Hannah’s Beau Read Free

words had barely slid off her tongue when she broke into a fit of coughs.
    Beau pressed a white cloth against her mouth, afraid each cough wrenching through her fragile body would tear her flesh from the bone. After the bout ceased, Beau pulled back the cloth now filled with the red stain of blood.
    Blood from her damaged lungs.
    Another moment passed in utter silence.
    Beau’s heart pounded so hard with anguish for her, for what she’d become, he thought he might choke fromit. Now that the stage was no longer a viable prospect, Jane Goodwin had chosen to earn her money in the most hideous way imaginable. It hurt to see how far she’d fallen.
    A shudder racked through him. If only she would accept God’s grace and Beau’s charity.
    “Dear, sweet Beau.” Jane turned her head and blinked her dazed, drugged eyes up at him. “My sins are too many to wash clean now. Why else would I be here?”
    She waved her hand in a gesture that seemed to say, Look where we are.
    The heartsick tone of her voice took him aback. Beau glanced around the tiny room decorated purposely for sin. In the bright light of day, beneath the expensive silk and satin, hung a shabbiness that spoke of the years of hard, ugly work that had acquired the worldly trappings. And yet the room had a sad, unkempt feel. Once brilliant, now forgotten.
    Just like this woman.
    Just like the rest who shared residence in this…house.
    Too many for one man to help.
    He closed his eyes, once again praying for wisdom. A small, still voice inside said, One at a time, Beau. Start with this one.
    All right. Yes.
    Beau asked God for the words to convince her to leave, but behind his confident demeanor he was soul-sick with the hollow feeling of defeat. “Miss Jane, please reconsider my offer. The sanatorium is only a day’s train ride away.”
    He tried to capture her stare, but her gaze dartedaround, eventually locking on to his left shoulder. “I…No, it’s impossible.”
    He reached out and cupped her hand in his, staring fiercely into her eyes. “All things are possible through Christ.”
    “Not for my kind.” Her voice was uneven, shaky, the underlying disgust at herself no longer hidden behind false bravado.
    She’d given up then, resigned herself to die thinking she’d turned so far away from God that she could never find her way back, had convinced herself she deserved this sort of hell on earth.
    “God forgives all sins, even the seemingly unforgivable ones.” He spoke with the conviction of his heart. “You need only to ask.”
    “You don’t understand.” Jane tugged her hand free, the sharp gesture at odds with her infirmity. She struggled to speak, her lips moving frantically while words seeped out in a soft wispy whoosh. “I have a daughter.”
    Beau studied Jane’s vulnerable expression with mingled pity and horror. He hadn’t known. Hadn’t realized. But he should have. He’d seen it often enough. The unbearable chain of sin continuing from one generation to another. “She is here? Living in the brothel?”
    “Megan is at Charity House. If I leave, if I don’t work, I cannot continue to pay her board.”
    Charity House. Of course. Beau knew all about the special home where children born to women of ill repute were welcomed without question. Marc and Laney Dupree, the owners, never turned a child away. No matter the financial circumstances. Jane was worrying over something that would not be a problem, ever.
    “But if you don’t leave, you will make your daughter an orphan. How is that any better?”
    Another fit of coughing was her only response.
    Beau shut his eyes for a moment. He must not quit on Jane. He must not. God had called him to minister to the ones with no more dignity, no identity, no…hope.
    He knew firsthand what it meant to be an outcast, never fitting in the world around him. Although he adored his family, without their passion for acting, the constant years of traveling from stage to stage had left him feeling alone