Bledsoe snorted. “So it would seem.” His eyes flicked over Josh’s body. “I’m a little surprised you’re still awake and conversing with us.”
“No more surprised than I,” Josh said.
Grudging respect glinted in the other man’s eyes. “You still refuse exchange?”
Breath in, then out. “I do.”
Bledsoe shook his head, slowly at first, then with more vigor. “I do not understand you.” His gaze flicked toward the door, then back. “Would that you were a Confederate.”
“Or that you were a Federal,” Josh said.
A thin-lipped smile was Bledsoe’s only reply. He shifted. “Clem tells me he went to fetch Pearl when he saw the three lurking about while you were in the privy. Where, though, did he find arms?”
“Field salvage,” Josh said, with a little smile of his own. Would Bledsoe see fit to confiscate those, if he knew?
But Bledsoe only grunted. “If anyone asks,” he said, finally, “the man died of his wounds. Nothing more.”
“The yard was full of men watching what happened,” Portius said.
“You’ll not speak of it,” came Bledsoe’s sharp reply. “I won’t expose Pearl to possible recrimination, if I can help it.”
Josh peered at the two of them, locked in a silent battle of wills with their gazes. Finally the Negro broke and swung away. “Very well, sir.”
Judging by the mocking edge to his voice, nothing had been ceded at all, there.
Travis returned later that day and, as he promised, collected all the men Portius deemed ready to travel—including, to her surprise, Mr. Shaw, who was suddenly much more respectful and had apparently improved enough to be moved. Or perhaps Travis and Portius decided not to risk his causing trouble again, later. Pearl was not a little relieved to see that the effort reduced the number of men they tended by at least half, although several of their neighbors still hosted many more.
After he’d gotten the men loaded in the hospital wagon, Travis approached Pearl, his face grave and thoughtful. “I may not be able to return in the next few days, but I’ll do what I can to send more provisions.”
She nodded. His words were a mere formality, she knew—not that she wasn’t grateful for anything he could send, given the circumstance.
“And—if questioned about what took place today, admit nothing.”
She made her gaze more searching this time, but he stood turning his hat round and round in his hands for a long moment, refusing to meet her eyes.
“You know I’d never do anything to deliberately endanger you, don’t you?” he said at last.
A corner of her heart softened. “I do know that.”
“And—I’m thankful you weren’t hurt, either today or yesterday.” His voice thickened. “Very thankful that Wheeler was there to intervene.”
She bobbed a nod. “As am I.”
He cleared his throat. His hands stilled, holding the hat. “Please … please promise me you’ll not go running off alone, again.”
That wasn’t something she felt she could promise, but—“I’ll try.”
His gaze was earnest this time. “Please, Pearl. I couldn’t bear if you came to harm.”
More of her heart melted. “I promise I won’t deliberately endanger myself, if I can help it.”
As if he realized that was the best she could do, he nodded, then jammed his hat back on his head. “Be well, Pearl,” he murmured, and before she could stop him, he leaned in to brush a kiss on her forehead.
Her breath caught, and heat washed through her. All it did was remind her of that windy hillside, and Josh.
The rain returned with a vengeance the next several days. Josh slept, and woke, and slept again to the sound of it running steadily off the eaves outside his window.
During that time, Clem was as likely to look in on him, and sometimes linger to talk, as Portius or Pearl or Lydia. In fact, Pearl was there less often than she was wont, or at least not when he was awake enough to know it, and—he missed her.
He shouldn’t miss her. He’d no business doing so.
Breathe in, breathe out. After three days, it hurt only slightly less. Why he hadn’t accepted Bledsoe’s offer to send him back, he wasn’t sure, except that he didn’t think he could face jostling in a wagon even a few miles. It was bad enough to have the two men lift and carry him inside the house.
Clem had no more news of either army, except for reports of dissent within the ranks of the Confederate forces over General Bragg’s decisions—or lack thereof. The Federals were still holed up in Chattanooga. Josh thought about that—how Rosecrans’s goal had been to take the town. Did he consider himself the victor after everything, in the battle just a few weeks past? And if Bragg considered that the Confederacy were at a point of strength, why hadn’t they moved more decisively, since?
None of these were his to have an opinion on, of course. He was not one of those in authority. Technically he knew nothing of battle strategy and had never been to West Point or studied law, as many officers had.
Yet the situation niggled at him.
And how—how best to protect Pearl in all this, and her family? Because once the Federal army found its footing and moved—and surely they would, because President Lincoln would not stand by and leave them undefended, not with reinforcements already arriving—and word got back about her having shot down a Union soldier, even if it was in her own defense, she’d be hauled before a court-martial at least. Other women had in similar cases.
His chest ached. Or was that simply his cracked and bruised rib cage?
A sound came from the other side of the room, in the dark. Likely Thorsson, stirring in his sleep. He’d improved so greatly, Josh was surprised Bledsoe hadn’t taken him with the others.
