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
