Time Passage: A Time Travel Novel, page 4
Once inside the stateroom, he closed the door and gave me a curt nod. “I’m Percy Blackstone.”
He didn’t offer to shake hands, and that was fine with me. “Cindy Downing.”
The room contained an upper and lower berth, a half sofa, a narrow desk, a snug bathroom and a clothes closet.
I saw an open trunk placed on the floor near the lower berth, with clothes packed inside. The trunk looked heavy, a square-shaped box with wooden straps and a gold latch that could be locked.
Percy and Nellie exchanged a nod, the kind of nod that I interpreted as, “So far, so good.”
Percy pointed at the door. “I’ll just be going and let you two go about your business.”
The sleep had helped my state of mind. The food had also helped. I felt better, although I still had a slight headache, and my body was stiff and sore as if I’d worked out in a gym, too long and too hard.
When Nellie removed the bustle dress from the narrow closet, I didn’t say anything. I watched in curious wonder as she laid the beautiful burgundy dress across the lower bed.
She told me it was a silk taffeta dress, and it was awesome, to say the least, with the trimming, the opulence, the expensive laces, and the multitude of fabrics, all on the same gown. It must have taken a seamstress days to make the thing, and it couldn’t have been cheap.
Nellie reached into the trunk and removed undergarments, trimmed with lace. They were long, loose-fitting underpants that split and overlapped in the middle, which, I guessed, allowed for easy bathroom access. There was a chemise, a corset, a stiff-looking petticoat, and a bustle made of wire and fabric.
I knew what was coming, and I wanted no part of it. The dress was beautiful, but I couldn’t imagine stuffing myself into those undergarments, never mind the petticoat and the corset. I’d be unable to move around in that paraphernalia. It was absurd.
I put my hands on my hips and said, bluntly, “I’m not going to wear that. Any of that.”
Nellie straightened and gave me a cool glance. “Miss Downing…”
“Just call me Cindy, okay? Nobody calls me Miss Downing. You don’t need to be so formal.”
Impatience flashed in her face and voice. “We have little time to discuss this. You cannot make your appearance before my friends wearing those immodest and bizarre-looking clothes. Did you not see the cold stares you received as we strolled through the passenger coaches? They believe you to be a loose woman, or one who has escaped from a sanitarium. That should tell you the truth of it, and why you must put on that dress.”
I lifted my chin in a challenge. “Okay, fine. And who are these friends of yours, Nellie Cummins, and why are you and Percy, or whatever his name is, being so friendly to me when you don’t even know who I am? I can see it in your face that you think I’m crazy or I’ve just dropped in from some other planet, which, believe it or not, I have. So, who are these friends, and why are you helping me?”
Nellie’s icy stare was a little scary, and her voice dropped an octave into a threat.
“You are trying my patience, Cindy. As I see it, you have little choice in the matter. You either do as I say or you will be tossed off this train into the frigid winter night, where you will freeze to death, or starve to death, or end up with some very unsavory types who will have their way with you. I have heard that this is a very harsh and vulgar part of the country, filled with ruffians and scoundrels.”
Nellie set her chin and our eyes clashed.
“Now, do you understand me, Cindy? You have no money, no friends and nowhere to go. I am giving you the rare opportunity to meet wealthy and decent people, who will protect you and look after your every need.”
My grappling, restless mind sought an escape, but there was no escape. I kept circling the same question: what was this girl up to? It couldn’t be good.
I kept my hands on my hips. I kept my poker face, and I struggled to keep my cool.
“Who are you, Nellie, if that is your right name? And what do you really want from me? Like you just said, I have to go along with whatever it is you’ve got planned for me, so you might as well tell me everything. Right?”
I could almost see and hear her brain working. The room filled with silent tension.
CHAPTER 7
“So you want the truth, then you shall have it,” Nellie said, with ugly superiority. “My true name is Rosamond Adams.”
That certainly got my attention.
