A Twist In Time

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?”

He nodded.

“Report to me in the morning. There’s produce to be picked up and furniture to be moved for the night’s entertainment.” She went on listing all the jobs she expected him to do that ran the gamut from daytime handyman and deliveryman, to nighttime bouncer and bartender.

“For a dollar a day?” He asked in disbelief.

“You want the job or not?”

Della watched the cords in Colin’s neck tighten. Being subservient was not in his nature, either. How long would he last under Maude’s callused thumb?

“I’ll take the job…for now.”

“Good.” Maude’s smile showed her satisfaction. “Gertrude Katz runs the boardinghouse next door. Tell Trudie to give you a room. Most people on Market Street do my bidding…police included. They don’t call me Queenie for nothing.”

“I can see that,” said Colin with an edge of sarcasm to his tone.

Maude didn’t seem to notice. “As for you, Della, you’d better get yourself some sleep and act lively tomorrow. The girls haven’t been paid for nearly a week. Usually, each night’s receipts is figured and pay envelopes slipped under their doors the next morning. Got it? I expect you to get the books in shape in quick order. I’ve got bills to settle. We’ll go over everything in the morning.”

Della clasped her hands so tightly that her nails bit into her flesh. She welcomed the pain. It was real. More real than anything in the room.

Maude lifted her ponderous body to her feet. “Have to keep a check on my guests. I keep a short rein on my boarders…and my help.” She added the last with a pointed look at Colin. “Remember, no men beyond this room. If you’re thinking about putting your shoes under her bed, you’ve got the wrong floor. I never allow pleasure to be mixed with business. Better hie yourself over to Trudie’s and get a room.”

“I will…in a minute,” Colin answered firmly. “I have a few things I want to say to Della.”

Something in his tone made Maude’s hard eyes swing from him to Della and back again. The bridge of her nose narrowed and her ugly nostrils flared. “Keep the rules or out you both go. Nobody plays free and easy with me. You try and fox me and you’ll be like a dog with his tail cut off behind his ears. Five minutes and then you git!”

With a swish of her taffeta skirt and hidden petticoats, the madam rolled out of the room like a frigate and disappeared down the hall. They could hear her raised voice ordering more food trays from the kitchen.

Colin turned to Della. “Are you all right?”

Her answer was a shudder that racked her slender body. He reached out and drew her against his solid chest. With a sob, she melted against him. He could feel her pulse beating wildly, and through the layers of clothing, the supple curves and lines of her body brought a fierce heat radiating through him. “It’s going to be all right, I promise,” he said in a husky voice.

“How could this have happened?” Hot tears spilled from her eyes. “What are we going to do?”

He touched her wet cheek. His embrace tightened. He had to get her out of this. He stroked her soft hair and allowed himself a fleeting fantasy of claiming every inch of her utterly feminine body. Then he gave himself a curt rebuke. Della Arnell wasn’t for the likes of him. Look what had happened because he had brought her into his life. It didn’t matter what happened to him, but he had to protect her at all costs. “The way things are set up we’ve got a good cover for as long as we want.”

“As long as we want,” she repeated. She lifted her face and stared at him. Fear, disbelief and anger formed a hard lump in her throat. “We have to find a way back now.”

“That may not be possible…for a little while.”

A moment ago she had felt safe in his arms, now she felt trapped. She drew away, glaring at him with frightened eyes. Her voice trembled. “Why did you rush into that tunnel like a crazed man?”

His dark eyes burned into hers. “I didn’t have a choice then, and I don’t have one now. But I didn’t mean for this to happen. Hell, I would send you back in a minute if I knew how.”

“What about you?” Her voice rose. “You’re not going back, are you?” She recoiled from the steel hardness that turned the blue of his eyes into obsidian. “You wouldn’t leave if you could,” she said in horror.

“You have to understand. I can’t leave until I find some answers.”

“Answers to what?”

