Will mopped his brow and gazed around, his eyes wild, the whites wide and gleaming. “Sorry, I hate to interrupt you, but I’ve been seeing shadows on my last patrol.”
David itched his ear. “Shadows?” Truly? Will had good instincts, but to interrupt for shadows?
“Human shadows. Several of them.” Will strolled over to the window, peeking through the curtain. David followed and stared into the blackness.
“Did you catch anyone?” He squinted further. Hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. Was there something out there or was the warning just tickling his nerves?
“No.” Will didn’t move though.
“Then how do you know if they’re real?” Amalia joined them, her body right behind him, her chin almost on his shoulder. Magnolias and...well...her and...he tugged at his collar. Such a distraction...
“Meg saw them too when I went to fetch her from the kitchen and come here.” Will returned to the door and leaned against it, arms crossed.
Meg nodded, mouth grim. “There’s someone, several someones out there. Human, not ghosts or animals, circling the hotel. A maid confirmed. A nice one. Said she knew and liked you—something about teaching her and her sister fancy braids while you lived here. I’ve been told that the train depot attracted unsavoriness, especially considering the level of clientele here. There’s security, but I’m still nervous.”
“I remember those girls. I was bored and tired of always being on the edge of social circles so I befriended children. They don’t have the sense to call you ‘vapid.’” A faint smile appeared on Amalia’s lips. She rubbed the back of her head. “But, as for the rest, we are on the second floor...” She glanced back and forth between the two of them. Desire flared through him, but he quelled it once more. This was for her safety.
He hooked his thumbs in his waistband. “We need to leave.”
“Where? Where would we go? There’s no train until tomorrow morning. We’d be vulnerable at the train station and it’d be cold and wet and dewy by daylight. Everything would be ruined.” Amalia twisted a little as she ranted, her chest heaving. Annoyance flashed in her wide, mossy eyes, but... David frowned...fear flickered as well. She turned her back to him. To them.
“We’re vulnerable here too.” In two strides he was somehow across the room, his hand on her shoulder. “Someone is going to ambush us when we check out tomorrow morning.”
“Again, where are we going to go?” She didn’t turn around, but she didn’t brush him off either. David glanced over his shoulder at his partners, even as he held her a little closer.
“Don’t look at me.” Meg held up her palms and backed towards the door. “We’re just reporting.” Will inclined his head in the affirmative as Meg leaned against his chest.
David pressed his tongue into the back of his teeth. Where to go? Where to go? Who did they know in—oh. Oh. Amalia would not be happy. He gulped. Not exactly his ideal either, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He touched his free hand to his lips. “I know where we’ll go.”
Amalia stared at him and tilted her chin. For a moment they locked eyes. She gasped and took a step back. “No.” She closed her eyes and clutched his sleeve. “Oh no, David, no, please. I don’t have any animosity towards him, but...and overnight? It’d be unseemly, to say the least. And rather awkward. And exhausting. And this detour was supposed to provide me with a bit of rest and relaxation. And it’s not fair. It’s just not.”
“David?” Will pursed his lips and wrinkled his brow, confusion clear in every feature.
He didn’t turn to his friend though, just Amalia, whose ears were turning red. She probably had Thad’s temper. There’d been glimpses. And Simon had warned him.
She’s the fiercest Truitt. One time, when she was only six and I was eight, we were playing tag with some other children on the property. One of the bigger boys shoved me into one of our ponds, and Amalia...well, I didn’t know someone could toss a rock bigger than her head. At least she doesn’t have Thad’s aim.
Simon could say that again. Especially since Thad was a sharpshooter.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we have a choice.” He moved a little to block her access to any sharp objects. “All of your points are valid. We can’t stay at the train station, and as much as it pains me to say, we can’t stay here either. We need to leave and there’s only one person we know in this town and as you said, your split was amicable...”
“He won’t turn us away.” Amalia gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. “But being there, with him, will just prevent any sort of—” And now she was more purple than red. She ducked her head and mumbled words that would most certainly get quite a few people brought up on obscenity charges.
David worked not to snicker, despite himself. Of all the situations, of all the ways to ruin their night...
“Ah.” Will rocked on his heels. “I always did want to pick Armstrong’s brain about field strategy.” He shrugged.
Fair enough. At least someone’s night wasn’t ruined, though by the expression on Meg’s face...ah well. No “amusement” all around. Poor all of them. Though better safe and frustrated than dead.
* * *
Two hours later, David pounded on the front door to the farm to be greeted by Armstrong himself, and two burly servants.
“Who are you?” The man of the house held a rather large rifle as he eyed the visitors, before lowering it and gasping as he met his former wife’s gaze. “Mercy, Amalia? What are you doing here? And who are these people?”
Before he could answer, Amalia launched into a long, rambling explanation about suspicious characters and “Pinkerton instincts,” introducing all three of them. Her former husband’s eyelids began to droop once she came to the part about changing lines. She stamped on his toe.
“Ow, Amalia. What was that for? I could’ve shot you.” Armstrong yawned.
“You aren’t that fast and you weren’t paying attention to me and it’s late and I really don’t want to be here but...” She frowned.
