The Bride Fair

by Cheryl Reavis

  “I’m not scared,” Joe said after a moment, more to himself than to Max.

  “Joe,” Max said. “Come here.”

  The boy hesitated, then flung himself into Max’s arms.

  “You’ll be all right, son,” Max said, lifting him up off the floor and holding him. The boy hid his face in Max’s shoulder. “I promise. You and your brother both. Don’t worry.”

  Max looked around. Mrs. Russell stood in the doorway with Jake in hand.

  “It’s time for them to nap,” she said, still using that confrontational tone of voice he had come to dislike intensely. He believed Maria’s assessment of the situation. There was nothing he could say to this woman to smooth the way for Major De Graff.

  “Go with Mrs. Russell,” Max said. “Naps make you grow big and tall,” he added when he sensed a budding mutiny. “You’ve got to grow into a big boy—so you can ride your own horse one of these days. I will see you and Jake later. Mrs. Russell, how is Mr. Markham?” he asked to irritate the woman as much as to find out about Markham’s condition.

  “He’s stopped asking for cigars,” she said tersely.

  Joe reluctantly hopped down and trotted away with her. Max could hear him jumping up the stair steps—until Mrs. Russell made him stop.

  He sat down in a chair near the window, his mind focused on Maria Markham and her situation. He kept seeing the way she had looked at him today, just before the carriage moved away. She had desperately needed his help—and, as John had said, she would rather die than ask for it. It was one thing to make a request for a doctor on her father’s behalf and quite something else again when it was something she herself needed, no matter how small. He wanted to be with her now, damn it. He wanted her to rely on him, just a little. What could a man do with a woman like that?

  And yet, he had made her laugh—once. The old Max—the one who had been the darling of all the eligible young ladies of Philadelphia—and some not so eligible—had reasserted itself the night of the thunderstorm, quite without his bidding, and had made a remark spontaneous enough and witty enough to catch her by surprise.

  And what a pleasant experience her laughter had been.

  He closed his eyes, still considering what could be done for her. He could hear people coming and going, most of them bringing food. He didn’t know if the constant arrival of heavily laden plates and platters and bowls was a long-standing Southern funeral tradition or one born of their time of near starvation during the war. He had only recently learned how hard times had been here then. There had even been a bread riot, staged by these strong-willed women on behalf of their hungry children, and, if he could believe Perkins, the women had essentially won.

  In any event, it was as if, in Phelan Canfield’s absence, Maria had been designated the primary mourner by default, and the gestures of condolence that would have been extended to him had been redirected to her.

  Max wondered if Canfield had indeed gone to Mexico. If he had, then Maria’s predicament was all the more dire. If her father died, she would be left to care for Canfield’s children alone. And if she were pregnant and not married, the Kinnards and the Russells of this town wouldn’t allow her to keep them. As far as he knew, there was no family to step in—or he hadn’t seen anyone he could identify as such at the funeral.

  Perhaps all the Canfields were accomplished at disappearing.

  Skedaddled.

  A soldier’s term for running away under fire. Max supposed the word fit Canfield’s situation as well as any, though he suspected that the man was likely a brave soldier. It was trying to endure what was left of his way of life and the strain of day-to-day living that had apparently driven him to drunkenness and ultimately sent him on the run.

  Max suddenly got up and walked to the window and looked out at the rain in much the same way Joe had done. He, too, wanted to see Maria. He wanted to talk to her, to do something—anything—for her. Feed her. Hold her. Make her laugh again.

  How right Perkins and John both had been about the allure of a woman who is certain she despises you.

  He felt as if the house was closing in on him suddenly, and he was quite aware of the fact that he didn’t have to stay here. He could remove himself to headquarters, or to a hotel or even to another residence. Mrs. Kinnard would likely be delighted to have him. But for the boys and Valentina’s relentless determination, he might have actually sought an invitation.

  Joe.

  Jake.

  When and how had he come to put the sons of an enemy above his own comfort? It didn’t matter, he supposed. It only mattered that he had. He could still feel both sets of little arms around his neck and smell their little-boy smell, still see Joe standing at the window.

  I’m not scared.

  And he wouldn’t be if Max could help it.

  Carriages began to arrive out front, and people were coming into the entry hall—some of the funeral attendees, arriving hushed and drenched in spite of Mr. Markham’s illness.

  He had no wish to encounter any of them or to retreat to his room upstairs. He headed toward the rear of the house instead, where he found Perkins busily arranging the latest array of bowls.

  “I want Major Strauss to see Mr. Markham again today,” Max said.

  “Yes, Sir. I believe he is planning to do that—come here as soon as he finishes up his work at the infirmary. Shouldn’t take him long, Sir. Ain’t too many of the boys sick or banged up for a change.”

  Max nodded and stepped outside. It was getting harder and harder to stay ahead of his sergeant major. The man was born to manage army officers, and manage them he did.

