for heaven’s sake, Acacia,” Mrs. Russell said. “She wasn’t your mother-in-law then. We were only seven. You do remember being seven, I hope.”
“Six,” Mrs. Justice said. “And already well on our way to a highwayman’s life—just as soon as we got a better horse.”
Mrs. Justice and Mrs. Russell looked at each other, then burst out laughing, and Kate couldn’t keep from smiling. Mrs. Kinnard, however, remained unmoved.
There was a polite knock—kick—on the door, and Kate went to open it. A young soldier stood in the hallway, struggling to hold on to a large silver tea tray laden with a matching teapot and a mound of cookies and mismatched china cups and serving plates.
“Sergeant Major Perkins asks if you would like tea and cookies, Miss Woodard,” he said as if he’d rehearsed the line any number of times. Clearly, Perkins wasn’t taking any chances that Kate wouldn’t carry out his plans for fence mending.
“Do we?” Kate asked, looking over her shoulder at Mrs. Kinnard, giving her the final word.
“Wouldn’t it be rude not to accept Miss Woodard’s hospitality?” Mrs. Justice said behind her hand to Mrs. Kinnard—as if Kate couldn’t hear her. “I believe all three of our mothers taught us how to behave in someone else’s home, no matter what the circumstances might be.”
“Oh, very well,” Mrs. Kinnard said, clearly exasperated. “Since it’s here. Bring in the tray,” she said to the soldier. “Put it there. Will you pour or shall I?” she asked, clearly startling him to the point that even she realized it.
“Good heavens! Not you,” Mrs. Kinnard snapped—to the young soldier’s obvious relief. “Her.”
“I would much prefer that you poured, Mrs. Kinnard, if you would be so kind,” Kate said, assuming that she was the target of Mrs. Kinnard’s remark. “Unfortunately I haven’t had that much practice. My mother always chose to use the Woodard heirlooms rather than storing them, and she was always worried I would break something—with good reason.” She was telling the truth, but she was also trying to do as Perkins wanted and lay some groundwork before she made an attempt to soothe Mrs. Kinnard’s decidedly ruffled feathers. Besides that, she wanted to focus her attention on what was happening upstairs with Robert Markham.
“Indeed,” Mrs. Kinnard assured her. Believing that a catastrophe would be imminent if anything breakable found its way into Kate’s hands was clearly no hardship for her at all.
Mrs. Kinnard frowned at the mismatched cups and saucers on the tray, and for a moment Kate thought she was going to comment on it. But then she must have remembered what had likely happened to the set. “Maria went to such great trouble to hide her mother’s things when the house was looted,” she said. “We must do our best to preserve her tea service, after all.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Kate said, smiling. She understood perfectly that she was supposed to cringe at the insinuation that she had political and regional ties to the looters, and that as a hostess, she left much to be desired. But being able to preside over the pouring of tea didn’t matter to her in the least and hadn’t since Harrison was born. She gave a soft sigh at the sudden thought of him. She wanted desperately to be away from Mrs. Kinnard and the others so she could at least write to him. She had been so faithful in her correspondence to him that she liked to think he might even anticipate the arrival of her letters. She always tried to make them as interesting as she could in the hope that he would look forward to the next one. Perhaps she would tell him about the strange return of the man upstairs.
The tea pouring proceeded in silence and without mishap.
“Tell me, Mrs. Justice,” Kate said at one point in an attempt to foster enough mild conversation to carry out her mission. “What other adventures did you have when you were a little girl?”
Mrs. Kinnard gave her a warning look. She clearly didn’t want any more disclosures regarding her childhood. Kate tried not to smile again at the mental image of the three of them riding an ancient horse and trying to make it to those cookies on the window ledge without being seen. Somehow she couldn’t get past imagining them dressed just as they were now.
But Mrs. Justice was saved having to answer by a loud commotion in the foyer. Kate thought for a moment that Mrs. Kinnard was going to get up and go see what was occurring for herself, lest the chaplain get by her without her having the opportunity to give him both his instructions and her opinion of his being brought here in the first place.
“Well, how drunk is he!” they all heard Perkins say.
Kate couldn’t make out the reply. She worked on looking as if she had no idea what that comment might mean.
“Get him in here and sober him up! Stick his head in a bucket of snow if you have to!”
“Soldiers do seem to have unusual solutions to their predicaments, don’t they?” Mrs. Justice commented mildly as the commotion intensified and moved past the dining room door toward the back of the house. She took another sip of tea and looked at Kate. “What did Robbie say, my dear? Did he mention where he’d been at all?”
“I didn’t ask him anything about that,” Kate said.
“Oh! Of course not,” Mrs. Justice said, apparently alarmed that she’d dared suggest such a rude and thoughtless thing. “That wouldn’t have been a good idea at all. But you did talk to him?”
“He had...questions. He didn’t seem to remember what had happened to him.” She took a quiet breath. “He didn’t know his father had died.”
“Oh, that poor, poor boy,” Mrs. Justice said.
“And did he know about Maria’s marriage?” Mrs. Kinnard asked.
“No. He didn’t.”
“I’m sure he was upset about that, as well.”
“He is Maria’s brother. He would naturally be concerned about her. Fortunately I could reassure him.”
“Indeed yes,” Mrs. Justice said. Mrs. Kinnard and Mrs. Russell both gave her a hard look.
They could hear a second arrival in the foyer and then heavy footsteps going up the stairs.
“That must be the chaplain, don’t you think? Poor Robbie,” Mrs. Justice said again.
“Poor Robbie, indeed,” Mrs. Kinnard said, setting her cup down hard despite her desire to keep Maria’s mismatched tea service safe. “He’ll get no spiritual comfort there.”
“Sounds like their army surgeon to me,” Mrs. Russell said. “For a thin man, he has a very heavy tread. But then they all do.”
Kate took a breath and tried not to consider what in the world could have been behind the remark. Her head was beginning to hurt, despite the tea and the excellent cookies. No matter what Sergeant Major Perkins thought, there were some things cookies just wouldn’t fix.
“I’d like to say a prayer, if I may,” Mrs. Justice said.
“For whom?” Mrs. Kinnard asked, as if prayers came under her jurisdiction, as well.
“For our Robbie, of course,”
