Chapter One

December 1916

The little girl wove herself through the frigid air, lacing between shoppers and pedestrians. She felt nary a chill as she scampered through the crowd, just the unadulterated cheer that invigorated the air at Christmastime. It made her heart excited and restless. It made her spirit bright. It made her want to play. And right that moment she had only one game in mind: escape Mamma.

Oh how clever she felt, how sly and slippery. She loved to make people fret over her. It thrilled her to hear their anxious voices calling her name before she jumped out and surprised them where they stood. Especially her father who was particularly awful at finding her. He'd call and call her name, come so close to finding her, so close she could reach out and touch him, then think better of it and walk away. It made the girl fall into fits of giggles just watching him and it made her think highly of her hiding skills. It shouldn't be too difficult to find a hiding place here, she gathered, with so many petticoats swishing about and her being so small it would be easy to conceal herself amongst them.

Just as the girl had cleared her mother's sight it started to snow. Delighted, she opened her mouth and tried to catch snowflakes on the tip of her tongue, just how her father had shown her. It was more difficult than she anticipated, for as soon as she though one would land on her tongue the brisk December wind swirled it away. Indignant and determined, she would chase one through the air with a protruding pink tongue until finally a tiny white flake chanced upon it. She laughed at her triumph and just as she swallowed her snowflake a hand reached out and grabbed her by the sleeve. The little girl's heart panicked for a moment, thinking a wicked stranger may have just snatched her before she realized that it was her own mother who had caught her.

"Come here, you!" She said her voice light enough for the little girl to know she wasn't angry with her, nor was she at all worried for her. She was just as the little girl knew her to be, jolly and happy with a brilliant smile and a swollen belly.

The little girl admonished herself for not thinking more of Mamma. Running so fast to keep up with her might have hurt her baby sister. How badly she wanted a baby sister. Her mother and father kept telling her it may not be so but she refused to hear of it. She could not conceive her life without a little sister. It had to be so. She would will it to be so. She would do anything for it to be a sister.

"Are we going to buy presents for the baby, Mama?" She asked, watching her mother shake her head.

"The baby won't be here in time for Christmas. I am buying gifts for your father." She said with that knowing glimmer in her eye. She had a secret. The little girl could tell.

The little girl's heart quickened as they entered the Garment District. So many stores, so many new things, so many fine ladies that it made her ache with envy. The little girl looked down at her scuffed shoes and second hand dress and frowned. She wished she looked as lovely as they did. And most of all she wished that she looked like the little girls she and her father saw in Central Park. The little girls who wore satin and lace; that pushed tiny prams and held china dolls in their gloved hands. Her father had promised her that St. Nicholas would bring her a china doll for Christmas and all that autumn she was buzzing with excitement just dreaming of the weight of the doll in her arms.

"Oh, Mamma, Look!" She pointed at the toy store, at the display of Christmas dolls in the window. Their glassy cheeks painted rosy and their beautiful frocks laced with holly and mistletoe. Her mother looked up and regarded the dolls looking slightly crestfallen. She gripped her daughter's hand tighter and pulled her along.

"We're going to Macy's." She said stiffly. "Come on." The little girl could see a fresh wave of disappointment fall over her mother's weary face and she felt a pang of guilt in her heart for even mentioning the dolls.

Her spirits were no better lifted at the department store, the girl observed. For when they got there the store was jammed with people holding boxes upon boxes and bags upon bags. It was so very close to Christmas and people were rushing to get their shopping done in time for the holiday. She watched her mother's eyes pour over the crowd for some way to get in. The little girl wondered how they would fit in the store, her and her mother with her huge belly.

"You stay here." She instructed, putting two hands on the little girl's shoulders and backing her up against the cold brick. "I'll be right out." The little girl watched her mother edge herself into the crowd. She could still see the top of her scarlet head even after her body has disappeared into the store.

