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She should have realized when she’d introduced the two yesterday she’d been putting an open flame to a haystack.
No. No, no, no. Hannah had spent too many years taking the blame for her twin sister’s indiscretions, and too many months watching Tyler break women’s hearts, to hold her tongue now. “Tyler, stay away from my sister. Neither of you has any idea what sort of trouble you’re flirting with.”
Her words came out flat, hard and—unfortunately for them all—fell on unhearing ears.
“Stay away from that gorgeous, stunning creature? You demand the impossible, Hannah darling,” Tyler said. “Rachel’s smiles slay me, and her voice is sweeter than any angel’s.”
Clearly oblivious to the tension growing between their two leads, the other actors continued scrambling into place.
“Don’t, Tyler.” Pressure built in Hannah’s chest, stealing her breath and drying out her throat. “Just…don’t.”
“Why, my dear girl, you sound quite discouraging. One might start to think you disapprove.”
A familiar, albeit unwanted, affection broke past Hannah’s annoyance. Tyler had the kind of droll humor that reared at the most inappropriate of times and invariably took the sting out of an uncomfortable situation. It was hard to dislike a man who was as fully aware of his faults as his talents. Even if he used both to his full advantage whenever the occasion suited him.
Well, tonight, where too many lives might be harmed, Hannah could not—would not—allow a budding flirtation to turn into something more destructive. “Tyler, you must listen and take heed. She’s—”
A groan from the rigging stopped Hannah in midsentence and had both Tyler and her turning toward the curtain to fulfill their final duty of the night.
Conversation among the rest of the cast halted, as well.
A few more seconds of rope grinding to metal and the curtain began to rise. The audience leaned forward, eager to get a better look at the actors. With every inch of the curtain’s ascent, their palms pounded wildly together, again and again and again. Louder and louder and louder.
Hannah slid a glance at Tyler. With a sly grin lifting the corners of his lips, he reached out and twined his fingers through hers. Together they raised their joined hands in the air then bent into a well-rehearsed bow.
Rising first, Hannah shot a quick slash of teeth at Tyler, and then leaned forward again. They repeated the process until the applause died to a mere spattering.
As the curtain made its final descent on the Chicago production of Shakespeare’s delicious comedy, Hannah feared a tragedy far worse than any fictional tale was already in the making.
With another warning perched on her lips, Hannah turned to Tyler, but she only caught the wild flourish of coattails as he spun in the direction where Rachel stood.
“Tyler, wait. She’s—”
He dismissed her with a careless flick of his wrist.
Hannah lifted onto her toes to see past the other actors. “Rachel,” she called out. “You can’t. You’re—”
But her sister shifted to her left, literally turning her deaf ear in Hannah’s direction. It was an old trick of Rachel’s, a hard kick aimed straight at Hannah’s guilt, an open defiance that did not bode well for a reasonable end to the escalating situation.
Nevertheless, Hannah set out after Rachel and Tyler. The two quickly disappeared behind a side curtain. The backstage area was already filled with commotion, making it difficult for Hannah to see precisely which direction they had taken.
After several long minutes of searching, Hannah thought she saw two shadowy figures leave the building, but prayed her riotous imagination had taken over her logic.
There was one dreadful hope left.
Shifting direction, Hannah turned toward Tyler’s dressing room. She’d only taken two steps when one of the crew materialized in her path. “Hannah, your sister told me to give you this after tonight’s production.”
He pressed a piece of paper against her palm, then turned back to assist the stage manager in breaking down the set.
Hannah squinted toward the backstage door then looked down at the small, folded parchment in her hand. A foreboding filled her, and a hard knot formed in the pit of her stomach.
She unfolded the note with trembling fingers. Her sister’s looping script flowed through a single sentence.
Be happy for us.
“Oh, please, please, not again.”
Chapter Two
Denver, Colorado
Three days later
Harsh, irregular breaths wafted through the tiny room. The acrid smell of death filled the air. Both occupants sat wrapped in their own state of despair, each struggling for answers to unbearable questions. One had lost her will to live. The other had come to bring a final, eternal hope.
With the burden of his mission weighing heavy on his heart, Reverend Horatio Beauregard O’Toole swallowed his own sense of helplessness and looked at the haggard woman battling for each breath. There was little left of the vibrant creature Beau had met when he was but a boy. The gifted lead actress who had inspired a generation of aspiring young girls was now a broken shell of her former greatness.
She had no more faith. No more purpose.
No more hope.