Armstrong’s lip twitched as he eyed David once more. “I apologize.” He scratched his thinning hair. “And of course you can stay for the night. I don’t have any rooms made up, but I suppose you can take mine and Mr... Zisskind, right? V Corps?” Elias Armstrong wagged a finger at him. “I heard about you. You saved four men at The Crater, two of them mine.”
He inclined his head. “You and I can keep watch down here, let... Jefferies, was it? The same one who charged into gunfire, twice, to pull out the wounded? He can rest. With the nurse.”
Well, no one said Amalia married foolish men. Or ones with faulty memories. Though still, keeping watch with yet another man she had once chosen over him... He’d rather have the stables, unmucked. “That won’t be necessary—”
The former officer held up a hand to silence him. “I’d love to help. It’s been a while since I had this sort of excitement. I’d put Amalia with June, my wife, but she’s with child so that might be a tad awkward.”
As opposed to having your former wife in your bed?
Not that he’d say that out loud. Instead, thirty minutes later, he found himself precariously close to sharing a bed with the man himself, as the two had stretched out on opposite couches in the parlor, the older man with his weapon by his side.
David dragged his teeth over his lower lip as he stared, first out the window in the darkness, then at the ceiling. Even without a lamp, the cracks in the plaster were visible enough to count.
Across the room, Armstrong shifted, his breathing quiet, too quiet to be asleep. David’s thumbs itched. He shouldn’t, especially as it wasn’t necessary to the investigation, but he had to know.
“Major?” The other man’s head shot up at David’s voice. Now or never. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“As opposed to merely sharing my personal space?” Armstrong shifted again, springs creaking.
“I assume you want to know why I married her, as we are a bit...different.” A heavy sigh from the older man.
David twisted his forefinger so hard he cracked the knuckle. “Yes.” Because he had to somehow solve the puzzle of Amalia.
Armstrong grunted and the couch under him strained as he straightened to a sitting position. “I married Amalia Truitt because...well, because she was divorced. At least in a roundabout way.”
Of all the things that could’ve popped out of Armstrong’s mouth, that was the last one he would’ve expected. David blinked and pinched himself to make sure he was awake. “Sir?” He rubbed his eyes before reaching and slipping back on his spectacles. “But...”
“We had a bargain, you see.” Armstrong inhaled, before leaning over and fiddling with some items on a table. Minutes later the glimmer of a lantern illuminated his face. “I was rather desperate. The farm, my family’s legacy, was mortgaged to the hilt. Lands had gone fallow during my time in the military and my pension wasn’t enough. And back then, I wasn’t in any shape to handle the matter, handle the responsibility.”
David wrinkled his nose. Where was Armstrong going with this?
Armstrong grimaced. “After the war, after I returned, and there were no more battles, no more action, no more bodies, no more energy...” A shadow crossed the major’s face and a haunted look came into his eye.
David’s breath stopped in his throat as a faint murmur in the back of his brain grew in volume, the same way it always did when it was too quiet and he had too little to do, when he hadn’t worn his body down enough at work. The gunfire, the horses, the grunts, and the screams. The sounds always came first, before the smells and the flashes of vision.
“I couldn’t move. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t do anything. And I most certainly could not sleep.” He shook his head and tilted his chin in David’s direction. “I’m sure you know how that is.”
All too well. “I do.”
Armstrong rested his head in his hands for a moment. “Who do you see, Zisskind?” Even in the faint glow, the fact the older man’s eyes were rimmed in red was unmistakable. “I see John Riverton, my best friend from West Point. He took a shot in the head at Manassas. We were in the left flank and...” Armstrong sighed. “Anyway, I wandered for a few years and was in Philadelphia spending time with Rittenhouse. He was your lieutenant after Hazlett, wasn’t he?”
David could only nod as his mind shook and stuttered. Charles Hazlett. Shot the same day as Simon. Their superior but barely older than either of them. Like Armstrong and Benjamin Rittenhouse. And the smell was back—wet grass and woods and gunpowder. Pretty soon the cries would start.
With all his might, David gripped onto Armstrong’s voice, onto the story, so he didn’t get dragged back there.
“Thad invited us to some party at one of his family’s properties, a house on Delancey Street, a brick beast. His parents were in England and he and Belle were about to join them. Some sort of send-off. It was Ben who pointed Amalia out to me, gave me the bit of gossip regarding her recent divorce. I think. Or maybe it was Thad himself.”
The older man tutted with his tongue. “Anyway, that’s not really important. She was important. Many women would’ve retreated from society or at least acted lost and abashed, but no, not Amalia. Head high, she greeted every guest and danced with whomever requested, old, young, eligible or not, treating everyone with the same warmth, as if nothing had happened to her, as if her life hadn’t been torn asunder.”
Sometimes I like to think of my hair and makeup as armor. I wake each morning battling a million whispers about mistakes I’ve made. With enough powder and polish, I can ignore it, or at least force them to talk about something else.
David’s heart ached. He’d been invited to that party. He’d been invited to dozens of Truitt parties in Philadelphia over the years. Thad always sought him out and he’d always said “no.” If he’d only said “yes.” Regret flared in him. He pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing himself back into the conversation. “And you wanted that?”
