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“You’re in trouble,”the elegant woman stated, startling Rowie, who had forgotten her presence. “Stay here where it’s dark while I bring my carriage around.”

Stepping lightly, Elise passed silently down the wooden sidewalk and emerged in the circle of light cast by the gas lamp at the corner of the next block. She strolled at that point like she didn’t have a care in the world.

As Noah’s gaze swept the street for her, Rowie pressed her back against the exterior wall of the dance club, trying to make herself invisible. Elise paused and said something as he came even with her.

He turned and looked where she pointed, at the opposite end of the street, then strode quickly in that direction, disappearing around the next corner.

Rowie’s wobbly legs could hardly support her. She bent double, breathing deeply to catch her breath as the fear that had consumed her was replaced with relief—for now. Heloise didn’t seem like the type to give up easily, especially when money was involved.

Clomping horses on the street drew near where she hid. An expensive-looking coach passed, stopping a short way up the block well out of reach of the streetlights. The door opened, and Elise stuck her head out, waving frantically.

“Hurry! Get in before Heloise’s behemoth realizes I sent himon awild goose chaseand comes back!”

Rowie didn’t dither about her decision. This kind woman might be duping her, but she had to be better than enduring another night with the mad madam.

She sprinted toward the open door, paying no mind that in her haste, her cloak flapped out behind her, revealing her bare legs to mid-thigh.

As soon as she bounded up the three steps, her hostess for the night slammed the door and called to her driver, “Take us home, Arthur. Quickly!”

The vehicle jerked as, with a whistle and a snap of the reins, the horses leaped forward.

Still on her feet, Rowie lost her balance and fell with an oomph onto the padded seat across from her rescuer—the second of the night.

Feeling giddy at her first taste of freedom in a week, she laughed.

The woman smiled at her and leaned forward, gripping her hand in reassurance.

“You’re safe now, and I don’t even know your name.”

Her life had changed drastically in a month. She couldn’t go back to the girl she once was. And she refused to sully her father’s memory and besmirch his good name by using it moving forward. Rowena Dunn nee Eldridge had ceased to exist.

“It’s Charlotte,”she told her, using her middle name without faltering. She didn’t bother making up a last name and had never given one to Heloise. To men intent on taking their pleasure between her thighs, what did it matter?

“Lovely and à propos. You realize in French, Charlotte means free man or, in your case, free woman.”

“I do. My father was a scholar, and my tutors insisted on French and Latin.”

“Tu parles francais! C’est merveilleux.”

“I am only passable,”she denied, shaking her head. “My strength is in translation, not elocution, I’m afraid.”

“Ah, that is a shame,”she replied with a disappointed moue of her lips. “We might work on it while you stay with me, perhaps?”

“I should like that very much,”Rowie replied, meaning it. Her heart felt buoyant for the first time in a long time, despite the horror she had endured.

“Until you figure out your future, dear Charlotte, you are my guest.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I don’t know how I will repay you.”

“Call me, Elise, please. And you owe me nothing. I was once in dire straits as you are. If not for a benefactor helping me, I likely still would be. Life is hard for a woman alone, especially one so young. How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Nineteen.”

She scowled and uttered vehemently under her breath. “Après toutes ces années elle est toujours une salope maléfique.”

Able to pick out a few words and understand the insult, Rowie—no, she was Charlotte now—giggled. “Heloise is indeed an evil bitch,”she replied. “You’ll get no argument from me about that.”

She raised a brow and gave her a knowing look. “You know the meaning of salope , but you’re only passable?”

Rowie’s smile faded, and she glanced down at her hands, interwoven so tightly her knuckles and nail beds had turned white. “I was at Heloise’s for a week. Whore, slut, harlot—you name it—were tossed around liberally in several languages. I’ve never felt so dirty and demeaned.”

“At the Pleasure Palace, I’m not surprised,”Elise muttered. “They’re only words, my dear. They can only hurt and demean if you allow them to. Whether you continue in this vocation is up to you, but whatever you do, make sure it is on your terms, not a man’s or someone vile like Heloise’s.”

“How? When men hold all the power in the world?”

Elise tapped her temple. “We outsmart them. Men are simple creatures governed by their baser instincts, especially what’s in their trousers.

Stick with me long enough, and you’ll learn.

”She leaned forward and patted her arm.

“Lesson number one. If you have standards, don’t compromise.

For example, anyone who speaks in such a manner under my roof is promptly ejected without satisfaction or a refund, which hits ’em where it hurts. ”

***

Bent over with his hands on his knees, deep, barking spasms wracked his body as his lungs tried to expel the heavy smoke.

He’d played the hero, following his heart, not his head, and twice risked his life in the burning building.

But for what? To rescue an abuser and a dead man?

The saddlebags with half the bank haul he’d hidden under Judd’s bed were gone.

He didn’t even have that. Thorn and Stan, his prime suspects, were nowhere in sight and undoubtedly twice the richer.

Through eyes watery from grief as much as the smoke, Seth gazed down at Judd’s blanket-wrapped form at his feet.

