His Mail-Order Bride

The man beside her shifted in his seat. He fumbled in his coat pockets, his bony elbows butting into her side. Charlotte stirred from her slumber and cast an alarmed glance down the gangway. The conductor in a peaked cap and uniform had entered through the frosted glass door at the far end of the car, and he was inspecting tickets.

With a muttered apology, Charlotte jumped up and hurried in the opposite direction. At the end of the car, she darted through another door and lurched toward the convenience tucked away in the corner. She’d already made it without a ticket most of the way to Chicago, and she had no intention of being caught now.

The lock on the convenience door appeared stuck. In a burst of panic, Charlotte rammed her hip against the peeling timber panel. The door sprang ajar, and then jammed again, meeting some obstacle on the other side. Scuttling backward like a crab, Charlotte squeezed in through the narrow gap. She dropped her bag at her feet, kicked the door shut and turned around to survey her refuge.

A soundless scream caught in her throat.

In front of her, a young woman lay slumped beside the toilet bowl. The folds of her plain brown gown rippled in the draft that blew up from the iron rails below.

Her legs unsteady, Charlotte inched closer. Her breath stalled as she saw the marble white skin and the lifeless look in the open eyes of the woman.

The image of her parents flashed through her mind. Nothing in her twenty-four years had matched the ordeal of visiting the mortuary with her sisters to identify their bodies after they had been recovered from the sea.

Nothing until now.

Nearly swooning, Charlotte lurched forward and clung with both hands to the edge of the porcelain washbasin. In the mirror, her reflection stared back at her. Her face was ghostly pale, her eyes round with fear. Like a black cloak, her hair tumbled past her shoulders, her upsweep fully unraveled.

Scowling at her image, Charlotte struggled to contain the harsh breaths that tore in and out of her lungs. She couldn’t afford to give in to hysteria now. Dead is dead. A lifeless body presented no danger, required no rescue.

As her terror ebbed, her attention came to rest on a collection of items on the small metal shelf above the washbasin. A bundle of papers. Next to them, an empty apothecary bottle rattled from side to side, the stopper missing. Charlotte picked up the glass vessel and studied the label, neatly printed in blue ink.

Laudanum.

Pity clenched in her chest. What could have been such a dreadful burden? What had happened to extinguish the lust for life in someone so young? The urge to understand swept aside all hesitation, and Charlotte picked up the bundle of papers. Her fingers trembled as she shuffled through the documents.

Railroad ticket to Gold Crossing, Arizona Territory.

A letter, signed by someone by the name of Thomas Greenwood, referring to arrangements made through an agency. It confirmed that a room had been reserved for Miss Jackson at the Imperial Hotel, where someone would meet her with further instructions.

The last piece of paper had been folded over twice. Charlotte unfolded it.

The single page contained two shakily scribbled words.

“I’m sorry.”

Overcome with compassion, Charlotte sank to her knees beside the body and steeled her senses against the putrid odors of the shabby railroad convenience. As she studied the woman’s waxen features, desperation whispered its own cruel demands in her mind. Charlotte hesitated, then swept her scruples aside and searched the dead woman’s clothing.

“Please forgive me,” she muttered, shame burning on her face as she pulled out a small cotton drawstring purse and examined the few coins inside. “You don’t need this anymore, and I need it so very much.”

Tears of pity and shame stung her eyes as she continued her inspection. She found nothing more, but understanding dawned as her gently probing fingers encountered the contours of a belly swollen in pregnancy.

Poor Miss Jackson.

Charlotte ended her harrowing search and stood. Her hands fisted at her sides as she stared down at the wretched waste of a suicide.

God have mercy.

God have mercy on Miss Jackson. God have mercy on her own desperate flight that took her away from family and home. God have mercy on every young woman whose life had been ruined by a predatory male and on every child who never got the chance to be born.

“I’ll pray for your soul,” Charlotte said, her throat tight with emotion. She slipped the purse with coins into a pocket on her skirt and gathered her traveling bag from the floor.

Her gaze lingered on the slumped form of Miss Jackson a moment longer. What would they do to her? A suicide couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground. Would anyone speak words of understanding and forgiveness over her grave? Or would they only preach about hellfire and damnation?

In a quick motion, Charlotte set her bag down on the floor again. Her hands went to her neck, where a small silver cross hung on a chain. It seemed to take forever before her trembling fingers managed to unfasten the clasp.

