Cheryl Reavis (2 page)

“I don’t know,” Kate said, bending down to look at him again. He was still motionless.

“You didn’t go and shoot him, did you?”

“No, I did not shoot him, Sergeant Major.”

“What is he doing in here?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“Then what are
you
doing in here? Colonel Woodard didn’t say you were going to be on the premises.”

“My brother doesn’t know everything,” she said obscurely.

“Well, you just go right on thinking that if you want to, Miss Kate, but if you want my advice, you’ll revise that opinion, the sooner, the better. Don’t much get by that brother of yours. Every soldier in this town can tell you that.”

“Could we just address
this
first?” Kate said, waving her hand over the man still lying on the floor.

“That we can. Move the lamp so I can roll him over. I’m going to hang on to him. You see what’s in his pockets.”

Kate hesitated.

“We want to hurry this along, Miss Kate,” he said pointedly. “While he’s unaware.”

“Yes,” she decided, seeing the wisdom of that plan. She slid the lamp out of the way and knelt down by him again.

“He’s not dead, is he?” it occurred to her to ask.

“If he was dead, we wouldn’t need to be hurrying. Go ahead now. Look.”

Far from reassured, she reached tentatively and not very deeply into a coat pocket.

“I don’t reckon he’s got anything in there that bites,” Perkins said mildly.

She gave him a look and began to search in earnest. He didn’t seem to be carrying anything at all.

“You let him in?” Perkins asked.

“No,” Kate said pointedly, moving to another pocket. “He was just...here.”

“Kind of like you are, I guess,” he said. He was clearly suspicious about the situation, and he wasn’t doing much to try to hide it. “You miss your train?”

“I didn’t ‘miss’ it. I didn’t get on.”

“Colonel Woodard know about the...change in plans?”

“He does not.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“There is nothing for
you
to worry about, Sergeant.”

“And yet here I am. Down on the floor with an unconscious and unknown man, helping you riffle through his pockets.”

“The riffling was your idea,” Kate reminded him.

“So it was,” he agreed. “Anybody else here?”

“Just him—as far as I know.”

“You’re not sick or anything, are you?” he persisted, the question impertinent at best.

She didn’t answer. Her fingers closed around a small book in the man’s other coat pocket—a well-worn Bible, she saw as she pulled it free. She opened it. There was some kind of...card between the pages. The texture felt like a
carte de visite
. She moved closer to the lamp so she could see. It wasn’t a photograph. It was a Confederate military card.

“Robert Brian Markham,” she read. She looked at Perkins. “Max’s wife was a Markham. She had a brother named Robert,” she said, forgetting how long he had been Max’s right hand and how likely it was that he knew more details about Maria Markham Woodard and her family than Kate did.

But that Robert Markham had been killed at Gettysburg, along with a younger brother, Samuel. Kate had understood for a long time why Max tried to be elsewhere during the first three days of July. His wife’s heart had been broken by her brothers’ deaths, and he was the last person who could comfort her. He had been at Gettysburg, too, fighting for the other side.

Kate picked up the lamp and held it near the man’s face so she could see it better. It didn’t help. She didn’t recognize him at all and she couldn’t see any family resemblance. She’d never actually met anyone with his kind of rugged features. She thought that he might have been handsome once, but then his face must have gotten...beaten and battered somewhere along the way.

She realized suddenly that Perkins was watching her. “He’s not bleeding,” she said, moving the lamp away.

Perkins reached out and briefly took the man’s hand. “Prizefighter, would be my guess,” he said. “Men fresh out of a war can have a lot of rage still. And they have to get rid of it.”

“By beating another human being for sport?” Kate asked.

“There are worse ways to live—especially if you need to eat.”

Kate looked at the man’s face again. How much rage could be left after that kind of brutality? she wondered.

Perkins took the card from her, then stood. “I want you to go upstairs and lock yourself in, Miss Kate,” Perkins said.

“Why?”

“I need to take care of all this and I’m going to have to leave to do it. I’ve only got the one horse and the snow’s too bad to try it on foot. You’ll be all right if you stay quiet and keep your door locked.”

“I don’t think he’s in any shape to do me harm,” Kate said, trying to sound calmer and more competent than she felt. “I’m not afraid. Just go.”

Perkins hesitated, looking closely at the man again. “All right,” he said after a moment. “I’ll be back as quick as I can. Find something to cover him with. He needs to be kept warm until we find out what he’s up to—just in case.”

Kate was about to ask what “just in case” meant, but then she suddenly realized that Perkins was considering the possibility that this man might actually be Max’s—and her—brother-in-law, or at least have some information about him.

