“You must,” he said.
But Elizabeth knew she mustn’t. “You’re all very kind, but I couldn’t possibly impose, and I really must get back home to my aunt. She’ll be worried sick.”
“You can send her a telegram,” Mrs. Bates said. “Tell her kindly people are looking after you.”
“Gideon!”
David Vanderslice hurried down the aisle, squeezing by the women who had begun to make their way out of the car.
“I have a cab waiting. Anna, don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything.”
She smiled up at her brother. “David, this is Miss Miles. We must take care of her, too.”
David nodded politely. “Of course we will. Anna, can you walk?”
Anna said she could, but Mrs. Bates told David to carry her, so that’s how she was taken off the train. Mrs. Bates followed, leaving Gideon to escort Elizabeth.
“Can you walk, Miss Miles?” he asked with a wicked gleam in his eye. “Because I’m perfectly willing to carry you again.”
“I can walk, Mr. Bates,” she assured him, pretending not to notice how he was smiling at her. She followed the others, and Bates came along behind her.
“It’s futile, you know,” he said.
“What is?” she asked in alarm, wondering what he knew about her.
“Trying to resist my mother. She always gets her way.”
“I really can’t—”
“And what about poor Anna? How can you cause her any more distress?”
If he only knew the kind of distress Elizabeth could attract. “You’re very persuasive, Mr. Bates,” she said. She knew better than to continue an argument she couldn’t afford to lose. She’d simply excuse herself to the ladies’ lounge and then disappear. It would be kinder to everyone.
The porter helped her down the metal stairs to the platform, and she paused to get her bearings. She saw the doors into the station and the ticket windows beyond. And then she saw Thornton’s thugs, standing at the end of the platform and watching every woman who got off the train.
“Are you all right?” Bates asked.
She wasn’t all right at all. She ducked her head, praying they hadn’t seen her. “I feel a bit faint,” she said quite truthfully.
“You never faint,” he reminded her. “Would you like me to carry you?”
“No!” She couldn’t cause a scene. They’d see her for sure. “But if you’d let me take your arm . . .”
“Of course.” He offered it, then laid his other hand over hers.
She turned her face, nearly burying it in his shoulder as they walked past the two men who would kill her, given the chance. Surely, they wouldn’t dare accost her if she was with Gideon. She didn’t even glance at them to see if they recognized her, but her heart hammered so loudly, she imagined they could hear it. Surely, Gideon Bates could hear it.
And then they were through the terminal and outside again, where a row of vehicles waited to carry passengers to their destinations.
David Vanderslice’s shout drew them to a motorized cab, and Elizabeth let Gideon Bates hand her inside and onto the seat beside Anna.
“Oh, Elizabeth, I’m so glad you’re coming with us.”
“You’re right. I do need to rest before I try to go home,” she said as Gideon and David took their seats up front with the driver. She’d go to the hotel with them for the night. Maybe she’d even travel to New York with them. She’d be safe from Thornton’s men if she wasn’t alone.
“So tell us, Gideon,” Mrs. Bates said. “How were you able to get Whittaker to release us?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it at all,” he called back to them. “It was David and an old friend of ours.”
“What friend is that?” Anna asked.
“You won’t believe it,” David said. “I hardly believe it myself, come to that. It’s Marjorie’s husband, Oscar Thornton.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Oscar thornton?
Elizabeth’s whole body went numb. She couldn’t have heard that right.
“That’s an unkind joke, David,” Mrs. Bates said.
“It’s not a joke, Mother,” Gideon said. “Thornton found out you and Anna had been arrested, and he offered his help. Honestly, I don’t think you’d be free if he hadn’t.”
“What on earth could Oscar do that you couldn’t?” Mrs. Bates asked. Elizabeth had never seen her so angry, not in all the time they’d been mistreated and abused at the workhouse. “And how did he find out we were arrested in the first place?”
“I’m afraid I told him,” David said. “He came to me with a business proposition and—”
“What kind of business proposition? I hope you aren’t planning to get involved with him.”
“Mother, please, don’t upset yourself,” Gideon said.
“I’m not upsetting myself. Oscar Thornton is upsetting me. How dare he approach any of us after the way he treated Marjorie?” Mrs. Bates said. “And then he expects David to help him in some business arrangement?”
“I have no intention of it,” David assured her. “I’m afraid I used Anna’s situation as an excuse to avoid having to turn him down directly, though, and then he offered his assistance. When it seemed as if he really could help, I had to listen.”
“And he really did assist us,” Gideon said.
“In what way?” Mrs. Bates asked skeptically.
“He sent his bodyguards out to find a deputy to serve Warden Whittaker with the writ to force him into court today,” Gideon said.
“Gideon and Mr. O’Brien—he’s the attorney for the Woman’s Party—had been trying to find a deputy for days, but they were all hiding,” David added.
“What do you mean they were hiding?” Mrs. Bates asked.
Elizabeth’s head pounded as she tried to follow the conversation and make sense of it at the same time. David and Gideon explained how President Wilson or someone had hidden the deputies so they could keep the women in prison, which seemed very strange to Elizabeth. How would the president hide deputies? But somehow Thornton and his thugs had outsmarted someone or other and saved them all. Mrs. Bates couldn’t believe it, but that was only because she didn’t know Thornton wasn’t trying to save her and Anna at all. Oh no. He was trying to get his fat hands on Betty Perkins. Elizabeth shuddered, remembering poor Jake out in the alley.