Cheryl Reavis (17 page)

“Thomas,” she continued. “It is Thomas, is it not?”

“I…yes. I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage—”

“Sit down,” she interrupted. “It hurts me to look at you. Well, come on!” she insisted, when he continued to stand. “I won’t bite you. At least I don’t think I will. Actually, when it comes to damn Yankees like yourself, I prefer riding crops.”

“Riding crops?”

She dismissed that topic with a wave of her hand.
“We don’t want to talk about that. We want to talk about your wife. Yes or no?”

“Forgive me, but who
are
you?”

“Miss Gwendolyn Pembroke,” she said primly. “Now which is it? Yes or no?”

“Yes,” he said, pulling another straight chair close to the stove.

“Abby was very upset by seeing you today.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was…unexpected.”

“So I gathered. You realize that our only information here was that you were dead. You were on the casualty list Dr. Nethen brought—the one printed in the
New York Times.
‘Harrigan, Thomas, Captain, killed.’ And we’ve never heard otherwise. Abby didn’t believe it, of course.
No one
could make her believe it.

“I see,” he said.

“Do you?” she asked pointedly.

He sighed. “No.”

“Well, that’s where I come in. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know if Abiah is all right,” he said without hesitation.

“She’s…tolerable. The fever she had hasn’t come back, but she’s still not the Abiah she was the last time I saw her in Virginia. I saw you then, too. You liked my hounds.”

“Miss Gwen,” he said, suddenly remembering. “You’re Miss Gwen.”

“I am. And you are the scalawag Yankee who has broken my Abby’s heart.”

“She told you that?”

“No, she did not. I don’t know the cause of her present mental state. I can only make my conclusions after seeing the result. My question is what are we going to do now? Are you her husband or aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“You know there were rumors to the contrary—people who said the marriage was not bona fide, that it was only done so that she might die happy.”

“Who said that?”

“People in Falmouth who repeated the rumors they heard and then wrote them down and mailed them to their relatives here.”

“Does Abby know that?”

“I can’t say. If she does, it would account for some of her melancholy.”

“There were
three
chaplains at the ceremony, Miss Gwen.”

“Three!”

“I can assure you I am her husband.”

She looked at him for a moment. “Good,” she said finally. “Of course, it doesn’t matter what people think. It’s what Abby thinks.”

“What does she think?”

“You know, Thomas, I am not sure
she
knows—which is why I’m here. I think you need to talk to her.”

“Then let’s go—”

“Not
now.
She’s too upset by your resurrection, even if she didn’t think you were dead. Wait a day or
two. I don’t see why you can’t come to the house one evening. I don’t see any reason why you can’t just walk right in—half your sorry army does that whenever they feel like it, anyway. I would suggest after supper—when she won’t have any excuse to go skittering off someplace if she thinks she doesn’t want to talk to you. If fact, I would suggest some time
well
after supper. Her room is at the top of the stairs, the first one on the right. The window faces the street. You will be able to tell she’s awake if her lamp is still lit. Perhaps it would go more smoothly if she weren’t.”

He looked at her. What was she telling him to do—break into the house, into Abby’s bedchamber? At this point he had no idea whether Miss Gwen was an ally or not.

“You’ll be able to find your way,” she said. “The officers leave a lamp burning in the foyer at all hours. It’s a terrible waste of oil—but then, your army has it to waste, doesn’t it? Do you understand me or don’t you?”

“I understand,” he said.

“Good. Now help me up—or should I help you? Neither of us are very accomplished at walking these days, are we?”

He assisted her out of her chair and offered her his arm. “I dare say we could use some improvement,” he said as they both limped to the door. “How will you get home?”

“I have my buggy. Here,” she said, giving him a sheet of paper from her pocket. “These are the directions
to the house. I expect
not
to see you arrive there.”

He abruptly smiled, and so did she.

“You should smile more often, Tommy,” she said. “It helps a body understand what Abiah sees in you.”

He stood for a moment after she had gone. The only thing he knew for certain was that he would
not
be waiting a day or two.

