Cheryl Reavis (4 page)

“It still is,” she said quietly.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway again, but they continued past
the door toward the back of the house. “I always...liked Mrs. Justice,” he said
when it seemed that they were safe from any outside intrusion.

“I believe the feeling is mutual.”

“I liked all my mother’s friends...but it was a little harder
with...Mrs. Kinnard.” He supposed that she must know about Mrs. Kinnard and her
bossy nature—unless things had changed radically, everyone in this town longer
than a day would know. But he only made the remark to see if she would smile. It
pleased him that she did.

“All your mother’s friends vouched for you. If they hadn’t, I
suspect you would have awakened in the stockade rather than in your own
bed.”

“I...don’t look the same.”

“Even so, they didn’t hesitate.”

“I’m most grateful, then.”

They stared at each other until she became uncomfortable and
looked away. It was time for her to identify herself, and he wasn’t sure why she
didn’t. He supposed that hiding was one thing, and introductions were something
else again.

“Miss Woodard,” she said finally.

Robert frowned, trying to remember if he’d ever known a Woodard
family. “Miss Woodard,” he repeated. Half a name was not helpful. He still had
no idea who she was. “And that would be the...Miss Woodard who...hides.”

“The very one,” she said agreeably. “I do apologize for
intruding. I didn’t intend to come in here at all, but I thought you were still
unaware, and I was quite...trapped. My only excuse is that I’ve been charged not
to upset the occupation by offending Mrs. Kinnard. I’m finding
it...difficult.”

“Yes, I can...see that. Tell me, do you often...go through
men’s pockets?”

“Thus far, only when Sergeant Major Perkins insists,” she
said.

“If he’s like the...sergeants major I’ve known, he does that on
a...regular basis. Insists.”

“Well, he is formidable. They say my brother knows everything
that goes on in this town and in the occupation army. If that is true, I believe
the sergeant major is the reason.” She stood and smoothed her skirts. “I must go
now and tell him you’re awake.”

“Your brother is...?” he asked, trying to keep her with him
longer, though why he wanted—needed—to do that, he couldn’t have said, except
that she was an anchor to the reality he suddenly found himself in.

She looked at him for a long moment before she answered.
“Colonel Maxwell Woodard. Your brother-in-law. Which makes us relatives, I
suppose, by marriage.”

Robert heard her—quite clearly. He even recognized the
implication of her brother’s military title. He just didn’t believe it. Maria
married to a Yankee colonel was—impossible. It would have been no surprise to
him at all to learn that she had wed during his long absence, but she would
never have married one of them. Never
.

And then he remembered.
Never
was
for people who had viable options, not for the ones who found themselves
conquered and destitute and occupied, especially the women. He should have been
here. Who knew what circumstances had pushed Maria into such a union, and he had
no doubt that she had been pushed.

A sudden downdraft in the chimney sent a brief billowing of
smoke and ash into the room. He realized that his alleged sister-in-law was more
concerned about him than about the possibility of a singed hearthrug. She was
looking at him with a certain degree of alarm, but he made no attempt to try to
reassure her. He stared at the far wall instead, watching the shifting patterns
of sunlight caused by the bare tree limbs moving in the wind outside. It was his
own fault that he was so ignorant. He supposed that some might find the
situation ironic, his little brother dead at Gettysburg and his sister married
to one of the men directly or indirectly responsible.

“I’m sorry to have put it so bluntly,” she said after a moment.
“I should have realized that the news might be...difficult to hear.”

He dismissed her bluntness with a wave of his hand. “Your
brother and Maria...?” He couldn’t quite formulate a question to ask; there were
so many. Seven years’ worth.

“They live here,” she said, apparently making a guess as to
what he might want to know despite her misgivings about him. She couldn’t know
if he had been so uninformed by choice or because of the circumstances he’d
found himself in.

