“That’s good to know.” She moved the other way, but he blocked her again.
Trying to ignore her racing pulse, she crossed her arms and looked into his deep blue eyes. That was the first mistake. The next was noticing that he hadn’t shaved today and he had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt.
She forgot that she was mad at him and found herself smiling back.
“It’s good to see you.”
She glanced behind him. “You’ve been in the tent.”
He scowled. “Unfortunately.”
She tried to focus. “It must be hot in there.”
“We’re going to have to move everyone inside.”
“Why is that?” The thought of all those soldiers inside the house was daunting to say the least.
“It’s going to rain.”
Arabella glanced toward the clear blue sky and squinted against the blazing sunlight. “Wishful thinking.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
She shrugged. “All right.” If he wanted to move all these men inside, then he would do it. She was quickly learning that if Augustus Townsend wanted something to happen, it happened.
“I wonder if there’s room.” She said out loud.
“I’ll keep them downstairs.”
She thought about her soft bed and how much she was looking forward to sleeping in it tonight. “That’s thoughtful.” She stood, her feet planted in place. It was pointless to try to move past him.
“There’s something else.”
“Okay.”
“I changed my mind.”
“About what?”
“About you looking pretty.”
Arabella’s stomach dropped. She ran one hand along her soiled skirt. She’d spent some time kneeling in the dirt next to the soldiers. And lowered the brim of her hat with her other hand. “I must look a sight.”
He laughed. “No. Not that. You’re beautiful. I mean. I want you to help me.”
She squinted at him. “What do you need help with?” Surely he didn’t think she could help move these men. She could barely navigate the skirts to move herself about. She vowed right then and there that if he was going to ask her to help move the men inside the house, she was going to change back into jeans.
“Help me tend the men. I need a nurse.”
“Ha. You just want me to faint again.”
He seemed to consider and she felt her face flush with the memory of being in his arms. And she realized she’d been the one to bring it up.
“Not really. I’ll be cautious about what I ask you to do. But you seem to do a better of distracting the men than Nathaniel while I stitch and such.”
Stitch and such. Dig bullets out of flesh. Amputate fingers. And all manner of unsavory procedures that she’d been hearing about all day. “Okay.”
Chapter 42
Augustus woke to the sound of birds chirping and the scent of bacon cooking. That meant his father would be heading out to the cotton fields soon and his sisters would be beginning the day’s lessons. Even now Adeline was practicing her piano. He knew it was his younger sister Adeline because when Allison played, it sounded like a two-year-old. But Adeline could play. And she was playing even better today than he’d ever heard her play.
He tried to remember what it was he had to do today. Were there any sick neighbors he needed to check in on? He had something he had to do, but he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around what it was.
He opened his eyes and struggled to orient himself.
This was not his bedroom.
And it was dusk, not early morning.
He had something to do, alright.
He’d fallen asleep wearing his clothes, covered with blood and with his boots on.
He was in the middle of a war. This stranger’s house had essentially become a hospital. The bottom of the house was overflowing with men lying in various states of illness or injury. So far, they’d managed to keep the hospital out of the second story of the house. It was mostly out of respect for the Becquerels who were not even home, but also for selfish reasons. He and Arabella needed a place to escape to. A place that didn’t smell like sickness and death.
Arabella. She worked tirelessly alongside him. Her ability to triage was unparalleled. She had some odd ideas about things, especially medicine, but they were saving more men than he’d expected.
Augustus swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.
The piano music he’d imagined was still playing. He strained his ears. He wasn’t imagining it. Someone was playing the piano and it wasn’t his sister. He didn’t recognize the song. Unlike the soulful music Adeline always chose, this music was uplifting.
He got up, splashed water on his face, changed into clean clothes, and followed the music downstairs. At the doorway to the parlor, he stopped, and leaned against the doorjamb. Half a dozen men, bandaged and bleeding, stood around the piano and several others, sitting on the floor, were staring toward the piano with rapt attention.
He shifted to see who was playing.
Arabella sat at the piano, her fingers moving deftly along the black and white keys.
Augustus’s heart tugged and he fell a little bit more for the strange beauty named Arabella.
Chapter 43
Arabella closed her eyes and, sweeping her fingers along the piano keys, allowed herself to be somewhere else. She was at home, in the parlor, taking a break from studying. It was evening, but her grandparents claimed to find her playing both entertaining and soothing. Her grandfather swore up and down that he’d rather spend an evening listening to her playing the piano than watching anything on television. They shared a fierce love of Frank Sinatra.
She lost herself in the sensation of being in a place long ago… yet so very far in the future, allowing the pain of loss to sweep through her, scraping against the edges of her raw emotions.
