get one hand out from under the covers and reach up to touch his forehead.
Yes. Definitely a reason for the pain.
He finally opened his eyes. A fair-haired woman sat on a low stool in a patch of weak sunlight not far from his bed, her arms resting on her knees and her head down. He couldn’t see her face at all, only the top of her golden hair and the side of her neck. Was she praying? Weeping? He couldn’t decide.
“Miss Woodard!” the voice whispered fiercely right outside the door, making her jump.
She turned her head in his direction and was startled all over again to find him awake and looking at her.
She took a deep breath. “I’m hiding,” she said simply, keeping her voice low so as not to be heard on the other side of the door.
He thought it must be the truth, given the circumstances.
“What...have you...done?” he managed to ask, but he didn’t seem to be able to keep his eyes open long enough to hear the answer.
* * *
Kate took a hushed breath. He seemed to be sleeping again, and in that brief interlude of wakefulness, she didn’t think he had mistaken her for the still-mysterious Eleanor, despite his grogginess. She knew that the army surgeon had given him strong doses of laudanum—to help his body rest and to make his return to the living less troubled, he said. The surgeon hadn’t known that Robert Markham had already made his “return to the living,” and thus missed the irony of his remark.
She hardly dared move in case Maria’s brother was more awake than he seemed. She watched him closely instead. He was so thin—all muscle and sinew that stopped just short of gauntness. Both his eyes had blackened from the force of the fall in the hallway, and there was a swollen bruise on his forehead. He hadn’t been shaved. She tried to think if she’d ever been in the actual company of a man so in need of a good barbering.
No, she decided. She had not. She had seen unkempt men out and about, of course—on the streets of Philadelphia and here in Salisbury—but generally speaking, all the men she encountered socially were...presentable. The stubble of growth on Robert Markham’s face seemed so intimate somehow, as if he were in a state only his wife or his mother should see.
But still she didn’t leave the room. She looked at his hands instead, both of them resting on top of the latest warmed and double-folded army blanket the orderlies kept spread over him. The room was filled with the smell of slightly scorched wool.
His fingers moved randomly from time to time, trembling slightly whenever he lifted them up. She could see the heavy scarring on his knuckles, and she was sure Sergeant Major Perkins had been right. These were the kinds of scars that could have only come from fighting.
And rage.
I shouldn’t be here, she thought, Mrs. Kinnard or no Mrs. Kinnard.
But it was too late for that realization. He was awake again.
* * *
Robert stared in the woman’s direction and tried to get his vision to clear. When he finally focused, he could tell that she was the same woman he had seen earlier— in the same place—hiding, she’d said. Did he remember that right? Hiding?
She looked up at a small noise. She seemed only a little less startled to find him looking at her this time. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said after a moment. “I’ll go—”
“I wish you...wouldn’t,” Robert said, his voice hoarse and his throat dry. “I...don’t seem to know...what has happened. Perhaps you could...help me with that.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m somewhat bewildered myself.”
“About what?”
“You, of course. You’re supposed to be dead.”
Robert looked away and swallowed heavily. He was so thirsty.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked, but he wasn’t ready to consider that detail quite yet.
“Is there some...water?” he asked.
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
She rose from the footstool and moved to a small table near the bed. Someone had put a tray with a tin pitcher and a cup on it. She filled the cup with water, spilling a little as she did so. She hesitated a moment, before picking up one of several hollow quills used for drinking that had been left on the tray, then looked at it as if she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to manage to give him the water.
Robert watched as she carefully brought the cup of water to him. He could see that it was too full and that her hands trembled, but he didn’t say anything. As she came closer he could smell the scent of roses. How long had it been since he’d been this close to a woman who wore rosewater? He lifted his head to drink, his thirst making him forget the pain in his head. It intensified so, he couldn’t keep still. Water spilled on the blanket, more of it than he could manage to swallow.
Appropriate or not, she put her hand behind his head to support him while he drank, but she took the cup away before he had drained it. “Not too much at first,” she said. “As I understand it, when you’re ill, what you want and what you can tolerate can sometimes be at odds.”
“I’m not...ill.”
“Not well, either,” she said. She let his head down gently onto the pillow.
Robert looked at her, trying to decide if he felt up to arguing with her about it. No, he decided. He didn’t. The persistent pounding in his head and the fact that he obviously couldn’t manage something as simple as drinking from a tin cup on his own led him to conclude that, for the moment at least, he was some distance away from “well.”
He watched as she returned the cup to the table and sat down again. He still couldn’t decide who she was. Not Eleanor was the only thing he knew for certain—besides the fact that she was not a Southerner. Her diction was far too precise and sharp edged for her to have grown up below the Mason-Dixon Line. It was too painful to attempt any kind of conversation, so he kept looking at her. She seemed so sad.
Why are you sad, I wonder?
Since the war the whole world seemed to be full of women with sad eyes. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring; he thought she was far too pretty to be unmarried.
“My name is Robert Markham,” he said after a moment because it seemed the next most socially appropriate thing to do.
“Yes,” she said, watching him closely, apparently looking for some indication that she’d let him have too much to drink. “So I’m told. And you’re sometimes called Robbie, I believe.”
Robert frowned slightly. Incredibly, he thought she might be teasing him ever so slightly, and he found it...pleasant.
“Well, not...lately. How is it you know...who I am when I don’t know you...at all?”
“I went through your pockets,” she said matter-of-factly. “I found the Confederate military card inside your Bible. But three ladies who live here in the town actually identified you—Mrs. Kinnard, Mrs. Russell. And Mrs. Justice,
