Standing, she smoothed her skirts and slid into the aisle. Her companion was forever finding fascination in the smallest things. A baby cooing in its mother's arms, a herd of wild mustangs galloping across the plains—things she wouldn't have even noticed until seen through the eyes of the Irish girl. Of course, back home, she would never have befriended someone of her class. Or her race.
She'd been brought up to believe the Irish a crass and uncivilized lot, the men drunken sots and pugilists, the women suitable only for servant status to support their lazy men. But she saw none of these faults in her companion, who yanked corset strings and styled hair as if she'd been born to it. Marguerite had, in fact, tried to coerce Alice into replacing her disloyal lady's maid. The lively redhead had laughed and not taken offence, reminding her that she had her own life to live, and while she cherished their friendship, a husband awaited, and a new life.
But if Alice was any indication, perhaps her mother's friends could learn something about grace and character from the Irish.
How would she ever tolerate the return trip on her own?
That was for another day—hopefully in the near future. She scanned the crowd of mostly men in search of a father whose framed tintype image had hung over the piano. Despite her mother's staying in the East, they seemed to have an odd sort of connection and had exchanged these images a few years before. His grim, salt-and-pepper bearded face, stiff collar framing his jaw, offered no quarter to a young woman about to be thrown into the dusty streets of the West.
In a last minute burst of sentimentality, she'd lifted it from its nail and tucked it in one of her trunks. Perhaps he would succumb to a dutiful daughter's charms. What had Mother seen in him?
"Marguerite?"
She clung to her reticule and parasol and peered in front of her as the other passengers disbursed, leaving an open space between her and the man from the photograph. "Father?"
He held her gaze, his face so serious she had no doubt it was him. Did he ever smile?
Then he did, and his eyes flashed the same blue she recognized from her mirror. "Daughter." The years parted, for a moment, and she remembered the man who'd bounced her on his knee and held her hand along the cobbled streets, taking her for a treat or as his companion on a business call.
They hadn't had so much money then, but they'd been together. A family. And Mother had sung and played the piano...
He closed the distance between them, a slight limp alleviated by his silver-tipped cane, and gathered her in his arms. She inhaled the scent of tobacco and the Macassar oil slicking down his center-parted hair. Burying her face in his jacket, she inhaled, remembering.
"Florida Water."
He patted her back. "Your mother sent it to me."
"I know." Drawing a deep breath, she stepped back and followed him to an open buggy where a driver helped her up and, she noticed, her father as well. The limp, the need to be assisted into the seat. Was he quite well? A bit of unease twitched in her. She started to ask, but the driver flicked his whip and the pair of matched golden-brown horses took off. She twisted to look behind her. "Father, my things…"
He chuckled. "They shall be loaded in a wagon and brought to the house. I didn't want to keep you in the sun any longer than necessary." True, the open wagon exposed her to the late afternoon rays even with days of dust clinging to her skin. At the reminder, she opened her parasol and sought to find an angle where it would shade her face. She refused to return to Boston as bronzed as one of the hard-faced women she imagined populated the town.
Why would a woman come here, if she had a choice? Did the miners have wives with them, or solely the women of whom one spoke only in a hushed voice? Those forced to rely on themselves to survive.
Could she have become one of those, if she'd defied her father? Dressed in scandalous things and living for the pleasure of men for an hour or two or… how long did it take to fall so far? She flushed and patted her cheeks. Ten minutes in the West and her standards, and thoughts, had already lowered. She couldn't leave soon enough.
Ready to lay groundwork, she turned her most charming smile on her father, only to have an odiferous dust cloud from a wagon laden with sweaty, dirty miners choke her. "Oh," she coughed and struggled to catch her breath, "that was most unexpected."
A choked-off laugh from the driver was followed by an open one from her father. "You'll soon find nothing is as you expect it in Virginia City. Change is the way of things here. Seems a new building sprouts up every day, eh, Harvey?"
