Liam released her with a low grunt and sank back in his seat, arms crossed. “Put thoughts like that out of your head, Mac,” he said. “That’s not where you’re going.”
“And where exactly did you say we are going?” she asked.
“We’ll be there soon enough.”
Definitely ominous. Mac had a brief, uneasy notion and quickly dismissed it. Even Liam wouldn’t be that rash—would he?
She steadied herself and searched for street signs as the carriage lurched into motion. No smoothly curved Embarcadero here, only a stairstep succession of jutting piers. Nothing was immediately recognizable. After a few bumpy minutes the driver turned onto a wide thoroughfare, and the wharf area gave way to the city proper.
Market Street. Mac pressed her nose to the smudged glass. In her own time Market was the central artery of San Francisco, dividing the financial and residential districts from the southern industrial area. So it was now. That was almost the only similarity.
Questions bubbled in her mind like an overflowing pot, but she couldn’t get them out. She couldn’t even worry much about Liam and his secretive, contradictory attitude or what she was going to do when this ride was over. All her mind would accept was observation, a mute cataloging of everything that passed within her view.
Buildings no higher than four or five stories, if that, square and somber and pierced with rows of identical windows. Quaint signs advertising apothecary shops and ship’s chandleries and steamship lines. Telegraph offices and cigar stores and buggy companies. Carts and hacks and gigs bumping over the cobbled street, alongside horsecars and cable cars running on rails.
And people. Barefoot urchins hawking newspapers, sober businessmen tipping hats, laborers making deliveries. As the carriage moved away from the Bay, the traffic grew heavier and more women appeared on the streets. Women in dresses that could double as cruel and unusual punishment, complete with bustles that made shelves of their posteriors.
It looked like something out of Masterpiece Theatre. Only those were usually British productions, except for that Edith Wharton adaptation. The one about the American girls who’d gone to England to find husbands. About the right time period, too…
“Damn it,” Liam snapped. “What’s taking him so bloody long?” He pounded on the side of the coach. “Come on, man!”
The carriage moved no faster. Vehicular traffic had thickened, and Mac found herself fascinated by the aftermath of a minor mishap between a produce cart and a carriage driven by a nattily dressed man. A crowd had gathered in the middle of the street to witness flying curses and vegetables.
At least in this era, caught between the “wild west” and the twentieth century, no one was likely to pull out a gun to solve the argument.
No, this kind of confrontation would probably be more dangerous a hundred years from now, in the middle of a modern city. Or in the jungle, where no rules applied.
Victorian San Francisco, on the surface, was civilized.
The carriage lurched to a stop at the curb a few blocks farther down the street. Liam jumped out before the driver left his seat.
“Wait here,” Liam commanded.
“Hold it. Where are you—”
But he was already striding away toward a building of nondescript brick and wood, three stories high and studded with rows of plain windows. A sign on the ground floor, neatly lettered, proclaimed “Rooms and Suites Available.” Was this where Liam intended to put her up?
She didn’t have long to wait. After a few minutes Liam came charging back, his expression more grim and forbidding than ever.
“The Palace,” he rapped to the driver, who was impressed into swift obedience by Liam’s glare.
“Didn’t they have any rooms available?” Mac asked as he sat down beside her.
He gave a narrow-eyed look. “I think you’ll prefer the Palace Hotel. You have heard of it, haven’t you?”
She nodded. The Palace Hotel of Liam’s day was an extravagant marvel in a city of extravagance. It had been home to the moneyed elite, wealthy travelers, and diplomats. It was also extremely expensive. “Is that where you live?”
“Hardly. But it should do well enough for you—for the time being.”