Then there was a creak, and the door swung open, and a bit of candlelight filtered in. A female figure hovered in the doorway, leaning in, then away, swaying with obvious startlement. “Oh! I didn’t mean to awaken you,” she whispered.
For a moment, he forgot all the aches. “I was already awake.”
She hesitated then glided inside.
“What time is it?” he asked. “I seem to have lost all sense of day and night, again.”
“I’m not sure. After midnight, likely.” The light from her candle made her eyes shine like stars.
“Is it your turn to sit up, then?”
Another hesitation. “No. I simply couldn’t sleep.” She slipped inside the rest of the way, leaving the door ajar, and set the candlestick on the washstand before reaching for the chair, which still stood between the beds. She tugged it closer to his side before settling herself there.
For a long moment she only gazed back at him. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen her at all these past few days, during the usual tasks of tending his wounds, both new and old, or of seeing him fed and watered. But there had been none of this, the lingering, as if they could truly just enjoy each other’s company with no thought of North and South and the war between them.
“Are you feeling any better?” she asked, finally.
“A bit.”
“You look—” She leaned forward, examining his face. Her hand lifted and twitched as if she wanted to brush his hair back, and a part of him craved that touch, though he tamped the feeling down. But then she drew back. “The bruising might be fading already. It looked a little better when I saw it this afternoon, in daylight.”
So she did come to look in on him more often than he knew.
“Your arm, though, is worrisome—” She winced, and then her eyes, wide and earnest, fastened on his again. “I am so sorry you’ve had to endure this,” she murmured, “simply for coming to my defense.”
He started to reach for her hand then pulled his back as well. “I would gladly do so again.” At the shake of her head, he did reach out, letting his fingertips brush her forearm. “In fact, it might just have been the most useful thing I’ve done since joining the army two years ago.”
She looked startled bu
t didn’t pull away from his touch. “How can you say that? I am … I’m not even on the Union side. I expect, in fact, that we represent everything you enlisted to fight against.”
“Not … everything. There’s much, truth be told, that you represent about what we all feel we’re fighting for.”
She caught her breath, lips parting, eyes wide. “But we are—Secessionists.”
“There is that.” He shifted so his hand covered hers. “But you’re brave. Hardworking. Strong in both mind and faith. And whatever the Confederacy stands for in regards to slavery …” He peered at her. “Just how is it, anyway, that one who so obviously believes in the dignity of the human soul can support a government which approves of keeping a whole people in bondage?”
Her mouth compressed, trembling. Her gaze filled but held his. “I will tell you something, Joshua Wheeler. My own brother loved a woman he was not allowed to marry, simply because of the color of her skin. My pa has been slow to accept my brother’s choices, mostly because he knows how cruel a polite society can be about things they do not approve of, but also because it’s hard to see the fault in a way of thinking that one has been brought up in.” She stopped to catch her breath. “But those children sleeping in the attic above us are his grandchildren, whatever our society says, and they give him joy. Have we not all wished for a better world, one in which my brother would be free to call Lydia his wife without recrimination or shame? Of course we have. But we do not believe Lincoln has done one thing to make such a world. His grand Proclamation earlier this year did very little to undo slavery, and even less to help those who it claims to free. Many of us feel it just a ploy to add men to the Federal army.”
Josh closed his eyes. He’d heard such before. There was no answer to it—Pearl herself had said so when last they’d tried to discuss it—at least none that any would listen to in these times.
The worst thing about it, however, was the way the question rattled inside him, stirred up a fluttering panic that all the expense of enlisting, of going to war and clamoring to fight had truly been for naught. It was the question that haunted him in the dark of night, when the ache in his arm was the worst, when pain seemed to come from the hand he’d lost, itself, when in reality that hand was no longer even there to suffer pain. He’d never feared dying. What if now he’d just become a useless sacrifice in a war that would accomplish nothing?
Especially after a loss like this last one. Especially with the awfulness of battle, all by itself.
Pearl’s hand started to slide out from beneath his, but he gripped it a little tighter. “Please. Do not leave, just yet.”
“Why?” she breathed.
“Because … I can’t face the dark alone. Not tonight.”
Her chin tucked, and her expression was lost to shadow. Slowly, she turned her hand over until she could clasp his in return. “You still haven’t explained why coming to my rescue was so much more worthwhile.”
“Accosting women is a blight on any army, regardless of politics.” He thought about how much more to say. “But on either side, war is terrible,” he admitted at last. “Before any of us had seen battle, we couldn’t wait to get a taste of the fight, show those Rebs what we were made of—but then we all found it a horror. You don’t know—I could never explain—men and horses and mules torn to pieces. The whine and scream of bullet and shell. Men crying, no, sobbing for their mothers.” He hesitated. “I might have done that myself a time or two.”
She tipped her head, a tiny, sympathetic smile on her lips.
“And then to have battles like the one weeks ago—or Shiloh, or Gettysburg—where it’s day after day of run to the front, and fight, and fall back, then get up and fight again. Where you see your best companions lifeless on the field—” He swallowed. It was too much, but he couldn’t seem to stop the flow of words. “You wonder if you’ll ever see those you love again, this side of heaven. Or if you’ll ever have the chance at a wife and family of your own, of a plain, ordinary life.”
