CHAPTER TWO

 

The contents of the slop jar sloshed against its sides, threatening to splash over onto Jenny’s hands before she reached the back door. Holding her breath against the stench, she fumbled for the doorknob with one hand. Miraculously, it opened before she touched it.

“I hate to see you doing this kind of work,” Thelma muttered, wrenching her face away from the odor as Jenny hurried past and down the path to the outhouse. Thelma beat her to that door, too, and held it open while she dumped the putrid contents into the dark hole. Vile odors rose and Jenny hurried out while Thelma slammed the door closed.

“I don’t know why the customers can’t go to the outhouse here same as they’d do any place else,” Thelma muttered as Jenny yanked on the pump handle until a thin stream of water poured out. Quickly she rinsed the enameled pot and lumbered back to the outhouse to dump the contents again.

“Miss Lucille wants to make them feel as comfortable as possible, I guess. Pampered and such.” Jenny put a hand to her aching back and trudged the well-churned snowy path back to the brothel.

“Still, you shouldn’t be a-doing this kind of work, what with your condition and all.”

“Nobody wants a pregnant whore, Thelma. I’m just thankful to have a job.” Jenny stepped into the moist warmth of the kitchen and inhaled the aroma of roasting meat.

“Git out of my kitchen with that nasty thing.” Loni turned from her stove, wiping her pudgy, black face with the end of a dirty apron.

“I’m sorry.” Jenny tucked the chamber pot behind her back. “It’s always so warm in here. I couldn’t resist.”

Loni’s expression softened. “Go put it back and wash your hands. Then come and see me.” A wide grin split her generous face. “I got a surprise for you.”

Her stomach rumbling at the mention of food, Jenny slipped through the parlor unseen and crept up the stairs to the Egyptian room. Vacant, the room still stank from the chamber pot. Replacing the pot behind the screen, Jenny yanked up a window and pushed the curtains aside to let the pure, clean air pour inside. She breathed deeply, none of the Skagway street smells reaching the second floor window. The air here came straight off the snowy peaks gleaming pink in the western sky.

Turning from the window, she yanked the soiled sheets off the bed and replaced them with clean ones, leaning around her protruding stomach. When she was done, she ruffled the tasseled bedspread over the bed and tucked it neatly under the pillows. Then, she stood back. In the four years she’d worked in various whorehouses, she’d never gotten accustomed to the odors. The musky scent of lovemaking didn’t bother her, somehow seeming natural. But men visited whorehouses for more than just sex and alcohol always played a role. Too much alcohol left a mess for her to clean up--at least since she’d started working as Miss Lucille’s house girl. But she wasn’t complaining. Most madams wouldn’t give a pregnant girl a second look when they came begging for work. Miss Lucille was different, offering her the only job available with profuse apologies. And Jenny had leaped at the chance. After all, in a few months, she’d have another person to think about.

She glanced around the elaborately decorated room, marveling that Miss Lucille had managed to get such wondrous and odd things here to Skagway. The mounted head of some beast hung over the fireplace, great tusks sprouting from its mouth. Cavorting, golden figures danced half-naked across the dark green wallpaper. Above, candles burned brightly in a chandelier made entirely of moose antlers. The as Miss Lucille liked to say, was the golden sarcophagus propped up in the corner. It had once been an Egyptian king’s coffin, she’d explained, but the only girl who’d use the room after that was Thelma, who professed no fear of anything. Miss Lucille was a smart woman, well versed in what appealed to men in rut. Men lined up to use the room on Saturday nights and Thelma had to go out and buy herself a set of scales to weigh gold dust. Some, Thelma had said, even wanted to make love inside the coffin.

Shaking off the spell the room always cast over her, Jenny hurried downstairs, remembering Loni’s promise of food. She ate when it was generously offered and tried to save her money otherwise, existing on one meal a day.

