Serenity, Michigan
December, 1879
Hardscrabble men were not the only people who regularly took one of the boomtown express trains that ran to Serenity from points around the nation. Just as had been the case in California some thirty years before, enterprising women heard the news of the lumber operations there, and knew that where thousands of hardworking men congregated, there would be a need for equally hardworking women.
Upon arrival, these women found work washing clothes, (and any one of the women who did this job would tell you that the lumbermen hadn’t made use of the service often prior to their arrival). They also opened and ran restaurants, served as tailors, teachers, as well as pretty much any other role which opened itself to them or to which they pulled the reluctant door open on hinges that protested when they did.
There was, of course, one career path that was dominated by women, and many of the lonely damsels who stepped off of the train at the soot-covered station in the heart of Serenity thought they were coming to Michigan to be cooks and seamstresses, only to find that those positions had been filled by those who’d gotten the jump on them, and that the only work available, while it also involved jumping on, was not the one they’d anticipated. A ready-made “Plan B.”
For Guinevere Carver, there was no “Plan A.” Gwen had left New York City, kicking the dust of that filthy place from her polished boots as she’d stepped off of platform at the Grand Central Depot, only eight years old and called obsolete by many on the day it opened in 1871.
At no point in her journey to Michigan had she considered any other career path upon arrival. It had been what she’d done since leaving home at age sixteen. In the ten years since she had done the job well, and she saved a little money where she could, so that when the news of the Michigan lumber boom reached her, she was able to buy a fine dress—although it was last season’s fashion—and the boots which were about to step onto the platform in Serenity. Her parasol completed the picture of a sophisticated woman from the East.
She had, in fact, heard the news only ten days earlier. It had been the same day that New York City, now home to nearly two million people, had become too small for her. Because in the dark streets of Manhattan on that night she had narrowly missed being seen plying her trade by the man she’d run away to escape, her lecherous father, who had secured the services of a girl she knew. She had turned a corner onto 48th street and made out his face in the ghoulish lamplight as he agreed to terms with Suzzette, then vanished with her into the shadows.
He was a long way from the family’s uptown tenement, but it was clearly no longer far enough. Later that night she heard another girl say she was leaving New York for the clean air of northern Michigan. She said the men out there were strong and handsome and had not been crushed down by the weight of the expanding city. There were enough men to keep a girl’s bed full for as many hours as she cared to work.
The image of Gwen’s father prowling the streets she walked was not something she ever hoped to see again. So the following morning when the shops opened, so did her purse. She bought the dress, a matching hat and gloves, the boots, and lastly the frilly parasol. Then she headed to the train station. Three years before an express train had crossed the country in only eighty-three hours from New York to San Francisco.
Michigan was much closer than California, but much farther than the Bronx, than her past. Than her father.
The train got into Serenity right on schedule, and though it was nearly eleven p.m., the place was bustling. And although the vast majority of the men she saw milling about looked nothing like the description provided by the other fleeing streetwalker, they were men, ultimately, and would sooner or later need someplace soft. Someone soft.
Even after ten years on the streets of New York City, Gwen Carver was still delightfully soft, and most easy to look upon. She was blessed with a strong constitution and had never fallen prey to the myriad of maladies that routinely befall practitioners of her mode of livelihood. For all her hatred of her father, he was also a robust man, and he’d passed that on to her. Certainly she had not inherited the same frail constitution that had taken her mother from her when she was still just a child.
And that meant that she often caught the eye of a wealthier clientele.
“Ha!” she snorted, her breath curling in front of her as it hit the chill winter air. There was not much danger of tripping over a member of the gilded class in this place!
She took a few steps away from the hissing train and had a look around. What she saw caused her to blink her eyes a few times. She’d lived her whole life in New York City, so noise and bustle were not new to her—but this was something else again.
It was far closer to midnight than it was to noon, but you wouldn’t know it based on the level of activity in Serenity. Not only was the saloon swinging, as she’d expected it to be, but every shop window was lit, and the sound of feet on the wooden walkways in front of them was cacophonous, as was the banging and sawing noises—the burgeoning population making round-the-clock construction essential.
What Gwen realized, as the sum of it disoriented her, was that all of the sounds and sights were surrounded so closely by wilderness—the very trees that brought all of these people to this place—that it seemed not quite real.
A city built in the woods, she thought.
And indeed, the closest thing to a man of means in view was the train conductor, and he was fixing to leave town. Even as she turned to look back at him, he closed his watch and tilted back his head.
“All aboard!”
