The Bride Fair

by Cheryl Reavis

  “How did we ever get here—you and I?” he said against her ear.

  “I don’t know—I don’t know—”

  His mouth found hers, and he kissed her deeply, fumbling to get her out of the clothes he had been too aroused to worry about earlier. He wanted nothing between them this time. Skin to skin, perhaps heart to heart.

  The storm was closer now. Thunder rumbled overhead. He could hear the rain begin to fall. But, for once, the storm without had no meaning for him. There was only the storm within.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Smitten.

  Max turned the word over in his mind, trying to decide exactly what it meant in his particular case.

  Outwardly, except for the addition of the Hansen woman and the two boys to the household, nothing appeared to have significantly changed since the marriage. Mr. Markham’s health neither improved nor deteriorated, and Max followed the same daily routine as when he first arrived. Because he needed a quiet place to work, he reclaimed the front bedchamber as soon as his mother and Kate left to return home and ultimately to join his father in London. He went to military headquarters in the morning—except when he had his staff meetings in the dining room—and he came back home again as soon as his duties permitted. During the daytime and in the presence of others, it was as if he and Maria had arrived at some kind of unspoken, mutual agreement to give the appearance that their relationship was as formal and restrained as it had been before the marriage.

  But at night—ah, God, at night.

  From the very first, he had intended his alliance with Maria to be a straightforward business arrangement, one which allowed him certain sexual privileges. But the passion they shared when they were finally alone was beyond his wildest expectations. Sometimes she came to him when he was working late on some impossible bureaucratic tangle. He would look up from his papers and find her standing there in her nightdress and bare feet, with no shame whatsoever as to why she had come. Knowing that she desired him in that way was an incredible compliment to him. He basked in it, and he simply couldn’t get enough of her.

  Smitten.

  If that was his condition, then there was more to it than just the lovemaking. He liked being in Maria’s company—he had always liked being in her company, even when he was doing his best to “inconvenience” her. He liked living with her and the boys. He even liked spending time with her father.

  Maria was proving to be a great help to him regarding the occupation, explaining the intricate relationships of the people in this town. Who got along and who didn’t. Who owed favors to whom, and who carried lifelong grudges—and why. She explained the fine points of the pecking order that he himself would have missed, and his knowing these things did much to put the occupation on a more even keel.

  His very life was on a more even keel—because of her. He found that he wanted to take care of her, feed her, clothe her, take her any place she wanted to go. He wanted to keep her safe and well and happy.

  And he wanted not to think about the father of her child.

  She was always on his mind—like now—when he should be working or at least giving the appearance that he was.

  He realized that Perkins had come to stand in the doorway, but he didn’t immediately acknowledge his presence. Instead he abruptly decided that he’d had enough of the army and its doings for one afternoon.

  “I’m going home for a while,” Max said. He opened a drawer in his desk to retrieve the cloth sack that held the two trains he’d finally finished whittling for Joe and Jake.

  “Yes, Sir,” Perkins said in such a way that Max looked up at him.

  “What are you grinning at?”

  “Nothing, Sir. It’s a fine day for going home. Yes, Sir, I’d say it was a very fine day.”

  “You mind your own damn business, all right?”

  “Yes, Sir!” Perkins assured him.

  Max didn’t smile until he’d reached the street. He really wasn’t planning on going home in the middle of the day for that reason—but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to be alert to the possibility. All he had to do was find Maria then outwit Warrie Hansen, two small boys, Bruno, and Mr. Markham—and anyone else in town who might be wandering through the household.

  He’d faced worse odds in his time.

  He rode down Main Street and on to Innes Street, spurring his horse into a cantor and appreciating the fine afternoon. Several people nodded as he passed, people who, before the wedding, would have turned away.

  His mount was in high spirits, and Max gave him his head, arriving at the Markham house at a gallop, scattering dust and chickens all the way.

