Persuasion, Captain Wentworth and Cracklin' Cornbread

by Mary Jane Hathaway

  “I should get ready,” she said, and glanced at Jem, wishing he would finish whatever he’d been about to ask. Jem’s expression was closed and hard. She felt a stab of shame. He had never said anything about the kiss he’d seen in the kitchen, and she had hoped he would forget all about it. But the sight of Marcus had brought it back because Jem’s friendliness had evaporated into silence.

  “Do you need any help? I can carry boxes.” Marcus pretended to flex his muscles.

  “No, thank you.” She managed to keep her voice light, but there was no way she was going to let herself get backed into another corner by Marcus and his helpfulness.

  “Go ahead, we’ll be here,” Marcus said cheerfully.

  Without another glance, Lucy slipped away to her office. As soon as she closed the door, she leaned against it and whispered a prayer: Help me get through this, Lord, and to focus on these men who died, not on Jem or Marcus.

  She turned to the desk and lifted the small boxes, determined to put her own pain aside and honor the dead.

  “I do regard her as one who is too modest for the world in general to be aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural of any other woman.”

  —WILLIAM ELLIOT

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jem watched Lucy walk away, feeling the sweat on his palms. It had taken him all weekend to get up his nerve, and then Marcus had to stick his nose into the conversation. Jem had been a few words away from inviting her to coffee, just a small gesture of reconciliation, but it had taken all his courage. Once burned, twice shy, as they said. His college friends would tell him he was a fool for even considering a friendship.

  “She shot you down, didn’t she?” Marcus let out a bark of laughter. “Dude, you need to make your move with more confidence. It was real obvious you expected her to say no.”

  Jem swiveled to stare at him. “More confidence? Is that what you call your behavior in her kitchen?”

  “That’s right.” The guy had the nerve to look smug. “She liked it, no doubt about it.”

  Jem felt his pulse thudding in his ears and forced himself to breathe slowly. “And she got your number from her sister and called you right away? She said she really wanted to see you again?” It occurred to Jem that he might be asking a question he didn’t want to hear the answer to, but if he were a betting man, he would lay money on the fact that Lucy hadn’t been liking any of Marcus’s moves in the kitchen.

  “Nah, but she will. She’s just playing it cool.” Marcus adjusted his tie. “I like a girl who doesn’t come on too strong. It gets real old.”

  “I would think you’d enjoy it.” Jem didn’t think Marcus was the kind of guy who wasted any opportunities.

  “Of course I take what’s offered, if you know what I mean, but for the long term, no real man wants used goods.”

  Jem’s fists clenched. He knew exactly what Marcus meant and it made him sick. “A real man doesn’t concern himself with whether the goods are used or not.”

  Marcus blinked. “Maybe I hit a little close to home there, huh? No offense, really. I got a buddy who married a girl who had a kid. I asked him whether he minded that she’s got a baby daddy, and he said as long as the other guy pays for the diapers, he doesn’t care.”

  “Just in time.” Stroud and his wife walked toward them. Jem tried to put on an expression that was far from the disdain and fury he felt toward Marcus. Stroud’s bow tie was a little crooked and he still had a stethoscope around his neck, but he was a welcome sight.

  “She hasn’t started yet,” Jem said, although that was obvious. The room was filling with people and several rows of chairs were filled. The low hum of chitchat made the piped-in Civil War ballads barely audible.

  Marcus reached out to shake Stroud’s hand and headed for a group of well-dressed men in the corner. Jem was thankful that he was gone. He didn’t know how he could have kept his temper any longer.

  “Good. Did you tell her you’re going to be my patient for the demonstration?”

  “I didn’t get a chance, but she must know by the costume.” Jem waved a hand at his shirt and trousers. Lucy had given him a long look but hadn’t asked any questions.

  “I’m going to the powder room,” Mrs. Stroud said. “Save me a seat.”

  “Will do, honey.” Stroud glanced over at Marcus. “Strange to see him here. I didn’t know he was particularly interested in the Civil War.”

