It was Jeb who finally pulled away from her. He swallowed hard and was breathing a little heavily. But the old Jeb could not be held down for long. He threw his hat up in the air and shouted, “Did you hear that? Miss Flora Cooke is mine! Finally! Whoo hoo!” Then he grabbed her around the waist, hoisted her up, and whirled around and around.
Flora laughed with sheer delight, throwing her head back and her arms in the air.
Jeb set her down and then, grinning like a fool, went to fetch his hat.
Flora was trying to straighten her own hat, as it had fallen to her back, held on by the gold braided straps. “I’m dizzy,” she told Jeb, “and I don’t think it’s only from turning in circles. I can hardly believe it, even though—even though—”
“You’ve always known it, that you would marry me, ever since the Independence Ball,” he said smugly, helping her settle her hat and pulling the bolo tie up under her chin.
“I didn’t even think I’d be calling you Jeb by this time,” she replied smartly. “Much less that I’d be calling you my fiancé. Oh! My fiancé!”
“Sounds good, doesn’t it? But I can’t wait till it’s ‘my husband.’ That sounds even better. Can we get married now?”
“Silly bear,” she said, playfully pinching him. It was like pinching a concrete pillar. “I do think we should at least have a decent engagement, considering we’ve hardly had what’s considered a decent time for a courtship.”
Impatiently Jeb took her left hand, removed her glove, and tucked it into his waistband along with the other. “You are now my fiancée, and I am going to hold your ungloved hand, no matter how scandalous it is. And what do you mean by a ‘decent engagement’? There’s nothing at all indecent in us, and I’ll fight any man who says there is.”
“I just meant that we should plan a wedding far enough in the future so that we could make arrangements for our families to be there,” Flora said soothingly.
“Your family and my family are scattered all over about a dozen states,” Jeb argued. “It would take too long to try to herd them all together. I want to get married now.”
“Jeb, stop saying that. You know perfectly well that we can’t get married now.”
“I know not now, like today. But soon. It already seems like I’ve been waiting for you forever, Flora. I mean it.”
She looked up at him and saw that he was perfectly serious. And why not? she thought. By the standards of time, we haven’t been together long enough to be this much in love…but Jeb is right. It does seem as if we’ve been waiting our whole lives for each other…and I suppose we have. We know it’s the right thing in God’s eyes. What do we care what men think?
“What about November, Jeb?” she asked finally. “I would like to have a nice church wedding and for at least some of my family to be able to come. The St. Georges and the Virginia Cookes. And surely in that time your father and some of your sisters and brothers may be able to make arrangements to be here.”
“Still too long,” he grumbled, “but if that’s what you want, my heart, then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll marry in November.” Then he added, “Do you know what day it is?”
“Thursday?” Flora guessed, mystified.
“Actually it’s Wednesday, but that’s not what I meant. Today is August 15th.”
“Oh, August 15th,” Flora repeated with wonder. “I was going to leave today.”
“Oh no you weren’t, not unless me and Ace hopped on that train with you. That was my plan, you see. I can tell you all about it now. I planned that you would not leave on August 15th or any other day. I planned that you’d be with me, on this day and every day from now on.”
She smiled at him. “I won’t pretend anymore, Jeb. I knew. Maybe not at the ball, but the very next day, I knew. And I was happy.”
“Are you, Flora? Can you really be as happy with me as I am with you?” he asked, putting his arm around her and pulling her close.
“Yes, because I believe in the Lord, and I believe you are my gift from Him,” Flora answered. “Even better than us, Jeb, He knew. God always knew.”
Flora was happier than she had ever known, had ever known that a woman could be, as she prepared for her wedding. Her friends—and also now Jeb’s friends, who included just about every man he met—teased her about moving from the grand Rookery to “one room and a kitchen.” The officer’s quarters were little more than that—though they did, of course, have a bedroom—but Flora and Ruby had hours of fun fixing it up.
As always, Jeb was the dashing, careless cavalryman. He would find Flora at the Rookery or at their new little house, come rushing in dusty and smelling of horses, and grab Flora to kiss her and hug her as if he hadn’t seen her for months.
