Yankee Wife (5 page)

Lydia lowered her fork to her plate and sat with her hands folded in her lap. Although she would have done anything to prevent it, her gaze swerved to Brigham. She wasn't looking for a champion, needed no defense from the silly attacks of a child, and yet she expected something.

Mr. Quade glowered at his elder daughter, taking a white dinner napkin from his lap and setting it aside. “Perhaps you would prefer spending the rest of the evening in your room, contemplating the drawbacks of rudeness.”

“I'm sorry, Papa,” Charlotte said meekly.

Brigham's response was firm. “It wasn't me you offended,” he pointed out.

Charlotte turned her amber eyes to Lydia, and the defiance Lydia saw in their depths belied the child's words. “I apologize, Miss McQuire. I shall not be rude in the future.”

Lydia was skeptical of both the apology and the vow to abstain from bad manners, but she nodded, looking solemn for the sake of Charlotte's obviously formidable pride. “Thank you,” she said, with dignity.

Soon after, both Charlotte and Millie were excused from the table, and Mrs. Chilcote retired as well. Devon and Polly were lost in each other's eyes, and simply wandered out of the room. Lydia looked after them with an envy that surprised and dismayed her, remembering a time when she'd hoped for a love like that. A time when she'd believed love was possible for her.

“You thought you were going to marry my brother, didn't you?”

Brigham's words so startled Lydia that she spun in her chair, all color gone from her face, the peach-preserve pie that had kept her at the table still untouched before her.

She swallowed. The expression in Brigham's storm-cloud eyes was not unkind, but simply forthright. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she answered, at painful cost to her pride.

The timber baron sat back in his chair, looking at her pensively. “You don't need to worry, you know. You're a handsome woman, and any number of my men would be willing to take you in and give you a name.”

Lydia sat up as though lightning had touched the small of her back. A furious blush stung her face. He made her sound like a half-witted waif, or a bedraggled kitten, not the strong and capable woman she was. “I am not looking for a man to take me in, Mr. Quade,” she told him, parceling out the words one by one on little puffs of air. “I can look after myself, thank you very much!”

He smiled. “You would have been all wrong for Devon,” he said pleasantly. “Polly suits him far better, with her limpid looks and long sighs.”

Lydia pushed back her chair to leave, even though it killed her to abandon her pie. She had not had such a treat since before she left the East, and she did not forgo it lightly. “I don't suppose it's occurred to you, Mr. Quade, that Devon might be all wrong for
me
, that
he
might be the one who's unsuited—”

Brigham's palm struck the table with a resounding smack when she would have risen, and she dropped back into her seat, more surprised than intimidated.

“Sit,” he said, quite unnecessarily.

Lydia glared at him. It was still raining, and she knew she wouldn't be able to find proper accommodations in a town full of lumberjacks, even if the place had looked staid and settled from the boat.

He waggled an index finger at her. “You and I have gotten off on the wrong foot, Miss McQuire,” he said. “Every time I speak, it seems, you take immediate offense. I was merely offering a comment before; my brother would not know how to deal with a woman like yourself.”

A little of Lydia's ire subsided. It was true that Brigham Quade nettled her sorely, but she couldn't imagine why. She was used to the teasing of soldiers with both grave wounds and minor, and besides, he hadn't actually insulted her…had he?

She looked at her host out of the corner of one eye. “You have been quite kind, under the circumstances,” she conceded, tempted again by the slice of pie awaiting her. The fruit filling was probably both tart and sweet, while the crust looked flaky and light. Lydia tasted humble pie, as well as peach, when she took her first bite. “I'll try to be less sensitive.”

There was a smile couched in his voice, or so it seemed to Lydia.

“You do that,” Mr. Quade replied.

Lydia savored her pie.

“Devon tells me you were a nurse during the war,” said the master of the house, apparently determined to convince her that he could carry on a civil conversation. In truth, Lydia would have been much relieved if he'd simply removed himself from the room.

