It was a lovely dinner, with fresh lobster baked in a delicate wine sauce. Caroline ought to be embarrassed by her niggling sense of annoyance, but Nathaniel had been ignoring her from the moment they set off from Washington earlier that afternoon. He deliberately looked past her as people selected their seats, choosing to sit with Rembrandt and Alfred Medina, the communications officer with the nervous tic. Even though Nathaniel was avoiding her, she still sensed him stealing glances at her, but each time she tried to catch him in the act, his gaze immediately slid away.

Caroline dined with the three congressmen’s wives. Emmaline Foster’s husband was likely to become the next Speaker of the House, so the McKinleys were catering to him by inviting him to share their small table, but his wife had to sit at the ladies’ table. Mrs. Foster had a headful of tightly pinned steel-gray curls and a smile of barbed wire.

“Please stop daydreaming,” Mrs. Foster snapped at Caroline. “For the third time, I am telling you that I insist on sharing a carriage with the first couple on our visit to Monticello tomorrow, and yet you stare into space and ignore my request.”

Caroline maintained a pleasant expression even though Mrs. Foster was treating her like a peasant. “The carriage assignments are already in place,” she said. The train would pull into Charlottesville in the morning, and after a quick tour of the University of Virginia, the presidential party would ride in a string of carriages to Thomas Jefferson’s historic home. “The security team made the arrangements for seating. I don’t know if there is any leeway.”

“Then please inquire,” Mrs. Foster said. “My husband and I have only a limited time to travel with the president, and I didn’t expect to spend it foisted off on the help.”

Caroline seized the opportunity. “Let me go ask for you,” she said, leaving her seat and heading to Nathaniel’s table on the far side of the car. “Might I speak with you alone for a moment?” she said to him.

He shifted uneasily and didn’t meet her gaze. “I’m in the middle of the lobster,” he said. “It’s likely the last time we’ll be served seafood on the train.”

“I have a question about security during tomorrow’s trip to Monticello.”

He didn’t look happy, but he couldn’t shirk his duties either. He dabbed his mouth with a napkin, pushed away from the lobster feast, and gestured her toward the corridor connecting to the next car.

The communications car was empty but already a sloppy mess, and they weren’t even six hours into the journey. The journalists had left papers and reference manuals stacked up beside a jumble of wires and telegraph machines. It looked like organized chaos, but at least the car was private.

Nathaniel pulled the door shut but didn’t face her.