Cheryl Reavis (3 page)

“I thought you might like some tea and a little bread and butter to eat,” Mrs. Justice said. “I brought the bread with me—events being what they are tonight. I baked it early this morning so it’s fresh. And I took enough hot water to make a pot of tea when it started boiling—Mrs. Kinnard didn’t see me,” she added in a whisper, making Kate smile.

“You’re very kind—will you join me? I’m sure we can find another cup.”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Justice said quickly. “They’ll be bringing Robbie upstairs shortly and I must be on hand for that—though I’m not quite sure why. Mrs. Kinnard always seems to require my presence, but she never really lets me
do
anything. I can’t believe dear Robbie has come home. He’s so like Bud, you know.”

“Bud?” Kate asked as she poured tea into the cup.

“Mr. Markham Senior. We grew up together, he and I—well, all of us. Mrs. Russell, as well. You remember Mrs. Russell.” It wasn’t a question because Mrs. Russell was nothing if not memorable, especially if one happened to be associated with the occupation army in any way.

“I... Yes,” Kate said. Maria had told her that the war was not over for Mrs. Russell—and never would be. She was as militant as Mrs. Kinnard was imperious, and she had single-handedly ended an alliance between her daughter and one of Max’s officers. The disappointed young major had even reenlisted—much to Mrs. Russell’s and his family’s dismay—just to stay near her. So sad, Kate thought.

Together, Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Kinnard were a force majeure
in this town
,
a
walking, talking tribulation to all who had the misfortune to wander uninvited into their realms.

“Mr. Markham Senior was always ‘Bud’ to me,” Mrs. Justice continued. “He was a bit of a rascal in his youth—and so was Robbie. You know, everyone says the love of a good woman is what turned Bud around, but that’s not quite true. It’s not enough that the good woman loves the rascal. The rascal has
got
to love the good woman, too. And if he loves her enough not to cause her worry or pain ever again,
that’s
when it works out just fine. Or so
I
believe. And Robbie...well, before the war he was what you might call a regular brawler in the saloons and the...um...other places. Marriage to the right woman—somebody he loved—could have fixed him as well, I’m sure.” She gave a quiet sigh. “Sometimes I think I can still feel Bud in this room. It’s—” she looked around at everything “—nice. If only he’d lived to see this day and his older son come home again—or perhaps he does see it. His boys were everything to him. Everything.”

“Mrs. Justice!”

“I do believe I hear my name,” Mrs. Justice whispered with a slight giggle. “It’s quite all right, though. I’d put my hand in the fire for Bud’s son.” She had such a wistful look on her face, and Kate suddenly realized that this woman had once loved Bud Markham beyond their having shared a childhood, perhaps loved him still, and Kate felt such a pang of loneliness and longing that she had to turn her face away.

“Oh, you should know our Mrs. Russell will be along shortly, too,” Mrs. Justice said, turning to go. “Drink your tea, my dear,” she said kindly. “You are likely to need it.”

“Mrs. Justice!”

“Oh, dear,” she whispered mischievously at Mrs. Kinnard’s latest summons. She picked up her skirts and walked quickly toward the door.

“Mrs. Justice,” Kate said just as she reached it. “Who is Eleanor?”

“Eleanor?” Mrs. Justice said, clearly puzzled.

“Robert Markham roused enough to say the name Eleanor. I think perhaps he thought I was she.”

“Oh, that poor dear boy,” Mrs. Justice said. “That
poor
boy. If
she’s
the reason he’s come home...”

“Mrs. Justice! We need you!”

Mrs. Justice held out both hands in a gesture that would indicate she couldn’t linger because she was caught in circumstances far beyond her control. “Drink your tea!” she said again as she hurried away.

Chapter Three

“M
iss Woodard! Where are you!” The fact
that the question was whispered made it no less jarring.

Am I in a hospital?
Robert thought.
He tried to move, but he couldn’t somehow. Blankets, he decided, tucked in
tight. Perhaps he was in a hospital after all—except that it didn’t smell like a
hospital. It smelled like...

...coffee. Baked bread. Wood burning in a fireplace. Lavender
sachet.

His head hurt—a lot, he soon realized. He managed to get one
hand out from under the covers and reach up to touch his forehead.

Yes. Definitely a reason for the pain.

He finally opened his eyes. A fair-haired woman sat on a low
stool in a patch of weak sunlight not far from his bed, her arms resting on her
knees and her head down. He couldn’t see her face at all, only the top of her
golden hair and the side of her neck. Was she praying? Weeping? He couldn’t
decide.

“Miss Woodard!” the voice whispered fiercely right outside the
door, making her jump.

She turned her head in his direction and was startled all over
again to find him awake and looking at her.

She took a deep breath. “I’m hiding,” she said simply, keeping
her voice low so as not to be heard on the other side of the door.

He thought it must be the truth, given the circumstances.

“What...have you...done?” he managed to ask, but he didn’t seem
to be able to keep his eyes open long enough to hear the answer.