Head tucked again, Pearl’s chest rose and fell sharply. Her hand clutched his. “It is a valid enough thing to wonder at.”
“And it seems madness that the scrap we had a few days ago should be so frowned upon. Or that you, as Bledsoe is rightly concerned, should be indicted for taking up arms to defend yourself or your own.” And brilliantly so, although he’d not say it in this moment. “But in battle, they lead us out to the field, line us up, and tell us to have at it. Not that I disagree with the reasons why, but—” He huffed. “And here you and I sit, so … companionable.”
She sighed, leaning forward, cradling his hand now in both of hers. “And it cannot last.”
“Exactly.”
Or—could it?
“Would you—wish it to last?” he whispered.
A squeak escaped her—or was that a sob? “Do not ask me such a thing. Do not.”
“Why not?”
Her head snapped up, her eyes wet. “You know why, as well as I do. And we are only enamored of the sentiment here because—because it’s so very impossible that we can do anything about it.”
His turn to let out a long breath. Oh … if he could only pull her into his arms again, as he had the other day—but it was neither fitting, nor convenient, not with his added injuries or—
He should really send her away, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. “How is your pa faring?”
“He—I don’t know. There are moments he’s better. He sits with the Bible in his lap but doesn’t read. He has enough memorized to quote this or that and does regularly.” Pearl sniffled. “I know he is at peace with his Creator. If … if the worst were to happen …” She cleared her throat. “Speaking of … the young man with the gangrenous leg—Johnny—expired about sunset that next day. You were—asleep.”
Josh shut his eyes. “He too at least was at peace with God. So many are not.”
“And what of yourself?”
“I suppose I am.”
“You suppose?”
“Very well, so I am. Washed in the blood of the Lamb and all that.” He hoped his smile wouldn’t make her think he was being irreverent.
But she only looked at him gravely. “How is it that a man who believes so strongly in protecting others can be just fine with tromping all over people’s land and freedoms?”
It took him several moments to grasp her meaning. “It’s the Union that is worth fighting for,” he answered finally. “When our nation was founded, we were the United States of America. The concepts our Founding Fathers fought for, then wrote into the Constitution—it depends upon all the states staying together. Not half of them gallivanting off just because they can’t agree that slavery must come to an end.”
“Not all of us disagree with that,” she said. “In fact you and I talked about this once before.”
He sighed. “I do realize that.”
“And such conversations are why there could be no lasting friendship between us.”
But she still did not release his hand.
If he could only change her stubborn mind about this. There yet remained, however, the problem of him not being whole.
And she deserved nothing if not a whole man, who could hold both her hands with his, as he longed to do.
Which left him nothing but the longing, when all was said and done.
Impossible it might be, but Pearl woke, hours later as the sky was lightening, from her seat on the floor beside Josh’s bed, where she’d moved during the course of their conversation. She sat propped against the frame, her arm outstretched, still holding Josh’s hand as it lay now across his chest.
With a little start, she disentangled herself and rose. Her arm was still quite asleep, and she rubbed it to bring the feeling back.
Josh slumbered on, those long lashes fanned out over cheeks that, yes, were not quite as bruised as before. His mouth was parted slightly, lips looking so soft that she felt the urge to bend and kiss them—just once, very lightly.
No one wo
uld ever know.
But by the same token, she wanted Josh to know. To be assured that she did not hate him for being born a Northerner. And to have something to remember her by when Fate took him far away, because—that was bound to happen, sooner rather than later.
It was a wretched idea, all around.
Pearl caught her breath and held it, blinking against the sting in her eyelids, and walked resolutely out of the room.
The rain went on unrelentingly for what felt like days, until it seemed a living, breathing thing that sucked all the color and joy out of life.
As if that were not already the case, in the wake of battle and loss.
It was all Pearl could do to drag herself through a day. At least this time Lydia was there to help cook, and tend wounds. And with the numbers of wounded being reduced, Portius and Clem were able to bring in those from the barn, at least for meals and gathering around the hearth at night.
At first there were songs and stories, a nearly endless litany of the latter, where names and places and regiments all blurred into one, but even that faded after a few days, and the men were increasingly short with each other. A fistfight nearly broke out over a louse race—which was itself such a horror to Pearl that she could scarce believe the men engaged in such for entertainment, picking the vermin from their own bodies and setting them on a plate or other flat surface to see whose was fastest.
But with the rain and all else happening, there was also no time, or space, for proper washing. She’d done bedding once, after the most recent death, but that was all.
And she thought she might go mad if she had to hear one more Yankee camp song.
There were rare moments of peace, such as when Pa, sitting perennially with the Bible open on his lap, handed the volume of scripture over to Josh, seated in a chair beside him, and ordered him to read. And read Josh did, with a fine cadence and volume that made everyone quiet down and pay attention.
The Rebel Bride Page 16