Cheryl Reavis (10 page)

Someone—Maria—was playing the pianoforte—or attempting to. There were several false starts and stops before Kate could recognize the song. It was “How Firm a Foundation.”

Chapter Seven

“O
h! I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were—anyone—was— I’ll go,” Kate said.

Robert was sitting there in the dark—the last person she expected to find in the nursery. Both her hands were full, and she struggled to keep from dropping everything.

“Wait,” he said as she turned to leave, apparently without considering whether her brother might object to his having a conversation with her, too. Kate strongly suspected that Max would do just that because, thanks to the events of the evening, he was now set to object, without rhyme or reason, to anything associated with Robert Markham, no matter what the situation might be.

She stood there, unsure whether or not she should stay or go. It seemed that she was destined to keep losing her space in the house to him.

“I don’t want to disturb you,” she said.

“You aren’t. I was just thinking about a passage from Isaiah.”

“Isaiah?” Kate said, and he actually smiled.

“Yes. I’m not as unchurched as I might look, Miss Woodard.”

“No, I—didn’t mean—”

“You aren’t the only person who would be surprised,” he said, still smiling.

He stood and crossed to the fireplace to add another log and waited until the sparks had settled. Kate looked around the room for a place to put the unlit candle and candlestick she was holding without dropping her book, some paper, an inkwell and a pen.

“I’ll light the candle,” he said.

She managed to hand it to him, and the candlestick, but she dropped the book on the floor in the process. He bent to pick it up and her
carte de visite
of Harrison fell out. He retrieved that as well and held them both out to her. She took them from him quickly, clutching them tightly while trying to put the rest of the things down on the small, well-used oak table in the middle of the room.

“My mother brought that table with her when she married my father,” he said. “It wobbles. See?” He reached out to show her how uneven the legs were. “It was a keepsake from her girlhood, her ‘something old.’ I suppose it’s a place for Maria’s boys to have their meals with Warrie Hansen now—and whatever else little boys might want to do with their books and toys and treasures.” He looked around the room for a moment as if he were searching for something else familiar.

“I see you’re writing another letter,” he said as he lit the candle and set it securely in the candlestick. “When I was looking for you earlier today, Sergeant Major Perkins told me you’d gone to mail some letters,” he added.

“Oh,” Kate said. “I...didn’t feel sleepy, so I thought I’d just have this handy—in case—” She stopped because she was running out of inane things to say. She had no idea what had passed between him and Maria tonight, but whatever it was, seeing him now, she didn’t think he was the better for it.

“It’s good that you keep in touch.”

“I...suppose so. What was the passage?” she asked, hoping to steer the conversation to a better topic. “From Isaiah.”

“‘This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest. And this is the refreshing,’” he quoted. “I think I need that—the refreshing.”

“Why were you looking for me?” she asked when he didn’t say anything more. She thought that it likely had something to do with his request that she find out whatever she could about Eleanor Hansen. She did have some information now, most of which she wouldn’t share. She could tell him that Mrs. Justice had said that Eleanor left town, but she wouldn’t say that Mrs. Justice had also told her—without actually telling her—that Eleanor Hansen was Maria’s childhood friend Nell, the one who had lost her honor and reputation—or had thrown it away. And, based on Warrie Hansen’s remarks as she’d left the house tonight, in her mind at least, Robert Markham was the one responsible for her daughter’s downfall.

“Is it very late?” Robert asked instead of answering. “I don’t have any idea what time it is. The big clock in the hallway seems to be missing.”

“I understand it didn’t fare well—when General Stoneman raided the town.” Kate paused, but he seemed disinclined to make any comment regarding the fate of the Markham grandfather clock. “It’s just after midnight, I think,” she said.

She could feel Robert watching as she moved the sheets of paper on the table a little to the left with her free hand.

“Would you...stay for a while?” he asked. The request was simple enough, and he made no attempt to justify it.

“Yes, all right,” she said after a moment.