Some cultures burned their dead on funeral pyres, believing the smoke carried the spirit to heaven.

He wasn’t a religious man and had no objections to the practice.

He preferred it to the thought of his brother rotting underground, but he couldn’t let the pyre be a brothel.

He’d encountered some amazing things during his travels, but Heloise’s Palace was something else entirely. The medieval torture chamber, for instance, and the young woman with stripes on her back, trying to rescue the bastard who’d put them there.

Staying bent over made breathing easier. Seth turned only his head to check the boardwalk across the street where he’d left her. Mesmerized by the fire, a crowd had gathered, but he didn’t see the girl with the mass of dark wavy hair among them.

With the heavy smoke stinging his eyes and blurring his vision, he hadn’t recognized the woman on the stairs. Then she stumbled, and her cloak fell open, revealing a raised, red welt on her pale skin where a whip had wrapped around her thigh.

“I should have let the son of a bitch burn to a crisp,”he muttered hoarsely.

A group of the Palace’s ladies huddled nearby, their faces etched with shock and dismay, some with indifference, as they watched the place they worked but also lived turn to cinders.

Farther down the street, a smaller group of men, including guards he recognized from the brothel, gathered around Heloise.

She was shrieking at a large black man, so tall he towered over everyone.

Before he could grasp the reason for the public dressing down, a deafening crash obliterated all other sounds as the building collapsed in a spectacular shower of burning debris.

Guilt consumed him. He’d left the injured young woman to fend for herself on the street. He needed to find out what happened to her.

Seth approached the nearest guard. “Excuse me. The dove from the attic. Did she make it out?”

The soot-covered man glanced his way then put his head down and grumbled, “Don’t know nothing about no whore in the attic,”while walking away.

Heloise overheard and marched toward him, bombarding him with questions. “What do you know about Jade? Did you see her? Where? When?”

The madam’s once-scarlet gown was now mostly black from soot. He couldn’t help but stare at the neckline and the spectacle of her massive breasts jiggling with each step, on the verge of spilling out.

Impatiently, she snapped her fingers in his face. “Boy! Did you hear me? I asked where and when you saw her.”

He looked up, and instead of being offended by her attitude, he noticed the heavy makeup she used to conceal the deep grooves around her mouth and eyes. Her failed efforts and sour expression made her look old and haggard.

Her manner irked him, loud, coarse, and what really ate at him, referring to a grown man as a boy. His curiosity about the girl stopped him from telling her off. “She was on the top floor where the fire began, attempting to save the man she was with. He sustained severe burns.”

Heloise glanced across the street to where a white-haired gentleman was tending to the injured.

“Augustine was one of my best clients. The doctor sent him to the hospital, but he wasn’t hopeful about his chances.

Butsuch is life,”she declared flippantly.

Then, refocusing on the issue at hand, she asked, “What about the girl? Have you seen her since the attic? I must find her.”

“She went down the back stairs with everyone else. With all the smoke and confusion, I haven’t seen her since.”

Her lips twisted into a scowl, deepening the surrounding wrinkles—not a good look. “I’ll find the little bitch,”she fumed, “if I have to search the entire city house by house.”

Madam Heloise was not only greedy, as he had experienced firsthand, but also a vulgar, heartless old shrew. He hoped the girl was long gone and well rid of her.

“Why is she so important to you?”he asked, curious.

His suspicions altered her demeanor. “All my girls are important,”she declared, but the words felt hollow, and her eyes held a hint of unease. “I am more than the souteneur and mistress of the house; I am their friend and confidant.”

A harsh snort escaped Seth’s lips at the monstrous lie; his manner was as abrasive and rough as hers. “You should take better care of them, then. Your best client used her harshly, marking her with his whip.”

“Was she bleeding?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“Too bad,”she uttered under her breath.

“Your concern for your friend overwhelms me,”he observed caustically.

“You misunderstand, Mr. Hartigan. If she’s hurt, she may go to the hospital where I could locate her. She’s new to the city, and I’m all she has. Thank you for watching out for her.”

Her sudden display of sweetness rang false. She repulsed him, and he wanted to get away—fast.

“I must see to my brother. Can you direct me to an undertaker?”

She glanced down at Judd, shrouded in a blanket at his feet. “My condolences.”Her response was flat and felt disingenuous. “Hillman’s Mortuary is located three blocks north on Broadway. He is quite reasonable.”

With him of no further use to her, the madam left him without another word.

Seth crouched and lifted his brother in his arms then started the arduous task of burying the last of his family. His parents and brother were dead, and his uncle was missing. Thorn was the last to see him, which didn’t leave him with a good feeling.

He looked down at the lifeless figure in his arms. “What do I do now, Brother?”he asked, his voice gruff with emotion.

Of course, he received no answer, not even a ghostly whisper or a sudden enlightenment as an idea sprang to mind. At twenty-one, with no home, source of income, or knowledge of his uncle’s whereabouts, he was alone and would have to forge his own path forward.