Chapter 3 – A Dusty Pearl...
“You should be riding with me on that train to Chicago.” James Harlow idled on the station's platform. “How much longer are you going to keep my family waiting to meet their son's fiance? How much longer are you going to keep me waiting, Emma?”
Emma Harlington felt the first tickle of the tremors in her gloved hand. How much longer would James delay his departure? Emma wondered if the waiting, steaming train had been scheduled solely for James's convenience. The power to send trains from one station to the next throughout the country would be a power the Harlow tycoons would be happy to possess. It would be a power Emma's father Randolph would admire. It would be another power that, without her choosing, linked her to James. Could that train linger on James's whim? Was it not dangerous for a train to ignore careful schedules and instead idle on the rail?
“It's time for you to board your train, James,” Emma pleaded with her green eyes. She held her twitching fingers behind her back. “We'll have time enough for family. But waiting now only makes the parting hurt longer.”
“Come with me to Chicago and they'll be no need for the parting.” James reached for Emma's hand, but she kept her shaking and gloved fingers hidden behind her back. “I have your father's blessing. You father's hired man will inform him you changed your mind to go with me to Chicago. It would make your father glad, and it would thrill my family.”
“In time, James.”
James grimaced. “I am running out of the words with which to describe you to them, Emma.”
Emma politely smiled. Boys and men had always lacked sufficient vocabulary with which to describe Emma Harlington. Boys and men could not understand how such a woman could blossom in a settlement as dusty as Dry Acre. She possessed an angel's slim, confident face, with green emeralds for eyes that cast life upon whatever dirty inch of territory they looked upon. Locks of auburn hair curled past her shoulders. As Randolph Harlingtons's only child, she had been blessed with the best manners and wardrobe that money might buy. As Randolph Harlington's only child, wealth supplemented whatever gap the most cynical of suitors might perceive in her beauty. It was together all more than enough to make any man swoon. A man might ride his horse near to death to see that pearl of Dry Acre with his own eyes. And whatever man visited Dry Acre to see that pearl for himself always lacked the vocabulary with which to describe Emma Harlington.
“If you insist,” James Harlow, reared in a dynasty rising with stock yards and packing plants, never lacked the confidence to look upon Emma Harlington, and thus he had become spellbound. “Were you any other woman, I believe I would carry you onto this train. But you are not any other woman, Emma, and I can force myself to wait a little longer. We'll marry when I next return to Dry Acre. I'll fill an entire train with my family and friends. We'll turn Dry Acre as green as your eyes. We'll sweep away all this dust and make this land bloom for your wedding day.”
“The dust's not so bad,” Emma offered James a conciliatory kiss on the cheek. “Hurry before you miss your train.”
James laughed before mounting the waiting passenger car and saying farewell with a tip of his dustless hat.
Though she felt the tremors spread from her hands into her arms, though she felt those shakes spill from her arms into her legs, Emma Harlington stood as still as she could to give James the proper and polite farewell the young man's influence deserved as that suitor regarded her from the passing train. Perhaps James looked upon his fiance from his passenger window and regarded Emma's rigid posture a sign of good breeding. Perhaps James thought Emma's impassive bearing the promise of the stoic wife required in the pursuit of deep fortune.
James would not have suspected Emma's affliction that forced her to stand so still as his train pulled away from the station.
“Wilson!” Emma cried as she felt the tremors surge beyond her control.
Her father's hired man caught her before Emma's shaking body fell upon the dusty ground.
Wilson, her father's hired man, had caught her many times.
Wilson lifted Emma's shaking body and carried the twitching woman to the coach that waited to carry Dry Acre's pearl home. No one waited at the station to watch Emma's body shake in Wilson's embrace. Emma maintained her most intimate secret as Wilson softly placed her into the coach's privacy.
The seizures wrenched Emma as Wilson hurried the coach's horses home.
Emma's body shook through the miles, leaving her exhausted as they neared Dry Acre. The spasms receded as Wilson guided the coach onto the Harlington ranch. She did not remember the journey home as Wilson offered her a hand as Emma's trembling weight accepted the support of her driver's wide shoulders before again standing upon the dust.
“Do you think he saw?” Emma asked as her eyes stared into Wilson's.
Wilson removed a white cloth from his pocket and gently wiped perspiration from Emma's glistening forehead.
“He didn't see anything,” Wilson untangled a matted lock of Emma's auburn hair. “James didn't notice you tremble.”
“Nor anything else?” Emma's hand drifted towards Wilson's arm before she withdrew the offering of her touch.
Wilson did not turn away from Emma's intense, green eyes. “Nothing else.”
“There's goodness in that,” Emma sighed, “but I hate the secrecy.”
“Time finds the means for many things, Emma.”
Emma quietly contemplated the sentiment. “The tremors are getting worse. They give little warning anymore. They hit me so quickly, and they shake me like never before.”
“What does Maggie say?”
Emma's lips trembled, and Wilson feared another round of spasms about to beset her.
“She doesn't say anything,” Emma moaned. “I beg her to visit me as the tremors get so bad. But she doesn't answer. She won't come to offer any solace with her touch. She's lost too many brothers, and she blames father.”
Wilson nodded very slightly, a gesture from which Emma had come to take much assurance. “I'll talk to Maggie. Let me explain to her how badly you suffer from the seizures. It's not you she hates, Emma. Maggie will help. We both know her better than the town's rumors. She's too kind to let you suffer.”
Emma smiled. “Where would I be without my Wilson? Maggie hangs on your word. If anyone can persuade her to ease the suffering of a Harlington it's you.”
Emma cast her green eyes upon the dusty ground and inhaled to regather her calm before walking away from Wilson towards the direction of the Harlington home. Her bearing quickly returned though the shakes had so recently sapped her. She did not look back to tell Wilson goodnight.
Nor did Wilson allow his gaze to linger upon Emma Harlington as she strode to that home built upon Randolph Harlington's fortune. Instead, Wilson tended to the horses before withdrawing to the bunkhouse reserved for the many hands hired by Randolph Harlington.
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