She finished up Frank Sinatra’s Young at Heart and moved seamlessly to New York, New York, pushing the pain away, pulling herself back to the less distressing present. Makeshift cots filled the bottom floor of the house. The music diminished the moans of men lying in various states of injury. A handful of men, disheveled in their war damaged states, stood around the piano perhaps seeking the music to lift their spirits and perhaps speed their recovery.
The music spilling from beneath her fingertips distracted Arabella from the pain and stench of injury all around her. Some antiseptic was badly needed. Unfortunately, it was about four years away from invention and even further away from widespread use.
After the sound of shuffling and male mumblings registered in her brain, she opened her eyes. Her mind froze, but her fingers kept moving automatically over the black and white keys.
Augustus stood in front of her, watching her from across the piano. She wasn’t sure if the other men had stepped away or if his presence merely overshadowed them. It didn’t matter.
She saw only him. Her fingers shifted as though of their own accord and without a hitch, she began playing the plaintive strains of Stardust, another of her Sinatra favorites.
Their gazes locked and the corners of his lips curved up at the edges in a small smile.
Her breath hitched, but she played the song through. With the last note, the music still lingering in the air, Arabella sat back, her hands in her lap.
Augustus came around the piano, his eyes never leaving hers until he stood about a foot away.
He held out his hand and putting her hand in his, she stood.
With her hand firmly in his grasp, he pulled her out the front door into the darkness of night. Arabella was reminded again. No streetlights. Only the moon to brighten their darkness.
“Did you know it’s a blue moon tonight?” He asked.
“A blue moon.” She leaned over the railing, but the moon was hidden by the clouds.
“It means it’s the second full moon this month.”
“I don’t even know what day it is, much less what the moon is doing.”<
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He laughed and pulled her with him to sit on the porch swing. “Tell me something.”
She turned her head and saw that his face was only inches from hers. “What do want to know?”
“Where are you from?”
A spark of panic shot through her. This was what she’d feared. What she hadn’t decided how to answer. The truth was always a good place to start. “Baton Rouge.”
“You said you’re unmarried?”
“Yes.” She thought about her fiancé. And tamped down the surge of guilt about not even having thought about him in days.
“How is that possible?”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “You seem to attract a large number of admirers.”
She scoffed. So he seemed to think. “Probably because I’m the only female around.”
He laughed. “I don’t think that’s it.”
It wasn’t like this at home. In her time. In her time, she barely had time to acknowledge men. In fact, most of the men she was in contact with were automatically disqualified as potential love interests. As her favorite professor always said, clients are not a dating pool. Nor were colleagues.
Whatever it was, she had no interest in spending time with any of them… except maybe the one she was sitting next to.
As the thought took shape in her mind, he shifted his head and pressed his lips lightly against hers. Held them there.
The world melted away and the only thing she was aware of was the tingles of pleasure that pulsed through her.
He pulled back enough to look into her eyes.
This can’t be happening.
This is the past.
Chapter 44
Arabella was an angel in the moonlight. His great-grandmother had an old saying. True love only comes along once in a blue moon. He’d never taken her literally. He knew that she meant true love only comes rarely. But in this instant, the literal meaning was enmeshed with the metaphorical.
Her lips were so soft just as he’d expected. And she hadn’t resisted him. He took that as a positive sign. She was an addiction. An intoxicating drink he couldn’t get enough of. He’d thought that true love had passed him by.
But in this inane war, he’d found love.
“I don’t think we should do this,” she said.
Every bubble of hope he held crashed at his feet. He looked away, staring unseeing into the night.
Such was the way of it. The woman he loved didn’t return his favor. “I must apologize.”
“Please don’t. Please… I”
He turned his gaze back to her. “I understand.”
“No. It’s just. I live so far away. I don’t know how it would work.”
“Yet you’re here now.”
“Yes.” Her statement came on a breath and she swayed toward him. He wrapped his arms around her and then their lips were locked.
He just held her, enjoying the sensation, not pressing for more. Arabella was a woman to savored like a fine wine.
He smiled at himself, his lips moving against hers.
She pulled back. “What? You’re smiling.”
“I’m happy.”
She returned his smile. “I’m happy too.”
Then their lips were on each other’s again and time stood still.
Chapter 45
Arabella was lost in the moment. She may be from far, far in the future, but his man was here. Right now. And she wanted to get lost in his arms. Lost in his kiss. Lost in him.
She’d never felt this kind of intensity before. This all consuming passion. This desire to never stop kissing him.
She felt his lips curve into a smile against hers. And, yes, she was happy. Happy to be kissing him. Happy to be here with him in this moment.
It didn’t matter how she got here or where she was supposed to be. All she knew was that she was where she wanted to be in this moment.
A happy place.
He put an arm beneath her knees and pulled her legs across his lap. In the process, he leaned her back, his arm a cushion for her neck. With the slow moment of the swing, and his lips against hers she felt like she was floating.
