Read Online Wanton Angel by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online Page B

whisper.
    Eli hesitated, then withdrew to the shadowy interior of his sister’s elegant carriage and departed.
    Bonnie rounded the side of the plain frame building and climbed the outside stairs, letting herself into the kitchen. Katie, poring over a thick book, looked up at the sight of her employer and smiled. “You look all done in, ma’am. I’ve set tea on to brew, but I think maybe you should just go straight to bed.”
    Bonnie hung her wrap rather carelessly over a peg besidethe door, thinking of the first time she’d seen Katie Ryan. It had been aboard a train that long-ago day; Katie had been traveling with her family of vaudevillians to perform at the Pompeii Playhouse. When her parents were ready to move on, Katie refused to go with them and somehow prevailed against their authority, turning up at Genoa’s door to ask for a position.
    Genoa hired the girl as a companion, taking an instant liking to her just as Bonnie had, and at Rose Marie’s birth Katie became the child’s nurse. Half her salary was still paid by Genoa, a circumstance that nettled Bonnie’s pride but could not, for the time being, be avoided.
    Bonnie poured herself a cup of tea and ignored Katie’s concern. “How is Rose? Did she eat her supper?”
    Katie looked a bit guilty, it seemed to Bonnie. “She’s fine, ma’am, and she did eat.”
    “And?”
    Katie lowered her beautiful green eyes for a moment. “It was her papa that fed her, ma’am,” she admitted in a rush. “Rose took to him right away, and I didn’t see how I could say anything—”
    Bonnie sat down at the kitchen table, curving her hands around the teacup for warmth. “It’s all right, Katie,” she said gently. “I suppose it was inevitable that Eli would see Rose and—and recognize her.”
    “He didn’t know about her at all, did he?” Katie asked, her eyes looking off into the distance, her mouth quirking at one corner in just the merest smile.
    Bonnie knew that the sight of Eli feeding a year-old child must have been a humorous one, given his size and inexperience, but she felt a twinge of envy, rather than amusement. “He knew,” she said in reply, not adding that Eli had assumed Rose to be another man’s child.
    Katie was back in the here and now, and slightly flushed. Despite her stage experience, she was not an outgoing or daring person, and she probably regretted mentioning Eli at all. She closed her book and stood up. “I’ll be off to bed now,” she said. “Miss Rose will be up early, I’m sure.”
    Bonnie put her teacup in the deep iron sink and went to the windows overlooking the street to turn down the wick inone of the two lamps that burned. A half dozen rough-looking men were passing below; even in the darkness, Bonnie could see that they were reeling drunkenly. Their words were muffled, of course, but they held a petulant note.
    A chill unrelated to her own problems trembled its way up and down Bonnie’s spine. The men were smelter workers, she knew, and she could guess at their conversation: they were unhappy about their wages, their working conditions and their hours. Only weeks after Bonnie’s return to Northridge, there had been talk of a strike and scattered incidents of violence, but Forbes, in his capacity as manager of the McKutchen Smelter Works, had been able to appease the workmen temporarily. Now, rumor had it that there were union organizers in Northridge again, conducting secret meetings.
    Perhaps, given the state of his grandfather’s company, Eli couldn’t have chosen a better time to return to Northridge.
    Bonnie took up the unextinguished lamp and made her way to the rear bedroom she shared with Rose Marie, considering the terrors that a full-fledged conflict between the different factions could incite, and realizing that, on the contrary, Eli could not have chosen a
worse
time to come back.
    Holding the flickering kerosene lamp with care, Bonnie paused to admire her sleeping daughter. Curled up in her crib, Rose