* * *

Kate took a hushed breath. He seemed to be sleeping
again, and in that brief interlude of wakefulness, she didn’t think he had
mistaken her for the still-mysterious Eleanor, despite his grogginess. She knew
that the army surgeon had given him strong doses of laudanum—to help his body
rest and to make his return to the living less troubled, he said. The surgeon
hadn’t known that Robert Markham had already made his “return to the living,”
and thus missed the irony of his remark.

She hardly dared move in case Maria’s brother was more awake
than he seemed. She watched him closely instead. He was so thin—all muscle and
sinew that stopped just short of gauntness. Both his eyes had blackened from the
force of the fall in the hallway, and there was a swollen bruise on his
forehead. He hadn’t been shaved. She tried to think if she’d ever been in the
actual company of a man so in need of a good barbering.

No, she decided. She had not. She had seen unkempt men out and
about, of course—on the streets of Philadelphia and here in Salisbury—but
generally speaking, all the men she encountered socially were...presentable. The
stubble of growth on Robert Markham’s face seemed so intimate somehow, as if he
were in a state only his wife or his mother should see.

But still she didn’t leave the room. She looked at his hands
instead, both of them resting on top of the latest warmed and double-folded army
blanket the orderlies kept spread over him. The room was filled with the smell
of slightly scorched wool.

His fingers moved randomly from time to time, trembling
slightly whenever he lifted them up. She could see the heavy scarring on his
knuckles, and she was sure Sergeant Major Perkins had been right. These were the
kinds of scars that could have only come from fighting.

And rage.

I shouldn’t be here,
she thought,
Mrs. Kinnard or no Mrs. Kinnard.

But it was too late for that realization. He was awake
again.

* * *

Robert stared in the woman’s direction and tried to get
his vision to clear. When he finally focused, he could tell that she was the
same woman he had seen earlier— in the same place—hiding, she’d said. Did he
remember that right? Hiding?

She looked up at a small noise. She seemed only a little less
startled to find him looking at her this time. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,”
she said after a moment. “I’ll go—”

“I wish you...wouldn’t,” Robert said, his voice hoarse and his
throat dry. “I...don’t seem to know...what has happened. Perhaps you
could...help me with that.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m somewhat bewildered
myself.”

“About what?”

“You, of course. You’re supposed to be dead.”

Robert looked away and swallowed heavily. He was so
thirsty.

“Do you know where you are?” she asked, but he wasn’t ready to
consider that detail quite yet.

“Is there some...water?” he asked.

“Oh. Yes. Of course.”

She rose from the footstool and moved to a small table near the
bed. Someone had put a tray with a tin pitcher and a cup on it. She filled the
cup with water, spilling a little as she did so. She hesitated a moment, before
picking up one of several hollow quills used for drinking that had been left on
the tray, then looked at it as if she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to
manage to give him the water.

Robert watched as she carefully brought the cup of water to
him. He could see that it was too full and that her hands trembled, but he
didn’t say anything. As she came closer he could smell the scent of roses. How
long had it been since he’d been this close to a woman who wore rosewater? He
lifted his head to drink, his thirst making him forget the pain in his head. It
intensified so, he couldn’t keep still. Water spilled on the blanket, more of it
than he could manage to swallow.

Appropriate or not, she put her hand behind his head to support
him while he drank, but she took the cup away before he had drained it. “Not too
much at first,” she said. “As I understand it, when you’re ill, what you want
and what you can tolerate can sometimes be at odds.”

“I’m not...ill.”

“Not well, either,” she said. She let his head down gently onto
the pillow.

Robert looked at her, trying to decide if he felt up to arguing
with her about it. No, he decided. He didn’t. The persistent pounding in his
head and the fact that he obviously couldn’t manage something as simple as
drinking from a tin cup on his own led him to conclude that, for the moment at
least, he was some distance away from “well.”

He watched as she returned the cup to the table and sat down
again. He still couldn’t decide who she was.
Not
Eleanor
was the only thing he knew for certain—besides the fact that
she was not a Southerner. Her diction was far too precise and sharp edged for
her to have grown up below the Mason-Dixon Line. It was too painful to attempt
any kind of conversation, so he kept looking at her. She seemed so sad.

Why are you sad, I wonder?

Since the war the whole world seemed to be full of women with
sad eyes. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring; he thought she was far too pretty
to be unmarried.

“My name is Robert Markham,” he said after a moment because it
seemed the next most socially appropriate thing to do.

“Yes,” she said, watching him closely, apparently looking for
some indication that she’d let him have too much to drink. “So I’m told. And
you’re sometimes called Robbie, I believe.”

Robert frowned slightly. Incredibly, he thought she might be
teasing him ever so slightly, and he found it...pleasant.

“Well, not...lately. How is it you know...who I am when I don’t
know you...at all?”

“I went through your pockets,” she said matter-of-factly. “I
found the Confederate military card inside your Bible. But three ladies who live
here in the town actually identified you—Mrs. Kinnard, Mrs. Russell. And Mrs.
Justice, of course. She’s the one who calls you Robbie.”

