His presence was also a source of worry. Stephen was healthy and thriving and not terribly demanding. If he got sick, she had no idea what she would do. She certainly could not trust the medicine of the day when even the basic concepts of cleanliness were in their earliest days. And with thousands of wounded crowded into every available hospital space, who would care for a single baby?
There were a few books in the room, novels mostly, and she tried to read them, hoping to improve her grasp of French, only she couldn’t seem to concentrate on the pages. She turned to using the sewing kit bought for her by Samuel. It occupied two days, but she took in a rather nice dress in burgundy with black brocade. It didn’t hang on her like a sack now. There was another bottle green dress that needed less work, and a voluminous wool coat that she felt comfortable leaving at a fuller fit. And a pinafore-type dress she could wear in the rooms over a starched blouse.
There were undergarments as well that needed figuring out. A corset, bustier, pantaloons, and a bewildering selection of skirts that she knew were worn under the dress, but their proper order eluded her. Also a tidy selection of gloves, scarves, and a carpetbag to keep it all in.
There were two hats, and she favored a broad-brimmed black one with a veil. A fine pair of leather boots that buckled up the sides. They turned out to be a half-size too big but would accommodate the sweat socks she kept as her only modern garment. The rest of her twenty-first-century clothes, she tore into strips and burned in the stove.
She wondered at Samuel’s knowledge of period dress. The wardrobe was reasonably complete. Caroline assumed he had help from an eager shopkeeper once that fat roll of francs came out of his pocket.
At the bottom of the carpetbag was an item she knew he had probably needed no help selecting—a fat, ugly revolver with a box of shells. It served to remind her of the seriousness of it all, as if the sounds of the barrage outside would let her forget how dire her situation was.
The pistol looked peculiar, sort of like a cowboy’s weapon, but less elegant somehow. Caroline had no interest in firearms but took the time to learn how to load it. It had a cylinder that held nine copper-jacketed rounds marked with .36 on the striking end. But it also had a larger barrel suspended below the first. After some jiggering, she determined that this barrel held the paper-wrapped shells that looked to her inexpert eyes like they belonged in a shotgun.
She was never political in school or after and really had no opinion for or against guns. It was an issue that she never troubled to think about. And, as most of her education was in England, the subject seldom came up in conversations.
The thought of having to use a firearm in her own defense never entered her mind. And she absolutely had never imagined she would be so often in the company of men to whom guns were a tool of their craft. But she’d been in a firefight now and even killed her share when the time came to choose between her own death and the death of another.
She’d also been in a fight without a firearm at hand and knew which scenario she preferred. The brutal looking pistol would be her constant companion from here on.
On the sixth day, she dressed in the bottle-green dress and all its layers of underskirts. She balanced the veiled hat upon her head at what she thought was the proper angle, using girlhood memories of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady as a guide. She then slipped the cash and coins into a beaded purse, bundled Stephen up, and went downstairs to take a meal in the hotel’s first-floor dining room. She left the revolver hidden beneath layers of clothes in the carpetbag lying on the floor of an armoire, which she locked. She did not anticipate a gunfight in the lobby of Le Hotel Exemplaire.
The dining room was a gloomy affair. The finely etched windows facing the street had been covered with boards to protect them from looters, vandals, and potential cannon shells. A layer of cigar smoke hung in the air, wafting from a table where three gentlemen sat in hushed conversation.
The only other diners were an older married couple who were just ordering as Caroline entered with the basket containing Stephen on her arm. An unescorted woman with a child was something to be remarked upon, and her fellow diners made no secret that she was a fresh topic of conversation.
Caroline just didn’t give a damn. She had to get out of the room or lose her mind. She sat demurely in a chair offered by a waiter and smiled as the same waiter filled a glass with some very doubtful looking water. He presented her with a hand-printed menu, issuing slurred apologies for the scant bill of fare. She read the top two items, consommé de cheval au millet and epaules et filets de chien braises, and lost her appetite entirely. Her choice was of either horse or dog.
“I will have a cheese plate with bread, please,” she said.
“We have only black bread today,” the waiter said gravely.
“That will do. And wine.”
The waiter plucked the menu from her fingers and vanished.
“Perhaps the lady would prefer a filet of Castor or Pollux,” one of the cigar smokers said to the amusement of the others.
“Pardon?” Caroline said, confused.
“They are elephants,” the married woman said with a disapproving glance at the table of guffawing men.
“Were elephants,” the wit remarked, to answering guffaws from his friends.
“The zookeeper at the Gardens shot them and sold the meat to a butcher,” the woman informed her with an irritated glance at the table of jokers.
“He became a wealthy man
