At a warehouse’s corner stood a girl close to Dovey’s own age. She leaned one hip against the bright-blue wall, toying with something in her hands, smiling broadly at Dovey. The girl was brown-skinned, like so many people in Aspinwall, and dressed rather gaudily in a pink skirt with a proliferation of bows and ruffles. Her corset was laced in such a way that her small breasts pushed up like two round islands rising from the seafoam of her lace trim. Even with her dark complexion, Dovey could see that the girl’s cheeks were thoroughly rouged. She was pretty—her face was exquisitely carved, her shining black hair curled and arranged just so. But her beauty was somehow overt—forceful, asserting itself in a way that intrigued Dovey even as it sent a thread of anxiety through her veins.
The girl lifted the object she held. It was a piece of bread, flat and dark, smeared with some pale substance. Dovey’s stomach rumbled as the girl bit into it. But Dovey smiled and beckoned, and soon the girl in pink approached, and lowered herself onto the bench at Dovey’s side.
“Where do you come from?” the girl asked. She spoke English well, though her accent was thick. “I have not seen you here before.”
“Massachusetts,” Dovey replied, and the girl giggled again, unwilling to try the tangly word.
“I’m called Orquídea,” she said.
“Dovey.” She shook the girl’s hand, and couldn’t help gazing at the bread lying in Orquídea’s lap. The rich scent of roasted garlic filled the air, and Dovey’s mouth watered.
“Have you come to work?” Orquídea asked politely.
Dovey tore her eyes from the bread and stared at her quizzically. “Work?”
“You know …” She gestured toward the docks with a conspiratorial half smile.
Dovey was on the point of asking whether Orquídea hauled mail bags up the ships’ ramps, when at last she realized just what the girl mean by work. She chided herself. You dolt. Are you so hungry that your head has turned to dough?
“That work—no,” Dovey said. “I’ve come looking for a husband.”
Orquídea threw back her head and laughed, exposing teeth as small and white as pearls. “Good joke,” she said. “I’ve come looking for a husband, too. Just for one night,” she added, choking on her giggles, “then a new husband the next day!”
Dovey grinned in response. She knew she ought to go all stiff and offended—propriety demanded it, and she was a member of the Mason family, after all—but she realized with a flutter of amusement that she didn’t mind if the girl thought she was a prostitute. No doubt Sophronia would have asphyxiated on her own outrage if anyone suspected her of dallying for money. But as Dovey sat beside her new friend, she saw no shame in the profession. The world was a hard, unfriendly place for a woman. Either a girl allowed herself to be traded away like a fattened heifer, or she made her own way through life. Every woman Dovey knew was making her way, whether she worked the piers like Orquídea, or tied all her hopes to a mad gamble in Seattle. Even Sophronia was doing what she had to in order to get by. The way Dovey saw it, there was no difference between Sophronia and this pretty little dockside whore—no difference that truly mattered.
Orquídea lifted the half-eaten crust of bread from her lap. She extended it to Dovey, an offering of fellowship.
“Truly—may I?” Dovey took the bread as if it were a sacrament, and sat staring in awe before she bit into the thick slice. The roasted-garlic spread sent a tingle of satisfaction along the roof of her mouth, and she closed her eyes in bliss as she chewed.
When she had finished the bread, Dovey leaned back on the bench and sighed. Orquídea turned her face up toward the sun, soaking in the warmth of the afternoon.
“I meant what I said, you know,” Dovey told her. “I am on my way to find a husband. I’m going all the way to Washington Territory, to be wedded.”
“Ah!” Orquídea gestured toward the Illinois. The crew still hauled their bags of letters and wrapped parcels up the ramp to the ship’s deck. Orquídea muttered a Spanish word, then tapped her chin, searching for the correct translation. “Delivery,” she said. “Mail.”
Is that what I am? Dovey wondered. A bride by order—like a parcel picked out of a catalog?
If she was, then so be it. It seemed a damn sight better to become the wife of a man she didn’t know at all than to agree to marry a draft dodger whom she knew to be a pudding-headed sap.
