Cheryl Reavis (8 page)

“Our Maria’s back,” Mrs. Justice said happily, despite the escalating confusion beyond the dining room door.

Oh, no! Maria!

Kate scrambled to put her cup down and get to her feet, then ran for the door shoeless, but Mrs. Justice reached it ahead of her and threw it wide as she stepped into the chaos in the foyer. Kate was left staring directly into her brother’s astonished face.

“Kate—?” he said incredulously. “Mrs. Justice—?” But whatever else he was going to say got lost in a long and terrible wailing sound coming from someone behind him. And it didn’t stop. It went on and on. The boys began to cry, and in the sudden shuffling of people, Max ended up holding his youngest son. He thrust the baby into Kate’s arms and turned to help Mrs. Justice ease Warrie Hansen down so she could sit on the bottom step of the stairs. Joe and Jake were clinging to her skirts, and Mrs. Kinnard kept insisting on having Max’s attention.

And Maria—

Maria was standing just inside the front door, staring past Kate toward the rear of the house, her face ashen. And then her eyes rolled upward and her head tilted back. She grabbed for Valentina’s arm as she sank into a heap on the floor. Valentina’s squawk of alarm added to the din, and Max moved her bodily out of the way so he could get to Maria. Perkins was barking orders, sending a runner for the army surgeon and the rest of his soldiers to either help clear the foyer of unnecessary people or get out of the way.

And Warrie Hansen was still sobbing.

“Joe! Jake!” Kate said to the boys, holding out her free hand. “Come here!” Surprisingly, they ran to her, and she took them back toward the kitchen, carrying Robbie, leading Joe and essentially dragging Jake, who held on to the folds of her skirt with both fists. Her only thought was to get them out of the melee, but Mrs. Justice and Mrs. Russell decided to bring Warrie Hansen down the hallway to the nursery wing so she could lie down. Kate and the boys were decidedly in the way. Mrs. Justice kept trying to soothe Warrie, but it was having no more effect than Kate’s trying to soothe the boys. Their crying escalated, and Kate felt like crying right along with them.

Kate stopped short as she realized that Robert Markham was standing in the kitchen doorway, much as he had that snowy night he’d arrived home. But she knew more about him now, and when she saw his stricken face, she understood immediately what had happened. He must have been standing there when Warrie and Maria came into the house, and both women had seen him, not knowing anything at all about how he came to be there. Warrie was still so distressed, she didn’t seem to know that she was passing right by him.

“Robert,” Kate said, but he was looking at his sister being carried into the parlor. “Robert,” she said again because she thought he was only a moment from going to her.

“This is my fault,” he said.

“Yes,” Kate said. “It is. But right now isn’t the time for you to try to talk to Maria. My brother has to be told what’s happened so he can prepare her. I told you how it is with them. He’s not about to let you make things worse. Please,” she said because he was clearly determined to handle this himself, but she knew her brother, and she knew she was right. “I need to get the children upstairs,” she said, but he wasn’t listening. She moved around to where she could see his face.

“I need to take them upstairs.”

He finally looked at her. “Give me the baby,” he said.

She hesitated, then handed Robbie over to him. He took the baby gently, skillfully, and held him against his shoulder. Kate managed to get Jake to release his grip on her skirts. She took him by the hand and led both boys through the kitchen and up the back stairway.

She looked over her shoulder at one point to make sure Robert was behind her. It suddenly occurred to her that he might be too unsteady still to carry a baby, but he seemed to be maneuvering the stairs without any difficulty. When she reached the big open upstairs hallway, she considered going into the sitting room on her right, but then she kept going, leading the way to the room Robert now occupied, primarily because she could hear what was happening downstairs better from there. Once inside she gave Robert a look of gratitude for being reasonable and tried to catch her breath, then she bent down and put her arms around both boys.

“It’s all right,” she whispered to them. “Don’t cry.”

“Maria fell down!” Jake wailed, and Kate could hear Robert’s sharp exhalation of breath behind her.

Joe had nothing to say. At some point, as the older of the two, he had decided to leave the actual asking of whatever questions the two of them might have to Jake. For reasons known only to him, he didn’t want anyone to know he might be in need of information. He especially didn’t want to be laughed at because of something he didn’t understand. Kate leaned back to look at him. He was trying so hard to stop crying and be brave.