  “He came to a dinner at Lucy’s this weekend. I think he’s more interested in her than anything else.”

  “Oh, really?” Stroud let out a chuckle. “He’d best be polishing up on his history, then. I can’t imagine Miss Lucy choosing anybody who didn’t have his battles straight.” Stroud took another long look. “Then again, he’s a handsome man. I’ve always wondered when she would find her match. A beautiful woman like that, with her heritage and education, seems odd she’s never settled down. She must have had more than her fair share of good prospects.”

  “She’s still young.” Jem didn’t want to talk about Lucy’s marriage plans. Even though his mama had said that Lucy’s being married might save him some grief, right now he felt that seeing her with a husband would be more painful than dealing with all their unresolved issues.

  “Certainly, but I’ve never seen her with a boyfriend either. We’ve been to plenty of the same parties. Her sisters always have someone on their arm, but never Lucy.” Stroud smoothed his white mustache. “Come to think of it, she never really stands around talkin’ to people, either. Maybe she’s a shy one, although she seems comfortable enough here.”

  “I’m sure there’s been someone. She might not parade them around like her sisters do.”

  Stroud shrugged. “Probably. You know, Nick Riven over at the National Center for the Preservation of Civil War Battlegrounds told me he asked her out and she turned him down. He got the impression there was someone else, but she didn’t say.”

  Jem frowned, wondering what this Nick looked like, where he came from and who his family was. Then Jem wondered who the other “someone” was. It occurred to him, all at once, that Lucy could have a boyfriend. Someone her family didn’t approve of and didn’t invite over, someone who didn’t attend all the nice parties. They could be content together, in their own private world, keeping everyone else out of their happy bubble.

  Stroud clapped a hand to Jem’s shoulder. “Listen to us, a bunch of old gossips. Worse than the ladies.”

  Jem forced a smile. “Should we take a seat?”

  “Right. My wife will wonder what we were thinkin’ if we get stuck standing. Miss Lucy sure seems to pull in a good crowd to these presentations.”

  They found a place and Jem settled on a metal folding chair. A moment later Mrs. Stroud joined them. There was a hard knot of unease in his chest. Could Lucy have someone that she kept private, not wanting to risk the ire of her family?

  After a few moments, he dismissed the thought. Lucy was all or nothing. She wouldn’t sneak around in the dark. He didn’t know everything about her, but what he did know told him that Lucy didn’t lie in word or deed. She spoke her mind and faced the consequences.

  But even if there wasn’t a secret lover, what made him think that Lucy would want to give him the time of day? She surely didn’t care about the medical degree he had now. She had broken up with him because he didn’t fit in, because her family could never accept him. As his mother had said, what he’d loved about her wouldn’t have changed, and in the same way, the things that had kept them apart were still just as real. Just because she didn’t want Marcus didn’t mean that she wanted Jem, either.

  He let his mind wander while Stroud talked about various medical tools. Jem was glad he hadn’t finished his sentence, no matter what he was feeling. He needed to keep his mouth closed before he got another taste of rejection.

  Jem listened as Lucy spoke,
mostly from memory, with only a small batch of notecards in one hand. “Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia met the Army of the Potomac under George B. McClellan at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. Antietam was the bloodiest single day in American military history, with almost twenty-three thousand casualties. Dr. Jonathan Letterman, the medical director of the Army of the Potomac, developed systems of casualty management that are used today.”

  Lucy’s voice was firm and clear. She looked relaxed, with an ease to her movements. She didn’t mind speaking in front of this kind of crowd, but Jem’s palms were already sweaty with the idea of playing an unconscious soldier.

  “At First Manassas in 1861, it took a week to remove five thousand casualties from the field. Dr. Letterman pushed for changes to handle the logistics of treating the wounded. His model became the standard by an act of Congress in 1864. Put into practice at Antietam, the twenty-three thousand casualties were removed from the battlefield in twenty-four hours. Our entire medical triage system evolved out of the military.”

