The Engineer's Wife

by Tracey Enerson Wood

  “No, I believe the iron for the chain came from our side of the river, forged in Cold Spring,” Mother said, her debate muscles already warmed up.

  As the two of them seemed content to argue, I wandered into the garden a few steps away, admiring the fragrant blooms. Soon, the crunching of gravel announced that a carriage approached.

  Wash hopped out first, holding the door for his father. I had seen a photograph, but it did not prepare me for the man in the flesh. John Roebling had slightly receding hair and Wash’s ice-blue eyes, pierced by a frightful intensity. His salt-and-pepper beard came to a point at his shirt collar.

  “Father, this is my beloved Emily.”

  I held out my hand in greeting, and Mr. Roebling squeezed it so hard, it was nearly painful. “Welcome to the family. You must be quite the young woman to so dazzle my son.” Although he had a German accent, his English was rapid and nearly perfect.

  Wash held out his arms to me. I was struck by how his usually well-fitted uniform hung away from him, and small lines had appeared on his face. We snuck in a quick kiss before following the others to a sitting area. Wash introduced Mother to his father.

  Mr. Roebling greeted her with an outstretched hand. “Mrs. Warren, it is a pleasure.”

  A breath caught in my throat. He hadn’t waited for her to first offer her hand. But Mother took Mr. Roebling’s hand, appraising him from head to toe. “It’s Phebe. We’re to be family.”

  We settled into some intricate garden chairs, forged from iron, of course.

  Mr. Hewitt opened a leather satchel he had at his feet and extracted a ledger. “If the ladies will excuse a bit of business, I’ve got the prices tabulated for you, Captain.”

  Mr. Roebling and Hewitt looked over the ledger, running their fingers down rows of numbers. Curiously, Wash paid scant attention, even though he was there on army orders. The distraction seemed so unlike my focused, mission-oriented fiancé.

  The horses, which had been unfastened from the carriages and left a few yards away in a nearby paddock, suddenly jumped and brayed loudly. Wash shuddered and covered his face with his arms.

  “What is it, son? You survive a war and you’re frightened of a horse spooked by a rabbit?” Mr. Roebling chuckled, but my stomach clenched.

  “Well then, as our business is complete, shall we go to the manor house for tea?” Hewitt said.

  The others rose and headed for the manor house, but Wash remained seated, staring across the pond.

  I lightly tapped his shoulder. “Wash, shall we go inside?”

  “Hmm? I… We… No. We have only an hour or two…and a wedding to plan.” He stared at his hands, alternately stretching his fingers, then balling them into fists.

  “Should we take a stroll around the gardens?” I desperately wanted to get that faraway look out of his eyes. He had been quiet and withdrawn the entire afternoon. Was this what he was like around his father? Or was it something else?

  Mr. Roebling had doubled back. “Washington, come.”

  “Yes, Father. I mean, no, we’re…”

  “We need a moment to ourselves if you wouldn’t mind,” I said.

  “It’s your fault.” Mr. Roebling looked straight at me, his face tight.

  “Pardon?” The blood ran out of my face at his glare.

  “You’ve been like this the whole trip.” He pointed at his son. “And ever since you met Miss Warren. Stumbling, indecisive, hardly the son I know. Is she doing this to you?”

  Mother came to my rescue. “Come along, Mr. Roebling. Let the lovebirds have a moment.”

  A chill ran through me, and I pulled my wrap tighter. Apparently, Wash being different around his father wasn’t the issue. But it certainly wasn’t me, was it?

  The scent of a wood fire wisped from the manor chimneys. The thought of hot tea was very appealing, but time alone with Wash trumped the comfort of a warm room. As the others headed to the house, I guided Wash through the garden and toward the woods, dappled by the low autumn sun.

  “I’m afraid your father doesn’t think much of me.”

  Wash shrugged his shoulders. “He hardly knows you.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  He kicked the ground, sending a spray of leaves ahead of us. “Good God, Emily, we’re trying to win a war. I should be at the front right now, helping to keep your brother alive. He should have sent his quartermaster for this task. But he sent me so that you and I could have a moment together.”

