Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery by M. Louisa Locke Read Free Book Online

her dark brown curls, which had escaped from her cap during her precipitous rush down the stairs, and said, “Ma’am, you’ll never guess who’s come to visit. I put him in the front parlor, thinking you would want some privacy. Mrs. Fuller, it’s Mr. Dawson come to call!”
     
    Damn, she is more beautiful than I remembered , Nate thought, as Annie entered the parlor. The whole time he’d been away he’d tried to picture the exact shade of brown of her eyes, and now he remembered that they changed, depending on her mood. In the lamplight, against her skin, which was as pale as old ivory, her eyes looked coal black, and angry.
    Bowing, Nate took a deep breath and said, “Mrs. Fuller, Annie, I am so sorry to call this late. I arrived back in town night before last, and I hoped to come yesterday, but my Uncle Frank has kept me completely tied up with business . . . never mind my excuses, I just hope you don’t mind the late hour.”
    Annie gave him a chilly smile and said, “Mr. Dawson, please don’t apologize. If your uncle needed your expert legal advice, I have no doubt it was over a serious matter.”
    Nate’s stomach clenched. She clearly hadn’t forgiven him for suggesting his work was more important than hers. He fell back on the polite formula of strangers, saying, “I hope you have been in good health, and Mrs. O’Rourke? I almost came to your place right from the train station on Saturday, thinking about those wonderful oat cookies she made for me last time I visited.”
    “ Mrs. O’Rourke is well, although I am afraid that she is finding the long hours standing in the kitchen more and more difficult. She won’t admit it, but I can see she hurts at the end of the day. I wouldn’t be surprised if she is downstairs right now, making up a batch of those cookies for you,” Annie said in a slight tone of disgust. “ She has missed having you to cook for.”
    “ And Miss Kathleen, is she still being courted by both the butcher’s boy and Patrick McGee?” asked Nate, feeling as if he were leaping from one conversational stone to another, hoping not to fall.
    “ Oh, yes, although I would say that the butcher’s boy is a very distant second at this point. I think she strings him along just to make Mr. McGee jealous. Shall we sit by the fire? The night has grown rather chilly,” Annie remarked, nodding to the two chairs next to the fireplace.
    “ If you wish,” Nate replied, relieved at this sign that she expected their conversation to be of some duration. After having sat down, he searched for something else neutral to say. Finally returning to that old standby, the weather, he said, “Such a change from yesterday, when we were having a touch of Indian summer. My uncle tells me that the fall has been unusually mild.”
    “ Yes, yesterday I took the new Sutter Street line out to Laurel Hill, to visit Matthew’s grave, and the grounds were awash with people picnicking.” Annie looked up at him and said, “But then you haven’t been in town, have you? So how was the weather down the peninsula? And your parents have been well, I hope? They seem to have kept you very busy this fall.”
    Nate knew it was now or never if he hoped to explain his failure to write.
    He leaned forward. “Please, Annie. I know I should have written. And yes, I was busy, but that is no excuse. You have every right to be angry with me. I just felt like such a fool after the last time I saw you, I . . . nothing I wrote down seemed adequate.”
    “ Nate Dawson, don’t be ridiculous. You are a lawyer, you make your living communicating. Don’t tell me you couldn’t write and at least tell me how you were doing?” Annie said, glaring at him.
    “ That’s just it. I didn’t feel I could write to you about the weather, or the number of new calves; I had to try to explain why I acted so childishly that last night. But everything sounded like a legal brief.”
    “ Well, you were behaving like a child.”
    “ I know.