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chosen to come?
    She reached into her reticule for her mother’s locket watch to check the time, and her fingers brushed against a piece of paper. She pulled it out. The address Uncle Antoine had written down on a torn piece of stationery. From one of his many trips, she knew. This one to New York, to the Perrault Gallery. New York was a place she never wished to visit again either. However, in comparison to Nashville . . .
    Uncle Antoine had instructed her to report to the residence as soon as she arrived, and assured that she would be well taken care of until they joined her. Papa had said the same just before she’d boarded the carriage. But with nearly five hundred miles separating her from them now, she didn’t feel the same pressure to comply as she had the night she’d left.
    And yet . . .
    She had no arrangements other than the ones already made, whatever those were. And no money left either, having spent the few coins she’d had on meager rations of food along the way. Standing there, satchel in hand, her brief dream of independence and adventure puddled pathetically at her feet, and her choices narrowed to one.
    “Sir?” She flagged down a porter. “Would you be so kind as to give me directions to this address?”
    “Surely, ma’am.” He glanced at the paper. A brow rose. “That’s a ways from here, but not a bad walk on such a pretty afternoon. And a nice part of the city too. Lots of shops and galleries.”
    Encouraged by his comments, Claire focused as he told her the way, drawing a map with her mind’s eye. She thanked him and set out but had barely reached the end of the station platform when an oversized wooden crate being unloaded from one of the freight cars drew her attention.
    As did one of the men beside it.
    The man definitely wasn’t an employee of the railroad, Claire surmised—not with the expensive cut of suit he wore. And not with the way the other men looked to him for instruction.
    “Careful, gentlemen. Please!” Shedding his suit coat, he came alongside the dockworkers and lent his strength as they eased the crate down the ramp. Judging by the strain on the men’s faces, the crate’s contents were considerable.
    “Care to inspect it, Mr. Monroe?” a dockworker asked, wiping his forehead. A trace of Ireland lilted his voice. “Before we load it on the wagon, sir?”
    “No, that’s all right, Jacobs. We’ll do that out at the house. If there’s a problem, I’ll contact the gallery.”
    The gallery? Claire took a step closer, grateful for the signage partially concealing her curiosity.
    “This one came all the way from Rome, sir?” a worker asked Mr. Monroe. “Rome, Italy?”
    “It did.” Monroe smiled. It was an easy gesture, one that seemed to come as natural to him as breathing. “But the sculptor is an American.”
    An American . . . Claire strained to see writing on the side of the crate, anything that might yield more information, but she saw nothing.
    “I ain’t hardly believin’ that, sir,” another worker chimed in, his drawl rich with the South, his skin dark as burnished coffee and glistening in the sun. “That fine lady, she crosses that big ocean only to go and buy somethin’ one of our fellas made. . . .”
    “ One of our fellas . . . ” Claire grinned, pleased to see Mr. Monroe doing the same.
    Monroe tipped each of the workers and shook hands with Jacobs, gripping his forearm like older men sometimes did, even though he was younger than Jacobs by half. It was a friendly gesture, sincere, intimate. Which was surprising given Monroe’s obviously high social rank. What wasn’t surprising was to learn he was married.
    “ That fine lady . . . ” Mr. Monroe’s wife, Claire guessed. Still, she found it far more appealing to imagine that the fine lady was his mother, or older sister, or perhaps a rich elderly aunt. It made the world a much more interesting place.
    Emboldened by her invisibility, she studied him more closely.
    Handsome could’ve