Kate sat down in the other rocking chair, which was closer to the one he had been sitting in than she would have liked. But she didn’t want to make a point of moving it. She really didn’t mind the proximity. What she minded was Mrs. Kinnard somehow finding out about it. Kate could hear him sit down in the other rocking chair, but she didn’t look at him. She stared into the fire instead. The log he’d just put on the andirons began to pop and hiss. She wouldn’t ask him about his talk with Maria. She would just leave him to his thoughts.

They sat in silence; the silence was not uncomfortable—at least not for her.

“This was Samuel’s room,” he said after a time. “Our father decided to take out a wall here and there to make a bigger space for one of us. We played poker for it—much to our mother’s dismay. Or she would have been dismayed if she’d found out about it.”

Kate turned her head to look at him. “And you let him win.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Phelan and Billy Canfield’s Harvard cousins make me think that.”

He smiled. “How did you know about them?”

“You told me.”

“I don’t think I remember.”

“You were heavily dosed with laudanum at the time.”

“Ah. That would explain it then,” he said.

“You were a good brother,” Kate said, daring to glance in his direction. She wanted to know how he was. She had been too direct in her conversation with him before, and now she couldn’t seem to find that kind of directness at all.

“Not good enough,” he said, his voice flat. “I’m not very good at putting the things I’ve broken back together again.”

“You were—are—a good brother,” Kate said firmly. She believed that to be true even without knowing whether his remark pertained to his distant past or to whatever had happened when he’d talked to Maria tonight.

Once again the silence between them lengthened. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. Kate held on to her book and waited, thinking of Harrison and of Joe and Jake and Robbie, all of these boys asleep tonight in a place that was not their home.

“I...don’t know where Samuel is,” Robert said, his voice quiet and devoid of emotion. He might have been telling her the day’s date or the correct time. She could see that his hands were clenched tightly on the arms of the rocking chair.

“I know he died,” he continued. “I was with him when he died. I saw the wound. I saw the light...go out of his eyes. It was there, and then it wasn’t. He was gone and I knew it, but I still couldn’t...

“I tried to get him to the rear, but I couldn’t carry him. I couldn’t get him up off the ground. I kept trying and trying. Somebody dragged him away from me. Somebody else carried me the way I was trying to carry him. I thought he must have been brought off the field, too. But he wasn’t. I kept asking, but no one could tell me—” Robert stopped, and Kate could almost feel him struggling to remember. “And then I was on a wagon full of wounded men, in retreat with our tails between our legs. We couldn’t believe it—Bobby Lee had let us down. It rained for days after the battle, and Samuel was still out there. In the rain. I don’t even know if he was...buried. I remember the rain, but after that, it’s all blank. I just—can’t remember. I try but I can’t. It’s...gone.”

“You can’t blame yourself when you were wounded, as well,” Kate said. She had heard the army surgeon tell Perkins how severe Robert’s wounds had been. But she knew the moment she said it that he wouldn’t accept that reason as an excuse for whatever had happened, no matter how rational it was.

Grey’s last letter, the one that had arrived weeks after she knew he was dead, suddenly came to mind.

If you ever feel sorry for me, don’t let me see it...

She took a hushed breath. Why was she feeling his loss so strongly tonight? “Perhaps some of the men in your old regiment will know, men who were there,” she said.

“I think not. Samuel was—” He stopped for a moment before he continued. “He was the company favorite. Everybody loved him. They would have told our father and Maria where he was, if any of them had known. Father would have moved heaven and earth to get Samuel home so he could be buried here beside our mother. I...was supposed to take care of him and I...”

“Did you tell Maria any of this?”

He didn’t say anything. “Yes” would have been an easy enough answer had he done so, and from his ensuing silence, she could only conclude that he hadn’t. She felt instinctively that this one event was at the heart of everything, the prize fighting, his not coming home and perhaps Eleanor Hansen, as well. And not telling Maria about it now could only prolong both their misery.

“Don’t—” Kate began, than stopped.

“What? What were you going to say?”

Kate leaned forward in the chair so she could see his face. “I was going to say don’t spare her. She won’t thank you for it. You said you weren’t any good at putting the things you’d broken back together. If you can’t find the solitude you need to sort all of this out—if it gets too difficult being home when it’s not home anymore, and you can’t find the...courage to tell Maria the worst of what happened to you and Samuel—don’t just up and disappear again. At least tell her that you’re going, even if you can’t say why.”

