“Any day now, then,” Mr.Walsh replied, though they’d only had a few showers in the past month. Not the torrential rains that would bring in the throngs of gold miners from the fields.
She nodded. “Any day.”
Mr.Walsh took a bite of the iced Venetian cake on his dessert plate, and she filled his crystal goblet again.
Liquor was banned from her establishment, and she didn’t allow her patrons to smoke cigars—there were plenty of saloons along Second and Third Streets for that sort of thing—but she did serve wine to her regular clients. The finest drink shipped over from Italy and Portugal in casks called pipes. She then transferred the wine into green-tinted glass bottles before serving it to her clientele.
Ross had said good wine was essential if they wanted to bring in those who appreciated the refinement they missed in cities like Paris and New York. The Golden was the only hotel in Sacramento that catered to the businessmen who owned local banks, shops, and shipping companies. A few of these men had sent for their wives, and these ladies basked in the opulence of her establishment as well.
Most of their guests, though, were the miners like Mr.Walsh who’d struck it rich and craved a nice dinner and clean bed when they returned from the goldfields.
Mr.Walsh lowered his glass. “That’s all for me tonight.”
Isabelle replaced the cork in the bottle after he left and moved back toward the cellar where she stored her wine. Her hand against the brick wall, she slowly descended the rickety steps. She didn’t bother to bring a lantern with her. Light filtered down the staircase from the dining room, illuminating the mortar and fired clay.
Whenever the Sacramento River flooded, everything in this cellar was carried to the upper floors of her three-story hotel until the water decided to recede. The last time the river seeped through her front door, Ross had been here to help her. They’d worked through the night to save almost everything on the lower floors. The piano’s rosewood legs had been stained and the wood floor and wainscoting in the dining room ruined, but everything else in their hotel had survived, including the gold Ross had hidden for them behind this wall.
Smiling, she thought about the man she hoped to marry. Did he miss her as much as she missed him?
Even though she’d had proposals, she hadn’t sought love in Sacramento, hadn’t thought she would ever marry, but Ross had been kind to her heart. Patient. And she had learned to be patient with him too—waiting for months last summer and fall as he searched for gold along the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The Mother Lode.
It didn’t matter to her if he brought back a bagful of gold nuggets from the fields, as long as he returned.
The bell chimed overhead, and she slid the wine bottle onto the rack, then picked up her skirt to hustle back up the steps. It was probably a late delivery from one of the steamboats—or it could be a new customer for the hotel—but every time the bell chimed, she thought Ross might have returned.
She swept through the dining room, then rounded the stairs to her right and entered the front lobby. But instead of a deliveryman or Ross waiting for her, a woman stood alone by the front desk. She was wearing a floral calico dress, and her light-chestnut hair was swept up in a knot behind her neck. Isabelle guessed she was a few years older than her own twenty-three years.
The women held a carpetbag in her right hand and a soggy sunbonnet in her left. Her face was quite pretty, but her clothing smelled of seawater and coal smoke.
A wave of nausea swept over Isabelle—most of the young women who traveled alone were from France or China, their passage purchased by so-called benefactors, the men and women who operated brothels across California.
The woman looked as if she could be from Europe or the East Coast, and Isabelle prayed for her sake that she was simply looking for a husband or father who’d come ahead of her.
Isabelle stepped behind the wooden counter where she kept her roster and the ledger of accounts. “How can I help you?” she asked, folding her hands on top of the shiny mahogany surface.
The woman glanced up at the wall beside the desk at the list of eight rules that Isabelle displayed so that all her guests clearly understood that the lawlessness in this new state didn’t extend into her establishment. “I’m looking for the proprietor of this hotel.”
Isabelle stood a bit taller. “I’m the owner.”
The woman tilted her head, her dark-blue eyes wrinkled with confusion. “I thought Ross Kirtland owned this place.”
Isabelle placed both her hands on the ledger, wondering at the familiarity of the woman’s language. How did this woman know Ross? “I bought out his portion when he left for the goldfields.”
“Oh.” The woman leaned back against a post. “I reckon it’s good that he’s looking for gold.”
“He goes out for a few months every year, like most of the men around here.” Isabelle sat on a pine stool. “Where are you traveling from?”
“Kentucky,” she said. “Boone County.”
“And how exactly do you know Mr.Kirtland?”
The woman smiled. “I’m married to him.”
Married to him?
The woman’s words ricocheted in Isabelle’s mind, clanging together like the bells on wagons running up and down K Street. And the stool—it felt as if it had disappeared from under her, as if the wine cellar had opened up, swallowing her.
“But Ross—” she began to protest before correcting herself. “Mr.Kirtland’s from New York City.”