  He expected to find Maria in the summer kitchen this time of day, but it was empty. He could hear Warrie and the boys somewhere in the house. Sack in hand, he went back inside and hurried up the back stairs. He looked in on Mr. Markham and found him—and Bruno—napping in the cross breeze from the open windows.

  He continued down the wide hallway straight to Maria’s bedchamber. She wasn’t there. He stared at the bed for a moment, wondering idly if he would ever look at rose petals in the same way again. Then he moved to the window. He saw Maria standing at the far edge of the yard. She was talking to a man.

  No. He realized immediately. Not “a man.” Phelan Canfield.

  In the weeks since the wedding, Max had all but forgotten about him. He stood for a moment, watching, then abruptly turned and went downstairs. There would be no more trying to eavesdrop on Canfield’s conversations with Maria. He would confront the man and find out firsthand what he was doing here.

  Warrie and the boys were in the kitchen now. He went immediately to the window, but he couldn’t see Maria from this vantage point. Both boys grabbed him around his legs, nearly toppling him.

  “Whoa!” he said, reaching down to touch them both. “Now what are you two up to?”

  “We went to Mrs. Kinnard’s house,” Joe said. “She’s got cake.”

  “I’ll bet she does,” Max said. “Did she give you any?”

  “No,” Joe said morosely. “We were too wild.”

  “I see. Well, sometimes it works out that way. You get too wild, you don’t get cake.” He disengaged himself from the boys’ grasp, intending to go outside.

  “Colonel,” Mrs. Hansen said, putting herself between him and the back door. “Would you stay awhile? The boys have missed you today.”

  Max looked at her. She was lying.

  “Please, Sir,” she said, her voice gone urgent now. “For them?”

  “Mrs. Hansen, I don’t—”

  “Please. Maria will be here in a minute,” she said pointedly, and what he was supposed to take from that, he wasn’t quite sure. Except that she didn’t want him going out to where Maria was.

  “Here I am,” Maria said suddenly from the doorway. “Are you looking for me?” she asked. She appeared rushed, flustered, but she was smiling as if she were glad to see him. There was that, then. In spite of whatever Phelan Canfield was up to, she was glad to see him.

  Or was she?

  She began to move busily around the kitchen, but she was distracted in a way that reminded him of the night they’d announced their engagement. She kept picking up things and then didn’t seem to know what she intended to do with them.

  “Will you eat with us, Maxwell?” she asked after a moment.

  “No—I have to get back. I just came to bring the boys something.”

  “What is it!” Joe cried, and both of them had him around the knees again. He handed the sack with the trains to Warrie.

  “Mrs. Hansen will have to say if you’ve been too bad to have it. Can you do that, Mrs. Hansen?”

  “Lordy, Colonel Woodard, these are not bad boys—they’re just boys, that’s all. Acacia Kinnard just don’t know a thing about how they are. Come along, Joe—Jake. Let’s us go up and find us a nap.”

  The boys groaned in unison, and Max smiled.

  “Of course, we will be looking into this sack first,” Warrie told them and w
as nearly rushed off her feet for it.

  Max stood watching until they disappeared up the back stairs.

  “So what have you been doing today?” he asked Maria, watching her closely, waiting for her to tell him about Canfield.

  “Well…making watermelon syrup,” she said, busy again doing things that didn’t need doing.

  “I don’t think I know what that is.”

  “You would if you’d gone without sugar for years,” she said. She made an attempt to smile and didn’t quite make it this time.

  “Maria—”

  “Colonel Woodard!” someone called from outside.

  Max walked to the kitchen doorway.

  “Patrol’s back, Sir!” one of his men called. “They got Julian!”

  Julian.

  Yet another plague Max had tried to keep from intruding upon his post-wedding bliss. He still had men out looking for the son of a bitch.

  “Keep him under lock and key,” Max said. “I’ll be there shortly.”

  “He’s raising hell, Sir.”

  “Let him,” Max said. “Bring my mount around before you leave.”