He had to struggle to keep control of his emotions. He hadn’t
expected to hear that the Markham household as he knew it was essentially gone.
Finding out that Maria had married one of them was hard enough, but it was even
more difficult to accept that this Yankee colonel had taken up residence in the
house where his family—especially Samuel—had lived. Lying here now, he wanted to
hear Samuel’s boisterous presence in the house just one more time. Samuel,
running down the hall, bounding up the stairs, whistling, dropping things,
sneaking up on their mother and taking her by surprise with one of his exuberant
hugs. Robert smiled slightly. It had cost the household a whole dozen eggs once
when Samuel in his joyful enthusiasm had made her drop the egg basket she’d been
carrying.

His smiled faded. There was nothing now but the tread of enemy
soldiers.

No. The war is over. We aren’t supposed to
be enemies anymore.

“And you live here, as well?” it suddenly occurred to him to
ask.

“No. I’m only visiting.”

“Visiting,” he said, because it all sounded so...normal. Only
it wasn’t normal at all. Nothing was normal anymore.

His head hurt.

“Are you—” she started to say, but he interrupted her.

“Is he good to her?” he asked with a bluntness of his own. “I
want to know.” He turned his head despite the pain so that he could see her
face. The question was disrespectful at best, and far too personal under the
circumstances. He knew perfectly well that she would likely be the last person
to give him a truthful answer, especially when the question in and of itself
suggested that he had no faith whatsoever that her brother could behave well
toward a Southern woman.

But it couldn’t be helped. She was his only opportunity, the
only person who might actually know.

She didn’t seem to take offense, however. “He is as good to her
as she will let him be,” she said. “He has to be careful of her Southern
pride.”

“And you see...that as a...problem?”

“No, I see it more as a token of his regard for her. He was
quite smitten.”

“Was. He isn’t smitten now?”

“The word suggests to me a transient kind of emotion, Mr.
Markham,” she said, clearly trying to explain. “I believe what my brother feels
for Maria is a good deal more than that. Maria has made him happy—when he
thought he would never be happy again. The war...”

“Yes,” he said when she didn’t continue. “The war.”

“He was a prisoner,” she said after a moment. “Here.”

“And now he’s the...?”

“Occupation commander.”

“That must be...satisfying, given his...history.”

“If you’re talking about an opportunity for revenge, it might
have been just that, but for Maria. He loves her dearly. And it isn’t one-sided,
Mr. Markham.”

“What do the townspeople think of the marriage?”

“That would depend upon whom you ask, I believe.”

“Has she suffered for it—for marrying a—the colonel?”

“The fact that Mrs. Justice and the others are here in the
house ready to take care of her brother, and have been since you arrived, would
suggest that she hasn’t.”

She was still looking at him steadily, trying to decide, it
seemed to him, precisely how much he should be told of his sister’s situation.
At this point he was certain there was more. Perhaps Mrs. Justice would know.
Asking Mrs. Russell and particularly Mrs. Kinnard was out of the question.

He loves her dearly
.

And Maria apparently loved him in return. That was the most
important thing, wasn’t it? He couldn’t want more for Maria than that. But,
whether she was happy or not, he still had to face her—and his father. He closed
his eyes. He dreaded it, almost as much as he dreaded facing Eleanor. He had
never answered her letter, but even after all this time, there were things still
to be said.

He took a wavering breath. The things he’d done—and not
done—had become overwhelming and indefinable. His sins were so many he couldn’t
separate them out anymore. They had all melded into guilt, into sorrow, into a
relentless sense of regret. There would be no fatted calf for his homecoming,
nor should there be. He didn’t deserve one, not when he’d abandoned what was
left of his family the way he had, and the worst part was that, despite the
progress he’d made, he was still lost in the relentless apathy that passed for
his life.

I need Your help, Lord,
he thought.
I have to make this right if I can. If I haven’t waited
too long. If the damage can be undone.

“Who is here in the house?” he asked abruptly.

“Right now? Mrs. Kinnard—she comes and goes. Mrs. Russell and
Mrs. Justice are here on a more permanent basis for propriety’s sake. And
Sergeant Major Perkins. Several soldiers from the garrison who are usually
assigned to the infirmary—they’ve been taking care of you. The army surgeon is
in and out. And there are one or two other soldiers whose job it is to keep Mrs.
Kinnard happy.”

