up off his knees, handing back her spectacles and raising her to her feet. His arm around her, he walked her from the quiet ward. She glanced in the hall to see the partition gone from around a now empty bed.
He gave her shoulders a squeeze and started her toward the entrance. “In the middle of this month, would Private Benedict have any serious objection if you take two weeks off for a trip to Cheyenne? I’ll have two patients fit enough to travel to Fort Russell by then. I intend to accompany them in an ambulance, and you will come along, if you haven’t decided I’d make a terrible husband.”
“I will come along.”
“Rumor says there will be a court-martial—the first of General Crook’s victims from Powder River—and I will be needed for court-martial duty. Before that boring job, you and I will find a justice of the peace. I trust you won’t be too bored waiting for my sorry carcass to show up each evening in the hotel. What do you think? It’s hardly the honeymoon of a woman’s dreams, but welcome to the army.”
“I have fairly low expectations.”
He laughed softly. “Good thing. You’ve seen my kitchen, and you already know I have a lumpy bed.”
“I thought it was fine.”
“So did I, actually. Change your mind now, if you’re going to.”
He waited, his tired eyes as lively as they were going to get, without at least eight hours of sleep. She kissed him.
“I won’t change my mind.” She hesitated, watching his face. “There is one thing.”
“You can have anything up to half my kingdom, which right now is a plantation in Virginia where my unforgiving relatives squat. I own it, by the way. Paid enough damned taxes to carpetbaggers.”
“I want to ask an attorney what … what my rights are, if we find Tommy.”
“We’ll find him, and we know where he belongs.”
He said it quietly, but the conviction in his voice stayed with her down the hill, into the Reeses’ quiet quarters, and to her own bed. She made herself drowsy by trying to decide which of her shabby dresses would be the best wedding dress. She smiled in the dark. It had probably better be the one with the least chalk dust on the sleeves.
They were married two weeks later in Cheyenne by a justice of the peace who seemed to find their shyness somehow endearing, no matter that both of them were above and beyond thirty years of age, previously experienced in the snares of Venus, and endearingly besotted with each other. The JP had sharp eyes.
Or so he told Joe, while spending a moment with him, examining the certificate Joe had composed as attending physician, and registered after Melissa’s death. He spent more time over Suzie’s more voluminous divorce decree. To Joe’s relief, he had no editorial comment to make about divorce. He only offered one piece of advice.
“Major, treat her as you would the Queen of Sheba,” he said as he pulled on his more official black frock coat. “Ladies are a rare commodity in Wyoming Territory, and a pretty one like your future wife should keep you on your toes.”
“I’ll treat her as kindly as the army allows.”
The justice of the peace winced at that doleful bit of news. He regarded the post surgeon in silence a moment, his eyes kind now. “Major, did you have a good first marriage?”
“I did. No complaints except that it was too short.”
“Then you should have another good one. Those things tend to follow one another.”
They nodded to each other in perfect agreement.
Joe didn’t think Suzie could have any surprise for him, but there she was in the justice of the peace’s parlor, almost breathtaking in a deep green dress that he thought he remembered Katie O’Leary wearing at a dinner a year ago. The dress had an exquisite lace collar similar to one he had noticed Mrs. Burt wear at the enlisted men’s Christmas dance two years before the O’Leary dinner. He definitely recognized the paisley shawl as Maeve Rattigan’s.
“You’re well rigged out, Mrs. Hopkins,” he whispered when he took his place beside her and offered his arm. “Did you borrow a nightgown from Fifi?”
She looked down, then gave him a sidelong glance. “Major, I didn’t even bother with a nightgown.”
That rendered him speechless until his “I do,” which amused his new wife no end.
He had collected himself by the time they stood in the street again. “Why are you not flustered and taking shallow breaths?” he