Read Online A March to Remember by Anna Loan-Wilsey - Free Book Online

smile had been replaced by professional curiosity. I had truly overheard something that wasn’t meant to be public knowledge.
    â€œIs it true?”
    â€œYes, it is true. Now I only came across this information after a great deal of footwork and palm greasing. Tell me, Miss Davish, how did you come to know this?”
    â€œYou should attend Mrs. Cleveland’s receptions, Mr. Harper,” I said. “You’d be surprised by what the women of this city know.”
    â€œHere, here!” Sarah said, laughing. “You’d make a fine member of the Washington Wives Club, Hattie. You’ll have to come to our next meeting. The women of this city will love you.”
    â€œBut—?” Mr. Harper said, his brows knitted and his head tilted in puzzlement.
    â€œDinner awaits, gentlemen,” Senator Smith pronounced, interrupting the journalist’s question.
    â€œAbout that conversation, sir?” I said, ignoring Mr. Harper’s quizzical expression and the satisfied smirk on Walter’s face. “The personal matter?”
    â€œIt will have to wait, Hattie,” Sir Arthur said. Without another thought for me, he launched into a discussion on arranging a visit to Coxey’s camp with Senator Smith as he descended the stairs.

C HAPTER 6
    T he city was resplendent. After taking our leave from everyone after the Senate session, Walter and I had a light dinner at Vorlander’s near the Capitol, of soup with fried bread, riced potatoes, lettuce with mayonnaise dressing, and lemon pie. Afterward, as the sun set, we strolled slowly, very slowly, arm and arm back toward Senator Smith’s home in Lafayette Square. Beginning at the Capitol, lit up like a glorious, ghostly beacon on its hill for all night travelers to guide themselves by, we passed the Botanical Gardens, its conservatory dark and filled with leaf-shaped shadows. We walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, the thriving thoroughfare lined with buildings of limestone, brick, granite, and wood, of heights commonly three to four but as tall as nine stories high, even at this hour resonant with the clomp, clomp, clomp of horses and clickety-clack of carriage wheels. We passed the four-story, narrow Evening Star newspaper building; the popular, six-story Palais Royal Department store with its mansard roof; a two-story dime museum, the paint peeling from its sign, closed for the night; and, one block from the President’s House, the Willard. With its brick façade curving smoothly around the corner, the elegant hotel icon was known to have hosted every president since Franklin Pierce in 1853 and numerous other luminaries including Charles Dickens, Buffalo Bill, P. T. Barnum, Samuel Morse, Lord and Lady Napier, and the first Japanese delegation. Eventually we strolled past the imposing structures of the Treasury Building and the White House. I’d spent weeks in this city and never fully appreciated the magnificence of its architecture, the lushness of its parks, the simple majesty of its grand design. But then I hadn’t been on the arm of the man I loved.
    All too soon we had to say good night.
    â€œDon’t forget to talk to Sir Arthur,” Walter whispered as I took the first step toward the Smiths’ front door.
    â€œI won’t. Good night.”
    â€œGood night, my dearest Hattie.” And then he muttered under his breath, “Ah, what the hell.”
    I turned, surprised by his language, not by what he’d said—I’d heard far worse from Sir Arthur every day—but by the fact that he had said it at all. Before I could ask what was wrong, he leaped up the stairs, wrapped me in his embrace, and kissed me ardently. I couldn’t imagine anything ever being wrong again.
    * * *
    I could still feel the silky touch of Walter’s lips on mine when I found Sir Arthur drinking coffee in the drawing room and chatting with Senator and Mrs. Smith. Although I knew him to have been invited to