The Yankee Widow

by Linda Lael Miller

  “And that point is...?”

  “You said it yourself. She’s a widow—a recent one. A major battle has just been fought, practically in her own backyard, and now there’s a field hospital on her property. She’s in no position, my friend, to receive your heart, however honorable the offer. Move too quickly, and you will leave her with no choice but to break it.”

  Rogan let out a long, slow breath, sitting back in his chair. Pondering. After a lengthy silence, he said, “Don’t assume anything. But you’re right. I have a war to fight, and she has a husband to mourn.” He paused and attempted a smile, which faltered into a grimace almost before it took shape.

  Bridger, who knew the pitfalls of loving a woman he couldn’t have, was fairly certain Caroline Hammond would be on Rogan’s mind for a while. But before he could frame a response, the heavy door of the kitchen house swung open and a small, cloaked figure hurried in, emerging from the gray wet of predawn.

  Simultaneously, Bridger and Rogan rose to their feet, an awkward scramble, oddly urgent.

  This, Bridger thought, with a sense of detachment, is Caroline Hammond.

  “Please,” she said, this striking woman, seemingly woven of mist and summer heat and the scent of lilacs, “be seated.”

  Neither man complied.

  She stepped into the circle of lantern light, bringing her face into sudden, sharp relief, pushed back the hood of her cloak and offered a tentative smile.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said, probably surprised to find her charges alive on that drizzly early morning, let alone standing upright. “Do sit down. Please.”

  Bridger did not sit, nor did Rogan.

  She blinked, confused by this unintentional resistance to her invitation. At least, it was unintentional on Bridger’s part. He found himself inexplicably unable to respond in any way, a state that was foreign to his nature. And he had no explanation for it.

  A brief, uncomfortable silence ensued.

  Finally, Caroline spoke again. “I see you are both starting to recover,” she said, slipping the damp cloak from her shoulders as she turned away, then crossed to the door again, and hung the garment from a nearby hook. “That’s a relief.”

  Taking an apron from a drawer, she turned to face them, and as more light seeped in through the windows, Bridger got a better look at this woman his best friend seemed to fancy.

  Her eyes were bright and intelligent. And her clear skin and lush crown of wheat-colored hair, uncertainly pinned and slightly askew, made Caroline Hammond instantly magnetic. She gave an impression of strength, of sturdy roots running deep into the singular essence of life itself.

  God help Rogan, Bridger thought, and God help me.

  He groped for his voice, found a fragment, dragged it upward to his tongue. “A gentleman,” he heard himself say, “does not sit in the presence of a lady.”

  Caroline had been moving toward the stove, but she stopped when she heard Bridger speak and studied him with a mixture of consternation and surprise. “You are of Southern extraction, sir,” she said. He suspected she’d noticed that before...

  It was not an accusation, merely a statement.

  Rogan, silent all this time, cleared his throat.

  Bridger did not heed the warning, well-meant as it surely was. He had deceived many a woman in his time, by flattery, by omission, although never with malice; yet for some incomprehensible reason, he could not lie to this one.

  “My name is Bridger Winslow,” he said. “And I am a captain in the Army of Northern Virginia, currently under the command of General J. E. B. Stuart.”

  Caroline’s eyes widened, and she stopped in the act of tying her apron strings.

  Rogan groaned in obvious disgust.

  Caroline glanced from Bridger’s face to Rogan’s, then back again. Her elbows jutted out at her sides, her hands suspended behind her.

  “Did I hear you correctly, sir?” she asked.

  “No,” said Rogan, just as Bridger replied, “Yes.”

  She stiffened, finished with the apron ties and dropped her hands to her sides. “Which is it, gentlemen?” she demanded. “Yes or no?”

  “Yes,” Bridger repeated.

  Standing a few feet away, on the other side of the table, Rogan made a sound of pure exasperation.

  Bridger, conversely, felt a sense of mild, if precarious, relief. He even smiled a bit, a response that was in keeping with his generally audacious nature, and probably ill-advised.

