Her Hesitant Heart

“You won’t after a winter of nothing but raisins,” he assured her.

Seated at a packing crate desk, Private Benedict looked up as they approached. He was on his feet at attention then, snapping off a smart salute, which Major Randolph returned.

“Private, let me introduce Mrs. Hopkins, teacher for the officers’ children.”

She extended her hand with no reticence, to Joe’s pleasure.

“I’m delighted to meet a fellow teacher,” she told Private Benedict.

“Where’s your classroom, Mrs. Hopkins?”

“A place not nearly as pleasant-smelling as yours,” she said. “It’s that first floor room in Old Bedlam, complete with a chimney probably full of bats or birds, and maybe a ghost or two, if I can believe the corporal of the guard.”

They laughed together, comrades already. With a friend in Katie O’Leary and a colleague—however improbable—in Private Benedict, Mrs. Hopkins would rub along at Fort Laramie, Joe thought. Now if he could convince her to give him some spare time at the hospital …

The private offered Mrs. Hopkins his chair, and in no time they were deep in conversation. Joe perched himself on an apple barrel, content to watch her. He knew she must be tired after a day’s hard labor in an old building, but she had found a friend in Private Benedict.

He had admired blondes before, but Melissa’s brunette glory had always stirred him, especially the sight of her wavy dark hair spread on his pillow. He folded his arms and decided that Mrs. Hopkins’s blond hair, coupled with her brown eyes, could prove endlessly fascinating. He liked the trimness of her figure. Mrs. Hopkins was also tidy and impeccable of posture. She had a full, deep laugh, not ladylike, but so infectious.

They were both looking at him now, as though waiting for a reply to a question he had not heard, so busy was he in admiring Mrs. Hopkins. “Beg pardon?” he inquired.

Private Benedict asked again, “Sir, may I walk Mrs. Hopkins back to her quarters? I’d hate to keep you from work.”

Hell, no, he thought. He took a few deep breaths, surprised at his resistance to a kind offer. “Actually, I had hoped to quick march Mrs. Hopkins to my hospital and introduce her to the redoubtable Nick Martin.” Joe paused, hoping Susanna Hopkins would see his interest. He was not a man to encroach; blame his Virginian upbringing. “Mrs. Hopkins, it’s your choice.”

Please choose me, he pleaded silently, yearning for her approval like a schoolboy.

He realized he was holding his breath until Mrs. Hopkins replied. “Private, I trust we will have plenty of occasions to discuss both your pupils and mine.”

Private Benedict sketched a charming bow to her. “We will.”

“Good day, Private. We’ll speak again soon. Major, shall we go?”

When he was a boy, living on his father’s plantation, Joe Randolph had had a one-eyed dog. Brutus belied his name, being most tame and possessed of a self-effacing nature, at least until the post rider happened by.

Brutus became a different dog then, considering it his duty to give chase. The post rider always managed to escape Brutus’s retribution, until one day when the energized dog latched on to the horse’s tail.

The horse stopped, looked around at this source of discomfort, and did nothing. Joe remembered watching, eyes wide, as Brutus sank to the road and also did nothing. Once he had caught the post rider’s horse, he had no idea what to do with it.

Joseph Randolph, grown now but possibly no wiser, had no idea what to do with Mrs. Hopkins. He had never supposed she would abandon a conversation with a fellow educationist. But here she was, probably with nothing on her mind beyond avoiding her cousin’s house for another hour. That thought channeled him toward his best efforts to relieve at least some of her anxiety. He couldn’t call it a smooth recovery, but Mrs. Hopkins probably knew better than to expect miracles from men.

“Yes, I promised you Nick Martin and I suppose you are wondering why,” he said, as they left the warehouse.

“True. I can control a classroom,” she assured him. She ducked her head against the wind that roared down the parade ground, and staggered with the force of it.

He steadied her automatically. “Some ladies in the regiment sew lead shot into their hems, to keep the wind from, well, doing what it does to skirts,” he told her.

“I’ll remember that.”

As they walked toward the hospital, the bugler in front of the guardhouse played recall from fatigue, or tried to play it, considering that the wind grabbed the notes and hurtled them toward Omaha as soon as he blew them.

“Soldiers have been known to commit suicide from too much wind,” he commented, then could have smacked himself. Do I not remember a single bit of idle chatter? he asked himself.

“One can scarcely blame them,” Mrs. Hopkins said. “Now, sir, Nick Martin.”