by Baird Wells
“Who is Covington?”
“Hmm?” Matthew glanced up from his dispatches, eager for any chance to pay Kate some attention.
Reclined in his favorite chair, stocking-clad feet propped on his favorite saddle, Kate held up the article and tapped a finger at the newspaper's faded print. “Ld. Covington proposes reform of military discipline.”
He snorted. “That paper is old. He's dead now, pompous bad-hat that he was.”
“Ridiculous. The man sounds as though he's never spent a day with the army.”
Matthew glanced up, catching the disgust pinching Kate's face, and chuckled. An original, indeed. With one hand he flipped the pages of his correspondence, adding tea to her cup with the other.
They had carried on this way for four nights now, Kate reading and remarking from time to time, while Matthew went about his work. He basked in her nearness, even when they went half the night without speaking. Caroline's wounds were still raw. Kate demanded nothing, expected nothing, leaving him space to heal without allowing him to brood.
Their routine had begun by accident. French infantry had taken advantage of cover of darkness, skirmishing with the Prussians east of the crossroads. Light guns and musket fire pulled the garrison from sleep, tense and wondering if battle was at their door.
Kate, fetchingly disheveled in a blue bed gown and boots that were obviously not hers, had poked her head in to ask if she should wake Porter and make preparations. The siege came and went within the hour, but when Kate admitted her inability to sleep, Matthew eagerly exploited the situation, calling on Mister Hill to bring them tea.
They had passed the hours til morning in silence, Kate falling asleep from time to time with her head on his desk, complaining grumpily if he banged his boot or inkwell while he'd answered dispatches.
That night after dinner, bored by the composition of an after-action report, he had sent for her on the pretense of a medical question. Conveniently forgotten by the time she arrived, Matthew had invited her to stay until he remembered, which of course, he never did.
She had not seemed to mind.
The second night, Kate had simply brought herself over, and afterward their evenings became a standing invitation. Days had grown long and tedious, filled with tasks to be crossed off until she finally arrived. Evening had become his favorite time.
At some point while he mused, she had traded the old newspaper for a book. He leaned across the desk, tapping its binding with his quill. “What the devil are you reading?”
“System of Chemistry.” Her face didn't leave the pages.
“Sounds fascinating.”
“It is. I don't entirely understand it, but I only started yesterday.”
“Intent on sticking with it, then?” he probed.
Eyes pinned him from above the book's edge. “What is that supposed to mean?”
It meant he was impressed, very impressed. Matthew realized too late that he had failed to convey it. “It means that of all the women I can claim as acquaintance, a few of them might pick up such a book, once. They would not do it a second time.”
“Hmm.” His answer seemed to mollify her. Kate's face disappeared behind the red canvas.
He dipped the quill, managing the first and second words of his next sentence. “Are you familiar with botany, Miss Foster?”
She snapped the cover shut, and Matthew realized he'd been nothing but interruptions – to Kate and himself, for half an hour at least.
She was gracious about it, nodding slowly. “The study of plants. I am familiar with it, but my knowledge of them is less formal.”
“What else do you read?”
“Medical texts, mostly. Papers by your Royal Society as well. I read for improvement more than leisure,” Kate said, smiling. “At least in this part of the world.”
She had opened a door, and Matthew stepped through eagerly. He settled back in his chair. “Then what of your leisure time?”
“I draw, and sew a little. Not well, ironically.” Laughing she pointed down toward his wound, looking sheepish at the confession. “But I enjoy it. And I dance.” She clasped hands together. “I love to dance.”
His breath checked a moment. He could not have constructed a more perfect opportunity by design. “Do you waltz?” he invited.
She was tucked up impishly in his chair, heels on the edge of the seat, head shaking. He got up, coming around the desk to her. “Should you like to learn?” He was stepping off an edge, and he could not see the bottom, but he did not care.
“Yes, please.” Kate was breathless, eager and willing. This was a recipe for trouble.
