Wedded to War (51 page)

“Ah well.” The rancid breath was hot against Phineas’s face. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Billy Yank, you are under arrest for desertion.”

Desperately, Phineas grabbed the watch from his pocket, spun on his heel, and hurled it back toward Tiber Creek, hoping against all odds that its golden arc would end in the open sewer, never to be found.

The last thing Phineas Hastings remembered before his world went black was one soldier running after the watch and the other ramming the butt of his rifle into Phineas’s head, trapping the guttural groan in his throat.

He heard her coming before he even turned around.

“Edward—Chaplain Goodrich—said you wrote me a letter,” Charlotte said in a rush when she found Caleb in his ward at Armory Square Hospital. Instantly, the pain in his back receded. All of his attention was now riveted on Charlotte.

“Of course I did. You didn’t get it?”

Charlotte shook her head, holding her gaze with his. “Please,” she whispered, pleading in her caramel-colored eyes. “Tell me what you said.”

Caleb groaned inwardly. What did it matter now, anyway? But one
glance at Charlotte’s face told him she wouldn’t let him off that easy. He glanced at the rows of patients, said, “Let’s take a walk,” and escorted her out into the sun.

Gravel crunched beneath their feet as they strolled through the massive hospital complex.

“I don’t know if I can remember exactly what I said then,” Caleb confessed, and raked his hand through his hair. “That was a long time ago, and I was still in and out of my right mind from fever. It might have been filled with gibberish.” He laughed nervously, irritated with his rising heart rate.

“Well then, what would you say to me now?”

“Would it matter?” His tone was tired, his lips flat. “Aren’t you promised to that Phineas Hastings fellow?”

She shook her head. “No, Caleb. As it turns out, you were quite right about him. He wasn’t the best partner for me after all.”

His pace slowed. “Do you mean you’re—free?”

Charlotte laughed, nodding. “But I hope not for long.”

Caleb stared.

She stood in front of him now, lifting her radiant face to his. “So let me ask you again. What would you say to me now?” Her voice was as smooth as a gentle melody.

Caleb’s heart skipped a beat—no, two—before he could speak. “Charlie, forgive me,” he said, emotion thick in his throat. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “This is long overdue. Once upon a time, there was a flickering flame between us, and I snuffed it out—at least, I tried. You must have hated me for it. I almost hated myself. But it had to be done, to protect you from making a choice just because it was easy.”

Charlotte opened her mouth to speak, but Caleb held up his hand to stop her. “Please,” he said. “Please let me finish. Hear me out.” She nodded. “I was your good friend after your father died. I’m sure you knew I loved you then. But asking you to love me back when you were still so raw from your father’s illness and passing would not have been right.”

Charlotte started to reply, but once again he hushed her with a finger to her soft lips.
How many times have I dreamed of kissing them?
A rush of heat prickling his body made him forget that it was autumn. He swallowed the urge to kiss her right then, though it took all of his strength. “Neither of us would have been sure you were really loving me back or merely showing gratitude for getting you through your father’s worst times. I had to leave. Don’t you see, Charlie? Otherwise I would have always wondered if you had only fallen in love with me as one falls into a rut.”

Tears glistened in Charlotte’s eyes as Caleb continued.

“Over the last year, you’ve proven that you do not choose a path because it looks easy, but because you are following your heart. I had hoped that once the smoke of battle clears and the war is over, your heart would lead you back to me.”

He reached for her hands and traced the lines of her palms with his thumbs. “Are your hands calloused from work?” He brought them to his lips and kissed each one. “I love them better than if they were smooth and soft. When your uniform is stained and dirty, don’t be ashamed, for these are the marks of service. You are more beautiful now than you have ever been before. I loved you years ago, and I love you even more now. I love your desire to make a difference in the world. I love that you take risks and gave up a life of ease to help others.”

He looked down into her eyes now, mining for gold. “But I want you to choose me, not settle for me.”

Caleb wrapped his large hands around her waist, igniting a heat that spread through her body like wildfire. She reached up to smooth away the lines of worry from his brow and rested her hand on his cheek. “I choose you,” she whispered, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close.

Charlotte’s hope surged, but it was gone in an instant. “I need to tell you something,” she said, pulling away. “I have my own confession to make.” She read a question in his eyes, but he held her hands firmly in his own.

“First of all, you probably know by now that when I told you I didn’t care for you, I was lying. I just wanted to hurt you for hurting me. I’m so sorry.” She fought against the rising lump in her throat.
So many years! Wasted!

A sad smile tipped his lips. Moments passed before he found his voice again. “We were practically children then. I understand.” But his eyes were filled with tears.

“I should have apologized. I meant to. I mean I did—” Her voice broke and she bit her lip. “But I didn’t send it.”

Caleb waited, allowing Charlotte to continue at her own pace.

“I learned something about myself that I wanted to keep from you. To protect you from a future that wouldn’t be good for you. I must be far more selfish now, though, because I don’t want to keep you away from me any longer.” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Darling, you speak in riddles! What can possibly be so horrible?” He cupped her face in his hands. Oh heaven help her, those eyes were as warm as wool.

“I—apparently I can’t—” She swallowed and turned away, her cheeks burning. “I can’t have children.”

She peeked back at his face. He looked surprised, but not crushed.

“Says who?”

“My body. Not made for it.”

Caleb stroked his chin. “Ever hear of a thing called adoption? I hear they’ll let just about anyone take in a child these days.” He grinned, but his eyes were intense. “We’ll figure that out later. For now, all I want is the promise
of you
.”

