Crooked Hearts by Patricia Gaffney

Author:Patricia Gaffney [Gaffney, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Historical Romance, kc
ISBN: 9781587241987
Amazon: B0069YO2BE
Publisher: Topaz
Published: 1994-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

12

True passion is a consuming flame, and either it must find fruition or it will burn the human heart to dust and ashes.

—William Winter

THE BATHROOM WAS IN the middle of the hall on the way to their second-floor room. Reuben stood guard at the door while Grace made a lot of splashing sounds inside. They went on for so long he finally tapped at the door and called, “Say, Gus, you didn’t go for a swim, did you?”

Abruptly the door opened. “Sorry,” she said in a strained voice, not smiling.

“That’s okay.” She looked scrubbed and fresh, and the floor in front of the enameled iron lavatory was wet; he guessed she’d been taking a stand-up bath. He took her hand to lead her down the hall to No. 8, wondering at her mood. She looked tense and brittle, as if she was holding something dangerous in check. As soon as they were inside the room, she left him and went straight to the window.

There was a scorched oil lamp and a box of matches on a bureau in the far corner. He set the whiskey bottle down and lit the lamp, then surveyed the room in its dim, flickering light. “Lovely,” he pronounced, for the sake of something to say. It was small and ugly, with a low ceiling and no rug on the unswept floor. The only furniture besides the bureau were a washstand and a bed. The mottled walls might’ve been blue once, but now they were the color of the fog outside, only dirtier. The door had a foot-shaped chunk of wood missing below the knob, and somebody had filled in the hole with piaster. The lock worked, though. And the sheets covering the thick, lumpy mattress on the iron bedstead looked clean, at least from here. All in all, he thought, things could be worse.

Grace still had her back to him. She was holding the broken paper shade away from the window so she could stare out at the shifting mist. The fog had turned her curly hair into an enormous halo. He stared at her thin, fragile shoulders and her pretty back. She’d belted the yellow robe tight around her waist, which emphasized the sexy, womanly flare of her hips. Her blue-veined white feet under the hem looked cold, and unbelievably naked. He remembered how she’d looked tonight, languid and nude in Wing’s bed, and wondered how much longer he was supposed to go on like this.

“Can you see anything?” he asked.

“Fog.”

“We’ll stay here for a couple of hours, then find a way to get home. Wing’s men can’t stay out all night looking for us.” He hoped.

She didn’t move or speak; he wondered if she’d even heard him. After a while she dropped the shade and hugged herself, rubbing her arms hard under the wide kimono sleeves.

He said, “Grace?” She didn’t turn. “What was it all about?” She didn’t answer. He went closer. A shadow crossed his mind—an awful thought. “Did he hurt you?

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