Matthew reached out a hand to her.
He had paid very little attention to the form of country dances: lines of men and women twisting and weaving around one another, without ever truly coming together. The waltz was another matter entirely. Like any dancing, it was an opportunity for amusement and conversation, but with the added pleasure of touching. A pleasure, Matthew admitted, that he was more than a little interested in sharing with Kate.
She stood from the chair, and he twined their right-hand fingers together. “Put your other hand on my shoulder.”
“Like this?” she asked.
Exactly like that. He nodded. “My hand goes here...” Matthew cupped her shoulder in his palm.
“Is that necessary?” she asked.
He froze, wondering if he had offended her with his eagerness. “Is it too forward?”
Kate frowned, shrugging at his touch. “No, it's uncomfortable.”
“I can put it here.” He slipped fingers around her side, and rested them on her shoulder blade. His thumb brushed the bare skin above her gown.
Nodding, she nestled back against his hand. “Much better.”
“We are in agreement on that score.” Matthew punctuated his teasing with a wink.
Smiling, she ducked her head. “What next?”
“Now we form a box, moving every third beat.” He stepped away, just a few inches to demonstrate. “One, two, three, one two three.” He tugged her hand, starting them off, but they were out of rhythm. She stumbled on his boots, and he steadied her until they were recovered enough to start again. He caught her worrying her bottom lip, clearly over-thinking the moment in true Kate fashion. The point of the exercise was not learning the dance.
He pulled back, glancing between them. “My word, look at those hooves!” He tapped her small leather shoe with the toe of his boot. “I have no idea how I'll manage around them.”
“Stop!” She giggled and caught him with a gentle kick to the ankle. “Be serious. I want to get this right.” She relaxed in his arms, just as he had hoped.
“As you command.” Lacing their fingers back together, he shivered at the way their skin slipped, palms pressing together. He had to consciously sweep the feeling aside in order to lead them off.
“One, two, three,” he counted. Kate's small steps followed his in perfect time. He pulled her into the first turn, cheering when they moved through it in unison. “There were are!”
“Look! Look, we've got it!” Her eyes darted from their feet, to his face, and she beamed.
She was so delighted. With him. He would have made any number of bargains in that moment to keep her adulation. “You are a quick study, Miss Foster.”
Kate raised hooded eyes to his. “I have a very skilled teacher.”
He swore there was an invitation there, in her throaty compliment, in those blue depths. His lips begged to test it, fingers desperate to drop an inch, slip into the back of her bodice. But if he were wrong...
Matthew hesitated, and the moment passed. Kate stepped away, putting a distance between them that he felt to his core. He wanted to grab her hand, pull her back, to fill an absence that was so much more than physical.
Her soft smile opened into a cat-like yawn, stifled against the back of her hand. “I should sleep. Walk me back?”
They stepped out under a nearly full moon, and he offered her his arm. A drum
and whistle serenaded them from a campfire that set the tents along the west wall aglow, casting lanky shadows of the men across the timbers. On his side of the garrison it was comparatively quiet. The officers had either turned in early or were keeping their card game civil. Their path was lit by little more than moonlight. The relative privacy made him bold. Walking was not dancing, but Matthew decided he could still turn it to his advantage. “I don't believe you have ever told me how you came to be here.”
Kate wrapped her arm around his. “Here? Well, you go north through Spain, and a tiny bit east when you reach France, and there it is: Belgium.”
He chuckled. “You are now my doctor and my pathfinder, Miss Foster. Congratulations.”
Her arms wrapped tighter around his sleeve. “Tell me what you mean, then.”
“With the army. His majesty's army.”
“Oh. My husband was a captain in the navy. The American navy.” It was her turn to chuckle. “Did I tell you that? I can't remember.” Her head shook against his arm. “I saw how soldiers in the field, who badly needed care, received not even what was commonplace for civilians. It seemed unfair.”
He was confused. It was quite a bridge to cross, from an American town to the battlefields of Europe. “But why not stay in Albany, or somewhere else in your own country?”