He was looking back at her. “Are you always so certain about things?” he asked.

“No,” Kate said. “But when I am, I don’t want to ever regret not having said so.” She stood. “I’ll take my leave now. Good night, Mr. Markham.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said when she was in the hallway. “You can tell your brother that.”

Kate kept walking.

“Miss Woodard,” he called, and she stopped and turned to look at him.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For praying for me.”

“I—I’m afraid I’m...not someone who offers prayers on behalf of other people very often,” Kate said, not quite denying that she had done exactly that.

“But you prayed for me. I could feel it. I want you to know I’m grateful. I’m often in need of prayers. I hope you will keep it up.”

She stood for a moment longer. “Good night,” she said without acknowledging his gratitude, and she continued down the hallway.

“My dear,” Mrs. Justice whispered as she passed the kitchen door. “Will you join me?”

Kate hesitated, then followed Mrs. Justice into the kitchen. She was surprised that Mrs. Justice was still up and dressed. At this late hour she would have expected that the woman would have been fast asleep by now in the room off the kitchen she’d been sharing with Mrs. Russell ever since Mrs. Kinnard had essentially ordered them both here.

The kitchen was warm and quiet and still smelled of the bread that had been baked earlier in the day—yesterday. She was so hungry suddenly; her stomach rumbled.

“You’ve been neglecting yourself,” Mrs. Justice said. “I don’t believe you’ve eaten all day. Sit down at the table. I’m going to find you something. We can’t have you getting sick on top of all this upset.”

Kate would have protested, but she was too hungry. “Thank you, Mrs. Justice,” she said instead. “Bread and butter would be nice.”

“We’ve plenty of that. And some nice strawberry jam. One of the soldiers brought it—young Private Castine, I believe. I’m not going to wonder where or how he got it. We’ll just open a jar and have a bit of a feast. Sit—sit,” she urged.

Kate sat. In no time at all Mrs. Justice had the strawberry jam on the table and had fetched the milk and butter from the cold shelf in the cellar and then sliced some bread she took from the warming oven in the cookstove. She sniffed the jug before she poured them each a glass.

“Hasn’t turned.
Eat,
” she insisted. “No need to wait for me.”

Kate began to eat, while Mrs. Justice went into her bedchamber. The bread was warm, warm enough for the butter to grow soft and delicious. Kate’s face was sticky with jam by the time Mrs. Justice returned.

“I’ve made up another of the beds,” she said. “You must come in with Mrs. Russell and me—at least until...the house is more settled.”

Kate looked at her. Mrs. Justice had said “house,” but Kate suspected that wasn’t what she meant at all. She meant Robert Markham.

“I don’t—”

“We must do what is proper, my dear. It’s late. You can’t sleep in the nursery while Robbie is sitting there—he may be in there some time. And you can’t go to the room you normally use because he’s so at loose ends he may turn up there, as well. You’ll find the room down here warm and comfortable. There’s hot water in the ewer, and I’ve laid out a fresh nightgown for you—one of mine, so it’ll be too big, of course, but still comfortable enough for sleeping. I believe tomorrow may be every bit as trying as today has been. If it is, you will need your rest.”

“Mrs. Justice, I—” Kate hardly knew what to say in the wake of the woman’s kindness. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, my dear. I’m only acting in dear Bud’s stead. He would want you to be comfortable in his house despite everything that’s going on. Of that I am certain. Run along now, if you’re finished. I want to speak to Robbie before I retire—if he’ll let me.”

Kate hesitated, thinking she should at least help Mrs. Justice clear the table, but the woman shooed her away.

“Sleep well, my dear,” she said. “And don’t forget your prayers.”

The gentle reminder made her sigh heavily.

“What is it, my dear?”

“I— It’s— I want to pray but I’m so—” Kate shook her head. “What do you do when everything is just a—”

“When your worries are all jumbled together and you don’t know where to start?”

“Yes,” Kate said. “That’s it exactly.”

“Well,” Mrs. Justice said. “For me, two words always take care of it.”

“What two words?”