This, she thought. This is what love feels like. This is what brings people to their knees. Arabella had managed to keep herself emotionally distant from people in spite of her ability to empathize with others. She could offer the practical side to helping people move on from the abyss created in their lives from the absence of love. From this.
Would she be able to do that now, she wondered idly. Or would her level of emotions be forever warped by this experience.
And did it matter? There was no way to know if she would return to her time. There was no way to know if her skills would be needed again. Was it ethical for her to practice psychology in the state of Mississippi? She almost laughed out loud. There was no field of psychology in this time. She was free to do whatever she wanted.
Her feeling of floating intensified and Augustus moved his kisses to the corner of her lips, setting every nerve on fire, then across her cheek to lick lightly at her earlobe.
It occurred to Arabella in that moment, that perhaps she had died and was in heaven.
Chapter 46
The hours turned into days and the days into weeks. Vicksburg was under heavy siege and there was nothing they could do to help. The rains continued keeping injured soldier cooped inside the house. Those that got better moved outside to tents, but without adequate care they seemed to either die or return to the make-shift hospital. Then there were the others. The injured soldiers who found their way to them.
Augustus had thrown many blue jackets into the flames to keep others from knowing which side they fought on. Even so, he wasn’t so sure it mattered. The soldiers there in the house under his care were merely trying to survive. They didn’t have the strength to fight anyone or anything other than death itself.
Arabella had become his constant companion. She’d held soldiers’ hands while he stitched up wounds… while he amputated limbs. And not once had she fainted.
They had fallen into a routine. They worked tirelessly during the day, then ate in the kitchen in the evenings. After supper, sometimes she would play the piano, but often they sat on the porch swing and watched the darkness envelope the land. Those were the best times. Those were the times he could steal kisses. No matter how many he stole, he wanted more.
And they talked. They talked about everything and nothing.
Tonight was no different. Tonight they talked about the war.
Arabella lay with her head in his lap. He toyed with her incredibly soft hair as he listened to her soothing voice.
“How do you know it’s not all in vain?”
“The war?” He dragged his fingers out of her hair and caressed her cheeks. “You mean the war has no value?”
He felt her expression brighten beneath his fingertips. He’d picked up some of her vernacular. She told him she’d studied abroad, but when pushed, she wouldn’t give him any additional information. It explained in his mind her odd language and at times odd thoughts.
“Exactly. How do you know it has no value?”
“I don’t know if war ever has value. It’s something men do. Something they have to do. Without war, men would all be fops like the English.”
She laughed. “You’re saying it keeps their testosterone down.”
“Their testo…”
“You know, their need to be aggressive. You’re a doctor.”
He cleared his throat. A lady wasn’t supposed to know of such things, certainly not an unmarried lady. He knew of the testes and their role in sexuality, but he’d never heard of anything called testowhateveritwas. Another of her odd words. He supposed she made them up based off of what she knew which was a great deal. “Yes. I do believe that it gives men something to live for.”
“The irony.”
“Yes. The downside is that people die. If only there were a way for men to battle without actually having to die.”
She tipped her head back and gazed at him. “You’re a man ahead of your time.”
She’d told him that twice now. The first time was when he insisted on washing his blade between patients.
“Anyway.” She entwined her fingers with his free hand. “I hope that your efforts are remembered.”
“Why is that?”
“Hundreds of Americans are dying. Don’t you want our country’s history to be remembered?”
“I don’t care if no one remembers me in two hundred years. I don’t even care if they remember this inane war. In fact, I hope they don’t. There are some things best forgotten. I just try to do the best I can during the life I have to life. I want to make someone’s life better. If I can make just one person’s life better, I’ve made my life meaningful.”
“You’re an unusual man Doctor Colonel Augustus Townsend.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but he loved hearing his name on her lips. And he especially loved it when she called him Doctor Colonel or Colonel Doctor which she did frequently, interchanging the order at random.
Chapter 47
While Arabella changed her dress for dinner, she wondered as she always did when choosing one from many gowns, about her mother. Did these dresses truly belong to her mother? And if so, how had Arabella ended up in the twentieth century?
Not only was time travel itself illogical, but this situation was inexplicable.
Pulling on a blue dress she hadn’t worn before after peeling off one covered in blood and grime, she was thankful for the freed servants who had stayed around to help out. Without them all pulling together to keep the household together, caring for the soldiers would have been impossible.
Though she knew others that did, Arabella never thought of them as slaves. The whole slavery thing was too preposterous to even entertain. Besides, the war wasn’t about slavery. It was about states rights. All the soldiers she talked to knew that. She hadn’t heard a single man say anything about owning slaves. Even Augustus said that his family hired workers of all races to help them out on their plantation. History got so many things twisted up.
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