Hannah laid her embroidery in her lap. Her blonde hair was tied up in plaits and pinned with combs, making her look rather cold and Nordic.

‘Don’t you think it’s time you went to San Francisco and talked to Mr Laurence Melford?’

‘Melford? You mean about the railroad?’

‘Of course about the railroad. What else? The time is just ripe, with all this uncertainty about the coming elections. Even Laurence Melford isn’t going to be fool enough to ignore the possibility of war, and of Lincoln’s being elected.’

Collis finished mixing himself a stone fence, and then walked thoughtfully across the room. ‘I was going to wait to see the outcome of the elections themselves. But I guess you could be right.’

Hannah reached out her hand for him. ‘If the election goes to Douglas or to Breckinridge, then Melford will ignore you. If it goes to Lincoln, then everyone will be panicking too much to think clearly about railroads at all. Now is an ideal moment, don’t you think? It is far easier to trade on fears than it is on certainties.’

Collis squeezed her hand. ‘Hannah, my darling,’ he said, ‘I do believe you’ll make a fine businesswoman yet.’

She smiled. ‘I know my own weaknesses, Collis. That’s why I can see those in other people.’

‘Even in me?’ he asked her.

She nodded, happily. ‘A man without weaknesses is like a garden wall without a gate.’

Collis sipped his drink and thought about the plan he had devised for Laurence Melford. He hoped to God it would work; but, even more, he hoped to God that Hannah wouldn’t get to hear of it.

Collis did everything he could to persuade Hannah to stay at home in Sacramento while he went to San Francisco to deal with Laurence Melford, but she refused to hear of it. She had friends in San Francisco she wanted to visit, and shopping to do, and she also wanted to tend Walter’s grave. Collis, who before their marriage would have found it comparatively easy to insist that he should go alone, now found Hannah’s gentle obstinacy to be more than he could handle. So their maid, Lilah, packed Hannah’s trunk with nightdresses and frocks and bottles of cosmetics, and Hannah joined Collis on the deck of the steamer Renown in her most elegant cream cap and parasol.

They stayed at the International, mostly for the sake of sentiment. The manager shook Collis by the hand and welcomed him back, and gave Hannah a distinctly uneasy look.

‘Mrs Edmonds,’ explained Collis, without looking up from the register book.

The manager clasped his hands together and said, ‘Of course.’

‘The real Mrs Edmonds,’ said Collis, putting down the pen. ‘We were married in Sacramento in March.’

‘Of course,’ said the manager. ‘Congratulations.’