Undercover Bride (13 page)

“I don’t know why God answers some prayers and not others,” she said softly. The minister who worked at the orphanage had told her that even when God didn’t answer prayers, He worked through them to change lives. “All I know is that we have to keep praying.”

She heard his intake of breath. “The entire time I was in the stockades not one Christian church showed us prisoners any mercy or care.”

“It was war,” she said. “You were the enemy.”

“That didn’t stop the Southern Masons from sending provisions to Northern Mason prisoners. Should, God forbid, there ever be another war, my advice to soldiers would be to forget the church and join the Masonic lodge.”

“The church isn’t perfect,” she said. “It was never meant to be perfect, and yet, God works through it, just as He works through our imperfections.”

She might not have survived those turbulent years with her family had God not worked through her obsessive need to save face.

Garrett said nothing, and they sat in waiting silence, deep in their own thoughts. She didn’t want to think about the past, but once the door had been opened, there was no stopping the memories.

Her family fled to the United Province of Canada during the war, along with thousands of American draft dodgers. Running away from conflict was not much different than running away from the law, so the move hardly affected her. It wasn’t until after returning to America and her father’s death that the full impact of the War between the States become evident. By then she had joined the ranks of war-orphaned children.

She soon learned that wartime losses were socially acceptable; hangings were not, so she invented a new past. She told everyone she lost her family in the North—South conflict. It was the only way she knew to fit in with the hundreds of other orphans. The only way she knew how to preserve any sort of dignity.

Her pretense provided ample training for her job as an undercover detective. Making up a good cover story was the least of it. An operative had to live the deception, and the only way to do that was by repetition. State a lie enough times and soon even the most outrageous falsehoods seemed like the truth.

No longer wishing to dwell on the past, she leaned over and pressed her hand gently on Elise’s forehead. She still felt hot to the touch. Maggie ran her knuckles along the child’s flushed face.

“Our Father,” she whispered, and the words fell from her lips as if of their own volition. “Who art in heaven.”
Heal this precious child.
“Hallowed be Thy name.”
Protect her and make her strong.
“Thy Kingdom come.”
Help her to grow in her faith even when it seems like You have deserted her.
“Thy will be done.”
Help her to follow Your plan for her.
“On earth as it is in heaven.”

“Give us this day, our daily bread.”

Her eyes flickered open at the sound of Garrett’s voice. She waited for him to say the next line, but when he didn’t, she said it for him. “Forgive us our failings as we forgive those who fail us.” They finished the prayer in tandem, after which there was nothing left to do but wait.

But as they kept vigil, something happened in that room; something changed. The very air around them seemed to move more freely. At times, in the past, they had acted cautiously with each other. Wary, even. But not now. Their concern for Elise was the bond that united them in a way no pretense ever could.

Maggie studied his profile as he leaned over his sleeping daughter. He would have made a wonderful physician. She shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts but couldn’t seem to help herself.

“Why did you choose to become a tinker?” she asked. That was a long way from his original desire to pursue a medical career.

“Actually, I didn’t,” he said quickly, openly, without his usual circumspection. “The profession chose me.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “There were no utensils, plates, or even cups in prison. Someone gave us rice, but we had nothing to cook it in.” He reached into the basin of water for a washcloth and squeezed it out before continuing.

“I was able to make a pan from my canteen. From there, I learned how to make spoons from brass buttons and cups from wood. Eventually I traded what I made for extra rations. That helped keep me alive.”

“It must have been hard,” she whispered.

“Hard doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

He talked about the war, his imprisonment, and the difficulty of adjusting to civilian life. The scar on his face was the result of trying to break up a prison fight. It was as if his daughter’s illness had uncorked memories that had long been bottled up inside.

“The town greeted me like a hero when I got home,” he said. “But I sure didn’t feel like one.” He pressed the cloth on Elise’s forehead, and Maggie heard his intake of breath. “She’s so little.”

“Yes, but she’s strong,” Maggie said.

“It’s odd but some of the biggest and the strongest men in prison were the first to die. Scrawny men were the most likely to survive.”

The same was true in the orphanage, though she hadn’t really thought about it until then. It was as if those who’d led a hardscrabble life had somehow acquired an extra layer of protection against physical stresses.

“You survived, and you’re strong.”

“I guess you could say I was just lucky.” He tossed the washcloth in the basin and rubbed his neck as if to work out the kinks. “Let’s talk about you.”

A knot tightened in her stomach. “Me?”

“I’m curious. Why would a woman as… attractive as you answer an advertisement for a mail-order bride?”

His compliment made her blush. “I could ask the same of you,” she said, throwing the verbal ball back at him. “Why would you place such an advertisement? I’m sure you could have your pick of local women.”

“A scarred widower with two children? Not likely.”

She studied him and felt a worrisome shift of allegiance. Her job required her to uncover the truth no matter the circumstances. There was no better time to question a suspect than when his defenses were down. But she had no desire to play detective. Not today. Taking advantage of Garrett’s vulnerable state would be like shooting an unarmed man, and that she could never do.

