Chapter 34
Sacramento City
July 1854
Isabelle didn’t light a candle in the sitting room. If Victor could track her to Sacramento, he could easily locate her aunt’s home. Better to stay in the dark tonight, pretending that no one was in the cottage. Perhaps Stephan could help her gain passage with Persila up to Vancouver Island tomorrow. Then she would give him the keys to her hotel.
After Ross left the hotel, she had found Isaac in the kitchen. While he retrieved his and Alden’s things, she’d thrown some clothing and personal effects into a carpetbag. She should have left Alden a note on her desk as well and salvaged her money and Aunt Emeline’s box from their hiding space, but her mind had been all muddled.
Sing Ye had come with her and Isaac to the cottage but hadn’t stayed with them. Nicolas took her to visit a friend who lived on a rancho outside of town. He feared backlash from today’s trial, and he wanted to keep his wife safe. Aunt Emeline would be pleased, knowing how much Nicolas cared for Sing Ye.
And her aunt would be praying all night if she knew Victor was in town.
Nicolas had asked her and Isaac to join them on the rancho, but she’d said she thought it best to wait here for Stephan and Alden, to see if they needed further assistance with hiding Persila. She would never forgive herself if something happened to Sing Ye because of her past or her current work.
Isaac was sprawled out on the woven rug below her, one of Aunt Emeline’s books clasped in his hands. It was too dark to continue reading, but he was still trying to make out the words in the faint promise of starlight.
Aunt Emeline would be so pleased, knowing this Negro boy was in her home, reading her books.
Isaac glanced up at her. “Do you smell smoke?”
She sniffed. There was a faint scent of smoke in the air, but Sacramentans often disregarded the ban on fires during the dry summer months. Strange that Rodney wasn’t as compelled to stop those who ignored this law as he was to enforce the one about runaway slaves.
“Someone must be burning trash,” she said.
He reluctantly closed the book, resigned it seemed to the loss of light. “How many books are in this house?”
“At least twenty.”
He sighed. “I wish I could read every one.”
“I’m sure Sing Ye would let you borrow any of them,” she said. “You can read my books back at the hotel too.”
He could have all of them after she left for Vancouver Island.
“I will take good care of them.”
“Does Mr. Payne know you can read?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“I don’t mean Alden—” She hesitated. It seemed odd to use the man’s first name. “I mean Alden’s father. Master Payne.”
“That Master Payne doesn’t know me at all.”
“Did your mama teach you to read?”
“No,” Isaac said. “She left right after I was born.”
Isabelle’s heart twisted. She couldn’t imagine leaving her son.
“My mistress said she took off with another slave.”
She considered his words in the darkness. How sad it must be for a child to learn his mother ran away. Devastating. “I’m sorry that your mama left you.”
“She didn’t leave me, Miss Labrie. She left slavery.”
“Of course,” Isabelle said. And how could she blame the woman? Her heart probably ripped in two, leaving her child in search of freedom. Perhaps she had escaped with her husband. Perhaps Isaac’s parents were planning to come back one day to rescue their son.
“Master said my mama was a princess.”
“I’m sure she loved you very much.”
“I would have loved her too.” He paused. “My nursemaid said she would be proud of me, learning how to read and play piano.”
“Any mother would be proud to have you as her son.”
“One day, I’m going to find her. And I’m going to take care of her too.”
“Isaac,”—she straightened her skirt—“you said your mistress told you that your mother ran away.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mr. Payne hadn’t mentioned a wife, but after her experience with Ross, she knew it was quite possible that he too had left a family behind in Virginia.
“Is Alden married?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, but a woman on our ship sure wanted to marry him.”
When Isabelle breathed the air again, the smoke seemed heavier. Acrid. Then the clang of the town’s fire bells resonated through the room.
She jumped up from her seat, her heart clanging with the bells. The last time Sacramento City caught fire, it took almost every building with it.
She raced over to the window and saw the center of town glowing an eerie orange. She had to return to the hotel before the flames reached K Street and destroyed everything inside, including Aunt Emeline’s box.
Her body trembled at the thought of discovering Victor below, but she couldn’t let her fear stop her from saving Aunt Emeline’s gift and the money she needed to start over. In the chaos, the smoke, she could slip back into the city and rescue her things without Victor seeing her. Then she would return to this cottage.
She knelt down beside Isaac. It would be too risky to take him down near the fire. She needed to move swiftly, through the alleyways to avoid the blaze and the man who wanted to destroy her as well.
“I need you to stay here and watch the house,” she told him.
“Like I did with the hotel?”
“Exactly. The fire shouldn’t come this way, but if it does”—she pointed east—“follow this street outside town, to the floral gardens. I will find you there.”
He reached for her hand. “Miss Labrie?”
“Yes, Isaac?”
He leaned over, kissing her cheek. “Don’t get too close to the fire.”
Smoke poured down K Street, curling between the empty buildings and abandoned wagons. Flames followed close behind the smoke, but unlike its predecessor, the flames showed no mercy. They devoured the wooden structures faster than Moby-Dick destroyed Ahab’s boat.
A crowd of people watched the flames from the street, listening to buildings explode in the distance when barrels of gunpowder ignited. Victor pushed through the mob, rushing up one more block, his leather portfolio tucked safely under his arm.
He’d walked the streets for far too long tonight, trying to find either the Golden Hotel or someone sober enough to give him accurate directions. It wasn’t until he’d found a man headed to fight the fire that he discovered the hotel was near the wharf. A brick-and-granite edifice in a long queue of wood.
He gritted his teeth as he stared at the structure. The front door was shuttered with iron. He’d come so close to finding Mallie, and now it seemed like she’d escaped him once again.
The smoke burned his throat. Stung his eyes. Lifting his loose shirt up over his mouth, he watched the fire in the distance, the flames casting a hazy glow through the curtain of smoke, the roar of destruction shaking the ground.
He wouldn’t stop searching, for her or for Isaac. He would find them both after the fire subsided, and they would return to Virginia together, as a family, even if he had to shackle them together for the entire journey home.
Oh, the rage in Eliza’s face when the three of them walked through the door. He’d triumph without saying a word.
Heat radiated between the buildings, and the smoke almost drove him back toward the crowds. But then he saw her—an apparition in a cloud sustained by the fire. And he couldn’t move.
He’d worried that Mallie might outgrow her beauty, but she was even more beautiful now than she’d been as a girl. And Mallie was his. He’d inherited her. Subdued and trained her. He would treat her as a lady. Eventually. First, she must be taught a swift lesson as a reminder: he owned her, for the rest of her life.
As she held up her lantern, checking the iron shutters, he stepped toward her. But then she seemed to disappear into the smoke, along the back of the hotel.
He smiled in spite of the heat. The alley was the perfect place to waylay her. No one in the crowd would see him take her. Or hear her scream.
He moved swiftly into the alleyway, searching for her light. She may have outwitted him before, but he wouldn’t lose her now.