Preview of Two Wars and a Wedding by Lauren Willig
Preview of Two Wars and a Wedding by Lauren Willig
Tampa, Florida
June 2, 1898
Betsy Hayes arrived in Florida with a single carpetbag and sick on her skirt.
The sick wasn’t hers. It was courtesy of a three-year-old who’d been in her compartment since Savannah. The one benefit to her noxious state, as far as she could see, was that the other passengers tended to give her a wide berth. Betsy’s dress felt stiff with sick and her legs felt stiff with sitting and her brain felt stiff with trying to make sense of a situation that didn’t make sense at all.
Betsy wasn’t supposed to be in Florida, barreling toward a war she knew nothing about. She was supposed to be in Greece, digging up antiquities and showing the Harvard boys how it should be done. One minute, there she had been, a newly minted graduate of Smith College, one of only two women at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, all prepared to batter down the prejudices of the male establishment—but then it had all gone so very wrong and now here she was, on a train in the middle of nowhere, covered with someone else’s vomit, trying to stop her best friend from making the same mistakes she had made.
She had to find Ava and stop her from sailing to Cuba.
We’re at war with Spain, in case you haven’t noticed, which you probably haven’t, Ava had written, and, of course, Ava was right, as Ava so often was. From the chatter on the train from New York to Florida, Betsy gathered the war was something to do with the Spanish oppressing the Cubans. Or possibly something to do with the Spanish blowing up an American ship and then lying about it. Betsy didn’t like to ask and she didn’t much care. She’d learned in Greece that it wasn’t the cause that mattered; even the best of intentions wouldn’t stop wounds from festering and disease from spreading.
Two miles to Tampa, the conductor had said. But that had been an hour ago, before the train had stopped with an abrupt jolt, and here they were still. Not moving. Stuck in the middle of nowhere in an endless night made hideous with the belch of coal smoke and enough shouting and clattering and clanking to keep even the most exhausted awake.
“Hey diddle diddle, the train and the fiddle,” sang the loathsome tot who had been ill on Betsy’s skirt, singing the wrong words and then hooting as though he’d done something clever.
The child’s mother was heavily pregnant and feeling it. As Betsy watched, the little boy bumped up against his mother’s arm and, green-faced, weary, the mother lifted her arm so he could snuggle against her, bump in the belly and all.
Betsy’s eyes stung. With the smoke, the blasted smoke. Good heavens, did no one know how to open a window around here?
Rising abruptly, Betsy grabbed her carpetbag off the rack overhead. She didn’t care if it was two miles to Tampa. What was two miles? She’d walk if she had to. If she didn’t get out of this compartment soon, they would clap her straight into one of those depressing places where they prescribed cold baths and electrical shocks and called it healing.
The pregnant woman lifted her head from her son’s. Betsy could see the fine lines the boy’s hair had made on her cheek, imprinted on her. “Where are you going?”
“I’m finding out what’s going on out there,” Betsy lied.
The woman blinked at her. “With your case?”
Betsy pretended not to hear. She swung herself out of the compartment and onto the ground. She had failed to take into account that there wasn’t a platform there, so it was a longer way down than she’d expected. She landed hard on her left foot and staggered before righting herself. The ground on the side of the track was dirt and scrub, studded with chunks of coal that bit through the thin soles of her boots.
She wasn’t the only one taking a break from the train. Half the US Army appeared to have had the same idea. She could see them as dark shadows, as the red circles of cigar butts glowing in the darkness. But even if she hadn’t been able to see them, the smell of an army on the move was unmistakable: unwashed bodies and tinned beef; black powder and oiled leather.
Despite the heat, Betsy was suddenly cold through, shivering in her sick-stained, sweat-soaked dress. Her hands felt numb and bloodless; she rubbed them together, dragging in tortured breaths of thick, smoke-clogged air. Florida. She was in Florida. Not Greece. Two miles from Tampa. Just two miles. Two miles to go.
She drew herself up. She’d been traveling for days, from train to ship to train. Enough to make anyone dizzy. She was fine. Fit as a fiddle. She’d walk to Tampa if need be.
From Two Wars and a Wedding by Lauren Willig, published by William Morrow. Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Willig. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollinsPublishers book link
Preview of Two Wars and a Wedding by Lauren Willig
