“Miss, do ye need a place to stay?”
Startled, Charlotte whirled toward the coarse voice. A man had stopped beside her. Short and stocky, he wore a gaudy brown suit. He whipped his bowler hat down from his head, exposing coils of oily black hair. His dark eyes raked over her in a bold inspection. His lips curled into a suggestive smile.
“New into town, ye’ll be,” the man said, with a note of satisfaction in his tone. “A pretty girl like you could do well in the right place. I’ll show ye where to go.”
He reached out to take her traveling bag. Charlotte gave an alarmed squeak and jumped backward. She gripped her bag tighter, spun around and hurried down the platform, away from the man. In her haste, she kept bumping into people. Rough hands groped at her and another man shouted a lewd comment after her.
She increased her pace, panic soaring inside her. She might be innocent, with no exposure to life outside of Merlin’s Leap, but she possessed common sense. A young female alone in a big city was easy prey to the worst elements of humanity.
Her hair was disheveled after her flight, her clothing dried into wrinkles from getting soaked in the drizzle, her face a mask of fear and uncertainty. Everything about her revealed that she was down on her luck and therefore an easy target for the predators.
Along the platform, a conductor was yelling instructions to board a departing train. “Train to Chicago and cities and towns west,” the dapper little man shouted. “All passengers to Chicago and cities and towns west must board immediately.”
Charlotte’s gaze fell on the open door of the railroad car. Her steps slowed. She knew she didn’t possess enough money for the long-distance fare, but boarding a train without a ticket seemed less terrifying than facing the dangers of New York City after nightfall.
The train blew its whistle. The iron wheels screeched, spinning into motion. Charlotte gripped her bag tighter and sprinted forward. Reaching up, she grasped the handle on the door and climbed up the steps into the railroad car.
* * *
The train chugged over the flat prairie with a dull monotony. Charlotte dozed in the hard wooden seat, crammed between a large woman on the way to her sister’s funeral and a thin salesman who sold farm equipment. Sunshine streamed in through the windows, making the air hot and stuffy.
All through the night, as the train rolled from town to town, making frequent stops to take in water for the steam engines, she had moved from compartment to compartment, snatching a moment of sleep whenever she could, while at the same time trying to avoid detection by the conductor.
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