Holding the cross in her hands, Charlotte crouched to reach around the slender neck of Miss Jackson and fastened the chain. Don’t you dare anyone steal it from her, she admonished in her mind.

The piece of jewelry, a birthday gift from her sisters many years ago, was not of great value, which was why Cousin Gareth had allowed her to keep it. Now the cross would be like a blessing for Miss Jackson, and the gesture eased Charlotte’s conscience over the money she had taken.

Charlotte finished by throwing the bottle of laudanum down the toilet chute and stuffing the suicide note in her pocket. There, she thought as she straightened and surveyed the scene. The cause of death might have been an attack from an illness, which might make all the difference in how they buried her.

Picking up her bag once more, Charlotte clutched the railroad ticket and the letter from Thomas Greenwood in her hand. She pulled the door ajar and peeked in both directions to make sure the corridor was empty before she slipped out.

A plan was forming in her mind, born as much of lack of alternatives as opportunity and impulse. Charlotte Fairfax needed to disappear until her twenty-fifth birthday. If she could become someone else for a year, she would be safe from the Pinkerton agents Cousin Gareth was bound to send after her. Too much money was at stake for him to simply let her run away.

Making her way down the corridor, moving up from third to second class, Charlotte strode along until she spotted a vacant seat. The compartment was occupied by a family. The parents sat on one side, feeding breakfast to a pair of sleepy children perched on the opposite bench.

“Excuse me,” Charlotte said, in a voice loud enough to capture their attention over the churning of the train. “Would you be kind enough to allow me to join you?”

“Don’t you have a seat in another compartment?” the woman asked. In her thirties, with delicate features and wispy brown hair hidden by a bonnet, she was pretty in a tired, worn-out way.

Charlotte fiddled with the clasp of her leather bag and lowered her gaze, pretending to be embarrassed. “I would prefer to move. Sometimes gentlemen act too familiar. It makes a lady traveling without a chaperone feel uncomfortable.”

The woman leaned across to wipe the mouth of the little girl in pigtails and glanced at her husband. A lean, bearded man in a wide-brimmed felt hat and a tightly buttoned black coat, he gave a silent nod of approval.

“You’re welcome to join us,” the woman said.

“Thank you.” Charlotte managed a strained smile as she settled next to the children. “I’m Miss Jackson,” she said. “I’m traveling to take up a position in the Arizona Territory.”

* * *

Afternoon sun scorched the dusty earth as Charlotte made her way from the railroad station along the single thoroughfare that ran through Gold Crossing. She lugged her leather bag with both hands. Sweat beaded on her brow and ran in rivulets down her back and between her breasts. In the Arizona heat the green wool skirt and jacket suitable for spring weather in Boston baked her body like an oven.

She had spent ten days traveling, sleeping rough on trains and railroad stations, exhausting her funds with the cheapest meals she could buy.

Each time she had to change trains, the town had been a little smaller, the passengers a little rougher, the train a little shabbier. The last legs of her journey had been westward from Tucson to Phoenix Junction with the Southern Pacific Railroad, and then a spur line north that terminated in Gold Crossing.

Only two other passengers had alighted at the platform where the train still stood huffing and puffing. The pair of grizzly men had stared at her, the way a hungry dog might stare at a juicy bone. Charlotte had hurried on her way, without giving them an opportunity to offer their assistance.

Imperial Hotel. She squinted down the street where a few equally rough men seemed to have frozen on their feet, like pillars of salt, ogling at her. Could this really be her destination? The town was no more than a collection of ramshackle buildings facing each other across the twin lines of dusty wagon ruts. Most of the windows were boarded up. It puzzled her how such a miserable place had merited a railroad spur.

A faded sign hung on a two-story building painted in peeling pink. On the balcony that formed a canopy over the porch a teenage boy stood watching her.

Summoning up the last of her energy, Charlotte closed the distance. The boardwalk echoed under her half boots as she climbed up the steps and swung the door open. A gangly man standing behind a polished wood counter looked up from his game of solitaire.

“Can I help you?” he asked. Perhaps forty, he had sallow skin and faded blue eyes that seemed to survey the world with wry amusement.

“Yes.” Charlotte dropped her bag to the floor with a thud. “I have a reservation. Miss Jackson.”