by April Jane
But she felt nothing. It was as if her mind had shut down, leaving her unable to receive any emotion. Dread would have been a close second, thinking of the implications of having a husband. She would have to speak to him, she would have to touch him, endure the feel of his hand against hers and standing close enough beside him to feel the heat of his body. She would have to kiss him. Before the mere thought had sent shivers of horror down her spine, but there was nothing at the thought. She attempted to dredge up the feelings of disgust and horror, but still, there seemed to be a sense of unreality, as if she were stuck inside a dream that she would never wake up from. Would she simply stay like this for the rest of her life?
“Alice, darling,” Mother said, stretching her hands out, the first genuine smile that Alice had seen directed at her ever since her first failed attempt at wooing a man into talking to her at her debut ball and failed at every attempt since. “This is wonderful!”
Alice couldn’t find her voice for several moments. “Yes,” she finally said faintly, as if she were far away from her vocal chords and had to reach across a great length in order to issue a single sound “Marvelous.”
“You must leave immediately,” Mother said, reading over the telegram. “Your husband says that he would be happy to receive you whenever you are available next.
“Can we not put it off for a week so that I can gather my things?” Alice pled, her senses finally kicking in. “I need time to get ready.”
“You have been waiting for this moment for six years, darling,” Mother said, voice as hard as a diamond, and cut her like the sharp edge of one. Alice took in a sharp breath. Ever since her father’s death, her mother had showed Alice no real affection, and of course she would want to get rid of the last reminder of her late husband. Mother was the kind of woman who tended to ignore the little problems that buzzed in the back of her mind, not face them directly as Alice did with every other problem—save boys. “You are not getting younger, and I am not either,” she added, her voice not softening a bit. Alice winced. It was true; her mother was getting too old to work and would soon have to depend on some other source of income. Her brother hadn’t contacted the family in years, and Mother couldn’t very well ask a relative that was no better than a ghost for help.
For the first time in her miserable existence, Alice wondered if it was desperate need and not vanity that drove her mother to do the outrageous things she did, disregarding her daughter’s feelings and wellbeing.
“Mr. Bradbury would be more than happy to receive you as soon as you are available,” Mother continued, scanning the note. Her lips turned down a bit at the next sentence, and Alice watched her carefully for any indication of what she might be reading. She desperately wanted the note back; she hadn’t bothered to read anything past, ‘You have been selected’ before she began to panic and Gertrude had stolen the note from her. She spared the maid a quick and eloquently displeased glance. The maid glanced up at her and gave her a wicked grin that would have earned her a slap from anyone but Alice. She simply pressed her lips together and turned to face Mother again, waiting to hear the next sentence.
“You will be living in the settlement of Montana.”
Alice balked. No matter how miserable her life might be, she was able to live it in the lap of luxury. “Mother,” she said, her tone stronger than it had been. “You cannot let me go there.”
“And he is twenty years your senior,” Mother added thoughtfully, glancing up at the window momentarily, as if doing a mental calculation beyond years. “He shall be well settled, then,” she said, nodding. “And will provide you with a decent income and us a solid sum.”
“Is all you think about money?” Alice asked, not bothering to keep her tone’s volume from rising above what a young lady of good breeding should be displaying. “What about my happiness? I will be shipped off to a land filled with savages and I shall never be able to see you again, nor take a stroll through the park. There will be mountain lions and bears that will eat me if I attempt to—“
“Gertrude, sit her down,” Mother interrupted, not even bothering to glance away from the window. “Before she faints.”
“I am perfectly fine here,” Alice growled, yanking her wrist from Mary’s grasp. The maid was strong, but she hadn’t expected Alice to object so quickly and lost her grip. Her fingernails scraped along Alice’s arm in a most unpleasant way as she scrabbled for purchase. Alice bared her teeth at the maid and moved out of reach.
“Alice!” Mother’s voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip. “There will be no complaining and there will be no negotiation. You have no say in this since you failed to take the easy way out. This is no one’s doing but your own. Retire to your room and ponder over your mistakes and perhaps return a proper young lady.”
She stood, green eyes flaming as if they had been lit from behind with a hellish fire. Alice immediately subsided and dropped her chin in submission. She had only seen her mother like this once, when her brother had reappeared one night after weeks of staying out all night and day. He had been drunk and stumbling. He had been gambling in an opium and had lost all of the money that had been meant to buy the food for the week. Alice remembered the mouth-watering smell of walking down the road towards whatever tea party she and her mother were attending when she hadn’t had a single morsel to eat for two days. She also remembered being limited to one biscuit at tea and how she had discreetly consumed every single crumb that was contained in that small pastry.
Backing out of the room, Alice quickly made her way up to her room, trying to hold the tears at bay until she was alone, or as close as she would get with Gertrude trailing behind her, no doubt cackling internally and waiting to tell Mother the fine details of how she collapsed onto her bed and refused to move despite all of the promptings her maid gave her.