She chewed, swallowed, dabbed at her mouth with a linen napkin. “Yes.” She hated to think about those horrible days, let alone discuss them. There was every possibility that the nightmares would return if she dwelt on the topic too long. “It was not very pleasant, of course.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Mr. Quade agreed, watching her.

Lydia finished another bite of pie, which didn't taste quite as good as the first. “Perhaps you were involved in the war effort in some way?” she asked, hoping to direct the flow of conversation away from herself.

“Actually,” he replied, reaching out for a china pot that looked ridiculously out of place in his brawny, callused hand and pouring himself more coffee, “I sold timber to both sides and kept out of the argument.”

She pushed away her pie, unable to believe what she'd just heard. “‘The argument'?” she echoed in disbelief.

Quade leaned forward in his chair, looking baffled. Clearly, he knew he'd offended her again but couldn't think how.

She was about to enlighten him.

“I have seen bodies stacked between trees like cord-wood, Mr. Quade,” she said coldly, sitting up very straight in her chair. “Sometimes, one of the arms or legs would twitch. We didn't know whether or not some of those men were still alive, and we hadn't a moment to find out, because there were others—so many others—being brought in all the time. At Gettysburg there were corpses so thick on the ground you could barely wedge a foot between them, and they say the water of Antietam Creek ran scarlet with blood. I would not call the War Between the States an ‘argument.' Furthermore, I consider your selling lumber to the rebel states an act of treason.”

“The war is over, Lydia,” he said, his voice quiet and grave.

She barely heard him, she was so flustered. “Have you no conscience? How could you bear to prosper from such carnage?”

Brigham's tones were still level, though a tiny muscle was twitching under his left cheekbone. “I didn't start the conflict, and I couldn't have stopped it by refusing to sell lumber because a man wore gray instead of blue.”

Lydia was so horrified that, for the moment, she couldn't speak. She sat clutching the edge of the table, unable to rise from her chair.

Mr. Quade regarded her thoughtfully for a long interval, then said, “I am willing to allow you your opinion, Miss McQuire. Why is it that you are so troubled by mine?”

She closed her eyes, hearing the exploding shells again, the screams, mere boys in farm clothes and mismatched uniforms, covered in gore and shrieking for their mothers. She smelled the powder from the cannons, the blood, the merciless stench made up of sweat, excrement, urine, and infected flesh. She swayed, felt a strong hand grasp her forearm and steady her.

“Lydia!”

She looked, saw Mr. Quade bending close, but she could still hear the screams. Even after she'd walked away from the hospital in Washington City for the last time, she'd heard them, night and day, hour upon hour, until she'd truly thought she'd go mad from the sound.

She was trembling.

Mr. Quade went to a side table. She heard the clinking of glass against glass, and then he returned, shoving a brandy snifter into her hand.

Normally, Lydia did not take ardent spirits, given the havoc whiskey had caused in her father's life, but she was about to topple over and she needed something to revive her. She took an unsteady sip, using both hands to hold the glass.

“What just happened here?” Brigham demanded, crouching beside her chair. As shaken as she was, his nearness had its effect on her. She felt an achy heat deep inside her, in that place a good woman tried hard not to think about. “You look as though you've just taken tea with the devil.”

Lydia was beginning to gather her composure. The nightmare was at bay, for the time being at least, and the alcohol had warmed her blood, but in another way she was more frightened than ever. Mr. Quade's distant comfort was quite as intoxicating as opium; she realized she could come to need that comfort to live, the way she needed water and air and food.

She set the brandy down with a shaking hand, pushed back her chair and bolted. In the doorway she turned back, watching as Mr. Quade rose slowly, gracefully to his feet.

“Lydia,” he said, and that was all. Just her name. And yet she felt as though he had somehow reached out and caressed her; her blood thundered in the pulse points behind her ears and at the base of her throat.

She shook her head, somewhat wildly, backing away.

