Read Online The Courting of Widow Shaw by Charlene Sands - Free Book Online

women, no? And now you wear the clothes of a soiled woman.” The full-bodied woman with a heavy Mexican accent glanced at the others, nodding.
    Mortified, Gloria wanted to dash from the room.
    “Oh, hush, Carmen.” The woman in red turned to her. “Don’t you pay attention to Carmen. She has a mouth on her. I’m Ruby and I’m in charge while Lorene is away.”
    Ruby eyed her up and down, then let go a pained sigh. “I suppose you don’t want to be here any more than we want you here.”
    Gloria nodded her agreement. “I…don’t.”
    “But you are, so we’re just going to have to deal with it.”
    “She is one who thinks she is better than us. The murderer,” Carmen announced coolly, “should not be so eager to judge us.”
    Gloria’s ire sparked, lit like a candle on a moonless night. “You’re right. I don’t want to be here. If I could, I’d shut down this place, along with all the other brothels. What you do is—”
    “Is by choice,” Ruby cut in. “We do what we do. You don’t have to like it. But Carmen is right. You should not judge us. You killed your husband defending yourself. You did what you had to do…to survive. We’re not all that different.”
    “Lorene is good to us. We have a good life. Much better than if we hadn’t come here,” Emmie offered with softness in her tone. “And now, you’re here, among us. Steven is bent on protecting you.”
    “I didn’t ask for his help,” Gloria responded irrationally.She knew if Steven hadn’t rescued her, she would have died alongside Boone that night.
    Carmen snorted, a most unladylike gesture.
    The others scowled.
    “But I’m grateful to him,” she added quickly. “He saved my life.”
    And that’s all she’d allow herself to feel for the man whose life was worlds apart from hers. She couldn’t condone who and what he was any more than she could these ladies, who stood tall and proud defending themselves. “I’d better go. Thank you for the meal, Mattie.”
    A sad smile lifted Mattie’s mouth up slightly. She, too, thought she judged the “ladies” too harshly. “I appreciate the help with the pies.”
    Gloria raised her chin and walked out of the kitchen as regally as she could manage. She’d confronted the prostitutes on their own ground, and hadn’t cowered. She held firm her resolve. The brothels had no place in Virginia City or any other town. They brought in rowdies, people like Denny Pratt, a drunken drifter who had quarrelled with Lorene Harding and had pulled a gun on her. Gloria’s unsuspecting father had gotten caught in the turmoil and lost his life over a mindless squabble with a whorehouse madam.
    Gloria would never find forgiveness with these women. She’d never understand the choices they made. If the good Lord wanted that, then He asked far too much from her. She climbed the stairs slowly contemplating her life and headed back to Steven’s bedroom.
    Her prison.

Chapter Five
    A lone in her room, Gloria peeked out the heavy curtain to the street below. Situated on the corner of Union and C, Rainbow House sat in the heart of the rowdiest part of town, a place where saloons, music halls and brothels attracted miners by the hundreds. Tonight was no different. Drunken men swaggered with women on their arm and from her third-floor perch, faint sounds of music from the street below drifted up, rivaling the lively piano playing coming from just three flights down in this very house.
    Gloria shuddered involuntarily. The notion of where she was living still came as quite a shock. “Lord, what am I to do?” she muttered, closing the curtains and lowering her head. Even though her faith had been tested at times, Gloria still believed in the Almighty, His power and wisdom. There must be a reason for all this, she mused. He must have a grand plan, a motive for placing her here now, amid the kind of life she so adamantly and wholeheartedly denounced.
    A beautifully ornate grandfather clock made of brass and