She rose from the bench and pulled Orquídea up with her. “Come on. I don’t have much time in this place; I want to see all the sights before the sun goes down.”
Orquídea strolled with her along the waterfront, pointing out the ships that glided into the harbor, calling greetings to the sailors she knew—and her acquaintance with Aspinwall’s sailors seemed legendary, though she couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old.
At first, Dovey found herself tensing and blushing every time Orquídea waved to a man or stopped to offer a few words and her charming, pearly grin. Despite Dovey’s growing conviction that a prostitute and a prospective bride were not so very different when all was said and done, a lady of the Mason family simply wasn’t so free with her attentions. But after a time, as the sailors and dockside merchants began to cast their smiles and little compliments at Dovey, too, she began to find Orquídea and her wharfside domain more intriguing than mortifying.
It seemed right enough to Dovey that a girl ought to be free to cast solicitous glances toward any man she pleased. As she watched Orquídea lift the hem of her rosy skirt just a little too high, batting her eyes at a butcher, she thought, Why, after all, shouldn’t a girl be open in her intentions?
The longer she walked the streets of Aspinwall, drifting on its slow, heady currents of spice and heat, the less Dovey cared for the prim, proper world of American society, with its rigid strictures and pointless conventions. Let Sophronia dwell within the small, stuffy confines of propriety. The world was a broad, varied place—as vast and airy as the sky—and Dovey would find her own place to dwell. She would set her own borders, make her own conventions. What had she left Lowell for, if not to set herself free?
As the sun lowered in a petal-pink sky, Orquídea was just showing Dovey how to lean against a wall or a lamppost in a more appealing manner—shoulder shrugged up coyly, hair falling down to half conceal her face—when a shout rang across the docks. The cry was wordless, but there was no mistaking its shrill, mortally offended note.
Dovey gritted her teeth. “Lord,” she breathed, and stepped away from the lamppost, braced for the coming storm.
Orquídea glanced around at the shout, then uttered a quick exclamation in her native tongue. Sophronia swept past the girl, a streak of pale gold, and seized Dovey by the arm. She dragged her several paces away from Orquídea, as if fearing the merry little prostitute might combust at any moment and set Dovey’s skirts ablaze.
“Let go,” Dovey said, jerking out of Sophronia’s grip.
But it was no use—Sophronia released her upper arm only to clamp her hand around Dovey’s wrist with a painful, biting grip. Jo came hurrying along in Sophronia’s wake, and Dovey turned to the older woman, pleading.
“Get her off me, Jo! She’s ferocious!”
“I’ll show you ferocious,” Sophronia promised, hissing her threats into Dovey’s ear. She never took her eyes from Orquídea, and made a shooing gesture with her free hand, as if the young prostitute were a stray dog begging for a bone. “Get away from this creature, Dovey! What on Earth were you thinking?”
“She’s not a creature, you mean, coldhearted louse! She’s my friend!”
Sophronia’s shock was so monumental that she loosed her hold on Dovey. She stood still for a moment, wide-eyed and dazed. “Friend? Dovey—you cannot mean it. A … a fallen woman!”
Dovey jerked down the sleeve of her parrot-green jacket; Sophronia’s grip had twisted it awry. “I certainly do mean it. She’s been good to me—better than you have!”
“Dovey!” Jo exclaimed. “After Sophronia nursed you through your illnes
s—”
But Dovey’s feathers were too ruffled to feel any remorse for her unkind words. “And anyway, I don’t think she’s so far fallen.”
Sophronia, gaping, as glassy-eyed as a landed cod, turned to Jo in speechless horror.
“Her line of work seems perfectly fine to me,” Dovey added with vicious deliberation. “I just might take it up myself.”
Sophronia finally managed one high, warbling exclamation: “Oh!” She clutched Dovey by the arm again and began marching her up the nearest street, toward the little rise where the boardinghouse stood.
“Good-bye,” Dovey called to Orquídea. But the girl had already turned away, shaking her head and laughing.
Dovey scowled at Sophronia as the pale woman propelled her through Aspinwall’s narrow lanes. “You really are rotten, do you know that?”