Loni’s kitchen was always warm and fragrant, perhaps the homiest place in the otherwise austere house. Miss Lucille’s decorating tastes ran to the odd and the dark. In addition to the Egyptian room, there was the Texas room for those that fancied themselves cowboys and the girls wore nothing but chaps. And the London room where gentlemen had the privilege of peeling away layers of high necked, constricting clothes from girls that acted as virginal, proper English ladies.

“Sit down right there, Miss Jenny.” Loni motioned with a spoon at an empty chair then ladled steaming food into a bowl with the same spoon. “Did you wash your hands?”

Jenny dashed to the pitcher and bowl that always sat by the door.

“Use plenty of that soap.”

Jenny lathered her hands and arms and rinsed, embarrassed to have forgotten so important a task. Loni insisted on cleanliness of all who entered her domain. No sex-tousled girls were allowed in for midnight snacks, not unless they’d bathed since their last customer. Jenny wondered how Loni had ended up so devoted to Miss Lucille as she hurried back to the table, now a slave to her grumbling stomach.

“Now try this chicken soup and tell me if it needs more salt.” Loni set a generous portion in front of her, far more than was necessary for a ‘taste’.

Jenny had down three gulps before she thought to look up and mumble, “It’s fine.”

Loni grinned as if the comment was a compliment from the queen herself. A gold tooth gleamed in the front of her white teeth and Jenny took another spoonful, closing her eyes as the delicious broth slid down her throat.

“You don’t eat enough to feed that babe,” Loni scolded, her expression quickly darkening.

“We’re all right,” Jenny reassured. “I don’t get that hungry.”

“Hungry or not, that baby gotta eat.” Loni’s voice held the hint of an exotic accent. She’d come from the Caribbean on a ship with big, white sails, a warm, tropical place where flowers bloomed all year and sudden storms brought spectacular rainbows. Jenny could sit for hours and listen to Loni’s stories of a land completely surrounded by water.

“You hear me, girl?”

“What?” Jenny blinked and found herself staring straight into Loni’s face. Seated across the table, Loni leaned beefy elbows on the table, her eyebrows knitted together in concern.

“I say, do you hear me?”

“I promise I’ll eat more.”

“Miss Lucille ain’t gonna charge you for your meals.”

Jenny shook her head as she devoured another spoonful. “I’m not one of the girls. I just work here and I have to pay for my food.”

Loni tapped a finger on the table. “You let me talk to Miss Lucille. We see about that.”

“Talk to Miss Lucille about what?” Lucille Turner stood in the doorway, her conservative dark green dress tastefully draped around her still-trim figure.

“About feeding this child.”

Lucille looked from one to the other, obviously perplexed.

“She don’t eat but one time a day. She’s saving her money, she say.”

“Heavens, Jenny, you don’t have to pay for your meals here. Not with the work you so cheerfully do. You’ll eat with the girls whenever they eat and more often if you’re hungry.” Lucille stepped into the room, letting the swinging door close behind her. “Have you been under the assumption you were supposed to pay for your meals these weeks you’ve been here?”

A wave of perfume enveloped Jenny, a soft, soapy scent, as Miss Lucille approached and leaned over her. “Where on earth did you get such an idea?”

“I . . . heard you tell one of the men that came to do the garden . . . that he had to pay . . . .” She let her words drift off as amazement filled Miss Lucille’s face.

“Good heavens, Jenny, he was somebody I hired off the street to do odd jobs. I mostly wanted to discourage him from coming inside the house. Have you thought all this time . . . and done without . . . .” She blinked rapidly before raising her eyes to Loni.

“Don’t worry, I took care of her.”

Lucille smiled. “You have the most apt talent for appropriate sneakiness, Loni.” She returned her attention to Jenny and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I came to find you, Jenny. May I see you in my office a moment? After you finish your meal, of course.”

Miss Lucille’s office was as odd and exciting as any other of the rooms she decorated. Lavish tapestries covered the rough board walls and thick, colorful Persian carpets lay on the floors. A soft glow filled the room, light given off by candles held in opaque, glass globes that sat about on tables like stars fallen to earth.

