The Sapphire Brooch Katherine Logan (best beach reads TXT) 📖

She fixed him with a direct look. “I threw it against the wall and it bounced.”

“I won’t ask why.”

She stood aside, brushing dust from her hands. “I was pretending it was a grenade.” He grabbed the back corner of the chest and pulled, barely straining against the weight. She bent to reach for the shoe. Her fingertips brushed against the heel at the same time she spotted the frame to a door. She blinked, so surprised she couldn’t immediately translate the appearance of the door into the significance of its presence. A moment passed, and then she let out a sort of unhinged giggle. “There’s a door back here. Push this monstrosity farther from the wall.”

Jack pulled the piece of furniture out several more feet, leaving a wide gap between the wall and the wardrobe. “I doubt it’s a closet. Must be a connecting door to Braham’s room.”

“If it’s unlocked, I can get in to talk to him.”

Jack held out of his arm, blocking her way. “Wait a minute. You can’t go barging in there uninvited.”

She ducked and skirted past him. “Of course, I can. I do it every day. If I waited for patients to be ready to see me, I’d waste half my day. I simply enter, and avert my eyes if they’re on the commode.”

There was a ghost of a smile on Jack’s face, although his eyes were dark with concern. “If we go in there, he’ll probably have us thrown out.”

She gave a brief snort, the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “I don’t care. After I change the dressings, he can toss us out, and lock this door, too. We’re going home anyway.” She took a breath, placed her hand on the doorknob, turned it, and pulled gently. The breath she had held blew out in a rush as she pulled the door open wider. It didn’t creak.

A heavy red velvet curtain hung over the doorway, probably to keep heat from escaping either of the rooms by way of the passage. She slipped the back of her hand between the door facing and the edge of the drape, fanned the curtain out of the way, and tucked the bunched fabric into a brass holdback. The dark tomb-like room reeked of whisky, sweat, and cigar smoke. She shook her head to clear it and looked up to find Jack’s eyes on her, no longer dark, but blue and vivid. He, too, understood at once the complexity and dangers of Braham’s use of alcohol to battle depression.

The sunlight gleaming in from her window cast a long beam of golden light into the dimness of Braham’s room. The light illuminated several plates filled with half-eaten food, as well as empty whisky bottles, and discarded clothes. A small uneasy feeling darted down the back of her neck. She sniffed, but didn’t smell rot, or worse.

“Go away. Why are ye in here?” Braham’s slurred speech was raspy from whisky and smoking.

She didn’t bother answering; it was a rhetorical question anyway.

“Stoke the fire,” she said to Jack. “I’ll open the drapes and windows and let in some fresh air.”

“Leave me alone. I don’t want ye here.” Something hit the floor with a thud. “I need another bottle. Edward.”

Jack threw on some kindling and poked the fire. Light sprang up, wavering in swaths of shadow and light over the plaster walls, and the chill quickly dissipated.

Charlotte pulled open the drapes, then went over to the other door and threw back the bolt. “Edward.” Within seconds, the butler was standing in the room, holding two bottles of whisky. “This can’t go on. No more alcohol. Draw him a bath, clean up this mess, and bring him his favorite foods. He needs something solid in his stomach.”

Within minutes, servants were moving about the room, picking up soiled clothes and empty bottles. Braham slouched in an armchair with his shirt unbuttoned down to the mat of hair on his chest. Unkempt and puffy-eyed, he let his head loll to the side. “Get out, all of ye. Leave me alone.”

Charlotte bent over him, pressed her hands on the arms of the chair, and dug her fingers into the upholstery. “I didn’t save you from Chimborazo to see you waste away like this.”

“I didn’t ask ye to save me.”

“No, you didn’t, but a man who loved you very much asked me to do it.”

Braham glared at her and the rhythm of the pulse in his throat closely matched the pounding of her heartbeat. “I failed to do the same for him.”

“Your failure, if it’s what you want to call it, grants him immortality.” From the corner of her eye, she caught the movement of his hand as it inched down into the side of the seat cushion. Thinking he might have hidden a flask of alcohol, she pushed his hand aside and dug her fingers into the crevice. When her hand brushed the smooth-finished grip of a revolver, she jerked upright, gasping with a hot flash of shock, and then she slapped him across his whiskered jaw. His head popped up, and he shot her an affronted glare, clutching the side of his face, red with her handprint from chin to cheekbone.

She snatched up the revolver and held it by thumb and forefinger. “Take this,” she said to Jack. “And check the room. See if there are any other weapons. He’s not going to blow a hole in his head while I’m here.”

“Get out.” Braham clenched his teeth and waved a shaking arm. He swallowed hard and visibly. “I don’t want ye here.”

“Right now, I don’t give a damn what you want. You’re going to have a bath and dinner, and when you’re sober, we’re going to talk. When we’ve finished, Jack and I will get out of your life.”

Braham was not the same man she had witnessed struggle to get to his feet in the cell at Castle Thunder. That man had the will to live. The man sitting in front of her now, crumbling