Fresh heat burned her face as Delsie brought her hand up to cover her exposed throat. “Yes, my bag. Thank you.” She plucked it from his grip, prepared to retreat in mortification, but he didn’t make a move to leave. “Is there something else you needed, Mr. Patton?”
He shifted his weight from boot to boot. “Well, you see—”
“Oh, your money,” she finished for him. She lowered her hand to open her valise. “I believe we agreed upon twenty-five dollars...”
His hand closed over hers before she could locate the cash. The gentle, almost caring, touch felt different than the times he’d helped her on and off the Express horses today and succeeded in derailing her thoughts. A strange flurry of sensation churned inside her, similar to what she’d felt on the ferry ride that morning.
“I don’t want your money, Miss Radford.”
“You don’t?” The color of his eyes reminded her of warm, liquid chocolate, the kind she liked to sneak from the kitchen and drink in her room after her father was asleep. Myles released her hand, bringing clarity back to her muddled mind. “B-but I promised to pay you for today.”
“Look.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, mussing it more. “You did...pretty well today, Miss Radford.”
Pretty well? She cocked an eyebrow at him in defense. How many women did he know who could keep up with an Express rider for a hundred and twenty-five miles?
His lips twitched when he caught her look. “All right. I can give credit where it’s due.” He blew out his breath. “You rode as well as...as well as a new Express rider might.”
It was Delsie’s turn to hide a smile. “Seeing as you are a man of few words, Mr. Patton, I’ll take that remark as a compliment.”
“As you should.” The merriment in his dark eyes faded and his expression returned to one of complete somberness. “That being said, I think this is a fool’s errand.” She started to protest, but he held up his hand to stop her. “Let me finish. Whether it’s plain crazy or admirable that you want to be at your sister’s wedding on the twenty-second, it can’t be done.”
Spikes of alarm shot through her. “But what about today?”
“Today was different.” He jammed his hat on his head and began to pace the hall in front of her door, his boots clomping against the floorboards. “I know these station owners. But that ends tomorrow. No one past Guittard’s knows me. You’ll have to pay—possibly double what you did today—to take a horse at every station. Two horses.” He held up two fingers as if she didn’t remember. “And another thing. Like I told you before, I’ve never been farther west than Nebraska. I don’t know the terrain, the stations or the dangers beyond that.”
Myles stopped pacing to face her directly. “The time it would take to learn all of that, to convince these station owners to lend you their Express horses...”
The dread that had tightened her stomach when he’d first begun his little speech grew worse, even before he half whispered his next words. “You won’t make it to California when you need to.”
“I...I have to.” She clutched the valise to her chest, hoping to stop the panic rising into her throat and spilling over into tears. “There must be a way.”
He shook his head, his look bordering on compassion. “Even if you rummaged up a guide and a couple of horses, the poor beasts wouldn’t make it that far that fast. It’s impossible. That’s why we change out animals every ten to twelve miles. Besides, the supplies you’d need to strike out on your own would weigh the horses down too much.”
The need to cry was growing stronger, the sting of tears forcing Delsie to blink. Had she left behind everything familiar, in order to reach Lillie, only to be turned back now?
“I’m sorry, Miss Radford.” For once his voice held nothing but kindness. “If you’d like, we’ll take it slow heading back to Saint Joe tomorrow.”
“What I’d like is to go to California,” she whispered, but she knew he heard her by the way he glanced at the floor again.
“Good night.” He lifted his gaze to hers and held it for a moment. Though he didn’t say it, Delsie sensed he, too, had experienced the bitter disappointment of having a dream ripped from one’s grasp. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”
She gave a wordless nod and stepped back to shut the door. Alone once more, she sank onto the neatly made bed, her valise still crushed in her arms. She’d never felt such fatigue, such despair. Every muscle in her wearied body seemed to echo Myles’s sentiment, It can’t be done. The first of her tears skidded down her cheeks. In seventeen more days, her sister would be lost to her forever and her promise to their mother would be broken. There was nothing she could do to change either one.
Unable to hold back the sobs any longer, Delsie dropped onto the bed and buried her head in the pillow to muffle the sound. She’d managed this first part of her journey without crying once, despite the new and somewhat terrifying things she’d experienced since leaving her aunt’s house.
Aunt Cissy had assumed Delsie was returning straight to Pennsylvania, after her two-week stay in Saint Louis, and Delsie hadn’t bothered to correct her. She’d been so full of optimism once she’d concocted her plan to go to Lillie, just as she had today when she’d convinced Myles to take her with him. But now... The failure tasted worse than the hardtack she’d stomached earlier.
Twisting onto her side, she stared at the room’s nice furnishings, not so different from the opulence she was accustomed to at home. What sort of room did Lillie live in? Did she enjoy being on her own as she’d claimed to in the letters Delsie had discovered?
Her eyes narrowed in on the book lying on top of the low table beside the bed. Delsie released her bag to the floor and sat up. She pulled the book onto her lap. Her own Bible would’ve weighed her luggage down too much, so she hadn’t brought it, but she was grateful to find one here.
She flipped aimlessly through the pages, wondering where to read, where to find solace. At her aunt’s house, she’d been working her way through Hebrews. Delsie turned there now and located the last place she recalled reading. She began in chapter 10, but her mind was as much on her predicament as it was on the words before her. Until she reached verses thirty-five and thirty-six.
Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
A feeling of warmth began near her heart and spread all the way to her tired fingers and toes as she reread the two verses. She’d felt that confidence from the moment she’d decided to go to Lillie and at every step up to now. Why should she doubt, then? If God wanted her to be in California before the twenty-second—and everything inside her said He did—then she had to trust and be patient that He would make that possible. That she would receive the promise, the reward, of fulfilling their dying mother’s wishes and reuniting with Lillie before it was too late.
Delsie set the Bible on the bed and stood to pace the room, her arms tucked tight against her. Myles thought it impossible to either procure horses at every station or to travel with their own for so long. But was there a third solution they’d overlooked? One obvious to the Lord?
“Please help me see it, too,” she prayed in a soft voice.
Calculations appeared in her mind’s eye like figures on a chalkboard, the way they always did—the number of miles they had to go, the number of miles a horse could reasonably trot before needing to rest. She dug through her valise to find a pencil and Lillie’s last letter. Using the back of one of the pages, Delsie wrote down the numbers in her head. She began playing with them, organizing them, rearranging them.
And then she saw it—the answer—as plain as day and as clear as the sky had been earlier. So simple and yet so hidden until this moment. A ripple of excitement and gratitude