She did just that, not caring what Gertrude would tell Mother later, because she wouldn’t see mother very much after however long she could manage to get the maid and her mother to put this ridiculous and vaguely terrifying trip off.
“You could help pack,” Gertrude said in that annoyed tone that usually managed to provoke Alice into snapping something back about her being an insolent excuse of a maid, but today she simply curled herself as tight as the corset digging into her ribs would allow and ignored the girl as she threw whatever she could find of Alice’s into the trunk that had remained shut for most of her life.
After all, it would delay her a bit, would it not?
###
The train ride thus far had been exceptionally boring. The city gave out to flat land and did not improve from that point on. Alice’s bonnet was being crushed into a shape that was contrary to natural, but she didn’t have the presence of mind, nor the will to push it off of her head. It shielded her from the rest of her train car and blocked out what little noise a flimsy piece of fabric could manage to do. Overall, it kept people from bothering her, and her from staring at the man who was situated much too close to Alice for her liking; a scant two feet away. Upon finding that one of those dreaded and foreign creatures was riding in her train car—on her side, no less, she had been less than thrilled. When the kind-faced woman sitting across from her if she was alright, she had huffed out an answer that had sounded more like an animalistic sound than an actual word. She hadn’t bothered to correct herself, though, and the woman hadn’t spoken another word to her.
The man was utterly oblivious of her discomfort, not bothering to move himself further away, though she was plastered firmly against the window to the point of pain and flinching every time he moved. She had no doubt that the woman sitting across from her thought that she was some sort of abused child who had run away from home, even though she had a maid who occasionally asked her if she could help her in any way.
Each time, Alice gave Gertrude an eloquent glance that she knew the maid girl could interpret quite perfectly, but never spoke a word. It would have been unbecoming of her to disrespectfully acknowledge even her maid when she
was asking her for help, and most of all childish. She wanted to prove to Gertrude—and through the maid, her mother—that she would not take this by pouting and being a sullen child.
She was eighteen years old and very able to take care of herself, after all. She couldn’t have her mother thinking anything else and doing something as embarrassing as coming to the tiny western town she was going to be living in just to check in on her.
“Do you need anything, missus Alice?” Gertrude asked again, though at this point, she doubted if the maid was doing it for Alice’s benefit.
“A glass of water, perhaps,” she said. “Thank you, Gertrude.” She was being quite amiable towards the maid, taking into consideration the fact that it had been Gertrude who had caused this entire mess. If Alice had been able to quietly do away with the evidence of the thirty-eight year old man’s interest in her. Would he have missing teeth? Or perhaps they would be greyed and yellowed by alcohol and tobacco. Either way, all she could envision were the heathens that lived close enough to the city to make their yearly supply runs. They had been dressed in ragged clothes and been covered in all sorts of terrible kinds of dirt and soot. She had wondered if they only had streams to bathe in, or if they didn’t bother because they were surrounded by the infernally blowing dirt all the time and had forgotten what it felt like to be clean.
There was no way that her future husband could be anything but worse than those heathens. At least they had the same accent as the city folk. Out in the Wild West, who knew if they even spoke the same language? They had run alongside the savages for so long that they may very well have adopted their language.
A loud tap on the roof caused Alice to startle out of her brooding. She looked around the train car, surprised to see that Gertrude had managed to slip out to get her glass of water without her knowledge.
What had caused that loud noise? Had a bird dropped onto the top of the train? Or perhaps it had been a wayward child throwing rocks at the passing train. It would be typical of heathens to do such a thing.
Huffing out a nearly silent breath, Alice glanced over to gauge the distance that would remain between her and the well-dressed gentleman who was now reading some sort of paper, spectacles perched low on his nose, if she were to straighten herself out and lean her head against the window.
Grimacing, she slowly eased herself into a more comfortable position, realizing that she would cause a crick in her neck if she continued to sit the way she was and continue to look out the window. One foot. She let out another breath. Twelve inches sat between her and the man’s hand. Good, that would be enough, just as long as he didn’t move any closer to her.
She glanced across the woman across the aisle. She had her head leaned back and appeared to be staring blankly at the ceiling. Alice wondered where she was going, but after her earlier rebuff of the woman’s kindness, she doubted she should try to talk to her.
Sighing, she closed her eyes, pressing her temple against the warm glass. Everything was miserably warm on this train; even the water that Gertrude was fetching at the moment would be mediocre in temperature. It would be difficult to sleep in circumstances such as this usually, but the way the train car rocked from side to side made it very easy to close her eyes and deepen her breathing, ease the tension on her forehead and attempt to calm her mind; or perhaps to distract it from her impending doom.
She had forgotten to ask Mother his name, hadn’t she? Alice stiffened, considering opening her eyes to ponder that problem, and then relaxed again a moment later without bothering. No matter, he would single her out fairly quickly once she arrived. He had probably seen her photograph enough to recognize her at a passing glance. There were only so many people in a tiny Western settlement, after all, weren’t there? She could figure it out by asking around.