Jenny fidgeted on the stiff, upholstered chair, wishing she'd had the time for a bath, sure she still reeked of chamber pots.

“I’m sorry, my dear, just a little business to clear up before we open tonight.” Lucille bustled into the room and closed the door behind her. She rounded the baroquely carved desk and settled into the velvet chair like a queen ready to rule her kingdom.

“I’ll come right to the point. I have a proposition for you. You are under no obligation either to accept or refuse. When this request came to me, I immediately thought of you.”

Jenny nodded and waited.

Lucille picked up her eloquent quill and ran the soft ridges of the feather through her fingers. “One of our best customers lost his wife and son in childbirth a little less than a year ago. I am given to understand that the circumstances were tragic and he has never quite gotten over the pain of losing them. He has seen you about and come to me with a request.”

Fear slipped into Jenny’s blood like a cold, slithering snake.

“He would like an evening with . . . a lady . . . a pregnant lady.”

Jenny sucked in her breath.

“He only wants a supper in one of our room, some pleasant conversation. He said specifically that he did not want relations.”

Suspicious began to grow.

Lucille held up a hand. “I know it sounds strange and if it were not . . . who it is, I would have refused. I believe that he simply wants the company of someone who reminds of his former life. He is a prominent man in Skagway with interests in Dawson City as well and he has always conducted himself as a gentleman while under my roof.” Miss Lucille smiled. “Over the years, I’ve become a very good judge of people and Mr.--, the gentleman, is quite normal in his tastes, I’m confident. He’s offered to pay very well and you would keep fifty percent, just as the other girls do. I wouldn't have come to you with this if you weren’t . . . experienced.”

Jenny’s thoughts spun. Something niggled at the corners of her mind about a request so odd, so poignant. Out and out strangeness she could handle, but this situation seemed rift with emotional involvement and unpredictable outcome. And yet, there was the money. She mentally tallied her secret cache, safely hidden beneath a loose board under her bed. Just a little more and she’d have enough to buy her way to Dawson and maybe some left over for a room for a week or two.

“I’ll do it,” she said, snapping open her eyes.

“Don’t you want a little more time to think it over?” Lucille studied her closely.

“No. When?”

“Tomorrow night. I’ll have Thelma alter a dress to fit you.”

“Thank you,” Jenny said, rose and started for the door.

“Jenny, wait.”

She turned to face Miss Lucille’s worried face. “If anything . . . untoward should happen . . . I’ll be close by.”

 

* * *

 

 

The room glowed softly, Lucille’s glass globes lent for the occasion. The girls called this the Virgin Room, used mostly when fathers brought their sons in for their first taste of illicit love. The decor was homespun, with soft quilts on the bed, white curtains at the windows and a fire softly burning on the hearth. Nothing erotic or adventurous here, a concentration only on comfort and the deed at hand.

Thelma had altered a soft, pink gown, one of her personal dresses, a garment meant for life outside the brothel. The bulge of Jenny’s stomach was almost concealed, just enough to be tasteful and yet revealing enough to satisfy the mysterious visitor’s careful instructions. Loni had set a lovely, small table in the center of the room, complete with white tablecloth and a softly waving candle. As soon as their guest arrived, supper would be served.

As the minutes ticked past on the mantle clock, Jenny grew more uneasy. Every intuition she possessed was revolting at the thought of what she was about to do. And yet, her logic told her this was a simple meeting with a simple purpose. She’d conjure and then soothe his memories, allow him his fantasies. Why was that any different than any other meeting? Somehow, though, it was.

Maybe it was this room. Jenny rose from the rocker and paced to the hearth. Red rugs, red curtains and nauseatingly baroque furniture belonged in a brothel. Quilts and rockers did not. They belonged in a home with loving parents and children.

