This Fierce Splendor by Iris Johansen Read Free Book Online Page A

carefully casual. “Perhaps you could introduce me to your business associate, Dominic Delaney, when you have finished your transaction?”
    “I’m afraid you’d better rely on someone else for anintroduction.” She wrinkled her nose. “Mr. Delaney wasn’t pleased with my proposition.”
    His smile faded. “Oh. Well, perhaps I can strike up an acquaintance somewhere else. I hear he is a professional gambler.”
    “When he’s not shooting people, you mean?” she asked dryly.
    His brow furrowed. “Oh, he’s not really a murderer. It is the custom here. A gunfight is as honorable as a duel is in Europe.”
    She stared at him in disbelief at his enthrallment with the West and its gunfighters. Suddenly, though, she realized there was something quite vulnerable, even a little pitiful in his childlike excitement. “I see,” she said gently. “I hope you’re able to arrange to meet Mr. Delaney. I believe he was planning on going to a place called the Nugget when he left here.”
    “Thank you.” He looked eagerly at the door. “I hope you rest well. Shall we meet in the dining room at nine?”
    She was surprised he even remembered their proposed breakfast appointment. It was obvious he couldn’t wait to go in search of Dominic Delaney. “That will be fine.”
    His reply was barely audible as he hurried from the room.
    A few minutes later Elspeth breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the door of her room behind her. She could relax now. There was no one to see how weak and insecure she felt. This America was such a strange place with its brash and fast-moving people. Every time she turned around there was something new and different with which she had to cope. She had traveled extensively with her father both on the Continent and in the Far East but under very different circumstances. Her father had made quite sure she was kept too busy doing his research to have time to experience the practical and emotional difficulties of existing in a foreign land, a fact that had both disheartened and relieved her.
    Even this hotel room was strange. The small chamberwas clean, but it bore no resemblance to other hotel rooms in which she’d stayed. And, of course, it was nothing at all like her bedroom in the narrow two-story brick home in which she had grown up. The rough pine boards of this floor were covered by bright rugs in a bold design reminding her of a picture of an Aztec mosaic she’d seen in a book in London. The double bed across the room had no headboard and the springs were sagging slightly; the spread covering it was no more than a shabby patchwork quilt. A mahogany nightstand was adjacent to the bed and a rocking chair with a woven straw seat occupied the corner of the room to the left of the window. The mahogany armoire against the other wall was chipped and scarred and the flower-sprigged China basin and pitcher on the washstand next to it were permanently stained. It was a totally depressing and impersonal room, she thought in discouragement. If this sort of room was all that was available to rent, it was no wonder Dominic Delaney chose to live elsewhere.
    Then the color stained her cheeks as she realized how naive had been her thought. A man like Delaney didn’t live in a bordello for the quality of the bed but for the quality of the women in it. Elspeth was quite aware of a man’s physical needs and his casual way of satisfying them. Indeed, a by-product of studying antiquities had been the gain of a good deal of knowledge about hetaeras and the services they rendered.
Services
. The word was inappropriate when used in connection with Dominic Delaney. It sounded bland. Mechanical. That hardly applied to the man whose every movement was intense and radiated vitality. Even when he was still she had been conscious of something waiting to break free. Did it break free when he was with one of those women who lived in the bordello? She could imagine his face dark, intense, as he—
    She straightened