by Alyssa Cole
That wasn’t realistic, unfortunately, but it didn’t change the fury the realization brought to the fore. She looked from Sarah to Stephen; they would not understand such a sentiment if she were to express it. She was gripped by a sudden, aching loneliness, the surety that neither Sarah nor Stephen had any idea who she was at all.
“It must take a great strength of will to go directly from toiling in the fields to taking up arms against one’s oppressors,” she said diplomatically.
“And luckily you shall never experience either of those hardships,” Sarah said. “You are quite well taken care of here, aren’t you?”
Marlie stiffened. She didn’t consider herself taken care of—she worked, earned her living, but that’s exactly what she was. Exactly why she had never felt freer than when venturing out to the prison and helping those men of her own volition.
But with the Lynch money paving your way.
“I believe I will retire to my rooms,” Marlie said.
“You are always in your rooms now,” Sarah said. “I know things are difficult for you with Melody and Cahill, but they are difficult for me, too. Can you not tolerate a bit more for my sake?”
Marlie felt an inarticulate anger rise in her, and the first words on her tongue were neither kind nor true, so she took a moment before opening her mouth. “Sarah, I am sure things are difficult for you, but have you not heard the way Cahill speaks to me and the things he insinuates?”
How could Sarah not see? She was protected by her rank in society and the color of her skin, and Marlie had no such protection. Marlie felt the spinning disorientation of vertigo even though she was sitting. She found fault in everything now, it seemed—she’d always wanted to change the world, but never had she realized how maddening so many aspects of it were. For a moment she doubted her sanity, that everything the person she loved the most said chafed at her.
“I understand, but I just miss how things were before,” Sarah sighed, and Marlie’s anger diminished, replaced by affection for Sarah and sadness that it was strained. The work of treason had united them, and now that their joint operations were stalled, Marlie felt as if an ever-widening gulf was opening between her and Sarah, one she desperately wanted to ford.
“I do, too,” she said. “But war brings change, and none of us shall pass through these trying times unscathed.”
Sarah bustled over and sat beside her, taking up her hand. Her expression was serious. “Cahill hasn’t taken any liberties with your person, has he?”
“No,” Marlie said, shuddering at the thought. “He seems to take pleasure in inspiring fear in me, and I hate giving him the satisfaction. But I am afraid.”
Sarah placed an arm around her shoulder. “Forgive my thoughtless request, Marlie. You’re right. Perhaps it would be best if you remained out of sight until things have quieted down.”
“No, it would be best if he were kicked out of our home,” Marlie said, that headstrong voice rising up in her again. She glanced at Stephen, who quickly looked away. “Since no one is willing to do that, yes, perhaps it’s better that I remain in my rooms.”
She patted Sarah’s hands, then left the parlor, stopping by the kitchen to prepare a basket of food before walking up the stairs to her room. She was both furious and elated. She had been encouraged to make herself a prisoner in her own home for the sake of Melody and Cahill, but then again, she had just been given leave to spend her time as she wished instead of skulking around the parlor, flinching every time Cahill turned his gaze on her. As she entered her room and locked the door behind her she felt the weight of the outside world fall away from her shoulders. She knew that her situation with Ewan was far from normal—and most definitively temporary—but the freedom found in the moments spent talking and sharing with him had become important to her. Perhaps too important.
She tied on her apron and began gathering the ingredients to test out a new deworming tonic that she hoped could be of use. Then she glanced over at the desk and sighed. She didn’t investigate what the sensation in her chest might be, but she followed its impetus, walking over and pulling the desk back. The door opened and there was Ewan’s face, all sharp angles and freckle-sprayed.
“Here are some biscuits with lard,” she said. “And I can put some tea on the burner if you’d like.” She nodded her head in the direction of her work station.
“Tea would be excellent, if you’re having some, as well,” he said. “Thank you.”
She put the kettle on.
He sat with his legs stretched out on the floor before the door, chewing his biscuit with great concentration. “These are wonderful,” he said. “Reminds me of my mother’s.”
Marlie knelt down and prodded at his ankle, then sighed deeply. “Have you ever felt . . . as if the earth had shifted and you ended up on one side and your family on the other?”
He simply looked at her, the moment stretching out long enough that Marlie could regret asking.
“I’m sorry, that is none of my business. Your ankle seems to be healing well.”
She pushed herself to her feet, the loneliness she had felt in the parlor making its presence known once more.
“I gather you don’t mean physically,” he said.
She shook her head.
“I believe that I was born on the other side of a gulf such as the one you speak of,” he said quietly. “I have always been the odd boy, the strange young man. I asked too many questions, or turned the conversation to things that pleased me and bored everyone else. Easily frustrated and eternally restless. I’m sure you’ve noticed these traits.” He paused then and looked up at her, and Marlie saw the slightest hint of vulnerability, as if he expected her to tease him or say something cutting. She remained silent, and he continued. “When I got upset as a boy I would have terrible tantrums that humiliated and frightened my parents. I made the voyage from Scotland to the States even more traumatizing, I’ve been told. And once my father lost control of his drinking . . . yes, I understand such a feeling.”