"That's right, Mr. Stokes. Every day." As if to prove their point, they passed a building under construction, yet another crew of grimy men bustling around with tools and carrying lumber up ladders. Shouts and hammering deafened her.
Fortunately, she wouldn't be around long enough to experience so many changes. Boston, by comparison, held a solid charm. One she missed with painful intensity as they rattled down a street lined with two and three-story wooden buildings, as unlike the graceful red brick and leafy green trees of her neighborhood at home as anything could be.
"Is one of these your home, Father?" She might as not steel herself for the worst possible outcome at the outset.
The driver snorted. Servants certainly were bold in the wilds of Nevada. Anna would never have been so forward. Disloyal, obviously, but never forward.
"Did I say something amusing?" She filled her tone with shards of ice—something that would have been welcome in the late-afternoon heat—and waited for a response.
Her father rested a hand on her arm. "My dear, don't be too hard on Harvey."
She settled against the leather seat, for all the layer of dust as fine as any carriage in Boston, and steadied herself against the rutted road. Dozens of vehicles of all kinds crowded the street, and they were forced to wait behind a wagon with barrels of something, while the shouting driver and his assistant offloaded them and rolled them into a saloon. Her skin itching with grit and sweat, Marguerite wanted nothing more than to shriek at them all in a rage to let her pass, but didn't know whether her father would respond well to a show of temper, so kept it in check. Soon she'd be back on the train headed in the other direction and she'd never have to deal with such nonsense again. At home, the deliveries were completed at night or early in the morning, she supposed, and certainly through back alleys where respectable folk did not have to sit in wait for their lessors. If it weren't for the humiliation of having her friends and their younger siblings observing her lowered station in life, she would have begged Miss Pomeroy to take her on as a teacher. That and some of the rules for the staff she might have found hard to deal with.
Frustrated with the delay, her thoughts returned to her train trip with her friend. Alice had promised to write, but in the excitement of her new life near Reno, perhaps she wouldn't be able to. After all, unlike Marguerite, she was heading toward a life of her own choosing.
What would it be like to answer an ad in the newspaper, from a complete stranger looking for a bride in the wildest of the West? Alice had expressed no regret at leaving city life behind, had in fact been more interested in hearing Marguerite's tales of her life than sharing her own.
But her thirst for adventure would serve her well in her new life.
"Now," Alice held her arm and put a finger to her grinning lips, "we must be ever so quiet. I've been watching a lady and her husband since Missouri, and I don't know what to make of them."
She peered through the small window leading out onto the platform between cars. "Surely, I will be quiet as a mouse, but…"
A wail issued from the car behind theirs. The other passengers seemed unaware, but Marguerite was alarmed.
Alice winked. "Follow me." Gathering her skirts, she sashayed out the door and into the heated air. Ashes caught in Marguerite's hair and on her lashes. She hastened to the opposite platform, where her intriguing friend peered in the door. "Watch. They did this earlier, too. While you were resting" She waited a beat. "I don't want them to notice us. Good, they are
distracted." Alice opened the door a crack to the sound of a woman's shrill voice inside. She slipped inside, dragged Marguerite into a seat in the first row and turned to face the rear of the car.
"Me aunt used a switch on me once or twice, but I ain't never seen nothin' like this."
The car was empty save for the pair arguing at the rear. No doubt the other passengers had fled as soon as seats opened up. Surely, it wouldn't be pleasant to travel beset with such an unpleasant noise. "You say they do this all the time," she whispered, and Alice nodded.
"Everyone complained but he is some sort of railroad boss and the conductor cannot do a thing to stop them." Alice leaned closer and spoke into her ear. "Anyone else would have been set from the train."
Joining Alice on her knees, Marguerite peered over the top of the seat to see the couple, apparently unaware, or maybe just uncaring, that they were no longer alone.
