The Stranger's Secrets by Beth Williamson

ticket for this compartment and I will not allow you to stop me.” Mavis’s screech could be heard two states away.
    A low murmur of a man’s voice responded. Whitman stepped out to discover what was going on, grateful to have the opportunity to give Mavis a lesson in polite behavior.
    A porter stood there shaking his head. A fuming Mavis, with her hands on her hips, tried to push past him.
    “Ma’am, I told you, that ticket is for a seat in the public car up ahead, not the private compartments.” He was a big man with steel gray hair and a square jaw set in stone.
    Mavis stamped her foot. “That is not true. I was in there yesterday.” She spotted Whitman and her gaze narrowed.
    “Having trouble, Miss Ledbetter? You know what they say, what goes around comes around.” Whitman folded his arms across his chest. He ignored the little voice inside reminding him there were stains on his soul, worse than pushing a crippled woman—far worse.
    “It’s none of your business. Porter, this man is in the same compartment as me. Ask him.” She stuck a finger in the big man’s chest.
    “I don’t have to, ma’am. I can see on your ticket where you are supposed to be. Now if you don’t want to listen to me, you are welcome to disembark now.” He glanced at Whitman and nodded.
    “Tell him!” Mavis shouted. “Tell him I am a passenger in the private compartment.”
    “I am certain you are sitting where you deserve to sit.” Whitman was pleased to see a flush spread across her cheeks.
    “You have no right to judge me, Mr. Kendrick.” She put her nose in the air. “I saw the way you were looking at that whore last night.”
    That was the final straw for Whitman. His temper snapped as he stalked toward her. She must’ve seen something in his face because she yelped, picked up her skirts, and fled.
    “This isn’t the end, Mr. Kendrick,” she called over her shoulder.
    The porter turned a questioning gaze on Whitman. “Do you know her?”
    Whit grimaced. “She was a paid companion who wanted to do nothing to earn her wages.”
    “Looks as if someone changed her ticket.” The porter almost grinned. “I don’t blame that someone at all.”
    “Neither do I.” Whitman walked back to the compartment to ask that someone what she’d done.
    To his surprise, Sarah was reading, looking comfortable and calm, as if Mavis hadn’t shoved her off the train five minutes earlier.
    “What are you doing?” He sat down across from her.
    “Reading a book. It’s a binding with paper and ink formed into letters and words.” Her sarcasm knew no bounds.
    “What did you do to Mavis’s ticket?”
    “Nothing.”
    Whitman gritted his teeth. How could she get under his skin so quickly? “Yesterday she had a ticket for a private compartment. Today it’s a seat in the public car. Explain that.”
    Sarah closed the book and met his gaze. “I didn’t change it. Yesterday I paid the porter extra money to allow her to be in this compartment.”
    He had trouble absorbing what she said. Then it dawned on him that Sarah didn’t trust Mavis from the beginning. “You knew she was going to be trouble?”
    “No, there are only a few people in this world I trust, and none of them are on this train. I paid Mavis to accompany me. How far was up to her. She chose to stay with me for one day.” Sarah shrugged. “She still has a ticket and a week’s pay.”
    Whitman didn’t trust easily either, but he wasn’t nearly as distrustful as Sarah. She assumed the woman she hired to be her companion would leave her.
    “Why did you hire her in the first place?”
    “I needed someone to come with me. She responded to the advertisement and I hired her.” Sarah opened the book again.
    Whitman tried to puzzle out her reasoning but it eluded him. “I still don’t understand why you chose her.”
    Without looking up, Sarah spoke. “She was willing to leave Virginia.”
    Used to a military environment, Whitman didn’t normally question orders;