Before this story ends, I will be a murderer.

Oh, it was totally justified. The man deserved it, and as they say, “I did the world a favor” by my actions. But I tell you this because I think you already suspected that I was involved.

You’ve saved me and I shall pay you back that favor, for I always pay my debts, no matter which side of the ledger they are on. But as we say in our American West, I will be a square shooter. I’ll tell you about myself and how I got here, why I murdered him, before we enter a partnership to win back your honor.

Oh? You don’t want your old life back? Certainly, it is not because you don’t want it, for who would choose to live their life in this ragtag circus when you come from the upper echelons of British society?

You’re surprised that I know. Well, your accent gives you away. That isn’t the speech of someone raised in the gutter or the back alleys of some grand city. Even speaking Italian, you can’t hide it.

Do you think it is impossible to go back home? Or that I cannot achieve you your heart’s desire?

Hear my tale first before you are so quick to dismiss my abilities.

You say nothing. Is it your scruples? Just because you find me unsettling is no reason you shouldn’t welcome my assistance. Certainly, I’m not like the ladies you’ve danced and flirted with in the drawing rooms of your English mansions.

I’m more than they can ever be.

I know my independence discomfits you. That I don’t consult a man to tell me how to think.

I will tell you the value of men. They teach women in the harshest school, the one that is life. I’ve learned my lesson well at the hands of my husband. If you let a man be in charge, you become nothing but a puppet to dance to their tune. And sometimes the master is cruel to his little puppet. He might even cut her strings if she shows too much independence.

Or burn her.

Or imprison her in a box that he thinks she can never escape from.

Enough. I am getting ahead of myself.

Let’s begin this tale on my sixteenth birthday. My name? We won’t use the one I go by now, but a sobriquet: Jenny Townson. Jenny is a sweet, innocent young thing who could easily be mistaken for that girl the drawing-room ballad describes.

But Jenny has no bouncy yellow curls and cornflower blue eyes. No. She has hair dark as raven wings and gray eyes, like silver half-dollars. There is something unsettling about Jenny that doesn’t quite fit with the small-town girl she is.

I know you’ve struggled to place my accent. Am I Italian? French? Maybe you even thought I could be English. Is that when you began to suspect what I was? When you couldn’t figure out my nationality? Give me enough time to hear a local tongue, and I can chameleon-like, speak as well as any native.

Let me dispense with suspense. Jenny is from a small midwestern town in the state of Ohio, of the United States of America. That’s where she was raised and she would have stayed until her death from old age, but a man intervened.

Once again, I am getting ahead of myself. Let us start on the day that Fate rolled her dice to make things change for Jenny. The date? Eight years ago, on the day of my seventeenth birthday in 1894. It was the day they installed electric lighting on main street.

I see you thought me older than twenty-seven. Pain and starvation ages you, my friend. It lines your face and makes your eyes burn with a fire hotter than hell.

Enough! Now is not the time to be maudlin. Let us save the melancholy for later when the story grows sadder.

Let us return to Jenny, who just turned seventeen. An age of hope with vast opportunity stretching out unendingly to the horizon. Her moods can be mercurial as her emotions are still half in the schoolroom and not through the doorway to the other side, where adulthood awaits.

This innocent girl feels things passionately, and nothing angers her more than injustice. Which is all rather ironic since Jenny is about to be the victim of one of the greatest injustices she has ever known.

She walks down main street and admires the new lampposts they are installing. Jenny stops to talk to the workmen, asking them questions about how the wiring works. Will it be more expensive than gas, where does the electricity come from, and is electric brighter than gas?

Someone passing stops to listen and expresses a concern the new lights will spook the horses, but Jenny dismisses their worry with a toss of her head. “Progress is important and so the horses must learn,” she tells them before going on her way with a wave of goodbye to the workmen she has pestered and the matron who was worried about horses.

But it will be Jenny who must learn, for she and Fate are about to collide. Perhaps we should cry out and warn her? Beg her to turn away from her path and return home? But sixteen-year-old girls do not easily think they are in danger. They believe themselves invincible, never realizing this naïve belief is a paper armor, easily destroyed.

Certainly, you cannot expect a young girl to turn aside when she’s been given her birthday money and told to enjoy herself? She can spend the afternoon choosing another pair of gloves? Or perhaps a hat? But these ideas bore her, so instead she makes her way to the Carnegie library in hopes there might be a new book about places that aren’t so small that she can fantasize about visiting.

This girl is without parents and is being raised by a woman she calls grandmother. This is a polite fiction for no one believes they are related, as their features hail from different lineages. The girl’s dark coloring and sharp chin have an ancestry far from the land that produced the round and short Dutch woman with white-blond hair who looks after her. 

Still, the townsfolk act as if they believe the story because whatever their relationship, her grandmother is very generous with her money. She is also polite and amiable; she nods her head and lets the men on her porch speak without interruption when they visit. The woman attends church and does not gossip about her neighbors.

