Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

buttons, while she sat rumpled and overwarm in black velvet. The man’s tie remained irritatingly straight and jauntily tied while his round, flat cap rode straight upon his head.
    Last night he had offered to sell Rosa two hard lengths of pine and three pillows stuffed with straw that would convert the stiff-backed, narrow benches into a bed. Rather than part with two dollars, she decided she would be quite as comfortable leaning against the window. It was not too long before the ache in her back and the crimp in her neck proved her wrong.
    “Busted Heel, Wyoming, next stop!”
    She nearly jumped out of her seat at the booming sound of the conductor’s voice as he passed by her seat. Like every American she had encountered thus far, the man had a most peculiar habit of yelling as though he hoped to be heard by everyone within miles. He called out the same announcement twice more before he walked out of the rear door of the car. Rosa pressed her face against the window and tried to see down the tracks ahead. Anxious to stretch her legs, she reached up and unpinned the hat that matched her dress, another gift from the widowed contessa. Rosa smiled as she brushed the dust from the wide-brimmed hat that was unadorned except for a swag of netting draped across the front. Like her dress, the hat was black, and although Rosa had felt a slight, ominous stirring when she had donned the color relegated to widows, she thought the ensemble made her appear older and more sophisticated. The ebony did much to enhance the pure ivory tone of her skin and deepened the gold of her eyes to a darker brown.
    Rosa glanced out the window again as she straightened her hat over the pile of unruly hair wound on the crown of her head. She secured the hat with a long, lethal-looking pin adorned with a pearl and wondered if Giovanni would still find her desirable. After all, she thought, he had not seen her for three years. Doubt assailed Rosa, and she fidgeted on the hard seat, tugging at her heavy, draped skirt. They had been married less than a month before he left for America in search of the dream he said he had for them both. It had been barely enough time to become used to the fact that she was married at all, hardly enough time to become versed in the ways of love between a man and his wife. The direction her thoughts had taken made her jumpy, and in the nervous way of all travelers, Rosa reached down for the hundredth time to reassure herself the bulging valise she had stored beneath the bench was still there.
    “Busted Heel!”
    As the conductor made a return trip through the car, she wondered if she would ever get used to the harsh sound of English. Everyone she had encountered spoke more rapidly, not to mention louder, than had the contessa.
    Rosa frowned when she felt her hat list slowly toward her left ear. She planted her hand firmly in the center of it and hastily re-anchored the hat pin. Thankful that she had reached her stop at last, she remembered how the transfer station at Council Bluffs had nearly been her undoing. It was there Rosa had asked for a transfer to Broken Shoe, Wyoming. The station agent had informed her with very little sympathy that there was no such stop.
    “Yes,” Rosa had insisted in halting, heavily accented English. “There hasa to be. Is in Wyoming.”
    “No, there’s not!” The man had leaned forward and yelled so loudly and distinctly that Rosa’s face had flamed with color. Everyone on the loading dock had heard him. “There... is ... no ... such ... place!” the man bellowed again, as if shouting at her would help her understand.
    She had leaned toward him in retaliation, her face nearly pressed against the bars of the ticket window and shouted back. “Dare ... hasa ... to be ... becausa ... my husband ... saysa ... so!” Her nerves at the breaking point, she had pulled the letter from Giovanni out of her pocket and, without bothering to unfold it, waved it in his face.
    The agent reached down