by Regina Scott
“Even the partner,” Hank put in. “I thought the body we found burned was Pike’s. Since he’s obviously alive, it had to have been McCoy, the guide who went out with Colonel Coleridge.”
“Bad business all around,” the commanding officer said. “My condolences, Captain. Would you prefer I explain the matter to your family?”
“No, thank you, sir,” Ben said. “I’ll do it. And after that, with your permission, I’d like a cavalry detail to go after Pike.”
Yearling spread his hands. “Much as I’d like to see the fellow punished, he could be anywhere.”
Hank shook his head. “Not likely. He’s either on his way east, then southwest to Prescott as he told you to make sure no one else has staked a claim in the area, or he’s on his way back to the gold to protect his find. Since we didn’t catch sight of him coming back, I’m leaning toward Prescott.”
Yearling seemed to consider that, mustache wiggling as if he chewed on the matter.
“Very well,” he finally said. “I’ll have six men ready to accompany you in the morning, Captain. Dismissed.”
Hank walked Ben out. “I hope you’ll let me make the seventh. I’d like to see Pike brought to justice too.”
“What about Dot?” Ben asked as they came out onto the parade ground.
“I’m sure she’d be delighted to make your eighth man.”
Ben laughed. “She probably would. And we’d eat better too. But I doubt the Army will requisition a cook.”
“A shame,” Hank said with a sigh. He cast Ben a look. “Nor a photographer, I gather.”
Ben paused and rubbed his neck. “I don’t know what to do about Meg. I can’t take her with me on this assignment. She may not be willing to stay at the fort until I get back. I asked her to marry me, but she refused.”
“You do have a way with the ladies,” Hank joked.
“If only that were true. Besides, there’s only one lady whose good opinion I crave.”
Hank nodded toward the officers’ quarters, where Diana had come out into the sunlight as if searching for Ben. “Only one?”
Ben sighed. “Tell Meg I’ll come by this evening.”
Hank nodded, and Ben went to join his sister.
She linked arms with him the moment he was close enough. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
“Me too, though I think I brought a few visitors back with me.” He scratched at his uniform, which seemed far more prickly than usual.
Diana hastily disengaged. “Forgive me. You wanted to clean up first.”
“Perhaps it’s better if we talk,” Ben said.
Diana backed away. “No, no. Mother would have apoplexy if you came inside in all your travel dirt. Surely whatever you have to tell us can wait.”
He nodded again, feeling craven for taking the excuse to escape his duty. Still, he couldn’t help remembering another lady who had had no trouble being at his side, dirt or no dirt.
By the time dinner rolled around, Ben was exhausted. He’d washed and shaved and put on his dress uniform. The man who looked back at him from the mirror was hollow cheeked and weary eyed. But he was in no worse spirits than his mother and Diana after he went to break the news about the Colonel. His mother’s reserve had cracked at last, and she had sobbed on Diana’s shoulder while his sister sat, lips trembling and face pale, all her usual brightness extinguished.
“I’m sure Colonel Yearling would understand if you wanted privacy tonight,” Ben had told them both.
His mother had raised her head. “We are Coleridges. We will do our duty.”
He hadn’t argued. She needed something to cling to, and there were worse things than duty.
The officers’ mess was a small room off the main hallway of the quarters. A white cloth draped the table, and china plates replaced the tin used by the enlisted men. Colonel Yearling must have ordered his other officers to eat elsewhere, for though there were multiple chairs at the table, he was the only one in the room as they entered. He rose from the head of the table and came to meet Ben’s mother.
“Mrs. Coleridge, may I extend my condolences? You are as gallant as the Colonel always said for joining us tonight.”
His mother inclined her head and allowed him to lead her to the seat at his right. Ben led Diana to sit at his left. Before he could take the chair beside her, however, a sound came from the open door.
Turning, he found Meg standing there. Her hair was piled up behind her and confined with silver combs that must have belonged to Dot. The blue and white dress outlined her curves, made her eyes blaze green. She was every bit the beauty he remembered from West Point, and so much more.
