Read Online A Wanted Man by Susan Kay Law - Free Book Online

brilliant wash of gold and red.
    And yet she was certain. She knew the set and breadth of his shoulders, the way he stood with most of his weight on his left foot.
    He lifted a hand, a salute that told her he’d been watching them, too. Was it mere politeness or did he recognize them from afar? It seemed impossible to her that he did not know her as easily as she did him. Impossible-seeming, but in reality perfectly likely—she understood her fancies were merely that. They were fun to indulge, had gotten her through many a lonely day, but were not to be relied upon. She was her mother’s daughter in that she enjoyed the rush of heady emotions, but enough of her father’s in that she would not be ruled by them.
    She stretched high and waved back, by necessity a quick, broad motion because she knew Mrs. Bossidy would intervene. She did not disappoint, grabbing Laura’s wrist and yanking it down with such speed that Laura couldn’t help but smile.
    “Mrs. Bossidy, you are ever predictable,” Laura said.
    She frowned. “If you would show a bit more decorum and restraint, I wouldn’t have to be,” she said as she steered Laura away from the river and back toward town.
    “And how, exactly, is merely responding to a greeting—across a space of at least two hundred yards, I might add—unrestrained? I’m quite certain that, if I put my mind to it, I could be far more unrestrained than that.”
    Mrs. Bossidy scowled and marched steadily on, towing Laura in her wake like a miscreant child. As a matter of fact Mrs. Bossidy had dragged her home exactly the same way when Laura was twelve. It was the first time since she’d had the fever that she’d set foot outside the grounds of Sea Haven. She’d pleaded and begged for weeks to be allowed a bit of a trip, a walk down the rocky beach or a trip to the dry goods store. For a child who had once been very active being confined to her rooms but for a religiously monitored hour of fresh air in the garden once a day, and even that only recently granted, the confinement was torture.
    It hadn’t been easy. She’d awaited her chance with a patience she’d never before utilized until she’d slipped out the door while the household staff were in a flurry preparing for one of her mother’s parties, this the first since Laura had fallen ill. And then the gate—she would have been foiled right there, except the guard had been distracted by an attractive kitchen maid who,Laura was pretty sure, was supposed to be peeling rutabagas.
    Mrs. Bossidy had caught her five minutes down the road. She hadn’t listened to a single one of Laura’s pleadings, and she hadn’t been all that gentle while she hauled her home.
    But she hadn’t told Laura’s parents, either, something which, Laura knew, would have garnered her two burly guards in the guise of “nurses” around the clock until she was, oh, ninety or so.
    “I love you,” she told her now, as Mrs. Bossidy hustled her into their car and flicked on the gaslights. “But you’ve gotten a lot more annoying over the past few years.”
    “I could say the same about you,” Mrs. Bossidy returned without pause. “It’s a normal part of a female’s maturation, but it would have been better if it had happened when you were fourteen. I thought it fortunate that we’d skipped it at the time. Now it seems it was merely delayed.”
    Hands on her hips, she surveyed the beautifully finished car and sighed. “I wish you would have consented to move to the hotel.”
    “Why?” Laura untied the wide silk ribbons that secured her bonnet. “It seemed more trouble than it was worth to move. And Father went to such trouble to out-fit this car.”
    “We’re going to be heartily sick of it by the time we reach Sacramento.” She shot an impatient glance over her shoulder. “And I thought the whole idea was for you to experience and see as many different things and places as possible.”
    “Oh? And that’s why you shoved me away from the