The Devil of Whiskey Row (3 page)

No, that was fear or disgust, not excitement.

Definitely not excitement.

He stood from the tub, brushing water from his limbs and shaking droplets onto the floor like a dog stepping out of a river. She stared at his manhood, hanging thick and long, even at rest. He glanced at her and raised an eyebrow, but instead of commenting, merely asked, “Not ready to sleep?”

She shook her head.

“Are you hungry?”

She sat up in the bed, holding the blanket to cover her breasts. “Yes, sir.”

“Come on downstairs, then,” he said as he pulled on his clothing.

She sat up and pulled the coverlet off the bed, draping herself with it.

He glanced at her and grinned, his smile transforming his face, making him look ten years younger. She smiled back before she could think to scowl. He held out an arm and she moved into it, allowing him to guide her, barefooted and clad only in a blanket, down the hall.

He showed her where a key was hidden above the door frame for the bunk room at the top of the stairs. Inside, he pointed out an armoire. “You can wear any of the clothes in there—the girls share most everything.”

The room had rows of bunks along the walls, and a long plank table in the middle. The older Mexican women were sitting around the table and Joaquin was with them, chatting in Spanish.

A sheet strung across the middle of the room divided it in half. Seeing her taking it in, Diggory said, “That side for men, this side for women.”

“Which men?” she asked, rather stupidly.

“Right now, it's just Hank and now Joaquin,” he said, nodding gravely to the boy. She wondered, vaguely, where he slept and was simultaneously relieved and disappointed that it wasn't in the bunk room.

“Josefina,” he said, addressing the older Mexican woman who'd brought in her bath, “Will you find Cora something to eat when she's dressed?”

“
Sí, señor
,” Josefina answered.

It seemed Josefina had already taken Joaquin as her charge. She shooed him off to bed now, speaking with all the command of a loving grandmother. “
Buenas noches
,” Cora bid him, smiling and winking at the boy, happy to see he appeared comfortable here.

Cora looked through the clothes, examining with interest the drawers, which were all cut short in the legs with ruffles added to the bottoms as decoration. She donned a pair and found a corset which she pulled over her head and fastened in the front. She didn't bother tightening up the lacing in the back. After slipping into a chemise and modest day dress, she followed Josefina down the stairs to the back kitchen, where Josefina handed her a plate of beans and rice and left her on her own.

She didn't think she was hungry until she ate the first bite, then she shoveled the food into her mouth, suddenly ravenous. Afterward, she climbed back upstairs and found an empty bunk, fighting the feeling of contentment that had fallen over her. She needed to stay on the defensive if she was going to survive here.

She climbed into bed and heard the charming sound of Diggory's piano striking up and the crowd cheering. It must be time for their famous French can-can. She thought about creeping down the stairs to watch it, but found her limbs were too heavy to attempt leaving the bed. Instead, she fell soundly asleep, lulled by the familiar sound of loud, drunken voices and the unfamiliar, but thoroughly pleasing sound of lively music.

* * *

Jake absently finished the warm-up music he was playing on his piano, his mind still on Cora Underhill. He normally felt satisfied, even powerful after spanking one of the girls, but Cora's punishment had left him needy. Fifteen years celibate and he had never craved sex once, not even working in a brothel with naked and willing women all around. Spanking the girls filled the void, gave him small moments of intimacy, and allowed him to express his masculine power without being untrue to Eliza's memory.

But tonight, the thought of Cora's impudent breasts, the sensation of her soft form across his lap, the way her big eyes had searched him for answers kept rising in his mind. Was it just because she reminded him so much of Eliza? Or was it something else?

Catching Olive's eye from across the room, he gave a nod and she moved to find the other girls for their nightly can-can performance. Gigi and Marie had brought the can-can with them, along with countless other customs and know-how from the French brothels where they'd worked before they came to America. They were the first in the wave of women who embarked for California with the promise their passage would be paid by brothel owners when they arrived. Jensen, the former owner of his place, had paid Gigi and Marie's fare, promising them they'd pay off their debt in six months, but keeping them as indentured servants long past the prescribed date.