Mr. Quade did not pursue her when she fled the room.

 

In the morning, Lydia awakened to a room full of summer sunshine, feeling abjectly foolish. The first thing she remembered was Brigham's handsome face, close to hers, when he'd crouched beside her chair in the dining room the night before. Looking back, she had the strange feeling that he would have listened to every ugly memory she had, and she felt a peculiar ache in her heart. Few people were strong enough to bear the true realities of war, even secondhand, and because of that, she still carried much of the burden.

She jumped out of bed, having long since learned that action was the only remedy for melancholy thoughts, and put on one of the dresses she'd purchased in San Francisco. She looked sensibly pretty in the gray gown lined with faint pink stripes, she decided, as she unbraided her heavy hair, brushed it, and arranged the tresses in a loose knot at the back of her head. The narrow trim of lace around the cuffs and high collar of the dress added just the right touch of femininity.

The house was very quiet when Lydia descended the stairs, and when she passed the long-case clock in the entryway, she was chagrined. It was nearly ten o'clock; Devon and Brigham had probably been about their business for hours, and there was no sign of the children, Polly, or Aunt Persephone.

Worst of all, Lydia thought, with wry grimness, she'd missed breakfast. She'd never get these jutting bones of hers covered with womanly flesh if she didn't catch up on all the eating she'd missed in recent years.

In the kitchen, Lydia found cold toast and eggs. She brought a plate from one of the shelves and ate, aware of the many times, during the war and after, when she would have felt dizzying gratitude for such a feast.

Immediately after, she washed her plate and silverware. There was a cracked mirror on the wall above the pump handle, and she looked quickly to make sure she was presentable. Then Lydia hurried outside.

The land seemed determined to redeem itself, following yesterday's rainstorm. The dense and seemingly endless multitude of trees was rich green, and the sky was a powdery shade of blue. The waters lapping at the shore reflected the heavens, seeming to harbor the light of sleeping stars in their depths, and towering mountains beyond jutted upward, rugged and heavily traced with snow.

Lydia, who had left the house by a rear door, stood stricken on a rock walkway, staring, wondering how even a rain as fervent as yesterday's could have shrouded such beauty. It was as though God had taken a deep breath, pushed up His sleeves, and made a new Eden here, a glittering emerald of a place trimmed in the sapphire of water and sky.

She felt as though her soul had gone soaring like some great bird, out beyond the chain of mountains. A rustling sound high in a nearby cedar tree brought her back with disturbing abruptness.

“Excuse me,” Millie said, from somewhere in the dew-moistened leaves above, “but I wonder if you couldn't help me down, Miss McQuire? I seem to have gotten stuck.”

Lydia calculated the distance between the treetop and the flagstone path and raised the fingers of one hand to her mouth. “Hold on very tightly,” she said, when she could manage to speak, and then she proceeded toward the tree.

“Millicent can climb like a monkey,” a masculine voice said from behind Lydia, just as she would have hoisted her skirts and started up through the fragrant branches. She turned and saw Devon standing beside her, the sun glinting in his fair hair. “She probably intended to lure you up there and then leave you until there was no danger of being forced to work out a sum or diagram a sentence.” He moved to stand beside Lydia, looking up, his powerful arms folded, a wry twist to his mouth. “Isn't that so, Millie?”

A defeated sigh drifted down to them, followed by an industrious rustle of leaves and motion of limbs. Small black slippers appeared first, and then the skirt of a blue calico dress. “You'd think it was a crime to have fun in this place,” Millicent complained, bringing a smile to Lydia's lips. “I declare, Uncle Devon, you're getting to be every bit as dour as Papa.”

Devon tried to look stern, and held up his arms to receive his adventurous little niece as she made a heart-stopping leap from a perch on a branch three feet above his head. “Impossible,” he said, giving the child a brief hug before he set her on his feet and rested his hands on his hips. “Now, no more tricks, Millie-Willie. You want Miss McQuire for a friend, don't you?”