Time After Time (194 page)

“Who knows? No one ever stays around long enough for us to get a sense of the routine.”

Theo let himself fall back against the straw, one hand flopping over onto the stone floor. At least it was cool.

He waited and prayed and tried not to think of Margaret and of water. Who knew how long it would be before he might have either. Or indeed if reunion would come at all.

Chapter XX

Margaret walked home from the post office, having mailed letters to Rebecca, Matilda, and Phoebe apprising them of the current situation. It had been a few days longer than a month since they had learned of Theo’s disappearance. Still there was no news.

The situation in the Ward home grew tenser with each day. Surely they had to face the truth, as soon as they could decide what it was. Margaret’s feet slapped the sidewalk in a regular rhythm. Her corset rubbed at her hips. Her boots pinched ever so slightly. Those small discomforts were a relief as they were real. They cut through the nest of abjuration she had built around her heart.

She stopped across from the park, hesitating. She crossed the street and walked to the willow. She didn’t come to this place often, afraid perhaps that if she visited too frequently it would lose its power and magic. But now she needed those qualities to keep her hope alive. Sinking to the ground, she folded her hands and prayed.

She said, “Almighty and merciful Father, please see fit to return him to me. I know we have erred, as individuals and as couple. We violated your commandments. It was selfish and wanton and wrong. I know I have sinned and fallen short in so many ways. But, Lord, have mercy on me and most of all on Theo. Return him to me. Let us live a long and faithful and humble and righteous life … together. Or if you cannot, let us learn soon of his fate. Have mercy on a grieving mother. End Sarah’s uncertainty and glorify your holy name. Amen.”

It was a prayer she had been perfecting. She knew it now as confidently as she knew the Lord’s Prayer. Its words were her own, though its sentiment was endorsed by the prayers offered by Reverend Patterson every day in Sarah’s parlor.

Once she had finished this official request, she allowed another less formal, less pious prayer to flow from her heart. In ’59 and again more recently, she and Theo had kissed and clung beneath the branches of this tree, allowing the glory of nature to consecrate their union. Would they truly never do so again?

At this, tears built in her eyes and threatened to spill over. She pressed a handkerchief to her face and suppressed a sob. She focused on the movement of air in and out of her lungs. The crisis passed. She was calm and poised after several minutes.

Her hands drifted to her lap. She watched the flowing of the river and smelled the verdant soil and searched her heart for evidence Theo still walked the earth. No answer came back to her. Unsettled and unsatisfied, she started for the temple of worry she called home.

Before leaving the shelter of the willow, she offered one final prayer, breathed as much as spoken, “Please, Theo, you promised to return to me. Don’t break with me thus.”

Perhaps it was the morbid bent of her mind or the lack of sleep, but Margaret felt disconcerted. Pins pricked the back of her neck, and she whipped her head around only to find no one there. The beating of her heart was erratic, sometimes heavy and thick and then shallow. Her hands were dumb, struggling with the ribbons of her bonnet and with the handle of her basket. Somehow, her feet found the path back to Main Street.

Across from McDonough House, she stopped. The city was haunted by ghosts of her former self … and of Theo, whose name she couldn’t use in the same sentence as anything non-corporeal. She crossed the threshold into the foyer of the hotel and settled herself into a chair, allowing the memories of their honeymoon to wash over her.

How foolish she had been to deny her feelings for so long. Had she thought love and happiness and perfect union occurred regularly? Had she been so caught up in an ancient hurt that she couldn’t face the truth?

Losing her husband was punishment for her dawdling and wasting her life. How many sunny afternoons had she whittled away? How many years had she spent alone? Every day was a gift she would not again misuse. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She needed to become a dutiful daughter-in-law again and return home. Sarah needed her.

As she crossed the lobby, resigned to her fate, a familiar visage moved through the crowd.

Theo.

Her heart was in her throat and her stomach roiled. Every muscle in her body trembled. The instant she knew the face, it was gone, swept away in a stream of people. The face was thinner. The beard darker and fuller. The gait halting. But it was him. Margaret’s voice trembled, but she managed to shout his name from the doorway.

The man did not heed her. Had she been wrong? Was her mind seeing what it wished to see? Had she finally lost her tenuous grip on reality? She turned into the flow of traffic, making excuses and dodging people.

“Theo,” she cried. “Theo!”

Whoever he was, he moved quickly and with great purpose. He wore a dark blue military uniform, though she could not determine the rank as she was still half a block behind him. He moved with a limp and carried a bag that she did not recognize. No, it could not be. It was not him.

One final, sad time she tried. “Theo!”

At this, the man stopped. The word, or perhaps it was her tone, arrested him. Margaret’s feet had ceased to obey her. She froze, not daring even to hope, as she waited for him to either turn or to continue apace.

Around them, people strolled and walked and sauntered. How could they not know something significant was occurring? Why did they not look? In the street, carts and carriages and riders traversed. Was this not worth their attention? All was movement and business. It must not be. They would know. They would bear witness.

She released a breath that had been clenched in the deepest part of stomach. She had not known that she was holding it. As the air rushed past her lips, she released her hold on hope.

At last, very slowly, the man turned.

It was Theo. She would recognize those eyes across the marble halls of Heaven, across the widest rivers, across chasms of pain and loss. They were more familiar to her than her own. It was her beloved.