“I was feeling up to it after all,” she said. “I hope you’ll allow me to join you.”
Meg kept smiling politely as they all looked her way. Dot had convinced her to come.
“You mean you refused a good meal out of pride?” she’d demanded when Meg had attempted to explain why even her borrowed finery would not make her an acceptable dinner companion.
“It’s not pride,” Meg had protested, a little stung by the accusation. “Ben and his family really don’t want me there.”
“Says you,” Dot had retorted. “I know the Captain. He wants you at his side. He needs your support now.”
And that idea, far-fetched as it had seemed, had been what had encouraged her to cross the parade ground, enter the officers’ quarters, and knock at the door of the mess.
Mrs. Coleridge’s frown almost had her turning heel, but Ben came to take her hand. She hadn’t seen him in his dress uniform before, but the tailored navy wool frock coat with its brass buttons sat well on him.
“Meg, thank you.”
The relief in his voice buoyed her, and she allowed him to escort her to her seat.
Next to his mother.
Meg tried not to look at her as she sat. The colonel and Ben sat as well, Ben directly across from Meg.
“What a pleasure having three lovely ladies at my table,” Colonel Yearling said with a smile all around. He tapped his glass with his knife, making the crystal chime, and two of his men began bringing in the food. One hurried to set a place for Meg. She hardly noticed. Just the sight of the chicken and dumplings made her stomach rumble. As if she’d heard it, Mrs. Coleridge shifted away from her.
Colonel Yearling said the blessing and began serving them. Meg certainly wasn’t going to pick at the meal, as her aunt insisted, not after starvation rations the last few days. It was all she could do not to gulp down the food and demand more.
Ben was eating nearly as quickly and taking long drinks from his glass of lemonade.
“I apologize, Colonel Yearling,” his mother said with a frown at her son. “It seems the Captain has forgotten his manners since arriving at your fort.”
Meg stiffened at the criticism, but Ben merely smiled at his mother. “Forgive me, Mother, but this is manna after the rabbit and miner’s lettuce we ate the last two weeks.”
His mother sniffed, but Diana glanced from him to Meg, eyes shining like silver in the candlelight. “I think you were both tremendously brave. I don’t know whether I could have lived that way.”
“It’s surprising what you can make do with when needs demand,” Colonel Yearling said. “More chicken, Mrs. Coleridge?”
“No, thank you,” she said, then dabbed at her stern lips with the linen napkin.
“What did you think of the canyon, Miss Pero?” Diana asked from across the table. “I understand it’s quite something.”
“Words cannot do it justice,” Meg told her.
“But Meg’s pictures can,” Ben said. “I understand from Private Meadows that one survived.”
Meg nodded, warm just remembering. “The window to heaven.”
His smile brightened the room.
“Window to heaven?” Diana asked.
“A unique formation,” Ben explained. “Picture a mighty outcropping of red stone, pierced by a hole. Meg caught it aflame with the setting sun. I can hardly wait to
see what the public makes of it.”
Colonel Yearling frowned. “The public? The picture was taken during an Army survey. That makes it government property.”
Meg shook her head, but Ben jumped into the fray. “Sir, I must protest. That picture is all Miss Pero has to show from this venture. Her cameras and equipment were all destroyed in the fire.”
He was so determined to protect her. How could she not admire that?
As Colonel Yearling’s frown deepened, Meg leaned forward. “Actually, sir, there should be a contract on file from when I was hired. I think you’ll find that, while I will supply the Army with prints of any photographs taken during the expedition, all negatives remain my property. I supplied the plates, after all. You’ll find Mr. O’Sullivan with the Wheeler survey has a similar agreement.”
His face relaxed, and he nodded. “Very well, Miss Pero. I’ll look forward to seeing a print of this heavenly window.”
Ben beamed at her, as if he’d known she would win the argument.
