Chapter Four
Alexandra was so focused on the passing landscape that when her aunt put a hand on hers, she started. She turned to Lisa, who was regarding her with a slightly concerned expression.
“I’m fine,” Alexandra said, turning back to the window of the train. She hadn’t noticed how she had been clenching her hands, but now she worked to make them relax.
It felt like they’d been on a train forever, first from Philadelphia to St. Louis and now across the great flat expanse west of the Mississippi. With each hour they chugged closer to a future Alexandra wasn’t entirely certain about.
The rolling hills and greenery that hedged in the cities of the eastern states had given way to flat grassland dotted by herds of cattle and the occasional group of great, shaggy bison.
As the train crawled toward sunset each day, the grass turned to scrubland, the dirt became red-orange, and then a surprising shade of yellow.
“If you please, sir,” Lisa said, catching the attention of one of the conductors who patrolled the aisles of the train. The man in an indigo-blue uniform with bright gold buttons paused and touched the brim of his cap. “How much longer to reach Virginia City?”
The conductor, an older man with salt-and-pepper hair, smiled at Lisa. “We should be there first thing in the morning. You’re in luck; the line’s only been running since the winter. Used to be you’d come off at Reno and take a stage the rest of the way. Now, it’s much faster.”
“And safer, too, I’ll wager,” Lisa replied crisply.
“Well…” the conductor hedged, his smile faltering.
Alexandra turned back to the window. The danger of traveling west was something she didn’t want to consider. She had read plenty about it, the way she read plenty about everything, and had begun regretting the reading the moment she set foot on the train.
Her aunt chattered on, unbothered, commenting on the other travelers, the train, and the quality of the food at the various stops. Alexandra let her mind wander and stared at the encroaching desert.
She could envision her charges, adorable little cherubs in matching pinafores and short pants.
They would love her instantly; she just knew it.
After all, she was there to save them from a parentless existence.
Scenes of familial warmth and domestic bliss crowded in on her mind’s eye: family dinners, parlor games, bedtime stories.
There was also the matter of her would-be husband. A blush crept into her cheeks at the thought. She hadn’t really considered the reality of it—she would be a wife, which was something even her formidable aunt had never been.
She knew a great deal about Virginia City, the silver, the money, the new rail stop. She knew next to nothing about Mr. Aidan Rawlins beyond a ranch of some repute outside it, and nothing at all about what he would expect of her beyond minding the children.
He would be tall and handsome, ride a white horse, and have a winning smile.
He would recognize her value and be charmed by her.
The beginning might not have been the most romantic.
Still, there was no reason that they couldn’t join the likes of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, a love match for the ages.
“Alexandra?”
She blinked back to awareness. Her aunt was looking at her and had probably said her name more than once. Alexandra studied Lisa’s face, trying to work out what she wanted.
“Yes?” she ventured.
Lisa sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “I asked if you were nervous.”
“Oh! No,” Alexandra said. “Well, perhaps a little,” she admitted.
Lisa patted her on the shoulder. “It’s only natural; taking on three children is a large responsibility.”
“Oh, no,” Alexandra said hurriedly, shaking her head. “I’m not concerned about them.”
“No?” Lisa asked. Now it was her turn to study Alexandra. “Well, just… be patient with them. Take your time; let them get to know you.”
“Yes, Aunt,” Alexandra replied automatically. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the train window. She closed her eyes, letting herself indulge in fantasies of a full, happy home.
***
The train station at Virginia City was so new that portions of it weren’t quite finished. Wet paint here, a half-built wall there. The platform, at least, was whole when the train slid in, steaming and hissing.
When Alexandra stepped off and onto the wooden platform, her legs wobbled for a moment.
She’d moved no more than a few steps in days, and she was stiff and gritty, and her mouth had an odd taste.
Her hair, a riot of barely-contained curls at the best of times, had become plain unmanageable the moment they encountered the heat of the desert.
Her aunt had gone off in search of a porter while Alexandra blinked in the sunlight, taking her first glimpse of Virginia City. Behind her, the train stood breathing, and it would go back east without her.
The station was a hurricane of motion, everyone going in every direction at once. Mine workers loaded silver into a steel-reinforced car at the far end.
Lisa reappeared, with a harried-looking porter in tow. He was a slight man, more of a boy, who Alexandra doubted had sprouted his first whiskers.
“Take this to the front of the station,” Lisa directed, indicating the pair of trunks and assorted other luggage that had been piled at their feet from the luggage car.
The boy stared at the pile dubiously, then turned to Alexandra as if for help. She shrugged but lifted a single hat case from the pile, clutching it tightly to herself.
“Now, where do you suppose Mr. Rawlins is?” Lisa murmured. She took a moment to wipe delicately at her forehead. “Gracious, but this heat! I can scarcely move in it.”
“Perhaps wool traveling dresses weren’t the best way to go,” Alexandra commented, eyeing Lisa’s gray suit with its swags of fabric at the hips and rear.
“Nonsense,” Lisa said. “All the rail guides suggest it. Ah, here seems to be the way out. Keep up, young man!” she called to the porter, who was red-faced and grunting as he tried to load the trunks onto a trolley.
Lisa marched off, and Alexandra followed in her wake, as she always did. Despite the heat, Alexandra’s hands were feeling oddly cold, verging on numb.
I’ll be seeing the man who will be my husband in just a few minutes, she thought, a little giddy.
