Flirtation Walk

by Siri Mitchell

  “Just asking Hammond a question.”

  “Isn’t he the one who usually asks the questions?”

  “Don’t you have somewhere else to be? And why are you wearing my sash?”

  “Well, blast my buttons, I surely do.” He flashed a smile. “Just borrowing it. I’m supposed to see the tactical officer about something.”

  “Supposed to? Then why aren’t you?”

  “I’ve more important things to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’d say most anything is more important than reporting to the tactical officer, wouldn’t you?” He lifted a hand when I would have protested. “But don’t you worry, I’ve a yearling pledged to cover for me.”

  “If you would put as much time into doing your work as you do getting out of it, neither Campbell Conklin nor I would hold a candle to you, Deke.”

  “Right. And don’t you forget it. Now about getting you into the cavalry—”

  “There’s no hope for it. That’s what I was doing in there. Asking Hammond if there was any way a fellow could choose a lesser assignment. No offense.”

  “None taken.” He stretched up his chin and wrestled his top button into its buttonhole. Then he adjusted the white-web crossbelt over his chest and turned the red sash around his waist so that the knot rode his left hip, riffling through the fringe that fell from the ends in order to straighten it. “But that’s the trouble with you fellows at the top. You’re always asking questions about everything, ruining all the surprises.”

  “Where are you headed again?” He hadn’t really said, had he?

  “Heard there’s a new family visiting up at the hotel with a pair of pretty girls. I decided it was my responsibility to tell them about the grand ball on Friday. Got to make folks feel welcome.”

  I might have known there was a girl or two involved. “Then you might want to do something with that thatch of straw you call hair.”

  He lifted his dress cap with its black pompon and tried to smooth his hair down with his hand. “Can’t help what I was born with. I just have to make up for it with my stunning good looks.” He gave a glance off behind us and then tilted his hat just enough to put it off-regulation. “Meet me in Otter and Dandy’s tent after exercises tonight. I think I’ve figured out the solution to your problem.”

  I didn’t know whether I ought to go. On the one hand he was right: asking questions of Professor Hammond hadn’t done anything but confirmed answers I already knew. On the other hand, being caught where I wasn’t supposed to be was punishable by demerits, and what sort of example would I be to the new plebes and the yearlings if I were caught disobeying the rules?

  Campbell decided it for me. I heard him out in the street skinning one of the plebes for some infraction. He was such a grind that it pained me to imagine anyone might think the same of me. So that evening, I snuck down the street and slipped into Otter and Dandy’s tent, letting the flap fall into place behind me.

  It looked exactly the same as my tent, with its pair of mattresses and wooden floorboards, only here, the scent of flowers perfumed the air. Otter must have gotten another letter from his mother; she was known to scent her stationery. While I was trying to figure out how to politely push open the flap for ventilation, Deacon swore and reached over to do it himself. “Don’t see why she has to use a whole gol-darned bottle of skunk water all the time. What is it you call those flowers again?”

  Otter seemed to take no offense. “Jasmine.” He said it with a smile. Unlike Deacon and Dandy, he owed his place at the bottom of the class wholly to merit. He truly deserved to be there. He was loyal to a fault, and he sat a horse better than anyone else in the corps of cadets, but he wasn’t very smart.

  Deke gave the flap a shake, trying to get the stink out. “Well, we’re not a bunch of girls. And besides. We got work to do.” Releasing the flap, he took a stance in front of it, clasping his hands behind his back. He nodded at me. “I took it upon myself to apprise everyone of the situation.”

  There was a murmur of “tough luck” and “too bad.”

  As I nodded in acknowledgment, a flush crept up my cheeks. Had it really been necessary for him to tell Otter and Dandy that my sister was destitute because some swindler had stolen all of our money?

  He continued speaking. “I know what you’re thinking. I know you’re wondering why I went and told the other Immortals about your . . . well . . . you know. But they had to understand the lay of the land if we’re hoping to get their help.”

