Free Rose by Jill Marie Landis Page B

morning she’d braided her hair and wound the plaits around her head. There would be no more jaunty styles, for there was no one to try to impress. Giovanni was not here to appreciate her newly acquired sophistication. It was better to return to her old ways. Simple ways. Besides, there would be no loose pins or tumbling hair to battle. The style was practical, if not plain.
    Her skin looked pale as alabaster against the dark ebony of her hair and the equally black sheen of the hat and dress. The weather outside was warming with each passing hour, and the heavy dress would soon become unbearably hot, but she was determined to wear black. Besides, she thought, her other dresses—gowns of more serviceable weight—were packed in her trunk at the station. The velvet would have to do. Muted purple shadows lay beneath the red-rimmed eyes that stared back at her from the mirror. Rosa decided she had never looked worse.
    She shrugged at her image. What did it matter?
    Silently she followed Mrs. Matheson down the stairs, stared at the woman’s wide girth, and wondered if the landlady ever feared getting stuck between the wooden banister and the wall. Rosa tried to glance around Bertha, but did not see the man standing in the doorway until they reached the bottom of the stairs and the matron nodded and went back toward the kitchen. Rosa stood silent, staring up at Marshal Storm. Even in her sorrow, she noted that her memory of his striking good looks had not been exaggerated.
    As he stood framed against the light in the open doorway, he towered over her, his hat in his hand. When he nodded politely in greeting, a thick shock of his straight black hair fell across his forehead. He shook his head and the stray lock fell back into place. His clothes were well fitted, almost too closely fitted against his wide shoulders and well-muscled arms. The soft fawn-brown material of his shirt appeared fragile and out of place on him, as if with a sudden movement, the seams would burst open and he would be freed of the encumbrance. He was wearing the sturdy blue denim pants that he had worn the day before.
    “Ma’am.” He nodded again and waited.
    “Buon giorno, Marshal.”
    “Are you ready?”
    She wanted to tell him that she would never be ready to walk out of this house and face the truth that waited beyond the door. Instead she whispered, “ Siì.”
    He stepped aside and let her pass through the door before him. “Can I carry your bag, ma’am?”
    “No. Is all right.”
    “I’d be happy to.”
    “I can do it.”
    “Fine.”
    The anger in his tone made her glance up at him from beneath the brim of her hat. His jaw was set and his eyes were trained on the street ahead of them. She wondered what had set his temper off, for surely she had done nothing to offend him. Rosa was thankful that he did not yell at her as if she were deaf, as had the other Americans she encountered.
    This morning the thoroughfare seemed to bustle with life in comparison to yesterday’s empty scene. A farmer was loading a wagon drawn up before the mercantile store, and farther down the street she could see two small Negro children darting back and forth along the boardwalk. As Rosa and Kase moved along in silence, neither of them bothered to use the walkway, but chose to continue down the middle of the dusty street. Determination lengthened their strides.
    Rosa was hard put to keep up with him.
    “That her, Kase?” A woman with bright red hair standing with both hands on her hips called out from the opposite side of the street. She stood before a gaily painted building, her skirt swaying from side to side like some huge magenta bell made of satin. Rosa glanced up at the evenly lettered words painted across the front of the building: Flossie Gibbs’s Hospitality Parlor and Retreat. She did not understand a word of it.
    She glanced up at the marshal in time to see him acknowledge the woman’s greeting with a casual wave. Kase. The woman’s words had