They wound their way through the crowd and emerged onto a street that was equal parts dust and cobbles.
Wagons and carts of every description clogged the road while pedestrians darted between them.
Alexandra had thought herself used to the noise of a large city, but nothing had prepared her for the sheer disorganization.
“Is it always like this?” Lisa shouted over the din.
“On days the mine sends up its silver, yes’m,” the porter answered. “The roads are being expanded, and new ones built, so it’s all a bit of a tangle just now.”
“Right, well, thank you for your assistance,” Lisa said dryly, and pressed a coin into the porter’s palm. The boy touched his hat and then vanished into the crowd. “Do you see our Mr. Rawlins anywhere?”
“Not as yet,” Alexandra said, straining to see over the crowd.
“Do you have a description of him?”
“No,” Alexandra admitted. It had never occurred to her that she would need one. She had assumed he would know her at first sight, and greet her with a warm smile and perhaps a kiss on the hand, like a proper suitor.
With an ear-piercing shriek of its whistle, the train pulled out of the station, and the crowd thinned, the excitement over for now. In the thinning there was a point of stillness at the side of the road: a man in a long duster, standing beside a pair of large horses hitched to a wagon.
Alexandra stared at him without knowing why. Perhaps it was because it was her first real glimpse of one of those cowboys out of the dime novels. Perhaps it was simply that he was so still and calm. He gently stroked one of the horses’ noses, his movements slow and steady.
As if he felt her looking, his gaze slid over and caught hers. Alexandra looked down quickly, her cheeks burning, and hoped the afternoon sun would excuse them.
“We should have unpacked our parasols. Oh, look here—this might be our Mr. Rawlins,” Lisa said.
Alexandra glanced up only long enough to see the man approaching.
She barely stifled a wince, hoping he wasn’t coming to reprimand her for her forwardness, or worse, to return her attentions.
Her eyes were still on the ground when he reached them, on his dusty boots, which may have been black-tooled leather once.
“You Hampshire?” he asked gruffly.
Alexandra looked up and stared at the sound of his voice.
It was deep, so deep she almost felt it rather than heard it.
It was the man from the roadside, the still one with the horses—very tall, black-haired and unshaven, with eyes nearly as dark as his own that had already finished looking at her and arrived at a total.
She blinked at him while he looked at the pair of them and waited.
“This is Miss Hampshire, yes,” Lisa replied curtly.
The man took this correction in stride. “Rawlins,” he said by way of introduction. He didn’t remove his hat or take her hand as she had expected. There was an awkward pause as he took in the sight of them.
Alexandra shrank away from this scrutiny. She knew that she was hardly anyone’s idea of a great beauty, with her short, round figure and glasses.
Her aunt discreetly placed a steadying hand on her back. Reassured, Alexandra straightened up and met his gaze directly. After all, he had invited her all the way out here—he’d selected her, not the other way around. As Alexandra understood it, there was a great lack of women on the frontier.
If he won’t have me, plenty of others will, she told herself.
“Best be getting on, I suppose,” he said at last. “I’ll bring the horses up.”
Alexandra nodded sharply and turned to their trunks, waiting at the curb. Mr. Rawlins clicked to the horses and walked them closer. She and Lisa shifted the smaller pieces while he climbed into the back of the wagon and stacked them with surprising care.
Lisa paused for a moment, wiping at her forehead again. Alexandra paused, touching her aunt’s arm. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” Lisa replied, waving her off. “It’s just this heat.”
“Takes some getting used to,” Rawlins commented.
“I imagine it does,” Lisa said. She turned back to the largest of the trunks and bent to grasp one of the brass handles.
She got it moving perhaps a foot before she had to stop and breathe, one hand flat on the lid, and she did it in the particular way of a person who had decided that no one was looking.
Alexandra had seen her aunt do that before. On the shop stairs. In the aisles at the back of the store. Once on a slope in Fairmount Park, on a walk they never finished. She had never in her life thought about it, and she did not think about it now.
Rawlins leaped down nimbly from the back of the wagon. He crouched and hoisted the trunk, placing the short end on the back of the wagon and sliding it in with only a small grunt for his trouble.
Alexandra stared at his back as he arranged it. There was more strength under the oversized duster than she’d have guessed.
“Here,” he said, offering a hand to Alexandra. “Don’t have a fine carriage to offer you,” he said with what was likely meant to be an apologetic nod toward the humble wagon.
“I neither need nor expect a carriage, Mr. Rawlins,” Alexandra replied primly. She put her hand in his and climbed up into the back of the wagon, perching on the very edge of it. Lisa followed along behind her, similarly taking up a seat on the other trunk across from her.
Surreptitiously, her aunt took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “He didn’t have to lift that,” Lisa said, very quietly, under the noise of the wheels.
Alexandra fixed her eyes on the station and the town as Mr. Rawlins climbed up and flicked the reins against the horses’ rumps.
The wagon lurched off, nearly unbalancing her.
The town shrank behind them in a cloud of dust as they bumped along, quickly leaving the paved roads of Virginia City proper behind.
She glanced ahead of the wagon, leaning around to see where they were going.
The road stretched out before them, the desert looming on all sides.
The noise of the city retreated quickly, swallowed up in the heat-baked dirt.
She’d only known a city life of bricks and glass and noise; this was sand, sun, and silence.
How did I let myself be talked into this? Alexandra wondered.