  We were hoping for their help? I enjoyed the fellows, and there was no one I’d rather room with than Deacon Hollingsworth, but why had he suddenly become a we with me?

  “On account of the way you got Otter through math and that time you covered for Dandy when he was late for parade—”

  I shrugged. “I only figured—”

  “And the way you volunteered to carry water that week during plebe year when you knew I was sick—”

  “It was the decent thing to do—”

  “We’ve decided we’re in. We’re going to help you. Besides, we’re the only solution to the whole problem.”

  “You are?” My gaze fell on Otter and Dandy, who were, even now, playing cards. And if I wasn’t mistaken, they were drinking too.

  “That’s right. We are.”

  “I fail to see how—”

  “You want to be assigned to cavalry, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Didn’t I? Wasn’t that the only way to rescue Elizabeth and find that Pennyworth fellow?

  “And you aren’t going to get there by studying your head off, are you?”

  “No.” Professor Hammond had made that quite clear.

  “So what you’re asking for is help.”

  “I don’t think I actually meant to—”

  “I’ve given it quite a lot of thought, and I’ve decided that what you need to do is fail this next semester.”

  “Fail? That’s not quite the solution I was after.”

  That’s when Otter lived up to his nickname. “I just don’t see how . . .” He paused to blink. “What I mean to say is, you worked hard to get to the top of the class these past few years, so if you want to get to the bottom, hadn’t you oughter start failing right quick? Once the semester starts?”

  “I don’t have any intention of failing.”

  Deacon held up a hand as if he were conducting a lecture. “Listen. We’re not here to corrupt you. We don’t want to do that. Do we, men?”

  They chorused a denial.

  “We simply want to help you. If we needed help with ethics or rhetoric or—”

  “Geology,” Dandy suggested.

  “Or civil engineering. Then we’d come to you—wouldn’t we, fellows?”

  They nodded.

  “So it just makes sense that if you wanted help with failing, then you’d come to us.”

  “I don’t quite understand—how it is that you decided I needed to fail?”

  “How else are you going to get into the cavalry? Do you think you can just walk into Colonel Lee’s office and ask him for a favor? And how would you put that exactly?” He struck a pose. “Colonel Lee, sir, no matter my class standing, no matter that I’ve achieved the highest grade in engineering since the foundation of the military academy, I was wondering, would you mind terribly if I threw away all this education and the goodwill of the academy board and joined up with the cavalry?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t do that. I just think—”

  He came forward to take me by the arm. “That’s just it. You’ve been thinking way too much these past three years. What you need to do now is let us do the thinking for you. And we have! We’ve got a plan. So here’s the way we’ll do it. If you’ll just stop studying—”

  “Stop studying? I can’t stop studying. You don’t just stop studying. Not at the best engineering school—the only engineering school—in the nation.”

  “I do. Don’t both of you?” Deacon looked at the other two.

  They nod
ded over their cards.

  He looked at me again. “So it seems you can stop studying. Leastwise until December. And then there’s a bit of hard work needed to catch up for January exams, you understand. You do have to start studying at some point, but at least you’re not wasting all that time every dad-blamed day over your books. That’s the first thing we’re going to teach you.”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t quite understand how you teach someone not to study.”

  Otter interjected. “Mother always says you might as well stop to smell the roses, because someday soon enough, you’re going to be pushing up daisies. Maybe we oughter say that we’re going to teach you how to have some fun.” He nodded. “That’s what we’re going to do.”

  Dandy glanced up at me over his cards. “And how to earn demerits.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve only gotten a couple demerits since I’ve been here. I really don’t think demerits are necessary, do you?”

  Otter skewered me with a look of pure disappointment. “Then you don’t want to find that cheating, thieving swindler? Because we were all planning on helping you do it once we’re gone from here and assigned to forts out in the territories somewheres.”

  “Of course I do.”

