Words Spoken True: A Novel Read online

  Duff tugged on her arm, but Adriane hesitated. She hadn’t seen enough yet. That hesitation cost her. The man who’d been looking at the body covered the space between them faster than Adriane thought possible. She gasped as he grabbed her other arm and yanked her out into the light. Duff pulled her back toward the shadows.

  Adriane tried to jerk free of the man’s hold. When he held on grimly, she kicked his shins. He paid the blows no mind as he tightened his grip on her arm. “You know something, don’t you?”

  His words so surprised her she ceased struggling and looked directly into his dark, intense eyes.

  Adriane was about to say something when Duff saved her from her own foolishness by shoving between them to ram his shoulder into the man’s middle.

  “Run!” he yelled.

  When the man staggered back, Adriane was finally able to jerk free. With a worried glance over her shoulder at Duff, she took off up the street, but she had no need to be anxious about the boy. He slipped away from the man’s hands as easily as an eel escaping a net. In a matter of seconds, he caught up with her.

  “Stick close, Miss Adriane,” he said as he passed her.

  Adriane didn’t need to be told. She stayed right on Duff’s heels. It wouldn’t do for her to be discovered down here.

  Behind them, the man shouted, “Wait! We won’t hurt you.”

  They kept running as Duff led her around and between buildings. Once they ran right through the middle of a warehouse, crawling in a window on one side and running out an open door on the other. After that, they didn’t really have to worry about anybody catching them, but Duff didn’t slow down until they reached the street leading up to the Tribune offices.

  “Too close,” Duff gasped as he leaned up against Harrod’s Dry Goods Store to catch his breath.

  Adriane held her side and pulled in deep breaths. She hadn’t run like that since she was a child playing tag with the neighbor kids, but now every nerve in her body was screamingly awake until she was aware of the slightest noises, the depth of the shadows around the Tribune offices across from them, and the very air against her skin.

  When she caught her breath, she said, “But we made it.”

  “Only because nobody but fat old Officer Jefferson chased us, and he can’t run more than five minutes without taking the wheezes.” The boy looked at her, and even in the shadows she could see his concern. “I shouldn’t of ought to have taken you down there. If Mr. Darcy finds out, he’ll fire me for sure.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let Father fire you, Duff.” Adriane touched the boy’s shoulder. Behind them, the sky was already beginning to lighten, so she went on. “Come on in and nap in the pressroom till time to take out the papers.”

  “Can’t,” Duff said. “I got to be going home to check on me sisters and me mother.” He turned to go but then looked back, a smile stealing across his face again. “It was some chase for sure, wasn’t it, Miss Adriane?”

  “That it was.” Adriane laughed and gave the boy a little shove down the street. “Now go on with you. I don’t want to have to explain to Beck why you’re late to get your papers.”

  The minute he took off in an easy jog, Adriane remembered she hadn’t asked him if he knew the name of the man who’d grabbed her, but she didn’t call him back. Instead, after noting how the eastern sky was turning a pale pink, she took off her shoes and slipped through the front door. Without a sound, she crept past the pressroom, but she didn’t make it. Beck grabbed her by the collar.

  “Hold it, you scalawag,” he growled. When he spun Adriane around to face him, her hat fell off. He blinked his eyes a couple of times and leaned down closer to her face as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing in the dim morning light. “Addie?”

  “Shh, Beck. Don’t wake Father.” She looked from Beck to the stairs and then back at Beck.

  The old man took in her trousers and tried to look cross, though one corner of his mouth twitched up. “I reckon as how that wouldn’t be a good idea right now.” Beck shook his head with a heavy sigh. “I’d ask you what you’ve been up to, but I ain’t all that sure I want to know.”

  “I was just trying to beat Garrett to a headline for once.”

  “And what headline you been out chasing?”

  “They found another Irish girl stabbed to death down on the riverfront.” Adriane turned her eyes from Beck to the pile of papers just inside the pressroom that were nothing but old news now.

