Chapter 7

Emma held River like she had never held another person before. The night was quiet and dark, and Emma wanted nothing more than to stay there forever. But when the remnants of ecstasy subsided, she thought of Percy’s suspicion, so quietly she rose to her feet and fixed her dress and her hair in the mirror. River watched her from the bed.

After Emma looked herself over a last time to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary, she walked over to River to give her one final kiss. River stood to meet her and ran Emma’s diamond necklace through her fingers.

“Never noticed that before. It’s pretty,” she muttered.

Emma’s throat tightened as she took a step back and tears welled in her eyes. She couldn’t see River clearly through the burning tears, only an apparition in the shadow.

“Why did I do it?” she croaked through burning tears.

As her answer, River held a compassionate finger to her cheek.

Emma cleared her eyes and looked upon River with one last good look and ran out of the dark room into the lighted hallway and shut the door behind her.

The next morning, Emma woke to find Percy shaving out by the window, where a silver sunlight came through and illuminated him. When he heard her stir, he looked over with a face full of foam and sang, “good morning, love. Merry Christmas.”

With a deft hand slicing a steel blade gingerly on his foam-covered jaw, Percy said, “my parents asked for us to join them for breakfast. Shall we?”

“Mmm… That sounds lovely,” Emma said.

“What did Miss Langtry think of the sherry?” Percy inquired.

“The sherry you brought her last night. How did she find it?”

“Oh, that. We hadn’t opened it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Ah. You were there for such a long while, I suspected perhaps that you were having a toast to celebrate your misadventure together in the mountains.”

Emma’s face flushed. “No, I just wanted to chat with her a bit. She seemed lonely.”

Percy stopped shaving and dropped his hand with the razor down to his side and he said, looking at her through the mirror, “that’s why I love you so much Emma. You have such a gentle soul. How on earth did I ever find you before anyone else? I must be in God’s good graces. Anyways, freshen up for breakfast, will you?”

Emma blew him a kiss and climbed out of bed.

With a suitable dress on, she accompanied Percy downstairs. They walked through the lobby and as they passed the reception, the receptionist called out to her.

“Madam? I have a note for you.”

She walked over to the desk and the man there handed her an envelope.

“Miss Langtry asked that I hand this to you when she left this morning.”

“I see. Thank you, sir,” Emma responded and slid the envelope into her handbag.

She wrapped her arm around Percy’s and walked with him to the dining room.

They took a bright table by the tall windows that faced the street and waited for Percy’s parents with tea. Spotting a friend of his, Percy slid out of his chair.

“There’s Sam. He’s with the Northern Pacific railroad. I want to say a quick hello.”

“Sure Percy, I’ll just be here.”

Percy gave Emma a quick peck on the cheek and walked over to where Sam was standing with a group of suited men.

Emma took the opportunity to open the envelope. The letter was etched with a concerted pencil:

As a fair warning, this letter should be kept in your strictest confidence.

I am not sure how to convey in words exactly how I feel about the past two days. I just hope to be as truthful to you as I can.

I have never before been with another woman. But I always suspected that I was destined to it. So what happened in that shack in the hills was no accident. At least not on my part. It was bound to happen. Just so happened that you were the one it happened with.

If you feel like I ruined you, I’m sincerely sorry. Please forgive me for the pains I have caused.

But know that I will be forever thankful for having met you and will be forever in bliss that you came to me again on Christmas night.

Today I make for Livingston. But thanks to you, I have Hong Kong now set in my heart. When I take that steam ship, I will take it from Tacoma. I will call on you there.

With joy swelling in her chest and in her eyes, Emma closed the letter. In her mind, she composed a short response letter. Dear River, I will wait for you. Yours truly, Emma

The railroad was repaired the day after Christmas and the train came bearing Emma’s aunt and cousin. They took a first-class cabin to finish their journey to Tacoma. Emma sat beside the window and rested her head against the glass to watch the city turn to prairie. She tried sleeping but couldn’t with the racket of the train. Mary gave her laudanum. It filled her head with effervescent thoughts.

When she left London, Emma’s parents warned her of this country. They warned her of the frontier. They warned her that the rules here were different than in London. That crossing the great divide between the civilized world, Emma’s world, and the wilderness would require a certain amount of courage and grit that most cut from her cloth did not possess. A soft soul that had only known a soft life would perish quickly here. Emma prepared herself by filling her soul with courage and grit before she made the journey westward, but as the civilized world melted away to the east, and the wild mountains and the virgin cedar and aspen and the snow came to meet her, in her short twenty-six mile exposure to it, she discovered more than a rough wilderness. She discovered River. Through River, she discovered something about herself for which she had not prepared for. Something that had been hidden deep within her. A wild, true spirit. Maybe it wasn’t River that stirred it from slumber, maybe it was simply an exposure to the things her parents warned her of.

In any case, with every mile that the train pushed towards the rising Rockies, that wild, true spirit within her waned. As she looked out upon the plains of Montana, to the roaming dots of buffalo, the vultures in the big sky, to the blades of windswept snow that rolled with the train westward, the spirit waned.

After the Rockies she would be in Spokane. After Spokane, Ellensburg, and after Ellensburg, Tacoma, where the conquering heroes of the west had settled down to become soft souls, as they had always intended to.

She imagined River. River was beautiful. Every line on her face and every speckle in her eyes confirmed that she was not of Emma’s world. She was of the wilderness. She was of the west. She was with an indomitable spirit. Emma knew that she loved her, and that she wanted more of her.

She took the letter secretly from within her corset and glanced to Percy to see that he was sound asleep in his seat across from her. She unfolded the letter and read it word by word like every pencil mark was a precious drop of water. Then she read it again, and when the words were memorized, she placed it back within her corset where it secretly warmed her heart.

She rested her head against the window and with the rhythmic shaking of the train, and the clacking of the wheels on the rails, and the laudanum, she dozed into sleep and dreamt of Hong Kong.