The practice of a father acquainting a son with his own particular variety of sin had never sat well with her. When they became men, they might frequent brothels for whatever reason drove them to do so. But it would be their decision, made in adulthood, not encouraged in adolescence. Fathers should encourage their sons to seek wives, start families, contribute to their communities. But, none of men she’d known were ever such upstanding specimens.

A soft knock interrupted her thoughts. She arranged her face and her dress and turned toward the door. “Come in.”

The door eased open and a young man stepped inside, his hat in his hand. “Are you Jenny?” he asked softly.

“Yes, I’m Jenny.” She walked toward him.

“My name’s Percy. Percy Sage.”

The owner of the new Sage Bank and Trust, whose brand new plate glass windows were probably already lettered with his name.

Jenny swallowed and pasted on a smile, liking this arrangement less and less with each second that dragged past.

Percy laid his bowler hat on the top of a dresser and slowly closed the door, latching it with a soft click. He turned, firelight reflecting in his dark eyes. He was a handsome man, a single dark curl dangling over his forehead. His clothes were the latest cut and a pleasant whiff of men’s cologne drifted around him. A chill ran up Jenny’s back.

“When are you due?” he asked, moving toward her. He stopped, inches from her, and laid a hand intimately on her belly.

“In December, I think.”

He spread his palm across her stomach and his eyes drifted closed. “My wife was seven months along when she died. We could feel the baby move.” His eyes opened to stare straight into hers. “Can you?”

“Yes, I can. Sort of like tiny butterflies fluttering around inside me.” She covered his hand with hers and felt him flinch. Despite his appearance or what Miss Lucille said, there was a dull madness in his eyes, a pain so deep it had ripped open his soul and let demons inside.

His other arm slid around her shoulders and urged her closer until her protruding belly pressed against him. He sighed, ruffling her hair with his breath as he pressed his temple to hers. “We used to make love,” he whispered, “Cecilia and I, after she was as far along as you. She was so big, she’d have to be on top. And when I’d slide inside her, the baby would kick and I could feel him there, pushing against me.”

“You shouldn’t be telling me these things, Percy,” she whispered, the oddity of his words prickling down her spine. “They’re private between Cecilia and you.”

“They can’t be private anymore because she’s dead. So, now I can tell anybody I want.” He tightened his arm and pulled her against him. “I want to feel that again, to know that there’s really life there, still alive, still breathing. I want you, Cecilia.”

Alarm bells clanged in Jenny’s head as he unbuttoned the back of her dress, keeping her firmly in his arms. The pink dress slid to the floor, leaving her wearing only her thin chemise. He dropped to his knees, shucked out of his coat and pressed an ear to her stomach. “I can hear you in there,” he said, “little William. Are you turning somersaults and upsetting your Mama’s stomach?”

“Percy-“ Jenny put her hands on his hair and fought the urge to shove him away from her.

Suddenly, he stood and snatched the chemise from her shoulders. She heard the thin batiste rip and the cold air close around her.

He looked at her for a long moment, allowing his gaze to slide up her naked body and back down to center on her stomach. Then, without taking his eyes off her, he quickly disrobed and stood before her naked.

“Cecilia, it’s been so long.”

She’d been called by other women’s names before but never with the unearthliness that possessed Percy Sage’s voice.

“You and William left me here alone and that was a bad thing to do, Cecilia. You know how I hate to be alone.”

If she could just get him in bed, she could take control of the situation. By her experience, most men, once in the throes of passion, became more malleable. But the sight of him, throbbing before her, sent a wave of eeriness through her. She sensed no evil in him, just a detachment from reality that both repulsed and evoked sympathy.

His hands were all over her, his mouth searching, tasting. He backed her toward the bed, lifted her onto the mattress and joined her there, eagerly pushing her knees apart.

“I’m frantic for you, Cecilia. Remember our first night?”