The girls lined up now on the side of the stage he and Hank had built for them.

“And now, gentlemen,” he called out in his best entertainer's voice. “May I introduce to you the lovely ladies Olive, Margaret, Gigi, and Marie—two misses, two mademoiselles! Give a big hand for them, fellows, and they'll give you a special treat!”

The gambling hall was filled with the sound of applause, boot-stamping, and cat calls. He began to play the signature music of the dance as the girls sashayed across the stage, their skirts swishing in a blur of ruffles and the intoxicating flashes of their black stocking-clad legs. They'd choreographed an intricate dance in which they formed two lines and then one, changing positions, locking elbows with one another and spinning in dizzying circles. The girls teased the men, giving their skirts little lifts and flounces while catching their eye, building into an energetic crescendo of cartwheels and then a final line of high kicks, which drove the men wild with the glimpses of their garter belts. Then came the punch line, in which the girls turned one by one and flipped up the back of their skirts to show their ruffled drawers, to the enthusiastic shouts of the audience. The finale was two girls spinning while holding one leg up to their ear, as the other two executed a split on the floor with their arms outstretched in a high “V” and smiles plastered on their faces.

The men whooped and stomped some more.

“Let me hear your appreciation for Daddy Diggs’ girls!” he called out and the applause grew louder. “Twenty dollars to take your own spin with one of them, step right up and pick one out now!”

He heard grumbling at that. Most of the men were flat broke and the gold rush prices were outrageous. Still, those who couldn't afford the girls would buy drinks, and they'd lose to him at faro or roulette or craps. Either way, if they walked into Daddy Diggs’, he'd take their money.

He surveyed the room as he played, keeping a sharp eye for any sign of thievery, cheating, or violence. Magdalena worked the faro table as Hank monitored for cheating. The girls flitted about the room, accepting a few coins or the offer of a drink to sit down next to a man, giving him a brief and rare opportunity to enjoy a woman's presence in a land in which men outnumbered women ten to one.

Marie had drifted over to lean an elbow on the top of the piano as he started up with another lively tune. “What's with the new girl?” she demanded.

He glanced up, then looked back at his fingers, his mind mostly occupied with the music. “Name's Cora,” he grunted.

“From Smoochy's?”

“Uh huh.”

“Daddy, you know she's going to be trouble. Smoochy's girls were the lowest of the low. They lie, they cheat, they steal. She'll be stealing from you the first night.”

Jake glanced up at Marie's sour face, then looked out over the crowd, keeping his eyes alert for any sign of trouble. “You think?” he asked noncommittally.

“Yes! She'll rob you blind, Daddy. She'll probably steal from all of us. You've heard what they used to say about Smoochy's place. No one walked out of there without having his money stolen.”

He gave a very slight lift of his shoulders, not giving Marie the satisfaction of looking at her again. He surveyed the crowd again.

“And that boy, too. If she doesn't steal, I guarantee you he will. You shouldn't have brought them in here, Daddy. We don't need them. We hardly have enough work for the four of us!”

Jake met her eye now, raising an eyebrow. She took the warning, snapping her mouth shut and standing up from the piano. “I'm just saying…” she said sulkily.

“I've heard enough. If you keep it up, you're going to get a spanking.”

Her lip thrust forward, but she said, “Yes, sir,” with a grudging tone and abandoned her post at his piano, in search of a more receptive audience with Margaret.

He bent his head to the keys, mulling over her warning. It was true Smoochy's girls were known to steal. His instincts said he could trust Cora, but then again, his judgment might be clouded. She wasn't Eliza, after all, no matter how alike they looked.

* * *

Cora woke with a jerk, disoriented in the new bunk. She coughed, her lungs still aching from the smoke the night before. The gambling hall was silent, save the sounds of gentle snores. She slipped out into the main hall to look around. It was so much finer than Smoochy's. The construction was solid wood rather than the sticks that had barely kept out the wind and rain. The floors were wide plank, swept clean from the activity of the night before. The gambling tables were clean, too—polished wood frame and green felt covering. She wondered if Diggory would let her work one of the tables instead of whoring. But no, she needed the money. Eight dollars a day he had estimated she might make. With those kind of wages, she could save up to make a new start, somewhere far away. For Joaquin, too, if he wanted, though with the way Josefina had taken him in, he might prefer to stay.