The colonel turned to Ben’s mother. “Forgive my intrusion at this difficult time, Mrs. Coleridge, but have you considered your plans?”
Very likely the fellow was hoping to move back into his own quarters soon. After all, Mrs. Coleridge had no more reason to stay. And, with her husband gone, her connection with the Army would grow tenuous. Despite her feelings toward the woman, Meg’s heart ached for her loss.
Mrs. Coleridge kept her head high and her smile pleasant as she turned from the commanding officer to her son. “I imagine that will be up to the Captain. We always moved at the Colonel’s pleasure. Now I expect we will move at his.”
Had the Colonel failed to make arrangements for them in the event of his death? Had she no home to return to? What a burden to place on Ben!
“I’ll be at Fort Wilverton until I receive my next orders,” he told her. “We’ll talk when I return from my current assignment.”
Meg paused, fork halfway to mouth. “You’re not going back to the canyon?”
“No, indeed,” Colonel Yearling answered for him. “Captain Coleridge is leading a detail to apprehend Mr. Pike.”
The food held no more interest. She lowered her fork and sat quietly. Conversation ebbed and flowed around her. Ben’s mother and sister did not seem overly concerned about the colonel’s announcement. All Meg could think about was that Ben was leaving. With a detail of cavalrymen at his side, the danger was possibly minimal. But Pike had proved crafty, and he would be desperate. If something happened to Ben . . .
“Meg?”
She blinked. He must have asked her a question, for his brows were up, his head cocked just the slightest. Everyone else was watching her, as if waiting for her answer. His mother looked the most displeased, likely because Ben had used Meg’s first name.
“Yes?” Meg asked.
His smile inched up. “May I walk you back to the Newcombs’?”
Relief and pleasure crested in waves. “Yes, of course.”
“You must get some rest, Captain,” his mother put in. “You have a duty tomorrow.”
One that did not include Meg.
“I’ll be fine, Mother,” Ben said. “But thank you for your concern.”
They left a short time later. She felt his mother’s gaze on her as they started across the parade ground. The moon was riding high on feathery clouds, turning the red soil to silver. Voices echoed here and there—the watch reporting, a sergeant calling for a private’s aid.
“She hates me,” Meg said.
Ben glanced at her with a frown. “Who?”
“Your mother.”
He chuckled. “She doesn’t hate you. She just has high expectations, of everyone.”
Expectations Meg would never meet. “How do you deal with it?”
“Mostly, I’ve managed to meet them,” he said, moonlight reflecting in his hair. “But when I don’t, I try to remind myself there’s only one person I need to please.”
“The Colonel,” she said.
He stopped short of the door to Dot and Hank’s home. The curtain twitched as if hastily being put back into place. Meg hid her smile.
“You know,” Ben said, one foot up on the stoop, “for a long time, that’s what I thought. Like Mother and Diana, I moved where my father moved, associated with those he pointed out, followed his least advice. As I grew older, I resented the way he loomed over my life. I realized in the canyon that I’d made him into a godlike figure. But he was just a man, and one who made mistakes. His last one cost him his life.”
She had to touch him, going so far as to rest a hand on his arm. It was firm and strong beneath the navy wool.
“There’s only one who matters, Meg,” he murmured. “And he forgives our mistakes freely. All we have to do is do our best. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”
Do her best. That was something she’d done all her life. She felt as if he’d opened the shutter on her camera, widening her view. All this time, she’d focused on the differences between her and Mrs. Coleridge, the differences between the woman she thought Ben’s mother wanted him to marry and the woman Meg knew herself to be. Perhaps she didn’t have to measure up to Mrs. Coleridge’s expectations any more than she measured up to society’s. Perhaps the only expectations that mattered were God’s.
Love him.
Love others.
Be her best self.
That she was capable of doing. Amazing grace indeed. Had Papa known that too? Perhaps that was why he had favored the song.
“Thank you,” she told Ben. “I’ll try to remember that.”
