Читать книгу From Runaway To Pregnant Bride - Tatiana March - Страница 9

Chapter Two

The home where Colin took Annabel was a lean-to shack in a New York City freight yard. Twilight was falling when they got there. Annabel plodded along in her heavy boots, grateful for the evening cool that eased the sultry August heat.

A stray dog growled at them from behind a pile of empty packing crates and then scurried away again. Unfamiliar smells floated in the air—rotting vegetables, engine grease, acrid chemical odors, all against the backdrop of coal smoke.

Colin pulled the door to the shack open without knocking. “Hi, Liza,” he called out. “Brought you a visitor. A lady.”

Caution in her step, Annabel followed Colin inside. He’d not said much about his sister, except that she was sixteen and worked in a tavern because her full figure no longer allowed her to masquerade as a shoeshine boy.

While they’d been waiting for the train, Colin had dozed off, and once they’d boarded the express service to New York City, he’d introduced Annabel to the conductor as his apprentice, and they’d become too busy for conversation.

Normally reserved, Annabel had found a new boldness in the anonymity of her disguise as a street urchin. It seemed as if the social constraints that applied to gently bred young ladies had suddenly ceased to apply.

In the first-class car, Colin had demonstrated how to tout for business by quietly moving up and down the corridor and offering his services. Shouting was not allowed. When they got a customer, Annabel knelt between the benches. After spreading polish on the shoes or boots, she used a pair of stiff boar brushes, one in each hand, to buff the leather into a mirror shine while Colin supervised.

By the time they reached New York City, her hands, already tender from the fall, were stained with polish, and her arms ached from the effort of wielding the brushes, but she had earned her first dollar as a shoeshine boy.

There were no windows in the shack, but the low evening sunshine filtered in between the planks that formed the walls. In the muted light, Annabel saw a tall, shapely girl bent over a pot simmering on an ancient metal stove.

The girl turned around. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

She moved forward, one hand held out. Annabel took it. The palm was work roughened and the girl’s blue gown was a mended hand-me-down, but her fair hair was arranged in a neat upsweep and her clothing freshly laundered.

“The pleasure is all mine,” Annabel replied.

She released the girl’s hand and surveyed the cabin. Everything was painstakingly clean and tidy. A sleeping platform, decorated with a few embroidered cushions, took up half the space. On the other side, a packing crate with a cloth spread over it served as a table, with two smaller packing crates as seats.

“Is it true, what Colin said?” the girl asked. “Are you a lady?”

“Yes.” Annabel felt oddly ill at ease.

“You are welcome to share everything we have, as long as you like, but I have one condition. You must correct my speech and manner. I want to learn how to behave like a lady.”

“Why should that be important?” Annabel said gently. “Is it not more important to be a good person? And it is clear to me that both you and your brother are.”

The girl’s gray eyes met hers with a disquietingly direct gaze. “You’d be surprised. Some people...some men...believe that if you sound like a streetwalker, then you must be one.”

Compassion brought the sting of tears to Annabel’s eyes. Her sisters worried about her sentimental nature, but sometimes emotions simply welled up inside her. And now, the understanding of how she had taken for granted her privileged life, how someone might so fervently aspire to what she had received as a birthright, tore at her tender heart.

“Of course,” she replied. “I’ll teach you all I can.”

Liza smiled. “In return, I’ll teach you how to look like a boy.”

* * *

“Shoeshine! Shoeshine!”

Annabel made her way down the corridor in the second-class car on the train along the Southern Pacific Railroad. Her hair was pinned out of sight beneath a bowler hat. A touch of boot black shadowed her cheeks and her upper lip. She walked with a swagger, shoulders hunched, chin thrust forward. She did not smile.

As she strode along, she studied the clothing and the footwear of the passengers, to identify the most likely customers. When she spotted a man in a neatly pressed broadcloth suit with dust on his boots, she halted at the end of the row.

“Sir,” she said, holding up her wooden box. “Polish your boots for two bits.”

The man, around forty, clean-shaven, contemplated her for a moment, then glanced down at his boots. Looking up again, he nodded at her and shuffled his feet forward. Annabel knelt in front of him. Swiftly, she applied a coat of polish and wielded the brushes. A final buff with a linen cloth added to the shine.

She got to her feet and put out her hand. The man dropped a quarter in her palm. Annabel studied the coin, then leveled her gaze at the client. “If a gentleman is pleased with the result, he usually gives me four bits.”