Jenny though is a hotter spark and the old men say she will get herself into trouble one day, while the younger ones tremble at the thought they might be that trouble if they were lucky.

“Has too many opinions for one as young as she,” says the bank manager. 

“She’ll outgrow it,” his wife tells him, hitching her third child up on her hip and wiping the young one’s face clean with a damp towel. “All she needs is a man.”

Isn’t that what most think about a young girl?

All she needs is a man?

Well, she is about to discover what a man is worth.

Jenny’s path is rather predictable, for the town isn’t so large that you can wander around downtown without reaching your destination within a few blocks. She crosses the street and turns left, her path on the sidewalk taking her past the service alley that backs to the town’s livery stable.

While she has already been given her allowance, she has her mind on her tonight’s birthday celebration, for her grandmother will gift her a piece of jewelry like she always does. This year it is bound to be more than pearls. Perhaps we can forgive her a little greed on her birthday, that special day when wishes are asked and often granted.

But the dilemma of whether rubies or emeralds would suit her best is abruptly swept away when she hears a smacking crack followed by a shriek of pain and a whining whimper. 

Jenny finds the source of the noise quickly: a man in the alley is raising a hand which holds a whip and he is bringing it down on the back of a dog. She moves quickly to confront him, for Jenny is a bold thing that has always had her way and at this time fears neither man nor beast.

Stepping between the man and the dog, she confronts him. “What are you doing?” Sensing a savior, the pup crawls under Jenny’s skirts for sanctuary. 

He is of middling height with an unshaven, dirty face. His bowler hat has a dent in it and his clothes give off a sour smell that makes her wrinkle her nose. 

“Don’t hit that dog again,” I warn him. Oh! How arrogant and splendid I was back in the day before I was taught the pain of impulsive action!

“And how will you stop me?”

As his hand comes up again, I crouch down over the dog, shielding it with my body and skirts. But the blow never comes.

“I’ll stop you,” says a deep masculine voice that I’ve never heard before. In a moment there is the sound of the whip hitting flesh, but the cry this time comes from the man with the bowler hat.

Opening my eyes, I see the back of the violent stranger running away down the alley, passing the curious horses that are corralled on either side.

A hand comes down to lift me up from my crouching position. My savior asks, “Are you all right?”

I know all the men in my class who live in this town. All the tiresome men who have paid me court or stopped by to share some lemonade on my grandmother’s porch. The ones who think asking “Do you think it will rain?” is a scintillating conversation.

He is none of them. “I’m fine, thanks to you.”

He tips his hat, a nice expensive one. “I’m glad to be of service.” 

It is hard to remember how he looked at that moment without being influenced by all that came later, but to make you understand, I must. Dark brown hair with gentle waves, and luminous brown eyes with black lashes. He draws a woman’s eyes across a room.

His face was far more handsome than yours, though I do think you are in better physical condition, notwithstanding the blood soaking through that bandage. Those muscles are probably due to all the manual work you do for the Bellinis. Horseback riding must make powerful thighs.

No, my protector exudes something more than you do; some appeal to a woman’s sensibility which would never make her think not of him being a friend but a lover.

“May I ask who I owe my gratitude to?”

“Mr. Karl Neumann.”

“You do not sound American, Mr. Neumann.”

“I am Swiss, Miss—?”

“Jenny Townson.” By this time something is rubbing against my ankles. Tucked under my dress, only the puppy’s beating tail can be seen. I reach down and heft him up in my arms, where he squirms, trying to lick my face.

Mr. Neumann tells me, “It looks like your friend appreciates you saving him.”

“Yes, but perhaps he should share some of his gratitude with you.” But when I lift the dog to Mr. Neumann’s face, he whimpers and tries to scramble out of my arms.

“Sorry, I am still holding the whip I took from that brute’s hand.” Mr. Neumann takes a step back and tosses it aside into the stubby grass. The pup calms down and I cradle him against me, not caring that his muddy paws are staining my dress front, for I have many more dresses and a maid to look after them.

“He may not like men after what happened. I’ve heard that some animals take a dislike to the sex which has hurt them.”

“Perhaps.” He smiles, which makes you want to find an excuse to keep talking with him. “What will you do with him?”

“I’d like to take him home and give him a good feeding. I can feel his ribs.”

“Do you live close by?”

I explain to him I have been dropped off by my grandmother’s driver and he is to meet me in a couple of hours.

“If it isn’t too presumptuous, perhaps I can take you home? My vehicle is nearby and it would solve the problem of this squirming hound.”

My first encounter with the man who destroyed my life. How it was masterfully planned for him to look the hero. For it was all planned, never doubt it, and no coincidence that a dog was the bait to persuade my tender girlish feelings to take Karl Neumann into an immediate liking.