Harrigan's Bride
Cheryl Reavis
Abiah's Heart Waged A Battle Of Its OwnAbiah Calder had always loved Thomas Harrigan. Always. But the war had contrived to make them enemies. Now that same war had bound them as man and wife. Yet did Thomas' heart's desire truly match her own?When Thomas Harrigan found Abby dying in an abandoned house, he risked everything to see her safe. No matter that he was a Yankee captain and she a loyal Rebel. She was all that had been good and true in his life - and he would claim her as his own; and damn the consequences.
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u857c6f20-eeff-54c9-b7b3-aa8f96365bd8)
Praise (#u24db5505-5fae-5cf7-964e-303bb7bbc683)
Excerpt (#ud0ce846b-3ec6-53f0-846a-0558c5d97b79)
Dear Reader (#u7df75e60-e520-5fae-a49c-3f275f808823)
Title Page (#u42de93e3-4c6e-5823-89df-3ed056b9a270)
About the Author (#uaf925622-77a7-52c2-9a6a-dccd33e07ab4)
Dedication (#u56bb9354-750c-5f58-8922-087bdd84dbfb)
Chapter One (#u7eff1bb4-e110-5183-bdff-db396849bf01)
Chapter Two (#u37bc11c9-1f36-577d-8dcd-3ab70e574dd9)
Chapter Three (#u9c340c13-b46e-5cfc-830c-ed94830a561f)
Chapter Four (#u3872b564-1d79-5ac7-a817-aec733f57342)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise for Cheryl Reavis’ previous historical romances
The Bartered Bride
“Several hankies and a comfortable corner are a must.”
—Rendezvous
1992 RITA Award Winner
The Prisoner
“A Civil War novel that manages to fill the reader with warmth and hope.”
—Romantic Times
“A thrilling page-turner…”
—Rendezvous
“Are you…married, Thomas?” Abby asked abruptly.
“What?” he said, because the question caught him completely off guard.
“Guire wrote us you were engaged. Did you marry her?”
“No, I didn’t marry her,” he said, surprised that the letter he had written to Guire advising him of his matrimonial intent had actually reached him.
“Good,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to die…coveting someone else’s husband.”
He frowned, thinking that he had misunderstood, and she suddenly smiled. “Poor Thomas. I’ve scandalized you…haven’t I? I know you always thought…I was a child. Do you…mind very much?”
“Mind?”
“That I…love you?”
“Abby—”
“Don’t look so worried, Thomas. Nothing…is required of you. I’m only confessing because I’m dying…”
“You’re not dying—so you’d better watch what you say.”
She smiled slightly and whispered, “I don’t mind…dying so much…now…”
Dear Reader,
This holiday season, we’ve selected books that are sure to warm your heart—all with heroes who redefine the phrase “the gift of giving.” We are absolutely thrilled about Harrigan’s Bride, the new Civil War romance from the immensely talented Cheryl Reavis. Cheryl has received the prestigious RITA Award, not once but three times, twice for her contemporary romances for Silhouette and once for her Harlequin Historical novel The Prisoner. In her latest, Thomas Harrigan returns from war and chivalrously marries the bedridden, abandoned daughter of his late godmother. Don’t miss this heart-wrenching story!
Be sure to look for A Warrior’s Passion, book nine of Margaret Moore’s medieval WARRIOR SERIES. Here, a young woman is forced into an unwanted betrothal before the man she truly loves—and whose child she carries—can claim her as his wife. Territorial Bride by Linda Castle is the long-awaited sequel to Fearless Hearts in which a cowgirl and an Eastern rogue prove that opposites attract. Their love is tested when Missy is seriously injured…
Rounding out the month is The Shielded Heart by rising star Sharon Schulze. Set in eighteenth-century Europe, this is a gripping tale about a warrior who learns to accept his special psychic gift as he teaches an enamel artisan about life and love.
Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historical® novel.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell, Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Harlequin Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Harrigan’s Bride
Cheryl Reavis
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHERYL REAVIS,
award-winning short story author and romance novelist who also writes under the name of Cinda Richards, describes herself as a “late bloomer” who played in her first piano recital at the tender age of thirty. “We had to line up by height—I was the third smallest kid,” she says. “After that, there was no stopping me. I immediately gave myself permission to attempt my other heart’s desire—to write.” Her Silhouette Special Edition novel A Crime of the Heart reached millions of readers in Good Housekeeping magazine. Both A Crime of the Heart and Patrick Gallagher’s Widow won the Romance Writers of America’s coveted RITA Award for Best Contemporary Series Romance the year they were published. One of Our Own received the Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series Romance from Romantic Times Magazine. A former public health nurse, Cheryl makes her home in North Carolina with her husband.
To Kelly Jamison, Juliette Leigh and Cait London. Thank you, ladies. What would I do without you?
Chapter One (#ulink_54253573-743c-5b5c-94dc-0e125bea72a4)
December 17, 1862
The front door stood ajar, and the wind blew dead leaves directly into the wide hallway. Apart from the open door, the Calder place looked very much as it always had. The bloody struggle for the town of Fredericksburg, and General Burnside’s ass-over-teakettle retreat back across the Rappahannock hadn’t disturbed anything here—on the surface at least. There was some comfort in that, but the fact remained that no one who had a choice would leave a door wide-open on a bitterly cold day like today.
Thomas Harrigan urged his mount slowly forward, still alert, advancing until he could walk the horse along the length of the front porch. He couldn’t hear anything or see anyone inside the house. There was no smoke coming from the chimneys.
Perhaps the Calder women had gone to a safer place, he thought, then immediately dismissed the notion. He knew Guire Calder’s mother and sister well. As Guire’s classmate and friend, Thomas had been a guest here many times before the fall of Fort Sumter. He knew that neither Miss Emma nor Abiah would ever willingly leave this house, not as long as it was still standing. They loved the place, as he himself did. He had once been welcome here, regardless of his miscreant parent and regardless of his “Yankee” ways.
Now he had returned, this time uninvited and in the wrong uniform, and he doubted that Miss Emma and Abiah would be happy to see him, in spite of the fact that he had managed to get here at great risk. For all intents and purposes, if he was caught here, it would be assumed that he had willfully and wholeheartedly deserted his post. He supposed that it might be a mitigating circumstance that he had chosen to leave the ranks after the battle instead of during it.
Not that it mattered. Nothing much mattered to him anymore—except perhaps knowing how the Calders fared. His mind resolutely refused to consider anything else. Not the thousands of good soldiers who still lay dead and frozen on the field at Fredericksburg. Not the consequences of his blatant disregard for military discipline. Not even his grandfather’s reaction to it.
Thomas realized suddenly that here was the only place he had ever considered his home. He had intended to bring Elizabeth Channing to this quiet valley to live after they were married. Beautiful Elizabeth, who had insisted that she wanted to be his wife and who had been so eager to give him almost everything before they even set a date for the ceremony. What a surprise then, when she had suddenly, inexplicably, broken their engagement. He had read her letter of polite dismissal over and over after it came, as if there was some part of it he might have misunderstood. He had gone to battle with it in his breast pocket, and very interesting reading it would have made for the scavengers, if he’d been killed.
He abruptly dismounted, stepping up onto the porch as he must have done scores of times. In his experience, the Calder house had always been filled with laughter—something he had never known growing up in Boston with his sad, gentle mother and a father who was never there. Even as a boy, Thomas had understood the humiliation his mother must have felt at having to beg his grandfather—her father—to let her come back home to Maryland after her husband had abandoned her. But Grandfather Winthrop was a charitable and forgiving man—and he never let Thomas or his mother forget it.
Except that Thomas had forgotten, here in the bosom of the Calder family. The memories, suddenly unleashed, swept into his mind. The summer evenings he’d spent sitting right here, holding his own in a gathering of arrogant and supposedly intellectual young men like himself, drinking brandy and smoking cigars, convinced that there was such a thing as a “just” war. He remembered the fireflies all across the meadow and Miss Emma playing the pianoforte in the parlor. He remembered a solitary moonlit walk and the smell of honeysuckle, and all the while he could hear Abiah somewhere in the house, singing a plaintive ballad in her sweet lilting voice…
He gave a sharp sigh and drew his revolver. The sudden longing he felt was akin to physical pain. How had he lost all of that and come to be here now with a gun in his hand?
He stepped inside the open doorway, but he didn’t call out. He walked quietly down the hallway, pushing open the parlor door with his boot and peering inside.
Empty.
He moved across the hall to the dining room, leaving tracks in the frost that had accumulated on the bare wood floor. No one else could have walked here for a while.
He opened the next door, and he saw her immediately in the shaft of sunlight that came in through the window.
“Oh, Jesus,” he whispered.
Emma Calder was lying on the great four-poster bed. Someone had wrapped her tightly in a quilt with only her face showing, someone who was perhaps still in the house. He edged closer, trying to keep an eye on the door because there was no other way out of the room.
She was dead—long dead. The layer of frost was on everything in here as well. And whoever had wrapped her like this had intended a burial. He looked down at the sweet face of the woman who had been more of a mother to him than his own, and he had to struggle hard for control.
Miss Emma.
He turned abruptly at a small sound, revolver leveled.
“Abiah!” he called loudly, no longer caring who else might be here. “Abby—!”
“It’s me, Cap,” someone said from the hallway. Sergeant La Broie stepped abruptly into the doorway.
“I could have shot you, man! What the hell are you doing here?”
“Well, sir, I’m thinking maybe that’s something neither one of us ought to go inquiring into.”
Thomas looked at him. La Broie was regular army, a man of undeniable military expertise, who had been dragged back—kicking and screaming most likely—from one of the cavalry outposts on the western frontier. He had then been plunked down horseless in a company of infantry in one of Burnside’s Grand Divisions, thereby adding at least one person who knew what the hell he was doing—usually.
