“Why?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because the war is over. It is a night to celebrate. One I will remember for the rest of my life, and I would like to remember having shared it in the company of a remarkable lady.”
She stopped short. “Lady? Mister, you don’t know anything about me.”
He cocked his head, that lazy smile just visible in the darkness. “I know that you call yourself Sarah Rogers. From your accent you were raised in western Arkansas. You wash clothes in exchange for food and live in the last standing chicken coop in western Arkansas. The others long since having been torn down for firewood.”
She shook her head, clutching the blanket tightly to her chest. “I don’t—”
“Just two people sharing a meal, Sarah. Sharing a duck on a night they will remember forever. After today, everything is going to be different. I eat alone most nights. I’d like this one to be filled with amiable discourse.”
She felt that light-headed hunger again. Her stomach growled at the thought of greasy, succulent duck. And she did have her pistol.
“I would be delighted to share your duck, Mr. Anderson.”
“Splendid!” He almost chortled, leading the way.
His camp consisted of a Sibley tent and awning beneath which stood a table and collection of rickety chairs where he conducted his card games. The fire in the center was a round eye of glowing coals. A light carriage, painted black, stood to the side, and she could see a harness hung on a rack at the back of the awning. By Fort Smith standards, Bret Anderson was a very rich man.
“Now, feast your eyes on this!” he proclaimed as he used an iron tong to fish a clay-wrapped object from the depths of the coals. The outside glowed a dark red as he rolled it from the fire. Then he tossed a couple of pieces of driftwood onto the coals where they leaped into flame.
Bret carried two chairs from his card table and set them across from each other on either side of the fire. “Please do me the honor of being seated.” He gestured, holding the chair as she seated herself. Fingers of worry kneaded her gut.
Then Bret proceeded to hurry about his camp, producing mismatched plates, forks, and knives, and finally, a bottle from which he worried a cork. At the pop, he grinned in the firelight, pouring something that fizzed into two tin cups.
One he proffered to Sarah, then, with a flourish, clinked the rim of her cup, saying, “To better days ahead, may the Confederacy rest in peace.”
Then he seated himself across from her, a smile on his lips, firelight playing in his dark eyes. He had a firm and straight nose, finely shaped cheeks, and his smile was just visible behind his mustache.
Sarah sipped the bubbly contents of her cup. “What is this?”
“Champagne. The real thing. From France. One of Fred Steele’s colonels, having lost everything else, thought that with three aces showing, he could recoup the entire evening with this prized bottle of his. A possibility my heart flush completely precluded.” He paused. “Do sip slowly. Unused to it as you are, half starved, and on an empty stomach, you shouldn’t overindulge.”
“What about the duck?”
“We need to let it cool until I can crack it open.” He leaned forward in his chair, hands cupping his tin cup. “The big question is what are the Yankees going to do now? How are they going to treat the Southern states? Arrest all the Rebel generals and politicians? Try and execute them for treason? Demand reparations? And the Reb armies are filled with fanatical men who have dedicated their lives to the cause. Do the Yankees expect them to just lay down their arms and go back to farming like nothing has happened? And what about the millions of freed slaves? Where do they go? Who employs them? Feeds them? Sarah, it’s all a mess.”
She studied him, feeling an odd warmth in her stomach from the champagne. “Mr. Anderson, there’s nothing but hatred and heartbreak out there. Maybe too much to ever heal. Some wounds run too deep. Nothing will ever be whole again.”
He studied her thoughtfully. “I do pray that you’re wrong, but I have learned the hard way not to put too much hope or faith in humanity’s good side. Word is that the Union lost nearly three hundred thousand men. That’s a lot of empty chairs, as the song goes. All them families, they’re going to want to punish someone.”
“Then where does it end?”
“I expect the Union to do its worst. So me, I think I’m going west. Think I’ll cast my future and fortune to a new land instead of seeking to rebuild it among the wreckage of the old.” He paused. “What about you?”
“I’d love nothing more than a full-time laundry job at the fort. But them’s all taken by soldiers’ wives.”
His lips twitched. “You’re a puzzle, Miss Rogers. One minute you talk like a woman with a finishing-school education sitting in her parlor, the next you sound like a frontier Arkansan. It’s as if you can shift skins.”
“Paw made me read. Made me learn my numbers, too. Said I might need them to keep a big fancy house,” she admitted, taking another sip of the delightful champagne. She’d always heard of it, but the few times Paw had had a bottle, he’d reserved it for influential guests. Champagne, she decided, was something she could enjoy more of. “He insisted that I learn to talk like a lady. Said I’d need such skills one day. But growing up in Benton County, and the last four years? It was all hardscrabble.”
She blinked, wondering what possessed her to speak so freely—as if the worry and fear had suddenly faded. She peered uncertainly across the fire, expecting to see some
