The Sapphire Brooch by Katherine Logan (best novels to read to improve english .txt) 📕

of his wool sock, thinking. Finally, he broke his silence. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought him to Jackson Place. But I wanted to tape the conversation, and the noise at the National Hotel made it impossible to get a good recording.”

“What’d he talk about…other than his gorgeous and talented self?”

Jack dropped his foot to the floor and leaned forward, holding his glass with both hands. “He asked what I thought of Lincoln. I said I admired him. He wondered how a good Southern gentleman could support a despot. I told him the focus of the interview was his career as a thespian, not his politics. He switched tactics and talked about the theater and oil and land investments.”

“Did you mention your meeting with Booth to Braham?”

Jack shook his head. “Braham’s not an assassin. He might threaten, but he’s got too strong a moral code. I predict when the date gets closer, he’ll make comments to Lincoln about additional security, and on the fourteenth, he’ll try to keep the president from going to the theater.”

“Since we don’t know where he is,” she said, “we can’t keep him from interfering. He was in town tonight to meet with Lincoln and Stanton. He could slip back into the city at any time and we wouldn’t know.”

“He ducked out on me tonight. He left to use the necessary room, and when he didn’t come back, I went looking for him, but by then it was too late. He was gone. Which won’t happen a second time.” Jack sat back in the chair, stretched out his legs, and gave her his endearing raised-eyebrow look. “Now, I want to hear what happened with Gordon.”

She looked down at her fingers, fussing with a hangnail.

After an awkward silence, Jack said, “You done stalling? Fess up. What happened?”

“I hate it when you’re right. You had Gordon pegged. He was about to propose when Braham showed up. Boy, did that piss him off.”

“Gordon told me I had done you a disservice by allowing you far too much freedom.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him the same thing I told him the day we met in December. You make your own decisions.”

She couldn’t help smiling with relief. “I don’t want to see him again. Not after the way he acted tonight. He might not even come back.”

“Oh, he will.”

“What makes you so sure?”

A dimple identical to the one she saw in the mirror every day appeared in Jack’s right cheek. “Gordon sees it as a competition now, and doesn’t intend to lose to Braham.”

“Men. I don’t intend to be a pawn in a chess game, and I certainly have no intention of being any Neanderthal’s prize.”

43

Washington City, February 1865

A knock on Charlotte’s bedroom door startled her awake. Her eyes popped open to see Braham standing in the doorway. “Ye left the door ajar. It’s allowed all the heat to escape the room. And ye look uncomfortable on the love seat. Why don’t ye sleep in yer bed?”

She yawned, shivering. “Jack stopped by to talk. I must have dozed off after he left.” Although smoldering ash of a dying fire scented the air, he was right, there was no heat coming from the red, yellow, and orange embers. “I’m surprised you’re here. I didn’t expect to see you again.”

“And I thought ye’d be gone, too.” His voice was low and husky.

“I don’t make it a habit of disappearing into the night like some people I know.”

He leaned back against the doorframe, wearing only a pair of trousers with suspenders dangling down his legs. Damp hair reaching his shoulders dribbled glistening drops of water onto his bare chest. The whiskers she’d seen earlier had given way to a smooth-shaven, expressionless face, but she sensed the roiling going on inside him. He closed the door and sidled over to the fireplace where he added wood and poked the dying embers, coaxing it to reluctant life. He then turned to face her, the furrows in his forehead deepening.

“I had to leave Jack at the hotel tonight. I didn’t want him to follow me.”

She reached for a shawl tossed over the back of the love seat and draped the warm velvet around her shoulders, snugging the ends close to her body. “Am I going to read about Booth’s murder in the morning paper?”

He set the poker aside and picked up the bellows. A whoosh of air stirred the embers even more until red-gold sparks burst into brilliant flames. “If ye do, it won’t be my doing.”

He turned, and those kindling eyes of his pierced her soul, deeper than they had any right to penetrate. She squeezed hers shut, pushing away his intrusion. Could he see her defenses crumbling? Because they were. Like sand castles when the tide comes in. She couldn’t speak; tears were too near the surface.

She took a breath and looked at him once more, saying softly, “Why are you here?”

Although the burning logs sizzled and popped, he poked at them again somewhat absentmindedly. “I didn’t want our earlier meeting to be my last memory of ye.”

Unsure of him, and definitely unsure of herself, she asked, “What kind of memory would you prefer?” Heat radiating off him, imagined or real, nonetheless warmed her. She loosened the ends of the shawl.

He set down the poker. “That’s not a smart question to ask a man going off to war.”

“Are you…” Her voice cracked, and she tried again. “Are you going off to war?”

“Yes.”

He crossed the flat woven carpet defining the edges of the small sitting area in her bedroom. She patted the sofa cushion, inviting him to sit. His shoulder brushed her arm, and his face was but inches from hers. The expression he wore was soft, eyes unguarded. With surprising tenderness, he stroked her cheek with his fingertips, up and down like a narrow brush, painting the essence of her.

“Don’t go.”

He laughed softly. “It’s my job.”

She leaned toward him with her arm along the back of the love seat. “You scared