  It was raining still. Max didn’t mind it much. Four years of war had rendered the elements essentially meaningless to him—unless it was something extreme. In wartime, nothing was ever postponed because of inclement weather. Burnsides’s infamous “mud march” was proof of that. In the prison, Max had lived outside for months, his only shelter a burrow in the red clay. And burrows were useless in the rain. It was only the thunderstorms that caught him when he was sleeping and sent him into the hell that was his past he minded.

  He walked down the covered walkway to the summer kitchen. And he found Maria sitting on a stool by an open window in the far corner.

  He didn’t say anything, and neither did she. It occurred to him that he should withdraw and leave her to recuperate from the funeral and the worry about her father in private, but he didn’t. He picked up the only other chair and set it in the doorway, dragging a piece of wood and his knife out of his pocket and sitting down with his back to her.

  And just in time. Mrs. Russell appeared on the back steps.

  “Are you available?” he asked Maria quietly.

  “Have you seen Miss Markham?” the Russell woman asked before she could answer.

  “Mrs. Russell, the regimental surgeon will be here to check on Mr. Markham soon,” Max said instead of answering.

  “I hardly think that is necessary,” Mrs. Russell assured him. “Mr. Markham was awake just now and without complaint. He was able to drink some beef tea and take some bread. Now, have you or have you not seen Miss Markham?”

  Max kept waiting for Maria to announce herself. “Sorry,” he said when she didn’t. “I can’t help you.”

  He went back to whittling, paring the edges of the wood into what could almost be identified as a train engine.

  “Thank you,” Maria said after a time.

  “You’re welcome,” he said without looking up or turning around.

  “I just…couldn’t—I needed…”

  “The house is full of people,” Max said. “Your father seems to be comfortable at the moment. There’s no reason why you can’t escape here for a while.”

  “It’s hardly an escape,” he thought she said. It occurred to him that perhaps Canfield hadn’t gone to Mexico, after all. Perhaps she was waiting for him.

  “Where are the boys?” she asked after a moment.

  “Mrs. Russell declared it time to nap. If they k
now what’s good for them, I expect they are napping.”

  She didn’t say anything else; she sighed.

  “Miss Markham,” he said. “What plans do you have for them?”

  “Plans?”

  “Joe says his father has gone to Mexico. Is that true?”

  “I…so Phelan said.”

  “And he’s left the children with you until further notice?”

  “Yes.”

  “There is no other family who could take them? Joe mentioned a grandmother.”

  “No. She died this spring.”

  “It could be a long time, then. It could be a permanent arrangement.”

  “I suppose so. Yes.”

  “Then I suspect you have a very serious problem,” he said, continuing to work the wood. “And I would like to ask what it is you intend to do.”

  “I intend to take care of them as best I can—”

  “No, I’m asking about your condition, Miss Markham. What do you intend to do about that?”

  He heard the stool scrape when she abruptly stood, and he turned to look at her, knowing that this was neither the time nor the place to ambush her with his suspicions—no, convictions—and that he was going to do it anyway.

  “Please answer me, Miss Markham,” he said.

  She walked forward with every intention of getting past him and making her escape. He stood up to block the door.

  “You have no right to speak to me in this way—”

  “I know that. Nevertheless, I do speak to you. You may be insulted by my audacity, if you like, but it changes nothing. I believe you are…with child, Miss Markham. For the boys’ sake, I would like to know how you will manage. Do you have the prospect of marriage? Will the child’s father step forward or not?”

  “Let me pass!”

  “After I say to you what I wish to say. If he will not come forward—then what are your plans? Surely you recognize the difficulties here. Your father is very ill. You can reasonably expect to find yourself alone at some point. You father has arranged for the back rent he has been paid to go into a bank draft in your name—as protection from his creditors should he pass. I know this because that is why he asked to see me the other night.

  “There will be some money for a time, but your father has debts, which I suspect will take whatever property he has—the roof over your head. There are the boys to think of. You yourself said that you didn’t want them to have to endure any more losses. And you and I both know that, as the mother of a bastard child, you will not be allowed to keep them. You will be completely ostracized by Mrs. Kinnard and the others, and if there is no family to step in, who knows where they will—”

  “I will not listen to this!”

  “Do you plan to go somewhere with them and assume a new identity?” he asked, ignoring her outburst. “It might work. There must be ‘war widows,’ real and false, all over the South. Or will you follow their father to Mexico? Perhaps you think you can join your friend Nell in her endeavors in order to support yourself and them.”

  Maria looked so pale, and she reached out to steady herself by gripping the edge of the table. He took a step toward her, but she backed away.

  “I don’t condemn you, Miss Markham. I am trying to help you.”

  “Why! Why would you want to help me! Am I not indebted enough to you?”

  “I have my reasons,” he said honestly. “Some of which I…can’t explain.”

  “You can’t help me. No one can.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that. There is a solution.”

  “And what would that be?” she said sarcastically.

  “Marriage.”

  She gave a short laugh. “Who would offer me marriage—even if I could deceive him? I have no dowry but an invalid father’s debts and two children to care for.”

  “I would,” he said, and he didn’t realize until he’d actually said it, that that was indeed the best solution for them all. “I think we would be…compatible—intellectually, if not politically or temperamentally. And we would not have the distraction of an emotional attachment.