“No.” The major shook his head. “I mean I wanted her courage, I wanted to bottle it and spray it on—make myself new again—make it all stop.” Armstrong’s chest heaved. “But she couldn’t give me that. Instead, she listened to my problems and offered a solution.”
“What?” David almost fell on the floor. Not at all what he expected.
“You see...” Armstrong adjusted himself. “Amalia needed money too. Which is rather ironic as her family is in the banking business. But her parents were indisposed and they control the family finances and no bank would give a single woman a loan.”
He gasped. “She married you for money?”
“Technically, she married me to get both of us money.” Armstrong gave a hollow chuckle into the darkness. “We obtained a loan, as a couple, because of her parents’ reputation. It paid off the old mortgage and was enough to save the poor woman.”
He frowned. “What woman?”
“The one that her charity was going to help.” A creak rang out as Armstrong turned on his side. “You know about her charity, don’t you?”
“I thought I did, but I’m beginning to believe otherwise.” His mind raced, turning over all the information he had.
Another deep, rumbling laugh. “That can happen. She speaks rather quickly and her mind works in unusual ways. Not in straight lines.” Armstrong cracked his knuckles. “Anyway, her charity: it funds divorces. Or more, gets women out of troublesome marital situations.”
David froze. That’s what Amalia had been doing all these years? Helping people...like his mother? That’s where the money was going, what her column and probably a great deal of her allowance were keeping afloat. Why she needed Ethan. He wrinkled his nose. Why weren’t her parents helping?
“That can be expensive,” was all he managed to say.
“Very much so.” Armstrong sighed again. “And, for some reason, she’s not particularly good at asking for assistance from her family, even when they’re around. But back then, it was, well, an emergency. The woman was pregnant and the husband was going to have her declared incompetent and those places, those asylums...as someone who’s often only a hair away from being trapped in one myself, I can tell you, they are not places for pregnant women. It was a mess.”
“An expensive mess,” David muttered. He shivered a little. Who could be that evil? What sort of husband? Even his father hadn’t done something like that.
“Quite. But Amalia succeeded. Got the funds and we milled around for long enough that our marriage couldn’t be a sham and so her parents would pay out the loan as part of the divorce settlement. So everyone got what they needed.” The older man paused. “At quite a personal cost to Amalia.”
“She was miserable here, wasn’t she?” He didn’t really have to ask.
“Definitively.” Armstrong nodded. “I wish it could’ve been different. That we could’ve been suited as something more than friends. But we weren’t.”
David stared into the darkness as if studying every line on the man’s face would give him the answers he needed. “But your new wife?”
Armstrong smiled a full smile that glowed brighter than the moon. The older man reclined a bit more. “Yes. We are suited. And everything is much better. There are still troublesome nights, but she’ll come and sit with me and make me feel as if it’s all right, as if I’m not weak.” He placed a hand over his mouth. “And I owe Amalia for that as well. Without her finding a way for me to breathe, for me to learn to manage my days and nights, I’d never have gotten here, never built this life. I wish somehow I could give her what she needs as well.”
Armstrong’s lip tipped. He wagged his pointer finger at David. “But she’ll give everything to the man who can. No matter what happened with me or the oth
er fellow. Because if anyone knows how to love...” He tented his fingers and placed them under his chin, his eyes boring into David.
A million wishes swirled in David’s mind as he stared back, chief among them was the chance to do it all again, this time right. “Did you love her at all?” he asked Armstrong.
“Like a friend, or a sister even.” The major rubbed his thinning hairline. “And I admire her. Very much.”
“Did she love you?” He blurted out the words because he had to know. He shouldn’t need to, shouldn’t pry and he shouldn’t be wishing and hoping for a particular answer, a confirmation.
“I’m sure a part of her very much wanted to, despite everything, despite how it started. But no, we were always honest with each other. We could never really be husband and wife.” Armstrong tucked his hands behind his head. “I always suspected...”
“What?” David’s heart lurched into his throat, a million terrible possibilities flitting through his mind.
“Now, she never committed adultery or sought the company of another man, despite our arrangement and despite how lonely she was out here, but I always wondered...” Armstrong frowned.
“What?” David ground his teeth to keep from shouting the question.
“There were times that she seemed somewhere far away. I’d wondered if she lost someone in the war, besides her brother. I even asked Thad about it, but he said ‘no.’”
“Oh.” David wiped his own brow. The heat again, but something else as well. Foolish hope bubbled within his gut. It couldn’t be about him, it couldn’t.
“Anyway, we should get some sleep. You have a long day tomorrow. Good night, Mr. Zisskind.” The man nodded and settled himself back down on his couch. He blew out the candle.
“Good night,” David whispered in the darkness, unease and guilt gnawing at every one of his organs. And worse, the flicker of hope that would not die.
Chapter Seventeen
The second worst thing about being back in the Armstrong house—the first being the interruption of her evening—was that June Armstrong’s lady’s maid, not David, dressed her. Poorly. Even when she wasn’t with child, it was clear that the current Mrs. Armstrong did not wear anything nearly as complex as she did. David was much more skilled. She was even starting to miss Meg.
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