Deadlier Than the Pen (9 page)

*Chapter Nine*
Diana bolted upright with a cry and opened her eyes.
Damon Bathory sat beside her on her bed in the drawing-room car. When he put his hands on her shoulders and tried to force her to lie down again she instinctively fought him.
"Be still," he ordered.
"Diana, do as he says. You're hurt."
It was the second voice, Jerusha's, that she obeyed. Her head hurt too much to go on struggling.
"What happened?" Her voice sounded weak and raspy.
"You fell crossing to the drawing-room car," Jerusha said.
"There's a lump on your head." Bathory looked puzzled. "The snow you landed in was deep and relatively soft. I don't understand how you managed to knock yourself out."
"My cousin Chloe was caught out in bad weather once."
Diana turned towards Mrs. Wainflete's strident voice, then wished she hadn't. Even the smallest movement sent shards of pain reverberating through her skull.
"She was unconscious and cold as a corpse when they found her," Mrs. Wainflete continued. She crowded into the cubicle with Diana, Jerusha, and Damon Bathory. "My great-aunt Fanny saved her life by wrapping her in a sheet smeared with molasses."
"A bath in tepid water would have been as effective," Bathory murmured distractedly, "and Mrs. Spaulding was not out there long enough to need such radical treatment."
"She's not badly chilled?" That was Jerusha.
"The cloak kept her relatively warm."
His cloak, Diana thought, and shivered.
"We need to get her out of these wet garments and into something dry." He started to unbutton her blouse.
"Mr. Bathory!" Mrs. Wainflete sounded scandalized and Diana felt her bat his hands away.
She wanted to tell the old battle ax to mind her own business, but the pounding in her head confused her. Had she fallen? Or had she been pushed? And if she'd been pushed, had it been Bathory who'd pushed her? Was he savior or enemy? Friend or fiend? She had no way of telling.
"Who found me?" she asked.
"I did," Jerusha said. "We all decided to retire shortly after you left the parlor car, but neither Patsy nor Lavinia noticed you there in the snow. I did."
Bathory's voice was all gentleness now. "Do you hurt anywhere else? Ribs? Back? Neck?"
Diana closed her eyes to the concerned faces hovering above her and forced herself to concentrate. Only then did she realize that the throbbing in her ankle was more intense than that in her head.
"When I _slipped_," she said slowly, emphasizing the word as she opened her eyes to watch Bathory's face, "I twisted my ankle."
She saw concern in his expression, and something more. It was as if he felt her pain. That impression was so strong that it temporarily banished her doubts.
"I slipped on the ice," she murmured.
This time she almost believed her own story. After all, wouldn't someone have noticed if Bathory had followed her out of the parlor car? Mrs. Wainflete certainly noticed, and bleated in protest, when he reached beneath the divided skirt of Diana's rationals, shoving aside one leg of the red flannel union suit she'd borrowed from Jerusha to run deft fingers over her injury. Holding her foot in one hand, he kneaded her calf with the other, his fingers warm on her cold skin and strong enough to rub away the cramps that had come from tensing her muscles against the pain.
As soon as she relaxed, he stripped off a bright pink stocking to get a better look at her injured ankle. Diana wondered what had happened to the little gold slippers but she didn't ask. She was too preoccupied with what he was doing to her. In stoic silence, she bore his poking and prodding.
Mrs. Wainflete was not so obliging. "Mr. Bathory! You cannot handle a young woman's limbs that way! It isn't decent."
"I am a doctor, Mrs. Wainflete. It is quite all right for me to examine her."
"He is a physician," Diana said through gritted teeth, but by the look on the woman's face, she did not believe either of them.
"It isn't broken," Bathory said. "Just a slight swelling. But it wants wrapping and you should stay off your feet for a day or two."
"I will wrap it," Mrs. Wainflete informed him. "Your medical knowledge, Mr. Bathory, is appreciated, but you are no longer necessary."
"Mrs. Wain -- "
"I have bandages. And laudanum."
"No laudanum," Diana whispered. She knew how it affected her.
Bathory did not allow Mrs. Wainflete to bully him, but neither did he pay attention to Diana's protests. Laudanum, he agreed, was an excellent idea.
Diana fell silent, all her darkest suspicions reawakened. Laudanum dulled memory. Was that what Bathory wanted? Was he afraid she'd recall that someone had _caused_ her to tumble into the snow?
"No laudanum," she said again, but in spite of her objections, she found herself bandaged, bundled up, and dosed with a potent mixture of alcohol and opium.
"Swallow," Mrs. Wainflete threatened, "or I'll slip it in your food. You need rest."
Diana obeyed, hoping she'd be left alone so she could throw up the potent mixture, but Mrs. Wainflete did not oblige. She was still sitting beside the bed when Diana drifted into drugged sleep.
The first nightmare engulfed her soon after.
She was in a theater, apparently one of the company performing there since she was in a dressing room containing the crocodile skin gripsack and tweed bag and steamer trunk she'd been accustomed to use when she traveled with Evan.