  “I don’t know how much longer the Occupation will continue—years, I expect. I have no plans to leave the military, and it would be very advantageous to me to have a Southern wife, particularly here. Your father apparently trusts me already to see to your well-being, so I don’t believe he will object. And the boys are attached to me—as you have already noted.

  “So. Please consider my offer. That’s all I have to say. Except that it would be a good idea if you made your decision regarding this quickly—if we are to deceive the town and your father as to the real reason for the marriage.”

  She kept wiping furtively at her eyes with her fingers, as if she thought he wouldn’t notice she was weeping if she did it quickly enough.

  He stood back from the doorway to give her room to pass.

  She took a deep breath and moved warily by him, clearly expecting him not to let her leave. When she had gone a few steps, she stopped. “It doesn’t matter to you that I hate you and your kind?”

  “What matters to me is that you don’t hate me as much as you wish you did,” he said.

  She looked at him a long moment, then turned abruptly and ran into the house.

  After a moment, Max sat down again and began to whittle, his mind firmly focused on the task. But he could only force his concentration on the wood for so long.

  You and your kind.

  John Howe had warned him of the dangers of becoming entangled with a Rebel woman. Clearly, it had been wasted advice.

  Maria sat at her father’s bedside, her heart still pounding.

  I didn’t deny it. Not once.

  And she should have. It didn’t matter that Max Woodard’s suspicions were correct. She should have told him he was wrong. She should have said how offended she was.

  Except that she hadn’t been offended. She had been shocked. It was incredible to her that he could have even made a guess about her condition, much less be so certain of it that he would suggest marriage. At the very least she should have made more of an attempt to leave. She should have called for help—done anything—to escape the humiliation of having him tell her that he knew.

  But she had simply been too exhausted to defend herself. She was still exhausted. She could hardly hold her head up, and she was only here now, playing the dutiful daughter at her father’s bedside, because she was mortified that she would encounter Max Woodard in the hallway.

  Her father was sleeping, and had been since shortly after the regimental surgeon had left. He didn’t need her presence. Thanks to whatever concoction the army doctor had given him, he wasn’t even aware that she was in the room. And the doctor had assigned not one, but two of his hospital orderlies to be on hand to assist with her father’s care. She hadn’t been able to find the will to protest that, either. She was slowly loosing control of everything in her life.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. She could hear the rain on the roof, and her mind immediately went to Suzanne and her lonely grave in the church cemetery. She had promised Suzanne she would always take care of the boys. She would never forgive Phelan for leaving the way he had. Never. Any more than she would forgive Billy.

  Max Woodard had been right about everything. About her pregnancy. About her losing the boys. About how very little time she had to make up her mind. He had been right about the other thing, as well. She didn’t hate him as much as she wished she did.

  Still, she couldn’t believe that he had actually proposed marriage, nor could she believe that what little indignation she could summon now was directed, not at his having offered, but at the way he’d done it, backing her into a corner with his cold logic and his Yankee arrogance the way he always did—and yet he had realized completely her need to evade Mrs. Russell for a time.

  She didn’t understand the man, and she didn’t understand herself. The reality was that however badly she’d wanted to run away from him just now, she had just as badly wante
d to stay, even knowing that he couldn’t be serious and that there was no “emotional attachment.” She would be a bigger fool if she believed him sincere than if she arbitrarily turned him down.

  She covered her face with her hands for a moment as she relived her humiliation. She had been so overwhelmed by everything else that she’d managed for days not to dwell on the coming child and what she would do.

  My poor baby.

  The encounter with Max Woodard had suddenly made it all real to her. A child. Her child. A son or a daughter.

  I don’t know what to do!

  Yes, she did. She would do what she should have done in the summer kitchen. She would tell Colonel Woodard that she would not marry him. If there was some money now, she would leave—and take the boys with her. There must be someplace she could go—

  Her father stirred, and she gave a heavy sigh. Perhaps she could take the children with her, but she couldn’t leave her father.

  She was trapped. There was no one she could turn to for help.

  No one.

  “I can’t think about this anymore,” she whispered.

  “Did you say something, Maria?” Mrs. Russell said behind her.

  “Yes—no. I—I’m so…”

  “Of course you are,” Mrs. Russell said. “Come away now. You must rest. Someone will call you if your father needs you.”

  “I can’t rest—”

  “Look at yourself, Maria. You don’t have a choice.”

  No choice, Maria thought. Exactly.

  She let Mrs. Russell lead her from the bedside with no more resistance than she’d given Max Woodard’s marriage proposal.

  How could she say yes to that ridiculous offer?

  And how could she say no.

  Chapter Twelve

  Maria slept much later than she’d expected. In fact, it was past noon when she awoke. Even so, she could have slept longer. She forced herself to sit on the side of the bed. All in all, she felt…better. Much better than yesterday.

  She washed the sleep from her eyes and dressed quickly in her everyday dress and pinafore, braiding her hair into one long braid she let hang down her back. She was hungry, as well, but she took the time to look at herself in the mirror before she went downstairs.