“I asked you a question, Sergeant,” Thomas said.
“I am trying to make it look like you ain’t deserted, sir,” the man said patiently. “The major got to wondering where you was. I said the colonel sent you someplace, so he sent me to fetch you. You might say I’m the one here officially.”
“How did you find me?”
“Weren’t hard, Cap. You been asking the refugees out of Fredericksburg if they knew anything about the Calder family ever since we crossed the river. And then this very fine Reb cavalry mount surrendered itself to me—a prisoner of war, you might say—and somebody pointed me in this direction to get to the Calder farm. She dead?” the man asked, jerking his head in the direction of the bed.
“Yes,” Thomas said.
“Then we got a grave to dig, I reckon. I’ll see what I can find to do it with—unless you want help checking the house.”
“No,” Thomas said. “There’s a door to the cellar at the end of the hall. There should be a shovel down there.”
“Ground’s froze hard, Cap. Going to take more than a shovel.”
La Broie walked away, and Thomas gave Miss Emma one last look before he followed him down the hall.
“Mind how you go, son,” La Broie said as Thomas started up the stairs. Under less-pressing circumstances, they might have had yet another one of their discussions about familiarity and La Broie’s penchant for always having the last word, but there was no time for that now. Thomas could say with certainty that La Broie was no hypocrite. He thought his duly elected captain was about as useful as a teat on a bull, and he took no pains to hide it.
Thomas made the search of the second floor quickly, room by room, trying to convince himself as he went that Abiah wasn’t here, that she must have gone with the other women and children and the elderly who had had to flee the army’s advance into the town by taking refuge in the surrounding woods. But he found her in the last room he looked. She was lying facedown on the floor, half in a patch of sunlight. She, too, was wrapped in a quilt.
“Abiah?” he said, kneeling down by her and expecting the worst. “Abby?” He gently turned her over.
Incredibly, she opened her eyes. They were bright with fever.
“Abby, it’s me,” he said, when she closed them again. “It’s me—Thomas. Look at me. It’s Thomas—”
“Thomas?” she said weakly, trying to lift her head. “Thomas, I…couldn’t get…the fire to…burn…”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said, moving to grab another quilt off the bed and covering her.
She closed her eyes, and he moved her slightly so that she was in the warmth of sunlight again.
“Everybody’s…gone, Thomas. Mother is…is…”
“I know, honey,” he said.
“I got sick…first. Mother was…looking after…me. But then…” Tears ran out of the corners of her eyes and down her face.
“Don’t talk. It’s going to be all right.”
He moved away from her to try to get a fire going in the fireplace. There were still some embers burning beneath the ashes, and it took him only a moment to coax them into flames. “Let’s get you back to bed,” he said.
“No, just leave me here. I hurt so…”
“Come on now,” he said, rolling her to him so he could lift her. She made a small sound when he stood up.
“I’m sorry about Miss Emma,” he said as he carried her to the bed. Abiah was so pale and thin. He had always thought her a pretty little thing, but now he hardly recognized her. And it wasn’t just the illness. It had been nearly two years to the day since he’d seen her last. During that time she seemed to have made a remarkable transformation from a gangly girl to a young woman.
“You shouldn’t be here, Thomas,” she said as he laid her on the high feather bed, but she clutched the front of his coat when he tried to straighten up again. “You’re…in the wrong army.”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion,” he said.
She tried to smile. “You’ll have to…forgive me…if I don’t care to discuss that right now.”
He gently removed her hand from his coat front and covered it with the quilt.
“I could…hear the guns,” she whispered. “It was a…terrible battle, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Guire’s dead,” she said. “Did you…know that?”
“No. No, I didn’t know. When—?” He stopped because he didn’t trust his voice.
“It was at Malvern Hill. He…” She began to shiver. “I’m so…cold…”
He waited, but she didn’t say anything else.
“Abby?” he said after a moment. He needed to get more wood. He needed to see if he could find something in the house to feed her. And then he needed to decide what he was going to do with her. He couldn’t leave her here. She’d die here alone in the cold if he did.
“Are you…married, Thomas?” she asked abruptly.
“What?” he said, because the question caught him completely off guard.
“Guire wrote us you were engaged. Did you marry her?”
“No, I didn’t marry her,” he said, surprised that the letter he had written to Guire advising him of his matrimonial intent must have actually reached him.
“Good,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to die…coveting someone else’s husband.”
He frowned, thinking that he had misunderstood, and she suddenly smiled. “Poor Thomas. I’ve scandalized you…haven’t I? I know you always thought…I was a child. Do you…mind very much?”
“Mind?”
“That I love you.”
“Abby—”
“Don’t look so worried, Thomas. Nothing…is required of you. I’m only confessing because I’m dying…”
“You’re not dying, so you’d better watch what you say.”
She smiled slightly. “I used to hide and listen to you and Guire discuss…philosophy. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Isn’t that the way it goes? Whoever said it is right, you know…” She said something else he didn’t understand.
“What?” he said again. He sat down on the edge of the bed, with no thought as to the propriety of such a gesture. She turned her head to look at him.
“I said, God is…good.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, because he was sure now that she was delirious.
“I don’t mind…dying so much…now.”
“Abby—”
“It’s a…gift, you see? It gives me such…joy…to see you one last…time. I—” She broke off and gave a sharp sigh. “I’m going to cry…and I don’t want to. I don’t want you to…think I’m sad.” Her dark eyes searched his. “I wanted to marry you, Thomas, did you…know that? I told Guire. He said you were…too…wild for…me.”
Wild? Thomas thought. If he remembered correctly, that word was synonymous with the name Guire.
“He told me about…those places…the two of you went to…in New Orleans. Those ‘houses’ with the red velvet…draperies and the crystal…chandeliers and those strangely colored birds in golden…cages all along the verandas. He said all the fancy women there…adored you.”
“Now, why in God’s name would he tell you something like that?” Thomas asked, more than a little annoyed at the direction this conversation had taken.
She smiled. “Did he…lie?’
Thomas didn’t answer her.
“That’s what I…thought,” she said.
“Sometimes the truth is not required, Abiah.”
“And sometimes it is. He said if I had my…heart set on you…then…I should know these, things. I should know the real…man is not the same as a schoolgirl’s…idea of him. But I didn’t…care about the fancy women. Or about the trouble with your father and grandfather…or anything else. I only cared about you. I was going to trap you the next time you came here to visit…so you’d have to marry me. I was going to wait until everyone had gone to sleep…and I was going to…come into your bed—”
“Abiah!” he said, because he was indeed shocked now.
“You needed me, Thomas…even if you didn’t know it. You were so…serious. I could have helped you with that,” she said, completely undeterred. “So now you know. I was prepared to be shameless where you’re concerned. Aren’t you lucky the war came along to save you—”
“Cap,” La Broie said from the doorway, and Thomas had no idea how long he’d been standing there. He held up his hand to keep La Broie from advancing. He didn’t want Abiah any more distressed than she already was, and he didn’t want La Broie to hear her confessions—if he hadn’t already.
Thomas got up and walked to the door. “What?”
“There’s a little garden on the south side of the house. The sun shines there most of the day, I reckon. The ground ain’t froze. I’m about to put the lady under. Is she all right?” he asked, looking past him to where Abiah lay.
“No.”
“We ain’t got much time, Cap,” La Broie said unnecessarily.
Thomas drew a quiet breath and looked back at Abiah. She was lying very still now, and he didn’t want to disturb her. He didn’t want her to be afraid if she woke up alone, either.
He walked to the bedside. “Abby?”
She opened her eyes.
“I’ll be back.”
She shook her head, the tears once again sliding out of the corners of her eyes. “No. Go from…here, Thomas—”
“I’ll be back,” he said again.
“Please! I want you to go—”
“Try to sleep.”
“She understands how things are, Cap,” La Broie said on the way downstairs, but Thomas made no reply.
He carried Miss Emma out of the house himself. La Broie had gotten the grave dug quickly, a skill Thomas supposed he had had to learn as a professional soldier. And it was La Broie who spoke over the grave.
“The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,” he said. “And there no torment shall find them. Amen.”
Thomas stood looking at the raw mound of earth. “Amen,” he said, earnestly hoping that that was the case for Miss Emma. And his mind was already working on the problem at hand. He had to get Abiah out of here—and he had no place to take her.
“You don’t have to wait for me, Sergeant,” he said.
“Yes, sir, Cap,” La Broie answered, but he made no attempt to leave.
“I want you to go back and tell the major you couldn’t find me.”
“You want me to lie to Major Gibbons?” La Broie said, as if such a thing would never, ever have crossed his mind.
“I do,” Thomas said. “And try to make it as good as the one you told him when you came out here.”
“You’re going to stay here with the lady upstairs, Cap?”
“No, I’m taking her with me,” Thomas said, stepping around his sergeant to get back into the house.
“Moving her might kill her, Cap,” La Broie said. “If she’s in a bad way.”
“What do you think leaving her here alone will do?”
“You planning on riding back to our lines with her, just like that, sir?” La Broie said. “That is, if you can get her back across the river.”
“In lieu of a better plan, yes.”
“Ain’t there somebody you could get to stay with her?”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “Only I don’t know who it would be at the moment. I’ll have to worry about that when I get to Falmouth.”
“If you get to Falmouth,” La Broie said. “Reb patrols are out, sir.”
“There’s a truce long enough to bury the dead. I’m going to have to rely on that. Well, go on, man. You have your orders.”
