She crumpled the letter in her hands. Ross may not have much to report from the diggings, but she had plenty to tell him. In person.
“Isabelle?” she heard Fanny call out from the dining room.
She quickly opened the door to the stove and tossed Ross’s everlasting love into the fire.
Part Two
The weary sun hath sunk to sleep
Beyond the great Pacific’s wave,
While here I stand and idly weep
That I have been to gold a slave!
—E. Curtiss Hine, “Lament of the Gold Digger”
Chapter 16
Sacramento City
February 1854
The faint aroma of orange blossoms billowed in the steam as Isabelle poured Fanny a cup of tea. Then she reached for the bundle of newspapers from December, two months past.
A carton filled with copies of theNew York Heraldarrived at the hotel each month, a luxury for her guests who wanted to stay abreast of news outside California. She devoured every word before passing them along to the people who stayed in her hotel. Sacramento City was a safe haven for her—a place she intended to live for the rest of her life—but she still liked to know what was happening around the world.
Isabelle chose the oldest paper from the stack—December 20—to read this morning and handed it across the table to Fanny as a gust of wind shook the windows of the dining room.
Fanny added a lump of sugar to her cup before reading a headline out loud: “Gold Seekers Flood into California.”
Isabelle laughed at the words, glancing out the window. The rainy street was already crowded with men headed to work along the riverfront. “That’s not news around here.”
Fanny glanced up. “People on the East Coast have no idea about the chaos happening on this side of the world.”
Isabelle sipped the sweetened oolong tea she’d purchased from a Chinese shop. “At least it’s starting to be civilized.”
“I haven’t seen any sort of refinement outside the walls of the hotel,” Fanny said. “And certainly no gentlemen.”
Fanny began to read the story about the influx of men—and a much smaller population of women—into the new state. Six years had passed since James Marshall found that first nugget of gold in the American River. Since then, more than three hundred thousand people had migrated to California.
The next story was about a New York man who’d found a lump of gold and quartz at French Ravine that was worth ten thousand dollars. He bought a hacienda near San Francisco but lost both his home and his money to roulette.
Fanny handed Isabelle the newspaper, and she read the columns about society, cooking, and fashion.
In Ross’s absence, the two women had settled into a morning routine after serving the guests their breakfasts, typically reading the paper or a few pages from a book out loud while they shared a pot of tea. Fanny always added sugar. Isabelle stirred a spoonful of clover honey into hers.
“Do you ever think about going out to the diggings?” Fanny asked when Isabelle finished reading the story.
Isabelle shook her head. “I’d much rather stay in the city.”
“If Ross doesn’t come soon, I’m going to look for him.”
Isabelle glanced out at the river of muddy rain flowing down the street. The storms began a month ago, and droves of gold seekers had arrived back in town to wait out the weather, but she hadn’t heard anything else from Ross.
“Was your uncle planning to dig for gold when he first came here?” Fanny asked.
“No,” Isabelle replied. “He sold his shop in Baltimore and used the money to start a mercantile for miners.”
