The Bride Fair

by Cheryl Reavis

  The authority in Max’s voice deterred him—but not for long. De Graff hesitated then raised his revolver and leveled it at Canfield’s chest, just as Perkins bodily removed Maria to the sidelines. The other woman screamed and put herself in between the two men. Canfield shoved her aside.

  “Go ahead!” Canfield yelled at De Graff. “What are you going to do—shoot her? Shoot me? She’s not armed! Neither am I! What’s next, you Yankee bastard!”

  But Perkins had his men well trained in the art of maintaining order. One of them put a hard thrust of his rifle butt into the back of De Graff’s knee, causing his leg to fold under him. The revolver discharged as De Graff hit the ground, and the women in the crowd screamed. Two more soldiers piled on top of him.

  “I will not tolerate this kind of behavior!” Max said as they wrestled De Graff’s side arm away from him. “De Graff! Get to you feet, damn you!”

  De Graff struggled to get up, and he by no means had himself under control. He stood weaving for a moment, then, amid a string of epithets, lunged at the woman again.

  It took some work to get the two separated again.

  “Lock them up, Perkins!” Max said.

  “Both, Sir?” he asked, still keeping Maria out of the way. “We ain’t got accommodations for the officers—”

  “I said lock them up!”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  “And break up this damn congregation. Now!”

  “Wait!” Maria cried, pulling free of Perkins’s hold on her. “Colonel Woodard—Phelan wasn’t to blame. It’s my fault. I interfered when I shouldn’t have. Can’t you—”

  “No,” Max said.

  “But he didn’t start this!”

  “He is drunk and disorderly, Miss Markham. I will not excuse behavior in an ex-Confederate that I do not tolerate in my own men. Perkins! Escort this woman home!”

  “You have no right—”

  “I have every right! For a damn wasted Sunday dinner, if nothing else!”

  “Sunday dinner! What are you talking about!” Max looked at her, but he said nothing. If she didn’t understand what participating in a tussle between two drunken idiots on Main Street in broad daylight was apt to do to her standing in Mrs. Kinnard’s pecking order, far be it from him to try to explain it. He began to walk away.

  “Now, Perkins! Take her home and turn her over to her father!”

  “Maria!” Phelan Canfield yelled. “Leave it alone! Woodard, I don’t need any of your damn favors! Did you hear me! I don’t need your favors! My boys don’t need your favors!”

  Max spun around and walked back to where the man stood. “Then maybe you should try to stay sober long enough to look after them.”

  “I look after them!”

  “I see. And where are they now, I wonder? Who’s looking after them so you can get yourself—and Maria—into another one of your drunken brawls?”

  “You don’t tell me how to look after my boys! My boys and Maria are none of your goddamn business!”

  Max had had enough—enough of Phelan Canfield, enough of all these damn Rebs. He turned and walked away, knowing the person he was really angry with was Maria Markham—for her flagrant disregard for her reputation, not to mention her life. And all for a man like Phelan Canfield.

  “You don’t worry about Maria, Woodard!” Canfield yelled after him. “Goddamn you, Woodard—”

  “Shut up, Phelan! Haven’t you done enough!” the prostitute, who was at the heart this ridiculous uproar, yelled. “Colonel Woodard! Wait! Please!”

  Max didn’t stop.

  “Colonel Woodard!”

  He finally stopped—because it was either that or have her yelling after him all the way to headquarters. “Yes, what is it!”

  She smiled in spite of his displeasure. She was quite pretty up close—dark red hair and blue eyes—and she knew it. She was showing an impressive amount of cleavage, and she knew that, too.

  “I just wanted to thank you, Colonel Woodard,” she said, putting her hand on his arm.

  “Who are you?” he asked bluntly.

  “Eleanor. Eleanor Hansen. I wanted to thank you for getting Maria out of that mess and for not letting Major De Graff hurt himself. He’s a good boy most of the time. Well, he hasn’t been so good lately—since he got jilted by the Russell girl. Just now it was the whiskey talking, but he’ll get over it.”