  He looked at Maria. He couldn’t tell if she was paying attention to the exchange.

  “I have to go,” Max said. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

  She nodded absently, then looked at him. “They say you aren’t going to do anything—about Julian.”

  “Who says?”

  “People.”

  “You mean the people who intercept the military telegrams? Those people?” Or Phelan Canfield.

  Maria ignored the question. “Are you going to let Julian go?”

  “Yes,” he said, because he didn’t want to lie to her. Julian had friends in high places, and Max had gotten the word early that morning that the man was to be allowed to move about the state unmolested by the military.

  “Then why even bother locking him up—if it’s all just for show?”

  “I can’t hang the bastard—but I can worry him, and I will.”

  “Suzanne is dead because of him.”

  “Yes,” he said again.

  Maria looked at him a long moment, then turned away.

  “Maria, are you all right?” he asked, giving her one last chance to tell him about Canfield.

  She gave a small sigh. “Just a bit of a headache,” she said. “That’s all.”

  He waited a moment longer, but she didn’t say anything more. She didn’t even tell him goodbye.

  He left the house, looking for some sign of Canfield as he did so. He saw Mrs. Russell driving her buggy along the street. And if she intended to stop, it was clear that she wasn’t going to do it until after he had gone.

  He rode back to headquarters with but one thought on his mind.

  Why didn’t Maria tell him Canfield was here?

  Surely they had reached a place in their relationship where she could do that. Surely she didn’t consider him an outsider in this matter, at least. The boys were important to him, and he to them. He had a right to know what had brought Canfield back here. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be his children. The boys didn’t know their father was skulking about—but Warrie Hansen did, and she’d clearly wanted to keep it from them.

  There were no answers Max could reach logically, no matter how much he worried the facts as he knew them. He would have to ask Maria—and he intended to do so as soon as he got home.

  He put off dealing with Julian—too long if Perkins’s fidgeting was any indication. By not letting the man go, Max was flying in the face of an official decree from the duly elected governor of this state—and it made his sergeant major more than a little nervous.

  Or perhaps it was the mood Max had been in since he’d returned.

  Perkins disappeared from the outer hall, only to reappear again almost immediately.

  “Sir, Mrs. Russell is asking to see you,” he said.

  “De Graff’s Mrs. Russell?”

  “That’s the one, Sir. She’s riled up about something—won’t tell me a thing. Just that’s she’s got to see you—and right now.”

  “All right. Send her up here,” Max said. There was no point in making any more of an enemy of the woman than she already was.

  He put some papers away, and when he looked up again she was standing at the doorway with clearly no intention of coming any farther.

  “Your wife is ill,” she said without prelude.

  “What?”

  “I think you heard me, Colonel. I suggest you go home.”

  With that she turned and left, going down the stairs as noiselessly as she’d come up them.

  “Mrs. Russell!” he called after her, but she didn’t stop.

  Max stood, annoyed by the woman’s sense of the dramatic.

  “You want me to find the surgeon, Sir?” Perkins said in the doorway, eavesdropping as always.

  “No,” Max said. He had no idea what was wrong—if anything. “Yes,” he amended immediately, because his annoyance had become cold fear. “Tell him what Mrs. Russell said and send him to the house.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  But Major Strauss was already at the Markham house when Max arrived. Warrie Hansen waited on the front porch, both boys clinging to her skirts.

  “What’s wrong, Mrs. Hansen?”

  “Lordy, Colonel Woodard, I don’t know. Maria was talking to Mrs. Russell and she just keeled over. I thought it was another of them faints like she’s been having, but she was burning up with fever and she didn’t seem to know where she was. Mr. Markham’s orderly—that Bruno—he carried her upstairs. He said he didn’t like the looks of her one bit, and he went for your doctor—”

  “Major Strauss,” Max said.

  “That’s the one. He’s been up there awhile. He said you was to wait here until he come down again.”