He teased Ruby unmercifully, and she adored him. She was fully as determined to make the house nice for “Miss Flora and Mr. Lieutenant Jeb” as Flora was, but sometimes Flora suspected she was so enamored of Jeb that she worked twice as long and twice as hard, sewing new bed linens, polishing the hardwood floors, and scrubbing the kitchen until it shone. Ruby even papered the dreary wooden walls with fine wallpaper Colonel Cooke ordered for them from New York, a small rose print that Ruby spent hours upon end matching up as she hung the thick strips. Jeb’s family sent them a fine woolen carpet for the bedroom, and Ruby would barely let Flora walk on it.
In the middle of September, the 1st Cavalry was sent on a raid, a hard raid hunting wild Cheyenne, and Jeb didn’t return until November 4th. Sorrowfully Flora had to break the news to him of the death of his father. Jeb couldn’t possibly go to Virginia. The 1st Virginia was a brand-new regiment and leaves were hard to come by, and besides that, Jeb’s father had actually died on September 20th.
And then the snows came hard in November, so Jeb and Flora had a small wedding at the Rookery, with only fifteen in attendance and Flora’s father. Flora wore her white graduation dress, and she glowed.
For once Jeb Stuart was serious, his voice deep and sure as he promised to love, honor, and cherish Flora until death parted them. In her heart, Flora knew he spoke truth, and she knew that she would cherish this man for all of her life.
He kissed her, his new bride, and they walked out of the parlor, for there was to be no reception. Jeb and Flora just wanted to go home. As they left, Jeb said, “Flora, I knew of God’s goodness, but I never knew He would be so good to me. You are my life, Flora. I loved you when I met you, and I promise I will love you until the day I die.”
“You are my heart and my life, Jeb,” she said simply. “I can’t believe God has blessed me with you.”
“It was meant to be,” he said, smiling. “I always knew it was meant to be.”
Two weeks before, Jeb had written a cousin. In telling him of Flora, he had repeated Julius Caesar’s famous quote, somewhat altered: Veni, vidi, victus sum.
I came, I saw, I was conquered.
And so, for the only time in his life, he was.
CHAPTER FOUR
The room was cold even though the fireplace held a roaring, lusty fire. Flora huddled in one of the big overstuffed horsehair armchairs by it, covered with a woolen lap robe, reading the Bible by a kerosene lamp. The cabin was rough, but Flora and Ruby had made it, on the inside at least, into a snug little cottage, with pictures on the walls and rag rugs on the floor and nice heavy black velveteen drapes for keeping out the Kansas winter.
With affection Flora looked at the twin chair next to hers. It was Jeb’s, and it had the imprint of his bulky frame in it. For many nights they had sat close together, reading or talking, holding hands, staring dreamily at the fire, contented and happy.
She looked up, and the calendar on the wall caught her eye. It was one she’d gotten with a picture of an angel watching over two children who were making their way down a dangerous pathway. December 23, 1856. I can’t believe we’ve been married for over a year. It seems like no time at all…or it seems like always.
Ruby came in the kitchen door.
Flora could hear her stamp
ing the snow off her boots and muttering to herself. Wrapping the robe around her, she went into the tiny kitchen. “Ruby, dear, what are you doing here this time of night?”
Ruby was still Flora’s maid, but she had moved in with a man named Turley. The circumstances of their relationship were a little vague, but Flora never pressed her. Ruby was certainly not a slave; she was a paid servant, and Flora believed that Ruby’s personal life was none of her business.
“Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, ain’t it? And looky here, not a sign of a fire in this here stove! What you gwine to feed Mr. Jeb when he gets home, I ask you? Snow?”
“I don’t think he’ll be able to make it home for Christmas, Ruby,” Flora said dispiritedly. “No one’s heard from the 1st Cavalry in two weeks.”
“He’ll be here,” Ruby said solidly, shedding several layers of outer clothes, scattering snow as she went. “And you with no Christmas dinner fixed for him. Good thing I brung over this here turkey to cook tonight, with Mr. Jeb comin’ home with no fire in the stove and jes’ icicles to eat.”
“He’s a soldier, Ruby. He can’t always do what he wants,” Flora argued.