“Begging your pardon, Cap,” La Broie said, still following along. “But we ain’t exactly on the battlefield at the moment, now are we? If we run into one of them Reb patrols, they’re going to think we’re ransacking the place and then there’s going to be hell to pay. And besides that, I have put in a lot of hard work breaking you in, sir—if you don’t mind me saying so—and I ain’t a bit happy thinking I’m going to have to start over with another captain. Hard telling what kind of jackass they’d put in your place.”
“La Broie, do you know how close you are to insubordination?”
“No, sir. It’s high praise I’m giving and not insubordination at all, sir. You have turned yourself into a good, sensible officer…” The rest of the sentence hung in the air unsaid.
Until now.
“Thanks to you, you mean,” Thomas said.
“It was my pleasure, sir,” La Broie said, almost but not quite smiling.
“Get going,” Thomas said. “I mean it.”
He went back upstairs. Abiah seemed to be asleep. He opened the armoire and searched until he found her portmanteau, but then immediately disregarded it as too awkward to carry. He took a pillow slip instead and went from drawer to drawer, dumping in things he barely bothered to identify—stockings, undergarments, a frayed wool shawl, a hairbrush.
There was a sudden commotion downstairs. He swore and drew his revolver, trying to identify the source.
“Cap!” La Broie yelled, and Thomas ran to the landing. The sergeant had ridden his mount into the front hall and he was leading Thomas’s bay. Both horses were having trouble getting their footing and both were wild-eyed at the straight chairs and small tables crashing around them.
“Hand your lady down, sir!” La Broie yelled. “The sons of bitches are almost here!”
Thomas ran back to do just that. Abiah was trying to get out of bed. He gave her no explanation of any kind. He grabbed her and the pillow slip and a quilt, leaving everything else behind and carrying her bodily out of the room. Halfway down the stairs, he handed her roughly over the banister to La Broie and tossed the pillow slip after her. The sergeant’s mount pranced and reared at the loose-flowing quilt, but La Broie held him in.
“Hurry, sir!”
Thomas mounted the bay with some difficulty, then took Abiah out of La Broie’s arms. She was completely limp, and he could hardly hold on to her.
“I’m going to let them see me, Cap,” La Broie said. “I’ll meet up with you at the river—”
He gave Thomas no time to approve or disapprove the plan as he urged his captured horse back out the front door and leaped in a great arc off the porch.
Chapter Two (#ulink_116de445-411d-5deb-b1e4-f0ccca680534)
What’s happening? Abiah kept thinking. She tried to follow the conversation around her, but it made no sense.
“Will you kindly shoot this man, Sergeant La Broie? My hands are full.”
“My pleasure, Cap. Or if you want him skinned alive and roasted over a hot fire with a stick—”
Abiah winced at the specifics.
“—I can do that, too, sir.”
“No. No, a ball between the eyes will do. You’ll have to excuse the sergeant here. He’s just come from the West. They handle things a bit differently out there. You and I are more apt to just kill a man outright when he irks us. But where the sergeant comes from, they like to savor the demise. Who was it you learned that from, Sergeant?”
“Apaches, sir. And, of course, the—”
“All right! I’ll take you across,” a third voice said. “You Yankees are damned attached to your whores, is all I got to say—”
There was scuffling then. Abiah cried out.
“Abby,” Thomas’s voice said close to her ear. She tried to answer him and couldn’t. Then she lost his voice and the others in a wave of soft, white nothingness.
It was raining when she heard voices again. She could feel the raindrops beating down on her face.
“I’ve got no room here, Captain.”
“Well, make room, damn it!”
“Where? We’ve got more wounded men than we can handle! You wouldn’t want to leave her here, even if there was a place for her. Who would take care of her, sick as she is? Look, why don’t you try one of the churches? Maybe there’s somebody there who can take her in.”
And then they were riding through the darkness again.
“I think you better let me take her, Cap,” a man’s voice said. “You go get Major Gibbons satisfied so he don’t have you shot. I’ll see to your lady.”
She heard Thomas swear.
“Ain’t no other way, Cap,” the man said. “I got a notion about what we can do—where I can take her.”
“We’ve been everywhere,” Thomas said.
“I’m thinking Gertie would take care of her—but she’d have to have money to replace what she’d get otherwise. How much have you got?”
“Are you out of your mind? She’s a camp follower. She is not somebody who goes around ministering to the sick with a basket on her arm.”
“We ain’t got much choice, Cap—and Gertie ain’t had much in the way of choices, neither. She’s a good girl, Gertie is. You can’t fault a woman for what’s she’s had to do to keep herself alive. I’m telling you, she’ll take good care of Miss Abiah—if she’s got money enough to do it with. Like you said, we’ve been everywhere. The only thing we ain’t done is break down somebody’s front door and hold a gun on them until they turn into the Good Samaritan. I say we quit going around Robin Hood’s barn here and get Miss Abiah in out of the rain, sir—and I don’t think she’d be very happy if she knew she was the cause of your court-martial.”
Abiah stirred at the last remark, trying to raise up. But she couldn’t manage it, no matter how hard she tried.
“We ain’t far from the Lacey house,” the man said. “You go on there and let Major Gibbons see you. Tell him, if he asks, that I was wrong. Say the colonel didn’t send you no place, you been around here all the time. Say you been trying to account for the wounded and missing out of your company. I’ll take care of Miss Abiah and then I’ll find you.”
“La Broie—”
“Give me your money and your lady, sir.”
“Abby, can you hear me?” Thomas said, his breath warm against her ear. “Abby…?”
She strained toward the sound of his voice, but the harder she tried to hear it, the more it drifted away. The soft whiteness closed over her.
What’s happening?
She tried to focus on her surroundings, but the light was too poor. She could see a candle burning on a table to her right, and a fire burning in the fireplace. It was raining still—it always seemed to rain after a battle. She could distinctly hear the patter of raindrops against the window.
The window.
She wasn’t outside then. She was warm and dry and in bed.
She wasn’t alone in the room; she could hear someone moving around. She turned her head slightly.
“Is she awake?” a man’s voice asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” a woman said. “Is the captain coming? She asks for him sometimes.”
“He’s confined to his quarters until somebody decides how bad he broke rank.”
“How long will that be?”
“No time soon—not the way people are talking. I’ll tell him she’s been asking for him. No, maybe I won’t. He’s liable to come to see about her whether Gibbons says he can or not. You’ve got everything you need?”
“I’ve got more than I need.”
“You don’t mind the room being down here with the servants?”
“Now, why would I mind that? The kitchen is close. I can get her the things she needs to eat. And there’s people I can talk to, so I’m not lonesome. But I’m wanting to know something, La Broie. How did you get Zachariah Wilson to give up a room in his house, even if it is below stairs?”
“He’s being paid well for it, Gertie.”
“He doesn’t need the money.”
“He’s a greedy man, Gertie, darling. Greedy men always need the money.”
“I’m thinking maybe you asked this greedy man in a way he couldn’t refuse.”
He laughed softly.
“Maybe.”
“What did you do, Pete?”
“Nothing much. I only mentioned that I knew he’d been a…acquaintance of yours. And being such a pillar of the church and everything—well, now he had the opportunity to help you change your ways and give shelter to the sick.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Why?”
“You heard me.”
“Well, because I could see you didn’t have the heart for the business you was in.”
“Since when do men care what’s in a woman’s heart?”
“Some of us do, depending on the man—and the woman.”
“And the rest of you are like Zachariah Wilson.”
“You ain’t had no trouble with Wilson, have you?”
“No. He’s not here. He’s gone off someplace on business. Nobody knows when he’ll get back.”
“If he bothers you, you let me know. I mean it. I wouldn’t have put you here if I could’ve done better—”
“How long?” Abiah said abruptly.
“My God, she is awake,” the man said.
“How long have I been here?” Abiah asked.
“Well, let’s see,” the woman said, coming closer to the bed. “It must be eight days now.”
Eight? Abiah thought in alarm. She couldn’t remember any of them—at all. How could she completely lose track of eight days?
“Who are you?” she asked the man.
“Sergeant Peter La Broie,” he said.
“You’re not in Lee’s army.”
“No, ma’am. I’m not.” He pulled a ladder-back chair around and sat down where she could see him. “And this here is Gertie. Captain Thomas Harrigan and me—we brought you across the river on a raft. Do you remember that?”
“No,” she said. But then she suddenly recalled something about Apaches. Whatever it was, however, slipped away. “I don’t understand,” she said after a moment. “Why are people talking?”
“Talking?”
“You said people were talking. Why? Tell me. I want to know.”
“It’s on account of you being a Reb girl and Cap being in the Union army and stealing you back across the river the way he did. Some think the captain ruined your reputation when he did that—maybe his, too, because he wasn’t supposed to be over there in the first place, much less coming back with you on his saddle. But you’d be dead if he hadn’t, and that’s for damn sure.”
Abiah closed her eyes. She was so tired. Too tired to try to sort this out. She did know that she hadn’t been stolen. She’d been…
She didn’t know what she’d been. She opened her eyes again as one particular memory suddenly came to her.
“Oh…”
“What is it, Miss Abiah?” the man said kindly.
He knows my name, she thought. He must have something to do with Thomas. She gave a wavering sigh.
“What is it?” he asked again.
“Where is…my mother…?”
“The captain said I should tell you everything straightaway, if you asked, because you’re not a person who likes the truth hid from them no matter how bad it is.”
“She’s dead…isn’t she?”
“Yes, ma’am. Your mother—Miss Emma—died. You’re remembering that now, I guess.”
Abiah nodded, wiping furtively at the tears that ran down her face.
“We buried her in that little herb garden near the house—where the ground was soft enough. And words was said over her, so you don’t have to fret yourself on that account. Cap says to tell you he did the best he could by her.”