  All signs of a smile vanished from Beck’s face. “Addie, tell me you didn’t go down to the riverfront.”

  “Oh, don’t look so shocked.” Adriane touched the old man’s wrinkled cheek. “Nobody knew it was me.”

  “What were you thinking, Addie?” Beck frowned at her.

  “That maybe we could beat Garrett to that headline.”

  “All the headlines in the world ain’t worth you taking that kind of risk. You’d best be sending up a thankful prayer that your guardian angel was watching over you.”

  “I know, Beck. I will and you’ll be sending them up with me, won’t you?” She gave him her best smile. She knew Beck couldn’t stay upset at her.

  “It’s a fact you need praying over.” He shook his head again as his frown faded. “I don’t reckon it’s any use fussing at you. You’re too hardheaded by far to listen to nothing nobody says anyhows.”

  “I’ve always listened to you, Beck.”

  “Then listen to this.” He gave her shoulder a firm shake. “You’d best get on some decent ladies’ clothes before the boss catches you in this getup.”

  Adriane looked down at the trousers damp from the river mist. She sighed. “You’re right as always. Father would tell me I’m ruining my chances for a decent match and here when someone has at last asked to marry me.”

  “What’s this about marrying?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Adriane kept her voice light. “Stanley Jimson asked Father for my hand in marriage last evening. Father’s ecstatic.”

  “You don’t say. Well then.” Beck wouldn’t quite meet her eyes as he went on. “It’s said the Jimsons are one of the finest families in Louisville.”

  “Richest anyhow,” Adriane said.

  “Money comes in right handy at times.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Adriane looked at Beck and stopped pretending. If there was one person she could be honest with, it was Beck. “You don’t like Stan, do you?”

  Beck finally looked back up at her. The wrinkles around his eyes tightened some as he reached out and laid his hand on her cheek. “It don’t make no matterance who it is I like, Addie. What you got to worry about is who it is you can take a liking to.”

  2

  Beck’s words echoed in Adriane's head as she exchanged her trousers for petticoats and skirts. Would she be able to do what he said? Take a liking to Stan Jimson. At least the proper kind of liking. She and Stan had been keeping company for months. As she’d told her father the evening before, Stan made a very convenient escort to the social functions where she gathered little tidbits on the social scene to print in the Tribune.

  The ladies of the town so enjoyed seeing their names in print, properly surrounded by flattering adjectives, that several months ago Adriane had begun writing a “Sally Sees All” column devoted entirely to who wore what accompanied by whom to which social.

  Often as not, Adriane had to hide her yawns behind her fan as she feigned interest in the chatter of the ladies at the gatherings, but the increase in the Tribune’s readership numbers more than made up for a few hours of boredom.

  Adriane jerked the pins out of her hair and let the dark strands fall down around her shoulders. As she began brushing out the tangles, she met her eyes in the mirror. She dropped her hands to her side and stared at herself. Would everyone expect her to become one of those ladies worried about nothing more than the latest bit of gossip or what she’d stitch on her next sampler?

  Adriane almost smiled. Gossip she could handle, but she couldn’t sew. She’
d never learned even the most basic stitches. The only thing she was good at was helping put out the Tribune, and she wasn’t ready to give that up. She had to keep being part of the push to get the news in front of the populace. It was what she lived for.

  The tangles in her hair forgotten, Adriane went to stand in front of her small desk where her journal lay open. She stared at the words on the page as if she hadn’t written them there herself the night before. I am to marry Stanley Jimson.

  She wanted to turn the page to a blank sheet where she could write of her morning’s adventure with Duff. Then she was ashamed for thinking of it as a lark. The poor girl under that grimy cover would have no opportunities to seize happiness in the days ahead. Those days, her very life, had been taken violently from her. Here Adriane was being offered every chance—money, position, love. Why did she keep feeling as if someone was trying to shove her into a dark closet the way Henrietta used to do when she was a child?