“He said he’d be here, an’ he’ll be here. If ’n you don’t know Jeb Stuart, I do. When dat man sets his head on something, he gets it done.” Finally down to her skirt and blouse, she started tying on an apron and stared at Flora. “Am I standin’ here lookin’ at you with your bare feet?”
“I—I was just reading—”
“Miss Flora, you git back to that sittin’ room right now and set down and wrap up, and I mean it,” she scolded. “Otherwisen, your toes’ll likely freeze off, and then what? Then you’ll just have little hooves like a little tiny pony, and they won’t be cloven hooves, neither. So that means the Bible says they’d be dirty.”
“I think you mean unclean, Ruby,” Flora said with amusement over her shoulder.
Ruby disappeared into the bedroom muttering, “Like I got time to go huntin’ wool socks for silly white ladies dat would let their own feet freeze off and can’t even cook their own supper.” She fetched Flora two pairs of wool socks, still muttering. “You is a good woman, Miss Flora, but you better make sure you be a good wife to Mr. Jeb. Freezing your feet off is one thing, but not havin’ a man his dinner when he gets home is ’nother can of worms altogether.”
Ruby had cheered her up; she had been depressed, missing Jeb. She always missed Jeb terribly when he was on a patrol. She felt alone, lonely, and somehow bereft, as if a part of her were missing. And I suppose it is. I am bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, she reflected. She had been reading Genesis, and she turned back a few pages to read again of the union of Adam and Eve and how God had ordained this miracle for all married people.
And in spite of what Ruby thinks, I am a good wife to Jeb. And oh, I’m so glad! I was so afraid I wouldn’t be, that I wouldn’t know how to be, that I wouldn’t be good enough for a man like him. But it hadn’t worked out that way. She smiled, thinking about her honeymoon and how wonderful it had been. Jeb had been very gentle, and she had quickly learned to please him. A memory floated to her mind of how she had awakened the morning after her wedding and how for a moment she’d been terrified to find a man in her bed. But since then, every night she slept with him and every morning she woke up to him, she had been filled with joy. She’d learned that the intimacies of marriage were part of the wonder of being a wife, married to a man she loved passionately. She was so grateful that she and Jeb suited each other in that way.
From the kitchen, Ruby called, “I got this here fire going good now, no thanks to some folks. And I got that lazy Turley to scrounge around and get you a turkey. It’s a little scrawny, but I’ll roast it up good. And he got some sweet taters, too, and I knows how much Mr. Jeb loves sweet tater pie.”
Suddenly Flora was hungry; she had been listless all day, missing Jeb so much that she didn’t really want to eat. But she felt much better now, and so she got up, fetched her warm wool robe and slippers, and joined Ruby in the kitchen. “Where in the world did Turley get that turkey, Ruby?”
“Hit’s a wild turkey, but he dressed it out so nice it almost looks like one boughten at a market. Turley, he’s a right good hunter. And he does what I says, ’cause then he knows I’ll be nice to him.”
Flora reached out and touched the bird. “He is a good size.” A thought came to her, and she glanced up at Ruby. “What do you mean ‘be nice to him’?”
“Jes’ whut it say.”
“Why, Ruby, surely you don’t mean you’d be letting Turley take some liberties?” Flora teased.
Ruby smiled, and the new gold in one of her front teeth gleamed. She had just gotten it from the new dentist in Leavenworth, and it was her pride and joy, so she smiled most of the time. “I knows what I be doin’, Miss Flora, and ain’t no call for you to be tellin’ me about no liberties. Me and your poor papa thought you and Mr. Jeb would scandal the place up to heaven till we got you two married. Good thing we did, too, jest in the devil’s nick of time.”
“Yes, thank you so much for that, Ruby. Jeb and I are grateful.”
“Orter be. What are you doing in here, anyways?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Oh, so now Miss Flora’s hungry, is she? Droopin’ too much over Mr. Jeb to even put on socks like a Christian woman, but now youse hungry?”
“Yes,” Flora said meekly. “But I’ll just fix myself some ham and beans real quick, and then I’ll help you.”
“Oh, jest sit down at the table there. I can fix them ham and beans faster’n you can find the pot to cook ’em in.”
