Kidnapped

Book 1: The Browns of Butcher's Hill

by Holly Bush

Genres: Mystery; historical romance; mystery; amateur sleuth

Synopsis

Phillip Brown wakes up one bitter November morning to find a woman near frozen on the stoop of the Baltimore home he shares with his sister and uncle. The unconscious woman eventually awakens, unwilling to share who has terrified her while she makes a recovery in the Brown home. He continues his work at the Wiest Oyster Cannery and pouring beer on occasion at his neighborhood brewery while guarding his family from dangerous criminals' intent of silencing his discoveries about the woman.

Daughter of the Wiest Oyster Cannery owner, Virginia Wiest hears the story of the unconscious woman by chance and is intrigued and determined to help. Deemed sickly as a young girl and cossetted by a widowed father, Virginia is drawn to helping the less fortunate and aiding Brown unravel the mystery surrounding the woman and her missing child.

When Virginia makes an ill-fated attempt to save the child, Phillip finds himself and his heart in danger. The daring rescue from a well-heeled brothel nearly ends him and his dreams.

This historical mystery includes a Happy for Now (HFN) conclusion.

Read more

Release date: May 20, 2025

Publisher: Holly Bush Books

Print pages: 210

Sample

Baltimore, November 1867

 

Phillip Brown turned his face into the down pillow and pulled the blanket over his broad, bare shoulders. Voices in the hallway were muted, but he could hear his sister, Sarah, attempting a whisper. He was not ready to leave his warm nest.

“What do you mean? On the doorstep? Good Lord!”

He imagined she was talking to their maid of all work about the milk delivery. Better Jenny than he. Sarah was never kind when he’d had more ale than was wise the night prior. A door closed with a slam, and a shuffle of slippers hurried by his room. Ahh. Silence and warmth. Just the necessary setting for him to sleep for several more hours and wake with a reasonably clear head.

On the cusp of slumber, Phillip sat upright at a piercing scream. He tumbled out of bed, pulled on pants and a shirt that smelled like tobacco and spilled ale, and raced down the steps, praying his stomach would not disgrace him before he found out who had shrieked and why.

“What? What is it?” he said as he hurried down the narrow hallway to the front door that stood open, sending a blast of cold air into the house.

“Help me, Jenny! She’s near froze!” Sarah looked up. “Thank the Lord. Here is Phillip. Carry her, Phillip. Hurry now.”

He stopped short at the threshold, nearly stepping on the body lying on the stoop. Sarah was kneeling beside a woman; he could see skirts now, stockinged legs and booted feet sticking out from under them.

“Build the fire in the spare room, Jenny, and gather blankets,” Sarah said and looked up at her brother. “Carry her, Phillip. Her skin is like ice.”

“Who is she?” he asked as he tucked his hands under the woman’s back and knees, his bare feet dancing on the cold stone stoop.

“I’ve no idea,” Sarah said, hurrying behind him. “Does it matter?”

It wouldn’t matter a bit to his sister, but he did not want to find himself between an angry husband and his wife. Hopefully, they’d be able to help this woman and send her on her way. He laid her down on the small bed in their spare room upstairs as Jenny lit coals in the fireplace. Sarah hurried in with a stack of blankets in her arms.

“Go on now, Phillip. I mean to get her down to her underclothes.”

He pulled the door shut behind him and wandered back to his room to dress in clean clothes, as there was no way he’d be able to climb back into his bed. He was wide awake. He looked out the window onto Wolfe Street after rubbing away ice curlicues on the glass that reminded him of the fabric on the chair cushions in the dining room. Sarah called it paisley. He saw a curtain twitch on old Mrs. Pappadol’s window across the way. Phillip pulled on his boots, not bothering to lace them, and clattered down the stairs, grabbing his heavy coat from the hook near the door. He waited until a wagon loaded with cut wood went by and darted across the street. He knocked and looked at the side window as a curtain twitched again.

“Mrs. Pappadol? It’s Phillip Brown. Can I come in?”

“Certainly not. I’m just a widowed woman, but I do have my reputation to consider.”

“Mrs. Pappadol. You’ve known me since I was in short pants. It’s freezing out here. Please let me come inside.”

He heard a bar slide and a lock turn. The door cracked open an inch or two. “What do you want?”

“You’re letting your heat out.”

The door opened and Phillip stepped inside, immediately assaulted with the smells he would forever associate with this old woman. Camphor and boiling cabbage. He took a breath through his mouth to settle his stomach.

She waved a hand under her nose. “You stink like the Bond Street Brewery!”

“I work there some nights. It’s no wonder I smell like beer.”

“That ain’t the reason you stink now. I saw you coming home near three in the morning last night.”

“What are you doing looking out your window at three in the morning?”

“None of your business. What do you want?”

“I want to know if you were looking out your window when that woman laid down on our stoop.”