Robert drew a long breath in a feeble attempt to distance
himself from the pain, but it only made his head hurt worse. Mrs. Kinnard. He
certainly remembered that Mrs. Kinnard had identified him, and it was good that
she had been correct in her identification. Mrs. Kinnard, as he recalled, was
never wrong about anything. He nearly smiled at the thought that he might have
had to assume whatever name she’d given him because no one had the audacity to
contradict her. She would undoubtedly be the angry whisperer outside the door.
It was no wonder this young woman had felt such a pressing need to stay out of
sight.

He looked around the room, certain now of where he was at
least, without having to be told.

Home
.

In his own bed. It was so strange, and yet somehow not strange
at all. It was the noise in the household that was so alien to him. Men’s
voices—accented voices and the heavy tread of their boots. Barked military
orders and the quick, disciplined responses to them. What he didn’t hear was his
brother Samuel’s constant racket; or his sister, Maria, playing “Aura Lee” on
the pianoforte in the parlor; or his father and his friends laughing together in
the dining room over brandy and cigars.

And he didn’t hear his mother singing the second verse of her
favorite hymn, “How Firm a Foundation,” as she went about her daily chores.
Always the second verse.

Fear not, I am with thee,

O be not dismayed;

For I am Thy God,

And will still give the aid...

He had never had her kind of faith, and for a long time he had
lost all hope that the words of that particular hymn might be true.

I’ll comfort thee, help thee,

And cause thee to stand...

And what about now? Did he believe them now?

He had thought he was prepared for the shame of returning, but
he wasn’t prepared at all for the overwhelming sense of loss. That was far
beyond what he had expected, the direct result, he supposed, of having been so
certain that he would never see his home again. And yet here he was, despite his
vagueness as to precisely how he’d gotten here, and that was the most he could
say for the situation.

Mrs. Russell suddenly came to mind—and her son, James Darson
Russell. He tried to remember...something. Jimmy had died in the war; he was
sure of that, and yet the memory seemed all wrong somehow. He frowned with the
effort it took to try to sort out what was real and what was not.

Jimmy had been several years younger than he, but he had had
the self-assurance not often seen in a boy his age. Most likely it had come from
having had to become the head of the household after his father’s death. His
mother and his sister had needed him, and he’d accepted that responsibility like
the man he was years from being.

Robert smiled slightly as another memory came into his mind.
Jimmy had been confident and self-possessed—until he’d gotten anywhere near
Maria. Then he couldn’t seem to walk and talk at the same time. He’d turned into
an awkward, inelegant boy who couldn’t put two words together without sounding
like a dunce. It was strange what a certain kind of woman could do to a man when
he ardently believed her to be unattainable. He himself had suffered the same
affliction when he’d been courting Eleanor and perhaps still would, had not a
war intervened. But absence hadn’t made her heart grow fonder; it had made it
grow more discerning. So much so that shortly before the disaster at Gettysburg,
she had written him a letter—her final letter to him—telling him plainly that
she had decided that their reckless personalities, hers as much as his, would
make for nothing but misery if they wed. He had been stunned at first, and then
resigned—because he couldn’t deny that their relationship was as volatile as she
said it was. He’d lost the letter along with all the rest of his belongings
somewhere on the Gettysburg battlefield, where it must have lain, who knew how
long, soaked in blood and rain, and unreadable.

“He was killed at...” he said abruptly, aloud without meaning
to.

“Who?” the woman sitting on the footstool asked. He had
forgotten she was there. She was looking at him intently.

“Mrs. Russell’s son. James Darson—Jimmy,” he said with some
effort, not remembering if she knew who Mrs. Russell was or not. “She was one of
my mother’s friends. Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Justice. And Mrs. Kinnard,” he added
as an afterthought. He deliberately called up the women’s names because he’d
lost his place in the conversation—if there had actually been a conversation—and
he didn’t want her to think he was any more addled than he was.

“Jimmy Russell had red hair—the good luck kind—a carrot top. I
used to chase him down and rub his head before every card game and every horse
race. He was always threatening to have his head shaved—just to break me of my
gambling habit. Once, though, he hunted
me
down—because he heard I was going to play poker with Phelan and Billy Canfield’s
Up North cousins—do you know the Canfield brothers?”

“No—except by reputation,” she added. He thought there was a
slight change in her tone of voice, enough to signify something he didn’t
understand.

He looked at her for a moment. Yes. Her eyes were sad.

“Harvard men, these cousins were,” he continued without really
knowing why he should want to tell her—or anybody—about any of these things.
Perhaps it was because he was starved for the company of another human being. Or
perhaps it was the fact that she seemed to be listening that made his rambling
recollections seem—necessary. “You could say they were arrogant.”

“I can imagine,” she said.

“Almost as arrogant as I was,” he said. “It was important—a
matter of honor—to win, you see.”

“And did you?”

“I had to. Jimmy said he’d shave
my
head if I...didn’t. Billy and Phelan would have helped him do it, too. I
can’t believe he’s gone...so many of them...” His voice trailed away. He had to
force himself to continue. “Jimmy’s life was full of burdens, but he was always
laughing...” He trailed away again, overwhelmed now by the rush of memories of
the boy who had been his friend. He shook his head despite the pain. He had
something important to do; he had to pull himself together. “I can’t seem to
recall where it happened—what battle. Early in the...war, I think. He was Mrs.
Russell’s life. It must have been...hard for her.”