Free The Harlot’s Pen by Claudia H Long

Cohen.
     
    Kate looked towards the door, but despite its many openings and closings that evening, Miss Strone did not appear. Kate knew an unescorted woman would never venture out in the evening, and certainly not to a salon, but there was something queer about that tall, dark-haired woman, something unsettling that made Kate leery of her and kept her wondering if she would arrive, inappropriately and unannounced, to press her suit for employment. No other petitioner had ever showed up at the front door clutching a poem.
    “A little quiet tonight, my dear,” Henry Lyon said, running his fingers along the seam of her sleeve. Kate smiled at him. He was such a dear man, undemanding, kind, and generous. “That’s better. Don’t want to see my little Kitty sad.”
    Kate metaphorically squared her shoulders. Undemanding or not, the gentlemen who came to her Resort came to be entertained, understood, and petted, not to look at a sour-faced, worried woman. Not that she was worried herself, of course, but those verses stayed in her mind. Miss Strone had written some very powerful words.
    “Of course not, bear cub,” she replied. “Let me get you a cordial.” Kate turned to catch the eye of Samantha, who nodded and quickly poured Henry a crystal glass full of the amber liquid. The new laws prohibiting the sale of liquor were a running joke in Spanish Kitty’s Salon, and the machinations of the government, far away in Washington, had little effect on Kate’s private club. “The harvest was good this year with our boys home from the Great War,” she remarked, taking a glass of cordial for herself. Her own vineyards stretched over several acres, not a mile from her Resort, and her small distillery produced enough for her to entertain her exclusive company.
    “And the cordial is remarkably good, if lacking in whiskey flavor,” Henry said teasingly. Though well placed in the government of the State himself, he had no interest in enforcing the Amendment or honoring the Volstead Act. “Did I tell you, Kitty, that I had the most remarkable letter today from Los Angeles? It appears that one Jew, a Mr. Cohen, has a fat finger in a larger pie, one of the most despicable pies in the state—a pawnbroker. I believe I mentioned this before?”
    Kitty nodded, and made her interested face. She furrowed her black, arching brows slightly, parted her lips appealingly, and gazed at Henry Lyon as he spoke. He indeed had mentioned his hatred of pawnbrokers often, and his odd liberal views on Labor as well. She thought of Miss Strone. Here was someone that she would fancy, only to discover that he was far and away beyond her understanding. She shook her head, thinking of Miss Strone’s foolishness.
    “No? You disagree, my lovely?”
    Kate caught herself. She had not heard the last part of Henry’s discourse. “Oh heavens, Henry, not at all. I simply am amazed at the brazenness of some people!”
    Henry Lyon smiled. “You are sharp, my dear. Brazenness is not a feature you would be unfamiliar with. Indeed, I was brazen in writing to Mr. Cohen, and even more so in encouraging the Committee to back the bills in the house that will clamp down on some of these pawnbrokers’ excesses.”
    “And so, shall Mr. Cohen and his brethren desist from pawn-brokering?”
    Henry Lyon leaned back and laughed. “For heaven’s sake! Not at all! Kitty, what is it with you tonight? Have you lost your intelligence to some affair of the heart?”
    “Heaven forbid, Henry, my bear cub. You have my heart, my soul, and my mind—at least tonight!” She raised her glass to him and drank. “I was only worried because without pawnbrokers, where will the hard up go for loans? No bank would credit them, nor indeed would I!”
    “Naturally, Kitty. Have no fear. I will apprise you of the results of my brazenness, as you call it. I am headed to Los Angeles tomorrow and will call on friend Cohen myself. I will say, though, that I personally have guaranteed many a