His hand rose to touch her cheek, the movement slow, soft. “I don’t know how long I’ll be away, Meg. Would you stay on at the fort and wait for me? I know you refused my proposal, but I believe we can find a way back to each other. I’m not willing to give up. Are you?”
“No,” she said, heart full. “But you’ll have to be patient. I feel as if I’ve stretched myself wider than ever, and it scares me.”
“What could possibly scare the intrepid Meg Pero?” he asked, but he gathered her close, sheltered her in his arms, as if prepared to protect her from whatever concerned her. She clung to him, breathing in the leather and wool scent that was an Army officer, imagined she heard his heart beating in time with hers. He had seen her at her worst—dirty, prideful, even fearful—and still wanted to court her. It was time she took a chance on what might be.
“I’ll be here when you get back,” she promised. If she had to fight the entire U.S. Army to do so.
29
Meg began her new life the very next morning. Head high, she stood next to Diana and her mother to wave the cavalry and Ben off. Private Larson made one of the detail.
“He wanted justice,” Meadows told Meg as they turned from the parade ground, Corporal Adams behind her. Both the young private and the corporal seemed to think it their duty to help her while Ben was gone, and the commendation Meadows had earned for bravery seemed to have loosened his tongue at last. “I reckon after the way those Johnny Rebs burned his town, he doesn’t take well to bullies.”
Neither did Ben. He was determined to bring Pike back. Meg tried not to think of the many ways he might be injured, ways that were far too real to her now that she’d lived through them.
In the meantime, she kept busy. She helped Hank and Adams go through the notes from the survey, filling in pieces they had overlooked. The supply office had small amounts of the chemicals she needed, and Hank rigged her up a dark room, so she could develop the stereograph and make multiple prints of a single frame.
“Oh, how amazing!” Diana exclaimed when Meg gave Ben’s sister a copy. “You’re right. It is like peering into the sky. Look, Mother.”
Mrs. Coleridge gazed down at the print, then up at Meg. “You took this?”
“She was the expedition photographer, Mother,” Diana pointed out.
“Very nice,” Mrs. Coleridge said, and Meg had never felt more pleased by praise.
In t
he limited society of the fort, it was all too easy to spend time with Ben’s mother and sister. Diana also introduced her to the other women at the fort over tea. One was the fifteen-year-old daughter of a major. The other two were wives of cavalry officers. Meg was determined to be herself, so much so that she wore her navy riding habit, which Dot and she had repaired, replacing the wool skirt with one of denim.
Mrs. Wilkins, the oldest at about Dot’s age, smoothed back her impeccably coiled gray hair as she picked up her teacup and held it precisely over her brown silk dress. “I heard you lost everything on that expedition. Ladies, we must do something.”
Miss Perkins nodded, flaxen curls bouncing. “I’ll help. I have some nice emerald-colored wool put by.”
“And I have some copper buttons left for a coat,” the curvaceous Mrs. Bateman put in.
“Just the thing,” Mrs. Wilkins agreed. She turned to Meg. “Would you mind terribly if we made you another dress, dear? Or would you prefer another riding habit?”
Mrs. Coleridge, who had said little until now, glanced up from her tea with a frown.
“A riding habit would be more practical,” Diana mused with an envious look to Meg’s skirts.
The rest of them were watching Meg, smiles eager and eyes bright. Even Ben’s mother offered a nod.
Once more tears gathered. Meg blinked them back and returned the ladies’ smiles. “I’d be delighted with either. Thank you so much for your kindness.”
“Not at all,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “We ladies of the frontier must stick together.”
Ladies of the frontier. She’d never thought of herself that way. Perhaps she could fit in, just as she was. All she had to do was be herself.
She was even more thankful when, on the third day, Meadows brought an old friend to see her.
“Stripe!” she cried, going to stroke the mare’s cheek where she stood beside Meadows outside Dot and Hank’s cottage.
“Patrol found her and most of the others ambling our way,” Meadows said with a fond smile. “I think she’s glad to be home.”
