Orange Blossom Time

PART FOUR: Clyde may have defended her honour but his worries  disappearance Rosina - as does the sudden frost...

- KATE FINNEMORE

Taut with shock, her skin crawling, Rosina watched Leonard Stratton-Macey step out onto the boardwalk outside the saloon.

Clyde and a man in a top hat were close behind him.

The hairs at Rosina's nape came up. It wasn't possible. Or maybe it was. Stratton-Macey was a railway engineer. Was he the British man Clyde had been meeting? The man he and his fellow businessmen intended hiring to oversee the construction of the line through Citrus Grove to Lake Constanza?

He stood there, lighting his cigar, surveying the activity around him, the couples in their Sunday best strolling by arm in arm, the farm carts trundling past, the children laughing as they played chase. His gaze fell on Rosina and a wolfish smile curved his mouth. Without a moment's hesitation, he headed towards her.

Contempt curled inside her. He hadn't recognised her, Rosina was sure of that. No. He'd seen the sack of seed potatoes she held in one hand, the large bag of sugar in the other, and had concluded she was nothing more than a lowly servant or farmhand.

Fair game, in other words. Her chin coming up, she continued on over to the carriage. Distaste for the man and a growing anger simmered inside her. Stratton-Macey had assaulted her, attempted to rape her, yet she had been the one to suffer the consequences instant dismissal from her job and no reference. The injustice of it rankled still.

Glancing back, she saw he was still coming towards her. He walked with the arrogant swagger of a man confident of his own superiority and she felt her contempt build. Beyond him, she could see Clyde, in the saloon doorway, talking animatedly to the man in the top hat.