  Despite his harsh wards, relief flowed through me. He seemed to have snapped out of his queer mood, and I’d rather have a feisty man than a sullen one. A slight smile may have tugged at my lips.

  He responded with a glare. “Don’t you see what a difficult position this puts me in? I would never have asked for such a favor. But you did. So I came here only to fall into a situation that could compromise my and my family’s reputation.”

  “Why did you come then, if it distressed you so much? Why not write to me about your reservations? And…that doesn’t really explain…” I was hesitant to bring up the way he startled at a sudden noise, the way his hands shook, or that he appeared to have lost thirty pounds in a few months. It seemed we were already on unsteady ground. Knowing how worried I was would only add to his troubles.

  He shrugged and broke off a dead tree branch as if the cracking sound were some sort of answer. I followed him down a narrow trail, then over rocks to cross a small stream. The chirping of cardinals and chickadees and the crunch of our shoes on fallen leaves soon replaced the echoes of our conversation.

  He stopped so abruptly, I almost stumbled into him.

  “Because I wanted to see you.” His back still toward me, he tilted his head this way and that, searching for something.

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” I said softly. “It seemed otherwise.”

  He turned to me, his face an unreadable mix of emotions. “It will never be otherwise.”

  The heaviness in his demeanor rasped at my desire for a pleasant if all too brief visit. Yearning for his playful side, I pushed in another direction. “It seems you’ve been in these woods before. Am I one of a series of women brought into your lair?”

  A smile slowly broke across his face. “A gentleman never tells.”

  * * *

  After that rendezvous, I wrote Wash nearly every day but received only one letter in three months. I was beside myself with worry, all my worst fears hammering in my head. One morning before Christmas, a messenger in Union uniform appeared at our door. I had to grab the doorjamb as my knees gave way beneath me. I took a deep breath before opening the sealed envelope, my address hastily scrawled upon it in an unfamiliar hand. “A fine man,” the Irish-accented messenger said, tipping his hat and turning back to the street.

  Slipping out the letter, with relief, I recognized Wash’s own handwriting. The short note said only:

  My lips have fully recovered from your attacks and are in good fighting trim to receive you.

  Your devoted Wash

  Soon after, a note from GK provided at once a sense of relief and a nagging in my gut.

  My dearest Emily,

  With a happy heart, I tell you that I am releasing my true and faithful assistant to your attention. Although our battle is not yet done, the end is near enough that we can allow some of our best soldiers the rest they so sorely need and deserve. I assure you he is as strong and hale as could be expected after so great an effort.

  After nearly four years at war, Wash left the service shortly after being promoted to colonel. He returned with his physical parts intact, although hollowness rounded his eyes, and I sensed a distance between him and the present world. It was the worst feeling to be unable to help the one you love, with no power to heal when it is the mind itself that is wounded. So I went about my business, filling journals with notes of wedding guests and party
schedules, giving details to a man who feigned interest, then crept away to an empty room when no one was looking. All the while, I worried if the man who had returned from the war was the same man with whom I had fallen in love.

  Four

  1865

  Wash and I married in Cold Spring in January 1865, eager for our new life together. Mr. Roebling softened toward me, never repeating the accusations he had made at Ringwood. Indeed, it seemed Wash was becoming more able to keep his bearings or at least better at hiding it when he couldn’t.

  Mother conspired with Mr. Roebling—who insisted I call him Papa—to have two separate wedding cakes, one for each of us. They were connected by a sugar sculpture of what Wash described as a “remarkably accurate scale bridge.” Lemon tickled our noses and buttercream coated our lips as we demolished every last bite, blissfully unaware of the prophecy held in the delicate spun sugar.

  * * *

  A few weeks after the wedding, we left for a weekend in Maine to be followed by a visit with the Roebling clan. At the train station, Mother adjusted my wrap, more out of parental habit than any real need. “Well, off you two go. My last baby to leave the nest.” She erased an imaginary smudge from my cheek, then blew a kiss as we boarded the train.