It was the Union Square, she thought, confused. Before the fire. Or was it during? Panic assailed her at the first whiff of smoke.
The scene changed. She saw herself huddled in a corner of the dressing room, clutching a large, angry cat close to her bosom. Jim, the big trick cat that lived at the Union Square.
The door burst open, its flimsy wood splintered by a kick, and Damon Bathory rushed in. Two long strides brought him to her side. He wasted no time on questions or explanations, simply hauled her to her feet and then off them, swinging her high against his chest.
The cat, hissing and spitting, escaped her hold and fled, bounding through the now open door.
It had been locked, she thought. Someone had locked her in. Someone had wanted her to perish in the Union Square fire.
"Put your arms around my neck, Diana," Damon Bathory ordered. "Damnation, do it!"
The fabric of her dress was slick beneath his gloved hands and he had difficulty keeping hold of her. With every step he took, she came closer to slipping out of his grasp. As they neared the stairs she made a concerted effort to escape. He meant her harm. She was sure of it. Squirming, she cried out in a raspy, smoke-roughened voice, but his arms were clamped like steel bands around her knees and shoulders. She could not escape.
The scene changed again. Bathory had reached the wings.
A tremendous crash echoed through the building, causing Diana to scream and bury her head against his shoulder. She clutched at him willingly, as a source of protection.
When she opened her eyes again, the dust had cleared and she could see that a large mass of burned beams and planks of wood that had once formed part of the balcony had fallen directly onto a small group of firemen. Their fellows attacked the debris, attempting to pull them out before they could suffocate or catch fire. _That really happened,_ she thought in the part of her mind that knew this was a dream.
"Can you walk?" Bathory asked, setting Diana down on the stage floor.
"Yes." But her voice was hoarse and she felt his loss as he moved towards the fallen firefighters. Then panic returned.
Someone had tried to kill her.
She turned and ran in the direction of the stairs that led to the stage door.
"Look out!" he called, but the warning came too late.
She could not avoid the thick length of hose snaking its way back and forth across the stairwell. Her foot struck the unexpected obstacle to send her pitching forward.
With a scream, Diana tumbled head over heels. She heard the unmistakable crack of bone against wood as one of her limbs struck the open door at the bottom of the stairs, but there was no accompanying burst of pain.
The only thing she felt was the brush of Bathory's hands, running over her limp body with practiced skill.
She woke unsatisfied and itchy.
She was not alone. Bathory stood nearby, watching her.
She started to reach for him, then realized that Mrs. Wainflete was also in the cubicle, snoring in a chair just a few inches away.
"Go back to sleep," Bathory said.
* * * *
When she awoke again, she was alone. Remembering her laudanum-induced dream, Diana brooded. Someone had attacked her in an alley in Manhattan. Now she'd had a knock on the head that could have resulted in her death from exposure to the cold. If Jerusha hadn't noticed her in that snowbank and called on Bathory to help pull her out, she'd be dead now.
That any one person should face two such life-threatening events in less than a week was extraordinary. The most logical explanation was that someone had deliberately tried to harm her. Someone who had been in New York and was now on this train. Toddy? Sims? Underly? Or Damon Bathory?
_Too much imagination_, she told herself. Any one of them would have had to be insane to try such an uncertain way of getting rid of someone. And wouldn't the killer have stabbed her?
_Coincidences happen all the time._ Why on this train alone there had been two falls, her own and Sam's. As a journalist, Diana knew better than anyone that truth was often stranger than fiction.
She considered Damon Bathory and realized she simply did not want to believe the worst of him. She'd seen too much of a gentler side of the man, a side that made her wonder how he could be capable of writing those terrible stories, let alone committing a real act of violence.
As if she'd conjured him up with her thoughts, he reappeared in the doorway of her cubicle. "Mrs. Wainflete has been outvoted," he said. "We cannot spare the fuel to heat this car as well as the parlor car."
With no more explanation than that, he swept her into his arms and carried her off to join the other passengers, pausing only long enough to gather up her borrowed shawl and cloak.
He also insisted upon staying close to her. Very close.
The passengers crowded into the parlor-car passed the time telling stories, several of which Diana had heard before, since members of Toddy's company told them. After a while, however, as another evening drew on, there was only the murmur of quiet conversation, and some of the men, who'd worked hard shoveling all day, fell asleep without even attempting card games or other pastimes. Bathory made a bed out of the cloak and shared it with her, keeping one arm around her shoulder to protect her from being bumped and to warm her. Diana gave up protesting after the first few minutes. He wasn't listening to her anyway, and it _was_ very comfortable.
"Tell me something," she whispered. "When you first came back to our railroad car to invite us here, why weren't you surprised to find me?"
"I'd overheard a conversation in the gents' washroom an hour or so earlier, between Charles Underly and Nathan Todd. Underly wanted to know why you were aboard." Bathory smiled. "I am well aware there is more than one woman in the world named Diana, but I had a premonition that Underly might be referring to you. Todd said you came aboard in the hope of getting Lavinia to accept an apology."
