Cheryl Reavis - Harrigan's Bride

“You are my sweet Abiah. You are all I have left of the one truly happy time in my life. I’m asking you to let me go into this folly of Burnside’s with my mind at ease.”

She closed her eyes to keep from crying. She couldn’t waste her strength on tears. She had to save it, so that she could do the right thing.

“Abby, answer me.”

She looked at him. Marrying Thomas Harrigan was all she had ever wanted, but her heart was breaking—and for his sake, not hers. She loved him too much to ever want to hurt him. In the naive and reckless plan she had once contemplated to trap him into becoming her husband, she would have at least been a healthy wife and not a sickly burden. It would be wrong for her to say yes to him now. She knew that, just as she knew that she hadn’t the will to refuse him.

“We have some major political differences, Thomas,” she said.

“I think they would make for very lively discussions at the dinner table,” he countered easily.

She smiled slightly at the idea, even knowing that it was improbable that they would share a dinner table ever again.

“Won’t your engagement get in the way?” she asked.

“That arrangement no longer exists.”

“Does she know that?”

“She does. And she has nothing to do with this.”

Abiah looked into his eyes, believing him because she wanted to. What did it matter that this was only a gallant gesture on his part?. An attempt to give her her heart’s desire, because he was fond of her and because he thought she wouldn’t recover?

So be it, she thought. She would take the only chance for happiness she would ever have, however fleeting it might be.

“All right,” she said. “You bring the minister—and I’ll try to remember who you are.”

Of all the emotions he had anticipated when he went to ask Abiah to marry him, surprise wasn’t one of them—at least not on his part. And he had certainly been surprised. First, when she told him she had another suitor, and then, when she had been so unwilling to even consider his own offer of matrimony. But most of all, when he realized how much he minded on both counts.

It had all seemed so clear to him beforehand. He was honor and duty bound to take care of the last member of the Calder family as best he could. It was something he simply had to do. Now, through no conscious effort of his own, he was afflicted with the added burden of wanting it.

Thanks to La Broie and his machinations, Thomas had gotten away to see Abiah long enough to make his proposal, but since then he could only sit in the drafty, abandoned brick building where he’d been banished until the generals decided what they were going to do with him. He had no idea what this place had once been. Nothing comfortable, in any event. The room he had taken at the end of the hall had a window big enough to let in some light and lessen the dungeon atmosphere, but many of the glass panes were broken. It took all his physical energy just to stay warm.

He still had to pen a number of letters of condolence to the families of the men who had been killed at Fredericksburg, but he was too distracted to accomplish very much. He realized immediately that it was not just the cold that caused him to be so unsettled. No, indeed. His mental turmoil had come about because, whether Abiah had agreed or not, he absolutely did not want her marrying John William Miller. It irked Thomas a great deal how much he didn’t want it. He had no right and no reason whatsoever to object.

Johnny Miller was a traitor to the country, of course, but then, by her own admission, so was Abiah. Thomas had always thought Miller a decent enough sort. There was nothing about the man as far as Thomas knew that would keep him from being entirely suitable for Abiah. Besides all that, Thomas was supposed to be heartbroken over his failed engagement to Elizabeth. He had certainly felt heartbroken when her letter came. Now it seemed as if all that had happened to someone else.

It suddenly occurred to him that the only explanation was that he must have believed Abiah when she said she loved him, even if she had since taken great pains to behave as if she had no memory of having done so. Clearly, it was a decided character weakness on his part—to always believe women when they professed a fondness for him. He had believed Elizabeth. He still believed Abiah, in spite of her reluctance in agreeing to marry him. He kept thinking about that one particular moment when he’d asked her why she wasn’t making plans for her wedding to Miller. Thomas could almost feel the way her dark eyes had stared into his.

You know why not.

He supposed that that was as close as Abiah would come to mentioning the embarrassing incident—embarrassing for her, not him. At least not since he’d recovered from the initial shock of learning how she had planned to “trap” him into matrimony. Assuming she had been serious, he wondered if she had any idea what coming into his bed like that might have precipitated. He would like to think that he would have behaved honorably, but if he had had one too many brandies on the porch, he might have forgotten that she was his best friend’s little sister.

He gave a quiet sigh. Perhaps Abiah did know. If Guire had been so imprudent as to tell her about their adventures in a New Orleans bordello, there was no telling what else the rascal had taken upon himself to explain. In any event, this bold plan of Abiah’s would certainly give Thomas something to contemplate during the long winter nights to come.

He picked up his pen and immediately put it down again. The ink in the bottle had frozen. His cigar had gone out and his fingers were numb with cold. An abrupt gust of wind caused the smoke from what he optimistically called a fireplace to billow back into the cavernous room. He gave up all pretense of working, the full import of the predicament both he and Abiah were in making a jarring return. He had no patience left. He had to get this marriage done.

“La Broie!”

“Sir!” the sergeant answered almost immediately, his voice echoing in the outer hallway. Thomas suspected that La Broie’s staying so close at hand had less to do with efficiency and devotion and more to do with the fact that Major Gibbons had probably ordered him to do so—in case that wild Captain Harrigan went a-roving again.

“Have you heard anything yet?” Thomas asked when La Broie appeared in the doorway.

“Nothing, sir,” La Broie answered, giving no indication that Thomas had already asked him that same question a dozen times.

“Why is this taking so damn long?” Thomas said, more to himself than to La Broie.

“You know by now how the army works, Cap. It takes as long as it takes.”

Thomas gave La Broie a scathing look. He was not in the mood for any of the sergeant’s military truisms, sage though they may be. He was trying to take care of Abiah. She was ill, and gravely so. The doctors gave him absolutely no encouragement as to her chances for recovery from an illness they couldn’t even diagnose. Typhoid pneumonia, perhaps, they said. The problem was that Abiah had been examined well after the telltale “rose spot” stage indicative of the disease. She had a “continuous fever” to be sure, but no one would—or could—give it a name. The army hospitals were full of “continuous fevers,” which were fatal more times than not.

The best Thomas could do was to make sure Abiah had good nursing care, preferably by someone who understood the dangers of these fever-ridden illnesses. He felt an occasional twinge of guilt that the only person even remotely knowledgeable about these things also happened to be a camp follower. But, like everything else in this situation, he had had no choice but to bow to La Broie’s opinion of Gertie’s willingness and competency, and to hire the girl. So far Thomas hadn’t had cause to regret it—as far as he knew. Gertie seemed happy to have a paying job that didn’t involve throwing her petticoats over her head.