  “You know Major De Graff well, do you?”

  “I have made his acquaintance,” she said demurely, refusing to take offense at the insinuation behind the question. “And don’t you mind about Phelan, either—”

  “I don’t mind about Phelan,” Max assured her.

  “Well, that’s good. He was trying to help me—or maybe he was just using me as an excuse to get at one of you Yankees. It doesn’t matter, I guess. You know, he’s just one of these people you can’t ever decide about—whether you want him drunk or sober. Either way, he’s still a pain in the ass.”

  Max laughed in spite of himself. He had all but forgotten about this particular kind of woman, brash and audacious and fun-loving. The kind who expected nothing of a man and who would forgive him anything—as long as he had the fee. Max had wasted many an hour and a great deal of his father’s coin on Eleanor Hansen’s sort in his reckless, pre-war youth.

  “There!” she said, clearly delighted. “I just knew you had to let yourself go now and again. You should come see me sometime, Colonel. I expect we could find something to laugh about, you and I.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said trying to move on.

  “And would you do something else for me?”

  “What is it, Miss Hansen?”

  “If and when Maria ever speaks to you again, would you tell her I said thank you? Just say, ‘Nell says thank you.’”

  “I should think you can do that yourself.”

  “Well, of course, I can’t, silly. Maria can’t be seen talking to me.”

  “But she can participate in a brawl on your behalf?”

  “That is entirely different. Will you tell her, please?”

  Max stood looking at her. Perhaps he needed more help understanding these people than he realized.

  “If and when she ever speaks to me again, I will tell her,” he said, and she smiled her best smile, bent and picked up her skirts so that he would get the full advantage of her plunging neckline, then hurried away—stopping once to blow him a small kiss.

  Max returned to his office; the dark mood that had come down upon him earlier came back again. A timid private brought the mail sack that had arrived on the afternoon train. When Max finally opened it, there were a number of personal letters for him in it. Two from his mother. One from his sister, Kate. And one from John Howe.

  He picked up John’s letter and turned it over in his hands, but he didn’t open it—or any of them. He sat at his desk, surrounded again by ghosts from the past, and he waited until Perkins came to tell him that everything and everyone was ready for the official burial at the prison.

  “Cancel it,” Max said when he did so.

  “Cancel it, Sir?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Perkins hesitated, then apparently thought better of pursuing the matter. He went downstairs, and Max continued to sit.

  The men lying in those trenches needed more than he had provided for them. No, he needed more. He needed every man, woman and child in this town to be in attendance. He needed the soldiers who had survived that place, as he had survived, to be there. As many of them as he could find.

  He heard a commotion downstairs.

  “Miss—no—you can’t go up there!” Perkins said.

  Now what? Max thought.

  Someone came running up the stairs; Maria burst through the doorway, with Perkins on her heels. Max held up his hand to keep the sergeant major from grabbing her. She didn’t stop until she was leaning against his desk.

  “I am not going to change my mind about Canfield,” Max said.

  “It’s…my fath
er,” she said, her mouth trembling. “I can’t find…the doctor. I need the…regimental surgeon. Please, Max—please!”

  She wiped at her cheeks with the heels of her hands, struggling hard not to let him see her cry.

  “Perkins will know where the surgeon is,” he said. “I’ll have him send a man to get him.”

  Maria stood for a moment, staring into his eyes, poised on the edge of something she couldn’t quite make herself say.

  Then she turned and ran down the stairs.

  Max stayed late at headquarters. Numerous papers had arrived in the mail bag that had to be read and signed. When that was done, he lingered to open his own letters.

  His mother’s were filled with news of people he once knew and now hardly remembered. There were some sketchy details of his father’s latest business concerns and the fact that he would be leaving for London soon—sketchy because she never really paid any attention to that sort of thing. Her job was to spend her husband’s profits wisely and well, not concern herself with how he acquired them. Near the end of her second letter, she mentioned a recent society with the Howes and how much she liked John’s “little wife,” in spite of her origins and her politics.