“Light some more lamps so I can see the house easier from the outside. It’s snowing so hard it’s a wonder I noticed anything was going on in here at all. Wouldn’t hurt to light a fire, too.”

Kate nodded at his last suggestion. She wholeheartedly agreed, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to admit that she didn’t know how to do it.

He helped her get to her feet, then picked up the lamp and handed it to her. She kept staring at the man on the floor.

“Miss Kate,” he said as he was about to go, and she looked at him.

“If he starts stirring, you get away from him.”

“Yes, I will. Of course I will.”

But Perkins still didn’t go.

“What is it?” she asked. She knew him to be a straightforward and painfully blunt man—it was the main reason Max relied on him so. But he was having some difficulty saying whatever was on his mind now.

“You’re...sure you don’t know this man?”

She was so surprised by the question that she could only stare at him. Then she realized that he was considering every possible explanation for the man’s being here and that he actually wanted to make certain she hadn’t missed her train in order to keep some kind of secret assignation. If she hadn’t been so cold and so upset, she might have been offended. Or she might have laughed.

“I don’t know him, Sergeant Major Perkins,” she said evenly.

“All right then,” he said.

“I’d appreciate it if you hurried,” she said in case he had any more questions he wanted answered.

“My plan exactly, Miss Kate.”

“No, wait. I need a telegram sent to my parents. Say I’ve been delayed. Could you do that, please?”

“Yes, miss,” he said.

She expected him to leave then, but he didn’t. He was still looking at her in that sergeant major way he had. Not quite what her brother called a “sack and burn” face, but still...arresting.

“There is one other thing,” he said. “My responsibility is to Colonel Woodard. I will do whatever is necessary to maintain his position and his authority in this town.”

“Yes, all right,” Kate said.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said—which wasn’t quite the truth. She understood that he made certain that her brother’s life ran as smoothly as possible and that he wanted her to know something about that duty, which he felt was important. She just didn’t know what that “something” was.

She had to turn away from the strong gust of wind that filled the hallway when he finally left by the front door. The man lying at her feet didn’t react at all. She gave him a backward glance, then hurried upstairs to pull two of the quilts off her own bed because she didn’t want to take the time to look through cedar chests for extra ones. He didn’t seem to have stirred when she returned. She folded the quilts double, then knelt down to cover him, hesitating long enough to look at his face again before she went to light more lamps in the downstairs. One of his hands was outstretched, and she carefully lifted it. She could see the scarred knuckles, feel the calluses on his palm as she placed it under the quilt.

It was so cold on the floor. She couldn’t keep from shivering, and she had to bite down on her lip to keep her teeth from chattering. For a brief moment she thought she saw a slight movement from him as well.

No,
she decided. He wasn’t waking. He was just cold. He had to be as cold as she was.

“I must learn how to build a fire. In a fireplace
and
in a cookstove,” she said out loud as she got to her feet. “And that’s all there is to it.”

She went around lighting as many lamps as she could find—she did know how to do that, at least. She had no expectation that Perkins would return quickly, and after what already seemed a long time, she began to pace up and down the hallway in an effort to keep warm. She didn’t know what time it was—only that it was nearly dark outside. She thought there had once been an heirloom grandfather clock in the foyer, but it, like the rest of the hall furniture, had become a casualty of the war, and Maria hadn’t wanted another one. In this one instance, Kate thought she understood her sister-in-law’s behavior. Some things were far too dear to be replaced, especially if all the replacement could ever be was a reminder of what had been lost.

Kate kept her eyes on the man as she walked the hallway, but she let her mind consider what she was going to tell Max about her being here instead of Philadelphia. After a time she decided that she wouldn’t tell him anything. She would say the same thing to him she’d said to Perkins. She hadn’t missed her train; she just didn’t get on—and that was all these two representatives of the military occupation needed to know.

She suddenly stopped pacing. This time she had no doubt that the man had moved. She took a few steps closer because she couldn’t tell for certain whether or not he was beginning to wake. If he tried to get up, if he seemed threatening in any way, she would do what Perkins said. She would run to her room and lock herself in.

She could tell that his eyes were still closed, and she took some comfort from that, but after a long, tense moment, he began stirring again. He gave a soft moan and turned his head in her direction.

“Eleanor,” he said.

* * *

Am I wounded?

He tried to open his eyes and couldn’t. He needed to get up, but he couldn’t do that, either. He could hear the voices swirling around him. Women’s voices.

“Move aside!” he heard one of them say. She must have been some distance away. There were sharp-sounding footsteps coming in his direction.