“Max will come and tell us all about it just as soon as he can,” she said, moving his hair out of his eyes. “We’re going to wait right here so he won’t have any trouble finding us.”

Kate glanced at Robert again. The baby was still crying despite his gentle swaying and soothing words. Kate gathered the boys to her again.

“I found Robbie’s horse. It’s on the mantel in the sitting room. Will you run as fast as you can and get it?”

They both whirled around and ran out of the room, delighted in spite of their distress to have permission to run free
in
the house. They were back in no time, both of them clutching the horse and holding it out to her.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “You were so quick! Robbie,” she said softly, moving to where Robert stood so she could caress the baby’s soft curls. “Robbie. Look what Joe and Jake found. See? Look, Robbie.”

After a few more moments of crying he turned his head in Kate’s direction, and seeing the horse, he took his fingers out of his mouth and reached for it. But he dropped it on Robert’s chest in the process. Robert retrieved it and let him take it again, smiling slightly as the baby began to bite on the horse’s head.

At least one problem is solved, Kate thought. Clearly she should address the few things she could actually accomplish. She began to help the boys off with their coats.

“Joe. Jake,” she said. “Do you know who this man is?”

They shook their heads, still sniffling.

“This is...” She hesitated, ostensibly to help Jake get his arm out of his coat sleeve, but actually because she didn’t know how she should explain Robert to them. He was Robbie’s uncle, but she didn’t know how he would feel about suddenly having two adopted nephews.

“I’m your uncle Robert,” Robert said for her. Both boys looked at him doubtfully.

“We belong to Maria and Max,” Joe said after a moment, his voice full of suspicion.

“Yes. And I’m Maria’s brother, so that makes you my nephews—”

“Maria’s brothers died. Everybody knows that. Maria cried and cried. Maria’s brothers and my mama—they’re all in heaven. Warrie said so.”

“I was wounded in the war, but I didn’t die,” Robert said. “And I’m here now.”

“Is my mama coming back, too?” Jake asked hopefully.

“No, Jake. What happened to me isn’t what happened to your mama.”

The boys looked at each other, and for once, Kate thought Joe might pose a question of his own. But then he sighed and said nothing, clearly disappointed that Robert was so certain that their mother wouldn’t return.

“Papa went to Texas,” Jake offered after a moment.

“Did he?” Robert said. He glanced at Kate, she thought for some kind of validation. He must have assumed that both the boys’ parents were dead if Max had adopted them.

Kate gave him a slight nod. This was yet another change he didn’t know anything about.

“I didn’t know that,” Robert said to the boys.

“And Uncle Billy, too. They couldn’t stay here anymore—because of the Yankees. Have you been to Texas?”

“I have. Once, before the war.”

“Do you know my papa and my uncle Billy?”

“
My
papa and
my
uncle Billy, too,” Joe said, giving him a push.

“Yes, I know them. When Phelan and Billy and I were just about your age, we were best friends.”

“Did
you
ever get in trouble?” Jake wanted to know despite Joe’s pushing.

“Yes,” Robert said. “I did.”

“Papa and Uncle Billy, too?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too,” Jake said solemnly. “And Joe,” he said, careful not to leave his brother out this time.

“Well, it’s hard not to sometimes,” Robert said, glancing at Kate again. She came and took the baby from him and moved to sit down in the rocking chair.

“We wanted to go to Texas, too,” Joe said. “But nobody wanted any boys along. I could go to Texas. I could go right now. I could go
easy
.”

“Can not,” Jake assured him. “We like it
here
. Maria and Warrie would cry and cry if we—” He abruptly stopped, Kate thought, because current events had suddenly given him some insight as to what that might look like. Joe leaned forward and whispered something in Jake’s ear.

“Where did
you
come from?” Jake asked, looking at Robert hard.

“New York City,” Robert said. He sat down on the side of the bed and patted the folded blanket next to him as an invitation for both boys to join him—which they did, Jake sitting next to him and likely still full of questions, and Joe well apart from them both.

Kate looked down at Robbie. The rocking and the quiet turn of the conversation seemed to have put him on the verge of sleep.

“Did you ride on the train?” Jake asked.