“Laid down? She didn’t lay down. She was dropped there like a sack of taters.”

“Dropped?”

“That’s what I said. Dropped. Two men come along with a wagon, no mule, just one of them pulling it. They look up and down the street, and the one points at your door. The othern slings that girl over his shoulder and drops her. She never moved. I thought she might be dead.”

“What time was this?”

She shrugged. “Getting close to daybreak.”

“And you didn’t think to tell someone that a woman was going to freeze to death on a neighbor’s stoop?”

“Don’t you lecture me! You’re nothing but trash. We don’t need no Irish on Wolfe Street! Butcher Hill would be better off without you!” Phillip stared at her until she looked away and muttered, “Get out of my house.”

“Gladly.”

Phillip took a deep breath of frigid air and started across the street to his own home, glad he had not given in to the urge to return her cruelty. Why would anyone look up and down the street, point at his door, and dump an unconscious woman on his steps?

He went into the house and saw his sister hurrying down the stairs. “Is she dead?” he asked.

She pushed past him on the way to the kitchen and yelled over her shoulder. “Not yet. Come carry these buckets of hot water. We’ve got to warm the room. I sent a message to Dr. Prosperi. Hopefully, he will be here soon.”

“Prosperi? He’ll be charging us a week’s wages.”

“Why did you go over to see that hateful woman across the street?” Sarah asked as she handed him buckets of steaming water.

“Her curtain twitched, and I figured if anyone saw what happened it would be her.”

“Here,” Sarah said as she led him into the small room. “Put one by the fireplace and one near the bed.”

“What in the devil?” Uncle Patrick said as he walked into the room. “Who’s that?”

“She was on our doorstep this morning; don’t know how long,” Sarah said.

“Mrs. Pappadol said close to daybreak.”

“That old busybody? I don’t trust her!” Uncle Patrick said.

“Rub her arms, Jenny,” Sarah said. “I’ll rub her legs. We’ve got to get her blood flowing.”

They all looked toward the bed when they heard a faint moan. Sarah hurried to the woman’s side, touching her face with the back of her fingers.

“Miss? Miss? Can you hear me?”

Phillip heard a knock at the front door, and Jenny hurried past him and Uncle to answer it. She was back in a moment, ushering Dr. Prosperi into the room.

Sarah looked up and smiled. “Thank goodness you’re here, Doctor. I wasn’t sure what else to do.”

As usual, Prosperi only had eyes for Phillip’s younger sister which made Phillip want to break his neck. Sarah shooed him and Uncle Patrick out of the room as the doctor opened his black leather satchel. Phillip stood staring at the bedroom door for a long moment before glancing at his uncle, his father’s eldest brother, a permanent resident of 159 Wolfe Street since Phillip was a small child, even before his parents had succumbed to smallpox.

“What do you have against the doctor?” Uncle asked.

Phillip nearly bumped his head on the low ceiling at the stair landing when he looked over his shoulder and started down the steps. “He just wants a nursemaid for his children, and he doesn’t care who she is. He walked away from that widow on North Street after stepping out with her for a year or more.”

“Whatever you or I think, Sarah is a grown woman—a smart one too. If she needs help, she’ll ask, as long as you’re not being a hotheaded know-it-all.”

Uncle Patrick closed the door on his small room near the kitchen before Phillip could argue. Sarah had tried to convince Uncle to take one of the larger bedrooms on the second floor, but he wasn’t interested. He liked his snug room where it was.

Phillip went down the two stone steps to the kitchen, muttering under his breath about found women and old men. He stopped and closed his eyes, reaching out to steady himself against the wall, feeling the heat, smelling something wonderful simmering on the stove, and being reminded of his previous night’s adventures by a rolling stomach.

“Drink this,” Eliza Waterman said.

He took the mug still bubbling with bicarbonate of soda and drank it down. He grimaced at the taste and handed the mug back to Eliza, who’d been cooking for them for nearly fifteen years. Uncle Patrick had found her walking along the stream where he often fished in a creek off the Patapsco River. She’d walked from South Carolina, where she’d run the kitchen of a massive plantation, and had miraculously made the trip alive to Baltimore, as there was a bounty on her head as an escaped slave. Maryland was a slave-owning state but did not secede or join the Confederacy. Uncle had brought her home by roundabout back alleys, and she’d been with them since, working for wages and her room and board.

“What is all the ruckus I hear? A froze girl? Buckets of my heated water?”

“Jenny found her on the stoop, so cold her skin was nearly blue. They’re trying to get her warm,” he said and recounted his conversation with Mrs. Pappadol.

“Somebody tossed that girl at this house on purpose?”

“That’s what it sounds like.” Phillip shook his head. Who on earth was she? Why was she left for them to find? Who had she made angry enough to let her freeze to death?

Eliza handed him a slice of her homemade bread slathered with honey butter. He ate it and held out his hand for a second. Then a cup of tea.