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After a moment, the ground stabilized under her feet. With terror caught in her throat, Della gingerly raised her head from his chest. No horses, no wagons, no unfamiliar buildings. Cars roared by and the whirling blades of a helicopter sounded overhead. The stores, the people and the shops were just as they had been. Her strangled breath came in short gasps.
“Let’s get that drink,” he said. He kept a firm arm around her waist as he guided her across the street to the outdoor café, and eased her onto one of the chairs. “Scotch and water,” he barked to a hovering waiter and held up two fingers. Then he sat down opposite her. “All right. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I guess I had some kind of…of a spell,” she said lamely. She wanted to tell him what was happening to her but she couldn’t reveal the unbelievable truth. I see and hear things that aren’t there. I think I’m going crazy.
He frowned. “Your eyes were round with terror. Something frightened you.” His intense blue eyes suddenly darkened to almost black. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Why should I lie to you?” she said with some of her normal spirit. “Please don’t ask me to explain. I need time to sort things out. And I don’t want to talk about it, all right?” How could she tell him what was happening to her when she didn’t know, herself?
The waiter arrived with the drinks. She held her glass with trembling hands and gratefully let the fiery liquid ease down her throat. She kept her eyes lowered.
Colin’s troubled gaze appraised her over the rim of his menu. “I recommend the black bean soup and Monte Carlo sandwich.” She nodded and he ordered another drink with their food.
The surrounding laughter and easy chatter of other diners was reassuring. An early-evening crowd sauntered along the sidewalk in front of the café, and slowly the weird illusion of horses and wagons faded as if it had never happened. She began to relax.
When their order came, and she had eaten what little she could, Della glanced anxiously at Colin. What must he think of her? “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“I want to know what happened.” He leaned forward, offering his hand, but she didn’t take it. Instead, she drew back in her chair. His mouth tightened and a muscle quivered in his cheek.
She could see that her rejection had offended him. But how could she explain that she was entertaining dangerous feelings about him that were too strong to deny. He was engaging her emotions on levels she had never felt before. If the truth were known, he scared her.
“I know about dreams…nightmares…unexplained visions,” he said as if trying to encourage her confidence. “Don’t be afraid. You can share them with me.” The blue in his eyes deepened to a strange feathery black. “I’ll understand.”
She stared at him and suddenly her mouth went dry. I’ll understand. The shadowy figure at the end of the hall and the outline at the rain-streaked door…both times the impressions had made her think of Colin. And now, on the street, he had been with her when the bizarre illusion had assaulted her. Her pulse began to pound in her temples. Her thoughts whirled. Get hold of yourself. She really was losing it. Trying to tie Colin in with the aberrations of her mind was utterly ridiculous. She felt herself coloring under his measuring stare.
“I knew…I knew I was too tired to go out tonight,” she stammered. “You should have gone to the dinner without me. It’s still early. You can still make the meeting…”
“Damn the meeting,” he said gruffly. He quickly paid the bill and they left.
Silence built a wall between them on the way back to her hotel. When they reached the front door, he took the key from her trembling hands. Ignoring her pointed “Thanks…goodbye,” he followed her into the lobby.
Della sent a frantic look at the staircase. Empty. No painted ladies. No bright lights. Nothing. If she took him upstairs, there would be nothing to show him there, either. No harlots parading in and out of rooms in their gaudy satin dresses, no voluptuous redhead taking a bath in an old tub.
He stood behind her and she could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck. A sob caught in her throat and hot tears spilled into the corners of her eyes. He put his hands on her arms. Gently he eased her against his strong firm body. “Tell me. Whatever it is, we need to share it.”
The last fiber of her resistance melted away. She took a tremulous deep breath. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. Tonight on the street…everything changed,” she said in a strangled voice. “The buildings. The people. I heard horses and carriages.” She turned to face him. “And in the hotel, I see women. Old-fashioned harlots. Painted faces, low-cut gaudy dresses, hair piled high on their heads. Wandering up and down the stairs. In the halls. Taking baths.”
“Good God.” His voice cracked.
“Nobody else sees them…only me. I don’t know—” She broke off. Like an explosion, a raucous noise vibrating down the halls and ricocheting off the high ceilings shattered the silence of the empty hotel. A cacophony of laughter, tinny music and clinking glasses rose and fell in waves and vibrated through the echoing building.
“What the hell—” Colin swore.