  Max smiled slightly at his mother’s acceptance of John’s Rebel bride. John’s mother, on the other hand, would have happily seen her Southern daughter-in-law banished to Hell. He wondered if Mrs. Howe realized that there were situations here where the reverse was true, where young women like the Russell girl had been literally hidden away in order to protect her from the attentions of men like her beloved son.

  He moved on to the letter from his sister Kate. Hers was just as he expected—filled with her observations about young Harry Howe, John’s supposed younger brother.

  Poor Kate, he thought, skimming the page. Harry was the only child she would likely ever have—and he had been sacrificed on the altar of moral propriety. She had been fourteen years old when she became pregnant with John Howe’s child. Max still remembered that terrible time. Kate, in the throes of early pregnancy, having to jump up and rush from the table and no one even remotely suspecting the actual cause. When the truth had finally come to light, he had been incensed, ready to challenge John to a duel—illegal or not—in spite of the fact that John had been more than willing to offer his sister marriage.

  The two families had come to a terrible impasse. Kate was too young to marry—she and John both were—and Mr. Howe had no intention of seeing a grandchild of his lost. So the Howes and the Woodards hatched a plan. Mr. and Mrs. Howe would go abroad for a time and take Kate with them. She would deliver her child while they were gone, and when the Howes returned, Mr. and Mrs. Howe would pass the baby off as their own. The bleakness Max had seen in Kate’s eyes the day she had sailed for Europe had never left her. Even now, whenever he looked at her, he could see the abject sadness of a woman who had lost her only child. And what torture she must endure every time she saw him, knowing, for his sake, she could never tell him the truth.

  Max picked up John’s letter. When it came right down to it, he had quite a lot to forgive his friend John Howe for. But, he had managed to do it. He had successfully rid himself of the anger and resentment he’d felt, both for Kate and for having been left behind in the prison—most of the time.

  He stuck John’s unread letter inside his tunic and went downstairs, leaving the soldiers still on duty to maintain the hard-won military presence. The streets were deserted, in spite of the fact that it was not yet ten o’clock. He had every intention of going to the hotel. Even after he mounted his horse and rode down Main Street that had been his plan.

  But somewhere in the short distance between military headquarters and Howerton’s hotel and then the Mansion House, he changed his mind. Another crisis or no, he was going to the Markhams’ instead.

  The moon was so bright that the stars were barely visible. He rode through the empty streets, listening to the peaceful sounds of the warm summer evening. Cicada and whippoorwills. Tree frogs. Ordinarily such a night reminded him of the war, of being on the campaign.

  But tonight he was thinking about Maria. She had called him by his Christian name. He wondered if she even realized it, and the possibility that she hadn’t made it seem perhaps more significant to him, as if her saying his name unawares indicated that in her heart of hearts she didn’t think of him as Colonel Woodard, the despised occupation commander—but as Max. He thought, too, that Suzanne Canfield had been wrong. In this once incidence, Maria Markham had taken him at his word. She had looked at him, and she had believed him when he said he would send for the surgeon.

  He rode past the Kinnard house. It was dark—but someone was playing the piano. All the houses he passed were dark—until he reached the Markham house. The front parlor windows and Mr. Markham’s bedchamber windows were alight. As he approached, a seemingly alert private dashed forward to take his mount and stable it.

  Max didn’t see Maria when he went inside. There were two women in the central hall, women he had had introduced to him at the literary society meeting. One of them immediately pounced upon him.

  Fortunately, he was very good with names.

  “Mrs. Russell,” he said. “And Mrs. Justice, I believe,” he said to the other woman.

  He recognized the significance of the Russell woman’s name immediately, and he wondered if she were the mother of that Russell, the one who, for all intents and appearances, was going to be the ruination of one of his young officers.

  “Colonel Woodard,” the Russell woman said. “We weren’t expecting to see you.”