“The kind of experiences you’ve been having are not new to me,” he said patiently. “All my life, I’ve had these…spells. My mother said I was possessed, that the devil was trying to claim me through the spirit of my great-grandfather. I know it doesn’t make sense, but for some reason I’ve been drawn back into his lifetime. I’ve never hated anyone as much as I’ve hated Shawn Delaney and the heredity he gave me.”

“Well, I’m not staying. Do you hear me? I’m not going to wait for you to dig up your family’s skeletons. I’ll find the tunnel. Somebody will believe me…”

He grabbed her as she tried to jerk away. This time, his hands on her shoulders were not soft and reassuring but bit harshly into her flesh. “You can’t start blabbing about a tunnel. You can’t draw attention to yourself. They’ll never believe the truth and there’s no telling what Maude would do.”

“I can’t stay here. I can’t!”

“I promise you, I’ll look around tonight…then we can decide what to do. Trust me,” he said again.

“Trust you? How can I? I saw the way you looked at that newspaper. You have some crazy idea of solving your great-grandfather’s murder. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t bother to deny it.” She met his gaze squarely as she moved out of his arms. “I recognize a man with a purpose when I see one.”

The cleft in his chin deepened. “I have to know what kind of man Shawn Delaney was…why he was murdered. If I understand, perhaps I can lay some demons to rest—”

“Or be killed yourself,” she interrupted.

He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Not possible. I didn’t live in my great-grandfather’s day.”

With a tremor in her voice, she corrected him. “You do now.”

Chapter 4

W hen Della awoke the next morning, she kept her eyes closed, praying that when she opened them, she would find herself back in her hotel apartment. Her heartbeat quickened as she slowly lifted her eyelids. Disappointment laced with anxiety instantly surged through her. Nothing had changed since last night. She was still wearing a cotton shift for a nightgown, still sleeping in a room that had belonged to the deceased bookkeeper, Vinetta Gray, and still caught in the weird time warp that had swept her back to the turn of the century.

Last night, Colin had promised to come for her if he was successful in his search for the tunnel. She had lain awake for hours, waiting, but he hadn’t come. Had he failed to find the tunnel? Or had he lied to her about looking for it? Her feelings for him were in a hopeless tangle. When he held her close, she wanted to lose herself in his embrace. Her pulse leapt when his resonant voice softened to liquid. His intensity, dark passion and compelling personality were mesmerizing. She wondered if she’d be able to leave him behind as she had threatened.

Sitting up in bed, she looked around the room. Everything was just as Vinetta had left it, she recalled with a slight prickling chill. An ugly bowed dresser stood against one wall next to a scarred clothespress whose warped door was slightly open, revealing a collection of clothes. Positioned on one side of a small fireplace was an overstuffed chair with ecru doilies over the headrest and arms. A worn floral rug lay on a wide-planked wooden floor, and faded wallpaper in a pink cabbage-rose pattern covered the walls.

Della had a queasy feeling as she took in the dead woman’s personal items. A brush and comb with strands of brown hair still clinging to it lay beside a hand mirror and a box of large hairpins. A porcelain tea set, a leather-bound book and a pair of reading glasses lay on a round drop-leaf table covered with an embroidered fringed cloth. Vinetta Gray was dead but everything was neat and orderly, as if she would return any moment.

Abruptly, Della felt a swish of cold air upon her cheek. You don’t belong here, a voice whispered. She raised her hands to protect herself from the angry words and cried out as a vile wind of hostility whipped around the room, tossing the lacy curtains with wild frenzy. The sweet smell of lilac perfume was suddenly suffocating and overwhelming. Go back where you belong!

Gasping for air, Della leapt from the bed, ran to the door and jerked it open. She leaned weakly against the wall in the hallway, waiting for her legs to regain some strength and her head to quit spinning.