She could barely take it in. The truth had come out, and yet he still wanted her! Her heart dilated with joy. Somehow, in the middle of a civil war, they had found peace and love in each other—at last.

Oh no—the war. Rhode Island!
Charlotte’s conversation with the Surgeon General resounded in her ears. She winced as the pang of disappointment pierced her. Surely she could not keep both Caleb and the new position. Yet how could she give one up?

She buried her face in her hands and groaned.
Oh, the agony of decision!

“What’s this?” Caleb lifted her chin. “This doesn’t look like tears of joy to me.” Worry etched his brow.

“I never had a chance to tell you.” She willed her voice to be steady. “Dr. Hammond has asked me to co-direct a hospital in Rhode Island. He asked me on Sunday, you see … and I—” She grasped at words that did not come.

Laugh lines fanned at the sides of Caleb’s eyes. “A general hospital? Women have never been allowed to work in them at all, and now you’ve been asked to co-direct one? That’s brilliant! I hope you accepted.” He squeezed her shoulders.

“What?”

“You would be wonderful. You
will
be wonderful. It’s a great opportunity!”

“But what about—us?” She faltered. Was his love for her so shallow he wouldn’t even try to persuade her to be with him?

“Charlie. You of all people should know that a woman need not give up her mind in order to follow her heart. But listen. I’m not going back to New England for a while. I’ll be serving wherever the army is, and God forbid the war comes to our own doorstep. I want to be with you, Charlie, but we both have work to do, don’t we? Am I—are
we
—worth waiting for?”

She threw her arms around him once again and relished the warmth of his body against hers. “Yes!” she whispered in his ear. As soon as his lips touched hers, she knew—in both her mind and her heart—that this was where she belonged. She tucked her head beneath his chin and felt her heart beating in rhythm with her own. This, finally, was where she fit. “You are home to me.”

O
ne rainy October afternoon, in the archives of the Adams County Historical Society in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, I met Georgeanna Woolsey. A wealthy, twenty-eight-year-old woman in New York City when the Civil War broke out, she left all her comforts to become a nurse with the United States Sanitary Commission, which would be the forerunner of the American Red Cross. Georgeanna’s life and personality provided me with more than enough inspiration for Charlotte Waverly. (For everything you want to know about the Woolsey family, check out
The Woolsey Sisters of New York
by Anne L. Austin, and
My Heart Toward Home: Letters of a Family during the Civil War
by Georgeanna Woolsey Bacon and Eliza Woolsey Howland.) Georgeanna’s sister Eliza and her husband, Joseph Howland, inspired the characters of Alice and Jacob Carlisle.

The fictional character of Dr. Caleb Lansing is based closely on Dr. Frank Bacon, a Yale-educated surgeon in the Union army who was a close family friend of the Woolseys and married Georgeanna one year after the Civil War ended. They remained childless for unknown
reasons, but, among other achievements, together they established the Connecticut Training School for Nurses at the New Haven Hospital. They proved to be the perfect partners for each other.

Phineas, Ruby, and Matthew are purely fictional characters, but they reflect the attitudes and plights of their respective social classes. The scandal with the shoddy Brooks Brothers uniforms really happened, along with other war profiteering, and gentlemen of the Victorian era very commonly used prostitutes. Their reasoning was that “true women,” their delicate and refined sweethearts or wives, were morally superior to men, and had no sexual appetite. It was often quite common for even churchgoing men to leave true “spirituality” to women, the official moral compasses of society. Five Points was a real place, then the most notorious slum in the world. Ruby’s various attempts to provide for herself followed the typical immigrant’s options at the time.

Edward Goodrich’s character was based on Chaplain Harry Hopkins, who became the first hospital chaplain due to the requests of Georgeanna Woolsey and her two sisters, Eliza and Abby (Edward’s romantic feelings for Charlotte were purely fictional.)

Many characters in
Wedded to War
come straight out of the pages of history. Their legacies deserve to be mentioned here, at least briefly. After the war, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell returned to England where she and Florence Nightingale opened the Women’s Medical College. Her adopted Irish daughter, Kitty, remained her lifelong companion. Blackwell’s New York Infirmary for Women and Children became what is now the New York Downtown Hospital, the only one in ethnically diverse lower Manhattan.

Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect of Central Park, remained the General Secretary of the Sanitary Commission until 1863. Later, he returned to Washington and designed the Capitol grounds. (His son, Frederick Olmsted Jr., would later design the National Mall, Jefferson Memorial, White House grounds, and Rock Creek Park, among other projects.)

When Jonathan Letterman replaced Charles Tripler as the medical
director of the Army of the Potomac, he made drastic reforms for improved care of soldiers, the most memorable of which was his ambulance reforms. Before Letterman’s system was in place, whole divisions were without ambulances. Near the end of the Peninsula Campaign, an army corps of thirty thousand soldiers was reported to have ambulances enough for only one hundred men. But by the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, Letterman had an ambulance for every 175 men, and trained drivers chosen by the Medical Department. By the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, Letterman commanded 650 medical officers at the battlefield, along with one thousand ambulances and three thousand trained ambulance drivers and stretcher men. His three-part evacuation system (a field dressing station, field hospital, and large hospital away from the field) was adopted for the U.S. Army by an Act of Congress in 1864 and continues as the model for military evacuations today.

For biographical sketches and photos of these and other historical characters who populated this novel, visit the website at
heroinesbehindthelines.com

The text in this novel from Sanitary Commission reports, newspaper articles, and Dr. Gurley’s sermon at Willie Lincoln’s funeral came straight from the original sources. These documents can be viewed in their entirety at
heroinesbehindthelines.com
as well.