Beau could barely reconcile this beaten woman with the one who had played some of the greatest heroines onstage with such confidence and verve. Once her crowning glory, now her hair hung in blond, dirty strings. Her skin pulled taut across her thin face, while her eyes had sunk deep in their sockets. She was a mere apparition of the beautiful woman the public had adored with near obsession.
Beau dropped his chin to his chest and released a defeated sigh. No. He would not give up on the woman his mother had once called friend.
He lifted a skinny, limp hand into his, closed his fingers over the pale, graying skin. “Miss Jane, all is not lost.”
She gave him a ragged, quivering sigh.
With his own answering sigh, he released her hand and brought a glass of water to her cracked lips. He lifted her shoulders with one hand and helped her navigate the glass with the other. “You may still survive if you turn from this life forever. We could leave for Colorado Springs this afternoon.”
Jane took a slow, choking sip and then leaned back. “No.” A slow, harsh breath wheezed out of her. “It’s too late.”
The words had barely slid off her tongue when she broke into a fit of coughs.
Beau pressed a white cloth against her mouth, afraid each cough wrenching through her fragile body would tear her flesh from the bone. After the bout ceased, Beau pulled back the cloth now filled with the red stain of blood.
Blood from her damaged lungs.
Another moment passed in utter silence.
Beau’s heart pounded so hard with anguish for her, for what she’d become, he thought he might choke from it. Now that the stage was no longer a viable prospect, Jane Goodwin had chosen to earn her money in the most hideous way imaginable. It hurt to see how far she’d fallen.
A shudder racked through him. If only she would accept God’s grace and Beau’s charity.
“Dear, sweet Beau.” Jane turned her head and blinked her dazed, drugged eyes up at him. “My sins are too many to wash clean now. Why else would I be here?”
She waved her hand in a gesture that seemed to say, Look where we are.
The heartsick tone of her voice took him aback. Beau glanced around the tiny room decorated purposely for sin. In the bright light of day, beneath the expensive silk and satin, hung a shabbiness that spoke of the years of hard, ugly work that had acquired the worldly trappings. And yet the room had a sad, unkempt feel. Once brilliant, now forgotten.
Just like this woman.
Just like the rest who shared residence in this…house.
Too many for one man to help.
He closed his eyes, once again praying for wisdom. A small, still voice inside said, One at a time, Beau. Start with this one.
All right. Yes.
Beau asked God for the words to convince her to leave, but behind his confident demeanor he was soul-sick with the hollow feeling of defeat. “Miss Jane, please reconsider my offer. The sanatorium is only a day’s train ride away.”
He tried to capture her stare, but her gaze darted around, eventually locking on to his left shoulder. “I…No, it’s impossible.”
He reached out and cupped her hand in his, staring fiercely into her eyes. “All things are possible through Christ.”
“Not for my kind.” Her voice was uneven, shaky, the underlying disgust at herself no longer hidden behind false bravado.
She’d given up then, resigned herself to die thinking she’d turned so far away from God that she could never find her way back, had convinced herself she deserved this sort of hell on earth.
“God forgives all sins, even the seemingly unforgivable ones.” He spoke with the conviction of his heart. “You need only to ask.”
“You don’t understand.” Jane tugged her hand free, the sharp gesture at odds with her infirmity. She struggled to speak, her lips moving frantically while words seeped out in a soft wispy whoosh. “I have a daughter.”
Beau studied Jane’s vulnerable expression with mingled pity and horror. He hadn’t known. Hadn’t realized. But he should have. He’d seen it often enough. The unbearable chain of sin continuing from one generation to another. “She is here? Living in the brothel?”
“Megan is at Charity House. If I leave, if I don’t work, I cannot continue to pay her board.”
Charity House. Of course. Beau knew all about the special home where children born to women of ill repute were welcomed without question. Marc and Laney Dupree, the owners, never turned a child away. No matter the financial circumstances. Jane was worrying over something that would not be a problem, ever.
“But if you don’t leave, you will make your daughter an orphan. How is that any better?”
Another fit of coughing was her only response.
Beau shut his eyes for a moment. He must not quit on Jane. He must not. God had called him to minister to the ones with no more dignity, no identity, no…hope.
He knew firsthand what it meant to be an outcast, never fitting in the world around him. Although he adored his family, without their passion for acting, the constant years of traveling from stage to stage had left him feeling alone and separate from the rest of his siblings. Even in seminary his modern ideas of preaching and evangelizing had never truly meshed with the more traditional views of his professors.