“You hear it, too?” Suddenly, she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. The bewildering onslaught of noise wasn’t just in her mind. She wasn’t alone.
Colin strode to the bottom of the stairs, listened and then shook his head. “It must be coming from somewhere at the back of the building.” He grabbed her hand. “Come on. Let’s find out what the hell is going on.”
The racket grew louder as they reached a back entrance and the stone stairs descending into the basement.
“Oh, no!” Della shot an apprehensive look at Colin. She knew where their search would end. “The tunnel.”
“Didn’t you close the damn thing up?” He strode angrily down the stairs.
The basement was dank and drafty with a bare electric light hanging from the open-beam ceiling. At one end of the room, a crude opening yawned in the rock wall. Cold air swept out of the passage and Della hugged herself against the chill. The loud thumping of piano, laughter and singing created a deafening din.
“It’s coming from the tunnel, all right,” Colin said.
“But how can that be? There’s only a vacant lot across the street.”
Colin’s eyes burned into hers. “Then none of this is happening. We’re both hallucinating.” His voice lowered to a growl. “Maybe you buy that but I don’t. All my life, I’ve been shackled to the past. This is my great-grandfather’s mean spirit calling to me.”
In one frightening second Della knew that he was going to rush into the black tunnel.
“Go back upstairs,” he ordered.
“No,” she screamed, grabbing his hand and trying to pull him back.
He gave her a shove and turned toward the tunnel. In the next instant, he was gone. Della had not intended to follow him, but before she could move back from the opening, a blast of cold air sucked her forward.
“Colin!” she cried out, twisting and turning, unable to free herself from the propelling force driving her into the tunnel.
In the darkness of the passage, he reached out and grabbed her hand. A gale like the intense sucking force in a wind tunnel swept them both forward. Caught in a whipping, swirling hurricane, they clung to each other as they traveled through the passage.
A split second? An eternity? Della never knew. Flashes of bright lights. The brilliant hues of rampant flowers. Almost imperceptibly, the dank smell of the tunnel was replaced by a sweet floral perfume. A kaleidoscope of colors blinded her with stabbing intensity. The wind died and Della felt the ground beneath them level out.
They clung to each other. When they regained their balance and could see again, they were standing in the foyer of Maude’s Pleasure House on Market Street, dressed in the fashions of the 1880s.
Chapter 3
T he bordello blazed with lights. Fiddle and piano music, crescendos of laughter and the din of high-pitched voices floated out into a center hall from several arched doorways. Della’s throat tightened and the palms of her hands beaded with hot sweat. The same kind of women she had seen wandering around her hotel paraded up and down the staircase on the arms of purposeful-looking men. They were not vague and shadowy figures but horribly real.
Even as Della fought against the reality that bombarded her senses, a plump woman in her forties with a homely face, sharp nose and double chins paused at the top of a center staircase. She rested one bejeweled hand on the polished banister and looked down at Colin and Della as if she could reduce them to dust with one wave of her gnarled hand.
Della stared in disbelief. Rounded hips and full breasts stretched the fabric of her low-cut gown. An elaborate twist of false red hair held in place on top of her head by feathers and jeweled pins added to her height. Her complexion was sallow even with rouge and powder and there was a hawklike sharpness to her gray eyes, cold and impaling. She had nostrils that flared and a mouth that showed large ugly teeth. Della wanted to turn and run but her legs wouldn’t move.
The woman lifted the train of her deep blue taffeta gown, came down the steps and crossed a wide entrance hall to the foyer where they stood. The reek of cheap perfume touched Della’s nostrils with familiarity.
“I’m Maude Mullen,” she said in a guttural voice. “It’s about time somebody answered my ad.” She eyed Colin up and down like someone judging horse-flesh. “The job is part-time handyman and bouncer. Pay is a dollar a day. Be on the job by ten in the morning and at the bar by seven in the evening, except on Sunday. You keep your hands off the merchandise. Got it? Well, do you want the job or not?”
Colin hesitated for a moment and then nodded. He didn’t know what else to do. The woman had obviously mistaken him for someone else. He could use the precious time to figure out what in the hell was going on.