The man’s eyebrows went up, but he dug in his pocket again and passed her another quarter. Annabel thanked him and hurried off on her way. Bitter experience had taught her not to ask for the extra money until the initial payment was safely in her hand.

“Shoeshine. Shoeshine.”

For two weeks, she had stayed with Colin and Liza in their freight yard shack, becoming skilled in her new trade. It had been a revelation to learn that if she boarded a train and introduced herself to the conductor—Andrew Fairfield, was her name—they allowed her to travel without a ticket, as long as she obeyed their rules and offered to polish their shoes for free.

By the end of the second week, she had earned enough money to buy her own brushes and polishes, and had taken an emotional farewell from Liza and Colin. One day, she hoped to reward them for their kindness, but she did not wish to raise any false hopes by telling them that she came from wealth.

“Shoeshine! Shoeshine!”

The train was slowing for a stop. Annabel used the lack of speed to cross over the coupling to the next car. Sometimes men had their boots polished just to break the tedium of the journey, but she enjoyed the traveling, even the endless monotony of the prairie they had left behind two days ago. As the scenery changed, it pleased Annabel to think that not long ago her sisters had looked upon the same grass-covered plateau, the same rolling hills, the same high-peaked mountains.

“Shoeshine. Shoe—”

The word died on her lips as her gaze fell on a suntanned man in his early thirties. Dressed like a dandy, he had a lean, muscled body. He looked just like Cousin Gareth had once been, before drinking and gambling ruined him, turning him from a laughing boy who did magic tricks into a bitter, brooding man.

As she stared, spellbound, the man gestured with his hand and leaned back in his seat, stretching out his feet. Annabel edged over and sank to her knees. Her heart was beating in a wild cadence, her hands shaking so hard she struggled to unclip the lid on a tin of polish.

It’s a coincidence, she told herself. Everyone has a double.

She spread the wax over the man’s hand-tooled Montana boots and started brushing. Anyway, she reminded herself, Cousin Gareth had gone off to chase after Miranda, who’d left Merlin’s Leap almost two months ago. It would make no sense for him only now to be on his way to Gold Crossing.

“There is something exceedingly familiar about you,” the man said. “I get an image in my head, but it is of a girl with your features.”

Annabel lowered the pitch of her voice. “Girl, huh? If I was the gun-carrying kind, I might call you out on that.”

“I meant no offense.”

Head bent low, Annabel moved from the right foot to the left. Her mouth felt dry. The man had spoken with Gareth’s voice. She kept silent, working as fast as she could. The train had come to a stop now, but from her kneeling position Annabel couldn’t see if it was for a town, or just a water tower in the middle of nowhere.

“What is your name, young man?”

Ignoring the question, Annabel flung her brushes back into the wooden box with a clatter and straightened, omitting the final polish with a linen cloth. She put out her hand. “That’ll be two bits.”

The man grabbed the walking stick that had been leaning against the end of the bench. A chill ran through Annabel. It was Cousin Gareth’s walking stick, with a silver handle shaped like the head of a wolf. She nearly swooned. It had to be him. Somehow, Cousin Gareth had transformed into this fit, healthy stranger, but he had not recognized her...yet.

The man banged the walking stick against the floor of the railroad car, making a hollow booming sound. “Your name, young man,” he demanded to know.

Deepening her voice, hiding beneath her bowler hat, Annabel muttered, “Andrew Fairfield.”

“Andrew?” The man frowned and shook his head, as if to clear the veil of mist inside his mind. “Andrew... Andrew... Ann...” His blue eyes widened. “Annabel! I have a memory of a girl called Annabel who looks just like you.”

Panic took hold of Annabel and she bolted. Behind her, she could hear the clatter of the expensive boots as Cousin Gareth surged to his feet and set off in chase.

“Wait,” he shouted. “I have questions for you.”

Clutching her box, for it was her ticket for transport, Annabel hurtled along the corridor. People turned to stare at her, startled out of their books and magazines, but they were no more than a blur in her sights. She careened into a man who had risen from his seat. Barely slowing, she dodged past him. Beneath her feet she could feel the train jerking into motion and knew they were about to set off again.

Cousin Gareth was yelling something, but Annabel couldn’t make out the words. With one hand, she touched the small lump of the leather poke of coins beneath her shirt. She had only twelve dollars—most of what she made shining shoes went on food—but at least her meager funds were secure.

