The Journey of Josephine Cain (19 page)

Josephine turned over in bed. Again.

Realizing her eyes were wide open, she sat up. “This is ridiculous.”

She rearranged her pillows, creating a comfortable throne. She drew her covers ’round and plopped her arms on top. “There,” she said. “Now figure it out so you can get some sleep.”

Figure what out?

Problems? Worries? She had neither. She was a happily engaged woman.

Yet her sudden sigh spoke volumes she didn’t want to hear.

There was a tap on her door, and Frieda stuck her head inside. “You’re not asleep.”

Josephine shook her head.

Frieda pulled a chair over to the side of the bed. “Tell me.”

Right to the point. “Marriage is the next step. I am grown now. It
is
time I marry.”

“So you’ve become betrothed because it’s ‘time’?”

Not exactly. “I became betrothed because . . .”
Because I was asked by a man who has done nothing to make me
not
love him, a man my parents approve of. How could I refuse?
“It is time I am a wife and start my own family. It is time I have my own house, and get out of this—”

“Yes?”

“Get out of this house for good.”

“And?”

“Get away from Mother and Aunt Bernice.”

“There you go. The truth is always best.”

Josephine looked toward the window. A branch tapped lightly on the pane. “With Papa away, I still feel trapped here.”

“If he were home, would you be so eager to marry Lewis?”

Josephine pursed her lips, not liking the answer that came to her. “But all my friends are getting married—or have married. It is my turn.”

“So it is a contest?”

“Of course not. But I have dreamed of my wedding all my life.”

“So it is the wedding you want, not the marriage.”

“No, that is also not true.”

Frieda looked at Josephine through her lashes. “You haven’t shared the most important reason for marrying Lewis.”

Josephine hesitated. “I do love him.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do.”

Frieda moved to the bed, pulling her into an embrace. “Oh Liebchen. Having doubts is natural. Every big decision comes with doubts clinging to its side.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Frieda tucked her in. “Now go to sleep. Tomorrow is a fresh day.”

Josephine liked the sound of that.

Lewis walked through the cold with his shoulders raised to his ears. He was weary from working at the butcher shop every day then rushing over to spend time with Josephine. The trouble was, he couldn’t ask her for sympathy. He’d told her he was working on some drawings for Mr. Wilson, which was hardly physically exhausting work.

If only it were true. Since the Wilson dinner party, he’d repeatedly approached the man but had been told they’d hired another artist to do their illustrations.

No one shut the door on Lewis Simmons. Not without consequence.

“Simmons? Is that you?”

He turned around and was shocked to see the photographer from the meridian trip. He shook his hand. “Rosewood. How are you?”

“Very fine actually. Come into my studio and tell me what you’ve been up to.”

Only then did Lewis see that he’d walked past a new shop. Two men were inside, painting the name “Rosewood Photography Studio” on the windows in gold letters. Very impressive.

Inside was a photo-taking area complete with intricate, painted backdrops and props such as velvet settees and potted ferns upon Corinthian pedestals. The opposite wall was a gallery of very small photographs, two-and-a-half inches by four. Lewis moved forward for a better look.

“These are wonderful. You got some good ones of the Indians.”

“I’d love to get more, but I’m kept busy here—busy enough to open this larger studio. The small
carte de visites
are all the vogue here and in Europe. Queen Victoria is quite a collector.”

Lewis had never heard of them.

Rosewood explained. “Visiting cards. Instead of leaving calling cards, some of the upper crust like leaving these small photographs of themselves.”

He’d seen such photographs of Josephine’s brother and cousin in the Cain parlor.

“They’re also small enough to send through the mail.” He pointed at the studio area. “I’m getting a steady traffic of people wanting to see pictures of the West, or wanting me to take their own photographs. As you probably know, people are vain.”

“Thank goodness.”

Rosewood chuckled. Then he froze a moment and peered at Lewis. “Are you going out west again?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Because if you were, I could teach you the photographic process, and you could be my legs out there, taking photos, selling them on the spot, and sending plates back to me.”

“So you can develop the plates away from a studio?”

“I’d set you up with a traveling darkroom.”

It was intriguing. Ambition collided with his plan to marry Josephine. Yet, perhaps the two could be melded. The West . . . He
would
need a new place to settle himself after he carried out his revenge on the general, abandoning the man’s daughter and humiliating the Cain family. Or—what if he could hurry up the plan? “How much would I make?”

Rosewood clapped him on the back. “Now we’re talking.”

“You are doing what?”

Lewis took a step back. “I’m going out west to take photographs.”

Even after he’d repeated himself, Josephine couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Since when are you a photographer?”

“Since I crossed paths with Sam Rosewood, the photographer I met on the meridian trip. That’s why I’m late coming over here. He was teaching me how to do it.”

She remembered the man. Vaguely. “You are leaving me here for weeks? Alone?”

“Actually, I’m going to be gone for quite a while.”

“Meaning . . . ?”

“Perhaps a few months.”

This was getting worse.

She took her own step back, needing space between them. “What about our wedding plans? And setting a wedding date?”

He grinned and pulled her close, a hand at the small of her back. “How about today?”