Jenny cooperated at first, allowing him to touch her intimately, enduring him. Perhaps he would get what he wanted and leave. A frantic worry for the baby spun through her, but she pushed it aside and concentrated on handling Percy. He scrambled over her, frantic in his quest to have her, trembling, shoving against her.

“Percy, stop. You’re hurting me.”

He paid her no heed, mumbling Cecilia’s name, concentrating on burying himself in her as quickly as possible.

“Percy. Stop!” She scooted backwards, away from his groping, stopping only when the hard headboard pressed against her back.

But he pursued her still, hands smoothing her hair, knees gouging her sides as he clamored forward, all sense of the present lost.

“Percy, please. I’m not your Cecilia. You’re going to hurt the baby.” She fended off his hands that seemed to fly in all directions at once.

At that moment, Miss Lucille stuck her head in the door. “Is everything allri-“ She stopped mid-sentence and her face blanched. “Thelma,” she said softly. “Go to the post office across the street and get Constable Finnegan. I saw him bring in the mail this afternoon.”

Lucille stood peering around the door, seemingly frozen in her tracks.

“Percy, why don’t we play a game? You remember you used to like games.” Jenny suggested, trying to keep her fear under control. She’d handled unruly men before. She only had to keep her wits about her.

He hesitated for an instant and raised his eyes to meet hers. “A game? You never liked games before, Cecilia.”

And neither did Jenny. Too much time with a customer could result in some sort of attachment, so she’d always made it a rule never to dally in the performance of her job. “But you did, and I . . . feel guilty that I never played them with you.”

He smiled slyly. “What are you up to, you vixen?”

She was buying time, hoping for some sane way out of this. Some way to preserve this poor man’s sanity and her own safety.

“I paid good money for you.” His eyes darkened. His mind had taken a leap out of past and landed smack in the present. “I paid a ridiculous amount of money for this night and I’ll have you, damn it, have you in any way I choose.”

“I’m pregnant, Percy. You wouldn’t want to hurt the baby, would you?” She slid off the bed and now had the four poster between them.

“You’re not pregnant. It’s all part of Miss Lucille’s plan. I asked for a pregnant whore, knowing all too well there is no such thing, is there? You girls know how to get rid of that sort of problem.”

“Look at me. How can you say that?”

He glanced at her stomach. “I don’t know how Miss Lucille accomplished that disguise, but . . . .” He paused and frowned. “She’s never before failed to give me what I want. I don’t care how she did it.” He rounded the bed. “Why won’t you come to me, Cecilia? Must I chase you around the room?” He smiled slyly. “Is that what you want?” He bent down and took a knife from his discarded pants.

Jenny’s heart began to pound. Malice grew in his eyes as he advanced on her. Muted voices hummed outside the room and the door opened quietly. Over Percy’s shoulder, Jenny watched a Mountie slip into the room and assess the situation with a glance. He took off his coat and hat and handed them to Miss Lucille. Then he rolled up his shirt sleeves to his elbows.

Thelma and Lucille’s faces crowded the slight crack in the door. Other customers were just next door and across the hall. A semblance of normality must be kept at all times. Prostitution was illegal but rampant, and the already-overworked Mounted Police tolerated the practice as long as all established houses kept to a fringe area of town dubbed Lousetown and business was conducted quietly.

At Miss Lucille’s request to fetch a constable, Jenny had expected an ugly scene with drawn revolvers and a room full of scarlet-suited rescuers--enough unwelcome attention to close down the house. But the man now approaching her walked with a deliberate nonchalance that masked the strength she felt emanating from him. Red hair topped an angular face and he walked with a slight limp. Small in stature, he rolled back his sleeves to reveal muscular forearms. Moving with an ambling gait, he picked up a quilt from the back of a chair and draped it over his arm.

“Mr. Sage?” His voice sang with a faint Irish lilt.

Percy pivoted. “Yes?” he answered, pasting on his business face, seemingly oblivious to the fact he was stark naked.

“Are you and Cecilia having some trouble here?”