He had yet to find his place in the world. Thus, he traveled from mining camp to saloon to brothel, ministering to the outcasts of this world. Outcasts such as women like Jane.
But soon, if the vote went his way, he would have his own church in Greeley, Colorado. It would be a place where he could put down roots and begin a normal family with a traditional wife by his side. Her soft, compassionate nature would temper his overly bold, often impudent personality. He hadn’t found her yet, but he would and then his days of traveling across the territory and ministering to the forgotten would come to an end.
Well, not completely.
All would be welcomed in his new congregation. No matter their past sins or current ones. His church would be a safe haven for the lost. For the—
The door flung open with a bang. In swept a whirlwind of angry female and bad attitude. “Beauregard O’Toole, you know your kind isn’t welcome in this establishment. To think. A minister, here, in my brothel.” Her voice was incredulous. “It’s just plain bad for business.”
Beau rose and turned to face the new occupant of the room. With her outrageously buxom figure, unnaturally blond hair and overly painted face, Mattie Silks looked far older than her reported twenty-nine years of age.
She took two steps into the room, and then relaxed into a pose that spoke as much of her profession as her vanity.
Notorious. Legendary. With her own unique flair for the dramatic. Even without formal training, she could hold her own against any stage actress Beau knew. His lips pulled into a wry grin. Clearly, the woman had missed her calling.
Nevertheless…
If there was one thing his childhood had taught him, it was how to appease a dramatic woman in a fit of theatrics.
“Now, Miss Silks.” He gave the surly madam a smile so filled with O’Toole charm that even his rogue brother, Tyler, would envy the result. “I am only here to visit my mother’s dear friend.”
“No.” She switched poses, thrusting out one hip and slamming her fist onto the other. “You are here to talk my best girls into leaving.”
Perhaps. But if Beau didn’t try, who would? The Bible had taught him to look past the outer wrapping of a person and see into their heart. Well, Beau had done that sort of looking in the past weeks he’d held vigil by Jane’s bedside. Not a single “girl” in Mattie Silks’s employ wanted to be in the notorious madam’s…well, employ. Not even one.
But without a concrete alternative, most had no other means of supporting themselves.
Beau considered the situation to be an opportunity straight from heaven. There were only two things humans could accomplish on earth that they would not be able to do in heaven: sin and evangelize. Beau truly believed God had brought him to this den of iniquity to be a light of hope. To plant a seed that might bring the lost back to Him.
One ill-tempered madam wasn’t going to run Beau off that easily. “I simply offer to listen, and give advice accordingly.”
“You mean preach.”
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
Even Mattie Silks deserved his best efforts. “Preach, give advice. Semantics, Miss Silks, nothing more.”
She gave him a hard look. “Thanks to you, two of my girls have already quit.”
Beau sighed. He’d hoped for more. Shaking away his feelings of powerlessness, he continued holding Mattie’s stare. “Only two?”
Her lips twitched before she pointed at him with a gnarled finger that revealed her true age. “You are an arrogant man.”
Beau couldn’t deny that one. He was, after all, an O’Toole. His natural arrogance was a character flaw he had to fight against daily. His professors at seminary had tried to break him because of it. His fellow students had shunned him. He’d been run out of countless churches. And even now, the Rocky Mountain Association of Churches still questioned his ability to shepherd the new congregation in Greeley. All because he was an arrogant son of…actors.
Beau dropped his gaze to Jane and watched her fight for each breath of air. “I won’t leave my mother’s friend in the midst of her distress.” He brushed a hand across her brow. “There is no changing my mind, Miss Silks. I am determined.”
Mattie’s eyes flashed. “And if I say otherwise?”
Beau couldn’t fault the woman for her territorial reaction. This wasn’t the first time he’d walked into a brothel since leaving seminary, only to be unceremoniously tossed out when the madam in charge discovered who he was. Or rather what he was.
Nothing like experiencing a little shunning of his own to help him better relate to his unusual flock. “You’d deny one of your girls a moment of peace in her final hours of life? Are you so cruel?”
Her gaze wavered, just a bit, revealing that Mattie Silks might have a heart beneath the tough businesswoman veneer. “You think she’s that ill?”
“Dr. Bartlett thinks she’s that ill.”
Mattie shifted from one foot to the other then peered slowly down at Jane, who had finally fallen into a labored sleep. For several long heartbeats the madam merely stared at the near-lifeless form dragging ragged breaths into its injured lungs.