  What other choice did Adriane have except marriage? She was twenty-two, several years past the prime marrying age. As her father said, she was surely fortunate to be getting an offer at all, especially since he’d not been able to put aside any kind of dowry for her. There was always a new and better press to buy, such as the one he’d been talking about lately that could print twelve sheets at once.

  And every woman wanted to be married, didn’t she? It was the natural state of life for men and women to marry. Didn’t God tell Adam and Eve to go forth and be fruitful? Fruitful and marriage went together. Her father himself planned to marry the lovely Lucilla Elmore in the fall when her self-prescribed two-year mourning period for the late Mr. Elmore was properly observed.

  Lucilla had positively beamed at Adriane the night before when her father announced the news of Stan’s impending proposal, and deep inside Adriane, the first fluttering of something very near panic had awakened.

  She could perhaps have convinced her father she had no desire to marry, that he needed her to help him with the Tribune. Hadn’t he always told her she was worth two hired hands? But Lucilla would have stronger powers of persuasion. While it was rumored the late Mr. Elmore had not left Lucilla as much of his estate as she had expected when she married the man twice her age seven years earlier, he had left her with a comfortable income.

  With that money practically in reach, Adriane’s father had already been in touch with some of the manufacturers in the East. A press that could print twelve sheets at a time would be better than two hired hands.

  So if Lucilla had decided Adriane must marry, there would be no way she could fight it. She would have to marry Stanley Jimson. She made herself read the words on the page of her journal aloud. “I am to marry Stanley Jimson.”

  At the sound of his name in her ears, she had the odd feeling a box was closing around her. She pushed the feeling aside. She was no longer a child to be terrified by imagined monsters in the dark.

  She would face what had to be done. If she had to marry, then so be it. And why not marry Stanley Jimson? Now, when she thought about it, she realized he’d been trying to ask her to marry him for weeks, perhaps months. She had simply put him off. It surprised her that he had gone to her father. She smiled a little. Perhaps it would be good to marry a man with a few surprises.

  It could even be that if she had to marry, and it appeared she did, then Stan might turn out to be the ideal man. She could surely persuade him she would never be happy unless she could keep writing and in some way helping with the paper. He would want her to be happy. Wasn’t that what he was always telling her? That he had an undying affection for her and that her happiness was of the utmost importance to him.

  Adriane picked up her pen, dipped the nib in the ink, and wrote “Mrs. Stanley Jimson” on the page of her journal. She so disliked the way the words looked she almost marked them out, but she stayed her hand. Instead she stared at the name and remembered all the times she’d heard people say what a lovely couple she and Stan made. She could not agree.

  They were opposites in all ways. Stan was so blond and fair that she feared when she was in his company her own dark hair and rosy complexion caused him to look even more pale and delicate than he might have if he were keeping company with someone whose coloring more nearly matched his own. Even his eyes were pale, a kind of shadowy gray. Somewhat like the misty fog rising off the river that morning, Adriane thought suddenly. Her own eyes were as blue as a deep summer sky.

  While she never thought much about it, she knew it was true when people told her she was pretty. Those few who remembered her mother said she was the exact image of her. When she asked her father once if this was true, he had studied her for a long moment before he answered. “I suppose it is true that you look like Katherine on the outside, but you are like me on the inside.”

  Those had been his exact words. She’d written them down in her journal, but she didn’t need to turn back the pages to remember them. She knew what was important to her father and what was important to her. It was not what was on the outside.

  Which had attracted Stan? She had little doubt of the answer to that question. He claimed to be quite entranced by her looks. Young men were always ready to flock around her at any event, but she’d had few serious suitors. Her beauty was not enough to make up for her lack of money and, even worse, her outspoken and determined character. The only one to persevere was Stanley Jimson.

  Why? That was the question Adriane really needed to answer. It wasn’t as if Stan didn’t have plenty of other choices. That was assured by his family’s money in spite of the way the girls sometimes giggled and mocked Stan behind his back. The poor man did often appear to be weak beside his father who practically radiated power. Not only that, but his own mother had a way of making him seem fawning by demanding Stan attend to her slightest whim whenever they were out in public together.

