Cheryl Reavis (19 page)

Thomas opened the door, giving the judge no choice but to go through it. The old man stared at him for a long moment before he complied.

“I think you will regret this,” he said. “Or
she
will.”

“I think not,” Thomas said. “And the sad thing is that it will be
your
loss, not ours.”

The old man pushed past him, and Thomas stood for a moment, watching him go down the stairs. The break was final now. He knew that, and so did the judge. What he didn’t know was that he would feel such regret. There was still left in him some of that boy who had believed there must be some way he could make his grandfather proud.

The judge hesitated once when he reached the foyer, but he gave no backward glance before he went out the front door.

Thomas walked back into the room and sat down. He was so tired suddenly. After a moment, he got up again to put a log on the fire. When he returned, he pulled the chair closer to the bed and rested his arms and head on the edge. He must have slept, but he had no idea how long. He awoke with a start when someone put a hand on his arm.

“Thomas…” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

He lifted his head. Abiah was awake and looking at him. “Oh, God,” he said, reaching for her, holding her close, feeling her warmth, loving her. “Abby!”

“Is he all right, Thomas? Our boy—where is he?”

Thomas moved so that he could see her face because she sounded so afraid. “He’s down in the kitchen, where they can keep him warm. He’s all right. He’s eating and crying—ah, Abby, why didn’t you tell me we had a baby coming? Why?”

Her mouth trembled and tears slid out of the corners of her eyes. “Thomas, I—”

“You should have told me!”

“I know—”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t want to trap you, after all. Not knowing the way you feel…about Elizabeth.”

“The way I feel? I told you the day we married that she had no part in any of this.”

“Please, Thomas. I read the letter.”

“You keep saying that! What letter? Tell me. What letter?”

She gave a wavering sigh. “It’s in the Bible. There on the table.”

He leaned away from her to reach it. There were two loose sheets of paper inside the front cover. He recognized them immediately. They were part of a letter he had once written to Elizabeth.

“I don’t understand,” he said, quickly reading over the pages. “Where did you get this?”

“I…found it.”

“Where is the rest of it?” He looked at her when she didn’t answer. “I don’t understand. Why is this important—?”

“Thomas, it says you want out of the marriage.”

“No, it doesn’t. It says I want the war to be over…Wait. When did you think I wrote this? Did Elizabeth give you this?”

She didn’t answer him.

“Abby, I wrote this letter after I joined a Massachusetts regiment, over two years ago. Elizabeth was
upset with me because she wanted me to ask the judge or her father to get me some kind of political appointment in Washington—something with a little more cachet than that of a lowly infantry captain. This letter has nothing to do with my wanting to be free of my obligation to
you.
It has to do with my obligation to the Grand Republic. It has to do with trying to pacify Elizabeth.”

“You never wrote to me, Thomas.”

“Yes, I did! But Elizabeth got my letters somehow. I told my mother to check with the postmaster at St. Michaels, to see if he knew what had happened to them. That’s probably why Dr. Nethen hand delivered the last one—and
that
letter you wouldn’t read.”

“And the hotel?”

“I thought I was coming to see you. The message I received was that my ‘wife’ was in Falmouth. I didn’t know it was Elizabeth.” He gave a quiet sigh. “And I didn’t…leave…when I should have.”

“I see,” she said quietly.

“No, you don’t. I didn’t take her to bed, Abby.”

“But you wanted to.”

It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t know what to say. She had seen what he had written to Elizabeth. She had read his professions of love for her. How could he explain that he had done what Guire had warned
her
about? He had taken no time to know the real woman; he had been far too busy chasing his idea of her.

“I love you, Abby. Don’t you know that?”

“How can you? I threw myself at you. You never
thought of me in that way. How can you care about someone you could have so easily?”

“Easily! Abby, do you have any idea how hard it’s been to keep up with you
and
Robert E. Lee? Don’t you understand? There is the woman some men need to adorn their houses and their arms. And there is the woman a man comes to in the middle of the night when the pain and the nightmares are too bad—because he needs
her.
Because she is the one he loves—”

She reached for him then, clinging to him hard. He kissed her mouth and her eyes and her mouth again.

“It’s going to be all right,” he whispered.

“Is it?”

“Yes!”

“I’m afraid, Thomas—”

“Do you love me?”

“I—yes, I love you. I have
always
loved you.”

“Well, then, we’re going to start over again. Right now. You and me and-our boy downstairs.”

