Free An Untamed Land by Lauraine Snelling

really that important?

 
    S urely they couldn’t have moved the place overnight. Ingeborg wound the strings of her reticule tightly around her fingers. Where had she gone wrong? She glanced up at the tall building on her left. Had she seen it before? Was it today—or yesterday? How could she, who had never in her entire life gotten lost in the mountains or forests of home, be so confused in this maze of dirty buildings and even filthier streets?
    She could feel her nostrils twitch at the foul stench that rose from the open sewer running by the curb. While the snow had temporarily whitened the world this morning, now the streets were full of passing carts and carriages that splashed mud all over everything, including her skirts.
    She thought back to one of the Bjorklund family’s heated discussions on the new land. Some had said the streets were paved with gold. If New York, the largest city in Amerika, was any indication, the only gold to be found lay in the dreams of the immigrants.
    She looked up and down each street of the intersection, praying for a glimpse of the immigration center. Castle Garden was far too large an edifice to hide behind anything. It had to be here somewhere.
    Where was she? Nothing looked familiar to the streets they had passed yesterday.
    A shiver of fear added to the chill from the wind that had been kicking up ever since the sun disappeared behind scudding gray clouds. If the weather here acted like that at home, more snow was imminent. If she couldn’t find the center, how would she ever find her way back to the boardinghouse?
    Another shiver chased the first. Fear made her mouth dry.
    She paused an instant too long on the curb. A tall man, looking even taller with his beaver hat, jostled her on the right.
    Caught just as she was stepping out with her right foot, the bump made Ingeborg stagger. Coming down hard, a patch of ice under the snow sent her sliding into a portly gentleman on her other side, and straight toward becoming an ignominious heap on the cobblestones.
    But as quickly as she slipped, the first gentleman spun around and grabbed her arm, literally lifting her back to her feet and safe onto the sidewalk. It all happened so quickly that Ingeborg only had time for a tiny shriek. But in that instant, her imagination had her huddled in a puddle on the streets of New York City.
    “Mange takk,” she whispered at the same moment he asked her a question. At least it must have been a question because of both the inflection and the questioning look on his handsome face.
    “I asked if you are all right?”
    Ingeborg looked up at him, certain the shock of hearing her own language on the lips of a fashionably dressed gentleman on the sidewalk of New York must be registered on her face.
    “You speak Norwegian?”
    “Yes. Since birth.” The smile that lifted the corners of his mouth lacked the stiffness of those passersby she’d noticed in her travels of the morning. “But I must know, did you injure yourself in the slip?” he persisted.
    Ingeborg shook her head, making her hat bounce alarmingly. As the black brim tipped slightly forward over one eyebrow, she wished for a pit of quicksand beneath her feet, rather than the icy, rounded cobblestones.
    “But you talk like an Amerikan.” Ingeborg ignored the voice of her mother echoing in her ears, the voice that warned her against speaking with a man to whom she’d never been formally introduced.
    With a gentle hand on her arm, the tall stranger drew her back out of the melee of rushing pedestrians and against the protection of a brick wall. “I am an American, but my nursemaid was a fine Norwegian girl, straight from the old country. By the time I could talk, I spoke either language easily.”
    As he talked, Ingeborg tried to unobtrusively push her wayward hat back in place. The stubborn thing tipped even farther, and the feather, of which she’d been so proud, now tickled the end of her nose. She batted it away with one impatient