She slumped back onto the brick watching her breath hang in the air, taking in the happy disarray all around her. She wouldn't move this time, little Molly Dawson vowed to herself. She wouldn't dare. Not on her baby sister's life.

...

Caledon Hockley cursed the air under his breath. His car had been stalled on Fifth Avenue for no less than ten minutes! Damn New York! He'd rather be in Philadelphia with his inexorably needy wife and spoiled children. New York was splendid in the winter but its streets were too filthy and congested for his liking. He'd had enough of this. He needed a smoke.

He stepped right out of the car and into traffic, ignoring the shouts and beeping horns as he did. When he finally reached the sidewalk he leaned against a store front and lit up, relishing in a long drag of his pipe. It was good long while before he felt the lightning down his spine. The inexplicable sixth sense that someone's eyes were upon him.

He looked over and saw her. The lone little girl who was looking at him. She couldn't have been any older than five. She had her palms placed on a window pain and was looking sideways towards him, head tilted in scrutiny. She wore scarcely anything, Cal judged, considering the fierce cold that night. Her stockings looked thin; her dress too small, and her wool wrap sagged off her little frame. A poor immigrant child, he guessed, Irish maybe. But that was not the first thing Cal noticed. It was the jumble of beautiful red curls that cascaded down her back.

He stared back at her for a long while, noting the rose red of her hair, and she stared back at him in careful examination the way most children do. He flashed a handsome grin. She smiled back. Her heart and her trust had been won just like that. As he approached she looked back up at the store window with such painful longing it almost broke his heart. Almost.

"What are you doing out here all alone?" He asked genially. The little girl looked from him to the window and back again. The window was full of dolls. The kind of dolls his daughter Florence had dozens of, frilly and petite with their dainty limbs and painted faces. "You want one of those?"

"Oh, yes." Said the child breathlessly, pressing her cheeks to the pane. In the warm light of the shop window her likeness had become more apparent. It wasn't just the color and swirl of her hair; it was her face, the apples of her, the arch of her eyes, and the ivory glow of her skin. He could not believe it.

She was no child of immigrants. Her little wind-chime voice held no trace of a foreign tongue. But it was not a New York accent, either. Interesting…he thought. Who did she belong to?

"Perhaps Santa Claus will bring you one for Christmas, hmm?" He mused to her.

"I don't think he will." She replied unhappily. "Last year all I got was a bear and two oranges. And the bear was missing and eye so Mamma put a patch over it so he wouldn't suffer too badly without it. I try very hard to care for him well but I can't help but think Santa must not be very fond of me if all he gives me is a one-eyed bear while other children get sweets and beautiful baby dolls." The little girl was quiet for a long time. Cal stood beside her watching her forlorn eyes trying to think up something clever to say.

"Maybe St. Nicholas gave you that bear because he knew it needed someone very special to care for him in his condition." The little girl's face was overcome with epiphany. "I mean you can't give an injured bear to just anybody. It requires a special person to love and care for a bear like that. Only the purest of heart." He affirmed with only the slightest sarcasm in his voice. He reached out and placed an index finger on her little nose and she blinked and grin her whole being overcome with revelation.

"I do love him very much, sir! I call him Patch and he sleeps with me in my bed most every night right in the crook of my arm." She said, proudly pointing to where the bear rested each night. "And every night I sing to him and tell him a story just like Mamma sings to me. I'm very kind to him." She declared in her precocious little voice. "But I do wish that Santa may bring me a doll this year so he'd have a friend for when he gets lonely." Cal saw how the little girl's lissome fingers reached down just then to fiddle with the hem of her tattered dress. Cal knew she would get no doll this year and so did she. He could tell by her despondent looks and melancholy sighs that she understood what rich and what poor was and she knew what side she was on.

He pitied this impoverished child not only for her lack of means but for her lack of ignorance. Maybe he wouldn't have felt it so much if she hadn't resembled his dead fiancé so. Maybe he could have walked away. Maybe he could have left her alone in the street on that bitter December night. But he couldn't. Something deep down in that pit of remorse would not let him.