“You!” she suddenly barked. “Get the parlor and the kitchen fires lit! This house is freezing!”

“Yes, ma’am,” a young-sounding male voice said.

“The kitchen first!” she said, still yelling. “We need hot water and heated blankets! Now!”

He could hear the scurrying of a heavier set of footsteps, and then a different woman’s voice.

“That way,” she said kindly, and the scurrying continued past him down the hall.

“Have you made no preparations whatsoever?” the first woman demanded.

“No, Mrs. Kinnard, I have not. I don’t expect he’ll be staying.”

He struggled to make sense of what he was hearing.

Mrs. Kinnard? Acacia Kinnard?

It couldn’t be her. Acacia Kinnard was...was...

He couldn’t complete the thought.

“Indeed, he will be staying,” this Mrs. Kinnard said. “You cannot put Maria’s brother out for all your thinking you’ve won the War. Shame on you, Robert Markham!” she suddenly barked. “Shame!”

“I don’t think he can hear you,” the younger woman ventured.

“Of course he can hear me! Robert Brian Markham! Where have you been!” Mrs. Kinnard demanded. “What would your dear sweet mother say! And poor Maria—if you’d bothered to come home, she might not be—”

Her voice suddenly drifted away, lost in the blackness that swept over him.

Chapter Two

M
arried to a Yankee,
Kate thought. If Robert Markham had come home, as was his duty, then his sister might not have married a Yankee colonel. She was surprised that Mrs. Kinnard had stopped short of actually saying it.

Sergeant Major Perkins’s plan to “take care of all this” left a great deal to be desired, in Kate’s opinion. Her opportunity for solitude had completely disappeared when he’d returned with a number of soldiers, two hospital orderlies and Mrs. Kinnard, the indisputable Queen Bee of Salisbury Society. Mrs. Kinnard had an impeccable Southern pedigree, and she had used it to all but appoint herself head of just about everything, including the Confederate military wayside hospital down near the railroad tracks during the war. Mrs. Kinnard’s word was still law in all matters not under the direct supervision of the United States Army, and, Kate suspected, in some of those, as well.

“Excuse me, Miss Kate,” one of the hospital orderlies said.

She—and ultimately Mrs. Kinnard—moved out of the way so he could kneel down and assess the man’s condition. It occurred to her that Robert Markham was going to have every bit as much trouble pacifying Mrs. Kinnard as her brother did.

“Is the doctor coming?” Kate asked the orderly.

“Just as soon as we can find him, Miss Kate,” he said.

Kate stood watching as he uncovered the man and began to examine him, looking for a reason why he had fallen to the floor, she supposed.

“Well, can you do
anything
helpful?” Mrs. Kinnard said suddenly, and Kate realized she was once again in her sights.

“I...”

“
Exactly
as I thought. You do know where there is pen and paper, I hope.”

Kate took a quiet breath before she answered. “Yes. I’ll be happy to get it.”

Kate escaped to Maria’s writing desk in the parlor and returned with a sheet of paper and a short pencil. Mrs. Kinnard eyed the pencil, and Kate thought she was going to refuse to take it.

“The ink is frozen. I’m sorry,” Kate added, because in a roundabout way, that could be considered her fault. “I assumed you were in a hurry,” she said, still holding out the pencil.

Mrs. Kinnard gave an impatient sigh, then removed her gloves and bonnet and handed them to Kate in exchange for the pencil and paper. Kate had no idea what to do with them, given the dearth of furnishings in the hall. She held on to them in lieu of throwing them down on the parquet floor, then she opened the dining room door and went inside, ultimately placing the bonnet and gloves carefully on a chair next to the sideboard and nearly colliding with Mrs. Kinnard when she turned around to leave.

“They should be safe here,” Kate said, because she hadn’t realized the woman had followed her and concern for her finery was the only conclusion Kate could come to as to why she did. She could hear the front door opening and a number of footsteps in the hall. Several more soldiers passed by the dining room door, two of them carrying a stretcher.

Mrs. Kinnard sat down at the dining table near the oil lamp Kate had lit earlier and began to write—a list, from the looks of it.

“Mr. Perkins!” she cried when she’d finished, clearly eschewing Perkins’s military title, probably because he belonged to an army she considered of no consequence.

“Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Kinnard!” he called from somewhere at the back of the house.

“Take this,” she said, when he finally appeared in the doorway. “I want this list filled as soon as possible.”

He looked at the sheet of paper, then back at her. “Mrs. Russell isn’t going to welcome a knock on the door this time of night from the likes of me, ma’am.”

