I’m going to puke. Again.
The first time, the driver stopped and allowed me to hurl my breakfast up in some semblance of privacy behind some bushes. After that I was given two options. An old burlap bag that smells like rotten onions, its scent alone could make me vomit, or I can stick my head out the window and risk the wind blowing the contents back into the carriage.
To the relief and disgust of my fellow passengers, I chose the sack. A fine welcome to Texas, indeed.
“Try this dearie,” Mrs. Townsend says as she offers me a mint leaf. When I look at her quizzically, she rushes to explain, “Stick it under your tongue. Mint helps with nausea. Learn this trick with my second born, the morning sickness was unrelenting with that girl.”
She’s a widow journeying out to Portersville to live with her eldest daughter, the very one that cursed her with continuous nausea every second of her pregnancy.
Following her instruction, I find the leaf despite its mild grassy taste does indeed cut through the nausea.
Dusk is creeping over the town when we arrive. It’s smaller than I imagined, and nothing like the city back home.
The stagecoach shudders to a halt, wood creaking as if relieved the journey is finally over. For a moment no one moves. We all seem to be waiting for permission to exist again.
“Careful now,” a man’s voice calls from outside.
The door opens and the driver hops down, grumbling as he reaches for the first trunk. Before he can lift it, another pair of hands intercepts the handle.
“I’ve got it,” the man says.
He takes the weight without a sound of strain, setting the trunk down gently instead of letting it thud into the dirt. He doesn’t look around for approval. Doesn’t crack a joke or puff his chest. He simply moves on to the next piece of luggage as if this is how things are meant to be done.
Mrs. Townsend hesitates at the step, clutching the doorframe. Before the driver can bark at her to hurry, the man is there again, offering his arm.
“No rush, ma’am,” he says. “The ground’s uneven.”
She takes his arm with a relieved sigh, leaning more heavily than propriety probably allows. He doesn’t comment. Doesn’t adjust his stance to show off. He just braces himself and waits until she’s steady.
Something in my chest loosens.
This isn’t the performative gallantry I’m used to. Not the city men who help only when there’s an audience, who turn kindness into currency. This is quiet. Efficient. Thoughtful in a way that suggests habit rather than intention.
He passes instructions to the driver—short, practical sentences about where to set things, which crates belong to which passenger. The driver listens.
That alone tells me more than his appearance ever could.
When he finally turns toward me, his dark eyes meet mine without hesitation. No flicker of discomfort. No forced brightness. Just attention, clean and direct.
“Rose?”
The sound of my name in his mouth feels different than it should. He isn’t claiming it. He isn’t testing it. He’s simply confirming that I exist.
I nod, my throat suddenly tight.
Up close, he’s just as handsome as I first thought, but that’s no longer the most important thing about him. What I notice instead is the steadiness of his hands. The way his shoulders settle, as if the world makes sense when he’s standing in it. The fact that he hasn’t once looked to see who’s watching.
For the first time since the fire, since the long train ride, since the miserable lurching miles in that coach, I feel something unfamiliar settle over me.
Not excitement.
Safety.
And that, I realize with a quiet start, is far more dangerous.
Tall with dark hair that he’s slicked back with a comb and neatly dressed in grey pinstripe pants and a white button-down shirt.
My stomach tumbles as his dark brown eyes find me. He has a sharp jaw that’s clean shaven, and despite the dust flying across the plain around us he’s perfectly presentable. Not a hair, not a stray fiber out of place.
