Rebecca Hagan Lee - [Borrowed Brides 01] (4 page)

“But we’ve been here all day,” wailed a big-boned blonde in the back of the room.

“As have I, miss,” David acknowledged, “and I’m sure you must be even wearier than I. Go home. Get some rest. I assure you I’ll await you in the morning.” David dismissed the women from his mind and began gathering the applications and handwritten notes scattered across his desk.

Faith stood rooted in place, too tired to move and too numb to think. Women jostled her on all sides as they made their way toward the stairs. She caught snatches of conversation and tired grumbling through the rustle of skirts and belongings, but little penetrated. Her brain struggled to comprehend David Alexander’s words.
Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow at ten.
Tomorrow the screening process would resume. Faith was torn. She couldn’t afford to stay overnight, but she couldn’t afford not to. How could she abandon her plan? It was the only plan she had.

David placed his papers in his satchel. He looked up in time to see the young woman swaying on her feet.

“Miss? Is there something you wanted?”

“No,” Faith replied. She continued to stare at him.

“Are you sure?”

I want the job!
Faith’s mind screamed at him.
I need the job!
But she couldn’t form those words.

“Miss, are you all right?” David asked.

“I’m fine.”

She didn’t look fine. As David watched, she swayed again and this time, her knees came close to buckling beneath her. Her chalk-white face was tight and drawn and dark circles surrounded her large, expressive eyes.

David instinctively moved toward her. He started to speak, but Faith shook her head.

“Tomorrow,” David called urgently. “Be here tomorrow at quarter till ten. I’ll see you get in to see him.”

Faith said nothing. She straightened her back and kept walking.

David’s stare followed her as she trudged down the corridor.

Faith straightened her tired shoulders and smoothed her rumpled skirts as she reached the bottom of the staircase and headed straight for the front desk.

“I will require a room for the night,” she announced to the clerk.

“I’m afraid we’re full, miss. No vacancies.”

“At all?”

“None except the Vice Presidential Suite,” he said.

“How much for the Suite?” Faith looked around to make certain none of the hotel guests could overhear her vulgar question.

“Fifty dollars a day,” the clerk answered proudly. “Naturally, it’s second in luxury and price only to the Presidential Suite.”

“Naturally,” Faith agreed, masking her disappointment.

“Shall we send up your luggage?” The clerk’s round eyes accessed Faith’s shabby dress in manner that instantly reminded her of his morning predecessor.

“No, thank you,” Faith told him. “I don’t settle for second best. It’s the Presidential Suite or nothing.” She stared down her nose at the clerk, gathering her skirts in her hand. “Good evening, sir.”

With her head held high, Faith walked out of the Madison Hotel.

“Cab, miss?” the doorman asked as Faith walked out of the hotel. “No, thank you.”

“But it’s raining again, miss.”

“I won’t melt,” Faith assured him. “I’ve been wet before.”

“Will you be staying with us, miss?” The doorman was older than the haughty clerks inside the building and full of concern for the young woman.

Faith shook her head. “No vacancies.”

“The lawmakers are all in town. Congress is still in session. There’s not a room to be had in Washington.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Her shoulders slumped. “Thanks, anyway.” She managed a half smile for the doorman and started off down the street toward the station and the train home to Richmond.

* * *

Minutes later, Reese Jordan hurried down the front steps of the hotel and climbed into his waiting carriage. He stared idly out the rain-splattered window. As the driver urged the horses into a trot, Reese focused his attention on the wet scenery.

It had been a disaster of a day, from dawn until dusk. The response to that tiny ad had been much greater than either he or David had anticipated. It had been incredible.

Thousands of southern widows were looking for employment and at least two hundred had found their way to the Madison Hotel in Washington in response to Reese’s ad, much to the dismay of the overworked hotel staff. The hotel manager had expressed the disapproval of the staff and the other guests at the influx of unchaperoned, unmarried, women flocking to Reese’s suite.

“We are a reputable hotel, Mr. Jordan, not a bordello.”

Reese chuckled at the memory of the hotel manager’s indignation.