Abiah believed that without question, but the tears came anyway, tears and then finally the welcome refuge of sleep. She woke from time to time, wondering if the sergeant would be there. He never was, and she began to wonder if he’d actually sat in the chair by her bed or if she’d been dreaming. There was only Gertie, who seemed to know exactly what to do to make her more comfortable and who, more often than not, insisted that Abiah drink a hot, salty chicken broth and then take some bitter tasting medicine, after which she fell into yet another dream-ridden sleep. It was so hard to think clearly, to know what was real and what wasn’t. But conversation took far too much effort, regardless of Abiah’s growing curiosity.
“Miss Abiah, look who’s here,” Gertie said one afternoon, and Abiah opened her eyes to see another enemy soldier, who after a moment turned into a very awkward Thomas, standing at the foot of the bed. She stared at him, not at all sure if he really was here or not. There had always been a sadness in Thomas Harrigan; it was one of the things that had drawn her to him from the very first time Guire brought him home. But at this particular moment, he looked so lost.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him, and he looked at Gertie instead of answering.
“Tell me,” Abiah said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“That is my question, I believe, Abby,” he said, and she smiled.
“Oh, well, then. If that’s the case, the answer is ‘nothing’—if you don’t count the fever…and being out of my head most of the time.”
“So how is your head at the moment?”
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “Sometimes I think Gertie is Mother. Sometimes I think Guire’s here—or you. You are here, aren’t you, Thomas? I’m not talking to the bedpost, am I?”
“Most definitely I am here,” he said.
“Say ‘heart,’ then. So I’ll know.”
“Heart?” he asked, clearly puzzled.
She immediately gave a soft laugh. “Yes, it’s you. H-a-t—‘heart.’”
He smiled in return. “You are so very bad for my masculine certitude, Abiah. You are the only female I know who always makes fun of me.”
“I have to. You’d be insufferable if I didn’t.”
Gertie laughed in the background.
“I see you agree with her, Gertie,” Thomas said.
“I can’t help it, Captain,” Gertie said.
“Well,” he said, still forcing himself to be cheerful. This was a Thomas Abiah had never met before. “The doctor tells me you’re doing better.”
“Does he? He doesn’t tell me anything.”
“He says you mustn’t get overly confident. You must continue to play the invalid even if you feel like dancing.”
“Dancing? I’m having trouble knowing the day of the week.”
He smiled again, but this smile quickly faded. He stood there with his hands behind his back, tall and handsome, once her brother’s greatest friend and then his sworn enemy—and hers.
“I need to ask you something, Abiah,” he said.
She waited while he looked around the room as if it were of great interest to him, and then just to her left—everywhere but at her.
“I was wondering if you would consider something,” he said, now looking at the floor. He abruptly pulled around that same ladder-back chair and sat down. Then he cleared his throat and noisily slid the chair closer to the side of the bed. He brought the fresh smell of the cold outdoors with him. Damp wool and wood smoke. Soap and tobacco. Horse and leather. She longed to be closer to him still.
“If you intend to catch me…while I’m still lucid, I think you’ll want to hurry this along, Thomas,” she said.
“All right. Abiah, I was wondering if you would marry me.”
He finally looked at her, met her eyes briefly and glanced away.
“Too late,” she said, in spite of her astonishment. Even at her most mentally confused, even if she’d been in a room full of fever-spawned Thomases, she would not have expected that question.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
She smiled slightly, because once again his Boston accent had determined that he leave out an R. As a Southerner, she had a bit of a problem with that letter of the alphabet herself—only she didn’t leave it quite so blatantly out of the middle of words or add it onto the end where it didn’t belong. The years he had lived in Maryland with his grandfather hadn’t erased his accent at all. Knowing even so little of the relationship between the two men as she did, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Judge Winthrop hadn’t made an effort to weed out that particular reminder of his daughter’s failed marriage, just as Abiah wouldn’t have been surprised if that was a reason Thomas might have tenaciously retained it.
Guire had told her once that Thomas looked very much like his father—who being the only son of a wealthy shipowner, had enough inherited money and enough favors owed him to open at least some of the doors kept firmly closed to those with an Irish surname. But there the similarity ended. Unlike his father, Thomas Harrigan clearly didn’t abandon a woman who needed him.
“I said ‘too late,’ Thomas.”
“You mean your lucid moment is going?”
“No, I mean someone else…has already asked for…my hand in marriage.”
He looked startled. “May I ask who?”
“John William Miller,” she said.
“Johnny Miller wants to marry you?”
“Well, you needn’t make it sound so…incredible, Thomas. I believe he has been of a mind to since I was fourteen.”
“This is the same Johnny Miller who was at your mother’s house practically every time I came to visit.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose he’s in the other army?”
“Yes.”
“He’s an officer, no doubt?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re making plans to marry him?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I didn’t give him an answer.”
“Why not?”
She looked into his eyes. “You know why not,” she said.
He flushed slightly.
So, she thought. She had told him precisely where her heart lay. She was very much afraid that that particular memory was real.
“You don’t have to do anything else for me, Thomas,” she said. “I know you have saved me by bringing me here, and I shall try my very best to get well. But you don’t have to save my reputation, too.”
“You’ve got it the wrong way around, Abby. I was asking so you could save mine.”
“I would think stealing me out of my mother’s house and bringing me here would only enhance yours.”
“Alas, no. The story has reached General Sumner’s attention, and he doesn’t approve of such audacious conduct in his officers. At all.”
“I’m afraid I don’t much care whether Yankee generals approve or not, Thomas.”
He leaned forward so that he could look into her eyes. “The truth is a marriage to you would help my military career, Abby.”
“I don’t see how. I support the Confederacy in every way I can.”
“If I can forgive you for that, then I’m sure General Sumner will. Will you marry me, Abby? For my sake. I know you have a kind heart.”
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, taking her hand. His fingers were still cold from his ride here and he slid them in between hers.
“No,” she said again. “I will not.”
“I need you to let me me explain, at least. Let me try to tell you the way things are.”
“Then tell me.”
He took a deep breath. “The Union army didn’t have a chance at Fredericksburg because there were serious tactical errors made. The general who made them—Burnside—knows he is in danger of being relieved of his command. He is an incredibly arrogant man. He’s going to try to save face now, and he’s going to sacrifice his Grand Divisions to do it. I will do my duty when the time comes, but I need…” He stopped, holding her hand in both of his for a moment. “Guire was my friend. You are all that is left of his family. I need to know that you’ll be taken care of. Do you understand? I need to be sure. As my wife—or my widow—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, trying not to cry. “Guire would never have expected you to do this.”
“I want to do it, Abby. I haven’t much time for persuasion. I can’t make pretty speeches to convince you. I can only tell you the truth.”
“Look at me, Thomas. What good am I to you like this? I’m an invalid. I may stay an invalid.” She couldn’t bring herself to speak the real truth—that she might not survive this illness, just as her mother hadn’t survived.
“You are my sweet Abiah. You are all I have left of the one truly happy time in my life. I’m asking you to let me go into this folly of Burnside’s with my mind at ease.”
She closed her eyes to keep from crying. She couldn’t waste her strength on tears. She had to save it, so that she could do the right thing.
“Abby, answer me.”
She looked at him. Marrying Thomas Harrigan was all she had ever wanted, but her heart was breaking—and for his sake, not hers. She loved him too much to ever want to hurt him. In the naive and reckless plan she had once contemplated to trap him into becoming her husband, she would have at least been a healthy wife and not a sickly burden. It would be wrong for her to say yes to him now. She knew that, just as she knew that she hadn’t the will to refuse him.
“We have some major political differences, Thomas,” she said.
“I think they would make for very lively discussions at the dinner table,” he countered easily.
She smiled slightly at the idea, even knowing that it was improbable that they would share a dinner table ever again.
“Won’t your engagement get in the way?” she asked.
“That arrangement no longer exists.”
“Does she know that?”
“She does. And she has nothing to do with this.”
Abiah looked into his eyes, believing him because she wanted to. What did it matter that this was only a gallant gesture on his part?. An attempt to give her her heart’s desire, because he was fond of her and because he thought she wouldn’t recover?
So be it, she thought. She would take the only chance for happiness she would ever have, however fleeting it might be.
“All right,” she said. “You bring the minister—and I’ll try to remember who you are.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_7aaed090-8e79-58e4-b8f5-412e409834e1)
Of all the emotions he had anticipated when he went to ask Abiah to marry him, surprise wasn’t one of them—at least not on his part. And he had certainly been surprised. First, when she told him she had another suitor, and then, when she had been so unwilling to even consider his own offer of matrimony. But most of all, when he realized how much he minded on both counts.
It had all seemed so clear to him beforehand. He was honor and duty bound to take care of the last member of the Calder family as best he could. It was something he simply had to do. Now, through no conscious effort of his own, he was afflicted with the added burden of wanting it.
Thanks to La Broie and his machinations, Thomas had gotten away to see Abiah long enough to make his proposal, but since then he could only sit in the drafty, abandoned brick building where he’d been banished until the generals decided what they were going to do with him. He had no idea what this place had once been. Nothing comfortable, in any event. The room he had taken at the end of the hall had a window big enough to let in some light and lessen the dungeon atmosphere, but many of the glass panes were broken. It took all his physical energy just to stay warm.
He still had to pen a number of letters of condolence to the families of the men who had been killed at Fredericksburg, but he was too distracted to accomplish very much. He realized immediately that it was not just the cold that caused him to be so unsettled. No, indeed. His mental turmoil had come about because, whether Abiah had agreed or not, he absolutely did not want her marrying John William Miller. It irked Thomas a great deal how much he didn’t want it. He had no right and no reason whatsoever to object.
