Read Online The Red Velvet Horse (Siren Publishing Allure) by Iona Blair - Free Book Online
Authors: Iona Blair
Tags: Romance
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beside their table and cleared away their used plates and menus.
“Lovely.” Fern touched the delicate flowers with her fingertips, glad of the tender respite, no matter how brief, from the horrible business of infidelity and crime.
* * * *
“How could you do this?” April confronted Holt in the foyer of his apartment building. Her rage and sense of betrayal so great, she didn’t care who heard. “Throwing away everything we’ve worked so hard for. And for what? A cheap thieving prostitute.”
Holt looked as if he hadn’t slept since the robbery, his handsome face haggard and gaunt. “I…” he began haltingly. “Look let’s go up to my suite.” He attempted to take her arm to guide her towards the elevators, but she shrugged him off.
“Don’t you ever touch me again,” she raged, and stalked out the door before he had a chance to respond.
* * * *
A miserably unhappy April curled up on her easy chair and sought escape from her troubles in the ongoing erotic adventures of Hannah Wilks.
I have now been working at Mrs. Cloud’s establishment for about six months. Much of it spent either bent over or mounted on Neddy; a jiggering and buggering contraption second to none.
My bottom is in a constant state of tenderness, the faint pink lines from old birchings lying alongside fresh red stripes from recent ones. But I love every well-applied stroke of them, and never has my cunny been better lubricated or prone to such violent twitchings.
Meanwhile, I find myself employed in the tiresome task of looking for suitable accommodations. This has become imperative, as my landlady, a sharp-faced shrew named Violet Ruth, has been hiking up my rent because of my manner of employment.
It was during these perambulations around various rental properties that I found myself near my old home on Simcoe Street. On impulse, I decided to go into the haberdashery shop across the street, and see if Jeannie Fife, one of the assistants that was particularly helpful to me, was still there.
“Well I never,” she declared when she saw me, her overbite looking almost sinister in her open-mouthed glee. “I’d just about given up all hope of ever seeing you again.”
For want to see me she did, ever since a gentleman had been inquiring about me almost one year ago.
“He had gone across the street at first, of course. And finding you gone with no forwarding address had checked to see if anyone here might have any idea where you had moved to.”
A blinding swathe of sunshine cut through the high-paned windows and settled on the colorful bolts of cloth on the long cutting table.
“Did he leave a name?” I asked in a state of considerable apprehension. Could this have been an agent sent by my brutal husband, Ned Beasley?
“Well you know I did write it down somewhere.” Jeannie moved a dangerous looking pair of scissors out of the way before rummaging through a cabinet drawer. “Along with how he could be contacted.”
While Jeannie looked for her notes, I was entertained by the bustle of activity from the “flying foxes,” an elaborate system of wires and pulleys that ran the length of the store.
After writing the amount of a sale on a docket, the sales assistant would put it in a container along with the money. A tug on the pulley would send it to the cashier in the upstairs office, who would then return the change in the same manner.
“Ah, here it is,” Jeannie exclaimed at last. “His name was Tom Bateman.”
“Tom…” I repeated the name stupidly, and unable to reconcile this moment in a busy Toronto shop with the dark and handsome tram conductor whom I had loved so dearly in the gentle wet drizzle of Vancouver. Who had for some inexplicable reason simply stopped writing to me, and that, after so many passionate letters swearing his lifelong devotion.
Why would he suddenly go to all this expense and effort to locate me now?
Had he now abandoned whomever he had put in my place at that
“Lovely.” Fern touched the delicate flowers with her fingertips, glad of the tender respite, no matter how brief, from the horrible business of infidelity and crime.
* * * *
“How could you do this?” April confronted Holt in the foyer of his apartment building. Her rage and sense of betrayal so great, she didn’t care who heard. “Throwing away everything we’ve worked so hard for. And for what? A cheap thieving prostitute.”
Holt looked as if he hadn’t slept since the robbery, his handsome face haggard and gaunt. “I…” he began haltingly. “Look let’s go up to my suite.” He attempted to take her arm to guide her towards the elevators, but she shrugged him off.
“Don’t you ever touch me again,” she raged, and stalked out the door before he had a chance to respond.
* * * *
A miserably unhappy April curled up on her easy chair and sought escape from her troubles in the ongoing erotic adventures of Hannah Wilks.
I have now been working at Mrs. Cloud’s establishment for about six months. Much of it spent either bent over or mounted on Neddy; a jiggering and buggering contraption second to none.
My bottom is in a constant state of tenderness, the faint pink lines from old birchings lying alongside fresh red stripes from recent ones. But I love every well-applied stroke of them, and never has my cunny been better lubricated or prone to such violent twitchings.
Meanwhile, I find myself employed in the tiresome task of looking for suitable accommodations. This has become imperative, as my landlady, a sharp-faced shrew named Violet Ruth, has been hiking up my rent because of my manner of employment.
It was during these perambulations around various rental properties that I found myself near my old home on Simcoe Street. On impulse, I decided to go into the haberdashery shop across the street, and see if Jeannie Fife, one of the assistants that was particularly helpful to me, was still there.
“Well I never,” she declared when she saw me, her overbite looking almost sinister in her open-mouthed glee. “I’d just about given up all hope of ever seeing you again.”
For want to see me she did, ever since a gentleman had been inquiring about me almost one year ago.
“He had gone across the street at first, of course. And finding you gone with no forwarding address had checked to see if anyone here might have any idea where you had moved to.”
A blinding swathe of sunshine cut through the high-paned windows and settled on the colorful bolts of cloth on the long cutting table.
“Did he leave a name?” I asked in a state of considerable apprehension. Could this have been an agent sent by my brutal husband, Ned Beasley?
“Well you know I did write it down somewhere.” Jeannie moved a dangerous looking pair of scissors out of the way before rummaging through a cabinet drawer. “Along with how he could be contacted.”
While Jeannie looked for her notes, I was entertained by the bustle of activity from the “flying foxes,” an elaborate system of wires and pulleys that ran the length of the store.
After writing the amount of a sale on a docket, the sales assistant would put it in a container along with the money. A tug on the pulley would send it to the cashier in the upstairs office, who would then return the change in the same manner.
“Ah, here it is,” Jeannie exclaimed at last. “His name was Tom Bateman.”
“Tom…” I repeated the name stupidly, and unable to reconcile this moment in a busy Toronto shop with the dark and handsome tram conductor whom I had loved so dearly in the gentle wet drizzle of Vancouver. Who had for some inexplicable reason simply stopped writing to me, and that, after so many passionate letters swearing his lifelong devotion.
Why would he suddenly go to all this expense and effort to locate me now?
Had he now abandoned whomever he had put in my place at that
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