“No, mostly I walked,” Robert said. “Sometimes I hitched a ride with a mule skinner.”

“Well,
I
would ride on the train. I wouldn’t be
walking
or riding with a mule,” Joe assured him. “You should have thought of it. We rode on the train to Raleigh. Then we rode on another train to New Bern. I like New Bern. Warrie took us to see the boats. Boats and boats and
boats!
”

“I guess there were a lot of them.”

“Yes!” the boys cried in unison.

“I think—” Robert suddenly stopped because Max stood in the doorway.

“I want to talk to you,” he said. “Now.”

Chapter Six

S
o.
This is Maria’s husband.
Once his enemy, and perhaps he still was.

Robert got to his feet; he had no intention of letting the man tower over him. They stared at each other, and Robert found himself clenching and unclenching his fists as if he were about to step into the ring again, about to beat some hapless opponent bloody and reeling until he fell to the ground. He had thought he was done with all that, but how easily it had come back to him. He’d had to struggle hard to let go of his need to always respond with anger, and apparently he still did.

Watch ye, stand fast in the faith... Be strong. Blessed are the peacemakers.

“I think my brother means me, Robert,” Kate said behind him. He thought she couldn’t help but see the sharp contrast between the two of them—Robert raggedly dressed, disheveled and still in need of a shave, and her brother, all military spit and polish.

“Indeed,” Max said. “But you’ll have your turn, sir. I require at least some explanation as to why my house has been turned upside down.”

Robert didn’t actually flinch when Max Woodard said “my house,” and he was grateful for that.

“Sergeant Major!” Max snapped. “Gather up these boys and see if you can find them something to eat.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Come on, men,” Perkins said to Joe and Jake. “You heard the Colonel. I happen to know we’ve got cookies around here someplace. If we can find them, I reckon you can put away one or two. What do you think?”

Both boys nodded vigorously.

“And take the baby to Mrs. Kinnard,” Max said.

“Mrs. Kinnard, sir?” Perkins said, clearly thinking he’d heard wrong.

“Tell her I need her help. Say I know she’s very busy, but I’ve asked if she’ll take Robbie into the dining room and keep him there for a bit. Say I’m sure she’ll know what to do for him.”

“Yes, sir. If anybody can settle that woman down, I reckon our Robbie can. Come on, Little General,” he said, taking the baby from Kate. “Let’s go see the elephant.”

“Kate,” Max said, holding his hand in the direction he wanted her to go

But Robert had her attention now, and he thought his brother-in-law knew it. Kate was looking at him with such...concern, but he saw no pity in her eyes. It was more a kind of understanding, and he was grateful for that, as well. But there was something else, something he recognized easily because of his wild younger days and because he’d had a sister like Maria. Kate Woodard was fervently hoping that the men around her—her brother and he—would at least make some effort to behave in a civilized manner.

“I trust you’ll stay here—where I can find you,” Max said to him. And while the statement, on the surface, was at least somewhat cordial, it was by no means a request. This Yankee colonel didn’t want him doing anything without his knowledge and approval, and the two armed soldiers standing in the hallway assured that he wouldn’t.

“You do know the war’s over,” Kate said to her brother as she passed by him on her way out.

“Only for a select few,” he said, and Robert certainly knew the truth of that. The Reconstruction held both sides captive and would for the unforeseeable future. And then there were the individuals like himself and like the colonel, if he had been a prisoner of war—soldiers for whom the war would never end.

Surprisingly Kate and her brother didn’t move very far down the hallway, and Robert could hear them both quite clearly. He made no pretense that he wasn’t listening, standing where both the soldiers left to keep him in line could see him. Neither of them apparently considered overheard conversations any of their concern.

“What are you doing here?” he heard Max ask his sister bluntly. “How did you get tangled up in all this?”

“One thing doesn’t have anything at all to do with the other,” Kate said. “So don’t suppose that it does.”

“Perkins told me what he knew about
him
being here, but he was less clear about how it is you’re not in Philadelphia.”

“I didn’t go,” Kate said.

“Yes, I can see that. The question is
why?
”

“I didn’t want to go. So I didn’t.”

“Just like that.”

“Exactly like that,” she assured him.

“And why would that be, I wonder?”

There was a long pause.

