whole meal was larded with the conversation of people who shared the same profession: the coming campaign, the latest gossip from Omaha Barracks, what late-winter oddities from the commissary department lurked for the unsuspecting. Joe had spent most shared meals in similar chat, but this was different. He glanced at Susanna Hopkins, who seemed to blossom before his eyes, because no one intimated anything concerning the last few horrendous days. He wondered how long it had been since she had enjoyed dinner and conversation.
He did want to turn the conversation her way. “Maeve, were you able to recruit any friends for a night school? Mrs. Hopkins gets bored easily if she’s not teaching someone something.”
Maybe he had blundered. After all, he hadn’t even asked Susanna if she was going to accept his offer to teach with Private Benedict. “At least, I believe she has her work cut out for her in the garrison school,” he added.
“I do,” Susanna said, to his relief. “I promised Private Benedict that I would arrive tomorrow with my own lunch in my own lard bucket. My evenings are quite free, Maeve. Find me ladies to teach.”
“I already have three. Is that enough?” Maeve asked.
“Even one is enough,” Susanna replied promptly. “Shall we begin tomorrow night? You name the time and place.”
Joe couldn’t help himself. Or maybe he didn’t try. Without a word, he leaned over and kissed Susanna’s cheek. “Bravo,” he said, then returned to the plum duff in front of him, as though he did that every evening.
Maeve started to giggle, then Susanna. The women were still chuckling when they gathered up the dishes and moved back to the kitchen, that female sanctuary. Sergeant Rattigan wisely turned his after-dinner conversation to the upcoming campaign. By the time Joe ushered Susanna back across the footbridge, all was calm.
“Lights out any minute,” he told her as they walked more and more slowly across the parade ground, Susanna unconsciously moving at a snail’s pace, the closer they came to Officers Row. “You have to be in a classroom in the morning, looking chipper. I’d be derelict indeed if I monopolized any more of your time tonight.”
She stopped. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” she whispered.
“Just doing my job, as head of this year’s administrative council,” he said. They stood in silence as the bugler played taps. As the last note still lingered, he started her in motion again. The wind was picking up and winter had returned. “I’ll stop at the O’Learys, and tell them that you’ll be happy to escort Rooney to the enlisted men’s school, if you’re game.”
“I am.”
They were on the porch now. “Do you want me to come in? I could explain …”
She put her hand on his arm. “Thank you, no. This is for me to do.” She looked at the front door, as though it were the gaping jaws of hell, and went inside.
Stay with me, he wanted to say, but did not. He had nothing to offer her on the spur of the moment that was acceptable in any society, especially one as censorious as this one.
He stood a moment on the porch, then segued a few steps to the O’Learys’ front door, where he stood a few minutes with James O’Leary. The captain assured him that Rooney would be ready for school in the morning.
Joe returned to his cold quarters. He lit a fire in the parlor’s potbellied stove, because he expected a visit from Sergeant Rattigan. A whispered comment as Maeve and Susanna were kitchen-bound, and a nod from the sergeant, had assured him of that.
It was going to be a touchy subject, but maybe he had science on his side. Heaven knows, nothing else had worked for Maeve Rattigan. He was seated at his desk in his home office, looking at the Journal for Homeopathy, when he heard Rattigan’s knock.
Sergeant Rattigan gave Joe all his attention as the post surgeon fired the only shot left in his puny medical arsenal, an 1854 article from an obscure British medical journal. Professors at the University of Maryland had scoffed, but Joe had never forgotten it.
“I’m going to intrude in a monumentally intimate way, Sergeant,” he said. “You can stop me at any time and there will be no hard feelings. I mean that.”
The sergeant nodded. He stared at his well-polished shoes. “Please don’t expect us to abstain, Major. I don’t think we could.”
Joe thought of his own wife. Neither could we, he remembered. Tread lightly on Sergeant