stride and closing the distance between them quickly.
Lydia started to run. Her shoes were heavy with water and the wet cobblestones made the going slippery. The restrained coil of her sable hair loosened from its anchoring pins and fell down her back. Rain-slick strands were matted to the crown of her head and dark tendrils fell across her eyes, blinding her momentarily. When she reached to brush them away she lost her grip on her shawl. The fringe caught on the brooch she wore at her throat while the rest of the plaid garment fluttered behind her. She tried to recover it, but the hands that finally gripped it were not her own.
Lydia screamed. The large hand clamped over her mouth smothered the sound and her breath. Lightheaded, she struck out at her assailants with her feet and managed to catch one of them on the shin. She heard a grunt, but it was small satisfaction as pain shot from her toes to her leg. Lydia clawed at the hand covering her mouth as she was backed into a doorway. It was only after she was cornered, blocked by the door behind her and by the pair of men in front of her, that she felt the pressure on her mouth ease.
Sucking in air, tasting blood on her inner lip, Lydia leaned weakly against the door and stared widely at her tormentors, trying to make out their features in the darkness. She smelled spirits on their breath and sensed a certain wildness in their eyes as they unashamedly returned her scrutiny. She reached blindly behind her for a doorknob and was immediately pushed to the other side of the door.