A
bby woke suddenly not quite knowing where she was. It was still raining—she could hear it beating against the windowpanes, and for a brief moment it was as if she were in Zachariah Wilson’s house again. The room was cold. She fumbled in the dark to light the lamp, and she would have gotten out of bed to stoke the fire, but Thomas was sitting in the chair by the bed. She breathed in sharply, recognizing him only a split second before she would have cried out.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Well, you did. What are you doing here?” she asked, pulling the bedcovers tightly around her, as if that would be some protection against the onslaught of emotions his presence caused. She had expected to encounter him again, but not so soon and not here, not when she’d had no time to prepare herself, not when she could hardly look at him without weeping.

“You’re here,” he said quietly. “Where else would I be?”

She looked at him for a moment. “I don’t think we want to get into that.”

He ignored the remark.

“If you won’t write to me, if I don’t know whether or not I have to pretend we’re strangers whenever we meet, then I have no choice but to come to you like this.”

Their eyes met and held; he was the first to look away. She could see the scar on his face, and she could see the effort he was putting into not letting her see it. She had thought him changed before, but now—still—she barely recognized him. And it wasn’t just the scar. It was the terrible haunted and forsaken look in his eyes.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Well, I’m a hell of a lot better than I was.” He tried to smile and didn’t quite make it.

She shivered suddenly, more from nerves than from the cold.

He got up from the chair, slowly, painfully and walked—limped—to the fireplace to put on another log. “I would have done this sooner,” he said, “but I didn’t want to wake you.”

“How—how long have you been here?”

“Awhile,” he said.

“You just…walked in, just like that?”

“Just like that,” he said.

“Thomas…”

“What, Abby? You don’t want me here? I know that. But I…” He gave a quiet sigh.

She could see his weariness, so much so that when
he returned, she didn’t protest when he sat down on the side of the bed instead of in the chair.

He looked at her and gave an offhand shrug. “Can’t sleep,” he said.

“Why not? Are you in pain?”

He didn’t answer either question. “I thought maybe I could just sit here for a while,” he said after a moment. “With you. Maybe we could talk a little—like we used to when I came to your mother’s house. If you and I can talk, then I won’t have to think about…anything.”

He was looking at her so gravely.

“I’m not making sense, am I?”

“About as much as you ever do, Thomas,” she said, and he actually gave a soft laugh. She moved over. “Come lie down.”

He hesitated, to decide if she meant it, she supposed. She had no wish to be coy, and she was not hypocritical enough to pretend that they had not once been as intimate as it was possible to be.

He took off his boots, a procedure that clearly caused him a great deal of pain. She had to fight down her inclination to help him, because if she did, if he saw her, he would know. She could hide her condition under petticoats and jackets and shawls in the daytime. She couldn’t hide it under a nightdress.

Finally, he stretched out beside her on top of the covers.

“God, I am so…tired…” he said, sighing heavily and lying back on the pillow, his arm thrown over his eyes.

“Can’t you take something?” she asked. “So you can sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because it makes the nightmares worse…” He looked at her. “Could we just skip this and go straight to the serious discussion?”

“No,” she said. She made no move to lie down beside him, as much as she wanted to. “We have nothing to discuss.”

“Don’t we?”

“What’s done is done.”

“Ah,” he said. “I see. We’re to approach this with a pragmatist’s point of view.”

“One of us has to be practical.”

“Meaning I am not?”

“You’re the one who came up with the idea of us marrying.”

“So I am,” he admitted.

“There was nothing practical about that.”

“That’s a matter of opinion, Abby. Given the circumstances—even given the consequences—I would do it again.”

But you don’t know the consequences,
she thought.

He closed his eyes, and she could look at him openly now. He had shaved before he came. She could see the razor nick on his chin, smell the soap. She wanted to touch him. She was so glad to see him, so glad he was safe.

“I thought you’d throw something at me when we met face-to-face again,” he said after a moment.