  Max had no intention of waiting—until he saw the boys’ faces. He immediately knelt down and held out his arms for both of them to come to him.

  “Maria wouldn’t get up,” Joe said, his mouth quivering, and Jake began to cry loudly.

  “I know,” Max said, holding them both. He wanted to say something comforting, but they already knew the harsh realities of life. He didn’t dare tell them everything would be all right.

  “Here’s the doctor,” Mrs. Hansen said. “I’ll keep the boys out here.”

  Max went inside immediately. “Strauss—what’s wrong?”

  “Typhoid fever,” the major said bluntly.

  “And?”

  “And you know as well as I do that time will tell. With good care, we can be hopeful. Fortunately, there are no added stresses.”

  “Stresses?”

  “Like a recent illness. Or pregnancy. All her energies can go into recovering.”

  “And if she is pregnant?”

  “An early pregnancy would probably not—”

  “If it’s not that early,” Max interrupted, looking Strauss directly in the eyes.

  “Then the situation is more dire,” the man said after a moment. “You can go up to see her now, but don’t expect her to know you.”

  Max nodded, and Strauss waited until he was halfway up the stairs.

  “Colonel Woodard,” the man said. “She will likely lose the child.”

  Max continued up the stairs. He could see Bruno standing in the doorway to Mr. Markham’s room, and he wondered if Strauss had spoken to Maria’s father.

  Maria.

  She had been put to bed, in the same bed he’d been more than happy to share with her since they’d married. He was surprised to find Mrs. Russell in the room. And Mrs. Justice.

  He didn’t speak to either of them. He pulled up the chair that must have been provided for Strauss and his examination and sat down, taking Maria’s hand in his.

  “Maria,” he whispered, his face close to hers. Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t open them. He sat there a long time. Looking at her, trying to find a way around his fear. If she died…

  “Maria,” he sai
d out loud, reaching to stroke her face. She was burning with fever. She moved her head restlessly on the pillow, but that was all.

  “Mrs. Russell, where can I find a woman to act as nurse—”

  “There will be no need, Colonel,” she said, and at first Max thought she meant because the situation was so hopeless.

  “Mrs. Justice and I will be here to see after her—so that Mrs. Hansen can take care of the boys and the household. Some of the other ladies from the church will help, as well. We want no strangers taking care of our Maria.”

  Her none too subtle message wasn’t lost on him.

  Strangers.

  Like himself.

  “Whatever you need…” he began, but he couldn’t quite finish, because he was overwhelmed suddenly by the ache in his throat. He gave a sharp breath and struggled for control.

  “The doctor left a list of things,” Mrs. Justice said.

  “Give it to Sergeant Major Perkins,” Max said after a moment. “I expect he is downstairs by now.”

  She quietly left the room. Mrs. Russell hesitated, then followed.

  “Maria,” he whispered urgently as soon as the door closed. “Stay with me. Can you hear me? Stay with me!”

  But she didn’t hear him, nor did he really think that she would. He had witnessed the stages of this disease many times when he was in the prison. He knew what to expect. Fever. Delirium. Terrible pain.

  He couldn’t bear to just stand by and let Maria suffer like that.

  “Give her something to ease her, damn it!” he said to Strauss at one point.

  “Enough to take the pain away is enough to kill her, Colonel,” Strauss said.

  By evening Maria’s condition had grown worse. Max kept a vigil at her bedside—in spite of Mrs. Russell’s disapproval. He didn’t care about the Russell woman. He only cared about his wife.

  Wife.

  It had taken only a little time for her to become that to him, and he couldn’t bear the thought that it might all end.

  He delegated his military duties to his staff and did what he could. He lost all track of time. He sponged her to help keep her cool; spoon fed her water and broth and the chocolate concoction Strauss recommended; did battle with Mrs. Russell to keep her from cutting off all Maria’s beautiful hair. People came and went—women who wouldn’t leave Maria to the care of a stranger.