“I was raised in a tenement on the Lower East Side of New York by a shoemaker and a seamstress. I was always pretty, and I was always intelligent, and I spent much of my time desperately searching for schemes and methods to escape that crowded, miserable neighborhood and better myself. My parents constantly fought and constantly struggled to get enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table.”
I nodded, thinking that Nellie and I had some things in common.
Nellie continued. “I married an older man when I was sixteen. He was a drunkard, and he beat me. A year later, I stole money from him, and fled. Weeks later, I learned he’d been kicked in the head by a horse and killed. When I was eighteen, I took up with a man who traded stocks, and he was successful, and we had fun for a time, until he lost everything on bad investments, and then he shot himself. I met other men, but they were louts, cheats, or brutes. As you can see, I kept falling into dirty coal piles where men are concerned. I turned twenty-four two months ago, and I was desperate, living with two other girls in one room, and working at Lord & Taylor on the Ladies’ Mile. When a shopgirl friend told me about The Rose Daisy Agency, that they were looking for attractive, smart young women with refined interests, I seized the opportunity.”
Rosamond made a sour face, and her smile was crooked. “What a lovely name, isn’t it? The Rose Daisy Agency,” Nellie said, her words alive with sarcasm.
“What kind of agency is it?” I asked.
Nellie glanced away in disgust, wetting her lips, stalling, as if telling me would make her sick.
“Okay, well, it sounds totally suspicious,” I said. “Was it a high-end call girl agency?”
“I don’t know what a call girl is. The Rose Daisy Agency is a highbrow mail-order business, owned and operated by Mrs. Rose Daisy herself, along with her bloated ogre of a husband, who looks like a rodent and tries to paw every young woman who enters the place.”
Her dark expression suddenly transformed into pride. “A wealthy man paid ten thousand dollars for me, and I was to marry him.”
I didn’t see that coming. “Okay… Was?”
Nellie folded her hands, holding them at her waist. “The agency mailed him an artistic drawing of me—a sketch—and he liked it. But then he demanded a photograph, which he agreed to pay for. So, I was sent to Horace Abbot’s studio on Dey Street, and I had my photograph taken, which I found quite fascinating, but troubling.”
“Why troubling?”
“Have you ever had your photograph captured by a camera?” Nellie asked.
“Yeah, many times.”
Nellie’s folded hands tightened. “Well, I’ve seen photographs, of course, and I’ve seen daguerreotypes, but I will just say that it was a good likeness of me… Maybe it was too fine a likeness for my nerves. I felt as though I were looking at my twin. I found the eyes looking back at me to be probing and eager, and it revealed more than I was… Well, let me say, more than I was comfortable with.”
I thought about that photo of Cliff and me, the one where my smile was too wide and too forced, my eyes glazed from too much champagne and glittering with too much greed, and I understood what Nellie was trying to say.
Nellie flicked a hand in the air. “I’m talking too much. None of that matters now. Rose loved the photograph, and she promptly posted it to the wealthy man.”
Nellie dropped her hands to her sides and squared her shoulders. “Well, anyway, he chose me to be his wife.”
Mail-order bride? It seemed a fantasy and a twisted joke. I had no idea how much ten thousand dollars was worth in 1880, but I assumed it was a lot. “So, you’re on your way to meet and marry this man?”
Nellie avoided the question, and her voice became girlish. “As luck would have it, I met Percy only days before I was to board this train and travel to Denver. We have become, how should I say it? We are quite attached to each other, and he has asked me to travel with him to San Francisco. I told him about my particular situation, and he was very understanding. He said nobody will find us in San Francisco. He is a gambler—a very good gambler, and I am certain we will make a success of things there. He wants to open his own saloon, and I have a head for business.”
That shocked my clogged brain into full working capacity. Now I knew exactly what Nellie and Percy were up to, and I turned cold. I took a little step backwards and shook my head. “No way, Nellie. No friggin’ way.”
Nellie crossed her arms and fastened her hard eyes on me, her mouth a tight line. “I’m afraid you have no choice.”
