Damned by simple arithmetic, Marietta was loudly scorned. Tristan openly divorced her and she was sent away from Fairhaven, indeed from the whole state of Georgia. The child went with her, the pair of them exiled to New Orleans, where they’d been taken in by distant and reluctant relatives of Marietta’s, since she had no immediate family of her own.
Bridger’s attempt to follow them had been thwarted only a few miles from the plantation house, when Tristan, with several of his friends, and the white overseer, Banks, had caught up to him. He’d been roped like a steer and wrenched off his horse, landing hard on the dirt road. They’d dragged him several hundred yards to make their point, and then collectively beaten him near senseless.
With his arms bound to his sides, Bridger hadn’t been able to put up much of a fight, though he had managed a few well-placed kicks.
He’d awakened in Rosebud’s cabin in the slave quarters, where he’d remained for nearly two weeks, recuperating. Rosebud, Abel and Amalie had been his only visitors.
During the days and nights that followed, he’d been sustained by two visions, both of which were insane—killing his half brother with his bare hands, and traveling to New Orleans to claim Marietta and his son.
When he’d finally been strong enough to leave the cabin and head for the main house, he’d encountered a weeping Amalie on the path. She’d been holding a letter in one hand and shaking her head from side to side, as if to deny what she’d just read.
She’d told him then, between sobs, that both Marietta and the baby had taken a fever only days after their arrival in New Orleans. Marietta had recovered quickly, but the child had perished within a few hours.
At first, Bridger had refused to believe his son was dead.
This was some trick of his brother’s.
Amalie, still weeping, had shown him the envelope, addressed to her in an unfamiliar hand, then presented him with the letter Marietta had enclosed for him.
At first, he hadn’t understood, but when he unfolded the single-page missive, he knew instantly that Marietta had written it. With heartbreaking brevity, she’d told him about the fever and the baby’s death. Somehow, she’d learned that Tristan had taken revenge on him, and she begged him, for her sake as well as his, not to come to her, or even write. She was nearly crushed by guilt and regret as it was, and she could bear no more. They had brought this suffering upon themselves, through their own wantonness and treachery, and the child’s death was their punishment.
Bridger hadn’t said anything, couldn’t have managed a word, although inside, he’d bellowed like a panther caught in the sharp teeth of a trap. He had not shared Marietta’s belief that the life of an innocent baby had been the price required by a vengeful fate, but he’d known then, and knew now, that he was responsible, in large part, for what had happened.
After all, if he hadn’t bedded his brother’s wife, there would have been no child. Marietta would not have been sent away from her husband and home, and, while he and Tristan had never been fond of each other, they might have reached some kind of workable truce.
Instead, Tristan had gone to join one of the militias being formed all over the South.
Bridger had never told his father about the beating he’d taken on the road that day, being in no position to cast blame. The old man must have known some part of the story, but he’d never said anything about it.
Bridger had gotten roundly drunk that first night, and he’d stayed that way until those damned fools in Charleston fired on Fort Sumter, and brought the furies of heaven and hell down upon them all.
* * *
Enoch’s voice, sounding from the open doorway to Bridger’s room, jolted him out of the past with a question pertinent to the present.
“You ready to try the stairs?”
Bridger turned to him, marveling, as he often did, at the size and bulk of this man, the intelligence in his eyes, the kindness of his manner.
“Yes,” Bridger said. For days, he had been working to regain his strength, getting out of bed, making his way to the window, where he stood now, moving about the small room, and then along the length of the hallway.
Usually Enoch accompanied him on the more ambitious attempts, watching, always prepared to steady Bridger if he weakened, but not hovering, the way he thought a woman might have done.
Maybe it took another man to understand the extent of masculine pride.
Caroline continued to avoid him.
Jubie still brought Bridger his meals, but it was Enoch who sat with him on those evenings he wanted company. Sometimes, they played a game of checkers, using Enoch’s old, scratched-up board.
“I’d like to learn chess one of these fine days,” Enoch had observed one night, after they’d established an awkward rhythm and began to speak of other things besides chamber pots and bandages.
Bridger had looked up from his last remaining piece, trapped in a corner of the board by several of Enoch’s, and said, “I believe you would make a formidable opponent, Mr. Flynn.” The correlation between his situation and that of the Confederacy had seemed disturbingly clear in that moment, as he recalled.
“Enoch,” the other man had corrected him.
“Not as long as you’re still addressing me as Captain Winslow,” Bridger told him.
Enoch’s grin was wide, and bright as a beam from a lighthouse on an ink-dark night. “Bridger, then,” he allowed, almost shyly.
“I can show you how to play chess,” Bridger had volunteered. “Though I’ll probably regret it if I do.”
Enoch, while obviously pleased, had shaken his head. “I reckon this board would do, but I don’t own the right pieces,” he’d said.
Bridger had thought of the magnificent ivory and onyx chess set in one of the parlors at Fairhaven, where, in long-ago and better days, Tristan had taught him the game. Later, in Massachusetts, he and Rogan had spent hours bent over one of the boards in the library, a pair of callow generals pitting their wooden “men” against each other. Like their horse races and fencing matches, their chess games had been cordial enough, but they’d been battles just the same, fought, not played, with ruthlessness and cold strategy.
