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She loved him. The man was a serious hero. Too much of one to spoil his chance of the career he was destined for by dragging him back by her doubts. Or expect him to marry her just because he’d proposed in an impulsive moment. So she sent a note saying she was safe but she wasn’t coming.
They were both too young and she wasn’t able to contemplate being a burden on him. Plus there was the matter of her threatened independence. He deserved so much more but she hadn’t been brave enough to tell him.
She had already seen herself frustrate him when she lost things, seen his doubts after he’d impulsively proposed, knew how much easier it would be for him to realise his dreams of becoming a doctor unencumbered by a young, unskilled bride.
The next day, after a lonely night in a sleazy motel she ran to her only other relative, her mother’s much older unmarried sister, a midwife in Sydney, and that’s when her life really began to change.
She’d come a long way since then. A long way.
All the way to Venice.
Kelsie blinked at the reflection in the window—the face staring back at her wasn’t hers. A woman, eyebrows raised in disapproval at her invasion of privacy, stared back haughtily and Kelsie blinked. Wake up.
Her cheeks heated as she walked away. She’d been staring into the past—not the window. If she didn’t watch out she’d spoil her once-in-a-lifetime trip worrying about a man who had every right to hate her.
Because maybe she should have waited to find out if Connor had agreed with her reasons. Talked about it with him. But by then it had been too late, and she’d lost touch and the confidence that he would forgive her.
And her career had taken off until the serene, confident maternity unit manager she’d become barely resembled the young girl who’d run away instead of getting married. Except for the occasional misplaced item when she was tired.
Kelsie strode purposefully up to the immaculately presented, blue-suited guard, his quaint round porter’s hat stiff with its gold-trimmed peak, the whole confection jammed importantly on his head. She presented her ticket as he held out his white-gloved hand.
‘Welcome to the Orient Express, madam.’ He bowed, took her satchel, assisted her up the steps like precious cargo, and once she was safely aboard gestured for her to follow him up the narrow wood-panelled corridor.
Finally aboard the Orient Express, she could feel a smile plastered on her face.
‘Come this way, please.’
The air inside swirled pleasantly cool around her still-hot cheeks and hinted of different perfumes and metal polish and cedar oil and old wood. Kelsie couldn’t help glancing into the cabins as she followed him, interested in her fellow passengers, she assured herself, not nervously checking for Connor, and most of the passengers looked up and smiled back.
The cabin before hers held a young woman who seemed huddled in her coat, but the door was pulled shut as soon as she passed.
Kelsie winced. She was going to have a good time if it killed her or she had to kill somebody else—namely Connor Black for making her doubt herself.
The conductor stopped at her cabin and gestured grandly. ‘Your seat, madam.’
Kelsie obediently sat. Not quite sure what she was supposed to do as the conductor gently hung her satchel on a big brass hook.
He stepped back, facing her, and smiled, his teeth even and white, his blond hair crew cut around his ears. ‘Allow me to introduce myself.’ He bowed again. ‘I am Wolfgang. Your steward.’
Volfgang, she repeated to herself with an inner smile.
His English was precise and she guessed that, unlike herself, he was probably fluent in several languages. ‘I vill be caring for your needs, and those others also in this car, on our way to Calais. There you vill change for the Tunnel crossing.’ His precise English and accent matched his name and he suited the surroundings so appropriately, she had to smile, outwardly this time.
‘Thank you, Wolfgang.’ Kelsie perched on the long tapestry seat. The hanging neck pillows suspended by tapestry cords divided the seat into two. She realised she’d been lucky enough to face the direction they’d travel, thank goodness, and maybe she was even the single occupant for the next thirty-six hours. Hmm. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.
No. It was a good thing. She would imagine Agatha Christie with her and breathed in as she replaced the smile on her face.
Everything was perfect.
The little cabin was perfect, even prettier from the inside than it had looked when she had peered through the windows, and she noted there was only one crystal champagne flute on the pristine embossed Orient Express coaster on her tiny table so she probably did have the cabin to herself.
She sat in solitary splendour, surrounded by the different-coloured woods of the parquetry wall panelling as they glowed with light, and she noted more brass hooks holding the deep blue silk bathrobes and velour slippers, one of which she could don should she wish to slip into something more comfortable. How decadent. Though perhaps not, especially at eleven in the morning.
‘Observe there is a sink for washing your face and hands if desired.’ Wolfgang pressed a lever and the tiny bench opposite transformed into a basin and taps. ‘There is a water closet at both ends of the car.’ He stared at a point at the top of the window to avoid meeting her eyes. ‘It is preferred that passengers refrain from use while the train is at a station.’
Good grief. Now, that’s a salubrious thought. She chewed her lip to hold in a laugh as she nodded. ‘Of course,’ she murmured.
