Why can I not fight for my country too?
Deborah Samson
Rising early the next morning, Mae made her way downstairs to the kitchen to find a fire already kindled. The sight stopped her cold. With a glance back across the hall to the parlor’s open door, she saw another hearth snapping and leaping merrily, a most welcome sight.
Rhys’s doing?
A beat of hope stirred her into action. As she prepared a breakfast tray in the kitchen, her culinary mishaps fewer and fewer, she prayed for their day. Toast, eggs, and bacon soon crowded the pewter plate, though she doubted he’d eat half of it. Sometimes she finished whatever remained.
Taking a steadying breath, she traded the warm kitchen for the parlor, expecting to find him sleeping as she so often did. Instead, he was leaning back against the headboard, his fingers trellised behind his head.
“Morning, Mae.”
She tried to smile as she served him, unable to meet his gaze for fear of what she’d find there. “Thank you for tending the fire.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
Breakfast served, she started to leave the room, as addled as when she’d first met him, but his voice stopped her at the threshold.
“You’re angry with me.”
Was she? She turned toward him, all her fears gathering like storm clouds. Would he relapse and die right here? Or return to the fight and fall on some distant battlefield, shattering her heart all over again? Leaving her with countless regrets? The feeling between them was strained, anything but amicable.
“And you’re still angry with me.” Her voice wavered when she said it, all the pent-up emotion of the last months without him weighting her words.
He didn’t deny it. He simply looked at the tray and made no move to eat. She sensed how much he hated being off his feet, an invalid, waited on hand and foot and unsure of the future.
“I’m angry with myself ... our circumstances.” She tried to express what tore at her. Failed. “But I cannot undo anything about all that happened no matter how much I want to. I live with the regret of it day and night.”
He set the tray aside. Though far from agile, he reached for his crutches and began to get up. “I’ll eat in the kitchen. There’s no cause to be bedrid.”
She followed him with the tray, his breakfast no longer hot. The house was big enough that the hearth’s warmth failed to reach farther into the room than a few feet. She glanced at the kitchen windows in dismay. A light snow was falling, which might well lock her in with him and his smoldering fury and her own haunting regrets.
Jerkily, he sat down at the head of the table and leaned his crutches against a cupboard. She busied herself at the hearth, beginning the soup for their noon meal and wishing Bronwyn or Father Harlow would walk in. Rhys was often brusque with them too, saying little, mostly listening and protesting any attempts by them to turn him into a slabbering milksop, so he said. She vowed to not be one of them.
When the silence turned taut as a fiddle string, she murmured, “You miss your Rifle Corps.”
“Aye.” He continued his breakfast as she busied herself grating corn into meal for bread. “I miss being on my feet, hale and hearty.”
A twist of resentment needled her. “You’re married to the army ... not me.”
“You knew that the day I wed you.”
His matter-of-factness made her want to throw the bowl of corn at him. As it was, she grated her knuckle and blood stained her clean apron. She took a handkerchief from her pocket, wrapped it around her finger, and kept grating. “You’re sorry you wed me.”
“Nay, Mae.” He set down his fork. “I’m sorry you did what you did, but I’m not sorry you’re my wife.”
She felt the intensity of his gaze but couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. “Do you forgive me?”
“I do,” he said with feeling, reminding her of the hallowed vows they’d spoken at Jon’s farm. “Why won’t you look at me?”
“Because I still see anger in your eyes.” Her voice shook as she met his gaze. “You’re regarding me as you did at Fort Montgomery that dark day, only you’re no longer shouting.”
“I’m sorry it came to that.” His voice held telling regret. “Do you forgive me?”
Did she? The hurt she’d carried ever since had festered into a bone-deep rankling. Their blissful beginning had soured that day, tainting her every thought of him since. The words that could never be taken back or undone played in her mind like a broken melody.
“You chose your sister over me ... I should turn you out of this fort ... I trusted you once,and I can trust you no longer.”
