LITMIR.BIZ

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Let me show you where you’ll be staying.” Emily smiled her own company smile. “Come along. It isn’t much.”

      Emily was right; it wasn’t much, just a space behind an army blanket at the end of the little hall. At least I have a place to stay, Susanna reminded herself as she and her cousin stood on the small landing. One bedroom door was open, and she looked in, charmed to see her little cousin, Stanley, stacking blocks, his back to the door.

      She glanced at Emily, pleased to see some expression on her face now, as she admired her son.

      “Stanley is four now,” Emily whispered.

      “I’m certain we will get along famously,” Susanna assured her, thinking of her own son at that age—inquisitive, and beginning to exert a certain amount of household influence.

      As Stanley stacked another block, the wobbling tower came down. The little boy put his hands to his head in sudden irritation and declared, “That’s a damned nuisance!”

      Emily gasped and closed the door. “Cousin, this is the hardest place to raise children!”

      “I imagine there are plenty of soldiers who don’t think much of letting the language fly,” she said, putting a real cap on her urge to laugh. “Must be a trial.”

      “It’s not the soldiers,” Emily snapped, the portrait of righteous indignation. “It’s the no-account Irish living next door!” She lowered her voice slightly. “You’d be horrified what we hear through the wall.”

      Susanna stared at her. “Here on Officers Row?”

      It was obviously a subject that Emily had thought long about, considering that she never thought much of anything. “That’s what happens when the army promotes a bog Irishman from sergeant to captain of cavalry. So what if he earned a Medal of Honor in the late war? They’re hopeless!”

      “I have a lot to learn,” Susanna murmured, hoping that the unfortunates on the other side of the wall were deaf. She thought of the pretty redhead who had given her a welcoming wave, and decided to form her own opinion.

      Emily pulled back the army blanket strung on a sagging rod, revealing an army cot and bureau obviously intended for someone with few possessions. That would be me, Susanna thought.

      “You should be comfortable enough here. I had a private from the captain’s company hammer up some nails to hang your dresses.”

      “I am certain it will do,” Susanna replied. “I am grateful. Major Randolph said something about captains being alloted four rooms, not including the kitchen.”

      She quickly realized this was another unfortunate topic, because Emily sighed again. “I think it’s … it’s unconscious for a widower to have six rooms!”

      Do you mean unconscionable, Cousin Malaprop? Susanna thought, remembering Emily Reese’s bedroom back home. “I suppose that’s the army way. Now I’ll unpack ….”

      Emily was just warming to the subject. “There are captains here with five rooms.”

      “Why not Dan?”

      “We came here at the same time as another captain and his wife who have no children, but this is what we have.” Emily frowned. “He was even in Dan’s graduating class!”

      “Why did you get this smaller place?” Susanna asked, interested.

      “Because Dan was academically lower in his class,” her cousin said. “Is that fair?”

      I suppose that’s what happens when you marry someone no brighter than yourself, Susanna thought, amused. “What happens if someone comes to the fort who outranks the man who outranks … your husband?”

      “We all move up or down, depending,” Emily said, “and the Major Randolphs just roll merrily along in their excess space.” She sniffed. “I didn’t know about this when I married the captain.”

      No, you were mostly interested in how grand he looked in uniform, Susanna thought, remembering the wedding five years ago, where Tommy had been ring bearer. That was before Frederick started drinking each night. “There is a lot we don’t know, before a wedding,” Susanna murmured.

      “Maybe it’s just as well,” her cousin said, with another noisy sigh.

      No, it isn’t, Susanna almost said. If I had known …

      No matter that it had been ten years since Melissa’s fiery death, Joe Randolph never opened the door to his quarters without the tiny hope that this time she would be there to take his coat, kiss his cheek and ask how his day had gone. As a man of science, he knew it was foolish, but that little hope never left him.

      He had been gone nearly a month this time on court-martial duty, but he had learned that whether left empty three weeks, two months or two days, houses without women in them soon felt abandoned. He still missed Melissa’s rose talc.

      “I’m not busy enough, M’liss,” he said out loud to her picture, when he looked up from unpacking. There she was, smiling at him as much as she could, considering how long she had to hold that pose for the photographer in San Antonio.

      On that journey to Texas, he had pillowed her head on his arm as they whispered plans for the future. Their last night had its own sweetness, as they made plans for the baby she was carrying. He was no ignorant physician; he had picked up on signs and symptoms before M’liss overcame her natural reticence and spilled those particular beans. He smiled now, remembering how she had thumped him when he had said, “I kind of suspected. I did graduate first in my class at medical school.”

      She had kissed him, rendering the thump moot, and snuggled close in a way that made him feel like Lord Protector. Too bad he couldn’t protect her that next morning, when she stood too close to a campfire and went up like a torch.

      Even four years of war had not prepared him for that horror. There wasn’t even a bucket of water close. Burned, blind, swollen beyond recognition, Melissa Randolph had suffered agonies until nightfall, when, jaw clenched, he’d administered a whacking dose of morphine that killed her immediately. The steward standing by never said a word to anyone.

      There she was in the frame, forever twenty-four. Joe admired her for a long moment. “M’liss, what would you have me do?” he asked her picture. “I am thirty-eight and I am lonely.” He looked down at his wedding ring. He had never taken it off his finger since she’d put it there.

      He took it off now. Her wedding ring had gone with her into Texas soil, mainly because he would have had to amputate her swollen finger to release it, and he could not. She had earlier removed a ruby ring he had given her. When he could think rationally again, he’d put the ring on a chain, and he wore it around his neck.

      Joe lifted the delicate chain over his head now, unfastened the clasp and slid his wedding ring onto it. After another long moment he put the necklace and rings in his top drawer, under his socks.

      His bedroom seemed too small after he closed the drawer, so he put on his overcoat again and went outside. He looked up Officers Row and saw lights winking in windows of houses with families. He stood there until he had formulated a good enough excuse to visit the Reeses again, and walked two houses down.

      He chuckled to think of Emily Reese forced to live next door to the far kinder O’Learys. He would suggest to Mrs. Hopkins that she might find their Irish company enjoyable. Katie O’Leary had more brains than both of the Reeses, and Mrs. Hopkins would appreciate her.

      Pipe in hand, Dan Reese opened the door to Joe’s knock. “Come in, Major,” he said, then called over his shoulder, “Mrs. Reese, is someone sick?”

      What a blockhead, Joe thought, not for the first time. “Captain, I just wanted a moment with your cousin.”

      The captain gestured him inside. “Is Mrs. Hopkins sick?”

      “Not that I know of,” Joe replied,

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