An Imprudent Lady. Elaine Golden

a punch to the gut. Clearly she was horrified to see her once-spurned lover. Had she encouraged her family to dispose of him to one of the most unpleasant corners of the world?

      So, he’d snapped at her, unable to contain the turmoil of decades. And when he thought he couldn’t stand the thick silence that knit between them, she had spoken with her mother’s cool hauteur and called him Mr. Walsh.

      Mr. Walsh! What an affront that was after years of her ragged, lusty whispers echoing in his memory. Haunting him.

       Oh, Danny! Yes!

      And he knew that he had to escape her presence before he seized her by the shoulders and shook her until her hair fell down and he could see if it was even longer than he remembered.

      Now he stood in some strange room packed with the gaudy, gilt-covered furniture of the prior century trying to regain his composure, and he wondered how in the hell he could face her again with civility, when every animalistic impulse raged to reclaim her.

      Slowly he released his grip on the bureau, and he stared at the dark, red-brown wood gleaming in the lamplight. Mahogany. Even if it had been bastardized with baroque whimsy, the bureau was a stout piece of furniture. Sturdy.

      So, he balled up his fist and smashed it into the flat, glossy top. Over and over, until his knuckles split and blood spilled upon the surface.