  Dandy laid his cards down and gave me his legendary dark-eyed glower. The one that had caused many a cadet much bigger and older than he to back up a step or two and reconsider what he was about to do. “Then you don’t want to avenge your sister’s honor?”

  Good grief. It sounded as if he was challenging my honor. “No! I mean yes, I—”

  Deacon came over and planted himself right in front of me, glaring. “Then you don’t want to have to be assigned to the cavalry because there’s just no other place to put you?”

  “Yes. I mean . . . I do.”

  He grinned. “That’s fine, then. It’s settled. So what you got to do now, once school starts on Monday, is stop studying and just leave the rest to us.” He took up a hand of cards that was sitting on the table and settled down to join the others.

  Apparently I’d been dismissed.

  9

  Lucinda

  On Tuesday evening after the supper dishes were put away and the young ones put to bed, Milly brought a cup of tea from the kitchen for Phoebe, spooning some sugar into it. She sat down beside her sister at the table and started telling of a recent encounter with one of the townswomen. I hadn’t realized she was such a mimic, but it was all in good fun and she soon made her older sister laugh so hard Phoebe was crooking a finger to her eyes to wipe away tears. I didn’t have the chance to listen to the end of the story, for my aunt drew me into the sitting room to talk with my uncle. It was really rather fearsome the way he looked at a person.

  “Your aunt and I wish to speak to you of your future. I think it prudent that you use my family’s name. Some in town still remember your mother, and it would be best for everyone, I think, to leave the past behind us.”

  I agreed. Wholeheartedly.

  “If you call yourself our niece, of course it will still be true. But the Hammond name will protect you from your father’s misdeeds and give you a chance at a respectable future.”

  The scrutiny of his piercing gaze made me want to squirm, but I forced my lips into a smile. “That’s very generous.”

  “None of what happened in the past was your fault. I can’t bring myself to think you should be punished for it. And it would be a shame not to take advantage of the opportunity the military academy offers. Your aunt and I think that would be the best place for you to find a man of merit to marry. I suggest you consider this a chance to begin again, to forge a new life for yourself.”

  That fit exactly with my own plans. “If you think it best.”

  My aunt joined the conversation. “Of course the life of a military wife is not always easy, but you’re familiar with the West. You’re probably more suited to the life than many of the girls who flock here in the summer. Your uncle has agreed to be your escort to the cadet dances and—”

  “Hops, they call them.”

  “—and to introduce you to those cadets he deems acceptable.”

  “If I see any signs of history beginning to repeat itself, of you taking up with a cadet who displays the worst traits of your father, I will be obliged to ask you to leave.”

  I swallowed. Hard. “I won’t. I promise you that I won’t.” My days of deceit were behind me.

  “Promises are easily made. I’m more interested in seeing them kept.”

  “I will.” I had to. In this new world of mine, there was no room for a girl with a tarnished past. At least they thought me innocent of my father’s schemes. And how would they ever learn I’d been an active participant? My secret was safe. No one would ever know I wasn’t as spotless an as angel.

  The first dance I would attend, a grand ball to celebrate the end of something called Encampment, was to take place Friday evening, on the last day of August. But I had the rest of the week to get through first. Helping Milly mind Ella, assisting my aunt and Susan with the cooking, and reading to Phoebe left hardly any time for me to think about cadets, let alone to ready myself for the dance. Had I had the time, I might have salved my hands with glycerin jelly and rinsed my hair in alcohol and castor oil. As it was, Friday morning found me trying to coax Ella into eating her breakfast and chasing Milly down from the apple trees out behind the house.

  She dropped to the ground with a thud. “God wouldn’t have made the branches so low if He hadn’t meant them for climbing.”

  Now Ella was trying to climb it as well, hugging the trunk with her arms and kicking a leg up toward the branch.

  I caught her up about the waist as I admonished Milly. “If God made trees for climbing, then He was intending them for boys.” I picked a twig from her hair. “Girls were made for better things.”

