He flicked his hat with the tips of his fingers and leaned his elbows on the wagon side with the closest thing to a smile he could manage. “Glad I don’t have to pry your hands off that seat.”
She tossed her chin. “You only needed to be reasonable.” She held out her hand.
Instead of taking it, he caught her waist and swung her down. “It wouldn’t have taken much.” His grin pulled sideways. “Even with your best grip.”
“I would have made a horrible scene.”
He cocked his head. “A shame I missed it.”
She started to retort, but he sobered and went about readying the wagon. She swallowed her gall. After all, they were taking the train, and that meant she’d be home in days, rather than weeks.
They surrendered the full wagon and horses to a Union Pacific railroad man loading the flatcars and stock cars. She waited while Quillan instructed him pointedly about the horses, then a porter took the bags they would have onboard. Following him, Carina glanced back at the wagon as its wheels were lashed to the car and rendered immobile. She had a brief flash of her own wagon tumbling down the side of the mountain. Quillan’s freighter held gifts and reminders as precious as the things she had carried east.
But now they were heading west. She had traveled first class from San Francisco with Guido and Antonnia Mollica, then second class with the maiden aunts Anna and Francesca Bordolino, who thought it sinful to bask in such extravagance and probably couldn’t afford it. The second-class car, while not the squalid illness incubator of the emigrant cars, tested one’s capacity for discomfort.
She didn’t know which tickets Quillan had purchased. Would he think the best extravagant also? They passed the emigrant cars, bleak and stark. Already a smell emanated from the passengers who had been westward bound from the Atlantic coast. Poor people—how could they bear it? But then she thought of herself at Mae’s in the beginning. One adapted she supposed, as one must.
Carina breathed a sigh of relief as they passed the shabby third-class coaches interspersed with the baggage cars. She glanced at Quillan as they also passed the second-class day coaches to the elegantly appointed Pullman Palace cars. She raised her brows as he held out a hand for her to mount the stairs. So they would travel first class. Her husband quirked a smile. Was her face so revealing?
They found a pair of plush seats facing each other, and Quillan motioned for the porter to relieve himself of their load. With a night’s growth of beard, his buckskin coat, and his hair loose, Quillan drew curious glances from the other passengers. And some not merely curious. The gentlemen at large appraised him, but the ladies seemed to think him an exciting spectacle. In their eastern titters they discreetly pointed him out to each other.
Carina sat down and smiled. Maybe they would think her a daring partner to this western pirate. But she dismissed the thought when she noticed one red-whiskered gentleman perusing her boldly. Suddenly she resented the scrutiny of these coddled sophisticates out for a lark. She had seen them before, well-heeled adventurers traveling west for an excursion. The transcontinental rails of the Union and Central Pacific Railroads joined a decade ago at Promontory Point had made her home their playground.
With hardly any delay, the train headed out of the station. Across from her, Quillan looked out the window, seemingly unaware of the scrutiny—a fact that made him all the more mysterious to the women in their car. Carina couldn’t help but see what they saw: a man unlike any other.
Quillan chafed on the train as he hadn’t with his own reins in his hands, even though their speed tripled anything his horse-drawn wagon could manage and traveled where he could never have pressed his team. He looked across at his wife, lost in a periodical. She had been reading aloud from Harper’s Weekly, then had noticed his slack attention and fallen silent.
He rubbed his hands over his knees, unable to catch the pace, the rhythm of the train. Would he rather be traveling the rough stage road that paralleled the iron rails across the land? Rather see Carina with road dust and weariness in her face? At least he’d have that sense of connection. They’d be alone together.
Though the Pullman car allowed space and comfort, he squirmed under the curious gaze of the passengers around them. Carina seemed oblivious, though not a man aboard was oblivious of her. What could he expect? He could hardly go around gouging eyes. At least people gave them space. His visage, no doubt.
Carina glanced up. “Agitato.”
“What?”
“You’re restless. Agitato.”
He shrugged.
She closed the magazine. “I thought you liked hours and hours of traveling.”
“Alone on my wagon, in the open, with my hands on the reins.”
She waved her hand. “Ask the engineer to let you drive.”
“No thanks.” He stretched his legs out under her seat and crossed his ankles. “Only live animals.”
“Antiquato.”
“There you go, calling names.”
She laid the magazine on the seat beside her. “I said you’re old-fashioned.”
“Maybe.” He uncrossed his ankles and hunched up in his seat. Had his hindquarters ever plagued him so on the box? “But I would be in control.”
“Relax for a change. Let life happen.”
“I don’t like it when life happens.”
“Testardo.”
He glared. “At least insult me in a language I understand.”
“Testardo—stubborn.”
“Testardo. Now that one I could use back.”
“Then it would be testarda.”
He straightened slightly. “So adjectives change form.”
She nodded. “To match the noun. Some nouns are feminine, like saggezza, wisdom. Others masculine: disturbo. Annoyance.”
He crooked his brow. “Is there a point?”
She laughed.
He straightened the rest of the way, pressing his back to the seat cushion. “How do you say contrary?”
“Contrario.”
“And contraria?”
She waved her hand. “It would never be used that way, of course.”
“I sense biased instruction.”
“You want to learn?” She flicked her fingers toward him.
He folded his arms across his chest again. “Okay.”
She said, “Buon giorno.”
He repeated it.
She tapped her ear lobe. “You have a good ear.”
“Buon giorno means good ear?”
She laughed much harder than his error could have warranted. “It means good day. A polite hello or good-bye.”
“Buon giorno.” He committed it to memory.
She said, “Come stai? How are you?”
Come stai? That, too, went into recall. “And what do I answer?”
The corners of her mouth twitched. “At the moment?”
“Watch it.”
Again she laughed. “You say, Bene. Fine.”
“And all this time I thought you were cursing me.”
“It can also mean, Fine! or Well! ” She threw up her hands.
He nodded. “And if I’m not fine?”
“Male!”
“Very descriptive.”
“Italiano is a beautiful language. Bella lingua! And easy. Much more regular than English.”
He leaned forward. “In words maybe. But the inflection and sign language . . .” He shook his head.
“What are you talking about, sign language?”