“Our conflict with England is over. Again. For now.” Her elbow jabbed his side. “And as I've said, there are plenty of physicians at home for regular folk. You and your men fight not just for who rules you, but for your home, your...Englishness. A man brave enough to stand for that deserves to go home, or at least die by the musket. Not because his doctor bled him to death with filthy hands.”
“So your wading out into the middle of our decade-long campaign is entirely based on altruism,” he teased.
Kate laughed, pressing deliciously close alongside him. “It is partly altruism. And part opportunity. No one at home would allow a woman to even pretend to practice medicine. And the rest is escape.”
Matthew shook his head, glancing over the spikes of timbers, of tents, of trees in the distance; they all seemed an ill omen. “Hardly the surroundings for make believe.”
“Isn't that why you are here?” she prodded.
“Is it.” Matthew could not bring himself to make it a question. They knew each other too well by now for those sorts of games.
I was miserable in my marriage and, God help me, I'm glad to be free of it. Patrick wounded me –” Kate's voice broke a little. “I was humiliated in front of my family, our neighbors. Our church. I am not happy to be away from home, but I am relieved.”
He stopped them at her tent, studying the night sky above. Kate was watching him carefully. Her eyes glinted in the lamp light like two stars overhead, making him believe her gaze could bore into his soul. He cleared his thoughts, dredging up his courage. “India, France, Denmark, Spain. Those places were never an escape for me. They were the places where I wished to be all along. My disappointment came when I realized the person I had chosen as my partner did not want the same thing.”
Kate's hand pressed over his heart, warm against the skin beneath his shirt. “There's no honor in persevering with a mistake. Just stubborn misery.”
He cradled her hand, leaving a hesitant space between their fingers. A man at the edge of a great precipice, Matthew was certain if he touched her fully some part of him would be lost, though he had no idea what that meant. He wanted to find out.
Instead, he put half a step between them. He was not ready, not yet. “Goodnight, Miss Foster.”
Her arm slipped from his with what seemed a deliberate slowness. “Good night, Matthew.”
He nodded one last time, and she ducked inside.
Matthew.
Kate had called him by name. It sank in as he stared at the spot where she had stood a moment before. On the walk back, he told himself not to read too far into it, but there was no taking his own advice.
Matthew.
He lay awake after midnight, recalling the sound on her lips.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The rumble woke her abruptly, but it had not frightened her awake. French howitzers had lost that sort of power long ago. Crouched in a hospital at the rear, elbows deep in guts waiting for the enemy to retreat or occupy, a person would go mad if she could not make peace with the roar of heavy guns.
Boots pounded in pairs up and down the path beside her tent, cavalry running for their horses and riflemen heading for the walls. She groaned and rubbed her eyes, dumping herself from bed. A hand slapped at the table for matches until she heard the small box rattle. One candle offered barely enough light to see her hands, let alone her supplies, but she was in no hurry. Her work didn't start until the battle was underway. Porter would be up, hitching the wagon, stocking it with spare blankets if there were any to be had, filling canteens with grog-laced water. Their routine had been established years ago, on the far side of Spain. Porter held up his half of the partnership with the regularity of a clock-work man, and she was grateful.
Snugging up her apron's ties, Kate filled its pockets. Scissors and a small set of forceps, and a roll of bandages. Her red canvas bag accommodated two bottles of laudanum, alcohol spirits, more bandages and a worn flintlock pistol.
Fingers raked around inside the bag, and when she found the brown jute cord of her name badge she pulled it free. She looped it over her neck, tucking the small wooden square into her bodice. A morbid necessity, it was carved with her full name for identification in case she was too badly mangled to be identified.
Dressed and laced tight into leather boots, Kate grabbed the bag and ducked from her tent, pausing for a break in the soldiers who were running to muster. She loped straight ahead instead of left toward Matthew's tent. By now he would be with his officers at the command post.