Johnny Miller was a traitor to the country, of course, but then, by her own admission, so was Abiah. Thomas had always thought Miller a decent enough sort. There was nothing about the man as far as Thomas knew that would keep him from being entirely suitable for Abiah. Besides all that, Thomas was supposed to be heartbroken over his failed engagement to Elizabeth. He had certainly felt heartbroken when her letter came. Now it seemed as if all that had happened to someone else.
It suddenly occurred to him that the only explanation was that he must have believed Abiah when she said she loved him, even if she had since taken great pains to behave as if she had no memory of having done so. Clearly, it was a decided character weakness on his part—to always believe women when they professed a fondness for him. He had believed Elizabeth. He still believed Abiah, in spite of her reluctance in agreeing to marry him. He kept thinking about that one particular moment when he’d asked her why she wasn’t making plans for her wedding to Miller. Thomas could almost feel the way her dark eyes had stared into his.
You know why not.
He supposed that that was as close as Abiah would come to mentioning the embarrassing incident—embarrassing for her, not him. At least not since he’d recovered from the initial shock of learning how she had planned to “trap” him into matrimony. Assuming she had been serious, he wondered if she had any idea what coming into his bed like that might have precipitated. He would like to think that he would have behaved honorably, but if he had had one too many brandies on the porch, he might have forgotten that she was his best friend’s little sister.
He gave a quiet sigh. Perhaps Abiah did know. If Guire had been so imprudent as to tell her about their adventures in a New Orleans bordello, there was no telling what else the rascal had taken upon himself to explain. In any event, this bold plan of Abiah’s would certainly give Thomas something to contemplate during the long winter nights to come.
He picked up his pen and immediately put it down again. The ink in the bottle had frozen. His cigar had gone out and his fingers were numb with cold. An abrupt gust of wind caused the smoke from what he optimistically called a fireplace to billow back into the cavernous room. He gave up all pretense of working, the full import of the predicament both he and Abiah were in making a jarring return. He had no patience left. He had to get this marriage done.
“La Broie!”
“Sir!” the sergeant answered almost immediately, his voice echoing in the outer hallway. Thomas suspected that La Broie’s staying so close at hand had less to do with efficiency and devotion and more to do with the fact that Major Gibbons had probably ordered him to do so—in case that wild Captain Harrigan went a-roving again.
“Have you heard anything yet?” Thomas asked when La Broie appeared in the doorway.
“Nothing, sir,” La Broie answered, giving no indication that Thomas had already asked him that same question a dozen times.
“Why is this taking so damn long?” Thomas said, more to himself than to La Broie.
“You know by now how the army works, Cap. It takes as long as it takes.”
Thomas gave La Broie a scathing look. He was not in the mood for any of the sergeant’s military truisms, sage though they may be. He was trying to take care of Abiah. She was ill, and gravely so. The doctors gave him absolutely no encouragement as to her chances for recovery from an illness they couldn’t even diagnose. Typhoid pneumonia, perhaps, they said. The problem was that Abiah had been examined well after the telltale “rose spot” stage indicative of the disease. She had a “continuous fever” to be sure, but no one would—or could—give it a name. The army hospitals were full of “continuous fevers,” which were fatal more times than not.
The best Thomas could do was to make sure Abiah had good nursing care, preferably by someone who understood the dangers of these fever-ridden illnesses. He felt an occasional twinge of guilt that the only person even remotely knowledgeable about these things also happened to be a camp follower. But, like everything else in this situation, he had had no choice but to bow to La Broie’s opinion of Gertie’s willingness and competency, and to hire the girl. So far Thomas hadn’t had cause to regret it—as far as he knew. Gertie seemed happy to have a paying job that didn’t involve throwing her petticoats over her head.
But he had precious little time left before Burnside began his redemptive push toward Richmond, and whatever time Abiah had, Thomas intended it to be as respectable and comfortable as it was in his power to make it. He knew exactly what had to be done, yet not one damn superior officer would tell him anything. How hard could it be to let him leave his quarters long enough to get married?
“La Broie!”
“Sir!”
“I want you to go see how Miss Abiah is this afternoon.”
“Sir—begging your pardon. Wouldn’t it be better for me to see Miss Abiah when I got something to tell her? If I go now and she’s awake, she’s going to ask me things I ain’t got the answers to. If I can’t say for sure you’re going to make it to the ceremony, it’ll just worry her. And she ought not to be worried, sir, I’m thinking. Besides that, she might have gone and changed her mind about marrying you. Maybe you don’t want to give her a chance to retreat before we even get on the field.”
Thomas had to agree, even if he was absolutely convinced now that La Broie had been given unofficial guard duty, and even at the risk of letting him have the last word yet another time. “You’ve got the chaplain ready?”
“Sir, I’ve got three chaplains ready. I’ve got a doctor ready if Gertie needs him—besides the one Miss Abiah’s already got. And I didn’t send off that telegram to your mother,” he added significantly, because, surprisingly, he didn’t approve of Thomas’s having changed his mind about notifying his family. “There ain’t nothing left to do but wait, sir, and that’s the sad truth of it.”
“You’re sure about the arrangements?” Thomas said, looking at the morning muster roll again and trying to get some idea of who was fit for duty—just in case he ever got out of this building and back to soldiering.
“Yes, sir. I’m sure. Zachariah Wilson has been well paid for the room and board—even if he wasn’t using the space nohow. He knows which lawyer will keep on paying him. So Gertie and Miss Abiah can stay right where they are while you and me and the army is gone on this here fool’s errand. Oh, and I been turning people down.”
“What people? For what?”
“People wanting to come to the wedding, sir. We got all manner of volunteers to stand witness for it—from both armies—plus a whole slew of bushwhackers and newspaper people and deserters. You know, it’s kind of hard to tell which is which when you get them all in a bunch. And then there’s some church folk from Falmouth and Fredericksburg trying to get invited. I’m thinking we might need a guard at the door. Miss Abiah ain’t well enough to have a bunch of nosy strangers gawking at her—and you—on account of she’s supposed to be ruined and not long for this world. I did tell all these hopeful guests they could send you and her a wedding present, though.”
Thomas looked up at that impertinence, but La Broie wasn’t in the least discomfited.
“Sir, I ain’t never been one to let opportunity stand around knocking on a shut door,” he said. “And while I’m at it, I reckon I need to be begging your pardon—”
The heavy outer door of the building slammed loudly interrupting whatever La Broie had been about to reveal.
“This is it, Cap,” he said instead. “That’s one of Sumner’s aides coming. The one with all them littlegirl curls.”
“Now how the hell do you know that?” Thomas said, trying to at least appear as if he wasn’t affected by the footsteps echoing briskly down the hall in their direction.
“It’s them prissy little silver spurs he wears. He’s the only one that jingles like that.”
It was indeed the aide-de-camp in question, an overly serious lieutenant, who knocked loudly and who snapped a salute when he was given leave to enter. Thomas was notoriously serious himself—but he chose to leave out the jingling and the posturing.
“Sir!” the aide barked, presenting Thomas with a folded piece of paper and causing La Broie to almost but not quite roll his eyes.
It was a pass, granting one Captain Thomas Harrigan a three-hour furlough in Falmouth. He read it over—twice—and then exhaled quietly in relief.
“No message from General Sumner?” he asked, without looking up.
“No, sir.”
“Then you are dismissed, Lieutenant.”
There was no jingling.
Thomas looked up. “Is there something else?”
“Yes, sir,” the aide said.
“Then what is it?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, sir.”
“Well, I’m not in the mood to guess, I can promise you that—”
The outside door banged loudly again, only this time it sounded as if an entire company were advancing up the hall—singing.
“Sir!” the aide barked. “It is my duty to announce that your groomsmen have arrived!”
* * *
Abiah noted two things when she asked to speak to Thomas alone. That he had gone to a great deal of trouble to look presentable and that he wasn’t entirely sober. She was familiar with the custom of fortifying the groom with whatever strong drink his friends could find prior to the actual ceremony. Hardly any of the weddings she’d ever attended in her whole life had seen the groom not tangle-footed. She just hadn’t considered that this particular wedding would precipitate the ritual and the boisterous male revelry that accompanied it.
She had no illusions about why the marriage was taking place. How could she? Thomas had been nothing if not blunt about his motives. His military career. Her reputation. His obligation to, and his respect for, Guire and the Calder family. But regardless of the circumstances, here Thomas was, and he looked exactly the way a bridegroom was suppose to look. All spit and polish—except for the ink stains on his fingers. He was newly barbered and unsteady on his feet—and infinitely pleased with himself.
“You’re looking lovely this afternoon, Abby,” he assured her.
“You, sir, have had a lot more to drink than I first thought,” she answered.
He smiled one of his rare smiles.
“Only a bit, Abby. To keep away the cold. The boys went to such a lot of trouble to get it. It would have been rude to decline.”
“Is that the real reason?” she asked. “You don’t want to be rude?”
“It is.”
“Rude to them or rude to me?”
“To you?”
“Perhaps you need whiskey to get through this wedding, Thomas. Perhaps you’ve changed your mind but you’re too honorable to say so.”
He frowned. “I have not changed my mind. Have you?”
“Not as far as I can tell,” she said.
He nearly smiled again and pulled the one straight chair close to the bedside and sat down. “So. You recognize me, then.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t easy. You look so much prettier today than when I last saw you.”
He smiled genuinely this time. “I had a great deal of help, I can assure you. I’m especially partial to this very fine maroon-and-gold, nonregulation sash—I forget which of my groomsmen contributed it.” He opened his coat so that she could see it better. “But it’s not as fine as your ribbon,” he said, leaning closer to inspect the pink ribbon Gertie had meticulously twined into Abiah’s long braid and then tied in a dainty bow.