“Oh, yes, I do have a choice and there’s no way in hell I’m doing this. You’re out of your mind. I’ll get off the train and find someone to help me. I’m very resourceful, I can think fast on my feet, and I’m telling you, there’s no way I’m taking your place. There’s no way I’m going to marry some guy I don’t even know. And anyway, he’s seen your photo, and he’ll know right off something’s messed up. We don’t look that much alike.”
Nellie’s voice was steady, and taking on strength. “On the contrary, we look remarkably alike. We have the same shaped face. The same slender neck, and if our features are not quite a perfect match, they are close enough. No, when I saw you being carried off into that private car, I couldn’t believe my very good and timely luck.”
“And I can’t believe you’re serious about this! It won’t work, Nellie. Never. No way!”
“It will work, and I’m going to San Francisco!”
My stomach squirmed. “Okay, fine, go to San Francisco. So what? What will they do if you don’t show up and marry this guy? The agency isn’t going to send anyone from New York to search for you. And whoever this guy is, he’s not going to take the time and money to run off looking for you, either. So, keep me out of it and go to San Francisco.”
Nellie’s face darkened. “You don’t understand. He’s wealthy. He will come after me. There is no doubt about it. I told Percy that despite what he says about us hiding in San Francisco, John Gannon will come for me. I was warned by Rose when I signed that piece of paper in New York. I was told that John Gannon is a ruthless man who owns considerable land and employs many people, including private law officers. They will come looking for me, even in San Francisco. Rose told me that the day I signed the contract.”
I shook my head and shrugged. “Okay. Fine. Well, that’s your problem, Nellie, not mine. I’ve got other, bigger problems, and I didn’t sign anything, and I’m not about to marry that guy. It just ain’t gonna happen.”
Nellie’s posture tensed. “I was afraid you would respond like this.”
“Yeah, well, duh!”
“I do not know what that word means, and it sounds offensive.”
“Offensive? Good. I’m glad it sounds offensive, because I’m very offended. Well, girl, or Nellie, or Rosamond, or whoever you are, I’ve got to hand it to you, you’re clever and quick.”
“Yes, well, I’ve had to be, haven’t I?”
“And you weren’t going to tell me, were you? If I hadn’t like, woken up and got my brains back, you were just going to toss me off the train and chug-a-lug off to San Francisco with your gambler friend, weren’t you? Well, baby doll, it ain’t gonna happen, because I am not getting off this train in Denver unless somebody tosses me off.”
Nellie stared down, and when her eyes lifted on me, she’d slid her hand into a hidden dress pocket and retrieved a two-shot derringer with a beautiful pearl handle. She pointed it at me, staring with cold, even finality.
CHAPTER 8
I gave her and the derringer a long look. In all my wild, running days, I’d never had anyone point a gun at me. Like everything else I’d experienced in the last few hours, this, too, had a kind of fantasy, dreamlike quality to it. What nightmare of a reality was I in?
Nellie’s expression was grim and determined. There was no mercy in her eyes. “Step back, Cindy.”
There wasn’t a lot of room, but I took two steps back.
Nellie kept her hostile gaze on me. “Dr. Broadbent is from Denver. I learned that from the conductor. And I also learned that he has treated John Gannon and his family numerous times. Now you know that John Gannon is the man I’m supposed to marry. I spoke your name to Dr. Broadbent. I spoke your name clearly. I said you were my friend, Rosamond Adams, distinctly, so the doctor will know you by that name.”
I glanced around, considering an escape, so I decided to stall, so I could think of a way out. “Your name, Rosamond, is an elegant name. I’m sure your guy, Mr. Gannon, liked it as well. It sounds so romantic.”
Nellie’s smile was faint. “My father told me that if he couldn’t give me wealth, then at the very least, he could give me a name that sounded like wealth. Now, there isn’t much time, and I am weary of explanations.”
I didn’t say anything. I stared at that shiny derringer, thinking, if she shoots me and I die, where will I go? To some other world in the past… to the future?
A knock on the door startled me and shook me out of my thoughts.
“Who is it?” Nellie asked, tension tightening her lips and the skin around her eyes.
