Cheryl Reavis Read Online Free PDF Page B

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