“But I want to help,” Flora insisted. “Jeb should have a good Christmas dinner, and I really am very grateful to you and Mr. Turley for providing us with this feast.”
“Thought you said Mr. Jeb wasn’t coming home for Christmas,” Ruby said smartly.
“Well, perhaps he will,” Flora said, with much less doubt now.
“He said he would, and he don’t tell no stories, not dat man. Men like Jeb Stuart don’t grow on no trees. You jest better hang onter him, Miss I’m-Too-Pouty-to-Make-Supper.”
“I intend to do that, Ruby. So you just step aside and tend to that turkey. I can fix my ham and beans, and then I’ll help you with those sweet potatoes for Jeb’s pie.”
The day dawned with a bright sun, and the snow began melting. The bitter cold of the Kansas winters had not been pleasant, but Flora was used to them. She’d gotten up early, and she and Ruby had spent all day cooking. Ruby knew how to make corn bread dressing, so the two of them had gone to the commissary and had gotten cornmeal and fresh milk so Ruby could teach her how to make it. They were busy all day, and the time went quickly. They finished cooking in the late afternoon.
As evening fell, Flora had again almost lost hope of Jeb returning in time for Christmas.
“You might as well quit looking out dat window. He’ll come when he come,” Ruby said. “Now you set down here and behave. I’m gwine ter knit Mr. Jeb a pair of new wool socks. They’ll be too late for Christmas, but I knows his birthday is in February. I’ll be finished long afore then.”
“I should learn to knit,” Flora said aimlessly, her gaze wandering again toward the window. Though night was falling, she still hadn’t closed the curtains. She hoped Jeb would see the welcoming light—if he came home.
“He’ll be here,” Ruby repeated with emphasis. “You got dat present wrapped you got for him?”
“Yes, it’s under the bed.”
“What about me? You gots mine wrapped?”
Flora smiled. “Yes, I have. Do you want it now?”
“No, I don’t want it now. It ain’t Christmas. I’ll take it tomorrow ’fore we eat all dis turkey and dressing.”
Ruby went to bed early that night. The small house had a room in the attic that had been fixed up by the previous tenant, and she often stayed up there when she worked late. It was actually warmer, Ruby said, than the downstairs.
Flora waited and
listened to every sound. The night was quiet, and a soft gentle snow had begun to fall. She finally rose and murmured sadly to herself, “I might as well go to bed. He’s not coming.”
She turned to go to the bedroom, when suddenly she heard the sound of horses. She quickly ran to the door, and despite the cold she threw it open.
Bordering their tiny yard were the parade grounds, and a troop was coming in—and then she saw Jeb! He swung out of his saddle, gave some orders, tossed the reins of his horse to one of the men, then hurried toward the house. Flora could see his blue eyes sparkling yards away. He bounded to her, swept her up, and swung her around. “How’s my very favorite girl? I’ve missed you so much! I bet you didn’t think I’d make it in time.”
“I wasn’t sure, but Ruby was positive.” She took his heavy overcoat.
Jeb kissed her lovingly and said, “I’m going to thaw out a little.” He went to the fireplace, holding his hands out to warm them.
“Did you see any Indians?” she asked as she hung his coat on the back of a cane-back chair to thaw out and dry.
“Not a one. I think they’re all hunkered down for the winter, which shows that they’re smarter than the 1st Cav. What’s been happening around here?”
“Nothing much. We’re going to have a good dinner tomorrow.”
“That sounds fine! I’m tired of eating stringy antelope.”
Flora scrunched her nose and made a sour face, thinking about eating stringy antelope. “That man Turley, the one so sweet on Ruby, brought her a turkey, so we’re going to have turkey and dressing with sweet potato pie.”
“My favorite!”
As he stood there warming his hands by the stove, Flora was aware of the strange feeling she had. She called it an expansion, but that didn’t adequately describe it. She just felt more alive, more energetic, so much happier with Jeb. When he came into the room or when she touched him, the love she felt for him seemed to grow larger and larger. She went to him and took his rugged hands and held them to her cheeks. “You’re so cold.”
Last Cavaliers Trilogy Page 42