Lisa Plumley - Notorious in the West

Someday, perhaps, Morrow Creek would be a bustling place, full of vigor and industry and stirring intellectual societies. At the moment, though, Olivia’s rough-hewn hometown lacked everything from a decent mercantile or a completed rail depot to a proper schoolhouse. Lessons were sporadic and held outdoors. The town leaders were attempting to woo an instructor from the East to educate the youth of Morrow Creek. Given their current rate of progress, such a teacher’s potential students would have long gray beards before that teacher’s hiring was complete.

It was fortunate for Olivia that her father was so brilliant. Without Henry Mouton’s tutoring and encouragement—and willingness to barter with the J. G. O’Malley & Sons traveling book agent who occasionally came through town—Olivia would have been in quite a fix herself. As it was, she spent less time studying, though, than she did helping with the day-to-day duties of running her beloved father’s nascent hotel business. At the moment, The Lorndorff Hotel was not much more than a few nailed-together timbers for beams, an array of canvas for walls and several lumpy beds. But someday, Olivia knew, the hotel would define Morrow Creek as a place for sophisticated and educated folk to gather, converse and entertain socially.

The collecting crowd was right to be interested, Olivia reasoned as the peddler’s avowals grew ever more animated and persuasive. At least some of the claims the man was making had to be true. This was the nineteenth century after all! Miraculous scientific achievements had taken place.

Some of those achievements had been made by women, too. Olivia knew that because she loved to read. She’d learned about Mary Fairfax Somerville’s experiments with magnetism and about Maria Mitchell’s astronomical discovery of her new comet. Olivia had daydreamed about creating and publishing botanical photograms like Anna Atkins or unearthing a Plesiosaurus fossil like Mary Anning. She’d thrilled to periodical accounts of Lady Augusta Ada Byron’s invention of the analytical engine. Of course, she also idolized pioneering medical professionals such as the physician Elizabeth Blackwell and the tireless nurse Florence Nightingale. To Olivia, those women were true heroines.

While her best friend Annie’s oak bureau held hairbrushes and pearled pins and precious scraps of scented soap, Olivia’s makeshift crate-turned-nightstand held Familiar Lecturers on Natural Philosophy by the intellectual Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps. The work was somewhat dated, but it was fascinating—as was The Mechanism of the Heavens by Mary Somerville, another of her favorites. Naturally, Olivia also treasured her well-thumbed copies of texts by authors such as Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, but she preferred reading the work of female scientists and scholars. Somehow their achievements felt all the closer to her own life...and all the more real for it.

Even if those women didn’t live in a single-street Western town with not much more to brag of than a church, a popular saloon and more tobacco spittoons than were strictly reasonable.

As far as Olivia was concerned, anything was possible. The lives of the great women she’d studied proved it. They’d all asked questions, encountered important turning points in their lives and let their curiosity guide them on to greatness.

Maybe this encounter with the peddler’s scientific wonders was her own call to greatness, Olivia fancied. So, fully ready to begin her own quest for enlightenment, she stepped a little nearer. She picked up one of the bottles for closer study.

As she did, though, someone jostled her. Startled, Olivia held tight and glanced to the side...only to see a familiar and dispiriting sight. Old Mr. Richter, one of the railway foremen, was staring at her with a contemplative expression on his face.

He tipped his hat. “Afternoon, Miss Mouton.”

In time with his greeting, his gaze dropped to her skirts. He peered at their simple calico folds as though hoping to penetrate them, then moved on to her high-buttoned bodice...and lingered. His attention took a very meandering path back to her face, leaving her feeling fidgety and uncomfortable in its wake.

Ugh. Why did men have to ogle her? She’d noticed this happening more often as she grew taller and more mature. Her father insisted the townspeople were merely being friendly. Olivia had her doubts. The leers she garnered didn’t feel like simple neighborliness. But without a mother to rely upon for advice—her own poor mama had died during the journey westward—Olivia was on her own, swimming in a sea of adult interactions she wasn’t entirely prepared for and certainly did not want.

Politely, she inclined her head. “Hello, Mr. Richter.”

With that accomplished, Olivia directed her attention back to the patent remedy in her hand. Studiously, she examined its label. It purported to use bottled extractive magnetism as a curative. That was an innovative approach that Olivia had never heard of before. According to Mary Fairfax Somerville’s work—

Before she could consider the scientific implications further, Mr. Richter’s brusque voice intruded on her thoughts.

“Did your pa talk to you about my prop’sition?”

Oh, no. The railway foreman had to be referring to his facetious offer—made at her father’s tent hotel over cups of Old Orchard whiskey late one night—to “get that girl’s head outta them books and into some wifely duties, where it belongs!”

“I thought you were joking.” Reluctantly, Olivia postponed her examination of the magnetism-based curative. She gave him a direct look—one she hoped he’d perceive. “If you were joking, Mr. Richter, that would save us both from embarrassment.”

He did not recognize her attempts to sidestep the issue. Instead, Mr. Richter merely scratched himself absently while the medicine-show man began making sales and collecting coin.

“Ain’t nothin’ embarrassing about getting hitched to a beautiful woman.” He spat tobacco juice. “No, ma’am.”