“Sometimes...” Kate said as if searching for the right words. “Sometimes one gets weary of other people’s arrangements.” Her voice was calm yet full of significance. Robert had no idea what she might have meant, but the silence that followed suggested to him that the colonel did.

“Kate, you can’t just—”

“That’s all I have to say about it, Maxwell,” Kate interrupted. “I mean it.”

“You do understand that I worry about you.”

“Yes. And I appreciate it—sometimes. Now tell me what’s happening with Maria.”

“The doctor and Mrs. Justice are with her.”

“And?”

“And I was ordered out of the room. So I came to find out what kind of cataclysm I’ve walked into.”

“Perhaps it’s not that dire,” Kate said.

“Any situation that has Perkins wearing his sack and burn face
and
Mrs. Kinnard firmly established on the premises is dire. If this man really is Maria’s brother—”

“He is. Mrs. Justice, Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Kinnard have all vouched for him.”

“Which counts for nothing with me.”

“Then Maria will settle it.”

“Yes. She will. And assuming he is who he says he is, then what? Is he going to stay around or is he going to go off and play dead just when she’s used to the idea that she has the last of her family back again? She loved her brothers, Kate. If what I’ve heard of this one is true, his staying isn’t going to do much for Maria’s peace of mind—”

Robert had heard enough. He stepped out into the hallway, causing both the soldiers standing by to move toward him.

“I want to see my sister,” Robert said. “Now.”

“And I want you to stay put until I tell you otherwise. I would hate to have to shoot you, Markham,” Max said in response.

“I’ve been shot before,” Robert said.

“So have I—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Kate said sharply. “What is wrong with the two of you! It doesn’t matter what either of you wants. I know you’re used to being in charge, Max, and you, Robert, you need to make things right with Maria—but she—and Mrs. Hansen—have had a terrible shock. At least give them a chance to get their footing before you start squabbling over who’s going to do what when. Honestly! Sometimes I can’t—”

“All right!” Max said, holding up both hands. “Your point is well taken. Any particular reason why you’re so...prickly?”

“Yes,” Kate said.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten me.”

“Very well.
I
am not a member of your occupation army—and I don’t have any dresses.”

“Or shoes, either, from the looks of it. If I’m meant to understand that remark—” Max stopped because Maria was coming up the stairs.

“Here you all are,” she said calmly, but she was looking directly at Robert. Her mouth trembled slightly, and she bit down on her lower lip to stop it.

How pretty she still is,
Robert thought, realizing that he hadn’t expected her to be. He’d seen too many Southern women completely worn down by the war, their youth and their health gone. She looked...fine, like the grown-up woman she was meant to be. But she was yet another one of the many with sad eyes, and the difference this time was that
he
was directly responsible for the sorrow he saw there—and the disappointment.

A sudden cascade of memories filled his mind. Maria, the happy and smiling baby sister who’d toddled around after him just so she could give him hugs and kisses and who’d had him wrapped around her little finger from the day she was born. Maria, dancing the evening away in her white summer dress with gardenias in her hair—while he had made certain her enthusiastic beaus knew precisely whose sister she was and what he would do to them if they happened to forget. Maria, standing on the upstairs veranda, her heart breaking as he and Samuel rode blithely off to war.

Maria
.

Sweet. Funny. Strong. He’d always been so proud of her.

Yet he had deliberately let go of his life here just so he would never have to face her again. His throat ached as he realized, perhaps for the first time, what he’d given up. She was all he had left, and he could see how hard she was struggling now to rise above the pain
he
had caused her.

He stepped forward, and so did his brother-in-law.

She held up her hand. “I want to speak to Kate,” she said, looking directly into his eyes.

“Me?” Kate said, clearly surprised.

“Mrs. Justice told me you were here when Ro—when my brother arrived,” she said, still looking at him.

“Yes—”

“Maria, I’m the one you need to talk to,” Robert said with every intention of pushing past his guards to get to her.

“No,” Max said sharply. “Not until I know how you are, Maria.”

“Max, I am myself now. Truly. And I know you won’t understand this, either of you, but sometimes a woman just needs to speak with her own kind.”

Robert looked at his brother-in-law. He strongly suspected that in this one matter they could agree. They didn’t understand, not in the least.

