CHAPTER2
Daisy read the Charleston newspaper society pages and wanted to throw up. Already Thomas Jones had moved on to his next victim. A young girl barely sixteen.
As grateful as she was to Mrs. Newton for saving her from the streets, she had to do something. Tomorrow they were leaving town, and while she knew she could never stop Thomas, she could not leave without getting her revenge.
Somehow she had to tell the world that he was not a good man.
But how?
No one would listen to her. No one believed that he had forced himself on her…that only by the grace of God had he not completely defiled her and taken her virginity.
Everyone believed he was a fine, upstanding young man who was the catch of the season. Everyone but her.
What could she do?
Getting up and walking downstairs, she suddenly had an idea. Could it work? No, it wasn’t earth shattering, but it would let the women of Charleston be aware that the man was a predator of young women.
What if there were other victims who hid in shame?
She ran outside to Mrs. Newton’s barn. Inside were wood, nails, paint, and everything she needed. After she closed the barn door, she took off her beautiful dress, and in her pantaloons and chemise, she painted a piece of wood she found. After she wrote in red paint the words, she found some wiring and made a hanger.
Staring at her handiwork, she put her dress back on. Maybe it wouldn’t help, maybe no one would see her creation, but she had to do something. She had to try to save the young woman he was pursuing and any other women in town he might try to defile.
After she put her dress on, she went upstairs and wrote the girl’s father a note. Borrowing money from Mary, she paid a courier to take it to him in the morning. Then she found Blanche Underwood, another young woman leaving with her tomorrow for Treasure Falls.
Blanche was nicknamed the “wild one” because she could outshoot, outride, and do anything a man could, and did not know how to be a lady. Mrs. Newton had been working with her, but frankly, the girl couldn’t care less about holding tea parties. She wanted to ride horses bareback across the fields.
“Blanche, I need your help,” Daisy whispered.
The girl looked up, her auburn tresses hung down her back and her emerald eyes gazed at her quizzically. “What do you need?”
“Not here,” Daisy said, glancing at the other young women who sat around crocheting or doing needlework. They all looked like such perfect young ladies, but most of them had a past.
“Meet me out by the barn,” Daisy told her.
Mary frowned across the room at them. She knew that something was up, but she said very little and never left the house. Not once in the two weeks that Daisy had been here, had she seen her outside. This was the first time she’d seen her down in the parlor.
Daisy sat and waited for Blanche to slip out the door, and a few minutes later, she joined her outside. The women had not even noticed when she disappeared. Most of them were quiet. They all knew that in the morning they were leaving. That’s why this was the perfect time for Daisy to do this.
She opened the barn door. “You know what happened to me, right?”
“Yes,” Blanche said. “My papa said I would never be a debutante because of men like him. Too many scalawags.”
“He was right,” Daisy told her. “I need your help. Tonight, late, I want to sneak out and hang this sign on the Jones’s house, on his gate so everyone will see it in the morning.”
Blanche laughed. “Oh, this sounds like what I’ve been missing. I’ve felt so stifled sitting around in that house all day just waiting for the time for us to leave. I’m sick of it. Needlepoint bores me and the women are so depressing. Wish I didn’t have to leave.”
Daisy could not disagree with the woman, but she didn’t have the owner of the whorehouse trying to catch her and put her to work. In the weeks since Daisy had been kicked out of the house, her family had not tried to find her as far as she knew. She really had no choice but to leave.
“Agreed. What do you think of my sign?”
The girl smiled and read. “Beware Defiler Rapist. Guard Your Daughters.”
Getting the words on there had been difficult, but somehow she’d managed. Two simple lines of text told the people of Charleston who lived in the big mansion on the hill.
“I’m so excited. We’ll need to slip out around midnight, sneak through the streets, and then put this on his gate.”
Daisy didn’t tell her about the note she’d sent to the young woman’s father. That, no one needed to know about but herself.
“I’ll meet you out here at midnight,” Blanche told her. “I’m so excited we’re doing this.”
A thrill scurried down Daisy’s spine. Yes, she was taking a chance, but she was also getting even. And, hopefully, her note to the sixteen-year-old’s papa would end Thomas’s chances with her.
Five hours later as the clock struck midnight, she put on her pinned-together ball dress that the hornswoggle had ripped. She rushed out of the house and met Blanche at the barn. The girl was wearing dark men’s clothing.
“You look great,” Daisy told her. “If I’d some men’s clothing I would have done the same.”
“Sorry, I only saved the one set. I’m hoping once I get settled, I can wear them again.”
The girl was stunningly beautiful and all that auburn hair of hers was pulled back and piled up under a hat. No, she didn’t look like a man. She looked like a beautiful woman disguised as a man. There was no hiding her voluptuous curves. Curves even Daisy felt a little jealous of.
“Let’s get this done and get back. We’re leaving in a few hours,” Daisy said, glad to finally be getting on the train out of town. She’d never been out of Charleston, and the thought of leaving her family behind made her sad, but she needed to leave if she wanted a new life.
She had to get out of Charleston.
“Let’s go,” Blanche said, picking up the sign. “Grab some more wire. Let’s make this difficult for him to remove.”
“I like your way of thinking,” Daisy told her, grabbing the small spool of bendable wire.
They opened the barn door, glanced out, and then took the back alleys to the mansion that sat upon a small rise in the middle of town. They were quiet, and when they heard voices, they hid in the shrubbery until two drunks went stumbling down the street.
“Geez, it’s past midnight. Don’t they know they should be home?” Daisy whispered, remembering her nights sleeping in the park, hidden in bushes with mosquitoes and ants biting her. It had been a horrible time that she never wanted to repeat in her life, and yet, here she was taking a chance.
But she had to. She had to get her revenge before she left town.
They reached the gate and stood there for a moment watching to make certain Thomas didn’t have guards or someone watching the house. No one. It was silent.
Quickly they worked on hanging the crudely made sign on the gate, wrapping wire around the iron rods so it would take a while to disassemble.
When they finished, they stood back and admired their handiwork. Giggling quietly, they ran down the street toward the alleys that led them back to Mrs. Newton’s home.
It was finished. No matter what happened tomorrow, she had done her best to alert the women of Charleston that the man would harm them just like he’d harmed her.
When they reached the house, they snuck back inside. Daisy hugged Blanche.
“Thank you. That meant a lot to me.”
“You’re welcome. That was the most fun I’ve had in two weeks. Now, we better get to bed. We have a long day tomorrow.”
The girls went to their separate bedrooms and Daisy undressed and crawled under the sheets. She tossed the old ball gown, leaving it behind.
Tomorrow her new life began, but tonight she had written hopefully the final chapter in her dealings with Mr. Thomas Jones. Hopefully, he would now be the one who would face society’s condemnation.