Cheryl Reavis - Harrigan's Bride

Regardless of the fact that no one had been paid in recent memory, not a single man had dared give in to his craving for tobacco or whiskey by selling or bartering his blanket. So here they all stood, correctly outfitted for the weather, exactly by the book. Even so, it struck Thomas as he began his inspection that there was something entirely ludicrous about grown men standing out in the rain, apparently for no other reason than to make a great show of ignoring it.

“Rathbone,” he said, stopping in front of one of the privates who had been so recently wounded at Fredericksburg and who had refused to be left behind. “How is the hand?”

“It’s doing the best it can, sir,” Rathbone assured him.

“So are we all, Private,” Thomas said, drawing a few polite chuckles among those within earshot. “Anything you need?”

“Just my dear mother’s apple pie, sir.”

Thomas smiled and moved on, the remark immediately drawing his thoughts to a winter afternoon at the Calder house. Abiah and the apple pie she’d made and baked and finally cut for him in Miss Emma’s kitchen. He tried to imagine Elizabeth in that same situation—wearing an apron, laughing and completely unmindful of the flour on her nose.

Elizabeth. What was she doing now? he wondered. Did she still attend the judge’s salons? Probably so. She dearly loved the attention her presence always garnered, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t don yet another new satin frock and go. No one there would know she had broken her engagement to the judge’s grandson. No one there even knew there had been an engagement. At her insistence, he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone—except in his last impulsive letter to Guire Calder.

Thomas still didn’t know what had happened to cause her abrupt change of heart, but as far as he was concerned, Elizabeth was safe from any further revelations on his part. Somehow it didn’t matter anymore, and the fact that he’d been a consummate fool where she was concerned was something he would just as soon keep to himself.

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