MUSIC IN THE NIGHT -- excerpt

 

Before she could brace herself to clutch the cross and rose again, the vibrations stopped and the warmth faded. The wooden sidewalk rippled like waves under her feet. A more deeply recessed doorway, offering better shelter, was only a dozen steps further down the side street. She needed to sit down, out of the rain, just for a few moments. Hunching her shoulders, Carmen staggered down the sidewalk, aiming for the darkness of the recessed doorway, praying it was dry and deep enough that she could hide from sight while she regained her balance.

A steam-cart trundled down the street from behind her, just as she stepped into the doorway. A whimper of gratitude escaped her clenched teeth. It was deep and wide enough she could have laid down in it, and kept her feet dry. She gratefully sank down into the corner on the right, well out of traffic, if anyone needed to come out of the door. Tugging her skirts down around her ankles, she raised her hand to press against the cross.

The steam-cart came into view, framed in the doorway. It was an open steam-cart, a newer model but without any kind of roof or covering on it. Carmen snorted her disdain for anyone who thought an open vehicle made any sense in Chicago, with its wind and seemingly constant rain. The man who drove it hunched his shoulders, and his eyes were lost in goggles gone white with steam or condensation. The other man in the cart stood up in the passenger section behind him, one hand braced on the seat back, the other on the man's shoulder, and turned his head, surveying the street.

Carmen paused with her hand just above the cross. She couldn't breathe. Just for a heartbeat, the man's gaze seemed to lock with hers. Despite the rain streaming from the flat planes of his chiseled features and darkening his golden hair, slicking it to his head, she recognized him. That flat, hard line of his mouth, she knew very well. It was the last expression she saw on his face before he walked out of her life. Those lips had been as hard as his voice when he castigated her for the choices she had made.

Just a few days before those angry words, he had smiled and spoke only sweet words. Why did she remember his displeasure more clearly? 

Richard Boniface. He had wanted to marry her, and when her father said no, he had insisted she should run away with him. Carmen couldn't break her father's heart, even if she had wanted Boniface more than life itself. Her father had raised her to consider every question and choice carefully. Carmen had trusted her father's ability to read people more than her own heart. If he didn't trust Richard as her husband, then neither could she. Richard’s fury only confirmed her father’s wisdom in saying no. How could she trust her heart to such a changeable man?