Jo trotted along beside them, panting and wrangling her stiff skirt with both hands. “Dovey, it’s late. The sun is nearly set. We were worried about you—all of us. You mustn’t run off that way. We must stick together!”
“Stick together, indeed,” Sophronia barked. “This ill-tempered little beast doesn’t belong in civilized company. She isn’t one of us, Josephine.”
“Come now, Sophronia—”
“I’ll hear nothing more about it. When we get back to the boardinghouse, you must keep her in the room with the rest of the girls, and I shall go straight to Mr. Mercer. He needs to know.”
“Know what?” Dovey spat, jerking against Sophronia’s iron grip.
“He needs to know that you are not the high-minded woman he thought you to be—not the sort of girl Seattle needs.”
“I’m just the sort of girl Seattle needs—wait and see!”
“Oh no,” Sophronia said darkly. “Seattle has more than its fair share of girls like you, Dovey. You’re going straight back to Lowell, if I have to pay your passage myself. You can leave the good work in Seattle to worthy girls—women with high ideals and pure hearts.”
“The good work!” Dovey hooted with laughter, which only made Sophronia’s grip bite all the harder. “Don’t you understand what Mercer is about? We’re nothing but mail-order brides, Sophronia. That’s the only work he has in mind for us—to go meekly into the homes and beds of those men waiting in Seattle.”
“You make it sound tawdry,” she objected.
“It is! We’re goods to be traded, Sophie!”
“We’re more than that, you little fool. We’re companions—”
“So is that girl you called a creature—”
“We’re to start families in Washington, to bring a settling influence—”
“To breed, just like livestock. Who’s a creature now?”
“Raising up a good, moral family is a world away from breeding like stock. And it’s the only work that need concern a woman,” Sophronia added.
“It’s not the only work that concerns me. There’s a whole world out here to see, and I’ve only got one life to live. What if I don’t want to spend my life tied down to one man?”
“What other choice do you have?”
For answer, Dovey cast a glance back toward the docks. In the violet-gray of approaching twilight, she could see nothing of Orquídea’s bright-pink dress, but Sophronia read Dovey’s meaning clearly enough. The pale woman strode all the faster toward the safety of the boardinghouse.
“That is no kind of life for a girl of your background.”
“My background—fiddlesticks! Girls like Orquídea have freedom—adventure! Can’t you see it, Sophronia? That’s the kind of life any woman ought to desire.”
Jo cut in smoothly. “That kind of life is danger, Dovey. It’s not freedom or adventure—not for long, anyway. Soon enough it all turns to illness, insecurity—and men who might hurt you just as soon as pay you.”
It was more than Dovey could bear, for Jo—her only true friend since leaving Lowell—to speak out against her. Anger surged up inside, making her head throb and her neck ache with tension. Men—men who might hurt me, men who must pay me. It seemed no matter where she turned, men would forever control her freedom, her life. Father back at home, plotting to cart her off to the Stiltons, all meek and tame, bundled up in a bridal gown. Mr. Mercer here in Aspinwall, to decide whether she was worthy of Seattle. And if she did make it to Seattle, she would be in the thrall of another man still: a husband she didn’t know, who would care not a whit for Dovey’s ambitions or desires.
With one final, furious effort, Dovey wrenched out of Sophronia’s grip. She could feel the impression of each of Sophronia’s hard fingers; the bruised places throbbed with the speed of Dovey’s pulse. “This is my life, Sophronia—not yours. Not my father’s, and not some dullard husband’s! I’ll make my own way in the world. You run off and tell Mr. Mercer anything you like. I’ll leave his expedition if I please, or stay with it if I choose. Neither you nor Asa Mercer can tell me what to do!”
She spun away and stormed off into the dusk. Her tears veiled the town in a blur of color—but as night approached, even Aspinwall’s brightness faded.