Abiah, too, had had a great deal of help getting ready for this event. Besides the ribbon, her plain muslin nightdress had been exchanged for a finely embroidered and tucked cambric chemise de nuit. It was quite beautiful, albeit too big for her. The sleeves kept falling over her hands. Of course, a pink ribbon and especially the chemise de nuit were hopeless gestures on Gertie’s part, regardless of Thomas’s compliment. Except for the sleeves, he wouldn’t even see the nightdress. Abiah was covered up well past her bosom by a borrowed gray velvet quilt placed under a crocheted “wedding ring” coverlet—something someone in the household—or in the town or across the river—must have thought would be appropriate. Clearly, when the bride was too ill to be dressed, then one must dress the bed instead. Enough pillows had been found so that she could be propped almost to a sitting position. Her beribboned braid hung artfully over her right shoulder. She was even lucid, so much so that she had no delusions about the way she looked, just as she had no delusions about the way she felt.
“Don’t,” he said after a moment, and she looked at him.
“I see the second thoughts running rampant, Abby. I don’t have any. I want you to put yours aside.”
“I’m afraid, Thomas.”
“Not of me, I hope.”
She shook her head. “No, not of you. Of being…” She gave a quiet sigh. It was so difficult to put into words. If she were well, she wouldn’t have all these misgivings. If she were well, she would have at least a fighting chance of keeping him from resenting her and a marriage he’d wanted no part of.
She sighed again. If she were well, there would be no marriage in the first place.
“I’m cursed with a conscience,” she said finally.
“I wouldn’t have you any other way, Abby.”
She realized immediately that he was teasing her. “Thomas, you’re not taking this seriously.”
“Of course I am—”
Someone rapped sharply on the door. “Chaplain’s here, sir!” a voice said on the other side of it.
“We’re worrying La Broie,” Thomas said. “Can we put him out of his misery?”
“He’ll just have to bear up,” she said. “I have a question.”
“It’s very improper for me to be in here, you know. Didn’t you see your landlady’s face when I came in here alone and shut the door?”
“My landlady will have to bear up as well.”
“Abby, we have to have this ceremony right now.”
“But we haven’t discussed…anything.”
“You’re alone in the world and you’re ill. And I’m going into God-knows-what with Burnside. We could discuss all manner of topics until kingdom come, but it would still come down to those two things. We have to concern ourselves with the present situation. Nothing else. We can’t worry about what might come along later.”
“Sir!” La Broie said, rapping at the door again. They both ignored him and the burst of rowdy laughter from Thomas’s groomsmen.
“Have you sent word to her?” she asked Thomas quietly.
He didn’t pretend not to know who she meant. “That wasn’t necessary,” he said after a moment.
“Not even to keep from being rude?”
“No.”
She watched him closely, trying to decide if that was really the case.
Yes, she decided. It wasn’t necessary for him to tell his former fiancée anything. And perhaps that was yet another reason why he wanted this marriage to take place.
“Your mother and grandfather? Do they know what you’re doing?”
“No,” he said again.
“Why not?”
“Because I anticipated this. Your uncertainty. It’s better if they know later, after it’s done.”
“I see. They’d disapprove that much.”
“I don’t know if they would disapprove or not. The point is I don’t have the time or the inclination to hear opinions, one way or the other.”
“You and I have nothing in common,” she said. “Besides the dire consequences of your bringing me across the river—and Guire.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Have you or have you not read Emerson?”
“Only because you insisted.”
“That’s not the point, either. You know his work. We’ve had some most interesting discussions about Emerson. And if I said George Tockner you’d know precisely who I meant.”
She tried to interrupt. The fact that she could recognize the name of a hallowed Harvard professor signified nothing as far as she was concerned. “Thomas—”
“And William Cullen Bryant,” he continued, undeterred. “You’ve read his work.”
“I’ve read Walt Whitman, as well, but I doubt anyone would see that as a basis for a marriage.”
That remark certainly got his attention. “You’ve read Walt Whitman,” he repeated, as if he wanted to make absolutely certain he had this right.
“I have,” she said.
“Leaves of Grass.”
“That was the title, yes. Your Mr. Emerson approved of the work, I believe.”
“Never mind that. How the devil did you get your hands on a copy of Walt Whitman?” he asked—demanded—and she tried not to smile. She found him entirely adorable when he was discomposed.
“Believe me, it wasn’t easy. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is the advisability of this marriage.”
“What matters is that I can see right now it’s going to take all my effort to keep you in hand. Leaves of Grass, indeed.”
“Thomas—”
“My sergeant is going to perish at the door,” he interrupted. “Can we not get on with this and save him—before it’s too late?”
“Can you make me one promise?” she asked.
“What is it?”
“Can you promise not to forget that I gave you the opportunity to escape?”
“And may every other Rebel I meet from here on out do the same,” he said elaborately.
She gave a sharp sigh. “And I was worried about me not being in my right mind.”
He laughed and leaned closer.
“Now, Abby?” he whispered, teasing her again. “Will you give me leave to open the door?”
She didn’t answer him.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said, serious suddenly. “I give you my word on that.”
His word meant a great deal to her. “All right,” she said finally. “Go open the door. Save La Broie and me both.”
Thomas left her to fling the door open. A number of people stood gathered in the hallway and kitchen beyond, most of whom were straining to catch a glimpse inside the room. There would have been a great rush to gain admittance were it not for Sergeant La Broie. He allowed Gertie to enter, and then Mrs. Wilson, the dour lady of the house, who had clearly come out of duty rather than desire. It was the first time Abiah had seen her in person. Heretofore, the woman had only existed in the form of the verbal admonishments constantly repeated by Gertie and the household staff. Mrs. Wilson was full of don’ts. There was no doubt that she ran a tight ship; she was making an inspection even now to see if Abiah and Gertie had done any injury to her domain.
Not one but three army chaplains followed Mrs. Wilson into the room. All three came to stand around the bed. Abiah glanced at Thomas, who winked.
Ah, well, she thought. Given the apparent magnitude of the scandal precipitated by Thomas’s rescue, they had best have the matrimonial knot firmly tied. The chaplains introduced themselves—Brothers, Hearst and Holmes. It was clear that they had already decided among themselves who exactly would do what when. The Reverend Brothers began the proceedings with a lengthy prayer. Abiah was grateful for the opportunity to close her eyes. She was very tired suddenly, and had to concentrate hard not to show it.
Someone knocked on the door. The Reverend Brothers prayed on. Finally, after the third knock, La Broie went to open it, and after a brief, whispered conference with whoever waited on the other side, he accepted an envelope of some sort and closed the door.
The prayer continued. Abiah opened her eyes enough to watch with interest as La Broie discreetly passed the envelope to Thomas, who glanced at it and put it into his pocket.
“If you would join hands, please,” the second chaplain—Hearst—said as soon as the prayer ended. He opened the small leather book he carried and adjusted his spectacles, looking around sharply at another outburst of raucous laughter from out in the hall.
Thomas moved the chair closer to the bed and sat down, so that he could take Abiah’s hand more easily. Hers was trembling, and he looked at her sharply when he realized it.
“I think they would both approve, Abiah,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“Miss Emma,” he said. “And Guire.”
She looked at him a long moment, then nodded.
The Reverend Hearst cleared his throat. “May we continue?”
“Yes,” Thomas said, without looking at him. His eyes still held Abiah’s, and whatever indecision remained suddenly left her.
For better or worse till death do us part, she thought.
The ceremony began in earnest, but it was an obviously shortened version, to accommodate Thomas’s lack of time and her illness. Because of their proximity to the kitchen, Abiah could smell bread baking. She wondered idly if many weddings took place with the aroma of baking bread wafting through. She glanced briefly at the people who stood witness. Gertie, who looked sad enough to cry, and La Broie, who stood ramrod straight next to Gertie and watched her intently. Hardened soldier or not, the man was clearly smitten.
Interesting, Abiah thought. La Broie so enamored, and Gertie so oblivious to it.
Abiah glanced at Mrs. Wilson, with her longsuffering countenance, and made a mental note. Should she and Thomas ever actually live together as man and wife, she would not go around looking like that. She wondered idly if Mr. Wilson was somewhere at hand, too. She hadn’t met him, either, though Gertie had assured her when they first came to the house to stay that she wouldn’t want to.
Abiah turned her attention to the second chaplain.
How determined he is, she thought.
He had offered no call to the ceremony, no “Dearly Beloved…” He had asked for no declaration of consent, no “Wilt thou have this woman…” He had gone straight to the marriage pledge.
Repeat after me.
“I, Thomas, take thee, Abiah…”
Thomas’s voice was strong, unwavering. Whatever happened in the future, she would always remember that he’d said the words with a surety that belied the true situation.
Then it was her turn, and she hesitated too long—long enough to alarm Thomas and everyone else in the room. She abruptly squeezed his hand.
“I, Abiah, take thee, Thomas…”
The last chaplain, Holmes, concluded the ritual with a prayer, and suddenly it was over and done. Abiah immediately looked at Thomas, searching for some indication as to whether or not he was now filled with regret.
But he only smiled and shook everyone’s hand. Then he signed the marriage record and held the book for her to do the same.
“Are you all right, Abby?”
“Tired,” she said, trying to smile. She wanted to say something to Mrs. Wilson, to thank her for her charity and hospitality, but the woman had already opened the door and stepped into the hall. Abiah’s attention was taken then by Sergeant La Broie, who solemnly clasped her hand.
