“Names?” Maude demanded.
“Colin…and Della,” he answered evenly. His composed expression sent a prickling of fear down Della’s back. Why was he acting as if this were some normal introduction instead of a hideous nightmare?
“You got last names?”
“It’s Miss Arnell and Mr. Colin,” he lied.
“All right, I’ll give you two a try.” The woman’s stabbing glare shot from Colin to Della. “If you’ve got something to say, spill it now. I run the best house this side of St. Louis. Three drawing rooms, an evening buffet, beer at a dollar a draw and five dollars for a split of champagne. Eighteen rooms, and my share is half the take. The last two years, 1886 and ’87, were pretty good. Too early to tell what ’88 will be. The damn self-righteous citizens of Denver are on the warpath.” Her sharp eyes went from Della to Colin. “You two sharing the sheets?”
“No,” said Colin evenly. “We just…arrived together.”
“All right. You can have Vinetta’s old room,” she told Della. “And, Mr. Colin, get yourself a room at the boardinghouse next door. Just remember, if you two want to stay, you follow the rules of the house just like everybody else.”
Della didn’t want to stay. She wanted the bizarre illusion to end. Every ounce of her common sense rejected the unbelievable situation. They couldn’t really be here…caught in a malicious time warp that had sent them back over a hundred years. In a minute, the spell would be over. Everything would be back to normal.
Colin was saying something to the woman but Della didn’t hear the words. Her mind refused to work. Immobilized from shock, she stared at the madam who was treating her like a newly hired bookkeeper. She wanted to laugh and had to clamp her mouth shut to keep the hysterical laughter at bay. She closed her eyes for a moment and prayed that when she opened them, everything would have returned to normal.
“You look puny to me, Della. I don’t want some sickly gal on my hands.” Maude glared at her. “I got a house to run. I need to know exactly how much money’s coming in and going out on a nightly basis. I got plenty of expenses. The girls pay room and board but my grocery bill looks like I’m running the Brown Palace. I need a good bookkeeper.” She scowled. “I’m not handing out any charity. You’ll either do the job or you’ll be out in the street on your scrawny behind. Understand?”
Della managed to nod.
Maude snorted. “Well, I’ll know soon enough if you can add two and two.” She gave a jerk of her head. “Come on back to my office, both of you. You can start work tomorrow.”
Della held back. Her eyes widened in panic. We can’t stay here.
Colin bent his dark head close to hers. “We have to play along until this whole thing makes some sense.”
“And what if it never makes sense?” she protested in a desperate whisper. Was it possible? Transported back in time to the turn of the century? Set down in the middle of Denver’s red-light district? “We have to go…before we get trapped.”
His face shadowed. “We’re already trapped.”
The cold finality of his words shattered something deep within her. He was a stranger, dressed in a black double-breasted waistcoat and trousers, white shirt with a stiff white collar, a soft gray tie looped at the neck and even a gold pocket-watch chain stretched across his waist. It disarmed her to see that his dark handsome looks were in harmony with their surroundings as if born to them.
“We have to find the tunnel!” A new edge of panic made her voice sharp. She stared at him with a horrible feeling that he had become someone else. Someone she didn’t know at all. Had he somehow engineered the time warp? Had he bolted back into the past because he belonged there? “How are we going to get out of this?”
“I don’t know.” Her safety weighed heavily on him. Desperation had drawn him into the tunnel, a desperation to be free of the past, but she was an innocent victim in these bizarre happenings. He had to protect her but he would be damned if he knew how. “You’ll have to trust me.”
Trust him?
“Are you two coming?” Maude asked impatiently as she turned around and saw them still standing in the foyer.
Colin searched Della’s face and waited for her reluctant nod before he answered, “Yes, we’re coming.” He murmured to Della, “Try to pretend that everything’s normal.”
She wanted to laugh hysterically at the word normal. How could any situation be further from normal than this one? If they tried to convince the horrible Maude Mullen who they really were, she would probably have them hauled off to the nearest asylum. Della shuddered just thinking about the possibility. Asylums in the nineteenth century were hellholes. A whorehouse might not be a desirable choice for a roof over their heads, but at the moment it was the better option. Maybe Colin was right. Their situation was too precarious for them to admit anything about their true identities. She took a deep breath and murmured, “All right. I’ll try to act…normal.”
At that moment, two young women dressed in satin and rose-trimmed ballgowns went up the stairs in the company of two attentive middle-aged men. Della had the sensation that she had seen the women before…going up the staircase of her own hotel…but there was one difference. These women were flesh and blood. She could have reached out and touched their warm and breathing bodies. If they were only specters, then so was she, Della thought with new horror.
She touched the ecru lace collar at her neck and fingered the small bone buttons that ran down the front of her dark brown dress. Strange undergarments cinched her waist and lifted her breasts. Her brown shoes had narrow heels and laces like the old-fashioned look that had come back into style, and her hair was no longer loose but caught in a bun at the back of her head. If she was fantasizing, no detail in her dress had been overlooked by her imagination.
Colin kept a firm grip on her elbow as they walked down the hall. His mind raced. The tunnel led from the hotel, under the street to this brothel and somehow they had ended up on Maude’s doorstep. If he located the opening of the tunnel, was there some way to reverse what had happened? Could he send Della back through the passage? God forgive him if he had somehow dragged her into the dark quagmire of his heritage.
As they walked down a center hall, Della glimpsed Victorian drawing rooms with ornate furniture covered in silk and damask. Richly dressed young women sat on ottomans or stood beside fashionably dressed men of all ages. A gaudy opulence radiated from gilded plaster designs embellishing the ceilings and walls of the rooms. In one of the rooms, couples were dancing to piano music. The men were all drinking and eating as if they were guests at an elaborate party. The combined sound of music, laughter and talking was deafening. Well, we found out where the noise was coming from, she thought with bitter irony.
“Let me do the talking,” Colin cautioned as they followed Maude into her office. He gave Della a reassuring smile that didn’t reach his eyes, but she was more than willing to let him take the lead, at least for now.
Maude’s office was a spacious room that originally might have been intended to be a library, Della guessed. Bookcases lining two walls contained only a smattering of books, but the room was crowded with furniture, lamps, knickknacks, a huge horsehair sofa and matching chairs covered in leather. An elegant desk made of black walnut dominated the center of the room. A collector’s dream, thought Della.
Maude motioned to a small, plain desk stacked with heavy ledgers that was placed against the back wall. “That’s your desk, Della. Be at it by eight o’clock every morning but Sunday. I’ll come downstairs between ten and eleven to go over the previous night’s receipts.”
Della wanted to sit down. Her legs felt too weak to hold her. Her knees threatened to buckle at any moment.
Maude waddled across the room and opened a door leading to a back hall. “Your room is past the kitchen, second door. The cook and housemaid have the other two rooms. I haven’t moved Vinetta’s things.