To someone who did not know better, it would be impossible to tell that Matthew had just been woken from a sleep as sound as her own. Astride Bremen with looking-glass in hand, he studied the hills to the southeast. Kate stopped short at a table where his aide-de-camp scribbled furiously, and took him in for a moment.
Here, Matthew was a different animal than the dogged bureaucrat who had hounded her about daily reports and bandage inventories. His body was taut and ready, hawk-like gaze raking the field for a chance to strike his prey. Matthew always impressed her as brave, determined. Now he was dangerous and entirely in his element.
She rocked up on tiptoes, looking out over the wall into shadows too deep for her to see a thing. “Should I find the scotch, or go back to bed?”
Still squinting through the lens, Matthew shook his head. “I cannot say. The Prussians have pushed Napoleon's main body toward the river, but this force is too small. I think it likely Marshal Ney is bored and testing our mettle with a handful of skirmishers.”
A low wail overhead warned of a descending mortar shell. Bremen reared back steadily under Matthew's hand. Kate ducked, turning just in time to catch a face full of dirt and fine gravel. The skin of her neck and cheek stung like a sunburn.
“He's got his guns into position.” His jaw twitched, eyes sweeping over something to the left. “But so do I.” Matthew snapped the glass shut and stuffed it into his saddle bag, affording her a grin. “Be a good girl and stay put for now.”
Kate tossed her bag beside Thomas McKinnon, his young aide. “I tremble and obey.”
She swore she saw a wink at her parting shot, but Matthew wheeled past too quickly to be sure. He spurred Bremen's flanks, charging him through the gates and into the pock-marked fields between lines of men.
She slipped into Matthew's empty chair and pulled a dog-eared deck of cards from her bag. McKinnon watched her uneasily. “Well, there goes my partner for Beggar My Neighbor. Don't suppose you'd like to take his place?”
His baby-face colored, brows arranged in a serious line, and Thomas fixed eyes on his dispatch. “No, miss. I'm not permitted,” he mumbled to the table-top.
Smiling, Kate began
to deal for solitaire.
* * *
After an hour weighing his own men against what he could see of the French lines, Matthew felt satisfied enough to return to the garrison. Their shells were empty threats, more for mental injury than any true physical damage. Under darkness with rough terrain ahead, the French had a way to go before they made themselves a target for his own battery.
Inside the gate, he slid from Bremen and handed off his reins. The horse flicked his mane and whinnied in protest, looking distraught that they were already home. Matthew gave him a good scrubbing along his wiry muzzle. “I know, sir. And we shall soon enough.” He patted Bremen's neck. “Just be patient.”
He turned to find Kate had abandoned her post at the command tent. She had not made it far. Seated on the ground, her back rested against the timbers. Head tipped up, her eyes were closed, mouth gently slack. He chuckled. It was the soldier's way: sleep, any time you could. Despite her oblivious state, her fists clutched at her field kit with a death grip. He tossed his hat atop the table beside McKinnon's quill and settled next to her. Dampened from buttocks to the backs of his knees, Matthew sat against the chilled earth, waiting for the French to fire or advance. She stirred at the rattle of a gun carriage outside the wall. Rolling her shoulders stiffly, she glanced around them, seeming to gain her bearings. “See what you needed to see?”
“I did. A damned good sight, too. They have the ridge, but no cover. That is Major Burrell's specialty.”
“What isn't?” she quipped.
“Meaning what?”
“You've known him longer than I. Do you ever get the feeling –” Kate shook her head. “Pay no mind. I'm just tired. I am not even sure what I intended to ask.”
Did he ever wonder about Ty? Continually. Sometimes it felt as though Ty were four or five people, all in the span of a day. Matthew chuckled inwardly. Whoever Ty was, he was luckily always a friend.
Realizing he had been lost in thought for some time, he glanced to Kate, staring ahead looking just as absorbed by something. The impulse came over him without warning. “Tell me about your family,” he blurted.