An Improper Situation (Sanborn-Malloy Historical Romance Series, Book One) by Sydney Jane Baily Read Free Book Online Page A

previous evening over dinner that his father had also been a lawyer and Reed had naturally followed in his respected footsteps. Robert Malloy had passed away three years earlier. Reed was devoted to his mother, Evelyn, and his sisters. How could he understand that she had carefully created a world of safety in which she needed no one and no one needed her?
    Reed again surprised her by sitting down not more than two feet away.
    “ You do look thoughtful,” he told her, “and a trifle sad.”
    She flushed at the gentle tone in his voice, similar to the one he used with the children. Charlotte had not discussed her feelings with anyone since her parents died. This was foreign to her. She looked to their graves and he followed her glance.
    “Your parents?” he asked.
    She nodded but said nothing.
    “I’m sorry if our arrival has brought up memories of your own parents’ deaths. I know you understand what Lily and Thomas are going through—better than I ever could.”
    His eyes were so brilliant and blue as they looked on her, and she knew they could bestow the gentlest of looks as well as the most scathing. Such intelligent eyes, behind which she knew he would reason that because she understood how the children felt, she more than anyone should want to take them in—unless she were cold and heartless.
    Yet his voice sounded anything but condemning. She took a deep breath.
    “ My parents died of cholera when I was a young woman.”
    “ Perhaps not quite a woman,” he offered.
    She shrugged, then added, “Fourteen years old. It is as clear to me now as if it had happened yesterday. The cholera epidemic swept through Spring City so quickly. My parents were in town when the quarantine was put in place. They had already been infected by a serving girl at the restaurant where they’d dined that night.”
    She took a deep breath so she could speak evenly. “It was their wedding anniversary. Doc Cuthins sent a message to me and to all the homesteads outside of town to stay away.”
    She looked toward the town, feeling as if she could see through the years. “The next message that came, just three days later, said both my parents were dead. They died within half an hour of each other.” She stopped, wondering at her own outpouring of words on a subject that normally stayed buried deep inside her.
    “ I’m truly sorry.” He reached out and touched her—just a momentary brush along her hand, but it brought her out of her reverie and she focused again on his face.
    “ It must have been terrible for you and your brother. I remember when the cholera epidemic swept through Boston. I was very young, but no one who lived through it could ever forget the summer of ‘54. I lost an aunt and uncle. I can remember all those treatments they tried: first the laudanum then the acetate, the morphine, even red peppers. Nothing helped.”
    “ No, nothing,” she agreed. It had been a nightmare, but it was behind her now—except that the untimely death of Ann Connors was bringing it all up again
    The thought of becoming a surrogate parent once more reminded her of the struggles and the hard times and then, the inevitable loneliness, which she had coped with by developing a self-sufficient attitude to match her opinionated manner. And she would not put her writing on hold again; it was the only thing that had kept her sane.
    She looked him squarely in the eye. “I do understand Thomas’s nightmares and Lily’s quiet, solemn stares,” she told him, her voice as soft as the slight breeze that lifted the strands of hair off her shoulders.
    Reed raised his hand—perhaps to take hold of hers or to touch one of those errant locks—Charlotte didn’t wait to find out. She flinched away in the same instant and then stood up abruptly. She turned her back on him, taking the few steps toward her parents’ graves.
    “I understand that what the children need is a warm, secure home and a heart full of love and generosity to make their own