“Percy.”
Keeping the derringer pointed at me, she backed up, released the lock, and stepped away from the door. Percy slipped in, closed the door, and locked it.
His worried gaze looked at me and then at Nellie.
“It was the only way,” Nellie said. “She says she won’t do it.”
I could have said something brave like, “You won’t shoot me,” but I didn’t feel brave. I felt a flood of fear, and I’d been living with that damned fear ever since I hit Cliff with that heavy clock. I felt weak from it and sick from it.
Nellie handed the derringer to Percy. Even under the dim light of the wall gas lamp, his hair gleamed as he estimated the situation.
“Are you sure?” Percy said to Nellie, in a near whisper.
Nellie nodded. “I told you, it’s the only way. I told you it would be the only way.”
Nellie’s breathing was deep. She was stressed. With a tight face of impatience, she said, “We’re running out of time. Now get dressed, Cindy.”
I felt a big lump in my throat, and I couldn’t swallow it away. “I don’t know how. If you want me to put that thing on, you’re going to have to help me.”
Percy exhaled a mounting anxiety. “Let’s get on with it. We’ll be in Denver soon!”
I don’t know how to describe my transformation into a shiny new mirage of an 1880 woman. I removed my clothes and Nellie helped me put on the various undergarments, the petticoat, the corset, and the bustle. It was a feeling of gradually being tied up, shoehorned into the corset, fitted with the bustle and finally stepping into that voluminous dress that was nearly too big for the room. All the stuff beneath the dress gave it form. The corset molded the waist, and the bustle projected the dress out from behind.
And, of course, there was a hat. Every woman and man wore a hat. Mine was burgundy velvet, with silver gray brocade, black netting and off-white lace. The mirror provided was small, so I didn’t get a full-length view of myself and, anyway, I was scared to death, trying to keep my heart from kicking its way out of my chest.
As the train was slowing down, arriving at the Denver station, everyone was tense. I didn’t see a way out, so I’d have to go with it. I would meet Mr. John Gannon and then I’d tell him the truth. I’d tell him what Nellie or Rosamond had done and hope he’d help me find my way in this world of 1880.
Nellie seemed to read my mind. “One last thing, Cindy. Just in case you’re thinking about telling Mr. Gannon the truth about me. I warn you, from all I have heard about the man, he will not take kindly to it, and he will suspect you are involved in this little plot. If you value your life, I’d recommend you keep your mouth shut.”
That little witch had thought of everything, and I wanted to slap her silly.
We were moving down the aisle to exit the train, me in front, Percy behind me, with the derringer hidden in his suit coat pocket, and Nellie bringing up the rear.
I was about to step from one unknown world into another, and it felt as if I were going to my death, like I was walking the plank on one of those pirate ships of old. The long, heavy winter coat that covered the bulky dress was hot and suffocating, and my breathing was coming fast. I was trapped, and I hated being trapped. It was the same sick feeling as being in jail, but it was even worse, and I never thought that would be possible.
We stood by the exit door, waiting for the train to come to a complete stop, its bell clanging, steam hissing.
Nellie said, “There will be a carriage waiting for you. The coachman should be inside the passenger terminal searching for you. He’ll have your description, the dress, hat and possibly the sketch or photograph. He’ll drive you to the Gannon Mansion. Your trunk will be delivered on the platform. Be sure you have the driver load it in the carriage for you.”
“What trunk?”
“You’ll have a trunk, Cindy, so you don’t raise any suspicions. I have thought of everything,” she said, with a little lift of her haughty chin.
No, I didn’t want to slap her. I wanted to punch her in the face. “Okay, whatever.”
Nellie added, “You don’t seem quite in your senses.”
“Yeah, so maybe I’m not so in my senses,” I said. “When is this marriage supposed to happen?”
“It was never specified. It depended on whether Mr. Gannon approved of me.”
I thought about that. That could be good or bad. “Awesome!” I said, with a shake of my head. “And what happens if he doesn’t approve?”