“I’m wishing you health and happiness, ma’am,” he said.
“You’ll watch over Thomas?” she whispered. “Keep him safe?”
“I’ll do my best, Mrs. Harrigan, darling,” he assured her. “I ask the same favor of you. You watch over our Gertie.”
Abiah smiled. The man was completely smitten, she thought again, and she certainly had a profound empathy for anyone in that state. “I will,” she said.
“Pete,” Gertie said. “Don’t let all those people come in here. Miss Abiah needs to rest now.”
He immediately went to stop any uninvited wedding guests from pushing their way inside.
“I forgot, Mrs. Harrigan,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “There’s a wedding present out here for you.”
“A wedding present?”
She looked at Thomas, who was reading the letter La Broie had given him earlier.
“It’s from Johnny Miller,” Thomas said.
La Broie was already bringing the gift in. She recognized it immediately. It was her own cedar hope chest, the one made for her fourteenth birthday by her grandfather Calder. Like most girls that age, she had immediately begun filling it with linens and quilts for that time in the seemingly distant future when she would marry. Seeing it again, when she’d thought everything in the abandoned house had likely been plundered by both armies, brought her close to crying.
“Johnny went to the house and got it,” Thomas said. “Then he bribed a civilian from Fredericksburg to bring it across the river. Put it here, La Broie, where she can see it.”
“How do you know that?” Abiah asked.
“It’s in his letter,” he said, holding up the envelope La Broie had given him. “The letter was for me. The chest, for you.”
“What else does he say?”
“He…wishes us every happiness.”
She smiled. “He was there—the day my grandfather gave the chest to me. And he and Guire teased me so about being an ugly old maid and not needing such a fine piece of furniture. And Mother was…” She stopped and took a quiet breath. She didn’t want to reminisce about the past, even if the past was likely all she would ever have.
The sound of laughter and loud singing burst forth again from the direction of the kitchen.
“I guess more people knew about the wedding than I thought,” she said after a moment.
“I dare say,” he agreed. He was standing so awkwardly, as if he wanted to take his leave, but wasn’t quite sure how to do it.
“I…have a gift for you, too,” he said, and he reached into his pocket—for his watch. He opened it to check the time and then looked at the door.
“If you have to go now, it’s—” she began.
“Sir!” La Broie said abruptly in the doorway, making her jump.
“You must overlook the sergeant, Abby,” Thomas said, taking the bundle La Broie tossed to him. “Believe me, he all too often comes and goes like that.”
He lay the bundle on her lap. “It isn’t much. There aren’t too many things here to buy.”
She took the string off and unrolled enough of the muslin wrapping to reveal a green book. The title was printed diagonally across it in gold leaf: The Scottish Chiefs. It was beautiful.
“The story of William Wallace, by Miss Jane Porter. I always wanted to read this,” she said. “There was only one copy at school. I never got the chance.”
“I thought maybe you’d had enough of men writers and you’d like a woman’s perspective for a change.”
She smiled, running her fingers over the exquisitely tooled designs in the green leather cover—ivy and oak leaves and acorns, an exotic bird with long tail feathers that curved down across the banner with the title. She looked up at him. She loved books—almost as much as she loved him. “Thank you, Thomas.”
“And the other thing…” He lifted a knitted white wool shawl with a delicate lace edge free of the muslin. “It’s…well, it isn’t much, but I hope you like it.”
She leaned forward so that he could drape it around her shoulders. “It’s beautiful. Thank you again. I wish I had something for you.”
“Not necessary,” he said, pulling the chair around and sitting down again. “There’s one more thing here.” He unfolded the muslin the rest of the way, and took out an envelope. “This is the name of my lawyer in Boston. And the one here in Falmouth who will take care of your expenses. I’ve included my mother’s address in Maryland, if you should need to contact her. And there’s a copy of my will.” He was very careful not to look at her. “There’s also a note with my proper address. I would like it very much if you would write to me if—when—you feel up to it.”
“You’re in the wrong army, Thomas. How…?”
“There’s a chance that a letter will get to me as long as Falmouth remains in Union hands.” He finally let his eyes meet hers.
So sad, she thought. Still so sad. She nodded, because she didn’t trust her voice and because she was so tired.
“I’ve brought your toddy, Miss Abiah,” Gertie said from the doorway, making a much less startling entrance than La Broie had. “And some very fine sipping whiskey for you, Captain Harrigan—from Mr. Zachariah Wilson, you might say. A little something to mark the occasion.”
“Does Mr. Zachariah Wilson know how generous he’s being, by any chance?”
Gertie laughed. “Well, sir, if you run into him on your way out, I wouldn’t thank him for it, if I was you.” She set the tray down on the table by the bed and quietly left.
“What is this, Abby?” he asked, handing her the flowered teacup.
“Hot milk, honey—and brandy. Every three hours, just like clockwork. I’ve been promoted from chicken broth.”
“Well,” he said, lifting his glass to her. “It could be worse.”
They both drank. She was more used to her beverage than he was to his.
“I’m going to have to have help getting on my horse,” he said.
“I guess that’s what groomsmen are for.”
“Well, not these groomsmen. If I have to depend on them, I’ll surely have to walk.”
She smiled, feeling the awkwardness between them growing by leaps and bounds.
My husband, she thought. Then, Thomas, what have you done?
He didn’t say anything else, and neither did she. The silence between them lengthened as the revelry in the kitchen grew louder. Laughter. Singing. The smell of bread. She was glad someone found this a merry occasion. She and Thomas might as well be the chief mourners at a wake.
A log fell in the fireplace. The clock ticked quietly on the mantel.
“Thomas—”
“No more talking,” he said, taking her cup away. “Rest. Go to sleep, if you can. I’ll sit here by you until I have to go.”
“Thomas—” she began again.
“No more talking,” he insisted. “This wedding was supposed to be for your good. I don’t want it to make you worse.”
“I’d like to see inside the cedar chest. Could you open it?”
“There’s no key.”
“Force the lock, then.”
He sat for a moment, then did as she asked, first trying to open it with his bare hands and then the edge of the shovel from the fireplace.
“This is going to ruin it, Abiah,” he said after a moment.
“Please, Thomas. Open it.”
The lock finally gave, with a minimal amount of the wood splintering. She raised up on one elbow to look inside. Everything appeared to be there, even the gray uniform jacket and the saber she’d packed away on top. She realized that Thomas was looking at them.
“Guire’s things,” she said, and he nodded. She lay back against the pillows suddenly and closed her eyes, more exhausted than she realized. Thomas closed the chest.
When she opened her eyes, he was once again sitting by the bed.
“Abby,” he said, when he realized she was looking at him. “If you should hear from my grandfather, don’t let him bully you.”
“I don’t think there’s anything for your grandfather to bully me about, Thomas—except perhaps my politics.”
“Oh, the judge would find something, believe me.”
“Then I promise I’ll be every bit as obstinate as you would be.”
He looked at her a moment, then abruptly smiled.
“Go to sleep, Abiah,” he said again, the smile still lingering at the corners of his mouth.
“No,” she said. “I’ll have plenty of time to sleep later. Talk to me.”
“Are you warm enough? Shall I put more wood on the fire?”
“Don’t do that. Don’t remind me that I’m an invalid. Talk to me the way you used to when you came home with Guire.”
“Shall I take the book away?” he asked, still intent on being solicitous.
“Thomas!” she said in exasperation. “Tell me about…about your family.” It wasn’t what she meant to ask at all. She had meant to ask about the woman he had really wanted to marry, but at the last moment, she lost her nerve.
He gave a resigned sigh. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Everything.”
“I don’t know ‘everything.’ The Winthrops aren’t like the Calders. There’s no openness, no…”
“What?” she asked, when he didn’t go on.
“I was going to say affection. But I supposed there is some. We’re just very careful to keep it hidden—as if caring for someone was some kind of weakness in our character. The judge does care for my mother—at least I think he does, in his way, or he wouldn’t have let her come back home.”
“But he doesn’t care for you?”
“No. Never for me.”
“Why not?”
“I did the unforgivable.”
“And what was that?” she asked, determined to get whatever information from him she could.
“I was born. I am my father’s son. That alone is sin enough.”
She looked at him, and she made no token protests. It would be presumptuous of her to try to talk him out of his conclusions about the judge. Thomas understood the situation far better than she did. She had only to look into his sad eyes to know that. She wondered if he ever heard from the father who had abandoned him—but she didn’t ask about that, either.
“What is the house like? The one in Maryland,” she asked instead, turning to at least some of the things she’d always wanted to know.
“Big. Ostentatious, actually. Very much in keeping with the judge’s idea of his status in society. It’s always full of luminaries of one kind or another. The judge is very fond of holding salons. Everyone who is anyone strives to be invited, I believe—which is understandable. He is much more agreeable to the strangers who come to his house than he is to his family.” Thomas was looking away from her when he said it, seeing again, she thought, that big—and lonely—house in Maryland.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He looked at her. “Don’t be. My family is what made me appreciate yours so. Miss Emma and Guire. I will miss them all the rest of my life.” He suddenly reached out and took her hand. “Go to sleep,” he said pointedly. “I can see how tired you are.”
“I’m not,” she insisted. “Truly…”
But she must have been. When she opened her eyes again, the room was dark except for the glow from the embers in the fireplace. The chair where Thomas had been sitting was empty. The room had grown cold. There was no smell of burning wax. The candle had been out for a long time.
She struggled to sit up in bed, trying hard not to cry. She had wanted to be awake when Thomas left. She had wanted to tell him…
No. Perhaps it was better this way. No awkward goodbyes. No…anything.