The little girl let out a shiver and held herself tight and Cal fought the overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and hold her close. She was so little and he could already see it in her. She was Rose. He saw it in her eyes and in her very person. She was his Rose reincarnated and best of all she was Rose untainted. She was his chance at redemption and he would not let her slip away. Not like the last time.

"You know, I have about a hundred dolls like that at my house." He beguiled. The little girl looked up at him, blue eyes wide.

"You do?" She asked, astonished.

"Why, yes. They're everywhere and I have hardly any use for them." He sighed, feigning contempt. "It's really a shame their not enjoyed by someone who appreciates them." The little girl's attention had been piqued and so had her intuition. She let out a long, labored sigh of embroidered longing that Cal was sure was not only intended to tug on the heartstrings but snap them. So she was clever.

"Would you like one?" The little girl's face beamed with excitement but then fell again as she contemplated it. Her father had said Santa may bring her one for Christmas if she was well behaved. But Christmas was days away, a lifetime if your only three. Plus, right now she was being very naughty running off to look at the dolls when Mamma had told her not to move. Santa probably wouldn't bring her anything at all now. And here was this nice man offering her several dolls for nothing at all.

"More than anything in the whole world." She gaped in awe of her luck. She had never felt cleverer. A little actress she was. Just like Mamma.

"Come with me, then." He said, taking a few retreating steps. "We'll take my car to my house and you can pick out what you like." He said beckoning her forward.

"Then I'll come back here, right?" She asked turning his offer over in her mind.

"Of course!" He told her. " I'll bring you right back here. To this very spot. I promise."

But the little girl hesitated, looking over at the crowded Macy's department store. How long would her mother be, she wondered? Would she be back in time for her return or would her mother find her gone and become angry with her? She tried to picture her mother livid but nothing conjured. Instead she saw her smiling face as she approached with armfuls of porcelain and lace. Four beautiful dolls, no six! Three for her and three for baby sister! They could play together all day during the winter with those lovely toys. Her, her mother and her darling baby sister.

Without wavering, the girl leapt up and took the strangers hand. It was soft and warm like the inside of a glove. So unlike her father's nimble fingers.

"Where do you live?" She asked happily trailing his steps.

"In a place called Philadelphia." His voice made it sound like an enchanted kingdom

"Is it far away?" She asked tentatively.

"No. Not really." He told her as they crossed the street. She looked up at him as they approached his sleek black automobile, eyes gleaming. "Where do you live?"

"I don't quite know." The little girl screwed up her face in contemplation. "But I think they call it Hell's Kitchen." She said firmly without so much as hesitating over the word hell. Cal looked away from her and grimaced. A terrible neighborhood, no doubt full of equally deplorable company. Who in the world would leave their child alone, at night, in the cold? And so far away from home? He considered the wiles she displayed to him earlier. There was no doubt in his mind that her mother was a prostitute. Some gorgeous, penniless whore selling herself along with the retailers on Fifth. The shame of it! This little doll would do much better where he was taking her.

"Wait!" She cried, just as his driver had opened the door for them. She looked around them for all the world and more.

"What's the matter, sweet pea?" He implored, worrying she had become indecisive. What if she changed her mind? What if she cried out? He'd just have to take her anyway.

"I need to remember this place. So I know where to find my Mamma." She was so adamant that he let her stand there for awhile, in the middle of Fifth Avenue, taking in everything she would leave behind. The snowflakes, the lights, the madness. Oh, how she would come to miss the madness.

"Alright, I'm ready." She had no fear. For enemies in her mind were crooked, bony men all dressed in black. They were toothless old women with plates of poisoned goodies. As Molly Dawson looked up at this man with the generous smile and eyes of burning coal she held no doubt in her mind. All would be well.