The door slid open, but the footsteps weren’t Gertrude’s almost silent ones, and Alice could only assume that it was the woman, getting up to fetch her own water, since she didn’t happen to have the convenience of a maid on hand. She sighed once again, pressing her temple harder against the almost-hot glass, wishing that it was the glass of the window in her window seat where she would read the articles on etiquette that Mother would shove into her hands any time she found a book in her daughter’s hands. She would much rather be reading about how to be the perfect wife than preparing to become a less-than-suitable example of one.
The door clicked open again. Alice stirred, preparing to open her eyes. Gertrude would be bringing her water, and she would sip it and seethe in silence just as she was meant to, and she would not complain about her situation because it was not Gertrude’s fault, as much as she wanted to blame it on her maid. If she hadn’t overreacted upon reading the telegram, she wouldn’t have alerted Gertrude to its contents and she would be sitting in that window seat right now—
“What do we have here?”
There had been no footsteps, Alice realized a few moments later—too late—and her eyes flew open. At first, she noticed nothing amiss. The woman and Gertrude were gone, and the man was still reading his book, but as the man who stood at the open door spoke, he looked as if he had been started awake.
The man who stood in the doorway did not immediately identify as ‘train hijacker’ in Alice’s mind, but perhaps that was because she had no clue what one would look like if she happened to look upon them.
He was dressed in a well-worn suit that looked a few sizes too small for his tall and limber frame, but the material was fine; something she would have found in a tailor shop that some of her more well-off friends may have gone to. The pocket watch chain that dangled in a fashionable arc from his vest pocket looked to be made of silver—and not the plated kind, because it was well-worn in places, and still the dull metallic tone of something that needed a good polishing. Even his boots were of fine make; Alice had seen something similar once in a shop window, and the price tag had even made Emma Kindwater fan herself to keep the mixture of heat and shock from causing her to faint. They were made with a special type of leather and shipped overseas.
Alice’s gaze then switched north, towards his face. The first thing she noticed was his hair, which most definitely did not match the rest of his nearly polished appearance. Its unruly waved length just brushed the neatly turned down collar of his suit jacket and fell into eyes so green that Alice had to blink to make sure that she wasn’t imagining this as some sort of possible dream. He was still there and grinning in the most ungentlemanly way at her.
That was when Alice realized that she was still staring. She had met his gaze with nary a blush, and was still glancing over the rest of his face, noting the strong, aquiline line of his nose and the way his cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut high up on his face.
For the first time in her life, Alice had to tear her gaze away, because she could have stared at him all day. She glanced over at the other man, who had dropped his book onto the seat between them and was preparing to stand.
The man who stood before her stopped him with a hand in the air. “None of that.” His other hand had sliced into the fabric of his suit jacket, reaching for something in his pocket. A moment later, a gun appeared, barrel pointed at the man.
Alice should have screamed or leapt up as the man did, but she simply sat there, dumbfounded at the sudden change in events.
“Sir,” the man said amiably, the good-humored smile never leaving his face as he clicked the safety off of the gun and poised his finger over the trigger. “Please remain in your seat while I take your girl.”
The man spluttered, knees falling out from under him. Surprisingly, the first words out of his mouth were, “She-she’s not my woman.”
Alice scoffed as she looked over at him. He couldn’t have pretended to play along; now what chance did she have of being able to remain in her seat?
Would he try to touch her? The shiver that went down her spine wasn’t tinged with the usual fear. It was there, simply because he was holding a gun—which was finally sinking in—but there w
as only a trace.
The rest of the shiver was focused on an emotion that she had never felt before. It felt nearly forbidden, and she wondered what it was about this strange man who was holding a gun only inches away from her that had caused this sudden, new emotion.
The man threw his head back and laughed, displaying golden teeth that had replaced the molars in the very back of his mouth. “All the better then. I hope that you enjoy your journey to the settlement of Denver, sir and that you will not be missing this.” He held up a small bag that jangled as he shook it. The man spluttered yet again.
“That-that’s my money!” He looked like a walrus when he puffed out his chest like that, Alice thought just before the man tucked the money away and lunged forward, fingers wrapping around her wrist. She shrieked at the unexpected contact, but not because it was unpleasant. His fingers were just this side of worn with callouses and quite cool against the hot and tired flesh of her forearm.
“Let go of me,” she gritted out, wondering what was happening to her in this short matter of time. First she had been able to—no, enjoyed—looking at him, into his eyes, and then she had endured his touch.
“No can do, darlin’,” he said, giving her a grin that quite effectively shut her up and caused her bones to melt into something like candle wax, which made it quite easy for him to pull her up and out of the carriage. His accent was different than any other she had heard before, even with people coming into town from all around the country. It had long, drawn out vowels that sounded like honey being dripped into words and consonants that were much too slurred together for it to be okay, and yet it sounded perfect on the man.
As this stranger dragged her along the rows and rows of compartments, she looked back and saw Gertrude clutching a glass of water, openmouthed and simply staring at Alice.