Percy wrinkled his forehead and the intensity in his eyes faded. “No, no trouble.”

“Cecilia looks cold. You know how pregnant women are.” Without taking his eyes off Percy, the Mountie leaned across the bed and handed her the quilt which she quickly wrapped around her.

Percy smiled. “Yes, indeed, I know. Cecilia and I have been married for seven years and she was never cold-natured until she conceived my son.”

How bizarre, Jenny thought, edging away from the bed. Constable Mike Finnegan, as Lucille had called him, didn’t seem ruffled at all to be standing in the bedroom of a whorehouse with two naked people.

“Aye,” Finnegan said, picking up another quilt from the foot of the bed. “My wife shivered her way through her first pregnancy. Thought she’d set the chimney on fire piling firewood in the fireplace.” He draped the quilt around Percy’s shoulders. “Now, Percy, you know this lady here isn’t your Cecilia, don’t you?”

Percy swung his gaze to Jenny as she sidled toward the foot of the bed. “Of course she is, aren’t you, love?”

Finnegan caught Jenny’s eye and shook his head slightly.

“No. My name is Jenny.”

“And she works here for Miss Lucille, don’t you, Jenny?”

Percy frowned. “I paid a lot of money for tonight.”

“Yes, you did.” Finnegan eased himself down onto the edge of the bed and Percy followed, pulling the quilt around him, still clutching the knife. “But I don’t think Miss Lucille allows knives here. That would be dangerous, wouldn’t it? A man might get cut in the wrong place, wouldn’t you say?”

Finnegan looked at Jenny and jerked his head toward the door. She began to sidestep across the space between the bed and the door.

Percy’s eyes widened as he looked down at his hands. The knife clattered to the floor and he covered his face. “What have I done?”

Jenny bolted for the door, eased through the crack, then turned around to see Finnegan settle a hand on Percy’s quivering shoulder.

“I’m going to jail, aren’t I?” Percy asked softly.

“Well, let’s go down to the office and talk about things first.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking, what I have been thinking since the night she died.” He looked up, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I never visited a whorehouse before three months ago, never even dreaming of doing such a thing. But, the house . . . it’s so empty.” He turned to face Finnegan. “I miss her so much. You know what I mean, don’t you, Constable?”

Finnegan looked over Percy’s bowed head. Jenny met his eyes and felt a tingle and then a rush of embarrassment. There was such kindness in his face, compassion for the man beside him. She sensed from the moment he walked into the room that he’d passed no judgments, that he was a man well attuned to the flaws of mortals.

“Constable, help Mr. Sage with his clothes.”

Jenny turned and stared into the wide-eyed face of a young constable whose Adam ’s apple bobbed up and down. He diverted his eyes away from hers and brushed past.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” Finnegan had moved to her side and now guided her into the hallway with a hand on her elbow.

“I’m fine. He didn’t hurt me.” She tugged the quilts closer, suddenly more ill at ease than she’d been with Percy. “What are you going to do with him?” she glanced past him to the room where Percy fumbled with his shirt, muttering to himself.

Finnegan followed her gaze, then returned his attention to her face. “Poor lad’s lost his senses. Loss’ll do that to a man sometimes. Do you want to press charges?”

“No. He’s got enough problems.” Jenny glanced away from Finnegan’s face, garnering her suspicions around her, shaking awake all her cautionary voices. There was something about this man, something odd and unsettling. And familiar. As if they’d once met someplace, looking into each other’s eyes for a second or brushed shoulders in a crowd.

Mike Finnegan was nothing like men she’d been attracted to before. Surely she’d remember him if they’d ever spoken. In fact, if he’d been three feet high with a tall, green hat, she’d have thought for sure she was looking at a leprechaun. A riotous shade of red, his hair lay in disobedient curls. Eyes the color of a summer sky crinkled at the corners from years of laughter, Grandma would have said.

But leprechauns were devious and clever.

The man before her was downright dangerous.

 

***~~~***