  Caroline’s gaze shifted back to Rogan, and Bridger found himself begrudging the loss of her regard, however briefly. It was then that the realization came to him—Rogan might not have simply been confiding a personal interest earlier, when he’d admitted his admiration for this woman. Had he been staking some kind of claim, perhaps even drawing a figurative line Bridger was not to cross?

  “And you, Captain McBride?” she asked. “Are you collaborating with the enemy, or are you loyal to the Union cause?”

  Though Bridger did not look away from Caroline, he was aware of Rogan’s reaction to her forthright questions. He sensed that his friend had straightened and turned to face her.

  “I am loyal,” Rogan said, his voice rough and proud.

  Caroline raised her eyebrows and folded both arms across her bosom. Bridger was quietly amused. He’d just placed his freedom, if not his very life, in the hands of a woman he had never met and knew next to nothing about.

  “Captain Winslow and I are old friends from military school,” Rogan finally told her. “I think I mentioned that before—or at least that we’re longtime friends.” His tone was respectful, with a note of misgiving. “And I’ll be deuced if I don’t wish it were otherwise, just now anyway.”

  “I see,” Caroline said, bemused. But clearly, she didn’t see. Her brow was furrowed, and her smooth cheeks had gone pink. She regarded Bridger again, solemnly. “You are a prisoner of war, then?”

  Bridger was still puzzling out a reply when Rogan interceded. “No,” he said adamantly. “He is not.”

  “No?” Caroline echoed, attractively confounded.

  Rogan gave another sigh and drew back a chair at the head of the table. “Please sit down,” he said wearily. “If you don’t, I’ll have to go right on standing, and my leg is about to buckle from the pain.”

  Caroline approached the table, sat down in the chair Rogan had offered. She smoothed her apron again, briskly, and waited.

  Bridger, still in the thrall of whatever spell this farm woman had unwittingly cast, dropped back into his own chair, and Rogan did the same.

  Slowly, reluctantly, sending the occasional glare Bridger’s way throughout the coming explanation, Rogan told Caroline how he and Bridger had met as boys, while at boarding school, and forged a deep and lasting friendship. How Bridger’s father and family, including his younger sister, Amalie, had welcomed his orphaned self and showered him with Southern hospitality; how he’d often spent school breaks with the family and considered them his own. And how when he had discovered Bridger wounded in the field of battle, he felt compelled to bring his friend to safety.

  Bridger listened as Rogan explained their relationship, his body ablaze with the pain of his wound. He was touched by Rogan’s fierce commitment to the unlikely bond between the two of them, friends who’d come from such different backgrounds, and his determination to maintain that friendship, despite their differences.

  He hoped his friend knew he felt the same way.

  Some ties could not be broken—war or no war.

  Woman or no woman.

  And yet...

  He began to understand what drew his friend to this warm, forthright and appealing woman.

  16

  Hammond Farm

  July 4, 1863, 8:30 a.m.

  Caroline

  Rogan’s words had given Caroline much to think about,
but she simply didn’t have time to sit around pondering the dilemma in which she found herself. Too many wounded soldiers were on her farm in dire need of help; there was no opportunity to think about herself—to think the matter through in her usual logical fashion. Nevertheless, as she spooned medicine or water or thin broth into mouths of the fallen, as she cleaned and bandaged wounds, washed all manner of disgusting fleshly effusions from helpless bodies, she considered the situation.

  To treat a suffering Confederate soldier was an act of mercy and humanity, not of treason, surely. If she did as Rogan asked, however, and allowed Union officers to believe that Bridger Winslow was part of their own army, with the ultimate objective of helping him escape, he would most likely return to the opposing army and take up arms against Federal troops. She would then be at least partially responsible for every man he might kill in battle. Men like her own Jacob, like the sweet, naive boys from her own town, and other towns like it, all across the North.

  Was one life to be preserved at the risk of so many others?

  And could she expect Geneva and Enoch and Jubie—even innocent little Rachel—to share in the deception?