Marlie felt a bit of the tightness that had gripped her since the tension-filled expedition to the parlor loosen a bit. “How did you manage?”
“Well, I realized I could not close such a gulf—that was not in my control. But I could learn what pleased my family and what didn’t, and what pleased me about pleasing them. Even though the gulf still exists, there are bridges, and those allow me to get along with my family and vice versa.”
Marlie nodded appreciatively. “I will give thought to what bridges I may be able to build. I’m not used to feeling this way about Sarah.”
“She is your sister, no?”
She felt that exasperation rise in her again, and the word came out forcefully, as if meeting a challenge. “Yes.”
“Well, if you’ve survived this long without ever wanting to secede from her then you’re doing better than the nation as a whole.”
Marlie allowed herself a bit of laughter and was rewarded with a startled smile from Ewan. “Thank you, Socrates. This has given me some comfort after a trying day.”
“Anything I can do to put you at ease, I will do gladly.” The words were not spoken suggestively, but were so earnestly delivered that they left Marlie flustered and warm. It didn’t help that her imagination took the word ease and spun off with wild abandon imagining all the things it might mean.
“Good night,” she said, pushing the desk forward.
“Good night,” he replied, closing the door. When the desk was flush against the wall, she remained leaning on it, trying to discern why everything in her was straining toward the man on the other side.
Simple infatuation, and nothing more. It will pass.
Marlie had to believe this was true. She knew better than to think anything else could occur.
CHAPTER 9
Ewan gripped the rough wooden beam that bisected the attic space and pulled the weight of his body up, going slow enough that he could feel the burn in each muscle of his arms and abdomen. He reached the summ
it of the motion, exhaled, and lowered himself back to the ground. Then he did it again.
He tried to pull himself up again and his arms refused to follow through on the command. Since coming to Marlie’s home, he’d doubled and sometimes trebled the length of his exercise routine—modified to avoid jostling his ankle—not because he was vain but because it was the only outlet for the frenetic thoughts that ricocheted about in his mind. The letters passed back and forth between him and Marlie, slid beneath the door of the room that both protected and imprisoned him, were his lifeline to the world, and to Marlie. With each letter, she grew in his estimation, and the distance between wanting and having grew ever further, too.
Each time she asked him a question about what he’d done during the war, or what post he was returning to, was a reminder of why he needed to pull any unrequited feelings he had for Marlie out by the root. He didn’t regret what he had done for his country, but the fighting he did was different from shooting across a battlefield or wrestling in a trench. One could be morally right and yet still irrevocably stained, but he wouldn’t sully Marlie with the truth of himself.
“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”
Aristotle’s words were generally a bit too optimistic for Ewan’s taste, but the man had the right of it sometimes. Ewan was feeling very brave of late.
He’d already separated and organized all the dried plants that had been hanging in the room, again, using a different organization system. He’d asked Marlie what work needed to be done, and had set to labeling bottles and mixing to her measurements. After that had been completed, he’d gone through the books. Reading usually calmed him, drawing all his attention from reality and into the text, but being trapped in a room just out of reach of the person he most wanted and the person he most hated was bringing to the surface feelings that made concentration a hard thing.
The bothersome itch that seemed to emanate from deep within his skull had come back, driving him to distraction. He hated the feeling that had plagued him as a child; even in the prison camp he’d been able to work and barter and fix things to keep his mind clear. He hadn’t felt all turned around in such a way since before his father died. No—that wasn’t true. There had been one time since then.
Cahill.
The day he had first encountered Cahill was supposed to be calm; Ewan had been returning from another mission. The town was supposed to be free of Rebels, having been captured by the Union. The farmhouse was supposed to be safe—occupied by Negro men drilling for the day when Lincoln said they could fight in Union blues, officially. The sound of gunshots and panic had greeted Ewan and his fellow soldiers; a cowardly ambush.
There was a knock at the door in the wall, almost too quiet to be discerned, but pulling Ewan’s mind away from that horrific day all the same. He ran a hand over his sweaty face, unlatched the door, and pulled it open. It was only when he saw those dark, delicate brows raise toward the ceiling that he realized he wasn’t wearing a damned shirt.
“Pardon,” he said, turning to grab the shirt he’d tossed aside. He winced as he pulled his arms through the sleeves. “I may have overtaxed myself,” he said as he began buttoning.
When he turned, Marlie was still standing in the same position. Her brows were back at the proper longitude, but her lips were slightly parted and she stared at him as if he’d been wearing nothing but his boots. He heard a tinkling noise and realized it was the tray she held in her hand—the glass was brushing against a bowl of something delicious, on account of how her hands trembled.
He’d frightened her. Part of him wanted to soothe her, but it was better for her to be frightened. It showed she was as smart as he knew her to be.