“So did I,” she said, and he smiled. She had to look away so that he wouldn’t see the effect it had on her.

“I wrote to you.”

“I know.”

“You got my letter?”

“Yes and no.”

“I don’t know what that means, Abby.”

“It means I didn’t read it.”

“Why not?”

She didn’t answer him. There was no answer she wanted to reveal to him. Her heart was broken, she was afraid of what it said—and she just…hadn’t.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Because I want you to read it now—with me here.”

“It won’t change anything.”

“Abby—”

“It won’t change anything,” she repeated.

“I want the chance to explain.”

“You don’t have to. I understand.” She understood perfectly that she had been an unexpected inconvenience when he found her so ill. And she understood that she was even more of an inconvenience when she recovered. But she would not continue down that same path with her most inconvenient pregnancy, and what a great surprise it was to her to realize that she was not so willing to “trap” him after all.

“I should have told you about Elizabeth and the hotel—”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“It
does
matter, damn it!” He reached out as if he were going to touch her, but at the last moment he didn’t.

She made no attempt to move away from him. She lay down beside him instead. “I never should have married you,” she said, turning her head so that she could look into his eyes. “Never. It’s not
your
fault I keep getting the two things mixed up.”

“What two things?”

“The real man and the schoolgirl’s idea of him.”

“Abby…”

She reached out to lightly touch his lips with her fingertips, because she didn’t want to talk about this anymore. He took her hand, his fingers gently caressing hers.

“Are
you
well?” he asked.

“I’m very well, thank you,” she answered, as if they were in the parlor at the Calder house instead of lying in bed together.

There was sudden commotion in the hall—drunken singing that accompanied a noisy stumbling past the door.

“Way down South in the land of traitors! Whoresons! Tarts! And instigators! Look away! Look away! Look away, Dixie’s land!”

“No!” she said, when Thomas was about to get up. “It’s just the Forty-fourth Massachusetts Quartet Club.”

He looked at her, she thought because it must be obvious to him that she could tolerate the singing
much more easily than she could tolerate having the “quartet” know he was in here.

“La Broie is dead,” he said, lying back on the pillow. “And Bender.”

“Bender?”

“Private Theodore S. Bender. I wrote to you about him.”

“I didn’t get the letter.”

“Didn’t get it or didn’t read it?” he said.

“Tell me about him,” she said, ignoring the remark.

He gave a quiet sigh. “He was just a boy. Old enough, though, to go to war and to be in love with a confectioner’s daughter. He was the first one to congratulate me on my marriage. I don’t know how he died. I don’t know how La Broie died.”

“Are you certain they were both killed?”

“Their names were on the casualty list.”

“So was yours,” she said, looking into his eyes. He seemed about to say something, but he didn’t.

“Maybe Gertie will know about La Broie,” she said. “I have heard from her—about her. One of Miss Gwen’s Virginia acquaintances wrote that there was a woman living in the Calder house. I suppose it’s her. I hope it’s her.”

“Right before the battle, La Broie asked me to tell her something if he couldn’t. He wanted her to know that he wished he’d married her.” Thomas looked at Abiah. “At least I was spared that regret—” He broke off and closed his eyes. It was a long time before he said anything else. He still held her hand. She thought he had gone to sleep.

“Do you ever think about the way it was before the war?” he suddenly asked.

“Yes.”

“I think about it all the time. I think about Guire and Miss Emma…and you. There was this one picnic I remember—somebody’s little boy called it the ‘fried chicken picnic.’ My God, the food! We all went by buggy—half the county went by buggy—down by that shallow place in the river. There was an old man who played the fiddle, and you and the rest of the girls kept singing rounds. There was a kind of echo from the rocks and it sounded so fine. Do you remember?”

“I remember how annoyed you got when we started singing that one song—‘Tommy, he is oh, so sweet. Tommy, he’s a dandy…’”

“You girls were shamelessly trying to discompose me.”

“You were always so serious, Thomas.”

“I was not,” he said.

“Actually, you flatter yourself. The song had nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, and the fact that it was sung to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle’ was just a mere a coincidence.”

