Sea Change by Anna Kensing

Author:Anna Kensing [Kensing, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781734234428
Publisher: Kensing Books

Chapter 19

Mrs. Terrell Jackman was the last person Elliot wanted to see this evening. She made a beeline for the empty seat next to him in the Key City Club’s meeting room and settled into it with a rustle of skirts, just before her husband called the meeting to order. Elliot sighed and stifled a childish urge to sneak from the row while her attention was distracted by calling greetings to the other wives of the railroad trustees.

He had spent the morning reconciling the accounts in his office, a task that wasn’t especially difficult, but required enough of his attention that he could put most other things out of his mind. He’d given Sally and the girls the afternoon and evening off, and his plan had been to lock himself in his room to somehow survive the supermoon without Declan.

But the entire town had turned out for an afternoon meeting called to address the fact that the railroad had run out of money after laying only a single mile of track, and his absence would be conspicuous. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for a long, tedious meeting, tamping down the tension already building under his skin in anticipation of tonight’s supermoon.

The room was overwarm, the scents of the ladies’ perfume and the gentlemen’s pipe smoke rising and combining in a harshly sweet concoction that burned the back of his throat. Judge Swan provided an update about the corporation’s current financial state—dismal—and the point at which the laid track ended—nowhere useful.

Mrs. Jackman leaned closer to Elliot, her sleeve brushing against the arm of his jacket. Christ, if he couldn’t get out of this room soon, he was likely to crawl out of his skin. He shuddered at the vision of his tentacles bursting through the seams of his trousers, flailing in the center aisle between the two sections of chairs hastily set up in a meeting room built for far fewer people than it currently held.

“Are you quite well, Mr. Bishop?” Mrs. Jackman’s voice was soft under the rising rhetoric of Judge Swan expounding again on the benefits that having a transcontinental railroad connect to Port Townsend would bring.

“I’m fine, thank you, Mrs. Jackman,” Elliot replied. His voice was steady, at least, thank heaven for small victories. “A bit warm, perhaps.”

She laid a gloved hand on his forearm, and the soft pressure chafed the linen of his shirtsleeve against his heated skin. Baron Eisenbeis was now suggesting a subscription drive to raise money to lure one of the more established railroad companies to connect the track they’d already laid with an existing transcontinental line. It was an interesting idea, though one Elliot suspected Declan would never countenance.

“It’s a beautiful day, is it not? Perhaps a walk along the shore after the meeting ends would be cooling?” Mrs. Jackman suggested, and her tone was quiet enough that he hardly credited what she’d said at first.

“I beg your pardon?” She was hardly proposing an illicit liaison to him, not with her husband on the other side of the room.

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