“And my father?” he asked. “Where is he?”

She looked surprised by the question. “I’m sorry, Mr. Markham.
Your father died not long after Maria and Max were married,” she said.

He took a deep breath, and then another, trying to distance
himself this time from a different kind of pain. Coming home, getting this far,
had been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He had known that the old
man might not still be alive, but he had hoped—prayed—that that would not be the
case. Incredibly, he hadn’t realized how much he was counting on his father
being here.

Dead and gone
. Like Samuel. Like
Jimmy Russell. Like so much of his life. His faith was strong enough for him to
believe that they would all meet again; in his heart he knew that. But surely he
hadn’t thought he could come home after all this time and find that the
important things would have remained the same? The sorrow he felt at this moment
told him that he had.

He knew she watched him as he tried to process the information
she had given him so ineptly. He was grateful she hadn’t just left him to try to
understand all the things she’d told him on his own.

“My father— Do you know...what happened?” he asked after a
moment.

“He was very ill. It was his heart,” she said. “They had to
hurry the wedding on account of it—at his request, because he wanted to see
Maria as a bride. And his doctors advised that there could be no delay.”

“My father approved of the marriage, then.”

“Yes. He was quite fond of Max, and he...” She hesitated,
apparently uncertain as to whether he was up to hearing the details of his
sister’s marriage to a Yankee colonel.

“Go on,” he said. “I need to know.”

“He made sure that Maria could live here as long as she wanted.
It was in his will. He was worried that something might happen with the
occupation and the house might be confiscated if Maria owned it. So he left it
to Max. Your father trusted him to take care of her—they had long talks together
about it. The ceremony was held here in the upstairs, the wide hallway right
outside his room on the other end of the house. He could see and hear
everything. Maria looked beautiful—she wore the earrings you and Samuel gave her
before you left for the war—”

“We thought she would marry Billy Canfield. Where is he? Why
didn’t she?”

“You would have to ask her about that,” Kate said.

“My father was pleased about her marrying your brother,” he
said. It wasn’t a question, but the whole idea of such a thing was hard for him
to believe.

“Yes. He was. I think it was a very enjoyable day for him. Lots
of food and drink and good company, and I’m certain he sneaked at least one
cigar.”

Robert smiled briefly at hearing that his father’s love of
cigars had never waned. At least he had had something pleasant to focus on at
the end of his life. “An enjoyable day. That’s good. I’m...glad.”

“I liked Mr. Markham very much,” she said after a moment. “We
would talk sometimes.”

“Did he ever—” He suddenly stopped, unable to bring himself to
ask the question.

“What were you going to ask?”

“I— Nothing.”

“He spoke of you once,” she said, and once again he thought she
was trying to second-guess what he might want to know.

“He said you were his warrior son. And Samuel, his poet.”

Robert looked away. He had thought he was ready to hear these
things, but he wasn’t. Had he not been such a hotheaded “warrior,” Samuel might
be alive today.

He forced himself to push the conversation in a different, but
no less painful, direction.

“The colonel—isn’t here?” he asked.

“He and Maria and the boys left for New Bern three days
ago.”

“Boys? There are...children?”

“Three. Two are adopted. One, the youngest, is their birth
child. My brother had military business to attend to in New Bern and he wanted
his family with him. And Mrs. Hansen.”

He looked at her sharply. “Mrs. Hansen?”

“She helps Maria with the children. The boys are quite a
handful.”

“You’re talking about Warrie Hansen?”

“Yes. You would know her, I think.”

“I did,” he said. “A very long time ago.”

So, Robert thought. Now he knew where he could find Eleanor’s
mother at least.

“How...long have I been...?” He couldn’t quite find a word to
describe his current condition. He felt as if he had slept a long time, but he
didn’t know why or how. He reached up to touch his forehead again. It still
hurt.