Chapter 1.
Following in the wake of a trolley piled high with luggage and pulled by a profusely sweating and darkly muttering porter, James J. Moore turned and stopped to call after his daughter Barbara who, true to character, lagged indifferently at some distance behind. They had just set foot inside Chicago’s cavernous Union Station, after a short cab ride from the city’s luxurious Palmer House Hotel. In his hand he clutched their Pullman sleeping coach tickets and vouchers for the Pennsylvania Railroad train that was to convey them in style from Chicago to New York City via Philadelphia.
Moore was a self-made man, the epitome of the American ‘rags to riches’ ideal. He had built his fortune with extraordinary cunning and ruthlessness, cobbling together a thriving commercial empire based upon the advantageous locational position occupied by his home city of Duluth, situated at the head of navigation on the Great Lakes. Control of the port and the railroad lines extending into its resource-rich hinterland had enabled him to corner a sizable share of the market for eastward shipments of grain, timber and iron ore. Although a secondary player, by the standards of the great Barons of Minneapolis and Chicago, he was an up and coming force to be reckoned with.
But his ambition, now that he had achieved great wealth and power, had recently been turned to the one thing he lacked, inclusion in the ranks of high society … that is, he coveted but had yet to attain the social respect of America’s gilded elite. And it was for that reason that he had made the decision to leave Duluth and … along with his nineteen-year-old offspring, Barbara … take up stately residence in the East … in New York … to live amongst those whose acceptance he so desperately craved.
Halfway across the concourse, he slowed his pace to check his gold-plated fob watch. He knew that they must hurry. As usual, they were running late and, as usual it was his headstrong and often wayward offspring who was the cause.
A quick glance back told him that she was no longer following in his wake. And it took him a minute to spot her. Indeed, she hadn’t been following him for quite some time, for she had apparently gotten no farther than the concourse entrance before stopping to flirt with a smartly-dressed young man … a ‘dandy’ if there ever was one, from all appearances.
And, she was flirting with him in a most obvious fashion … leaning into him, taking care to raise the box-pleated front of her long skirt high enough over an artfully bent knee to offer a provocatively daring glimpse of exposed ankle and leg, while looking up into his eyes with her most coquettish ‘come-on’ smile.
“Barbara!” her father shouted, turning on his heel and marching swiftly back across the concourse in her direction. “Come! This is no time to dally! We’re already late!”
“Oh father, I’d like you to meet, Jeremy McIntyre. He’s just introduced himself to me. He’s from Scotland … and descended from a Duke! … or was it an Earl? … or something like that? … anyway, he’s nearly Royalty… isn’t that grand? … And guess what? … he’s traveling to New York as well! We’ll be seeing much of him on the train! He and I have already made plans to get together. Isn’t that grand?”
“Pleased to meet you, McIntyre,” purred her father, grasping and vigorously shaking the young man’s hand while adroitly slipping a banknote into it while whispering in his ear, “ten dollars says you get permanently lost, got it?”
Offering a curt nod of acknowledgment to her father, and a polite bow to the daughter, McIntyre withdrew as Barbara’s father took her arm and steered her away and off in pursuit of their overloaded baggage cart, which could by then be seen nearing the far side of the concourse, trundling steadily toward the train platforms beyond.
Sighing inwardly, her father reflected on how essential it was to whisk his man-hungry offspring off to a place where she might just find someone suitable. Duluth had been anything but that … a place hardly known for refinement and gentility. And in the absence of her mother, who had fallen suddenly ill and passed away three years earlier, keeping Barbara on the straight and narrow had been his responsibility alone, and a constant source of anxiety. As everyone knew, the world was on the cusp of modernity. These were hardly the times in which innocent young maidens could be forced to wear a chastity belt, or be locked in a tower, but he could well see the usefulness of such measures and wished they were still in vogue.
One and a half hours later he and Barbara could be found seated in the first-class dining car waiting to be served lunch. They had, despite her dalliance, made it to the train in time. Chicago was well behind them, the Indiana countryside with its rectangular fields, white and red farm buildings, and small market towns passed by as they stared thoughtfully out the window.
“I wonder where dear Jeremy is?” Barbara wondered, breaking the silence.
“Oh, with these young men these days, one never knows. He probably has other interests.”
“I don’t think so. He was definitely interested. I could tell, father … it can be pretty obvious, you know, with the tighter-fitting trousers young beaus are wearing these days.”
“Barbara!!!”
“Well, it’s so … and look, father! Here he comes now. Yoo-hoo, Jeremy! Over here! Come join us!”
Looking over in their direction, the young man grinned affably and sauntered over in the direction of their table as her father shot him a hostile glare.