“I want to see him, Thomas. I want to hold him…”

He nodded and went to the door. Lieutenant Howell was at what had become his more or less permanent post in the foyer.

“Howell!” Thomas called. “Ask one of the women to bring my son.”

“Yes, sir!”

A woman came almost immediately, carrying the baby close to her ample bosom. Thomas held out his hands, and she hesitated so long that he thought for a moment she wasn’t going to give him up. But she did
finally, and Thomas held him gently, looking down into the small wrinkled face.

How tiny he is!

“All right, young sir,” he said. “It’s time to meet your mother.”

“Put him right next to her, Major,” the woman said. “So she can keep him warm.”

Thomas pulled down the quilts enough to place the baby against Abby’s breast. The woman brought a piece of the flannel that was always kept heating in front of the fire and placed it carefully around them both.

When the woman had gone, he sat on the side of the bed.

“He’s…beautiful, isn’t he?” Abby asked after a moment.

“Yes,” Thomas agreed, his voice sounding husky and strange to him.

“I wish Mother and Guire—” She broke off to gently lay her cheek against the baby’s head. “Would you…mind if he’s called after Guire?”

“Guire Calder Harrigan. It suits him. One day we can tell him about his rascal of an uncle—” Thomas abruptly stopped in turn, and his eyes held hers.

“Abby,” he said. “Can we start over? Will you take the chance? Will you stay with me?”

She looked at him, trying not to cry. “Yes,” she whispered.

He kissed her then. She made room for him on the bed, and he stretched out beside her, putting his arms around her and the baby both.

He held them close. He didn’t know what the future would bring—what events or what persons might still conspire against them. He only knew that he loved her and young Guire with all his heart. He had come a long way to get to this point in his life. The journey had been arduous and full of peril. It might not be over yet.

But at long last, he, Thomas Harrigan, most willing husband of Abiah Calder Harrigan, had found home.

June 1865

A
biah went out on the porch to look down the long muddy road that eventually led into Fredericksburg. The spring rains had left it nearly impassable, but she still kept watch, hoping, praying to see a certain horse and rider coming from the crossroads, just as she had when she was all of fourteen.

Little Guire was intent on helping her keep vigil even if he didn’t quite understand, walking back and forth with her, hand in hand, solemn and watchful and so like his father.

“See?” he would say from time to time, pointing into the distance.

“Yes,” she would answer with a smile. “Mama sees.” But there was nothing, no one on the lonely road.

She walked closer to the edge of the porch, careful of the missing boards she hadn’t been able to replace.
The house had been occupied for a time, and the porch banisters and much of the flooring had been taken up for firewood. Gertie hadn’t said by which army, and Abiah hadn’t asked. With a husband in one army and a brother in the other, it hardly mattered.

There had been a yellow fever outbreak in New Bern last fall, and a very real chance that the warm weather would bring another. Thomas had wanted her out of there before the town was quarantined again, but she still hadn’t thought she would be able to come back to the Calder house. The war was over in mid-April, but thanks to General Sherman and General Grant, the railroads from New Bern inland and from Richmond northward were torn up and apt to stay that way. There was no reasonable means to travel anywhere with Miss Gwen and her dogs
and
a baby.

It was her old friend Captain Appleby who made the homecoming possible. After much soul searching, Thomas accepted an offer from the captain to transport his family by ship to Norfolk and then on to the railhead north of Fredericksburg at Aquia Creek. Gertie met them there. She had indeed been the woman Abiah heard was living in the house. Gertie, and what was left of Sergeant Peter La Broie.

Gertie had gone all the way to Pennsylvania to get him, finding him nearly dead and unattended in a barn near the battlefield. She’d stayed with him there and when they moved him finally to one of the tent hospitals in Washington. And when he was able, she brought him back to Virginia.

He had lost his left leg below the knee and the use
of his left arm. And he had lost his iron will. Nothing interested him—until young Guire took him over. The boy simply didn’t see the wall the sergeant had put up around himself. He climbed into his lap without coaxing—missing or useless limbs meant nothing to a child used to seeing men who were not whole. Sometimes he sat on the arm of La Broie’s chair and fed him bits of his honey bread whether he wanted it or not, chatting happily in baby talk that only he understood.

Abiah could hear La Broie approaching now, his heavy, peg-leg gait uneven as he came down the wide hallway. Knowing how self-conscious he was about his ability to get around, she waited until he was nearby before she looked toward him.