“You ain’t coming to breakfast in your shift, are you?” A large Swedish-looking woman with thick blond braids wrapped around her head stood in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “Miss Vinetta never poked her nose out the door without every hair in place and her dress crinkling with fresh starch.”

Della tried to find her voice but couldn’t.

The woman gave a disgusted snort. “So you’re the new bookkeeper. You looked mighty peaked to me. Too much to drink, I’ll wager.” The cook’s expression showed her disapproval. “If you’re looking for the bathroom, it’s last door on the right. I guess Miss Maude told you that you’re sharing the bathroom. I’m Inga and Lolly’s the housemaid. We don’t run around half-dressed the way the girls do upstairs. You’d better find a wrapper to cover yerself.”

But I don’t have any clothes. Della bit back the excuse. The cook’s scowl told her she was in enemy territory. Be careful. Don’t give yourself away. Any kind of scene would arouse suspicions. A hundred questions stabbed at her, but Inga had a closed expression which discouraged any explanations or confidences about insidious perfume and threatening spirits.

“I don’t hold breakfast. If it’s cold, it’s cold,” Inga snapped at Della. “Better get a move on. Maude doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Della’s breath slowly came back and the suffocating feeling faded. She looked down at the thin cotton shift that barely covered her. When she had undressed the night before, she’d draped the unfamiliar clothes over a chair. She couldn’t go anywhere the way she was.

“Well, what you waiting for?” the cook demanded ungraciously.

Della straightened and glanced through the open door into the loathsome bedroom. She had no choice but to go in and get some clothes on. Cautiously, she took a step inside the door, stopped and waited. She braced herself for the malevolent whirlwind that had sent her rushing out into the hall. Nothing. No scent of lilacs. No vindictive accusations. No hint of hostility. Nothing to indicate that the horrible experience had been anything but her imagination. She brushed her hand across her forehead and found it moist with sweat.

She walked across the room and with trembling hands, gathered up the dark brown dress, full petticoat, knee-length drawers and thick white stockings. She looked warily at the ribbed corset and left it lying on the chair. There was no way she was going to wear such a torturous atrocity. The dress with its long sleeves and high neck was uncomfortable enough.

With her arms filled with the clothes and the pair of old-fashioned shoes she’d worn yesterday, she opened the bedroom door again and peered out. No sign of Inga. She could hear pans and dishes rattling. A low murmur of voices floated through the kitchen doorway. She hurried down the hall in bare feet and cotton shift.

Much to Della’s surprise, the bathroom was as large as Vinetta’s room. A beautiful marble cabinet contained a small sink and a huge claw-footed tub was raised on a small platform. A smile crossed her lips as she viewed the toilet with its wooden box overhead, a long chain dangling beside it.

Someone had set out sweet-smelling towels and she decided that a quick bath in the deep tub might restore her frayed nerves. She filled it with enough water to touch her chin. The water was only tepid, but running water of any temperature must be a luxury, she mused as she scrubbed with a bar of coal tar soap. Thank heavens, electricity had come into use by the 1880s. The thought startled her. Was she beginning to accept the impossible? Was she really going to be living a hundred years in the past? She reached for one of the large towels and shivered as she stepped out of the tub.

She hated putting on the same undergarments and dress but she had no choice. Using a large-toothed ivory comb lying on the marble counter, she smoothed her fair hair into a French roll and fastened it with several large hairpins from a glass jar that stood beside a bottle of lime juice and glycerin lotion.

A round mirror above the sink had lost some of its silver and gave back a distorted reflection, which made her feel more off-balance than ever. A sob caught in her throat. How could she hold on to her real identity when everything and everyone around her denied it? Where was Colin? She needed his enveloping presence to keep herself sane.

She left the bathroom, walked down the hall past her room and felt a quiver of uneasiness as she entered a large kitchen. Her breath caught when she saw the mess left by last night’s activities. Dirty glasses, soiled plates, trays of party food, spotted table linens and crusted silverware covered work counters and one long table that stretched the length of the room.