The woman, a blowsy redhead, shrieked a curse at her husband and drew back her hand to swing at him. He ducked aside and removed his black felt hat from his slicked-down salt-and-pepper hair, hanging it on a hook beside the window. As she flailed and called him names, he calmly unbuttoned his jacket and hung it as well, then opened his sleeves and rolled them to his elbows.
"Alice," she hissed, "what is he doing?"
The Irish girl giggled. "Just watch."
The next time the woman swung, the man caught her wrist and twisted it around her back. She shrieked another volley of curses, but this time it might have been from pain and not rage. Her florid cheeks and wild eyes met the girls' but she didn't react or tell the man.
"We should go." Marguerite felt as if they were interrupting something personal, but Alice put an arm about her waist and rested her head on her shoulder as they knelt side by side.
"I don't think they mind."
But did she mind? Marguerite couldn't decide but the man had not seemed to notice them and she feared that if they made a move, he would. As the redhead panted, he dropped into the seat sideways, legs out in the aisle and, with a jerk, pulled her over his lap, her belly on his trousers, her face toward the back of the car.
He murmured something and she answered in a strangled tone, but with their voices so low, Marguerite could not make out what was said. Then he murmured something else and the woman—his wife?—began to struggle, kicking her legs and flailing over his lap.
"Maybe we can go now…" She started to turn, but Alice tightened her hold.
"No, we can't. Just hush." At a glance, she saw her friend's color heightened as well. What was the man going to do that had her in such a state?
Then it became clear. To her complete horror and embarrassment, he lifted his wife's skirt and underskirt, then unfastened her bustle and dropped it to the floor. As she kicked and cried out, he continued to pull, push and unfasten until only her pantalets remained to cover her female parts and her bottom.
"What are they doing?"
"Shhh."
He rested his palm on her back and spoke in a low, calm voice for some minutes, and after a bit, the redhead's flailing slowed, then stopped. Relieved, although still confused, Marguerite turned to speak to Alice when the first thud emerged above the rumbling of the train car. She jerked her head around to find him lifting his hand for another smack and another, peppering his wife's cotton clad behind with firm smacks as she shuddered and sobbed. Marguerite began to count, under her breath, one, two, and including the first one she hadn't seen, he spanked her twenty-five times before he stopped.
Of course a man could, indeed should, discipline a wife who showed him such disrespect. There were better methods for getting one's way with a man than screaming at him like a fishwife. But such public behavior! On both their parts. True, the car had emptied. "Did he do this when there were other people still in the car, Alice?"
She nodded. "I was speaking with Mrs. Hickston, the woman going to join her husband in California, when I first saw it. Although he didn't lift her skirts that time. It's quite scandalous."
"And he is a railroad man… what would his superiors say?"
Alice giggled softly, a sultry tone, unlike the merry laughter she'd shared with her friend before now. "I hear he is one of the top men. And that he does this a couple of times a year."
"If he's done, perhaps we should leave." Marguerite spoke quietly, still hoping not to attract the big man's attention. If he'd spank his wife for talking back, what would he do to them for listening in? And with no one to see—a man with such power in his position might be capable of anything. Especially in the middle of nowhere, in a rail car empty of other passengers. Heat rushed to her cheeks and a disturbing thrum began low in her belly. Was it getting warmer? "We need to return to our car and stay there with everyone else."
"Ooh." Alice sucked in a whoosh of air. "Look."
Far from being done, the man wrapped an arm over his wife's back and pinned her down, dragging her pantaloons down to her knees, where they effectively bound her legs, or at least made kicking him quite difficult. Shock replaced any other emotions. Marguerite had never seen another woman naked. Her mother dressed privately with her maid, and Anna had assisted her.
The woman's rounded buttocks were already a pale pink from her husband's attentions, but no, "He isn't done at all." Marguerite tensed to run away. How could she sit there while the other woman's nakedness was exposed to them? Such an intimate moment between man and wife. Her pulse throbbed in her temples.
