“And I remind you, ma’am, who won this war. It would be better for us all if you went somewhere and waited until I send for you. And right now, if you please. I don’t want to take exceptional measures, but I have the authority to do just that if I see fit.”
Kate stayed well out of the set-to, advancing only after Mrs. Kinnard had turned on her heel and headed for the dining room in a huff.
“How is it I have to maintain the peace for my brother’s sake and you don’t?” she asked the sergeant major.
“I am maintaining the peace, Miss Kate,” Perkins said.
“It sounded more like you might shoot her.”
“What I’m doing is trying to make sure that Mrs. Colonel Woodard finds her brother in the best state of mind and health possible when she gets back here. I’m thinking Mrs. Kinnard isn’t going to be much help when it comes to either of those things. And I’m thinking if the colonel’s lady is happy, then the colonel will be too. Which means, so will I. And probably you, too,” he added for good measure. “If you remember, he’s not going to be expecting to find you in the middle of all this.”
Kate frowned at his annoyingly perfect logic. No. Max definitely wouldn’t be happy that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. “As much as I hate to admit it, I think I have...things to learn, Sergeant Major,” she said.
Sergeant Major Perkins was only too happy to take her at her word. “Yes, Miss Kate, you do,” he said without even a token regard for her feelings. “For example, now would be a good time for you to go and apologize to Mrs. Kinnard for my very disrespectful behavior. Tell her your brother will hear of it, after which I’ll be disciplined accordingly.”
“I don’t see how that will help.”
“As you said, you have things to learn. It’s time to start learning. If you please,” he added respectfully.
“I am not going to lie, Sergeant Major,” she said, despite having lived in a huge web of untruths for more than half her lifetime. The fabrication regarding Harrison’s birth had been foisted upon her; she’d had no choice. In this matter she did.
“There is no lie in what I want you to do. I gave you the easy part. It’s going to be harder to get the colonel’s brother-in-law the chaplain he’s asked for. It might take a while. We have to find him and then we’re likely going to have to sober him up. The man gets into the O Be Joyful every chance he gets.”
Kate frowned. “Then I don’t think he’s going to do.”
“He’s the only one we got who fits the bill,” Perkins said matter-of-factly. “What would be very helpful now is for you to go and mend the fence I just knocked down. If you please,” he said again, tilting his head in the direction Mrs. Kinnard had gone.
She didn’t please. She didn’t please at all. But she went.
“Miss Kate,” he called as she reached the dining room door. “The company baker has made up a big batch of those shortbread cookies you like so much. They’re locked in the pantry. Maybe you and the ladies would like some of them. They’d go nice with a pot of tea.”
“You are bribing me with cookies,” she said incredulously.
“That I am, Miss Kate.”
She shook her head in exasperation, then took a deep breath before she opened the dining room door and went in. She was surprised to find Mrs. Justice and Mrs. Russell sitting at the long mahogany table, as well.
And the gathering felt more like a planned meeting than a happy coincidence. She wondered if she was to have been included, if that was the reason Mrs. Kinnard had been so determined to find her.
“What are you doing here?” Mrs. Kinnard said immediately, her rudeness causing Mrs. Justice to make a small sound of protest.
“This is my brother’s house,” Kate said calmly. “And if by here, you mean this room, I...wanted to ask if you might like some tea and shortbread cookies while we wait for Mr. Markham to see the chaplain—”
Mrs. Kinnard bristled at the mention of the clergyman she hadn’t approved.
“Robert Markham has his own pastor, one who has known him since he was a boy,” she said. “I can’t imagine why he would want anyone else.”
“He didn’t say why. I believe he wants to speak to someone of faith, but he also wants someone who has been in battle, as he has. That’s what ‘seeing the elephant’ means, that one has fought the enemy and survived.”
The women looked at each other. Mrs. Kinnard must have more questions, but apparently she had no intention of asking Kate.
“I would like some tea,” Mrs. Justice offered timidly from her seat at the far end of the table. “And cookies. I dearly love cookies. Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Kinnard do, too.”
“I have no interest in...cookies,” Mrs. Russell said, but Kate heard “her cookies.”
“Nor I,” Mrs. Kinnard assured her.
“Of course you do,” Mrs. Justice said, stopping just short of blatantly insisting. “Remember when all three of us got into trouble for eating the cookies that were left cooling on the windowsill at old Mrs. Kinnard’s house? I can still smell that wonderful aroma after all these years. Don’t you remember? We were all three riding on my brother’s decrepit old brindled mare. We got a whiff of those cookies and off through the spirea hedge we went. And we made the poor old nag go tree to tree and shrub to shrub until we got close enough to snap those cookies up—I don’t know what that horse must have thought. Now these cookies we won’t have to...um, borrow.”
Incredibly, Mrs. Russell smiled. “We did do that, didn’t we?”
“I don’t recall any such thing,” Mrs. Kinnard said. “The very idea. I certainly never took cookies from my mother-in-law’s windowsill.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Acacia,” Mrs. Russell said. “She wasn’t your mother-in-law then. We were only seven. You do remember being seven, I hope.”
“Six,” Mrs. Justice said. “And already well on our way to a highwayman’s life—just as soon as we got a better horse.”
Mrs. Justice and Mrs. Russell looked at each other, then burst out laughing, and Kate couldn’t keep from smiling. Mrs. Kinnard, however, remained unmoved.
There was a polite knock—kick—on the door, and Kate went to open it. A young soldier stood in the hallway, struggling to hold on to a large silver tea tray laden with a matching teapot and a mound of cookies and mismatched china cups and serving plates.
“Sergeant Major Perkins asks if you would like tea and cookies, Miss Woodard,” he said as if he’d rehearsed the line any number of times. Clearly, Perkins wasn’t taking any chances that Kate wouldn’t carry out his plans for fence mending.
“Do we?” Kate asked, looking over her shoulder at Mrs. Kinnard, giving her the final word.
“Wouldn’t it be rude not to accept Miss Woodard’s hospitality?” Mrs. Justice said behind her hand to Mrs. Kinnard—as if Kate couldn’t hear her. “I believe all three of our mothers taught us how to behave in someone else’s home, no matter what the circumstances might be.”
“Oh, very well,” Mrs. Kinnard said, clearly exasperated. “Since it’s here. Bring in the tray,” she said to the soldier. “Put it there. Will you pour or shall I?” she asked, clearly startling him to the point that even she realized it.
“Good heavens! Not you,” Mrs. Kinnard snapped—to the young soldier’s obvious relief. “Her.”
“I would much prefer that you poured, Mrs. Kinnard, if you would be so kind,” Kate said, assuming