  She pulled a face as she ran to the back door. As always, Ella trailed along behind.

  I spent the afternoon telling stories about my life in boarding schools to Phoebe and Milly as I helped my aunt and Susan cook. Most of the stories were inventions, but they would never know.

  By suppertime, my sleeves were powdered with flour and my forehead was slick with perspiration. I was halfway through talking to Phoebe about the classes I’d taken at Madame Mercier’s finishing school in St. Louis when my aunt pronounced her stew done. She set about serving supper before I even had the chance to remove the apron she’d lent me. And I still had pie crust underneath my fingernails. I’d found that the lard did wonders for my hands, but I feared baking pies and minding the gravy had made me smell like a tavern.

  After supper, Susan tended to the dishes while I went upstairs to change. I didn’t have many choices. My delicate blossom-sprinkled barège or my printed organdy. I settled on the barège with its lace trim. Its pale pink color suited me, and the bodice was cut to flatter, presenting me as respectably demure and understatedly wealthy. A pair of shining rock crystal earrings only added to the effect.

  Pulling my gloves on over ragged fingernails, I hoped there wasn’t too much dough still stuck beneath them. And I could only hope that I didn’t smell like gravy or the evening’s stew. But if I did, what was there to do about it? In frustration, I put a hand to my hair. There was no hope of curling it. I ought to have started earlier in the day for that. I pulled out the pins, smoothed it to dip over my ears and then plaited it into a braid and wound it into a bun at the back of my neck. Securing it with a comb, I turned toward Phoebe, who was sitting on the bed. “Do you think—” I was going to ask her about my hair; I’d forgotten again that she couldn’t see.

  “Do I think what?”

  “Do you think . . .” What could I say that wouldn’t underscore how different her life was from mine? And when had I come to care so much about her feelings? But she was so . . . sincere and kind and generous and selfless. She evidenced all the worst qualities of an upstanding citizen! Of course, it was those same qualities that made them so easy to deceive. There were a dozen
ways I could have turned her solicitation to my favor, to make her do what I wanted. But since coming to Buttermilk Falls, I seemed to have lost my will to do so—at least in her case. I sighed, turning to pull a hand mirror from a drawer. “Do you think autumn will be long in coming?”

  She frowned. “I shouldn’t think so. Just wait. In a month’s time, you’ll find yourself shivering of a night.” She began to unbutton her bodice. Her evening was ending while mine was just beginning.

  I pushed aside the pang of pity that wrenched at my heart and left. My uncle was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. My aunt stood beside him, twisting a handkerchief in her hands. “Remember, you don’t have to dance if you don’t wish to.”

  I adored dancing, but I didn’t say so. I simply nodded.

  “And don’t let any of the cadets take you away from the ballroom. For any reason.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And don’t—”

  My uncle leaned down and kissed my aunt on the cheek. “We’ll be fine.”

  “I just don’t know if—”

  “We’ll be fine. One of the benefits of keeping a conduct-roll in addition to a merit-roll is that the cadets have to mind themselves outside the classroom as well as inside.” He pulled on his gloves and helped me on with my lace-trimmed mantle.

  I only had the carriage bonnet I’d come with. It wasn’t the proper accompaniment for a ball gown, but it was the best I could do. As I settled it at the back of my head, my aunt presented me with a headdress of flowers fixed atop a fan of lace. As I took it from her, she removed my bonnet and set it on the hallstand. The headdress was outmoded but still quite pretty, the sort of touch one commonly calls charming. If I had been in danger when I came down the stairs, of being overlooked, her gift had cured me of that fate. Having settled it upon my head, my aunt stood back to take a look at me. She dabbed at an eye with her handkerchief. “It was your mother’s. Her favorite. One hates to discard such pretty things. . . .”

  My uncle saved me from a reply by opening the door and ushering me through it. But still, I put a hand to the flowers. I might have thought them a good omen, but the more I discovered about the past, the less I was certain of anything.