The Bride Fair. Cheryl Reavis

idea if the man were anywhere close by or not.

      “Sir!” Perkins said immediately on the other side of the closed bedchamber door.

      “Coffee,” Max said. “Now.”

      “Yes, Sir!”

      Max sat up on the edge of the bed with some difficulty, then unwrapped his hands and flexed his fingers again.

      Not too bad, Miss Markham, he thought.

      He stood and walked unsteadily to the window that opened on the back side of the house. He had initially been too distracted by the pain in his hands to register that everything else hurt, as well. It had been a long time since he’d participated in the kind of physical exertion necessary to put out a fire. Clearly, the days when he could subject his body to any and every kind of strain and misbehavior and not feel any aftereffects were long gone.

      He moved the lace curtain aside and looked down into the backyard. The sun was up. The birds were singing, and there was a fine, cool breeze coming in through the window. Maria Markham stood on the dewy grass below and, unless the man with her lived here, she was exhibiting a flagrant disregard for the new curfew.

      Max moved slightly to try to hear what they were saying, but he could only catch certain words. From the look of things, however, the conversation was not going well. Whatever verbal bouquets the man was handing out, Maria Markham was not accepting.

      “—how could she be better…they need you. Why can’t you see what this is?”

      The man reached out to touch her arm, and she stepped away from him.

      “You break her heart,” she said. Max heard and understood that quite distinctly.

      “I can’t help the way things are—” the man replied.

      “Yes, you can!” Maria said, forgetting to lower her voice in her agitation. “Who can but you?”

      But then she suddenly relented. “—I will,” she said. “They are always welcome—”

      Max looked around at a faint knock on the door.

      “In,” he said, and Perkins came in with the coffee.

      “Who is that with Miss Markham?” Max asked, nodding toward the window. Even from this distance and without much to go on, he didn’t like Maria Markham’s early morning visitor. It was enough that he was breaking the curfew.

      Perkins carefully handed over the tin cup of hot coffee and peered out the window to see.

      “You want me to detain him, Sir?”

      “No, I want you to tell me who he is.”

      “That would be…Phelan Canfield, Sir. Ex-Reb artilleryman. Brother to Miss Markham’s late fiancé and well on his way to becoming the town drunk. He’s married to a friend of Miss Markham’s—Suzanne, her name is. I hear that both the Canfield boys admired Miss Markham, though. Some folks here think maybe Phelan would have turned out better if he’d married her instead of letting his brother have her—on account of she would have made something out of him. Besides that, her brothers—if they had lived—would have half killed him for the kind of misbehavior he’s been showing. Good men, her brothers, or so folks say. But you never know about these things that might have been, do you, Sir?

      “Anyway, Canfield and this here Suzanne has got two children—little boys. One’s five—his daddy got to come home on horse leave one winter and that’s where he come from. The other one’s about two or so. Suzanne—now, she ain’t well enough to look after them or keep up her wifely duties, if you know what I mean, Sir. Most of the time Canfield ain’t sober—or he’s disappeared someplace and nobody knows where he got to. It’s usually jail for being drunk and disorderly or one of the whorehouses down by the railroad tracks. He ain’t got enough money to gamble or partake—but I reckon some of the girls take pity on him, him being a Reb war hero and all that.”

      Max stared at his orderly. “How the hell do you know all this?”

      “People talk, Sir. Alls I do is pay attention when they do it. Most of the folks here work so hard at ignoring us, I reckon they really do forget we’re around. But I ain’t deaf. You can hear all kinds of things at the bakery—it’s on the ground floor down at the hotel—Mansion House. And Miss Markham—she’s come down to the jail a time or two looking for the son of a bitch and thinking he’s been on another one of his binges and got hisself locked up. She takes care of them little boys right much and Suzanne, too. Them boys are a handful—you remember, I did mention, Sir, that this might not be the most restful place for you here.”

      Max declined to comment. He held the cup precariously with both hands, savoring the warmth against his painful fingers, and sipped his coffee. After a moment he moved to the window and looked out again—at approximately the same instant Maria Markham glanced up and saw him. She immediately sent Phelan Canfield on his way and went into the house.

      “Any chance of getting breakfast, Perkins?” Max asked.

      “I believe it’s in the making, Sir.”

      “You ‘believe’?”

      “Well, Sir, I did get myself run out of the kitchen pretty quick—so I can’t be exactly sure.”

      “What the hell did you do?”

      “Showed up, Sir,” Perkins said. “That’s about all it took.”

      “Perkins, the Markham woman is only this high,” Max said, holding up an aching hand in a fair estimation of her tallness.

      “Yes, Sir, but she had this here broom and even if she didn’t use it, she was about to cry—so I just thought I’d let her win this one. And as long as I was shoved out yonder in the backyard, I got me a campfire going to make the coffee. And I seen to your mount—checked the hooves and got the farrier up here. So that’s been done. I got the wash pot filled with water and a good fire under it, while I was at it. It ought to be hot enough about now. Would you be needing it for a shave and the like, Sir?”

      “I would,” Max said. “Tell Miss Markham I said to hold breakfast until I’m ready.”

      Perkins made a small sound. Just enough of one to let Max know his orderly wasn’t altogether looking forward to another encounter with the daughter of the house.

      “Tell her just like that, Sir?” he asked.

      “Exactly like that, Perkins.”

      A “shave and the like” didn’t take nearly as long as it might have. Perkins had already set up a place in a small connecting room—in what Max guessed had once been a nursery—Maria Markham’s perhaps. The orderly had the tin tub more than half filled. All that remained was carrying the hot water upstairs from the wash pot in the backyard. The biggest delay was caused by finding a wearable tunic. The one he had arrived in had numerous holes burned in it from the sparks at the fire.

      Still, the wait would likely not sit well with Maria. It was yet another “inconvenience” he didn’t mind perpetrating—or so he thought until he came downstairs. She had gone to a great deal of trouble from the smell of things—fresh bread, cooked apples, fried meat of some kind—bacon or ham—and coffee.

      Mr. Markham greeted him in the hall, a stately-looking man in a threadbare frock coat, if somewhat frail. Maria Markham must have taken after her mother. Max could see no family resemblance.

      “Good morning, Colonel! And a fine morning it is. This way, if you please,” the old man said, leading him into the dining room. “I trust you slept well?”

      “Quite well,” Max said, the lie coming easily. He had had months of practice when he was still recuperating at home after his imprisonment. Both his mother and his sister, Kate, had asked him that every morning, and every morning he had lied. The truth was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a restful sleep. Or even a long one. It seemed to be the way of things. He wasn’t the only war veteran to suffer from