“Mr. Richter!” This time it was Olivia’s turn to gawk. And likely to blush, as well. “I am thirteen years of age!”

He shrugged. “That’s old enough, if your pa agrees.”

“My father will not agree.”

“Then I’ll bide my time.” Plainly unperturbed and undeterred, Mr. Richter tipped his hat. “I can be patient.” He cast a glance at the peddler’s preserved exotic fruits, raised an eyebrow at their scandalous promises to bestow “bull-like stamina” then sauntered away without purchasing anything.

Irked to have had her stimulating outing interrupted for such a nonsensical reason, Olivia turned toward the medicine show’s wagon—only to come face-to-face with the alert gaze of a dark-haired, lean-looking Romany man. She recognized him, having glimpsed him earlier, as the medicine show’s driver and bagman.

Evidently, he’d overheard her conversation with Mr. Richter, because he aimed a disgusted glance at the foreman.

“Some men, eh? They have no finesse.” The bagman leaned confidingly nearer, his warmth compelling in the cool mountain air. “A girl like you deserves better. You are—” he gave an elegant wave “—special. Very special. I saw that right away.”

Olivia couldn’t help feeling vindicated by his perceptiveness—and a little thrilled, too. “Well,” she said, “that puts you one boot ahead of Mr. Richter, doesn’t it?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well. I’m sorry. What I meant was—”

“I am at least two boots ahead of him,” the bagman corrected her with a teasing grin. “Give me time. I will show you this.” Convivially, his gaze dipped to the remedy bottle in her hand. “You are interested in curatives? In perhaps traveling far and wide, like me, and seeing all the wonders of the countryside?”

“I am!” At least this man hadn’t tried undressing her with his eyes, Olivia reflected. He obviously—amiably—appreciated her intellectual curiosity, too. “Most people in Morrow Creek don’t think much about what’s outside it. But I do. All the time!”

The bagman gave a wise nod. “That is two of us, then. But you do not need any remedies of this kind.” Gently, he touched the bottle in her hand. “This one is for—” he paused, offered a few words in an accented dialect she didn’t understand then translated “—old people. You are not old. You are...magnificent!”

He kissed his fingertips as he said it, then flung his showy kiss to the territorial skies in a grand, gallant gesture. His dark eyes sparkled with good humor and attentiveness. Olivia couldn’t help liking him—or being intrigued by him. His close-trimmed beard lent him a keenly romantic air. His tattered finery and unfamiliar European inflection gave him an exoticism that felt far too exciting for staid Morrow Creek.

Finally. Here was someone who’d speak seriously to her. Someone who’d respect her curiosity and her bookishness alike.

Heaven knew, most people in Morrow Creek couldn’t fathom either of those qualities. Annie expected Olivia to gush over dressmaking illustrations in Godey’s. Her father expected her to be helpful be quiet, and be in bed by ten. Nothing more.

“Thank you,” Olivia said, quickly dispensing with the bagman’s flattery. “Now. This nostrum,” she said eagerly, raising the remedy bottle again. “Can you explain how the magnetic properties survived the bottling process? Surely they’re too volatile to withstand boiling?”

The man laughed. “Ah! You are delightful!”

Delightful? “Thank you, but I truly am interested in the process,” Olivia explained, “and in magnetism in general.” Didn’t he realize that was what made her “special” in his eyes? “You see, Miss Fairfax Somerville’s experiments proved that—”

He startled her by clasping his hand, warm and weathered, atop hers. “There is no need for this pretense. I am here! You have captured my attention.” Like magic, the bagman deftly withdrew the curative she’d held. “You do not care about this.”

Momentarily captivated by the sleight of hand he’d performed, Olivia stared. Then she blinked. “Yes, I do.”

His wave dismissed her. “Women do not think of such things. You were pretending, to make me see you. And I do see you.”

With a charming manner, he gave her a bow to prove it. But this time, Olivia belatedly noticed he was using that chivalrous gesture to sneak a peek at her ankles. The rogue!

“Never mind. I’ll ask your employer for the information.”

Staunchly, Olivia marched to the peddler’s wagon and the circle of townspeople. She waited, feeling—and ignoring—the bagman’s flirtatious gaze on her all the while. When finally the peddler turned his attention to her, she was prepared.

“Good afternoon,” Olivia said firmly. “I do not want a proposal or a proposition from you. All I want to know is—”

“Yes!” The peddler widened his eyes. “You!”

“—how your curative with the bottled extractive magnetism was created. Are you the inventor? Or did someone else—”

But the peddler only cast out his arm to silence the waiting crowd. He stared raptly at her. He nodded.

“You are perfect!” he cried dramatically. “Perfect!”

Fully out of patience now, Olivia put her hands on her hips. “Unless you mean I’m perfect at asking questions you can’t wait to answer, I honestly don’t see what that has to do with—”

“You must agree to pose for me,” the peddler interrupted. He stepped nearer, then chuckled. “I mean, for a lithographer, of course. I need a model to grace the bottles of my forthcoming Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic. With your face on the label, I’ll sell thousands!”