  She paused as if she expected him to try to justify his intrusion at a time like this. He said nothing, letting the silence lengthen until she became uncomfortable.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked, smiling a smile she did not mean.

  “I’m not hungry—”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “You shall have some coffee and pie, at least.” She looked at the other woman, who immediately bustled off, he supposed, to get it.

  Max very nearly smiled. Here was someone to usurp Mrs. Kinnard’s throne, given half the chance. “How is Mr. Markham?” he asked, certain that the Russell woman would know.

  “He is unchanged.”

  “What has the surgeon said?”

  “He believes it to be a case of the dropsy. Maria found him fallen in the kitchen when she returned this evening—your men carried him upstairs. Your army physician says it is a matter of waiting. Either he will recover—slowly—or he will not recover at all. Only time will tell.”

  “Where is…Miss Markham?” he asked.

  “She should be lying down,” Mrs. Russell said pointedly. “She has run herself ragged of late, trying to keep this big house and see that her father is comfortable.”

  And waiting hand and foot on a sorry Yankee colonel. The woman didn’t actually say it, but the way her eyes flicked over him, she might as well have.

  She was indeed De Graff’s potential mother-in-law, Max decided. This woman would take that old axiom about hiding one’s daughter from the attentions of the regiment literally if anyone would.

  “I have never known her to be so puny,” the woman went on. “Always swooning and feeling sick and the like. Maria’s constitution was always as strong as a horse. Nothing upset her until now.”

  “I ask you again, Mrs. Russell. Where is Miss Markham?”

  “I don’t know, Colonel Woodard—but I’m sure you wouldn’t want to disturb her.”

  “Your pie and coffee are in the dining room, Colonel Woodard,” Mrs. Justice said, returning. “And Maria is in the kitchen.”

  “Thank you,” Max said. He left both women standing and went straight to find her.

  But the kitchen was empty. He thought she must have gone up the back stairs but then decided to see if she might be at the well or the summer kitchen instead.

  He caught a glimpse of her as she disappeared into the shed where her horse was stabled.

  He didn’t follow her. Perhap
s she needed a respite from the events of the day—or from the Russell woman. He certainly found Mrs. Russell exhausting. He would hate to ever have to endure her and Mrs. Kinnard simultaneously.

  He lit a cigar and sat down on the stone steps, once again appreciating the summer night. After a time, he realized that Maria was talking to someone, that she wasn’t alone. He could just see the other person at the edge of the shadows—another woman. He recognized her. It was Eleanor Hansen.

  The conversation ended, and the Hansen woman slipped away into the shadows. Maria walked quickly toward the house, and she was becoming better at not reacting when she found him where she didn’t expect him to be.

  She didn’t jump this time. She only stopped and stood looking at him. She was tired, exhausted. Even from here he could see it.

  “I am beginning to believe it is an exercise in futility to think for one moment that I can enforce any kind of curfew in this town,” he said after a moment.

  “It isn’t ten yet,” she said, swaying slightly. “Is it?”

  “Perhaps not. Would it be too uncouth on my part if I suggested that perhaps you should sit down?”

  He wanted very much to ask her what Eleanor Hansen had been doing here, but he didn’t. He supposed that the irrepressible Nell had decided she could deliver her own “thank yous” to Maria, after all.

  Surprisingly, Maria came and sat down on the stone steps—but not too near him. And she stayed quiet for what seemed a long time.

  “Nell…and I were childhood playmates,” she said finally.

  “The third Musketeer, perhaps?”

  She looked at him in surprise, as if she’d forgotten that her father had told him of the little girl Maria and the playmates he called The Three Musketeers. “Yes. The earrings you returned to me—Hatcher had them. He took them away from me—as a payment.”

  “‘Payment?’”

  “Reparation. For the prison being here. He…appropriated things when it suited him—especially jewelry and especially…”

  Especially if the owner wouldn’t cooperate, Max thought.

  “Nell had been trying to get them away from Hatcher for me.”