“Cain and Abel,” he replied under his breath.
Hester swallowed her snort of abrupt laughter and turned it into a cough just as Merrit saw them and stopped. For an instant her face registered only shock. There was a brief moment while she struggled to remember from where she recognized them. Then it came, and she walked forward, her smile uncertain but her head high.
Hester had thought she knew how she would feel when she saw Merrit again; now it all vanished and she struggled to read in the girl’s face whether it was brazen defiance which lit her expression or if she had no idea what had happened in the warehouse yard. Certainly there was no fear in her at all, and no apology.
Breeland introduced them, and there was a brief instant when they were all uncertain whether to acknowledge past acquaintance or not.
Merrit drew in her breath and then did not speak.
Hester glanced at Monk.
“Good evening, Miss Alberton,” he said with a slight smile, just enough to be courteous. “Mr. Breeland speaks very highly of you.” It was ambiguous, committing him to nothing.
She blushed. It obviously pleased her. She looked very young. For all the womanly curves of her body and the romantic gown, Hester could see the child in her. It did not take much imagination to put her back in the schoolroom with her hair down her back, a pinafore on and ink on her fingers.
In a wild moment Hester longed for any escape from the truth, any answer but the dead bodies in the warehouse yard and Lyman Breeland on his way to Manassas with the Union army-and Daniel Alberton’s guns.
They were talking and she had not heard.
Monk answered for her.
Somehow she stumbled through the rest of the conversation until they excused themselves and moved on to speak to someone else.
Later that night Trace came to Monk and Hester’s room, his face grave, his dark eyes hollow and deep lines from nose to mouth accentuating his weariness.
“Have you made your decision?” he asked, looking at each of them in turn.
Hester knew what he meant. She turned to Monk, who was standing near the window which opened over the rooftops. It was close to midnight and still stiflingly hot. The sounds of the city drifted up in the air along with the smell of flowers, dust and tobacco smoke, and the overtaxed drains that everyone complained about.
Monk answered softly, aware of other open windows.
“We don’t think she knows of her father’s death,” he answered. “We plan to tell her, and what we do after that depends upon her reaction.”
“She may not believe you,” Trace warned, glancing at Hester and back to Monk again. “She certainly won’t believe it was Breeland.”
Hester thought of the watch. She remembered Merrit’s pride in it and how her fingers had caressed its shining surface.
“I think we can persuade her,” she said grimly. “But I don’t know what she will do when she realizes.”
“At all costs, we must keep them apart.” Monk was watching Trace. “If he can, Breeland may hold her as hostage. He won’t go back to England without a fight.” His voice made it half a question. Hester knew he was trying to judge what stomach Trace had for a confrontation and the violence that might go with it.
He could not have been disappointed in the reaction. Trace smiled, and for the first time Hester did not see in him the gentle man who had such pity for the Irishwoman on the ship, or who behaved with such charm at Judith Alberton’s dinner table, nor the person who grieved for the conflict that engulfed his people. She saw instead the naval officer who went to England to buy guns for war and who had beaten Lyman Breeland to the purchase.
“I’d dearly love to take him back to face a court and answer for Daniel Alberton’s death.” He spoke in little above a whisper, but his words were sharp and clear as steel. “Daniel was a good man, an honorable man, and Breeland could have taken the guns without killing him. That was a barbarity that war doesn’t excuse. He killed out of hate, because Alberton refused to go back on his word to me. I say we go after him, unless it costs us Merrit to do that.”
“We’ll tell her tomorrow,” Monk promised.
“How?” Trace asked.
“We’ve thought of that.” Monk relaxed a little and came farther into the room, away from the window. “The battle is going to come soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. The women are preparing some sort of ambulances for the wounded. Hester has more experience of field surgery than anyone else here is likely to. She will offer to help.” He saw Trace’s look of skepticism. He smiled tightly. “I couldn’t stop her even if I didn’t think it a good idea. Believe me, neither could you!”
Trace looked uncertain.
“But it is a good idea,” Monk continued. “She can easily scrape a reacquaintance with Merrit, who will want to help as well. They are two Englishwomen caught up in the same circumstances, far from home, and with the same beliefs on slavery and nursing the wounded.”
Trace was still dubious. “Are you sure?” he said to Hester.
“Positive,” she answered succinctly. “Have you ever seen a battle?”
“No.” He looked suddenly vulnerable, as if she had unwittingly obliged him to face the reality of the coming war at last.
“I’ll start in the morning,” she said simply.
Trace stood up. “God be with you. Good night, ma’am.”
It was as uncomplicated as Monk had said for Hester to join the efforts of the many women trying to assemble some help for the one assistant army surgeon to each regiment and to convey supplies nearer the battlefield, which was going to be almost thirty miles away. A little questioning, frequently interrupted by her own overwhelming sense of urgency to help what she knew was coming far better than these optimistic, good-hearted and innocent women, and at last she found herself in a yard with Merrit Alberton. They were handing up rolls of linen into a cart which would serve to carry the wounded back to the nearest place where they could set up a field hospital. It was dirty and exhaustingly hot. The air seemed too thick to breathe, clogging the lungs as if it were warm water.
It was a moment before Merrit recognized her. At first she was just another pair of arms, another woman with hair tied back, sleeves rolled up and skirts scuffed and stained with dirt from the unpaved streets.
“Mrs. Monk! You’re staying to help us!” Her expression softened. “I’m so glad.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes with a dusty hand. “I hear you have experience that will be invaluable to us. We are grateful.” She took a bundle of supplies-bandages, splints, a few small bottles of spirits-from Hester.
“We’ll need far more than this,” Hester said, avoiding the truth for a moment, although perhaps she spoke about a reality that mattered more. They were hopelessly unprepared. They had never seen war, only dreamed it, thought of great issues, causes to be fought for without the faintest idea of what the cost would be. “We’ll need far more vinegar and wine, lint, brandy, more linen to make pads to stop bleeding.”
“Wine?” Merrit asked dubiously.
“As a restorative.”
“We have enough for that.”
“For a hundred men. You may have a thousand badly wounded … or more.”
Merrit drew in her breath to argue, then perhaps she remembered something of the conversation at the dinner table in London. Her face pinched with recognition that Hester knew the enormity of what they were facing. There was no point in saying this was different from the Crimea. Certain things were always the same.
Hester could not put off her mission any longer. For a few moments they were alone as the other women moved away to begin a different task.
“There was another reason I wanted to speak to you,” she said, hating what she was about to do, the pain she would cause and the judgments she must make.
There was no shadow of premonition in Merrit’s face, which was beaded with perspiration, a smear of dust on her cheek.
Time was short. War overshadowed murder and would soon sweep it away, but for every person bereaved, their own loss was unique.
“Your father was killed the night you left home,” Hester said quietly. There was no way to make it kinder or
