Read Online Fatal as a Fallen Woman by Kathy Lynn Emerson - Free Book Online

said. "He told her he'd follow her if she didn't come back on her own."
    Maggie thumped the doorframe with one fist. "In a month, he said. It hasn't been a month yet. And how can he leave you, my darling, or his other patients?"
    "If it will help," Aaron said, "I'll take an oath to do no painting at all for at least three days."
    "Six."
    "Five."
    They shook on it. Then Ben turned his attention to the black-clad figure still hovering in the doorway. "A word with you, Mother?"
    He took her arm and hauled her into the outer room of Aaron's lodgings in the carriage house behind the Northcote mansion. It had been fitted up as an artist's studio and was permeated with the distinctive smells of turpentine and linseed oil. Stacks of canvases lined the walls but only two had been put on display. Both showed scantily-clad mermaids. Each figure had Diana's face.
    Ben turned away from them to snag the bentwood chair that customarily sat on a small pedestal at the center of the room. He eased his mother into it, then went to a sideboard stocked with crystal decanters and glasses and poured her a snifter of Aaron's best brandy.
    She glowered up at him. "Do I need this for fortification?"
    "I don't know. Maybe you'd prefer to throw it across the room. It should splinter with a gratifying crash."
    She sipped, but her scowl remained fierce.
    "I have to make sure she's all right. I intend to remind her that if she wants to work after we're married, I have no objection. How could I?"
    The implied compliment failed to soften her attitude, but Ben was beyond caring if he had her approval. He shouldn't have delayed this long. His decision made, he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
    "I told Aaron he needed to rest for another week, hoping he'd agree to four days. He'll be fine without me here. There's no need for you to hover over him."
    "If you say so, dear heart."
    "I do. So, I'll be taking an early train tomorrow. I don't expect I'll be gone long, but I will take as much time as I need to locate Diana and convince her to return with me. If all goes well, we'll be married by the end of the month."
    "Go, then." She knocked back the rest of the brandy in one gulp, heaved a long-suffering sigh, and stood. "We'll struggle along without you if we must."
    "I'm sure you will," Ben muttered as she swept regally out of the carriage house. He just hoped she wouldn't get into too much mischief while he was away.
     

Chapter Four
     
    Diana awoke groggy and disoriented and needed several minutes to remember where she was and how she'd come to be there. It was the portrait of Elmira, the same one that had once graced the Broadway mansion, that gave her the answer. It now hung opposite the bed in the owner's suite at the Elmira Hotel.
    Jane had taken Diana upstairs after Matt's reluctant departure the previous evening. Diana frowned, uncertain now why she'd been so resistant to his attempts to convince her to stay elsewhere. He'd meant well. And she couldn't explain, even to herself, why she'd felt such a total lack of concern about spending the night in a whorehouse.
    The unpalatable and inescapable fact that her mother owned and operated a bordello made Diana's head ache. Bad enough discovering that Elmira Torrence was a fugitive, but the additional shock must have been too much for her. It had quite undone her usual common sense.
    Yawning hugely, she swung her legs over the side of the high four poster and made her away into the attached bath. There seemed to be little point in trying to sort out all she'd learned, let alone search for answers to her many questions, before she'd had a good breakfast and several cups of coffee.
    Whatever else might be said about the Elmira Hotel, it boasted the latest amenities. No chamber pots or long walks to an outhouse for Elmira Torrence! The bathroom had a large, claw-footed tub, a water closet with an elevated flush tank, and a corner washstand topped with marble. Rabbit-ear faucets