Chapter OneHere Roams Theodore
COWBOY LAND, NORTH DAKOTA
WINTER 1884
THE PRESENT
The cold broods so mercilessly, the once-golden prairie ices into a bed of frosted steel. Still and silent, the lands idle, until a whoosh sounds, drawing me to the window. A cluster of scrub pines sways outside my cabin. Leaning against the pane, I feel the freeze on my cheek as I close my eyes and listen. Glassy branches touch one another, chiming like the chords of an Aeolian harp—ethereal notes sinking, rising, floating. The melody evokes memories of the first day I saw Alice Hathaway Lee, when she moved with such elegance the word itself could not have known the depth of its own meaning.
The breeze calms, the music quiets. I remain motionless. Where has she gone?
I pause to think of what to do. Shall I wait for another gust? There is a spot in the gorges where winds tunnel through. For certain, the pines will shake there. It is not so far, or I can stay here alone in this simple ranch-house built with unhewn cottonwood logs and smelling of moss. There is not much time as night draws near; I can see only a sliver of dying daylight on the horizon.
I step back from the window and look over at my one treasure amid these primitive things, the picture of us framed in gold that sits on the desk built by my hands.
Getting to the deep narrow passage may prove dangerous. In these brutal midwinter months, the air currents can pick up quickly and thunder through the naked canyons, bringing knife-blade cold.
I refuse to go on without her. I’m to the threshold, turning the creaky knob, opening the door to the madness.
Yes, I want more. I need more.
Chapter TwoPretty Alice Lee
SALTONSTALL ESTATE, CHESTNUT HILL, MASSACHUSETTS
OCTOBER 18, 1878
THE PAST
Born into a class considered elite in any circle, Alice knew to sit as a Boston Brahmin should: politely. Mindful of her manners, she folded her white-gloved hands in her lap atop a billowing indigo tea dress frilled with flounces. The prim belle, nine months shy of an eighteenth birthday, wore her light brown hair in an updo with finger waves styled in tight fashion. She kept an erect posture while seated on the east-facing veranda in a high-spindled, substantially carved rocker, yet the demure presentation ruffled due to the chair’s erratic creaking forth, back, stop, back, stop, and forth.
“Nothing more than a questionable experiment,” argued her cousin Richard Saltonstall with harsh inflection.
This spurt of utter nonsense vexed her, along with the ones from his classmate Hodges Chate. Both of the fellows were seated in front of her. Alice had read the news article printed in The Cambridge Tribune, to which they referred, on the proposal to allow women admission to Harvard College, not on the same campus, but an off-site, women-only annex.
“I fail to understand the reason for such an exercise in foolishness,” came from tight-jawed Hodges who had a most unattractive nasal voice.
Craning her neck to the right, Alice tried to distract herself by watching an oddly colored bird land on the branch of a hemlock. If not for the cherry-red head, the feathered darling might be challenging to spot as only black and white feathers covered the rest of it. From its big chisel-like bill emerged a rolling churr sound.
“Clearly ludicrous” came, gravelly, from Richard after a noticeable breath.
Becoming increasingly agitated, Alice attempted to maintain a staid disposition, knowing she came from an impeccable pedigree with her Coast aristocrat ancestors hailing from Lincolnshire, home to the likes of Sir Isaac Newton and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
She focused on the wings stretched wide. Whether the bird was male or female, she could not tell. Maybe an ornithologist could, she imagined. In some genuses, she had heard males sport bolder colors to compete for females’ affection, while the females blend into the surroundings to protect their nests. This flying charmer flaunted a perfect combination of the two, a back of black feathers with white ones patched about and the unique, crimson-colored head.
“Absurd!” The balderdash continued from the non-blood who specifically targeted one of the possible female candidates who had excelled in private instruction from Harvard professors. “I say again with certainty, she’ll turn into an old maid.”
Alice bit her bottom lip to hold back the vocables about to release in a splenetic outburst. Not even the scent of her lavender perfume, usually so calming, could ease her tension. Her chair halted its pendulation in the shade. Patience wore thin. Teeth clenched. Eyelids shut tight. A simple, stinging question escaped from her mouth: “Why, gentlemen, do you never speak of an old bachelor?”
The backs of the men straightened as straight as their rigid-back chairs.
Alice verbalized the argument in an affable tone, realizing she may have come across a smidgen too forceful. “You converse about one and not the other.”
Each angled toward her. They wore matching navy morning coats and tan trousers, with hair parted in the middle, trim beards, and quizzical looks.
“Old bachelor?” asked Richard.
“Old maid.” She used the sweetest inflection she could muster. “Old bachelor.”
Copyright © 2023 by Mary Calvi