A moment later the steam engine, in a cloud of its own creation, pulled away. Gwen watched it go, smiling at the red lights as they vanished into the swirl.
“Good riddance,” she said, speaking not so much to the train as to all the memories she’d left on it when she got off. She was ready for a new life in a new place. And while all she’d seen thus far were rough and lonely men, she held out hope there might be a diamond somewhere in all of this rough.
And then she saw him.
At first Gwen thought her hardiness had failed her. She thought she was seeing visions—wild delusions. How, in this place could there be a man in a jauntily tilted top hat, in a suit that looked like had been molded to him, wearing an opera cape and holding a walking stick topped with a jewel so big she could see it sparkle from thirty feet away, simply appear from a cloud of steam and dust?
Yet there he was.
Gwen knew nothing about Serenity, really, other than there would be a steady supply of work there. She didn’t know if it had a mayor, but if it did this apparently real person—for he had not vanished when she’d rubbed her eyes—this person must be he. Unless Serenity had a king, in which case it should also be him.
She could not recall so fine a figure of man ever crossing her path in New York. And her path had been crossed incessantly.
He approached her, smiling.
“I don’t mean to impose or disturb,” he called while still ten feet away. “but I cannot help notice you seem a bit unsure of where you need to go. I have lived here all of my life. Perhaps I could be of assistance. Where are you looking to be?”
His voice was as smooth as the rest of him appeared. His smile did something odd to her. At first she could not identify it.
The fact that Gwen did not understand is very understandable. Having to lay with men in a constant parade of faceless dicks, one quickly learns to feel nothing. And so Gwen had essentially never really had a single genuine sexual urge. Until this moment. It was a little twitch between her legs that tipped her off finally.
“I—I’m afraid I actually don’t know where I need to be, sir,” she said, trying to sound as little like a gutter-wren as possible. “I am, clearly, just arrived, but I confess beyond coming to your town, sir, my planning does not extend very far. In short, I have nowhere to be.”
“Ah, I see. So, no one to meet you then? No one I could take you to?”
She looked to the ground, an action she’d perfected over the years but now did involuntarily.
“No, sir,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry?” the man said, holding his gloved hand to his ear.
“I said have no one, sir, and nowhere to go.”
“Well,” he said. To Gwen, he seemed to be making up his mind. “Well. That will not do.”
The man turned and pointed to a distant pair of lights, seemingly hovering above the town.
“Those are lights from the windows of my home. You cannot make the house out well at this distance and in darkness, but it is quite large. In fact, I make many of my spare rooms available to some of the most down on their luck men when they first arrive in Serenity. Now, I would never have you stay in a room after one of that lot has vacated it, as they tend to leave behind reminders of themselves. I endeavor to control the pests, but frankly the men do not even notice.
“I do, however, have a splendid room that no lumberjack has ever seen. It was my mother’s room. It has been left just as it was on the day she died.”
Gwen held her own white-gloved hand to her mouth, and the man laughed easily.
“Ah, yes. Well, mother is no longer there, of course, but aside from that it is just as she would remember it—were she here to recall.”
“But, sir,” Gwen said, already imagining the feel of the mattress beneath her, “it would be improper of me!”
“Nonsense!” the man objected. “My philanthropy is well known in these parts. Were anyone to notice at all they would think nothing of it. Just another soul in need assisted.”
“Are there many men housed there now?” she asked, hoping she sounded slightly frightened. She was actually mentally counting money at the thought of a houseful of randy lumbermen.
“There are, in fact, none. The last guest …” He paused, seeming to seek the right word. “… moved on earlier today.”
“So there is no one, sir, in the house save yourself?”
“Ah, yes. I hear the dark in that. It shows great character and breeding that you would stress that point. There is another. My elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Chance.”
Gwen continued to do calculations. She scrapped the possible revenue from other guests, then factored in the presence of the cleaning woman. Not necessarily an impediment.
The feeling of warmth in a region she’d long thought dead, coupled with the man’s obvious wealth opened a new avenue of thought to the girl. What if she had not come to Serenity to continue her trade at all. Perhaps she’d come to find herself a rich lumber baron, settle down, and get fat in her forties. In any case the presence of the old woman made accepting the offer seem less brazen.
“In that case sir, only one thing stands in the way of our departing together. Introductions. I am Guinevere Carver,” she said, offering her hand. “My friends call me Gwen.”
The man took the offered hand and raised it gently to his lips, kissing it ever so lightly. The sensation caused the twitching to come again.
“I am Michael Parré.” He paused. “Dr. Michael Parré.”
A doctor! Gwen thought. I’ve won the bloody sweepstakes!