Miss Carolina,
It was a pleasure to meet you. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.
I noticed you went out in your old walking shoes yesterday. I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of getting you a new pair.
Yours,
Tristan Wrigley
WHEN LINA WOKE, SHE FOUND HERSELF IN A COLD sweat. Her head ached and there was a wretched hum behind her eyes. She was in a bed, but it was substantially wider than the one in her hotel. The ceiling was made of bare wood boards, and there was only one narrow, grimy window overlooking a downtown cobblestone street. She tried to recall how she had come to be in this unfamiliar place, but all she could conjure was a dark saloon filled with blurry faces and her own uncontrollable laughter. Soon after that she remembered Tristan, and the scene in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the fact that she had walked out into New York yesterday with every cent of her recently acquired fortune.
She clutched her chest, and then bolted out of the bed. She was still wearing Penelope’s old bloomers and corset, and found her things piled on the single, unvarnished wooden chair. Her purse rested on her neatly folded red dress not a single bill had been removed with a note perched beside it.
She read the first bit with only foggy comprehension what was it that he was going to take care of exactly? The part about the shoes was very clear, however. Lina’s shame-making boots were gone, and in their place were a pair of shiny black patent-leather lace-up shoes, with low wooden heels. They were as polished and new as anything in the Hollands’ closets. For a moment she could concentrate on nothing but them.
She slipped them on and stepped lightly across the room, wearing nothing but her corset and bloomers and her brand-new shoes. She had never had anything that fit so well. She imagined how her future as a society lady would be filled with nothing but custom-made dresses, and elegant slippers, and how there would be a wedding to Will Keller, who would have made his fortune out west by then. For a moment she was filled with delight, but then some logical thinking broke through into her stuffy head, and all of her good feelings began to turn quickly to shame.
She was prancing around a near-stranger’s barely furnished room, wearing nothing but her former mistress’s former friend’s undergarments. Yesterday she had had the chance to be a lady, and instead she had gotten drunk in the wrong part of town and now here she was, waking up in a strange room with a spotty memory of what had gone on the night before. Lina despised herself for having fallen so quickly, and so far, off her intended path.
She threw on her dress, took her purse and the note, and left as quietly as possible. She found her way down a slender tenement staircase and onto the street, all the while wondering how anyone could be so easily duped. Tristan had taken her for a lady, and she was now painfully aware that she was anything but.