Dancing in Red (a Wear Black novella) by Heather Hiestand, Eilis Flynn Read Free Book Online Page B

dark-haired
woman above her, dressed in a lovely nightgown and looking concerned as she
bathed her face in a moist handkerchief. “Are you all right, my dear?” the lady
said, the Irish lilt in her voice the most beautiful thing Nellie had heard in
months.
    “Oh, ma’am, I am so sorry,” she cried.
“I didn’t mean to. The perfume was so beautiful, and I wanted to see what it
was, and—”
    Unbidden, the tears started to fall, the
way she hadn’t allowed them to since she’d left Dublin, because she had to be
strong, and she couldn’t afford to lollygag. “I’m sorry,” she repeated,
sobbing.
    “That’s quite all right, my dear,” the
woman said. She sounded like home. Now though, while she recognized the Irish
in her voice, there was a hint of something else, too. “Poor thing, have you
been ill? You’re as thin as an oak twig.”
    At that Nellie cried harder. “I lost my
babe, and my home, and everything,” she sobbed. “Oh, ma’am, I shouldn’t be
telling you all this. I should get back to work.”
    “Oh no, my dear,” the woman said,
dismayed. “It sounds as though you’ve had your world turned upside down.”
    At that, Nellie told her the whole sad
story, starting from her days with her parents and brothers and sisters in
Dublin, down to Kildare to the prince though she didn’t name names, across the
water to England. The lady—“Call me Mrs. O’Connor, my dear,” she said—patted
Nellie’s hand after the tale was told. “You’ve had quite an adventure. Yet here
you are, starting on your next. Did you by chance attend a certain party before
Christmas, during which you met an Irishman? A Dr. O’Connor?”
    “I—yes,” Nellie said, staring at the
lady. “I did.” She shook her head. “How did you know, ma’am?”
    Mrs. O’Connor smiled. “He is my husband,
my dear. And he came home telling me about a certain young Irishwoman he met
that night, so far from home.”
    Nellie took a deep breath, recalling
that night, mere days before her world went topsy-turvy again. “It seems like a
long time ago,” she said wistfully. She felt something on her neck, and
discovered it was Mrs. O’Connor’s handkerchief, bathed in the scent that had
drawn her so powerfully. She took another deep breath before folding it
carefully and handing it to the other woman. “Thank you for your concern,” she
said.
    But Mrs. O’Connor didn’t take it,
instead looking at her with a shrewd expression. “Are you happy here, child?”
she asked.
    Nellie’s breath caught and she blinked.
She wasn’t sure what she should say. Would the lady, as kind as she seemed,
report back to the owners of the hotel? How happy could she be? She was
constantly starving and she was constantly tired, and she wasn’t sure from day
to day if she was going to be thrown out on her ear, she was so tired and
accident-prone. “I’m grateful for the job,” she said after a moment’s pause. “I
had nothing, and now, I have a chance to start over.”
    Mrs. O’Connor laughed. “What careful
words, child. You’ve learned well. If you are not, you see, I have a proposal
to make. Come with me,” she suggested. “My husband has many plans in the
making, and I know he saw something in you. He would be happy to see you again,
I think.”
    Nellie stared at her, blinking hard.
“Ma’am?”
    Her eyes were growing wet again, curse
it. Did she have any pride left? Then she felt a single tear coursing down her
cheek, and she had to admit that she did not.
    “Oh, child. You’ll have enough to eat
and enough sleep, and you can put this part of your life behind you. I need a
companion as Dr. O’Connor and I travel around the Continent, and it sounds like
you’ve enough savvy to adjust to the situation.”
    “The Continent? Europe, ma’am? But
Bertie—” she stopped.
    The nickname for the prince had Mrs.
O’Connor staring at her. “As in the Queen’s eldest son? Is that who your
protector was? The father of your