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Eventually she walked to Broadway and stood enchanted before huge glass panes that displayed items of such unimaginable luxury they took her breath away.
    She discovered streets that had formed into small countries, Italians here, strange exotic Orientals there, Hebrews and Slavs and Greeks, each group claiming a section of the city for themselves. She found the dumps where the ragpickers worked and the wharves and the factories that fouled the air with soot and the sulfur smell of blast furnaces.
    And always she watched for Mr. Kelly, hoping to turn the next corner and encounter him. When she did not, her disappointment was acute. As Lucie prided herself on possessing a practical nature not given to flights of fancy, her constant hope of meeting Mr. Kelly troubled her. She did not understand why she could not forget him. Or why she did not wish to.
    Aware she acted foolishly and out of character, she nevertheless scanned the streets and walkway traffic, seeking a bright auburn head, a broad set of shoulders, teeth as white as bleached bone. Once she heard a man laugh and she stopped, feeling her cheeks heat with anticipation. But when she turned, it was not him and her shoulders dropped with disappointment.
    She found no work, either. "Tomorrow I'll try the factories," she assured Stefan at the end of her second week in America. She considered their supper of cold potato pie and yesterday's bread and figured the cost in her mind.
    "The factories have been sacking people," Stefan informed her. "Greta worries whether she'll have a job tomorrow."
    Lucie still hadn't met Greta, which was a continuing disappointment, but already she admired the young woman's courage. Though ill, Greta rose each day and went to work. "Is she feeling any better?"
    Stefan carried their supper plates to the tub of hot water on top of the stove. A worried frown drew his brow. "A little. She's so eager to meet you, worried what you must think that she hasn't greeted you. I hope by next week"
    Lucie finished her glass of warm beer and mopped her neck. It was as hot tonight as it had been last night. Heat engulfed the city, squeezing the air from every breath, turning the streets into dry choking powder. The newspapers compared this summer to the heat wave of 1896, three years ago, and the numbers of people and animals who had died of heat-related illness.
    It worried her that Stefan carried his mattress up to the tenement rooftop to sleep, hoping for a breath of cooler air. At least once a week the newspapers reported the death of someone who had fallen from a rooftop.
    Lucie sighed. It was imperative that she find work soon. Stefan had shown her the hiding place under the loose board in the second room where he kept his money. The small cache was steadily dwindling. Standing, thinking about it, she smoothed her hands over her apron then washed the supper dishes, saving the water for the morning.
    "Tomorrow I'll bring your noonday meal to the work site," she said before Stefan departed to carry his mattress up to the roof. When he protested she turned to face him. "Please, Stefan. I need to feel useful. It will give me something to do until I find work."
    After he left, she sat in the hot thick darkness wearing only her petticoat and shift, holding their remaining coins in her hand. Slowly, she counted them again, hoping she had erred.
    Long after the night rustlings died in the street, Lucie continued to sit in the darkness beside the window, looking at the sagging shutters on the tenement facing her. Right now her goal of earning Stefan's marriage money seemed as far away as the handsome Irishman who continued to haunt her dreams.
    A bittersweet ache settled in Lucie's small bosom. She wondered if Jamie Kelly had found a job, wondered if he remembered their brief meeting at Ellis Island, wondered if he thought about her as frequently as she found herself thinking about him.
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Chapter Two

     
    Jamie Kelly stood back from the noise and dust billowing