“Well, Miss Moore. I’d be honored to join you but, alas, I have another lunch engagement. Perhaps this evening?” he soothed, making a theatrical show of bowing to kiss her proffered hand, and casting her a sly wink, while simultaneously accepting a fresh bank note from her father in his other hand tucked well out of sight behind his back.
“See father. He does fancy me. You saw his bulge, right?”
“Really, Barbara! That’s quite enough of that kind of talk!”
The rest of the day proved uneventful. They passed into Ohio, with stops at major towns and cities. There was a quiet dinner in the dining car, during which Barbara only picked at her food, clearly disappointed over Jeremy’s failure to appear, while her father quietly pocketed the folded, large denomination ‘get lost’ banknote he had been holding in his hand … just in case.
As nightfall approached, the porters appeared to carry out the task of converting the luxurious Pullman coach seating into lower beds, and bringing down the ingeniously hidden upper berths and dividing partitions. By the time the porters had finished the coach had been transformed into a suite of four private two-tiered sleeping compartments.
“Top or bottom bed?” queried her father, as he prepared to exit out into the corridor for a smoke while Barbara readied herself for bed.
“Bottom,” she replied, figuring it would be easier from there to steal out in search of Jeremy. She was wise enough to know that her father had likely taken steps to discourage the young Scot.
“0h, no you don’t. I want you in the upper berth where I am more likely to catch any funny business that you might be contemplating.”
“Really, father. If that’s the case, why did you bother to offer me a choice?”
“Good question.”
Knowing from practice that patience is rewarded, Barbara waited until the wee hours. With the train rocking rhythmically and her father asleep and snoring, she was able to quietly slip down from the upper berth. After pausing for several seconds to make certain that she had not disturbed him, she wrapped her robe around herself and stole out into the empty passageway beyond their compartment.
And there he was! Just as he had promised he would be, when back on the concourse of Chicago’s Union Station they discovered they were both traveling on the same overnight train and had hastily hatched a plan for a little late night tryst.
Talk about lustful attraction at first sight, she thought to herself happily, as she ran to him and sprang into his arms!
Their lips met … unbridled passion burst out in full bloom.
He lifted her high and pinned her tightly against the wall, thrusting his pelvis between her parted legs.
She kissed him harder.
After a while, he leaned back enough to open the front of her robe. And breaking off the kiss, he began to nibble at her ear and then her neck while feeling up her breasts and tweaking her hardened nipples through the thin fabric of her nightgown.
“Oh, my God. I want you!” she murmured throatily. “Do it to me now! Right here! Please! I want it! Want it so badly!”
Amazed at his good fortune, and eager to comply, he released her breasts in order to tug at her nightgown, managing after several tries to free it from between their thrusting hips and raise it up and over her breasts.
“Hurry!” she demanded insistingly.
He let her down, freeing himself from their impassioned embrace for long enough to unfasten and lower his trousers. He grimaced as she clumsily grabbed and pulled at his erection. Brushing her flailing hand away, he took firm hold of her hips and raised her up against the wall again, centering his engorged member beneath her. As it pressed upward against her lips and then slipped into her, he reveled in the inviting warmth and moistness of her loins.
In response and in the frenzy of anticipation, she threw her legs around him, locked her ankles behind his back, gripped him firmly by both shoulders, and thrust her bared breasts into his face.
“Now!” she gasped. “Now! Now!”
And he was just about to comply when, from behind, a hand appeared from out of nowhere to grab firmly the collar of his cutaway jacket and pull him bodily backwards and away … with sufficient force to pop all four buttons and send him sprawling … with Barbara still clinging to him and impaled upon his cock.
“Enough!” roared her father, as he tore his daughter free while planting a well-placed kidney-bruising kick in the younger man’s side.
“Barbara! Cover yourself immediately and return to the compartment! I will deal with you shortly! And as for you, Mr. McIntyre, I’ve arranged for the two railroad guards standing behind me to take you into custody and bodily eject you from this train at the next whistle stop … preferably before the train comes to a stop!”
And with that, he spun around and stormed purposely in the direction of the sleeping compartment where Barbara waited, desperately rehearsing and rejecting excuses, none of which, of course, seemed remotely plausible as innocent explanations for her half-naked coital embrace of Mister Jeremy McIntyre in an empty train car corridor in the dead of night.
There was no escaping the fact that she was in for a severe over-the-knee thrashing the instant her father returned to their compartment. And in contemplating that certainty, she hoped that his pearl-handled leather tawse was stowed away and out of reach in the checked luggage for, although neither was pleasant, she much preferred his bare hand.
