Brenda Joyce - [Francesca Cahil 02] Read Online Free Page B

determine whether the person was a man or a woman. She was about to demand that she be released when the person said, “Miss Cahill?”
    It was a woman. Francesca relaxed slightly. “Yes?”
    “Please.”
The woman’s single word was an emotionally distressed plea. “Please.
Please help me”
she said.

TWO
    F RIDAY, J ANUARY 31, 1902—10:00 P.M.
    Astonished, Francesca could only stare. As she did so, the woman pressed something into her hand and begged again, “Please.” She turned, slipping and sliding away as she fled into the crowd.
    “Wait,” Francesca began, coming to her senses.
    “Francesca?” her father called from the street behind her.
    Her heart was racing and she was breathless. Francesca opened her palm, keeping her back to Andrew as he called for her again. The woman had crushed a card into her palm, and even with all of the street lamps, it was too hard to read in the dark. Francesca quickly slid the card into her beaded purse.
    She inhaled with excitement and turned, moving toward the waiting brougham. Her father regarded her closely as she approached. “Did that woman accost you? Are you all right?”
    Francesca smiled at him, and it was genuine. “No, no, it was a case of mistaken identity,” she said.
    A woman was in trouble. Desperately so, if her tone was any indication of her straits. And she wanted Francesca’s help.
    It was not until she had reached the sanctuary of her bedroom that Francesca could dig into her purse and produce the calling card. On the front was the woman’s name, Miss Georgette de Labouche, and her address, which was 28 West 24th Street. She lived only a few blocks from Madison Square.
    Francesca turned the card over, and the laboriously printed words, all in block letters, leaped out at her. There were four.
    HELP.
    COME IMMEDIATELY.
    TONIGHT.
    Francesca exhaled harshly, amazed. What was this?
    She finally removed her elbow-length white evening gloves, kicking off her delicate high-heeled green satin slippers. Was this a trick?
    She knew no one except, perhaps, Evan, who might play such a prank on her, and he would not do so at such an hour. For clearly this note was urging her to return to Madison Square then and there. Francesca glanced over at the large bronze clock set on an ebonized maple bureau. It was ten past ten.
    For a single gentlewoman, it was late. Single gentlewomen did not rush about the city alone and unescorted at such an hour. If they were out, they were at a dinner party or a ball, or perhaps the opera or ballet.
    Of course, she was not like the other young single women in this city.
    Why had Miss Georgette de Labouche singled her out for her pleas? God, even her name, which meant “Georgette of the mouth,” was a joke.
    Was she an actress? Francesca began to pace, her mint green evening gown, a combination of silk and chiffon, rustling about her legs. Then she halted. Dear God, that woman had been frightened and terribly distraught. Francesca would bet her life on it.
    Which meant she must respond to the woman’s plea for help.
    Francesca hurried to her closet, throwing it open. Their home, built only a few years ago, had all of the most modern conveniences, including electricity, closets, indoor plumbing, and one telephone—which was in her father’s study downstairs. Set back behind a large circular drive and huge lawns on Fifth Avenue, facing Central Park, it had been dubbed the Marble Palace by someone in the press, for the vast use of that particular stone. There was no marble, though, in Francesca’s large and beautifully appointed bedroom, except for the mantel over the fireplace and one marble-topped table in front of the beige damask sofa and blue-upon-blue sitting chairs.
    She pulled a dove gray suit from her closet and fumbled with the buttons on the back of her dress, not wanting to call for a maid. The house’s single telephone was downstairs. Was her father in the library even now? It was his favorite room, his sanctuary, and