Back then, neither of them could have guessed that, within a few short years, they would be facing off in earnest, on a much grander scale, with cannon and rifles taking the place of pawns and kings, and living horses for knights.
Now, Bridger drew in the sight of Caroline and the little girl and her dog before he turned to meet Enoch’s gaze.
He and Enoch had never spoken of Caroline, but she was always between them. Enoch had seen the kiss and had no doubt drawn conclusions of his own...
“Come on out here into the hallway,” he said. “Get yourself some practice walking.”
He traversed the length of the hallway several times, leaning heavily on Enoch.
For Bridger, every step was a strain; sweat broke out on his upper lip, his forehead, between his shoulder blades. He was clad in plain trousers and a thin cotton shirt, better fitting than the garments Enoch had lent him.
They’d belonged to Caroline’s husband, he supposed, but that was a probability he preferred not to consider.
“You’re doing all right,” Enoch told him. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
The stairs were steep and the passage narrow and cool with shadows.
Bridger pressed on, his left shoulder brushing the wall, his eyes fixed on the descent. He nodded in response to Enoch’s quiet encouragement and did as he’d been told.
When, at long last, they reached the bottom, Bridger was about to thank Enoch when he heard a door open nearby, followed by Rachel’s giggle and the scrabbling of Sweet Girl’s paws on the plank floor.
Then there was Caroline’s voice. It came as a sweet shock to Bridger, since he hadn’t expected to encounter her. “No running inside the house,” she
told the child. “Captain Winslow is probably sleeping.”
No, Bridger thought, grinning in spite of the raging ache in his right shoulder and the all-over exhaustion of making his way down a single stairway, Captain Winslow is not sleeping.
The look on Caroline’s face was worth the agonizing efforts of the last several minutes; her eyes widened at the sight of him, and her cheeks went that peachy-pink color. She opened her mouth, closed it again.
She might have been less surprised, Bridger thought with delight, if she’d encountered Abraham Lincoln at the foot of her back stairs.
The dog gave a few happy yips.
Rachel clapped her small hands and crowed, “You got out of bed!”
Caroline, holding an empty laundry basket in both arms, simply stared and flushed all the more furiously.
Bridger, having caught her gaze, held it. Taking pleasure in the knowledge that, for whatever reason, she seemed incapable of averting her eyes.
Her lovely eyes.
It was a delightful interlude, but, alas, far too brief.
Caroline tore her gaze from his, and pinned it on Enoch.
The flush subsided, but she obviously found herself unable to say a word.
Rachel, however, was all but jumping up and down. “Do you want to see the chickens?” she asked eagerly. “I could show you our cow.”
Enoch silenced the child by clearing his throat. “Miss Rachel,” he said, “you’re fixing to wear that poor man’s ears right off his head. He’s in no shape to look at chickens and cows.”
Rachel sighed loudly, reminding Bridger of an actress in a melodrama. A very small actress, with a tendency to overplay her role.
She looked up at her mother and said dolefully, “I suppose you want me to go to Jubie’s room and talk to her.”
“Or,” Caroline said to her, “you could go upstairs and play for a while.”
“But I want to play outside,” Rachel pointed out, sounding eminently reasonable now.
“Later, honey, and take Sweet Girl upstairs with you,” Caroline said, careful not to let Bridger catch her eye again.
With another dramatic sigh, Rachel took Sweet Girl and stomped up the stairs.
Caroline rallied enough to smile and Bridger saw her steel herself before looking back at him. “Would you like to sit a while in the parlor?” she asked, as though he were an invited caller, rather than an unwanted guest who’d overstayed his welcome.
Bridger was amused, although he took care not to show it. In pain, perspiring and uncomfortably aware that he was wearing her dead husband’s clothes, he nodded.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re very kind.”
Caroline averted her eyes for a moment. “I’m afraid I haven’t been,” she murmured when she looked at him again. “Especially kind, I mean.”
Was this an apology?
Bridger didn’t know. Didn’t care. She had spoken to him, stopped pretending he was invisible, and it was enough for now.
“I have things to do in the barn,” Enoch said, watching Bridger. “Unless you need help getting as far as the parlor—”
“I can manage,” Bridger replied, without looking away from Caroline’s face. He wondered if she had any idea how beautiful she was, with her fresh, unblemished skin, her perfect features, her wheat-gold hair, thick and shining, always in danger of tumbling from its pins.
Enoch glanced at Caroline, probably expecting her to ask him to stay. When she didn’t, he left the house.
They were alone then, he and Caroline, neither one speaking. If Bridger could have stopped time, he would have done it, and remained in that perfect interlude for the rest of his days.
It was Caroline who broke the silence. “The parlor is this way,” she said, moving as if to take his arm, then withdrawing her hand.
That made Bridger grin—just for a second or two. He walked slowly in the direction she’d indicated with a motion of her head, and soon found himself standing in the middle of a modestly furnished but spacious room.
