Free Rebecca Hagan Lee by Gossamer

lose her job and her grandmother’s love, respect, and support—Elizabeth also found the situation oddly liberating. For the first time in her life, she was free from her grandmother’s critical eye, impossibly high standards, morals and the social restraints that had weighed on her since birth. For a few short days during the train trip from Providence to Oakland, being a social pariah and the first fallen Sadler woman in generations had been fun. Her grandmother might have disowned her, but she still had Owen. Owen loved her. Owen didn’t care that she’d made a mistake. Owen would love her no matter what. But then she had arrived in this horrid city and learned that Owen was lost to her, too.
    She was completely alone. Elizabeth rubbed at her eyes with the back of her fist. She knew she was feeling sorry for herself, knew that she shouldn’t. But she couldn’t seem to help it. So much had happened … So much had changed … Her plans for a new life in San Francisco had beendestroyed. And all because a Chinaman named Lo Peng ran an evil place where young men like her brother, Owen, were introduced to opium and encouraged to spend their hard-earned money indulging. All because Lo Peng had allowed Owen to die from his weakness for opium.
    Elizabeth raised her fist and placed it against the cool glass of the windowpane. She wanted to let go of her hard-won control. She wanted to cry and scream and pound at the glass. She wanted to throw a fit, to shout and break things, and to give vent to the frustration and fright building inside her. So much had gone wrong. Right from the beginning. She thought she was so clever when she removed James’s key from his pocket and replaced it with her own. She thought she was so clever when she talked the desk clerk into giving her the spare key to James’s room to further delay him and keep him from following her. She’d even congratulated herself for her ingenuity when she realized that by sneaking out of the Russ House she could avoid having to face James again. Well, look where her cleverness had landed her! She had run away from a nice, respectable, expensive hotel and a man who had offered her nothing but kindness, and had taken refuge in a shabby, inexpensive boardinghouse inhabited by an assortment of women who could only be described as disreputable. She had run from the Garden of Eden straight into Sodom and Gomorrah—and without a backward glance.
    She didn’t feel so clever now. She didn’t feel anything except stupid. And alone. Completely, utterly alone. What would James think if he could see her now? Would he come to her rescue once again? Elizabeth walked over to the bureau, opened the top drawer, and pulled out his embroidered handkerchief. She held it to her nose, inhaling the faint masculine scent that clung to the fabric. She glanced over at the window. Was he still at the Russ House? Or was he someplace else in the city? Had he left? Had he returned home to a family?
    Elizabeth didn’t know. But as she climbed onto the center of her narrow bed and sat huddled against the headboard,she felt comforted by the presence of his handkerchief. By the initials embroidered on it.
J. C. C.
    She sighed. She’d run away from him because she didn’t want to face him, but Elizabeth knew that at the moment, she’d give anything to see James’s handsome face again.

Six
    BY ONE O’CLOCK the following afternoon, Elizabeth had revised her charitable thoughts about James. She’d still give anything to see his handsome face again. But now she wanted to see him so she could have the pleasure of scratching his beautiful blue eyes out!
    Two members of the San Francisco police department, including kindly Sergeant Terrence Darnell, had descended upon Bender’s Boardinghouse after lunch. San Francisco’s finest were engaged in a house to house search of saloons, hotels, boardinghouses, and other less reputable establishments within walking distance of Saint Mary’s Church and