The Beloved Woman Read Online Free PDF

canvas awnings and nicely painted housescomplete with rocking chairs on the porches. Even though the sun had barely reached noon, raucous piano music filtered out the open doors of the Buzzard’s Roost Dance Hall and several similar establishments nearby. A half-dozen drunks lay in the alleyway between the rather grand Gallatin-Kirkland Saloon and the ramshackle Golden Lady Billiards Emporium. They were piled up like sleeping puppies. Flies circled them in the shadows.
    Men hunkered around dice games on the porches and in the street. A mud-covered gent in overalls danced a jig with a woman wearing an overstuffed carmine-red dress, the perfect color to match her hair. They had no musical accompaniment, at least not any that matched the rhythm of their feet. They did, however, have a nanny goat and her nursing kid for an audience.
    A wide variety of people traveled the street—miners carrying pans, picks, and shovels; businessmen in snug cutaway coats and top hats; barefoot farmers wearing coarse homespun; women in gingham and women in silk. They had one thing in common—except for a black slave or two, they were all white and seemed very much at home.
    “Why didn’t anybody write me about this?” Katherine asked in desperation.
    Justis shrugged elaborately. “It was hard for them to put into words, I reckon. And they didn’t want you to get worried and come home.”
    “Can you send someone for my father right away?”
    “You bet.”
    He’d tell her the truth as soon as they got inside the hotel, he told himself. He wasn’t very good with words and even worse with hysterical women. Thinking about her reaction made him feel sick.
    Mr. Bingham finished his circuit and headed off the square toward a handsome white building set not far from where thick forest closed in on a trail leading out oftown. Double galleries ran across the top and bottom levels, flowers formed a colorful border out front, and a small garden flourished beyond the limbs of a stately beech tree near one side of the building. A sign hung from the edge of the bottom gallery, with “Gallatin-Kirkland Hotel, Est. 1835” scrolled in large gilt letters.
    Dread pooled in Justis’s stomach as he stepped from the coach. Bingham jumped down and went to remove Katherine’s trunks at the rear. Justis followed him there.
    “You been paid in full?”
    “Yes, sir. Miss Blue Song took care of it in Nashville a few days ago. Look, I don’t feel right, going off and leaving her with strangers …”
    “Here.” Justis planted a ten-dollar gold piece in Bingham’s hand. “Get going soon as you unload. I’ll take care of her from now on.”
    When the driver looked at the coin his eyes bugged. “Yes, sir.”
    Justis heard a sound and strode to the coach door too late to do more than watch Katherine shut the door behind herself. She looked around anxiously while she set a black bonnet over her hair.
    “Don’t wear that thing,” he told her. “Makes it hard to see you.”
    She peered at him from under the bonnet, her face like the center of a darkly exotic flower. “I just want to be ready when my father gets here.”
    “You think he’s gonna know by magic the second you set foot on the ground in Gold Ridge?”
    “Perhaps.” She removed the bonnet and gave him a mild look of exasperation.
    “Mr. Justis! Is this the Injun?”
    A robust black boy, barefoot and shirtless but dressed in good trousers, ran up and grabbed Justis’s hand, then gazed at Katherine in awe.
    “This is Miss Blue Song.” Justis shifted awkwardly. Introductions were one of many social graces he hadn’tmastered yet. He gestured from Katherine to the boy. “Meet Noah.”
    She could have ignored the boy, nodded silently to him, or reproached Justis for introducing her to a house servant. Any of the three would have been acceptable. Instead, she smiled gently and said, “How do you do, Noah?”
    Justis watched her with a troubled heart. She was a real lady, he thought, and