  Clearly, she had sound reasons to refuse her complicity, but none of them were answers in themselves, not for Caroline.

  Bridger Winslow, after all, was a flesh-and-blood person, not merely a name on some official list of wounded, missing or dead soldiers. She had helped to treat his injuries, perhaps even to save his life. The experience had affected her relationship to him, just as tending Rogan had, and as looking after the others was changing her now.

  The choice between speaking up and holding her peace would have seemed an easy one, even a week before.

  Now, it was full of conflict.

  Throughout that morning, while she and Geneva and several young soldiers ministered to the patients, Caroline fought an inner war of her own. She was no closer to resolving the problem at noon, when Jubie came to take over her nursing duties for a while, so Caroline could spend some time with Rachel, than she’d been in the moment she’d first understood exactly what was being asked of her.

  She was grateful to Jubie, who spent hours every day helping soldiers—offering food, water and comfort—and Caroline now felt that the girl’s insistence on tending the wounded had been the right decision. She admired her willingness to put herself at risk of being seen. Enoch, too, spent time in the hospital tents, assisting mainly with the lifting and moving of patients.

  Entering the main house now was like finding refuge after a long and difficult journey, fraught with danger. Caroline let out a sigh of relief as her child greeted her at the door, small face at once joyous and troubled.

  “Mama!” Rachel cried, flinging herself into Caroline’s waiting arms. “You came back!”

  Caroline gathered her up, held her tightly, closed her eyes as she breathed in the scent of a healthy little girl’s clean, warm skin and hair, reveled in the solid heft of her wriggly form. “Of course I came back,” she murmured. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  Rachel leaned back in Caroline’s arms and studied her solemnly, shook her head once. “I heard screams,” she confessed in a near whisper. “I was scared.”

  “Did Jubie explain what’s happening?”

  Again, Rachel shook her head. “I sang songs to her baby in her tummy, and then we played with my dolls and she told me stories. I asked her if the people in those tents were screaming because they were having bad dreams, and she said I should wait and ask you.”

  Caroline smoothed Rachel’s hair away from her earnest little face; she wished she could shield the child from the terrible situation in the yard where, not long ago, she’d played happy childhood games, and knew it wasn’t possible. “There are soldiers in the tents,” she replied carefully. “Some of them are very badly hurt and in pain. That’s why they cry out.”

  The expression on Rachel’s face shattered something inside Caroline, perhaps for good. “Because they have to do a war?”

  Because they have to do a war.

  “Yes,” Caroline choked out, trying to smile and failing utterly. “It’s because of the war.” Reluctantly, she set Rachel back on her feet, although she would have preferred to go on holding her, tightly and for a long time.

  “The war that made Papa die?”

  Tears burned in Caroline’s eyes. “Yes, darling. The same war,”

  Rachel took Caroline’s hand, squeezed it with her small, strong fingers. “Are you hurt too, Mama?” she asked, clearly worried. “Is that why you’re crying?”

  “I’m not hurt, sweetheart,” Caroline responded with a sniffle, hastily dashing at her eyes with the back of one hand.

  “War makes people very sad,” Rachel said wisely, still gripping Caroline’s hand. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Caroline replied. “It does.”

  Rachel’s little brow furrowed with confusion. “It’s not nice to fight,” she announced. “Grown folks ought to stop doing it.”

  “I completely agree,” Caroline said, and this time, her smile was real. There was no rational way to explain war to a four-year-old, of course—especially when she didn’t fully understand it herself—but the subject could not be swept under the rug, either. It was, unfortunately, a reality, and would leave its mark on all of them, young and old alike. They’d reached the parlor by then, and without thinking, Caroline went directly to the harpsichord, seating herself on the bench, Rachel beside her.

  “Play something, Mama,” the child said.

  Caroline was not an accomplished musician by any standard, but she knew how to play a few simple tunes and hymns.