As if anyone would confuse the women he’d interviewed with the luscious creatures he saw when he visited the big, gray house on G street in the Tenderloin district on the northwest side of the city during his usual excursions to Washington.

Reese turned away from the window and looked down at his long legs stretched out in front of him. He had narrowed his possibilities down to two women following the day’s interviews, but there was a problem.

Although, they met his carefully adopted criteria to the letter, he wasn’t interested in forming a liaison, however temporary, with either one. He told himself the brunette was too cold and mercenary, the blonde, too warm and available, but the truth was much more basic. Neither of the candidates stirred his blood. Reese hadn’t even considered that possibility until he recognized it.

He hadn’t seen a woman during the entire day that appealed to him on that most basic level until the brief moment his gaze met and locked with
her
huge smoky-gray ones. She had struck a chord within him; then vanished, leaving Reese deeply unsettled.

He turned back to the window in time to see a man walking a few steps behind a black-skirted figure. As he watched, the man broke into a run and grabbed the woman’s left arm. She stopped suddenly and swung her free arm at his ear. A flash of silver glinted under the street lamp as the thief slit her purse strings and shoved her to the ground.

Reese reacted instantly. Shouting to the driver to stop the carriage, he leaped out the door and raced after the man.

Minutes later, the chase was over. The woman’s assailant melted into the dark of the side streets before Reese was able to catch him. He spent several moments in a futile search of the area before he retraced his steps, hurrying back to the victim.

She sat huddled on the ground, cold, wet, and muddied. She turned as Reese approached and clenched her fists, prepared to defend herself from further attack with the only weapons available.

“It’s all right,” Reese assured her. “I won’t hurt you. Let me help you.” He reached out a gloved hand.

Faith looked up.

Those eyes. Once again Reese was devastated by the look in those haunting, gray, eyes. A rush of tenderness rocked him down to his toes. “You.”

Faith gazed up into the face of her rescuer. She took his offered hand, moving as if in a dream, to the only secure thing she could find.

Reese pulled her to her feet. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?” The angry, urgent words spilled from his lips as he ran his gloved hands over her face and down her shoulders and arms anxiously searching for signs of injury.

“He stole my purse.” Faith held her left arm up for inspection. The cords were still looped around her wrist, dangling in the air, holding nothing.

“Your purse? Forget your purse. Did he harm you?” Reese held her wrist toward the glow from the street lamp and pushed back her sleeve. An angry red abrasion encircled the tender flesh around her wrist. “I was afraid he’d cut you.” Before he could stop himself, Reese rubbed his thumb across her injured wrist as if to erase the damage.

Faith inhaled. Her pulse leaped in response to the riotous emotions bursting through her at his touch. She opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her. She stood before him without moving, her teeth worrying the line of her full bottom lip, her deep gray eyes staring up at him.

Reese caught himself before he drowned in their depths. He caressed the back of her gloved hand for a bare second before he abruptly dropped her hand and stepped back.

“It’s freezing out here. Let’s get you inside. Can you walk?”

Faith nodded and took a step forward, but her knees seemed to turn to water. She wavered in his grasp.

Cursing beneath his breath, Reese swung her up into his arms.

Faith rested against him. Heat emanated from his flesh and warmed her through the layers of clothing separating them. She was astonished by the warmth. He took a step toward his carriage before she found her voice. “My purse!”

“It’s long gone.”

“But—”

“Forget it. It can be replaced.”

“But my money—”

“Is only money. Not worth risking your life. I couldn’t believe my eyes when you tried to fight him.” Reese struggled for words. “Confound it, woman, the next time someone tries to steal your purse, give it to him. Don’t lift a finger to fight him. You little idiot, he was twice your size and carrying a knife.” Reese’s long legs covered the distance from the sidewalk to the coach.

“But he stole everything.” Faith’s voice was muffled by the fabric of his coat. “He got away with it.”

“And you got away with a scratch and some bruises. It could have been much worse.” Reese paused as his driver opened the door of the coach.