“Will you just...stay here, please?” she asked. “Or go spy on Mrs. Kinnard. She has our boy giggling in the dining room. This is apparently a day for...extraordinary events.”

“Maria,” Robert said, and she looked at him for a long moment. Then she shook her head and went down the stairs.

* * *

Kate didn’t wait to hear what her brother and Robert decided. She maneuvered around them and followed after Maria, despite being in her stocking feet. Halfway down the steps Kate realized what Maria had meant by “her own kind.” It wasn’t just that they were both women with a common interest—Max. It was that they were women with exasperating older brothers. Surprisingly they had been able to sit together on the upstairs veranda on warm summer nights after her marriage to Max and compare their experiences as “little sisters” on more than one occasion—until her sadness at Robert’s loss came rushing back again. No one in the house would understand what Maria was feeling at this moment better than Kate.

Maria put her hands to her face as soon as Kate closed the parlor door.

“Oh, Kate,” she said, close to tears. “My brother is back from the dead and all I want to do is—
shoot
him! What’s happened to him? His face— I don’t—”

“Sergeant Major Perkins thinks he’s been fighting—prizefighting.”

“Prizefighting! Well, why not! That’s so much better than coming home to the people—who—love—you—” She was weeping now, and Kate came closer and put her arms around her.

“We—
I
—needed him. And my poor father—he loved Robert so, Kate.”

“I know,” Kate said. His warrior son.

Maria took a deep breath and stepped away, crossing the room to open a box on the writing desk. She removed a small, framed daguerreotype and brought it to Kate. It was of a Confederate soldier—Robert Markham, Kate realized after a moment, before his features had been battered so.

“You see? You see how much he’s changed? Mrs. Justice says you’ve talked to him. What did he say?”

“I did most of the talking, I’m afraid—he didn’t seem to have any information about what had occurred while he was gone or after he collapsed in the hallway. I told him you and Max were married. I told him about your wedding—how much I thought your father had enjoyed it—and that he’d likely managed to sneak at least one cigar.”

“He smiled at that,” Maria said, but it was more a statement of hope than one of fact.

“Yes,” Kate said truthfully. “He did.”

“But where has he been?”

“I...didn’t ask him. He told the boys he’d come from New York City.”

“New York City. Prizefighting—”

“The army surgeon says the wounds he received at Gettysburg were severe. He had to have spent a long time recovering.”

“But all this time he let us think he was dead!”

There was nothing Kate could say to that.

“Perhaps...”

“What?” Maria asked.

“He must have had a reason, don’t you think? And it must have been...unbearable.”

Maria wiped at her tears with her fingertips and began to pace around the room, apparently lost in her own thoughts until she suddenly stopped and took a deep breath.

“I thought I was ready to see him, but I’m not, Kate. The boys—Perkins is good with them, but they’re so afraid something is going to happen to me like it did with their mother. I’ve gotten myself together enough to reassure them, but if I see Robert now, I’m just going to—come—undone. I’m going to stay down here. Will you tell Max I’m in the parlor? And tell Robert—oh, I don’t know what to tell Robert. It’s— I just—”

“I’ll tell him you need a little time before the two of you talk—but I don’t know if he’ll listen.” She offered the daguerreotype she was still holding.

Maria nodded and wiped her tears from her cheek again before she took it. “Tell him—ask him—if he’ll wait for my sake, then. I can’t bear to have him and Max at each other, and you know they will be if I can’t be calmer than I am now.”

“If it comes to that, Perkins will step in.”

“Perkins. Yes. I forgot about Perkins. Kate,” she said as Kate opened the parlor door. “Has Robert...asked about Eleanor Hansen?”

“Yes,” Kate said.

“Did you tell him anything?”

“I don’t really know anything to tell him. Nothing firsthand.”

Maria gave a heavy sigh and looked down at the daguerreotype as if she didn’t quite know how she happened to be holding it.

Kate hesitated, then stepped into the hallway and closed the door quietly behind her. And she didn’t have to worry about telling Max anything. He was already coming down the stairs. He went into the parlor without stopping, brushing past her without saying anything.

Kate stood in the middle of the now empty hallway, at a loss as to what she should do next. She suddenly looked down. Shoes. First things first.