Deadly Vows by Brenda Joyce Read Free Book Online

senses at last.

CHAPTER THREE
    Saturday, June 28, 1902
4:00 p.m.
    H ER THROAT WAS raw from shouting for help. Francesca leaned against the door of the gallery, blinded by a sudden surge of tears. How was she going to get out? She had been crying for help for a very long time, and no one had heard her. What time was it, anyway?
    She could barely believe that she remained locked inside. Trembling, she turned to find her purse. She had dropped it on the floor when she had heard the front door being locked. It was on the other side of the central wall where her nude portrait hung. For one moment, Francesca stared through the shadows in the gallery at her own sultry image.
    She had been lured to the gallery and now, she was locked inside.
    Someone wanted her to miss her own wedding.
    There was no other conclusion to draw. She was not going to miss her own wedding! Somehow she was going to get out of this damn basement. She loved Calder Hart—she could not wait to finally be his wife. She would never leave him standing at the altar, in shock, waiting for her!
    As she stumbled into the other chamber behind the wall, she wondered who had done this.
    She had made many enemies in the course of the pastsix months. Every crime that she had solved had involved justice for the perpetrators. The list of those who wished to hurt her was probably long. She would consider it the moment she was out of the gallery and uptown—finally married to Hart.
    Her purse lay on the floor, open. Francesca knelt and dug within for her pocket watch. Her heart slammed when she saw that it was a few minutes before four.
    By now, her family, friends and three hundred guests were at the church. Everyone—including Hart—must know that she had not arrived.
    Surely he was worried about her! She wished she had left a message with Alfred; she wished she had shown Connie the damn note. But she hadn’t done either of those things and no one would have any idea where she had gone.
    She must have been screaming for help for perhaps an hour, hoping a passerby would hear her. Clearly, the gallery was set too low below the sidewalk, and too far back from it, for anyone passing to hear her. There had to be another way to get out.
    Francesca dismissed the notion of trying to escape through the front windows, as they were barred. She ran back into the office, praying that the windows there were not as small as she recalled.
    She stared up at the two windows, which were high up on the wall near the ground level, just below the office’s ceiling. They were small rectangles that barely allowed any light in. Each was probably eighteen or twenty inches wide. They looked half as tall.
    She was a slender woman, but even if she could get up to the windows and break the glass, she feared she would not be able to squeeze through. She shuddered. If it weren’t her wedding day, she would continue calling for help—and wait for someone, eventually, to hearher. But she was going to take her vows, even if she was late—which now, obviously, she would be.
    Francesca glanced around. She quickly realized she must push the desk to the wall, beneath the window, and stack the file cabinet on the desk, in order to make a ladder. The desk looked small enough, but it was surprisingly heavy, and it was many moments later before she had pushed it across the small space. She cleared the desktop with a determined sweep of her arm. Then she marched to a file cabinet. She pushed it across the floor, then managed to lift it onto the desk. Her back felt broken. Panting, she paused and looked up.
    Francesca stared up at the window grimly. If she got stuck in that window, she could hang there all night. The possibility was distinctly dreadful.
    But there was no other choice. Determined, she removed her shoes and stockings, the better to gain some traction, and climbed onto the desk. She tested the cabinet for balance by jiggling it. It sat square on the desk and seemed