  She hadn’t glanced Jem’s way, but made eye contact with several people who stood on the sides. Jem resisted the urge to see where Marcus was standing.

  She gave a quick overview of the kind of medical training a doctor might have and how few trained surgeons were available at the start of the war, then brought into focus the main subject of her talk. “Amputation became the primary surgical skill of the Civil War battlefield surgeon, resulting in about six thousand such surgeries.

  “We have Dr. Jacob Stroud here to give us a demonstration, using a Civil War battlefield kit. He has graciously allowed our center to display several of his best medical kits, and today he’ll be reenacting a battlefield amputation with one of the most unique medical kits in existence. The four-tier, sliding US Army models by Snowden and Brother from Philadelphia were quite common, but today he’s brought with him a very rare kit. Made by the George Teimann Company of New York, it was owned by the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia surgeon Norman Smith, MD. With it, he documented and performed one of the first amputations of the Civil War in the Riot at Baltimore. The soldier, one Lieutenant Herrick, survived and was discharged a few weeks later.”

  Stroud nudged Jem with an elbow, their cue to stand up.

  “Today Dr. Stroud will be demonstrating the run-of-the-mill amputation performed on the battlefield. We need a volunteer . . .” Lucy’s voice trailed off as she looked over at them. Her brows went up. “I think Dr. Jeremiah Chevy has been convinced to play the patient.”

  A smattering of applause greeted her statement, and Jem followed Stroud to the front of the room. A long table was set up in the center, with a smaller, raised table to the side. Stroud motioned to Jem, and he carefully settled himself, hoping the conference table would bear the weight of a grown man.

  “Welcome, everyone,” Stroud’s voice boomed out into the room. “Miss Crawford has done a real fine job of giving the history of battlefield medical care, and now I’d like to draw a more personal illustration of what went on back then. We’re going to use this fine specimen of manhood to bring home the point.”

  A wave of laughter greeted this statement. Jem felt his face go warm. He could always count on Stroud to play to the crowd.

  “Civil War surgeons knew about germs, but hadn’t made the connection that microorganisms cause disease.” Stroud selected several small tools from the kit. “When a soldier was brought in from the field with a bullet wound, which of these do you think he might use to investigate the wound? The curved probe? Or perhaps this exploring needle?” He waved a sharp metal tool the size of a pen.

  He waited while several in the crowd shouted out their guesses.

  “Nope. Y’all would be bad Civil War surgeons.” Stroud wiggled a finger in the air. “This is the probe of choice.”

  Laughter greeted his answer, with a few exclamations of surprise.

  “Remember that the connection between infection and germs wasn’t clear yet, so most of the doctors only rinsed their hands between patients.” Stroud looked down at Jem’s legs, frowning. “We never decided which parts we were gonna remove. Should we take a vote?”

  The crowd answered with loud calls of “Leg!” and “Arm!” and Stroud pretended to count the responses. Jem forced himself to keep a straight face. The man could make the most gruesome presentation seem like a party.

  “A man in the Civil War era might have an easier time without a leg. Even a gentleman needed his hands, what with holding the reins to a carriage. If Jem here was a regular man with a small plot of land, he might need his hands to chop the wood for winter, direct the ox-drawn plow, or harvest his crops. Imagine, for a moment, that he survives the war, but arrives home with one arm. His family would need to carry the burden of the farm tasks now. That usually was a wife or a child if he had one old enough.

  “A battlefield surgeon couldn’t do without his assistant.” Stroud glanced around the crowded room as if searching for the perfect candidate. “Miss Crawford, I need you.” Stroud said, waving her closer.

  Jem froze. It was one thing to play a wounded soldier in front of her, but he hadn’t counted on her joining him.

  She moved into his view, her face tense. Her dark eyes were wider than normal and he wondered if she was disturbed by the topic. She hadn’t seemed to mind talking about it. Stroud pointed to a spot beside him. She took her place, just inches away from Jem. He could smell her perfume, could reach out and touch her hand if he wanted.