Sunlight streamed through spotless windows, so bright, after the cool semidarkness of the corridor, that Bridger was momentarily dazzled. When his vision cleared, he took in a plain horsehair settee, two upholstered armchairs, a fieldstone fireplace, an old harpsichord with a rag rug between its three intricately carved legs.
Faint fragments of music teased his memory, but he couldn’t quite grasp when or where he’d heard them.
“Here,” Caroline said hastily, gesturing toward one of the chairs. “I can serve tea if you’d like...”
Bridger needed to sit down; he’d hesitated while taking in his surroundings, but he realized now that he’d had another reason—he hadn’t wanted to blunder into a chair her husband had favored. “I can’t sit,” he explained, “until you do.”
She dismissed his words with a wave of one hand. “You’re not well, Mr.—er—Bridger. I think we can dispense with airs and graces, just this once.”
Bridger stumped over to the chair, hesitated again, and then lowered himself into the seat.
“There,” Caroline said sunnily. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
The woman baffled him. She had been ignoring him for days, and even when she’d been forced to enter his room to retrieve her lively daughter, she had been careful not to speak or make eye contact. Now, all of a sudden, she was flouting the simplest rules of etiquette, urging him to sit while she stood. Allowing Enoch to leave them alone together.
He frowned. “I’d really like you to sit down,” he said, somewhat stupidly.
“Not yet,” Caroline told him. “I have to make the tea first.”
“All right,” he said, still confused. “That is, if you want tea for yourself. I don’t drink the stuff.”
“Oh,” said Caroline. She seemed unsettled now, as if she didn’t know quite how to proceed. Her small white teeth clamped briefly over her lower lip, and although she wasn’t exactly wringing her hands, she’d laced her fingers, and her thumbs twiddled restlessly.
Bridger gave in to the prompting of some passing devil. “Whiskey would be good, though,” he said.
He was rewarded by a widening of her changeable eyes and splashes of color on her cheeks. She was standing in the center of the room, about where he’d been a few minutes earlier, just out of reach, and that was probably fortunate, because he would have liked nothing better than to take her hand and pull her onto his lap.
He could imagine only one thing he would enjoy more than pulling the pins from her hair, burying his face in its luster, tangling his fingers in it, kissing her at his leisure—and much more thoroughly than he had before.
But now, he simply watched her, and that was a singular pleasure in its own right.
Caroline’s eyes narrowed. Ah, yes. He’d riled her, and it was well worth the effort.
For a long moment, she looked as though she might walk over to him and slap his head off his neck.
He was disappointed when she didn’t.
“You delight in unsettling me,” she accused him in a furious whisper. “Why?”
Bridger considered the question. “Because, Caroline, you forget, for a little while, that you’re a proper lady, bound by customs and responsibilities, and that’s when you catch fire.” He paused, knowing he was on the proverbial thin ice and not giving a damn. “That’s when I see beyond the lady to passion inside.”
She was silent for another long moment.
“Caroline,” Bridger said gently. “I’ll be leaving soon. Most likely, we’ll never see each other again.”
Unless, of course, she married Rogan, once the required mourning period was over and the war had finally ended. Rogan would expect him to attend the nuptials, to stand up with him during the ceremony. He would be compelled, for the sake of his closest friend, the man he would have chosen for a brother if that had bee
n possible, to join in the celebration, offer hearty congratulations. Pretend to be glad for both of them, on their wedding day and ever after.
The unending expanse of such a future was painful to contemplate.
His only refuge was now—this moment, this day, this time of sunlight and sorrow.
“No,” Caroline said, on a note of sad resolve. “Never again.”
In the next moment, she was in motion. She didn’t come to Bridger, not then, but instead walked purposefully to the mantelpiece, picked up a small object in both hands, held it reverently. Studied it, as though trying to memorize the thing.
Then she pressed the item to her breast, as if to absorb it into her inmost self.
The scene felt intimate, nearly sacred, and Bridger felt like an intruder, a snoop, a spy, but he could not take his eyes off Caroline.
After some time, she moved toward him, and he saw that the object was a small cabinet frame, square, with miniscule hinges on one side. He’d seen dozens of these since the beginning of the war; soldiers often carried them.
Wordless, she held it out to Bridger, her lips pressed together.
His left hand trembled as he accepted it.
Somewhat awkwardly, he released the catch, opened the little box, saw the photographic likenesses inside.
There were two, one of Caroline as a bride, standing behind her solemn new husband, who sat rigidly upright in a straight-backed chair. She rested a hand on the bridegroom’s right shoulder, held her chin high, but the expression in her eyes betrayed her innocence, her trepidation, her determination to be a proper wife.
In the second image, Caroline was seated, unsmiling, arms around the very young child on her lap. Here was Rachel as an infant, bonneted and clad in an elaborate christening gown, eyes lively with interest, one small fist held to her mouth.
The shock came first, preceding full comprehension by a second or two.
Chancellorsville. Suddenly, he was back there, surrounded by dead and wounded men. The smoke had lingered, burning his eyes and throat, even though the battle had moved on.
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