Ethan Ridley took Sally Truslow to Muggeridge’s Drapery and Millinery in Exchange Alley where he bought her a parasol in printed calico to match her pale green linen cambric dress. She was also wearing a fringed paisley shawl, yarn stockings, a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with silk lilies, white ankle-length boots and white lace gloves. She carried a small beaded handbag and, in rude contrast, her old canvas bag.

“Let me hold the bag for you,” Ridley said. Sally wanted to try on a linen hat with a stiffened brim and a muslin veil.

“Take care of it.” Sally gave him the bag reluctantly.

“Of course.” The canvas bag was heavy, and Ridley wondered if she did have a gun in there. Ridley himself had a gun at his hip as part of his uniform. He was in the yellow trimmed gray of the Faulconer Legion, with a saber at his left hip and the revolver on his right side.

Sally turned around in front of the cheval mirror, admiring the hat. “It’s real nice,” she said.

“You look lovely,” Ridley said, though in truth he had found her company ever more grating in these last few days. She had no education, no subtlety and no wit. What she had was the face of an angel, the body of a whore, and his bastard in her belly. She also had a desperation to escape the narrow world of her father’s cramped homestead, but Ridley was too concerned for his own future to comprehend Sally’s plight. He did not see her as attempting to escape from an unbearable past, but as an extortioner trying to gouge a parasitical future. He did not see the fear in her, only the determination to take what she wanted. He despised her. At night, impassioned, he wanted nothing more than to be with her, but by day, exposed to her crude ideas and lacerating voice, he wanted only to be rid of her. And today he would be rid of her, but first it was necessary to lull her into complacency.

He took her to Lascelles Jewelry Store on Eighth Street where he listened to the owner’s splenetic complaints about the proposal to lay a railroad line directly outside his shop window. The line, which would run down the center of the steep street, was intended to connect the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac rails with the Richmond and Petersburg line so that military supplies could be carried across the city without the need to unload one set of rail wagons into horse-drawn carts. “But have they considered the effect upon trade, Captain Ridley? Have they? No! And who will buy fine jewelry with locomotives smoking outside? It’s preposterous!”