Why had she followed Alice in here? The Irish girl might find such things interesting but a woman of Marguerite's class would never deign to acknowledge the poor behavior of the lower classes. What would her late mother think if she knew she was staring at the naked bottom of another woman and her… her puffy, swollen woman's parts? Despite herself, she leaned over the seat to see better. Pink and full, a reddish bush of hair crowning them. Did she herself look like that? It didn't seem ladylike to examine oneself in such a way.
In the dim light she could see the shine of wetness.
She gave a little gasp, and Alice moaned.
"She has wet herself."
"She—what? No… Marguerite, do you not know what happens when a woman is pleasured by a man?"
How embarrassing to admit that while at Miss Pomeroy's School, while the other girls speculated on such things, she'd studied her books, enchanted with the science available to girls under the tutelage of the kind spinster sisters who ran the institution, Miss Pomeroy and Miss Amy. She'd told herself there would be plenty of time to learn about marriage when she was married. But she'd never again have a chance to learn about the stars, the planets, the flora and fauna of the Earth. And mathematics…
A low groan carried to her ears, then a sharp crack. What was—?
"Is that a spatula?" The man lifted again and slapped the wooden board across the bared buttocks of his wife. A trickle of liquid tracked her thigh. "If not urine, what is it?"
"She likes it. She wishes him to do it more. Now hush!" Alice rested her chin on the seat back, lips parted, breathing in short pants.
Marguerite clamped her lips closed, more embarrassed at her lack of knowledge than anything else. If Alice, at least a year younger, knew these things, how could she not? Well, no worry. She would learn in her marriage bed when she returned to Boston. And found the perfect husband. Surely no such liquid would mar his deflowering of her. She would lie quietly, in her long white gown, under a crisp sheet, allow him to take his pleasure and think of the babes that would result from… whatever he did. As a lady should.
An ache began deep in her core as she watched the husband discipline his wife. He paused and in a strong voice that carried to them and curled her toes, said, "There, wife, will you mind your tongue in future?"
The woman murmured something.
"No?" He chuckled. "Need I find something stronger to punish you, then?"
She spoke again and his voice lowered to a growl. "I would indeed place you on your knees before me to school that naughty tongue, if
we were alone!"
"Run, Marguerite!"
But she didn't need to be told; she was back in the other car before Alice left the first one. Giggling and gasping, they raced to their seats, the other passengers staring, but it mattered not. What mattered was pretending they had not been guilty of spying on strangers while they engaged in an unusual sort of marital behavior. For the atmosphere had been charged with something she couldn't identify, but not brutality nor cruelty. And for a moment she wished they were still watching. What did the husband have planned for his wife's "naughty tongue," that required her on her knees?
She might ask Alice, but she'd already betrayed so much of her ignorance.
Alice rested her head on Marguerite's shoulder, and her lips parted in a slow smile. "Now do you know why she dampened at his touch? Do you understand?" Her heart thudded almost as hard as Marguerite's own.
"Because she likes being struck?" How could that be possible? It couldn't be the whole answer, at least.
"No," she stroked her hand, "it is their love play. In a way." Linking their fingers together, Alice rested against the seat back. "And when a woman wants a man in that way, in the way of a husband, a lover, her body moistens to welcome him." She sighed and her eyes drifted closed, a flush rising on her cheeks. "I cannot wait to reach my new home and my husband; it will be wonderful to have love play of our own. I hope he will be a kind man, but with a firm hand."
The carriage gave a start, drawing Marguerite out of her dream. Even now, the memory made her as moist as the woman on the train, and she shifted in her seat. She had never asked Alice what might happen on one's knees, but the one idea she'd come up with, after many hours of pondering, seemed impossible. Surely not.
They rolled forward, then turned up a narrow street and came to a halt in front of a mansion as large as anything to be found in Boston. "Here is our home. I hope you aren't too disappointed."
School's in Session Page 22