  Stroud retrieved a band of strong canvas and a metal tool. “This is the tourniquet. A temporary may have been applied on the battlefield, and this one will keep the patient from bleeding out during the operation.

  “An amputation could take as little as two minutes in the best of conditions. If the surgeon had help, then he could perform the surgery and leave his assistant to finish the job. Miss Crawford will play that role.”

  Withdrawing a small rag from the kit, Stroud held it in the air. “Chloroform. Takes effect faster than ether and is nonflammable. Amputations happened without knocking out the patient, but we’ll show you the good side of Civil War surgery today.”

  The crowd chuckled a little. They seemed to understand that Civil War surgery had no good side.

  “I’m going to hold this over Jem’s face, and in less than a minute he’ll be out.” Stroud pretended to press it to Jem’s nose and mouth. Jem turned his head to the side and closed his eyes, letting the tip of his tongue loll out of his mouth. The laughter in the room almost made him grin, but he kept his face relaxed.

  He felt Stroud’s hand lift his arm. “As soon as I’ve stuck my finger in the wound and assessed the damage, I realize the bullet has shattered the bone and the arm can’t be saved.” He pulled Jem’s arm vertical. “My assistant will unbutton the patient’s shirt and prepare the arm while I find my instruments.”

  Jem felt her fingers at his wrists, fumbling with the buttons on his cuff. The shirt was simple coarse cotton, picked up at a reenactment in Kentucky. Jem heard Lucy’s breathing, and the sound seemed to coincide with the beat of his heart. Finally, she released the button and rolled up his cuff in quick movements.

  “Farther. Let’s amputate Dr. Chevy’s arm right above the elbow.” Stroud spoke loudly enough for the room to hear. “Remember, we won’t be using any of these delicate extractors or locators because we’ve decided to remove the limb, not the bullet.” Stroud was describing several tools from the kit. Metacarpal saw, large forceps knife, ligature needle.

  Lucy rolled the loose fabric up to Jem’s shoulder. Her hands rested there briefly, and he felt the trembling in her fingers. He wished he could turn his head and see her face, but he was supposed to be completely unconscious. Jem could hear the small clink of instruments as Stroud removed, named and replaced the tools so the audience could see how he was going to proceed.

  It occurred to Jem
how odd it was for Lucy and him to be here, in this spot, ten years later. He always thought he’d live somewhere like Memphis or Atlanta, but now here he was in Tupelo, about to be dissected in front of an audience with Lucy as the assistant. As teens they had bonded over spoken poetry, literature, the great Southern writers, but it wasn’t enough to keep them together. What had brought them back together was the Civil War. On the surface they were opposites, like a magnolia tree and a hemlock, but their roots ran deep, intertwined in the red Mississippi clay. All their differences faded before their mutual love of kinfolk, Southern soil and history.

  He wanted to stop the presentation, turn and speak to her now. Was it possible that they could start over, get a second chance? He forced his breathing to slow and relaxed his muscles. Everything he had in him wanted to jump off the table and try to explain what he knew for sure, so clearly, right now. They were meant to be together, despite all their differences. And he had always loved her. Always.

  Lucy felt the stiff smile on her face become even more strained. She should have known Jem was going to be part of the presentation. The rough leather boots and simple shirt were all signs she’d missed because she was too distracted by his flirtatious comment.

  She rolled his sleeve to the shoulder, feeling the warmth of his skin under her fingertips.

  “All right, Miss Crawford, if you would place your right hand in his and extend the arm,” Dr. Stroud said.

  She didn’t have the right to touch him, to grip his hand and raise it high. She hoped he couldn’t feel the way her hand trembled, and she tried to breathe slowly. She looked at the hand in hers and wondered if it had always been that big, or if he had grown more after leaving for college. His palms were soft and warm. She loved the way his veins stood out in relief against his skin, the way the muscles of his forearm were so much bigger than hers.

  A sudden wave of nausea caught her by surprise. This was a nightmare. She had never been good at the gruesome aspects of the Civil War battles, but to hear Stroud preparing for a fake amputation on Jem was too much.