Her Hesitant Heart. Carla Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ looked at her with sad eyes. “What did you do to make him so angry?”

      “I didn’t do anything,” Susanna replied, wanting to end this inquisition, because her cousin’s mind was already made up. Pennsylvania may have been miles away, but nothing had changed. “About five years ago, Frederick’s business began to fail and he started drinking to excess. After that, nothing I did was right. Nothing.”

      She stopped, thinking of those afternoons she had come to dread, waiting for Frederick to return home. She’d always tried to gauge his attitude as he walked up the front steps. Was he going to be sober and withdrawn, ready to sulk in his study? Or would he be drunk and looking everywhere for something to touch off a beating or more humiliating behavior, once Tommy was asleep? She never knew which it would be.

      For all his simplicity, Susanna knew Emily’s husband was a kind man and her cousin would never suffer such treatment. Emily hadn’t the imagination to think ill of Frederick, who could put on a company face as good as her own.

      “I’m certain you meant well,” she told her cousin. “Captain Dunklin informed me that his wife is from Carlisle, too. Suppose she writes someone back home and mentions Susanna Hopkins?”

      “Carlisle is so far away,” Emily said, locating it somewhere next to Versailles. “I’m sorry if I did the wrong thing, but you don’t know these women, Susanna! They’re so superior. If they knew you were a notorious divorcee, no one would receive me, and Captain Reese’s career would suffer. I had to tell that little lie!”

      “Notorious divorcee?” Susanna said, stunned. “Emily, I am nothing of the sort! I have been wronged in the worst way, whether you believe it or not.”

      They stared at each other, her cousin with a wounded expression, and Susanna wondering how Emily had become the victim.

      “When did you start wearing spectacles?” Emily asked, obviously wanting to change the subject.

      “After Frederick pushed my face into the mantelpiece and fractured the bone under my eye,” Susanna said, not so willing to let Emily off the hook. “I don’t see too well out of that eye.” Susanna touched Emily’s arm. “We’ll hope that Captain Dunklin’s wife has no curiosity about doings in Pennsylvania.”

      “I won’t give it another thought.”

      I don’t doubt that for a minute, Susanna thought as she said good-night. After she closed the army blanket around her quasi room, Susanna sat still, her mind in turmoil. As she contemplated the gray blanket that constituted a wall, she felt a chill more than cold seeping into her bones.

      She undressed in the cold space, then did what she always did, closed her eyes and thought of her son. Usually she got no farther than that, but this time she added Major Randolph to her mental inventory. It was not a prayer, because she had given up pestering God.

      A bugle woke her in the morning, followed at an interval by a different melody. After the second call, she smiled at a massive groan from the Reeses’ bedroom, which suggested to her that Emily’s lord and master was not an early riser by inclination.

      Captain Reese eventually clumped downstairs, swearing fluently, which told her the true source of his son’s salty language, rather than the family through the wall. Susanna heard Captain—O’Leary, was it?—go down his own set of stairs on the other side of the wall, and decided there wasn’t much privacy in army housing.

      As Susanna lay there, she heard Mrs. O’Leary, in her bedroom through the wall, reciting the rosary. Her low murmur sent Susanna back to sleep.

      When she woke again, Stanley had pulled back her blanket and was staring at her. She remembered the times when Tommy had done the same thing: same solemn stare, same lurking twinkle in his eyes. With a laugh, Susanna pulled him down beside her. Stanley shrieked, then giggled as she snuggled with him.

      “Did your mama send you to wake me up?”

      “Damn right,” he said, the twinkle in his eyes daring her.

      Time to nip this in the bud, Susanna thought.

      “Do you know what I used to do to your cousin Tommy when he said things that he knew would shock me?”

      Stanley shook his head. “Mama usually shakes her fist at the wall.”

      Susanna sat up, her arms around Stanley, who had settled in comfortably. “I reach for a bar of pine tar soap, shave off a handful and make Tommy chew it.”

      Stanley’s eyes grew wide. “You would do that to a small child?” he squeaked, which made her cover her mouth and turn her head slightly, to keep her amusement private.

      “Yes! Tommy never cusses anymore. I would advise you not to, either,” she said, looking him right in the eye.

      Stanley considered the matter. “Would you make my father chew soap, too?”

      “I’ll leave that to your mother. But as for you …” Susanna reached around him into her carpetbag and found a bar of soap.

      Stanley flinched but did not leave her lap. With that dignity of children that always touched her, he eyed the soap and said, “I’ll tell Mama that you will be down to breakfast directly. Major Randolph is waiting, too.”

      Oh, he is, she thought, flattered. “I’ll hurry. Stanley, no more cussing. Promise?”

      He nodded. She put the soap back in her carpetbag and hugged him, then set him on his feet. “Stanley, I knew you would see the good in doing right.”

      He nodded in that philosophical way of four-year-olds and went down the stairs at a sedate pace that lasted for only a few steps. Susanna dressed quickly, wishing that everything she owned wasn’t wrinkled. She had no washbasin, so she went into her cousin’s room and washed her face, hoping Emily wouldn’t mind.

      Major Randolph sat in the dining room, frowning at a bowl of oatmeal. “My mother always told me it was good for me.”

      “It is, Major,” Susanna said, standing in the doorway.

      “Very well. I’ll eat it if you’ll join me,” he said, indicating another bowl of oatmeal.

      She sat down beside the major and picked up her spoon. “Race you,” she said.

      He smiled and started to eat. Emily came into the room and sat down, too, a stunned look in her eyes.

      Susanna put down her spoon. “Emily?”

      “Stanley told me he will never swear again. What did you do?”

      “I threatened him with pine tar soap, then appealed to the better angels of his nature, to quote our late president,” Susanna told her.

      Emily’s eyes were wide with puzzlement. “Our late president?”

      “Abraham Lincoln. Stanley knows his limits now. I am fond of little boys.”

      Susanna glanced at the post surgeon, who was smiling at her. She returned her attention to her oatmeal, pleased.

      When Emily returned to the lean-to kitchen, Major Randolph whispered, “After sick СКАЧАТЬ