“You underestimate yourself,” she said.

He discounted this with a shrug. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “I imagine you could have had your pick of suitors.”

She felt another rush of warmth to her cheeks. “An old maid like me?”

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was just thinking about the day I picked you up from the train station. I have to admit to having second thoughts. I worried that a woman who willingly put herself in danger might be too impulsive for my family’s needs.” After a moment he added, “I was wrong.”

Her pulse quickened. “What… changed your mind?”

He glanced at her hand lovingly stroking Elise’s forehead. “That.”

A
t four o’clock she left the house and drove the buckboard to the edge of town to pick Toby up from school. Worried about Elise and shaken by her confused feelings, she imagined herself falling into a bottomless pit with no means of escape.

Pulling up in front of the school, she forced her worrisome thoughts aside.

Toby greeted her with a frown, his slouch cap askew. It must have scared him to see his sister being carried out of the classroom, and she wished now she had thought to pick the boy up earlier.

“Is Elise gonna die?”

She didn’t want to answer the question—not even to herself. “Dr. Coldwell told us Elise will be fine once the fever breaks.”

He scrambled onto the seat next to her, his eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She has pneumonia.” Since she wasn’t sure if he knew what pneumonia was, she added, “Her lungs are sick. She needs our prayers.”

Toby tightened his hands into fists and closed his eyes. “God, if You make my sister better, I’ll let her go to the moon. Promise.”

She waited for him to finish his prayer. “She’ll like that,” she said with a nod of approval. Releasing the brake, she flicked the reins. The buckboard trembled as the wheels began to roll.

Toby leaned forward as if urging Patches to hurry.

She glanced at his stern young face. If she didn’t watch out, this kid would grow on her. The whole family would grow on her—if it hadn’t already—and that was a problem she didn’t know how to handle.

For five days and four nights, Garrett and Maggie hardly left Elise’s bedside except to take Toby to school and to open the door to church members dropping off casseroles, thanks to Aunt Hetty who had sounded the alarm.

Some offered to sit with Elise, but Garrett always turned them down, his manner brusque.

“They just want to help,” Maggie said, gently, after one such episode.

“They only want to help when it suits them,” he said and stalked away.

Another time she found him in the parlor staring at the dish that someone from the church had just left.

“That smells good,” she said.

He shoved the casserole into her hands and returned to Elise’s room.

During the course of the days and nights, they spent hours talking. Garrett spoke of his childhood, and the words flowed when he spoke about growing up with Aunt Hetty and Uncle Harry. It was harder for him to talk about the war, and long pauses accented his speech.

“The prison was designed to hold ten thousand men, but there were more than thirty thousand of us cramped together. That’s another reason I didn’t want to move to Philadelphia like Katherine wanted. I couldn’t bear the thought of living in a crowded city. I like looking out the window and seeing nothing but land and mountains and sky.”

Knowing what he went through, Maggie couldn’t blame him. But neither could she blame Katherine for wanting a better education for her children.

“Your turn,” he said.

Maggie didn’t want to speak of her childhood for fear of giving too much away, but he persisted. “The day my father died was the worst day of my life,” she said. That was the truth as far as it went. What she didn’t say was how he died.

He studied her as if detecting something in her voice. “Were you close to him?”

“No,” she said. “Not at all.”

He looked at her with sympathy or maybe even compassion. “Sometimes those are the hardest deaths to deal with.” Following a stretch of silence, he asked, “What about your mother?”

“We weren’t close, either,” she said a tad too quickly. She could never understand why a woman would stay with a man as mean-spirited as her father. Even more puzzling was how a woman could abandon her own children. At the age of seventeen she found out her mother had remarried. Though her new husband was well-to-do, her mother never bothered fetching her from the orphanage or tracking down her sons. In some ways, Maggie envied her mother’s ability to wipe the slate of her past clean and start over. But it hurt Maggie to think she could so easily be forgotten. It hurt a lot.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

A lump rose to her throat, and a heavy mass settled in her chest. Not because of his understanding or empathy, but because she couldn’t tell him the rest.

On the morning of the fifth day, Maggie awoke to find a thin sliver of dawn slicing through the curtains of Elise’s room. She lifted her head from the foot of Elise’s bed and rubbed her stiff neck.

Garrett was still in his chair, his head on the mattress next to hers. He was so close she could feel the warmth of his body, smell the sweet, spicy fragrance of his aftershave.

Though she had persuaded him to go to bed, he had returned sometime in the night to be by his daughter’s side. Even in sleep his hand never left Elise’s. The tense set of his jaw remained, as did his furrowed brow.

Elise’s breathing no longer sounded labored. Feeling a surge of hope, Maggie tiptoed around Garrett’s chair and laid her hand on the child’s forehead. Tears of relief sprang to her eyes.

“Garrett,” she whispered, shaking him.

He lifted his head from the bed and blinked away the haze of sleep.

“Her fever broke.”

He stared at her a moment then sprang to his feet and felt Elise’s forehead for himself.

“She’s going to be all right,” Maggie assured him. “Praise the Lord!”