At once, he was upon her. His lips and his hands were everywhere. It was scandalous. It was necessary. It was a rushing, bracing oneness. Margaret experienced a reunion of pieces of herself that she had thought gone forever. Fears, grief, and worry disappeared, replaced with relief so powerful it was frightening.

He was alive. He was hers. He loved her.

In the years since their first hurried embrace in the Smiths’ hallway, Theo had kissed her countless times. Those previous kisses had been tender, perfunctory, gentle, rushed, passionate, lusty, angry, consuming, brief, and enthralling. She thought she had seen the full catalogue of his kisses. She was wrong.

First this kiss was relief and confirmation. As if their bodies could communicate beyond words. Then came the waves of joy enhanced by sorrow and worry. And finally the promise that, having been restored to one another, they would be deserving and appreciative as no one had been before or would be again. Though perhaps no longer on the street …

Margaret broke from his mouth and laid her face against his chest, saying, “I thought I would not see you again. That you were — ”

“I told you I would return,” Theo murmured. He gently released her from his arms, took her elbow, and picked up his bag. They set off down the street, nodding to passersby, who eyed them curiously.

“But wherever have you been?” she asked, wiping moisture from her face. “Sarah is going to chide you so!”

“It could not be helped, I’m afraid.”

Theo spoke then. He told her briefly of his incarceration in Libbey Prison in Richmond. Of the prisoner exchange that had brought him out of the South. And of the wound in his thigh that had inadequately healed. With his injury, no return to the front was forthcoming.

More than once, they paused for her to recover herself, so chilled was she by the tale. Or perhaps she merely wanted to touch him, to comfort herself with the knowledge that he was real and had returned to her.

All too soon, they arrived at the Ward home, where Margaret would have to relinquish him to the cries and comforts of others, albeit briefly. Theo’s hand rested on the doorknob, poised to turn it and give Sarah the happiest shock of her life, when he paused and asked with a smile, “Did you not trust me?”

“I didn’t trust myself. But now my store of hope is endless,” Margaret replied.

“You will never need it again.”

They didn’t.

Epilogue

June 12, 1863

Matilda Winters folded the letter and leaned forward to look out the window, a smile hovering on her lips. Just beyond the casement, a wood thrush was sitting in its nest, singing a joyful song. It was a day to be happy. Mr. Ward had returned home, injured to be sure, but alive. He and Margaret would have a long life together, Lord willing.

As she slid the paper into her workbasket, her fingers brushed August’s most recent note. August Philip Wainwright. The six syllables caused her cheeks to blaze cerise and her heart to work twice as hard. She had known he was a dangerous man — a rogue, he’d said — from the first day of their acquaintance. He told her so straight out as a warning. What she hadn’t known was how she could feel his smile in her heels. How the velvet in his voice would run over her body, awakening every nerve. How his charm would drive her to do truly stupid things. To wit, participating in clandestine correspondence.

She knew that it was foolish. She had often lectured girls at seminary about the dangers of such activities. She was reasonable, logical, and obedient. This was madness. She had therefore almost absolutely decided to break with him.

The clock on the mantel began to sound and Matilda rose by instinct. Now, as she did every afternoon, she would meet Papa at the hospital and visit wounded soldiers. She gathered some books, paper, and an orange in a basket. But as she fumbled with the simple grosgrain ribbon on her bonnet, she examined herself in the glass.

What did August see in her face that was worth pursuing? Was she merely another challenge, another conquest? Or did he sense in her some hitherto unknown depth? Did he understand things about her that she herself had missed for twenty-one years?

In a subdued state, she closed the door to their rooms, descended the stairs, and bid Mrs. Wallace, their landlady, farewell. It was no good. She knew August was likely the scoundrel gossip made him out to be, and that he wanted to ruin and desert her like the heroine in a two-volume novel. But she possessed exactly enough doubt to prevent her from throwing him over. If she were one-tenth right about him, then it was worth the risk to try and see herself as he did.

For if she were correct, then he was a man who put all others to shame. His eyes were livelier than any others she had ever seen. He was merry and intelligent and amiable, whispered about everywhere but indispensable at every social event. But also sad. All the ladies loved him, but he stood apart from them somehow. Of all the stories she had heard, none in the least resembled their friendship. It was no rote seduction. She felt certain no one knew him as she did. Whether she understood the authentic man was a different question entirely … but frivolous and perilous as it might be, she had to know: who was August really? What did he see in her?

Matilda soon arrived at Armory Square Hospital and found Papa — Reverend Winters to seemingly the entire town — waiting for her at the door.

“Good afternoon,” he said, dropping a kiss on her cheek. “How are you, my dear?”

“Oh, I’m well,” she replied as they climbed the stairs, wishing that that simple truth were adequate to describe the sea that churned within her.

About the Author

Emma Barry has a master’s degree in English and is completing a PhD in American studies.
Brave in Heart
is her first published novel. She’s working on a sequel and several contemporary romances. She loves hugs from her toddler twins, Earl Grey tea, her cat’s whiskers, and her husband’s cooking.

You can learn more about her at
authoremmabarry.com
.

A Sneak Peek at Crimson Romance
The Winter Promise
by Jenny Jacobs

A Treasure Worth Keeping

Marie Patrick