  “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly, even as her feet found the pedals and her fingers flexed on the cracked, ancient keys. The instrument was an heirloom, treasured by three generations of Hammond women, and on the rare occasions when Caroline played, she felt vaguely guilty, as though she was poking through someone else’s belongings.

  Furthermore, there were men suffering, some of them terribly, within earshot. Too merry a tune would certainly be inappropriate, but a mournful dirge wouldn’t serve, either.

  “Please, Mama?” Rachel whispered, hopeful.

  Caroline reminded herself that she had been the one to sit down in front of the instrument. Perhaps if she played softly, the sound wouldn’t carry far enough to disturb the wounded. As a child and a very young woman, she’d learned rudimentary musical skills, including the ability to read music.

  She thought for a moment, then worked the pumps and stumbled awkwardly through the first verse of a favorite hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

  Rachel watched while her mother’s fingers played the keys.

  “More, please,” the little girl pleaded when the last notes had quivered into silence.

  Caroline smiled and hugged her daughter close against her side for a long moment.

  Rachel’s eyes were alight with a heartrending eagerness for the ordinary pleasure of music. “I like that song Mr. Enoch used to play on his fiddle,” she said. “The one about turkeys kicking straw.”

  Caroline laughed, an awkward sound, not recently practiced. “‘Turkey in the Straw’?” she asked. “That wouldn’t be at all fitting, I’m afraid.”

  Rachel pondered that information somberly. “Why not?”

  How, Caroline wondered, was she to explain that the tune might be too cheerful? Before she was required to answer, she heard a rapping sound from the arched doorway behind her, and turned to see Rogan McBride standing in the opening, looking chagrined.

  “I knocked at the side door,” he said awkwardly. “I guess you didn’t hear.”

  Caroline did not know what to make of his presence in her parlor. It wasn’t an affront, just...unexpected. “I’m sorry if we’ve disturbed anyone,” she said, about to rise from the bench.

  The poor man looked as though he might co
llapse. “No,” he responded quickly. “It isn’t that. It’s—well—the men... They’d like to hear more. It’s a comfort to them, the sound of an organ. Carries them homeward.”

  Caroline did not point out that she hadn’t been playing an organ, but a harpsichord. “I’m surprised they could hear it outside,” she said.

  “If we could open a window or two—maybe a door?” Rogan stumbled on, his expression as touchingly hopeful as Rachel’s had been earlier. “I mean, if it wouldn’t be an imposition?”

  “That would be all right, wouldn’t it, Mama?” Rachel asked eagerly. “Opening the doors and windows so the soldiers can listen, too?”

  Caroline could only nod as she felt herself, once again, overcome with emotion.

  The force of Rogan’s smile, wan though it was, nearly brought her to tears. “Thank you, Mrs. Hammond,” he said.

  “Caroline,” she corrected him, mentally searching her musical repertoire, then realized she needed to make an introduction. During the few days Rogan and Bridger had been here, they hadn’t met Rachel, who’d been taking her meals in the main house, often with Jubie. “Oh! Captain McBride, this is my daughter, Rachel.”

  Rogan smiled and bowed politely. “Honored to meet you, Miss Rachel.”

  She grinned widely. “Me, too, Cap’n!”

  Slowly, and with some help from Rachel, Rogan opened the side windows in the parlor and, on his way out, left the door ajar.

  Caroline drew a deep breath and began to play.

  She closed her eyes as the strains of “Abide with Me” flowed from her fingers and through the keys, to pulse entreatingly from within the instrument. She followed with “Home, Sweet Home,” which brought more tears as it coursed through the windows into the moist heat of the afternoon, and then the rousing, “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a favorite of Mr. Lincoln himself.

  Caroline became lost in the music, finding sweet solace even among the saddest compositions. At some point, she began to sing, allowing her own grief to find its place in lyrics of loneliness and sorrow.

  When Jubie appeared at her elbow, holding out a battered copy of a songbook, small enough to carry in a pocket or a rucksack, she started slightly. The girl’s face was a study in gentle fervor and a strange resolve.