Belle wasted few thoughts on the hapless victims. Any man who trod the streets of the Barbary Coast knew he would pay for the privilege, though whether with cash or his life depended upon the wheel of fortune that night. Belle only hoped that Severn wouldn’t divine that she had held back a few coins for herself from the evening’s take. She shivered slightly, the chill along her spine owing nothing to the inclement weather. There was still time to replace the money and thus guarantee that when Severn’s hand touched her it would be only with tenderness.
When dawn broke and the sun burned its way through the encroaching fog, she would greet the day a year older. Belle doubted that the women in the neighboring cribs would recall it was the anniversary of her birth, but Miss Lilly would remember. She had promised to deliver a special copy of a photograph she had taken of Belle the week before, a fitting gift to celebrate her twentieth year, Miss Lilly had said kindly. Belle knew her profession had stripped any semblance of youth from her face and form long ago. It was why she was reduced to working in a crib rather than the high-priced bordello where the madam had once sold Belle’s innocence to the highest bidder. She had been pretty then. The photograph Miss Lilly had taken would show she was no longer.
She wouldn’t hand over the extra coins to Severn, Belle decided. The small hoard was her grubstake, a start for a better life. The meager amount was not enough to outrun him, so she’d wait for Severn to run up against a man who bested him, for only then would she truly manage to escape.
A second chill shook her thin body. Belle pulled the shawl even tighter around her shoulders. She should go in. The grubby shift she wore was no protection against the evils of night air. Severn would be furious with her if she became ill. A woman with the ague rarely made enough to please her man, much less enough to enable her to skim a coin or two for the future. Quietly, so as not to disturb those who already slept, Belle reentered the building.
In Severn’s room down the hall a man laughed. Severn’s familiar growl answered, although Belle didn’t catch what was said. They were probably viewing Severn’s large collection of erotic stereographs, three-dimensional pictures of plump, nude or nearly nude women posed in improbable positions. He occasionally used them to get a man’s blood up, and thus increase the price he’d receive for the services of one of his stable of whores. If the man with him was yet another customer, Belle hoped it was one of the other doves he disturbed and not her. She was just about to shut the door to her narrow crib when her attention was caught by another sound—the ring of cascading coins.
The clatter went on far longer than she expected, causing gilded dreams to dance in her head. As if unable to resist the alluring music, Belle stole closer, her bare feet soundless on the unvarnished floorboards. Was Severn boasting of his wealth to his visitor? And if so, to whom? It was dangerous to flaunt a fortune hereabouts. Even those who claimed to be a friend would willingly stick a knife in a man’s ribs to gain a single twenty-dollar gold piece, or less.
The door hadn’t closed entirely behind Severn and his companion. The aged flooring was warped, so that the panel near the portal sagged, leaving a gap just wide enough to show Belle a narrow glimpse of the gaslit room.
Severn sat at the table scraping the last of a glittering pile of coins into a rough cloth bag. When he finished he passed it to the man across from him and accepted a glass of whiskey in exchange. His long, lanky form was relaxed, the strength and power of his arms and hands disguised by the ease of his stance. As Belle watched, Severn raised his drink in a toast to his companion. “To yet another very successful night,” he said.
“You celebrate too soon, my friend,” the other man said.
While her line of vision allowed her to see only a shoulder and the back of his head, Belle was sure she knew the visitor’s voice, though she couldn’t put a name or face to him at the moment.
“And you celebrate far too infrequently,” Severn countered. “When are you going to start enjoying our good fortune?”
“When it becomes a much larger fortune,” the unknown man murmured. He got to his feet. “Unreasonable spending would tip the scales against me just now, Karl, and you know how much I would dislike that.”
“Leaving then, are you?” Severn asked.
“I must,” his visitor said, and turned slightly.
Belle held back a gasp as she recognized him. His name trembling on her lips, she barely had time to retrace her steps before the door to Severn’s room opened, the scrape of wood against wood preceding the thud of men’s footsteps.
Her heart pounding, Belle glanced back before slipping into the dark confines of her crib room. Beneath her foot, the ancient flooring groaned softly.
The secretive man at the far end of the hall turned hastily at the faint sound and caught a glimpse of a fluttering skirt a bare second before Belle closed her door and leaned thankfully against it.
She was unaware that he gestured ominously to Severn before going out into the fog-shrouded night.
Chapter One
Lillith Renfrew frowned as she handed the requested sum to the driver of the hack. It was far more than she’d paid in the past for the journey from her home on Franklin Street to her destination, but there was little she could do about the matter. She hadn’t the time to haggle like a fishwife over the fare. As it was, her lapel watch showed that she was nearly late for her rendezvous with Belle Tauber.
The driver pocketed the coin without checking the denomination, obviously trusting her, although Lilly couldn’t say she did the same where he was concerned.
“You’ll return in an hour as I requested?” she asked, gathering her equipment. With the straps of her two satchels settled bandolier-style across her chest, one carrying plate holders, the other photographs to be delivered, she shouldered the heavy camera with its awkward tripod base.
“You bet,” the driver called, and drove off never to be seen again, Lilly was sure. It wasn’t the first time a cabby had left her stranded in the Barbary Coast. Which just went to show that such men thought nothing of leaving a proper young woman alone in the most disreputable neighborhood in San Francisco.
Well, perhaps she didn’t look as helpless as other females. Or as proper, considering she was lugging photographic equipment. What other middle-class woman would have taken up the science of the camera with the intention of making her living by it? None to her knowledge, for how many other of the gentler sex were strong enough to transport the weighty camera and equipment without help? Again, none of her acquaintance, nor of her sister’s. Nor, as they so often reminded her, of their parents’.
At times it seemed as if the members of her family had but a single theme: her inability to be like the other women of her class, which, they felt, resulted in her sad lack of suitors.
It never crossed their minds that she was just as they had created her, her tall frame similar to that of her father and brother, her unfeminine strength the result of years of nursing duties, supporting and lifting her invalid mother. Lilly’s dearth of suitors was quite a natural state of affairs, considering she had no social life outside of her parents’ narrow circle. Pouring tea for her mother’s visitors, all of whom were elderly women, or acting as hostess when her father entertained an old business associate at dinner, had yet to put her in the way of an eligible, single gentleman.
Granted, she didn’t possess the golden haired beauty that had made her elder brother and sister much sought after. Not only had she been born a decade behind Edmund and nearly nine years after Vinia, Lilly had also been overlooked when physical assets were handed out. Rather than blond curls like her siblings, she had brown hair with nary a wave in it unless she used a crimping iron. Rather than eyes that rivaled the summer skies, as her brother’s and sister’s did, Lilly thought her eyes an unremarkable, washed-out shade of blue. Kind matrons described her as handsome, for her nose was too long to be fashionable, her jawline too