He inclined his head. ‘Then excuse me. When our journey begins I will return with champagne and also to record your preference for the first or second dinner sitting.’
Kelsie was tempted to ask which sitting the Blacks were on so she could choose the other but contented herself with, ‘Thank you.’
She sat for a minute longer, trying to decide what to do when he left.
‘Acqua Panna.’ Kelsie sounded the words out on the complimentary water bottles on the bench of the washbasin hidey-hole. ‘Acqua has to be water.’ She picked one up, cracked the seal and took a sip as she surveyed the amenities.
Facecloths, a hand towel, a beautifully boxed cake of soap she might just keep to remind her of the journey, toothbrush and paste, an art deco folder holding postcards and embossed VSOE paper and envelopes.
Now she’d pretty well covered the contents of the cabin.
She put the bottle back and stared at the angled wooden divide opposite. They were really quite snug, these compartments, standing room only before the wall of the adjoining cabin. Someone coughed next door and she heard it quite plainly but couldn’t distinguish the voices.
At least she didn’t have an infectious companion locked in with her. She grinned to herself just as the train whistle shrieked a warning of departure.
Kelsie stood and reached hastily for the table to steady herself as the carriage jerked, and peered out the window. They were easing out of the station. Her grin was back and the excitement of finally fulfilling her dream made her want to laugh.
When she poked her head out of her cabin door other occupants had crammed into the corridor and were watching through the windows opposite as the world shifted, and she could imagine the wheels on the tracks below them begin to turn and pick up speed. They slipped past two bushy islands on their little spit of railway tracks on the way to the mainland of Italy.
With a sense of urgency to take just one last look at Venice, she squeezed past an older couple in the tiny corridor and walked to the far end of the carriage, where she was able to pull down the sash window on the door she’d entered the train by.
When she leaned out the cold wind blasted her face and she could see Santa Lucia station disappearing into the distance.
She looked the other way and a dark-haired man had his head out the window half a dozen carriages up. A very familiar face turned her way and Connor Black surveyed her coolly.
Only one thing to do. Kelsie waved.
CHAPTER THREE (#u9fbd4274-2c15-5d9b-a5a6-5d76ae17ebff)
CONNOR PULLED HIS head in and ran his hand through his hair. He’d stuck his head out to blow thoughts of Kelsie Summers away. Fine chance of that now!
At least she wasn’t in their car—she was in the last one—and he hadn’t wanted to know that. He just hoped they’d chosen the right lunch sitting to avoid her.
Funny how much importance avoiding Kelsie had assumed. He hadn’t spent that much brain activity on a woman for years and far too much on her today.
When he returned to their connected double cabins the steward was there.
He waved away the offered champagne. ‘No, thank you.’
His grandmother gasped and leant forward to take the glass.
‘For goodness’ sake, Connor. If you won’t drink it, I will.’ She waved at the man and the obliging fellow bowed and put the second glass next to the other one.
Great, Connor thought. Now Gran was going to get tipsy and she’d be uncontrollable. This trip was assuming nightmare proportions. ‘I’ll drink it.’
‘Good.’ His grandmother sat back smugly and he realised he’d been conned and she’d never intended to have two glasses. He sighed and had to smile. She winked.
‘Much better. You don’t lighten up enough, my boy.’
He narrowed his eyes at her but he couldn’t stay cross. She was a minx. ‘It’s my training. Normally, I’m responsible for people’s lives.’
‘You’ve thought you were responsible for people’s lives since you were a child. Makes you bossy.’ His grandmother shrugged that away. ‘You’ve been too responsible for too long. You’re becoming downright boring.’
Connor froze in the act of sipping and frowned at her. Did she mean that? Nobody else had complained—but, then, who else was there to complain?
There was a distance between him and most people that he’d acquired early, since the loss of his mother and advent of his stepmother, to be precise, and had never lost. His patients wanted him to optimise the course of their pregnancies. Fertility assistance required set boundaries of safety and precautions. Still, her comments seemed a bit harsh. ‘You don’t know the real me, Gran.’
‘Hmph.’ She snorted and he looked at her quizzically. So older ladies really did that?
She snorted again just to prove it. ‘Hmph. Nobody knows you. Except maybe that girl at the end of the train.’
So this was what it was all about. And how the heck did she know where Kelsie was sitting? He’d bet Winsome had bribed the porters already, though goodness knows when as he’d only been gone a few minutes. The she-menace had probably rung the bell as soon as he’d left.
She knew them all by name because she’d been on this train every year for the last twenty years with his grandfather. Her yearly birthday trip in February she’d missed this year because of his grandfather’s death.
