The Bound Heart by Elsa Holland Read Free Book Online

forward.
    She imagined the slide of rope.
    How it would feel over her skin, her breasts. What it would be like to be totally wrapped.
    Pleasure exploded through her body, arched her spine with light that had no place entwined with such dark thoughts.
    “Too dangerous,” his voice had whispered over her. “Too beautiful. Go home, Olive Thompson.”
    Her hand stilled as her body pulsed and her skin tingled. Still that image of him, his hand, his finger in that woman, that woman who should be her. Her body wept with a dampness she should not feel.
    Slowly, she drew her hand away.
    Let her fingers slide over the sensitive skin. The pleasure of it. Imagining it was him. Wishing, wishing he had been the one to give her this pleasure.
    “Olive!” Her sister’s voice was washed in frustration, beyond its capacity.
    “Wait!” Her voice was harsh back. She knew that strained sound of voice.
    Sisters. Even after all the hurt and all the differences, she was still compelled to help, to come whenever they needed her.
    Olive let her dress fall back in place and took her leg off the chair.
    What was she doing staying here?
    She had no man of her own. She had stopped looking, stopped going out two years ago. Instead, the focus was on her sewing.
    The repairs and paid work of course, but the other decorative work, the embroidery, the use of color and texture with the satin and silk threads and ribbons, that was the real focus.
    Women came for extras with their repairs, some embroidery or lace added. Every now and again, she got a special project like Mrs. Everson wanting her daughter’s wedding veil embroidered with her favorite flowers. And, Miss Wimple who marched down from her Kensington home and commissioned wall hangings embroidered with tales of feminine hardship and endurance to add to the Suffragette cause. ‘ The Needle and thread are the wheels to move you out of any hardship Olive.’ She’d say. ‘Every stitch will emancipate you from your lot. Stay focused and dream big.’
    There were things that Miss Wimple said, that Olive didn’t agree with but when she spoke about how sewing and her growing skill were a vehicle to a new life, she believed her.
    Olive washed her hands in the basin on the chest of drawers and slipped the photos into the pages of the little book on the nightstand next to her single bed. She only had one book.
    Her finger ran over the binding. She couldn’t read very well. Wasn’t sure what it was about. The important thing was she knew who had bound it.
    It had cost a big part of her savings. Buying it had been foolish. The kind of thing ‘no hope’ girls like her did. She knew that; yet still she’d bought it, and over the last year, never regretted the extravagance. Next to her bed on the nightstand, it was him. “Good night,” she would say as she blew the candle out.
    It was a moody little book. Sometimes she would hear it answer, other times not. Much like its maker.
    She had looked at every part of it. She’d lifted the front and back covers so the spine arched and she could see the binding, see the tight even stitches. Now, she knew he bound up a woman with as much patience and precision as his books.
    Her hand stroked the surface. A great many secrets were in plain view. Just like he’d said today about her brace. We all had them.
    But not for Mr. Edwards. Not anymore. No, today she’d found out what he wanted from a woman. And, perhaps why things had not progressed as they should have.
    “Olive.” One of the children started to cry and pans clattered. “Olive! Please!”

CHAPTER FIVE
    Thunder rumbled in the night and echoed through the stillness of the house like a low growl. The sound of discontent and unfulfilled hungers.
    Okazaki, the house’s long-term tenant and self-imposed housekeeper, moved in the doorway, a large tray in front of her.
    Jamie waved her in.
    She moved into the traditional sixteen-mat Japanese tatami room with those impossibly small steps Japanese women