  The thought of the old dragon brought a tight smile to Adriane’s face. Meta Jimson hated Adriane and had devised numerous ploys to protect her precious son from such an unsuitable match. Adriane stared down at the name she’d written in her journal and tried not to wish the woman had succeeded.

  She slammed the book shut, shoved it into its place on the shelf. Then without looking back in the mirror, she pulled the brush through her hair a few more times before tying it back carelessly.

  She didn’t have time to worry about any of this now. The newsboys would be coming for their papers and she wanted to write down what she’d seen in those predawn hours on the riverfront before she lost the intensity of the images. For a minute she remembered how the eyes of the man who had grabbed her burned into hers, and in spite of herself she couldn’t keep from comparing them to Stan’s eyes. Feeling had almost exploded from that man’s eyes. She’d never seen anything exploding from Stan’s eyes.

  Stan was always so perfectly in control, his emotions contained as neatly as his cravat was tied. In contrast, at times Adriane felt as if her own emotions were loose cannons apt to shoot off in who knew which direction. Hadn’t Stan just chided her last week for heatedly responding to Mrs. Hafley when the silly woman had made a totally inane remark about Adriane’s friend Grace Compton? Just because Mrs. Hafley was living in the lap of luxury didn’t mean all women were. And it was for all women that Grace was in the East making a valiant effort to promote a woman’s right to vote.

  Adriane sighed as she headed down to the pressroom. She would have to remember better control of her tongue this afternoon when they attended Mrs. Wigginham’s benefit. It would not do to have Mrs. Wigginham angry with her or more importantly the Tribune.

  With automatic movements, Adriane stirred up the cookstove fire, made coffee, and fried bacon and eggs. In the pressroom she could hear Beck straightening the trays of type before the new day’s rush began. Adriane slipped out the back door and whistled softly. An ugly spotted mongrel crept out of the shadows to take yesterday’s stale bread from her. When she patted his head, his crooked tail moved back and forth in a ludicrous sort of wag
that never failed to make Adriane smile. Then with the bread in his mouth, the old dog melted back into the shadows.

  Adriane watched him go and wondered what stories the old dog might be able to tell. For a minute, she considered writing something for the paper from the dog’s viewpoint. She smiled a little at the thought of her father agreeing to publish such foolishness in the Tribune. That would never happen.

  Back in the kitchen, she put her father’s breakfast in the warming oven and carried Beck’s to him in the pressroom, along with the pot of coffee. Adriane was at her desk struggling to come up with the right words for what she’d seen that morning when the newsboys showed up for their papers.

  The minute Beck opened the door, Duff slipped inside in front of the other boys to help hand out the bundles. Before he took out his own bundle, he came over to Adriane and pulled a newspaper out from under his coat.

  “You seen the Herald?” the boy asked as he spread the paper out on Adriane’s desk.

  The sight of the Herald’s masthead brought the usual flush of anger. Adriane’s eyes fell to the three-inch headline. RIVER SLASHER STRIKES AGAIN. Underneath in smaller headline type was THIRD GIRL’S BODY FOUND.

  “How does he do it?” Adriane said more to herself than to Duff as she quickly scanned the account.

  “It’s a puzzler, but I’m figuring he must have had his men holding the presses for the story when we were down there,” Duff said.

  “But how does he find out everything so soon?” Adriane said.

  “It’s said he walks the streets all over town talking to folks about what might be happening or going to happen.” Duff poked the headline with his finger. “I’m told he pays good money for all kinds of leads even if he don’t never make a story out of it, as long as them doing the telling promise not to let none of the other papers in on it. People who know I’m working for the Tribune won’t hardly give me the time of day no more. They’re scared somebody from the Herald will see them talking to me and Garrett will stop paying them for their stories.” Duff looked up at Adriane with a frown wrinkling his small, round face. “Looks like we wasted our time this morning.”