“I—I brought your dinner,” she said. “Everyone else has gone to a town hall meeting, so if you’d like to come eat in my rooms, you can.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“No one can get in,” she said. “And we’ll hear them arrive.”
He looked into those strange eyes of hers, wondering why she’d ask him to dine despite the risk. They spoke through their notes during the day, and his nightly trips to the necessary had become nightly conversations. But his meals during the day were usually taken in the drying room.
As he looked at her, one corner of her mouth tipped up into an awkward grin and her shoulders hunched, only by a millimeter, but such things caught Ewan’s attention.
She’s lonely.
There was the strangest searing twist in his chest at that realization. Although solitude was his preferred state, he didn’t mind being around other people. He was adaptable, and even the crowded confines of prison camp had been bearable. Anything was bearable, when it came down to it—that was his personal philosophy. But there was a difference between bearable and tolerable, and knowing that Marlie had been lonely while he was just a few feet away was intolerable.
“Sure, if it’s not too bothersome,” he said. “Having a different set of walls to stare at wouldn’t hurt.”
“Your ankle is nearly healed, so we can start figuring out how to get you up North,” she said. “I’m sorry that you’ve traded one prison for another.”
Being cooped up so close to her was surely some form of torture, but not in the manner she imagined. “Marlie, you do yourself a disservice with that comparison.”
She smiled, just a twitch of upturned lips, but Ewan soaked it in as if she’d caressed him. Maybe he had some of the McCall charm in him after all. He stepped out into the room, and she stepped back, placed his tray on her desk, and then turned to her work.
“I ate downstairs in the kitchen with Lace and Tobias,” she said. “They insisted I take advantage of Melody being gone since I’ve been passing most of my time up here. Tobias also wanted to interrogate me about whether anything improper was going on between us.”
Ewan paused, thinking perhaps he’d misheard since she said it so calmly. Had she really just spoken those words so plainly? Perhaps she wouldn’t have if she’d known how much time he spent trying not to think about exactly what Tobias was asking about.
“What did you tell him?” He moved the chair to the side of the desk so he could watch her as she worked.
She poured a premeasured cup of distilled water into the bottle, then corked it and placed it onto the shelf of an instrument he hadn’t seen her use before. When she’d filled the small shelf, she used a strap to secure the bottles, then wound a key. The shelf slowly lifted and lowered on one end and then repeated the motion, slowly mixing the contents of the bottles. Ewan was almost distracted from the conversation by the ingenuity of the device. Almost.
“I told him we were living in sin in several ways, but that given our circumstances we didn’t have much choice,” she said.
Ewan tried very hard not to focus on the ways they weren’t living in sin. Taking the Lord’s name in vain, perhaps. We haven’t done that.
She glanced at him. “He wasn’t pleased that I sassed him, but I told him that you were an honorable man who wouldn’t take advantage of the situation.”
Ewan remembered the looks Tobias had given him. “Is he courting you?”
Marlie laughed quietly. “Tobias has never seen me as more than a sister, which would make his courting me quite uncomfortable. As would his marriage to Lace.”
Feelings of possession were infantile and not the sort of behavior Ewan indulged in, but if he were that kind of man, he would have been powerfully pleased by the fact that Marlie wasn’t attached to Tobias.
“What about you?” Marlie asked. She kept working, but Ewan noticed that her efficient movements slowed. She picked up the wrong bottle, then knocked a bowl of dried leaves askew.
“Well, I believe Lace would take exception to Tobias courting me, as well,” Ewan said, and was rewarded with Marlie’s delicate laughter as she collected the leaves that had been tossed onto her worktable.
“You know what I mean,” she said. �
�You’ve mentioned your parents, a brother and a sister, but no sweetheart or wife.”
Ewan didn’t quite understand. “Because no such person exists.”
Or has ever existed. And that’s how I like it, he reminded himself.
“Truly? From what I’d read in the papers, it seemed every soldier had a lady pining away for him at home.” She glanced at him, then back at her work. “Seems a bit hard to believe you’re not one of them.”
Ewan wasn’t sure, but she might have been complimenting him.
“I never found a woman I’d ask to wait for me,” he replied. No one had exactly petitioned for the role, either, after receiving a lecture or three.
She smiled full-out now. “Ah. I can only imagine the high standards you would have for a sweetheart.”
Why did she find this amusing?
“Let me guess,” she continued. “She’d have to have memorized The Enchiridion, be able to speak several languages, and shoot a Rebel from fifty paces—”
“If you think that’s the case, perhaps I’ve misrepresented myself,” Ewan said quietly, though warning signs were going off in his head. “I have exactly one.”
She tilted her head. “And what’s that?”
“Cognitive superiority.” He didn’t allow himself to expound on ways in which a woman might demonstrate such a thing; for example, teaching herself medical botany, designing her own still and constantly improving upon said design, and engaging in spirited philosophical debate. She needn’t know that.
Marlie let out a quiet laugh. “Actually, that fits you perfectly,” she said. There was no derision in her laughter or tone, nor was there any inkling that she was aware how perfectly it fit her, too.