Maude turned her sharp calculating eyes on Della. “As for you. Not much to look at…too thin. But that don’t matter. Vinetta Gray was with me for twenty years. Best damn bookkeeper I ever saw. Kept the cleanest set of books on Market Street. You do the same…or else—got me? Any juggling with the numbers, I’ll know it. I don’t tolerate liars or cheats.” Her nostrils quivered and she set her painted lips in an ugly line. “If I find you’ve been less than honest with me, you’ll wish you never set foot in this place.”
Della opened her mouth but Colin put his hand on her elbow and gave it a warning squeeze. Don’t say anything.
She wanted to argue with him. They were making a mistake, she was certain of it. Surely it would be better to tell this madam that they weren’t the people she thought they were. Every minute they carried on the horrible charade, they could be sinking deeper and deeper into some incomprehensible horror. Della’s chest was so tight, she couldn’t breathe.
“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. We just buried her a week ago. You’ll find things just as she left them.”
Della’s stomach took a sickening plunge. She didn’t want to have anything to do with a dead woman’s room, didn’t want to be surrounded by Vinetta’s personal belongings. She sent an anxious look at Colin, pleading with her eyes for him to say something.
“The back wing of the house is off limits to males,” Maude snapped, having apparently intercepted the look they’d exchanged. “No danger of any of our gentlemen guests mistaking you for one of our ‘boarders.’ Not that you’d have to worry,” she added quickly as she gave Della’s slenderness a frank dismissal. “No man wants just a bag of bones in bed with him.”
Della was too dumbfound to respond, but Maude went on as if she was used to people holding their tongue in her presence. “You can make use of anything that’s in Vinnie’s room. She didn’t have much. Sent most of her earnings back to Chicago.” Maude pursed her broad red lips. “Told her she was a fool. You got family, Della?”
“No.” What would her sensible Aunt Frances have made of all of this?
“Nobody?” the madam demanded in a doubtful tone. “Your parents?”
Della swallowed back They were killed in an automobile accident. “They’ve passed away.”
“Anybody else? Brothers…sisters?”
“My sister died a couple of years ago. And the aunt who raised me passed away last summer.” She moistened her lips. “I’m alone.”
Maude nodded, looking satisfied. Obviously she liked her employees unattached, thought Della. She had goose bumps just thinking about working for this woman. No, she couldn’t do it. The whole idea of keeping track of johns and tricks turned her stomach.
Colin sent her another warning look. Stay calm. Don’t panic.
She drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. All right, she’d keep her promise to play along. Taking orders from this hard-nosed businesswoman would not be easy. She’d have to watch herself. How long would she be able to pretend to be something that she wasn’t? A subservient attitude was not part of her makeup.
Maude spent five minutes warning her about checking invoices and bills. “Damn grocers will cheat you at every turn. Charge you double if they get the chance. Check everything. You foul up…and it comes out of your wages.”
Della bit back a sharp retort and glanced at Colin. He was standing rigidly in front of Maude’s desk staring down at a newspaper. He pointed to a headline. “City Councilman Delaney Buying Market Street Property,” he read aloud.
“Your—” His pointed glare stopped her from saying “great-grandfather.”
Maude took the newspaper out of his hand. She snorted when she saw what he had been reading. “Shawn Delaney. Damn politician. Trying to get his hands on every business on the Row. Made a ridiculous offer for my place. I dealt with the likes of him in Chicago. Mob bosses, we called ’em, trying to move in.”
Colin’s expression was as dark as a mine pit. “Is that what he’s trying to do…move in?”
“Hell, yes,” she swore. “But he’ll find out soon enough that we know how to deal with his kind. More than one of them politicians have learned the hard way not to mess with people’s livelihoods.”
Colin’s great-grandfather had been killed on Market Street…on the doorstep of this very house. There had been no record of who had buried a knife in Shawn Delaney’s back. Della’s stomach tightened with apprehension. If the freak time warp continued, Colin might be on the spot to find out exactly who had murdered his great-grandfather. Did his dark brooding expression mean that he was thinking the same thing?
Maude eased her bulk into a huge chair behind her desk. “Now listen up, Colin. Tomorrow night, I want you walking around and keeping your eyes open. I want you to stop any fracas before it gets started. The girls get a cut on the drinks, so we don’t mind customers getting drunk as long as they don’t try to tear up the place. It’ll be your job to get a boozer out the front door before he causes any trouble.” She gave Colin’s strong Celtic features and muscular frame the once-over. She pursed her thick lips. “I don’t put up with anyone hassling my girls. And that means you, too. Got it?”