“Whether she welcomes it or not isn’t important. Taking care of Robert Markham now that he has returned from the dead, is. I won’t see him hauled off to your military infirmary, and this young woman is of no use whatsoever that I can see.”

Kate opened her mouth to respond to the remark, but Perkins cleared his throat sharply and gave her a hard look. His sergeant major look. Again. She suddenly understood what he had been trying to tell her earlier. Neither she nor her tender feelings mattered in this situation. Maintaining her brother’s authority and his rapport with the townspeople did.

Very well, then.

She stepped around him into the hallway. If she was going to preserve Max’s peace treaties, she’d have to get herself well away from this overbearing woman.

Honestly!
she nearly said aloud. As she recalled, even Maria found the Kinnard woman hard going.

Robert Markham—if Mrs. Kinnard’s identification could be trusted—still lay on the cold floor. The hospital orderly had lifted him slightly and was pouring brandy down his throat with all the skill of a man who had performed the treatment many times. Robert Markham eventually swallowed, coughed a time or two, but still did not wake.

“Miss Woodard!” Mrs. Kinnard said sharply behind her, making her jump. She closed her eyes for a moment before she turned around.

“Yes?” Kate said as politely as she could manage.

“We will put Robert in his old room,” the woman said. “We have no idea what his mental state will be when he fully awakens. He needs to be in familiar surroundings. The bed must be stripped, new sheets put upon it—I’m sure Maria uses lavender sachet just as her dear mother did and he will no doubt recall that. And then the bed must be warmed and
kept
warm.”

“The orderlies here will see to all that. Just tell them what you need, ma’am,” Perkins said on his way out. “His old room is off the upstairs porch, Miss Kate. On the left.”

And how in the world did Perkins know that? she wondered. It suddenly occurred to her that his room was also the one she was using—not that that would matter to Mrs. Kinnard. The woman had spoken, and Maria’s brother was in need.

“Flannel,” Mrs. Kinnard said, looking at Kate.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Flannel. We need flannel to wrap the heated bricks—you
are
heating bricks?” she said, looking at Kate hard.

“Yes, ma’am,” one of the orderlies said for her. “The oven’s full of them.”

Undeterred, Mrs. Kinnard continued to look at Kate, now with raised eyebrows.

“I’ll...see if I can find...some,” Kate said, heading for the stairs.

Perkins hadn’t left the house yet.

“Now try not to undo all your brother’s hard work,” he said quietly so Mrs. Kinnard wouldn’t hear him. “He’s finally got that old bat and her daughter where they don’t set out to cripple everything he tries to do—and that’s saying a lot. She’s a mean old cuss and don’t you go yanking her chain.”

Kate sighed instead of answering.

“I’m telling you,” Perkins said.

“I
don’t
yank chains, Sergeant Major.”

“Maybe not, but the Colonel says you are a strong woman, and it’s my experience that strong women don’t put up with much. This time it’s important that you do, Miss Kate.”

“Yes. All right. I’ll...behave.”

Easier said than done, she thought as he went out the door, but she was willing to try. She went upstairs and looked through the cedar chests, but there was no flannel in any of them. In an effort not to have to tell Mrs. Kinnard that, she went down the back stairs to the kitchen, hoping that flannel for hot bricks, if she just thought about it logically, might be found there.

Somewhere.

She found them at last in the pantry on a top shelf, a whole basketful of double-thickness, hand-sewn flannel bags she concluded were the right size to hold a brick, hot or otherwise. She gave them to the soldier manning the cookstove, then ended up holding the bags open so he could drop a hot brick inside—once he stopped protesting her offer of help.

“Mrs. Kinnard,” she said simply, and he immediately acquiesced.

When the job was done, there was nothing else required of her beyond standing around and letting the Kinnard woman use her for target practice. She had intended to get the bed linens for what had only moments before been
her
bed, but apparently one of the hospital orderlies—Bruno—knew more about where the sheets and bedding were kept than she did.

She went upstairs again, intending to remove what few belongings she still had in the room—yet another consideration that had escaped her attention when she’d made her bold decision to miss the train and stay behind. Most of her clothes had been packed up in her travel trunk and were by now well on their way to Philadelphia.

But she couldn’t get into the room. It was full of soldiers trying to stay ahead of Mrs. Kinnard.

“There’s a fire in old Mr. Markham’s sitting room, Miss Woodard,” one of them said. “You might be more comfortable in there.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, more than grateful for any suggestion that would keep her out of Mrs. Kinnard’s way—for a while at least. But she could already hear the woman coming up the stairs, and she hurried away.