That had really knocked her badly and Connor, alarmed his grandmother might just fade away with grief, had hired a nurse to look after her for a few weeks to ensure she ate enough to survive. She’d begun looking much like her old self since he’d agreed to share a last journey on her favourite train.
But he was very aware this was her first Christmas without her husband and they’d decided this was as good a way as any to get over the lead up to festivities on her own.
So this was effectively a ten-month delay on her birthday train trip.
He didn’t understand how she didn’t get bored.
He was halfway there already, and it would be worse if it wasn’t for the unexpected arrival of Kelsie Summers, and they were only a few minutes out of the station.
He sighed. So she was all over the fact that Kelsie was here! He should have known.
He enunciated carefully, as if to a child, ‘You’ve blown it all out of proportion. She was a kid at my school and I was like the big brother she never had.’
His grandmother nodded and he could tell she wasn’t listening.
She proved it. ‘When you came to me you told me you’d been going to marry her.’
‘Childhood nonsense. An impulse.’ He shrugged. ‘The girl is nothing to me now.’
She nodded, all sweetness and light, and his head went up. ‘I’m pleased. I wouldn’t like to see you upset.’
For some reason he didn’t like the sound of that, or the way she’d said it. She glanced out the window and then back again and a horrible premonition hit him just before her next words.
‘So it should be fine with you that while you were admiring the view I sent her an invitation to join us for lunch.’
Kelsie’s golden envelope arrived, along with her glass of champagne, its embossed VSOE paper and the spidery writing giving a clue to its origin. She’d bet it came from Winsome.
Wolfgang hovered as she opened it and glanced at the bottom. Sure enough, the flamboyant W rolled into an exuberant salute. ‘Please. Come!’
An invitation to join them for lunch at the first sitting. Fun. Not! How the heck did she answer this?
‘Perhaps I should return for your answer in a few minutes?’ Wolfgang wasn’t slow on the uptake.
She guessed he’d been exposed to many such missives and their impact.
Kelsie smiled gratefully. ‘Thanks, Wolfgang.’ His head disappeared from the door and Kelsie looked down at the embossed paper again. So how did she decline politely?
She sipped her champagne, the golden fluid so surprisingly light and dry that the bubbles jumped and tickled her nose until she took it away from her mouth and looked at it. So this is what the other half drank?
Like drinking golden sunshine—no hardship at all—and she needed the courage to make a decision so she took a bigger gulp.
Or maybe she should go? Maybe that was what needed to be done. Surely inside Connor Black there was still a vestige of the hero she’d admired as a young girl and that man might understand her adolescent thinking all those years ago. He’d been her best friend and she had let him down.
The perennial questions of youth had been so important back then.
The indecision of it all. Who does he think I am? Who do I want to be? And if I went with him would I have any choices left to me? That had been the big one.
She still believed she’d done the right thing, but she shouldn’t have been such a coward about it.
Maybe it wasn’t too far-fetched that they could reconnect as friends. She hated the constraint she’d caused between them and the added bonus was she genuinely liked his grandmother.
If she sincerely apologised then surely a lot of the ill feeling would be over? It seemed he didn’t mind if she came to lunch so that was a good sign.
And afterwards she could get on with enjoying her trip. Soak it all up in the way she hadn’t yet started to do because of remembering her youth and Connor and her last-minute aborted wedding.
The whole trip would be over by tomorrow evening and she would have wasted it dwelling on the past.
She felt a strange sense of settlement as the decision was made. Funny how things worked out.
Wolfgang returned with the bottle of champagne and offered her a refill. She appreciated his generosity in the circumstances. ‘You can tell her, yes, thank you.’ She looked at her brimming glass. ‘Just make sure I don’t fall over on the way to lunch.’
He nodded with a smile. ‘My pleasure, madam. I will return at five minutes to the hour to escort you to the correct dining car.’
‘Lovely, thanks.’
Kelsie put down the glass and glanced at her watch. Eleven-thirty. And how long would lunch go on for? It couldn’t be too long because the second sitting had been set for an hour and a half later and they’d have to reset the tables.
She glanced at her satchel, still unpacked. Clothes!
As the magnificent scenery of the white-capped Italian Dolomites passed, Kelsie refreshed her make-up, brushed her hair, and with a certain excitement hung up her clothes for the meal after this one.
Her aunt had always stressed it would be black tie for the evening meal on the train when she’d first mooted the idea of realising her dream, and Kelsie wanted everything to be ready when she came back after lunch.
They’d often laughed about Kelsie wearing off-the-shoulder velvet on the Orient Express, and while it wasn’t velvet or off the shoulder, the black uncrushable gown was suspended by gold links of chain above her breasts and fell from beneath her bust to the floor.
