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steel-strengthened corset was the way to proper posture. Underneath one shoulder blade, it had broken the skin. Miss Adams had applied a stinging salve to it the previous evening. I knew she could not fail to notice the other marks, but she said nothing and had laced me up just as tightly that morning. When I asked if I might travel in a looser, shorter set she refused. Apparently, Mama had told her that upon my arrival I should be straight into the smartest of San Franciscan society and I must not let myself down with a sloppy figure. Accustomed as I was to being constrained, the days had become very painful and more than once I had had to hide a tear whilst waiting to dress in the mornings, facing yet another day of imprisonment.
    We met few people on the trail and the team had seen orheard little regarding the whereabouts of the Indian tribes. Supposedly, it was common for bands of the young men, sometimes as few as two but other times as many as two dozen, to roam the country whilst the others stayed in one place. According to Mr Goldsmith, who had travelled this trail more than once, some of the local Indians were even farmers and did not use horses much, although others lived almost their entire lives on horseback.
    The horseback tribes, Mr Goldsmith told me, were great hunters of the buffalo, of which we had seen so many on the plains on the way here. Thousands, in such multitudes it was hard to imagine before seeing them. I had smelt them from the train window. The bulls, as they were called, were gigantic, far more massive than even the largest of the London dray horses. Abundance seemed to be everywhere, here in America: once, the train had followed an astonishing migration of birds, pigeon Mr Goldsmith said, so many we were with them for hours and they darkened the sky above us.
    And it was not only the animals that caught my attention: here and there, we had seen Indians, all on horseback, usually sitting stock-still and watching the train passing. Now we were heading through the country of the southern tribe whose name I could not spell towards the Blackfoot territory, before skirting the edge of the Flatheads’ land. Part of me quaked in fear at the idea that we would encounter Indians, but now I know another part of me wanted an adventure before we reached San Francisco. I did not know at that moment, of course, what an adventure I would have.
    My eyes stayed on the page but lost their focus as I thought about my new life. Before we had separated at Portsmouth, Mama had given Miss Adams a pamphlet that I was to read on the crossing, about wifely duties. I suspect she thought that, had I read it before leaving Portman Square, I may not have boarded that steamship.
    It spoke only of duty and tolerance. My tolerance, that is. Tolerance towards what was expressed as my marital duties and my husband’s natural physical needs. I had no knowledge of what form this ‘tolerance’ was to take, or what ‘physical’ part I might play in it. I regretted that Mama had not given me the pamphlet herself, so that I might have been able to ask her, but I also guessed that this was precisely what she had been trying to avoid. There were, I knew, issues of some delicacy surrounding private married life. I just wished I knew what they were. Mama and I had shared a bedroom all my life. Papa had suggested the year before that I might take one of the other six bedrooms, but Mama had refused, saying she required my company. He lived in a different wing of the house and the only ‘physical’ thing I had ever seen my parents do together was walk into dinner, my mother’s hand on my father’s arm. Miss Adams proved herself, once again, no great help, by staunchly refusing to discuss the pamphlet’s existence after handing it over to me.
    The coach slowed. Mr Goldsmith leant down from his perch on the roof. ‘Bridge, ladies,’ his disembodied voice said somewhere above the open window.
    It