She walked the length of the large hall. There was a stage on one end, with the piano sitting below. It was Diggory's piano and even never having set foot in his place before, she knew how well he could play. His music would fill the wide streets of Dorado Hills, carried all the way to Smoochy's place if the wind was blowing right. She used to sit on the porch to listen, when she could get away with it without Smoochy yelling at her.

She stood over it now, her fingers brushing the keys without pressing them.

“I wouldn't touch that, if I were you.”

She started and whirled around. Josefina was standing in the doorway, with her hands on her hips. “Daddy Diggs doesn't let anyone play his piano.”

A shiver ran down her spine, but she refused to show fear of the Devil Diggory. “I'll take my chances,” she said stubbornly and gazed back at the woman until she shrugged and left the room. Actually, she was more than a little frightened of Diggory. It wasn't that the spanking had been so awful—she wasn't even sore today—it was more the humiliation of it. Somehow, having her bottom bared for such a childish punishment, and the way he'd pressed a finger in her back hole like hooking a fish, was far more intimate than Smoochy's drunken pokes had been, and possibly more of a deterrent than his angry fists.

She sat down on the bench and stroked the keys again, pressing one very slowly, listening as the note reverberated through the instrument. She loved music. Always had. Before they'd left their home in Chicago to join the gold rush as investors, her parents had owned a piano. The memory of her mother patiently teaching her produced a dull ache in her chest. What
would
her parents think of her now? They'd been members of polite society—a lady and a gentleman in their hometown. Out here in California, they were just rich targets for murder. Only they hadn't been so rich, had they?

As an optimistic and wealthy financier, her father had moved the family to California at the first discovery of gold in 1849 so he could lend money to the various mining operations and business enterprises springing up. He'd been particularly enthusiastic about the new engineering methods of hydraulic mining that used water to flush gold out of the hills. He had lent out money to almost every operation in Dorado Hills, yet so many of those operations folded, that when he was murdered by unknown assailants, Smoochy owned every note, and held some on her father to boot.

She touched the keys, running a few elementary scales. She plunked out her first basic lesson: “Hot Cross Buns.” Then she explored the notes, trying to play a song her mother used to sing to her.
Hush little baby, don't say a word. Mama's gonna buy you a mocking bird…

Her fingers sought the keys, seeking and choosing the notes to cobble together the lullaby.
If that mocking bird don't sing, Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring.

Almost, not quite. She tried again. Then again. After several attempts, she'd found the right notes.
And if that diamond ring turns brass, Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass.

She closed her eyes, memorizing the location of the keys as she sang softly, picturing her mother, who sang like an angel and was more beautiful than one. The sound of a new chord made her jump and open her eyes. Diggory was sitting beside her on a second stool, next to hers.

“Don't stop,” he said softly, the fingers of his left hand dancing over the keys in harmony with her simple tune. “Go on, try it again.”

Tension tightened every muscle in her body and heat pricked her skin. Reluctantly, she picked back up with her plucking tune.

“Sing for me,” he urged in a low voice, his head so close to hers she felt his breath in her ear. She wanted to resist, but his voice picked up the words and she was stunned to stillness, surprised he would know her song and that he could render it so tenderly with his deep voice. When he fumbled the words, she corrected, joining in to sing the melody again while he added the rich tapestry of his elaborate counterpoint on the piano, making it sound like the most sophisticated and beautiful song imaginable. His right arm stretched around behind her, adding to her notes on the upper keys as well. She was intensely aware of the warmth of his body, the faint smell of smoke still on his skin, and the muskier, manly smell. She shivered at the feel of his hot breath on her neck. She stopped playing, allowing his notes to take over, singing to his tune, but he stopped, picked up her hand, and replaced it on the keys. His hand was huge and warm where it covered hers and she felt an instinctive desire to capture his fingers between hers and keep his hand there.