“The things I do for you, Max Woodard,” she said under her breath. She was as intimidated as that young lieutenant who was supposed to see her safely to Philadelphia.

She slipped inside the sitting room and firmly closed the door, then thought better of it and left it slightly ajar. She didn’t want Mrs. Kinnard sneaking up on her—not that the woman was given to anything resembling stealth. She was much more the charge-the-front-gates type.

A fire in the fireplace was indeed burning brightly. She savored the warmth for a moment, then moved to the nearest window and looked out. It was too dark to see anything but her reflection in the wavy glass.

Is that what a “strong woman” looks like?

She couldn’t believe Max had described her in that way. She didn’t feel strong. If anything, she felt...unfinished. What am I supposed to be doing? she wondered, the question stark and real in her mind and intended for no one. Clearly it wasn’t going to be spending time alone thinking of her lost child.

Brooding
.

Is that what she had actually planned to do? Perhaps, she thought, but she had never inflicted her unhappiness on anyone else, at least not consciously. To do so would have resulted in the decision to send her away—for her own good—and as a result, she would have had no contact with her son at all. She had worked hard to seem at least content with her life, so much so that she had nothing left over to nurture her better self. She always went to church, here and in Philadelphia, but the gesture was empty somehow. She felt so far away from anything spiritual and had for a long time. She still prayed for the people she loved, especially for Harrison. She had asked for God’s blessing on him every night since he’d been born. But she never prayed for herself, and she had never asked for forgiveness. When she looked at Harrison, at what a fine young man he was becoming, she simply couldn’t bring herself to do it. She might be a sinner, but
he
wasn’t a sin.

Perhaps this was what living a lie did to a person—kept them feeling unworthy to speak to God. The best that could be said of her was that she had endured. Day after day. Year after year. In that context, she supposed Max was right. She was a strong woman.

She could hear the soft whisper of the snow against the windowpane. How much more pleasant the sound was when there was a warm fire crackling on the hearth behind her.

Is it snowing where you are, my dear Harrison? Are you warm and safe?

No, she thought again. She wasn’t going to think about him now. She would wait until later. Until...

She couldn’t say when. She gave a heavy sigh and looked around the room. It was no longer a combination sickroom, sitting room and library, but more a place to escape the domestic chaos of a household full of little boys. Even when Maria’s ailing father had occupied it, it had been a pleasant place to be, with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, comfortable upholstered rocking chairs and windows that looked out over the flower and herb garden. She’d come in here often the first time she’d visited Max, shortly before he married Maria. Then the room had been a kind of
special sanctuary,
a place where old Mr. Markham had held court for the community and the conquering army alike, despite his doctor’s orders. He’d been a witty and delightful man who’d enjoyed company—her company in particular, it had seemed—and she’d liked him very much. He’d been quite cunning, as well. He’d done his best to recruit her to bring him some forbidden cigars, and failing at that, it still hadn’t taken him long to steer her into revealing all her misgivings about her brother’s upcoming marriage to Mr. Markham’s only daughter—some of which he harbored, as well.

She suddenly smiled to herself, thinking of Max and Maria and how suited they were to each other. “We were wrong to worry so, weren’t we, Mr. Markham?” she whispered.

Or so she hoped. The chaos in Max’s house tonight was of a completely different kind, the kind that had precipitated heavy footsteps and loud men’s voices, Mrs. Kinnard barking orders like a sergeant major and some kind of commotion involving pots and pans in the kitchen. The house was annoyingly alive, and all because of the man who had collapsed in the downstairs hallway. If he was indeed Maria’s brother, then it was no wonder he’d questioned Kate’s presence here. He must have believed the house was still his home.

Where has he been?
she wondered.
And why did he stay away?
She tried to imagine how she would have felt if Max had left her and their parents believing he was dead and grieving for him for years.

Kate suddenly realized that she wasn’t alone. A woman carrying a heavy-laden tray stood tentatively at the doorway.

“I— Am I interrupting?” the woman asked.

“No, no, of course not. Do come in, Mrs.—”

“Justice,” the woman said quickly, Kate thought in order to keep them both from being embarrassed if Kate happened not to remember her name—which she hadn’t.

“Yes, of course.”

The woman came into the room, a bit at a loss at first as to where to put the tray. After a moment she set it down on a small table next to one of the rocking chairs. There was a plain brown teapot on the tray, a sugar bowl, a cream pitcher, spoons and a cup and saucer—and a plate covered with a starched and finely embroidered—but slightly worn—tea towel.