  I eyed the rows of seats crowded with chatty passengers. Wash bumped behind me, slowed by armloads of hand luggage he refused to let the porter carry.

  “It’s a long ride. You won’t mind if I lay my head in your lap to get a bit of sleep?” I asked him.

  His eyes twinkled. “Even better. Here we are.”

  At the rear of the railcar, thin sliding doors hung on either side of the aisle. Wash dropped the luggage and checked his ticket. “This one.” He slid the door on the right, revealing a small compartment with a pull-down bed.

  “How wonderful!” Relief at gaining a bit of space and privacy buoyed my spirits.

  Giggling like ten-year-olds, we climbed in the berth and secured the door and a velvet curtain behind us. We weren’t in there two minutes before he was unbuttoning my dress.

  “Wash, they’ll hear.”

  “Shh.” He pulled off his trousers and shirt and slipped under the sheet. “Come here.”

  I leaned close.

  He whispered in my ear. “We’ll be very quiet.” He slipped my dress down and kissed my shoulder. He placed a finger gently on my lips. “Can you do that?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  His hands pulled up my skirts and found my bottom. He kissed my neck, ran his tongue toward my breast.

  I moaned.

  “Control,” he said.

  “I’m trying.” I laughed as I scooted under the sheet with him. It felt wicked, but I pressed my lips together while his lips and hands wandered. My skin sensed his touch more intensely through our enforced silence, his body warm against me, his scent of anise and cinnamon enveloping me like morning fog. He kissed me, deeply, hungrily, across to my ears and down my neck, tenderly cupping my breasts and making me shudder.

  I ran my fingers over the powerful muscles of his chest and arms, skimming past his hips and scraping down his thighs. Yearning to be filled by him, I could wait no longer. I slipped my hands to his buttocks and drew him to me.

  Wash glanced at the curtain. “We need to—”

  “Shh.” I closed my eyes, tilted my hips for him. With each rock of the train, we rode higher, his skin hot against my flesh. I rose up, up, up until I feared I would burst. We were as one—not two lovers on a train but a single spirit, bound for a destination that was ours alone. I bit his shoulder so my cries wouldn’t give us away. With sweet release, we tumbled back to earth in each other’s arms.

  “Tickets.” The conductor’s voice seeped through our protective curtain as he made his way through the car. “Tickets.”

  Wash donned his shirt and trousers in a flash and slipped outside our berth.

  He returned with a sheepish grin, and we laughed at our close call. It was a small bed for the two of us, but we didn’t mind. We lay face-to-face, the rhythmic chugging of the train a drumbeat to the melody of our voices. As it grew dark, Wash lit the sconce over our heads. The warm light and shadows it threw heightened the handsome lines of his face: a broad forehead over widely set eyes, a strong, straight nose, and full lips peeking from his honeyed mustache.

  Wash reached into his trouser pocket. “I have something for you.”

  “Let me help.” I reached down, but he playfully slapped my hand away.

  He opened a small velvet box to reveal a set of cameo earrings. “I got these in Fredericksburg.” He brushed back my hair and fastened one on my ear. “Carried them with me, one in each pocket. Many times, my fingers came across them, and I would think of how lovely they would be on you.”

  In his palm, the silhouette of a woman in the cameo glowed in the candlelight. He pressed the earring into my hand, then clasped my hand in both of his. “Knowing this day would come, well—” He swallowed, his eyes hollow and unfocused.

  “They’re beautiful.” I touched his cheek and brought him back. “I’ll save them for a special occasion.”

  In fact, I would be loath to wear them. The change in his face was not what I wanted every time he saw them on me, and I couldn’t countenance how they came into his possession during a devastating battle. I unclasped the one on my ear and tucked the pair back into the box. If they had somehow helped him get through the war, I was grateful for that. But now was the time to forget the horror and move on.