With a final dash, Annabel burst out through the door at the rear of the car, onto the small platform at the end of the train. They were gathering speed now. What should she do? She had no way of telling if Cousin Gareth knew about Gold Crossing, had figured out Charlotte was hiding there. If Miranda had shaken him from her trail, how far into the journey had that been?

Annabel stared at the flat desert dotted with knee-high scrub. She had three days of traveling left, but she couldn’t risk leading Cousin Gareth to her sisters—could not take the chance that he would follow her if she stayed on the train.

With a swing of her arm, Annabel threw her wooden box down to the side of the tracks. The ground was hurtling past now. She said a quick prayer and jumped. On the impact her legs gave and she rolled along the hard desert floor.

There was no crunch of breaking bones, only a dull ache down her side. She scrambled to her feet and dusted her cotton shirt and mended wool trousers. The train was shrinking in the distance. Cousin Gareth emerged onto the platform at the end, but by now the speed of the train was too great for him to jump down after her.

“Who am I?” he yelled. “I have no memory.”

No memory? Annabel’s brows drew into a puzzled frown.

“Do you know me?” Cousin Gareth shouted. The wind tossed his words around the desert, and then the train vanished into the horizon, with only a puff of steam in the air and the slight vibration of the iron rails to mark its passing.

Annabel did a quick survey of her surroundings. She could see for miles around, and the only construction was the water tower fifty yards back. She caught a flash of movement and strained her eyes. In the shade of the water tower stood a mule, with parcels loaded on its back. And beside the mule stood a big buckskin saddle horse. She caught another flash of movement. A man had vaulted into the saddle.

“Wait!” Annabel yelled and set off running.

The desert gravel that had appeared so flat was full of holes to trip her up. The sun beat down on her. The horse and mule stood still, but she dared not slow down her pace, in case the stranger wouldn’t wait. By the time she reached him, her lungs were straining and perspiration ran in rivulets down her skin beneath her clothing.

It was cooler in the shade of the water tower, the air humid from spills evaporating in the heat. Annabel looked up at the man on the horse. Against the bright sunlight, he was little more than a silhouette, but she could tell he was young, perhaps in his late twenties.

He wore a fringed leather coat and faded denim pants and tall boots and a black, flat-crowned hat and a gun belt strapped around his hips. He had brown hair that curled over his collar, beard stubble several days old, and narrow eyes that measured her without a hint of warmth in them.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“It’s nowhere.” He had a rough, gravelly voice.

“Where is the nearest town?”

“Dona Ana. Thirty miles thataway.” He pointed to the south.

“Phoenix? Which way is Phoenix?”

“Four hundred miles thataway.” He pointed to the west.

“When will the next train be?”

“Don’t rightly know. Same time tomorrow, I guess.”

“But you must know. You came to meet the train.”

The man shook his head. “I came to collect the freight a conductor had unloaded here. Could have been yesterday. The day before. A week ago. I don’t know.”

“Is there anything closer than Dona Ana? An army post?”

He shook his head again. “Fort Selden closed years ago. And if you want the train, Dona Ana is no good. The train goes through Las Cruces. That’s another seven miles south.” He raked a glance over her. “Ain’t got no water?”

“No,” Annabel replied, her panic escalating. The stranger was the only one who could help her, but he seemed wholly unconcerned with her plight.

The man untied a canteen hanging from his saddle and leaned down to hold it out to her. “Leave it in the mailbox.”

Clutching the canteen with both hands, Annabel turned to look where he was pointing. By one of the timber posts holding up the water tank she could see a long wooden box with a chain and padlock anchoring it to the structure.

“It’s a coffin!” she blurted out.

“It will be one day,” the man replied. “Now it’s a mailbox.” He swept another glance up and down her. “Got no food?”

“No!” Desperation edged her tone.

He bent to dig in a saddlebag, handed down a small parcel. Annabel could smell the pungent odor of jerked meat.

“Got no gun?” the man asked.

She replied through a tightened throat. “No.”

The man shifted his wide shoulders. “Sorry. Got no spare. Watch out for the rattlers.” He wheeled the buckskin around. “Stay out of the sun.”

And then he tugged at the lead rope of the pack mule and kicked his horse into a trot and headed out toward the west, not sparing her another look. A sense of utter loneliness engulfed Annabel, bringing back stark memories of the despair and confusion she’d felt after her parents died.

“Wait!” she yelled and ran after him. “Don’t leave me here!”

But the man rode on without looking back.