“Most certainly,” she assured him.

They both laughed.

“And I remember that Guire got drunk and challenged Johnny Miller to a duel over the Dearing girl—both Dearing girls. You broke it up,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have if I’d known Johnny wanted you.”

“Oh, but he didn’t then.”

“I think he was at Gettysburg. I saw his regimental banner across the meadow on the other side of the battlefield—just before they came at us. It was so…strange. Knowing every man over there had a reason to want to kill me—and Johnny Miller had two.”

She didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t quite understand the remark, and she didn’t want to get into it.

He was quiet again, lying with his eyes closed. The house had become very still. No drunken soldiers stumbling about. No singing. She could hear the rain, the popping and cracking of the fire. She tried to memorize the exact line of his profile so that she could remember always. Once again, she wasn’t sure whether or not he was asleep.

Not,
she thought, because she suddenly realized that he was looking at her. He didn’t say anything, and neither did she, not when he moved closer and not when his mouth gently, tentatively touched hers.

He leaned back to see her face, waiting, staring into her eyes.

I want him,
she thought.
I want him!

She ached with it, trembled with it. All this time she had been without him, thinking she would never see him again. He was everything to her. He’d been hurt and he needed her. She could feel how much he needed her.

I love you,
she thought.

But she couldn’t say it. Perhaps she could make him feel it instead. She reached up to touch his face and
then to kiss the corner of his mouth and finally his scarred cheek.

He stopped her when she would have kissed his lips.

“You’d better send me away, Abby. Now—because I can’t—” His mouth found hers, and there was nothing tentative about it this time. The kiss was hard and hungry and welcome.

She made a small sound, one of desire and longing; her arms slid around him and her lips parted under his. His hands pulled at the quilt so that he could touch her. She tried to hold on to it.

“Thomas…”

He wasn’t listening.

And a moment later she didn’t want him to listen—

Someone knocked sharply on the door. Thomas stiffened and raised his head, his breathing warm and quick against her cheek.

“Who is it?” she asked a after a moment.

“Ah, it’s Lieutenant Howell, ma’am. I’m trying to find your—Major Harrigan.”

Thomas gave a sharp sigh. “What is it, Howell?”

“The general’s got people out looking for you, sir. Begging your pardon, sir, but I think they’d better not find you here.”

“What time is it?” Thomas said.

“Quarter past midnight, sir,” the lieutenant said through the door.

“All right. I’m on my way—say that if the general asks.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Good man, Howell,” Thomas said, putting on his
boots as hurriedly as he could manage. “In some ways at least. Abby, I’ll come back—”

“Take care of yourself, Thomas,” she interrupted.

“Abby, I will come back—”

“Please don’t,” she said quietly. “For just a little while we were able to be Thomas and Abby again. No war. No…anything. For my sake, let’s just leave it at that. You are very dear to me and I am so happy that you are safe. I owe you my life, but don’t ask more from me than I can give. I have too much pride to pretend.”

“Abby—”

“Please!” she cried, and she was very near tears.

He looked at her for a long moment. “Very well. If you need me, I expect you know where I am.” He seemed about to say something else, but he didn’t. He turned and left the room, looking back at her once before he went out the door.

Abiah lay in bed for a long time after he had gone, trying not to cry, her mind in turmoil.

I should have told him,
she kept thinking.
He’s here—sooner or later he’s going to know.

She finally gave up trying to sleep and got up, dressing quickly and going down to the kitchen. It was still dark outside and still raining. She made biscuits for Miss Gwen’s breakfast with the little bit of flour they had remaining, just to have something to do. When she took them out of the oven and turned around to set them on the table, she found Lieutenant Howell standing there.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “I realize I’m intruding,
but I thought you might be worried—about the major, I mean. I thought you’d want to know that he hasn’t been sent into harm’s way or anything. It’s nothing like that at all. Some people came in on one of the supply ships tonight. They were very anxious to see him as soon as possible, and the general felt he should oblige them.”