roughened and the girl’s blue gown was a mended hand-me-down, but her fair hair was arranged in a neat upsweep and her clothing freshly laundered.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Annabel replied.
She released the girl’s hand and surveyed the cabin. Everything was painstakingly clean and tidy. A sleeping platform, decorated with a few embroidered cushions, took up half the space. On the other side, a packing crate with a cloth spread over it served as a table, with two smaller packing crates as seats.
“Is it true, what Colin said?” the girl asked. “Are you a lady?”
“Yes.” Annabel felt oddly ill at ease.
“You are welcome to share everything we have, as long as you like, but I have one condition. You must correct my speech and manner. I want to learn how to behave like a lady.”
“Why should that be important?” Annabel said gently. “Is it not more important to be a good person? And it is clear to me that both you and your brother are.”
The girl’s gray eyes met hers with a disquietingly direct gaze. “You’d be surprised. Some people...some men...believe that if you sound like a streetwalker, then you must be one.”
Compassion brought the sting of tears to Annabel’s eyes. Her sisters worried about her sentimental nature, but sometimes emotions simply welled up inside her. And now, the understanding of how she had taken for granted her privileged life, how someone might so fervently aspire to what she had received as a birthright, tore at her tender heart.
“Of course,” she replied. “I’ll teach you all I can.”
Liza smiled. “In return, I’ll teach you how to look like a boy.”
* * *
“Shoeshine! Shoeshine!”
Annabel made her way down the corridor in the second-class car on the train along the Southern Pacific Railroad. Her hair was pinned out of sight beneath a bowler hat. A touch of boot black shadowed her cheeks and her upper lip. She walked with a swagger, shoulders hunched, chin thrust forward. She did not smile.
As she strode along, she studied the clothing and the footwear of the passengers, to identify the most likely customers. When she spotted a man in a neatly pressed broadcloth suit with dust on his boots, she halted at the end of the row.
“Sir,” she said, holding up her wooden box. “Polish your boots for two bits.”
The man, around forty, clean-shaven, contemplated her for a moment, then glanced down at his boots. Looking up again, he nodded at her and shuffled his feet forward. Annabel knelt in front of him. Swiftly, she applied a coat of polish and wielded the brushes. A final buff with a linen cloth added to the shine.
She got to her feet and put out her hand. The man dropped a quarter in her palm. Annabel studied the coin, then leveled her gaze at the client. “If a gentleman is pleased with the result, he usually gives me four bits.”
The man’s eyebrows went up, but he dug in his pocket again and passed her another quarter. Annabel thanked him and hurried off on her way. Bitter experience had taught her not to ask for the extra money until the initial payment was safely in her hand.
“Shoeshine. Shoeshine.”
For two weeks, she had stayed with Colin and Liza in their freight yard shack, becoming skilled in her new trade. It had been a revelation to learn that if she boarded a train and introduced herself to the conductor—Andrew Fairfield, was her name—they allowed her to travel without a ticket, as long as she obeyed their rules and offered to polish their shoes for free.
By the end of the second week, she had earned enough money to buy her own brushes and polishes, and had taken an emotional farewell from Liza and Colin. One day, she hoped to reward them for their kindness, but she did not wish to raise any false hopes by telling them that she came from wealth.
“Shoeshine! Shoeshine!”
The train was slowing for a stop. Annabel used the lack of speed to cross over the coupling to the next car. Sometimes men had their boots polished just to break the tedium of the journey, but she enjoyed the traveling, even the endless monotony of the prairie they had left behind two days ago. As the scenery changed, it pleased Annabel to think that not long ago her sisters had looked upon the same grass-covered plateau, the same rolling hills, the same high-peaked mountains.
“Shoeshine. Shoe—”
The word died on her lips as her gaze fell on a suntanned man in his early thirties. Dressed like a dandy, he had a lean, muscled body. He looked just like Cousin Gareth had once been, before drinking and gambling ruined him, turning him from a laughing boy who did magic tricks into a bitter, brooding man.
As she stared, spellbound, the man gestured with his hand and leaned back in his seat, stretching out his feet. Annabel edged over and sank to her knees. Her heart was beating in a wild cadence, her hands shaking so hard she struggled to unclip the lid on a tin of polish.
It’s a coincidence, she told herself. Everyone has a double.
She spread the wax over the man’s hand-tooled Montana boots and started brushing. Anyway, she reminded herself, Cousin Gareth had gone off to chase after Miranda, who’d left Merlin’s Leap almost two months ago. It would make no sense for him only now to be on his way to Gold Crossing.
“There is something exceedingly familiar about you,” the man said. “I get an image in my head, but it is of a girl with your features.”
Annabel lowered the pitch of her voice. “Girl, huh? If I was the gun-carrying kind, I might call you out on that.”
“I meant no offense.”
Head bent low, Annabel moved from the right foot to the left. Her mouth felt dry. The man had spoken with Gareth’s voice. She kept silent, working as fast as she could. The train had come to a stop now, but from her kneeling position Annabel couldn’t see if it was for a town, or just a water tower in the middle of nowhere.
“What is your name, young man?”
Ignoring the question, Annabel flung her brushes back into the wooden box with a clatter and straightened, omitting the final polish with a linen cloth. She put out her hand. “That’ll be two bits.”
The man grabbed the walking stick that had been leaning against the end of the bench. A chill ran through Annabel. It was Cousin Gareth’s walking stick, with a silver handle shaped like the head of a wolf. She nearly swooned. It had to be him. Somehow, Cousin Gareth had transformed into this fit, healthy stranger, but he had not recognized her...yet.
The man banged the walking stick against the floor of the railroad car, making a hollow booming sound. “Your name, young man,” he demanded to know.
Deepening her voice, hiding beneath her bowler hat, Annabel muttered, “Andrew Fairfield.”
“Andrew?” The man frowned and shook his head, as if to clear the veil of mist inside his mind. “Andrew... Andrew... Ann...” His blue eyes widened. “Annabel! I have a memory of a girl called Annabel who looks just like you.”
Panic took hold of Annabel and she bolted. Behind her, she could hear the clatter of the expensive boots