"That is why I went to Grand Central at such an early hour." Diana explained how the story of the love triangle of Jerusha, Toddy, and Lavinia had gotten into her column. She could not tell if Bathory believed her or not. "I did not expect to find you there."
"You left me no choice. You were too persistent."
"Was it necessary to ... to..."
"Try to charm you? Rest assured, Diana, that was not all playacting. If I had not felt it crucial to avoid having my private life made public, I'd have done much more than take you to supper."
"Oh."
Bathory cleared his throat. "Yes. Oh."
There did not seem to be anything else to say.
Diana drifted into sleep soon after, and woke to the first pale light of day. She was still wrapped tightly with Bathory in the warm folds of his cloak. Her first thought was that she ought to be scandalized. Her second was that she was safe in his arms.
She felt more alive when she was with him. She'd not been this filled with energy since those giddy days right before she'd eloped with Evan.
The comparison gave her pause, but she chose to believe she was older and wiser now. She'd not repeat the same mistakes she'd made in the past. What harm, then, could there be in enjoying the heady pleasure of this man's unique company?
When others began to stir, Diana realized that there was an unusual amount of activity outside the parlor car, too. A party of rescuers had arrived to finish the task of freeing the train from its prison of snow. In the end, it took a snowplow pulled by twenty-eight horses and hundreds of men shoveling in front of it, to get them unstuck, but by midday they were at last able to press on to Stamford.
At 1:30 that afternoon, the train pulled into New Haven. Diana was one of the last to step, gingerly, onto the platform. Her ankle was tender, but she managed with the help of a cane, the fancy one Charles Underly always carried. Jerusha had appropriated it for her.
The other passengers milled about, most trying to make arrangements to go on to their original destinations. Bathory disappeared, but only long enough to hail one of the hotel wagons lined up at the depot.
"I'm taking you to the Columbia House," he informed her.
She knew the name. It was one of New Haven's finest hotels. "I cannot afford to stay there."
"You'll be a guest in my suite. With two separate bedrooms, you can be as respectable as you want to be."

"Oh, but -- "
"I feel ... responsible for you." There was a warmth in his tone that did nothing to dispel her uneasiness.
She fought it with banter. "Does that mean you're willing to admit to all and sundry, and my readers, that you are a physician?"
"I am willing to do all sorts of things, if you agree to come with me."
When he looked at her that way, it was impossible to resist.
"All right, but I must send a telegram to my editor first."
"A precaution?"
"A courtesy."
But telegraph lines were down in that direction. A hand-lettered paper, posted next to the distinctive black and yellow metal sign of the Western Union office, gave no indication of when they'd be up and running again. Diana was not really surprised. After a storm so severe, it only made sense that communications were still disrupted.
* * * *
"Diana!" Jerusha hurried towards her along the platform.
Toddy and Charles Underly followed after her, trailed more slowly by Lavinia Ross.
"Wonderful news!" Jerusha called. "The train can go on to Hartford. We leave in ten minutes, which means we can still make the last night of our stand." She engulfed Diana in a lavender-scented hug. "Will you be all right on your own?"
They both looked around for Damon Bathory. He had gone into the Western Union office. Diana could see him through its bay window, conversing with the man on the other side of the brass grill.
"I will manage, Jerusha." Diana forced a smile. Her friend's cough was much improved, but both eyes and nose still looked red and sore. "You must take care of yourself and stop worrying about me."
When Charles Underly reached them, she solemnly handed over his cane.
"Can you do without?" Toddy asked. "Underly, give that back to her. You can always buy another."
Underly sulked. "I need my cane. You know it's specially made."
Bathory interrupted, emerging from the telegraph office to take Diana's arm. "She has me to lean on," he said. "She has no need of a cane."
Jerusha sent him a piercing look. "Can we trust you to take good care of her, sir?" They all turned to stare at him.
"It was her desire for a story about me that landed Mrs. Spaulding on this train in the first place. I am honor bound to make certain she gets back to New York."
"Good man," Toddy declared, slapping him on the back. "But, another word with you before you go?"
They stepped aside. Diana assumed Toddy meant to make one last attempt to persuade Bathory to give him dramatization rights to his stories. "Good luck to him," she muttered.
"Good luck to you," Jerusha said, and slipped a small silk purse into Diana's hands.
She peeped inside and was astonished at the sum it contained. "I cannot take your money!"
"Consider it a loan, just in case you do not wish to let someone else pay your way. You have no means yet to return to Manhattan, and even if the tracks were completely clear, it is never wise to be entirely dependent upon a man's charity."
Murmuring her thanks, and further admonitions for Jerusha to mind her health, Diana slid the purse into her leather bag. It was with mixed emotions that she watched her theatrical friends depart, leaving her alone in a strange city under the protection of the most compelling and dangerous man she'd ever met.