She was still wearing the shawl he had given her, and she hugged it closer to her and lay back against the pillows. What if she never saw him again? What if—
She turned her head sharply at a sound on the other side of the door—a heavy thump, as if something or someone had fallen against it. She raised up on her elbow, listening intently, and just when she was about to lie down again, she heard a voice.
“Please!”
A woman’s voice. Gertie’s voice.
There were more scuffling noises—and a man speaking in muffled and angry tones. Abiah could hear him, but she couldn’t understand the words.
“Gertie?” she called, growing more alarmed now.
She jumped at another loud thump against the door. The doorknob rattled.
“Gertie!” Abiah yelled. She shoved back the heavy quilt and slid her legs over the edge of the bed. The room swam around her. She had to sit there until the dizziness subsided.
And all the while the struggle outside the door continued.
Abiah slid to the floor and went directly for the cedar chest, flinging it open and tearing through the starched linens and dresser scarves inside.
“Where is it?” she whispered, throwing piece after piece onto the floor. “Where is it!”
If it was gone, she’d take Guire’s saber—if she could lift it. She’d have to.
Abiah abruptly stopped looking. Gertie was crying. She could hear her plainly.
Dear God, what’s happening!
Abiah was frantic now, running her hands among the remaining sheets. Her fingers finally touched cold metal. She dragged Guire’s Colt revolver out, carrying it with both hands to the fireplace—the only source of light—so she could see. She had hated the thing, hated when Guire insisted that she learn to shoot it because he was away at school and she and their mother were isolated and alone.
She felt so weak suddenly, and she went down on both knees on the hearth, breathing heavily. The revolver slid out of her hands. She stayed where she was, her head bent low until she could pick up the gun again. Then took a deep breath and held it closer to the firelight, where she could see. It was still loaded.
She forced herself to her feet again, holding on to the furniture and then to the wall to get to the door. She didn’t hesitate—she could hear Gertie sobbing still. Abiah opened the door wide and stepped unsteadily into the hall. The too-long sleeve of her nightgown kept sliding down and covering the Colt.
There was no one in the hallway now.
She heard Gertie give a muffled cry somewhere to her left. Something fell and broke. Abiah went in that direction, holding the revolver with one hand and leaning heavily against the wall with the other. She had to keep stopping to rest, but she was determined to go on.
The man had Gertie down on the kitchen floor, and he was so intent on what he was doing that he didn’t hear Abiah. She brought the revolver up and pulled back the hammer. It was that noise that got his attention. He abruptly looked around. Only one lamp had been lit, and she couldn’t see his face distinctly.
“Move away from him, Gertie,” Abiah said, stepping closer to the end of the kitchen table so she could lean against it.
Gertie tried to stop crying, tried to cover herself. She made an attempt to scramble aside, but the man caught her wrist and struck her hard.
“Stop it!” Abiah cried.
He didn’t stop. Gertie was struggling, he hit her again.
“Stop it! I mean it!”
When he raised his hand the third time, Abiah pulled the trigger. The revolver misfired. She gave a soft cry of alarm and fumbled to pull back the hammer. Her sleeves were in the way. Her hands were shaking, but she held on.
The revolver misfired again.
“I never knew whores stuck together,” the man said, still holding Gertie down.
But then he was getting slowly to his feet. Abiah didn’t dare take her eyes off him.
“What are you going to do now, whore?”
“I’ve got…four more chances…to send you to hell,” Abiah said. Her entire body trembled from the physical strain. “If you don’t get out of here, I intend to use them…all.”
“She owes me, damn you!” the man said. “Come to think of it, so do you.” He lunged suddenly in Abiah’s direction, taking her completely by surprise, but not before she pulled the trigger again. There was a loud roar this time, and the man reeled away from her and fell heavily on the floor. Gertie screamed, and Abiah collapsed against the rough kitchen table and slid to her knees. The heavy revolver tumbled out of her hand. She had to cling to the edge of the table to keep from falling on her face.
“Oh, Miss Abiah! What have you done?”
Abiah found Gertie’s question entirely beyond her comprehenion. She still held on to the edge of the table, trying hard to stay upright, trying to stop trembling.
It was raining again. She could hear it.
How strange, she thought, that she should take note of that.
Happy is the bride the sun shines on today.
And she suddenly thought she heard Guire’s voice.
“What?” she whispered.
I mean it, Abby. Don’t you ever aim this gun at anything if you don’t mean to kill it.
“What?” she whispered again. “What did you say?”
“Miss Abiah, stand up! We have to get out of here!”
“No, I can’t, Gertie—”
“You have to! Get up! Now!”
Abiah tried to do what Gertie wanted. She pulled hard on the edge of the table in an effort to get to her feet. The man was no longer lying on the floor where she had seen him fall. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to understand. She didn’t know what was real anymore. And at this point, she had no idea which would be worse—to be out of her head again and to have imagined it all—perhaps even her marriage to Thomas—or to have killed a man.
She looked up at Gertie. One eye was bruised and swollen nearly shut.
Not a dream then.
“Is he…dead?” Abiah asked, her voice trembling.
“Carl says not,” Gertie said.
“Carl?”
“He’s the hired man. He came when the gun went off.”
“I…really shot someone?”
“Close enough.”
“Where—where is he?”
“I don’t know. Come on, Miss Abiah. We have to get out of here.”
“No, we have to let somebody know what happened. Mr. Wilson, or his wife. Somebody needs to know about that man.”
Gertie gave a sharp sigh and stopped pulling on her arm. “Miss Abiah,” she said in exasperation, “Zachariah Wilson is that man.”
“What?” Abiah said, no longer trying to get up.
“You shot our landlord, Miss Abiah. Not that anybody is going to believe that even if you tell them—not with the likes of me standing right here beside you.”
“But—”
“Miss Abiah, there ain’t no use talking about it. We have to get out of this house. We don’t wait until the rain stops. We don’t even wait until the sun comes up. We go. Understand?”
Chapter Four (#ulink_ce4ad9f6-c89a-539f-96be-9818ac9eb2c7)
“Mind what you do with your face, Cap.”
Thomas gave the sergeant a look in spite of the admonishment. The effects of his groomsmen’s brandy had long since worn off, and the last thing he needed was to be instructed on his demeanor.
“The boys are ready to drop where they stand, sir,” La Broie persisted. “You got to show them it ain’t as bad as they think it is.”
“Oh, it’s nowhere near as bad as they think it is,” Thomas said. “It’s goddamn worse.”
He had his own struggle to keep from dropping, and perhaps the only deterrent was the fact that he was standing in mud—and who knew what else—nearly to his knees. The roads had become completely impassible. He had long since given up trying to ride his exhausted mount; a horse mired in mud to its belly was completely useless. He walked like the rest of them, and every muscle in his body ached. He was shivering with the cold. He was hungry. And the rain. God, the rain.
The beginning of their little jaunt to surround the Confederates and utterly vanquish them began auspiciously enough, but by the first evening, the weather turned foul and stayed that way. By now they had been standing in a downpour for what seemed like hours, waiting for somebody up the line to decide what this dog-wet and mud-caked excuse for an army was going to do, and all the while it was common knowledge that they were giving Lee and his crowd the biggest laugh of their military careers.
There was a loud commotion up ahead, shouts and the neighing of distressed horses—another overturned baggage wagon. Thomas took a moment to indulge himself in a colorful assessment of General Burnside’s family tree.
“He is that, sir,” La Broie said appreciatively. “Indeed he is.”
“Let’s go, La Broie. And you can keep your remarks to yourself,” Thomas said, forcing himself to begin a pass along the line to hand out words of encouragement he didn’t begin to feel.
“Sir—” La Broie said.
“I know, La Broie! Mind my face.”
Thomas had an admirably disciplined company, now—something he could only accredit to La Broie’s reputation as an Indian fighter and his consummate ability to put the fear of God into a man with hardly more than a look. Unlike some of the other, more demoralized companies, this one was all present and accounted for. And it was safe to say that La Broie was the reason the men still had their “gum blankets” as well, that all-purpose piece of equipment that could be worn to keep the rain off or slept upon as a barrier to the wet ground.
Regardless of the fact that no one had been paid in recent memory, not a single man had dared give in to his craving for tobacco or whiskey by selling or bartering his blanket. So here they all stood, correctly outfitted for the weather, exactly by the book. Even so, it struck Thomas as he began his inspection that there was something entirely ludicrous about grown men standing out in the rain, apparently for no other reason than to make a great show of ignoring it.
“Rathbone,” he said, stopping in front of one of the privates who had been so recently wounded at Fredericksburg and who had refused to be left behind. “How is the hand?”
“It’s doing the best it can, sir,” Rathbone assured him.
“So are we all, Private,” Thomas said, drawing a few polite chuckles among those within earshot. “Anything you need?”
“Just my dear mother’s apple pie, sir.”
Thomas smiled and moved on, the remark immediately drawing his thoughts to a winter afternoon at the Calder house. Abiah and the apple pie she’d made and baked and finally cut for him in Miss Emma’s kitchen. He tried to imagine Elizabeth in that same situation—wearing an apron, laughing and completely unmindful of the flour on her nose.
Elizabeth. What was she doing now? he wondered. Did she still attend the judge’s salons? Probably so. She dearly loved the attention her presence always garnered, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t don yet another new satin frock and go. No one there would know she had broken her engagement to the judge’s grandson. No one there even knew there had been an engagement. At her insistence, he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone—except in his last impulsive letter to Guire Calder.
Thomas still didn’t know what had happened to cause her abrupt change of heart, but as far as he was concerned, Elizabeth was safe from any further revelations on his part. Somehow it didn’t matter anymore, and the fact that he’d been a consummate fool where she was concerned was something he would just as soon keep to himself.
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