  * * *

  After an all-too-short weekend in Maine, we traveled to Papa’s home in Trenton, along with several of Wash’s siblings. Not exactly a honeymoon, but it was pleasant enough. The family was as busy as a hive of bees, Papa and Wash with preparations for their next project, the other sons running the wire company. The company, which Papa had founded, made iron and steel rope by machine-twisting long strands of wire into bundles called strands, then aligning those strands into cables of varying thicknesses. They were used in all sorts of industries, including bridge making.

  Papa had hired Wash to help finish the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge, which had been long delayed by the war. Both men were eager to get to work. There was much excitement in the Midwest for the project to link Ohio and Kentucky, and Papa’s name and picture appeared in national magazines. Headlines declared “Famous Engineer and War Hero Son to Bridge Ohio River!”

  In the evening, the family left Wash and me alone in the study. Its high ceiling, crossed with rough wooden beams, gave the room an air of importance. A settee and a couple of small tables dwarfed by a weathered oak table occupied the space. Schematic drawings of a suspension bridge covered the table, along with pages and pages of detailed plans with careful notations of materials and measurements.

  I enjoyed the drawings, artful renderings worthy of framing. The beautiful lines and symmetry of the bridge, cables strung like harp strings reaching for the sky, spoke to me. But a puzzling wall leading to the bridge detracted from its beauty.

  “Why is this to be fashioned of stone?” I asked Wash.

  “It’s rather crucial, to keep people from falling into the river.”

  “What if it were made of iron cables so as not to block the view of the river and the bridge?” I drew a crude diagram. “More a fence than a wall. Wouldn’t that make it more visually pleasing?”

  He studied my diagram, then the schematics. “Interesting.” He gave me a playful knock on the head. “Brains and beauty. Fabulous combination. Now if you learn to cook, I shall be able to retire in grand style.”

  I gave him my own playful knock on the head.

  * * *

  As our days in the Roebling household waned, Papa and Wash supervised a servant packing Wash’s belongings in his spacious bedroom. They planned to leave that week on a three-day train trip, leaving me behind. In what had become a rather delicate issue, Wash had been evasiv
e regarding when I would be able to join him in Cincinnati.

  From my perch on the four-poster bed, I said as cheerily as I could muster, “My trunks will take some time to catch up with us.”

  Papa paced, hands on hips, muttering “these newfangled ideas.” He ran fingers through his thinning hair. “There will be plenty of time for you to be together, but this is not the time. Meine Frau Johanna, Gott segne sie, understood this.”

  Arguing with John Roebling was akin to facing a bull with a red cape. I ignored my thundering heart. “My place is with my husband.”

  I hoped for validation from my husband, but he just nodded and handed an armful of uniforms to the servant packing his trunks. “Would you take these away, please?”

  Papa waited until the servant exited. “Washington tells me you helped him with his schematic drawings.”

  “I made a tiny suggestion to enhance the view of the structure.” I was getting rather accomplished at sounding calm.

  The top of Papa’s head grew red. “Ladies are not suited for this work. There are complex principles involved for which you have no training. You will be at best a distraction and at worst a danger.”

  I darted a look at my husband.

  “My dear, this is between you and Papa. I won’t be caught in the middle.” Wash placed a pair of boots in a crate.

  Papa and I glared at him from both sides.

  Wash scrunched his face as if in pain. “Em, Papa is right. What we do is dangerous. Every day, I have to worry about a worker falling from a great height, a frayed wire snapping and slicing off someone’s hand—or worse.” He nodded toward Papa. “And it’s deeply troubling to have my own father facing those same risks.”

  Papa rolled up some maps. “These risks are unavoidable, given what we do, and I have faced them for decades. And now, my son as well. My consolation is that I’ve given Washington the benefit of my experience and the best education in the field.”

  “I’m not proposing to follow you to work like a puppy,” I said to Wash as he lifted textbooks from a shelf and handed them to me. “I have my own books to keep me company, and I’m not afraid of being alone, even in a strange city.”