No Job for a Lady Read Online Free Page B

guffaw. His coarse laugh is loud enough to attract the attention of those around us.
    “I beg your pardon.”
    We stop and face each other. My tongue is still tied.
    He shakes his head. Rather than angry, he appears to be perplexed. Even amused. “Such a little package of surprises you are. I’m not certain that you even have a mother, but if you do, I very much doubt that she would admit the relationship in public.”
    “How dare you.”
    “How dare I? You are the daredevil, madam. With reckless disregard for the truth as you plunge ahead. You’re a funny girl. You won’t have dinner with me, but you are willing to sleep with me.”
    “ Sir! There’s no call to be vulgar!”
    “Look who is calling the kettle black. Lies flow off your tongue like Niagara.” He smirks. “You should have just said that you wanted to share a compartment with me.”
    “That’s not true. I’ll have you to know I have no intentions of sharing that compartment with you. Here”—I reach inside my purse—“here’s two dollars. You’ll be able to purchase a seat for that.”
    “I get it. You use me as a tool to get yourself a comfortable compartment and then you throw me out like an old shoe.” He turns his back to me and walks away, not even taking the money I offered.
    I start to call him back but stop, worried that he is angry enough to cause a scene. Instead I watch him disappear into the crowd.
    I feel horrible. He’s right: I did use him for my selfish gain. My mother’s sudden illness threatening to make me cancel the trip, and my career, and miserable nights on the train from St. Louis, have left me off balance.
    So desperate to have everything go right, I’m out of control. I will have to rein myself in before I get into deeper trouble than I already am.
    As for the man, I’ll find him on the train and buy him lunch. There is no reason I should feel guilty. I didn’t really cheat him out of a sleeping berth. I was in line before he was and was entitled first to what was available.
    I will try to be in a charitable mood toward the man I have wronged, but I hear a devilish whisper in my head that says the best solution of all would be that he is unable to get a ticket because the train is sold out and thus I won’t have to face him and eat humble pie.

 
    5
     
 
    Grateful that I have only one piece of luggage, I scurry off to board the train. With all the people boarding and few porters, it would be a pain trying to maneuver more luggage.
    I decide to set down my carpetbag and wait for the crowd to thin down before boarding. No sense in getting trampled. Besides, I have comfort in knowing that I have a private compartment all to myself, so I won’t even have to fight to get a window seat.
    Even though I am still not over the trauma of having finagled my “husband” out of a sleeping berth, I am cheered by the fact that I don’t see him. Maybe my wish has come true and he wasn’t able to get even a bench seat on this one, or maybe he decided to wait until tomorrow for another train heading south. Either one works for me.
    My mother would be mortified if she knew what I had done. I chuckle over what she would say if I told her that I got a train compartment by pretending a stranger was my husband. Besides being irked by the damage to my unsullied reputation, she would tell me that by trifling with a strange man, I had risked being murdered by the Servant Girl Annihilator, 2 who has killed a number of people in Texas, most of them women—damnable deeds done in the dark of night.
    “What in heaven’s name were you thinking?” is her customary rejoinder when I confess that I have strayed even modestly from her strict guidelines for feminine deportment.
    My response that desperate times call for desperate measures rarely satisfies her fear that someday my impulsive acts will be too bold for my own good.
    I stop chortling about how I put one over on the man as it occurs to me that he might be very angry indeed at