CHAPTER NINE
TROUBLED WATERS
The train rocked and swayed, rattling through a long green tunnel of foliage. Josephine sat silent and alone, watching the fields and dense, broad-leafed forests glide past her window. The glass reflected her image like a vision of a ghost in a mirror. Whenever the train crossed open country where sunlight glowed on farmers’ fields or vast, burned clearings, Josephine’s reflection faded into nothing. But when the train passed again into shadow, she looked into her own face with sudden force—her features so sharp and exactly carved, she seemed a woman made of alabaster—of unfeeling stone. But always, even as sunlight warmed outside the train and her image began to fade, her eyes glittered with anxiety.
The train rattled past a field full of cows, standing belly deep in lush spring grasses. The beasts raised their heads to stare as the train rolled by, and beyond, where their pasture fringed into bright, glowing woodland, a flock of black birds took to the sky. Josephine watched the birds fly for a long moment, allowing the simple, rustic quiet of the landscape to soothe her troubled soul to peace. Then she turned and glanced along the train’s interior.
The other women of Mercer’s expedition had, by now, found good company with one another, and shared their stories and hopes freely. They sat in twos and threes, conversing happily or simply enjoying one another’s presence as they read or stitched at their needlework. Josephine had, during those dark days on the Illinois when she and Sophronia had tended to the ailing Dovey, come to think herself Sophronia’s friend. And she certainly cared for Dovey, brooding over the hot-tempered girl like a mother hen.
But she could not trust either one of them—not entirely. Not with the secret she kept. She could share her story with none of the women on this voyage. And as for hopes, Josephine had only one: that she might get to Seattle with the truth of her circumstances undetected.
She cast an uneasy glance at Dovey and Sophronia. The two young women were sharing a bench seat a few rows away—not by choice—stiff and silent, with as much space between their bodies as the bench would allow. The other seats in the car had all been claimed by the time Dovey scrambled aboard, tailed by the disapproving, watchful shadow of Sophronia. Now the girl practically hackled like an ornery terrier, indignant at her self-appointed guardian’s proximity but refusing to speak, while Sophronia held her chin high with an air of bearing with good fortitude the misfortunes that must be borne.
Dovey still had not forgiven Sophronia for hauling her away from that dockside harlot two nights before. The girl truly did not know what was best for her—Josephine conceded that much, even if she thought Sophronia a mite harsh.
Dovey had vowed to forge her own way in life, to make up her own mind—and so she had, it seemed. After storming away from Sophronia and into the uncharted wilds of Aspinwall, the girl had crept back to the boardinghouse at midnight, slipping quietly into her bed beside Josephine’s. Moonlight
had spilled through the window, dim and gray, and in that dull-pewter glimmer, Josephine had reached out her hand to Dovey. The two of them had lain that way for some time, hands clasped in the space between their beds, and Josephine had ached with loneliness. She’d nearly told Dovey everything, then. Thank God better sense had prevailed. For all her rough charms, Dovey really was a fool sometimes—weren’t all girls of sixteen?—and the secret could have flown between the women’s bunks before the sun was up. It would have spelled an end to Josephine’s hopes for certain.
If I can only keep silent for a few more weeks—until we reach Seattle. Then all will be well.
She could endure until then. Josephine knew she could. She had endured much already—more than most women or men could stand. What were a few more weeks of guarded silence?
In another hour, the train reached Panama City. The depot was near enough the wharves that as Josephine stepped from the rail car to the platform, she could see a forest of masts and the smokestacks of steamships rising clear and straight above the tile roofs of the city. Bright flags lifted on the masts, rippling in a steady, salt-scented wind. The sky was as soft and blue as hope itself, yet she felt a pinch of foreboding in her stomach.
It’s only my sour mood—the dark thoughts that have followed me from Massachusetts. I must shake off this bleakness. The final leg of the journey was about to begin—the last gate through which she must pass before she attained her freedom.
The women of the expedition hoisted their trunks and bags, then followed Asa Mercer’s dark head and velvet jacket through the streets. Panama City was much like Aspinwall—a clamor of bold colors, the air thick with the warm, furry breath of the tropics. A scent of smoke and spice hung above the streets, and from the high red rooftops, unknown birds cried out in harsh, scolding tones.
They made the docks just as Josephine’s stays were beginning to chafe in the heat.
“There she is,” Mercer proclaimed, gesturing grandly up at the nearest vessel.
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