She pushed free of him. “Today.”

“Then you could go with me.” He paused, then said, “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Josephine threw her hands in the air. “Tomorrow? You come here to say you’re going off to
my
father’s railroad project for a few
months
, and you’re leaving
tomorrow
?” She let her hands come to rest on her hips. “This is not the way it’s supposed to work, Lewis. We are engaged. We are planning a life together. To-geth-er.”

“Yes, we are, and we’ll fulfill that plan, we
can
fulfill it by marrying today.”

Suddenly, the absurdity of the idea transformed into something palatable. The solution came as a flash, but she was quick and didn’t let it pass without her catching it. “I know the answer to all of this. We will not hurry the wedding, but I shall come with you.”

The words hung in the air. Outrageous words. Rousing words.

Yet Lewis looked anything but roused, which made her wonder whether he really wanted her along at all.

She slipped her hand around his arm. “I belong wherever you are.”

He just stood there, his face blank, as if his thoughts were requiring all his attention.

“Come now, Lewis. It will be wonderful. There is nothing I would like better than to see Papa. Besides, I’m curious about the railroad’s progress and how they are going to cross the mountains in Wyoming. I have never seen proper mountains.”

A face beyond Lewis’s and Papa’s flitted through her thoughts. One she had very purposefully nudged aside since last October.

She shoved it aside once again.

“Telegraph your father,” Lewis said with a sigh. “Tell him the two of us are coming. And Mrs. Schultz again, I suppose.”

“
Tell
him?” She was close to Papa, but even she knew better than to
tell
him something.

“Ask him, using all the pretty words of a loving daughter. Tell him you miss him and—”

She raised a hand, stopping his words. “I know what to say.” Then she looked toward the stairs—toward her other hurdle. “Mother will never agree.”

“You are an adult. You do not need her permission.”

“She
has
been feeling better lately. I’m not sure I could leave her if she were sick.”

Lewis took her hand and strode toward the door. “Let’s go to the telegraph office. Contact your father first.”

“But you were leaving tomorrow.”

“I shall postpone my departure.” He held her cape. “I shall wait for you.”

“
If
Papa says yes.”

“He will say yes. He wants to see you as much as you want to see him.”

Josephine could only hope that were true, as the anticipation building in her chest was the first she’d felt in months.

Hudson stood in the Cheyenne railway office, waiting for further instructions from General Cain, who was busy going over a map with one of the surveyors. The general glanced up, acknowledged Hudson with a nod, then looked back at the map.

Hudson didn’t mind the wait. He had good news to report about a shipment of ties. They’d be ready to begin laying track soon. Although it was backbreaking work, he enjoyed seeing the constant progress, the
knowing
that what he was doing was vital to one of America’s dreams. To his dream.

He trembled at the notion that he was a part of something so important. No one would ever remember his name, and history would go on without notice of him, but the people he was working for—General Cain, Thomas Durant, Samuel Reed, General Dodge—these were men that history would embrace. To think that he talked to these men, followed these men, worked with these men . . . that was a fact no one could take away from him.

“Excuse me, General? This just came for you.” The telegraph operator sidestepped around Hudson and handed him a note.

The general read it, shook his head no, then said, “Well . . . why not?” He turned to the operator. “Write back, ‘I miss you too. Travel with Lewis and Frieda at your convenience.’”

Lewis? Lewis Simmons?
Was the note from the general’s daughter?

As the operator left to send the message, the general chuckled to himself. “She is a spirited thing.”

The surveyor said, “Sir?”

“My daughter.” He looked at Hudson. “You know my Josephine.”

“Yes, sir. I had the pleasure.”

“It appears her fiancé, Mr. Simmons, has found himself an assignment taking photographs out here. And she is coming with him.”

Hudson’s mind stuck on the word
fiancé
. They’d become engaged? To the general he said, “I’m happy for you, sir. I can only imagine how you’ve missed her.”

“Not going home for Christmas . . . that was hard on me, and on my family. You didn’t go home either, did you, Maguire?”

“No, sir. My brother and I decided to stay here and keep earning our nest egg.”

“Nest egg?” he asked with a smile. “So you have a sweetheart back home?”

He hesitated, then hesitated some more when he realized he’d hesitated. “Yes, sir. Sarah Ann.”

“I’m sure she misses you greatly.”

“Hopefully, sir.”

The general’s eyebrows rose.

“I haven’t heard from her since before Christmas.”

He stroked his beard. “Letters can be slow in coming. You know that.”

“I know that.”

Then the general nodded toward the telegraph. “Wire her right now. Tell her you love her. Tell her . . . whatever you want to tell her.”

The idea that Sarah Ann could receive a note from him on this very day was almost too much to fathom. But the bigger question was whether she would welcome it.

“You’re not going to even try?” The way the general looked over his reading spectacles was a challenge.

“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. It is worth a try.”

The general called out to the operator, “Frank, send Mr. Maguire’s message.”

“Yes, General.”

He shooed Hudson away. “Go tell your girl you love her, and by the time you’re through, I’ll be ready to listen to your report about the supplies.”

Hudson took his time crossing the room. He’d never had a chance like this. He didn’t know exactly what to say.