“Peep,” Guire said immediately, letting go of her hand and holding up his arms.

“Well, let Pete take you, then,” La Broie said. He leaned against the porch column so that he could lift Guire up with his good hand. And if he minded being called “Peep,” he hadn’t said so. Guire immediately lay his head on La Broie’s shoulder.

“Any sign of him?” La Broie asked.

“No,” Abiah said. “He should be here by now. His letter said he was leaving New Bern three weeks ago.”

La Broie didn’t say anything. He stood there, working to keep his balance and still hold on to Guire, who was already half-asleep.

“I’ll put the boy to bed,” he said finally.

“Sergeant La Broie,” she said as he turned to go.

“Ma’am?”

“When are you going to make an honest woman of Gertie?”

“Ma’am?” he said again.

“You heard me. When?”

“Gertie isn’t going to want to marry the likes of me.”

“How do you know? Have you asked her?”

“No, I ain’t asked her—”

“Well, why don’t you? She loves you, Sergeant La Broie. Or did you think she was hanging around here for your home cooking?”

He actually smiled. It was the first time she’d seen him do that since she had arrived.

“Thomas says you are a bold and fearless man,” she said as he was about to go inside. “You don’t want to be afraid of a woman’s love.”

He looked at her a moment, but said nothing. Abiah gave a quiet sigh. She could hear Miss Gwen through the open window in what used to be the parlor.

“There was a piano there,” she was saying, apparently trying to make the empty, pillaged room come to life. “And the refreshment table was over there. Oh, such fine things were offered.”

“Like what, Miss Gwen?” Gertie asked, clearly interested. The truth of the matter was they were all interested in food these days—particularly the things no one could get at any price.

“Oh, coffee and tea and lemonade—and a huge silver platter of little ham biscuits. Miss Emma and Abiah and I worked for
days
getting everything ready. We had angel food cake and cocoa pound cakes—eight of them! And not a one of them ‘sad.’ And vanilla wafers. And blackberry preserves. And cracker bonbons. I do love a good cracker bonbon. That rascal Guire—Abby’s dear late brother?—he brought
champagne
all the way from Boston—and what a bother
that
caused. Miss Emma was temperance, you know,” she added in a very audible whisper.

“And Thomas Harrigan led the cotillion. Everybody was surprised by that, him being a Yankee boy. But he did it so he could open the dance with the oldest unmarried daughter of the house—as was the custom. That was Abby, of course. He wanted the evening to be special for her, because she was coming out, you see. He brought Abby in through there,” she said. “There were flowers and candles everywhere. He was so handsome and she was so beautiful, with her hair put up and woven through with a pale pink ribbon. And they were playing a waltz—how did that go, Abby?” Miss Gwen called.

“I can’t remember, Miss Gwen,” Abiah called back, because the reminiscences had brought the worry she’d been trying to keep at bay these last few days dangerously close to the surface. She couldn’t trust herself to recreate the melody of that particular waltz without crying.

She kept staring down the road. There were a thousand things that could have delayed him, all of them bad—from yellow fever to bushwhackers to some renewed effort by Elizabeth Channing. Thunder rumbled in the distance. There was another spring storm on the way.

“Oh, I know. It went like this,” Miss Gwen called, beginning to hum.

Abiah listened for a moment. It was quite an adequate rendition of the song.

She glanced toward the road, then immediately back again. After a moment, she came down the steps, a few at a time, until she was finally standing in the
yard. And then she began to walk, to run. Behind her, Miss Gwen’s beagles began to bark.

“Thomas,” she whispered.
“Thomas!”

She didn’t even remember getting to him. He kicked his stirrups free and reached down for her, lifting her up just as he had that day in the Winthrop drive. And this time she did exactly as she had wanted to do then. She kissed him, hugged him, again and again.

“Oh, Thomas! You’re here—”

“Don’t cry,” he said, trying to hold on to her and keep the horse steady. “Kiss me hard and don’t cry…”

She leaned back to look at his face. “You’re all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Then where
were
you!” she demanded, and he laughed.

“A few last-minute duties I hadn’t counted on. My God, you look so good, feel so good!” He kissed her soundly. He was still kissing her when someone gave a discreet cough.

They both looked around to see La Broie standing there with little Guire in his good arm.

“Evening, Cap—Major,” he said. “Stealing Miss Abiah away on your horse again, I see.”

* * * * *