“Is the lady all right, sir?”

“Aside from being cold and wet and a bit shaken up, the lady appears to be fine, Murray.” Reese stepped inside the coach and settled Faith on the seat, tucking the lap robe securely around her. “Let’s go.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are you taking me?”

Reese looked down at the woman bundled up beside him. Her face was a pale, translucent ivory except for her straight, little nose, which was reddened with cold, and her shimmering gray eyes. Her eyes were the largest thing about her, he decided, and the loveliest.

“I was on my way to dinner. Have you eaten?”

Faith shook her head.

“Then you’ll join me.”

Faith shook her head again.

“Why not?”

“My purse is gone. I have no money.”

God, but she was persistent, Reese thought. “Forget about it. Worrying won’t solve anything.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t lose anything,” Faith reminded him.

“That’s true,” Reese agreed, “but I’ve enough for the both of us. I’ll buy you dinner tonight. You can pay me back when you recover your loss. Fair enough?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not hungry.” Her stomach growled loudly.

He smiled. “What if I told you I don’t like to eat alone?”

“I’d want to know how you know, since you’ve probably never eaten alone,” Faith mumbled, trying to hold on to her dignity.

“What was that?” Reese asked. “I didn’t quite hear what you said.”

Faith met his eyes and knew he’d heard every word. “I said I would be delighted to join you for dinner.”

“Smart girl.” Reese banged on the roof of the coach and shouted out the change in destination.

* * *

“Were you really coming here to dinner?” Faith asked. “Or were you going someplace a little more formal?”

They were sitting in straight-backed pine chairs at a table covered with red, checked linen in one of Washington’s little known restaurants.

Reese glanced down at his black evening wear and grinned at his companion. “Guilty as charged. I was supposed to make an appearance at a boring reception given by the British ambassador.”

Faith looked up from her menu and found his rich, brown eyes fixed on her. “I’m sorry you missed your reception.”

“There will be other receptions,” Reese said easily. “What will you have for dinner?”

Faith remembered, suddenly, the tantalizing aromas from David Alexander’s noonday meal and ordered from memory. “Roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, garden peas, and apple cobbler for dessert. And coffee, lots of coffee. Do you have real coffee?”

“We have real coffee, ma’am, but no apple cobbler,” the waiter replied.

Faith’s eager expression crumpled in disappointment. “Apple pie?”

The waiter shook his head.

“Oh, well…”

Reese opened his wallet and, removing a bill, pressed it into the waiter’s hand. “I’ll have the same. And find some apple pie.”

“That was very nice of you,” Faith told him. “I haven’t had apple pie in a very long time.”

Her compliment made him uncomfortable. “I didn’t do it for you,” Reese told her. “I did it for me. I have a taste for apple pie, too.”

“Oh.”

“How long?”

“What?” Faith was confused by the abrupt question.

“How long since you had apple pie?”

“Since the end of the war.” It had probably been longer than that, Faith realized. The apple trees on the plantation had been blasted to perdition by mortar shells sometime shortly after the fall of Petersburg and now that the war was over, apples were a luxury she couldn’t afford.

“Your drawl is southern,” Reese commented. “Washington, Virginia, or Maryland?”

“Virginia. Richmond.”

“You’re a long way from home, Miss…”

“Collins. Faith Collins.”

“Reese Jordan.” He extended his hand across the table.

Faith placed her hand in his. She had removed her gloves and the feel of his skin against hers jolted her. His hand was big and warm, the knuckles sprinkled with coarse, black, hair; his palm, callused in several places. Seeing her hand engulfed in his made her aware of the difference in their coloring. His skin was bronzed by exposure to the sun; hers was smoother, softer, pale in comparison.

Reese, too, was struck by the difference. He felt her shiver and a vivid mental picture of Faith Collins lying naked beneath him, her smooth pale skin covered by his hard, bronzed body, flashed in his brain. He abruptly withdrew his hand and cleared his throat. “Tell me about yourself. Why were you walking alone after dark?”

“I was on my way to the train depot. Headed home.”