Page 51 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Betsy sniffed unattractively. “I am too.”

“I—” Ava broke off, looking thoroughly torn.

“I know,” said Betsy miserably. She’d been responsible for her father getting sick. Well, sicker. If she’d behaved herself he could have stayed and coughed comfortably by his own fireside.

Ava looked like she was about to say something, and abruptly changed her mind. “It’s getting late. I should finish this chapter before supper.”

Betsy hauled herself off Ava’s bed. “I should probably look at an inscription.” And then write up an analysis that Professor Richardson would never bother to read.

“Betsy?” Ava looked up from her book as Betsy drifted toward the door. “Don’t seduce any of the Harvard boys.”

Betsy smiled crookedly at her. “I’ll try not to.”

Chapter Thirteen

When the American wounded at the army hospital heard of the care being lavished on their Cuban comrades, they immediately accused us of neglect. We explained to them it broke our hearts to be unable to render assistance and the fault lay not with us but with their own commanders. One can only imagine the hue and cry that must have arisen, because within a few hours, the official position was entirely reversed and our assistance formally solicited.

For those acquainted with the classics, I can only tell you that Hercules’s labors in the Aegean stables had nothing on what we discovered in that US Army hospital. While we nurses turned up our sleeves and went to work with carbolic, a force of men on the Red Cross ship the State of Texas braved the surf to bring out cots, blankets, food, and bandages.

No sooner had we made those men comfortable than word came of a great engagement between our men and our Spanish foes. . . .

—Miss Katherine Carson for the St. Louis Star Ledger, July 1, 1898

* * *

Sevilla, Cuba

June 25, 1898

“You went to Harvard?”

“It’s not really as bad as you New Haven boys think.” Holt had loved it there. He’d loved the lectures, the laboratories, the learned discourse, the way you could talk about everything without ever saying anything. Most of all he’d loved being a hundred miles from home. He’d felt free, really free, for the first time since babyhood, and probably not even then.

Paul stared at him like he’d grown an extra head. “But—you’re Hold ’Em Holt. You’re a cowboy.”

“Briefly.” Holt was having trouble getting the words out. He was, he realized, extremely drunk. He tried to stand and lurched on his injured leg. He might have fallen, but Thede Miller helpfully jumped up and grabbed his arm. So helpful, Thede. Why’d he have to go and remember him?

“Briefly?” Paul spat the word out. He’d risen to his feet too.

Holt shrugged, which was a mistake. “I left Harvard. I went West.”

“But—the papers—they said—they said you’d been born on the range. You were the child of settlers killed in an Injun attack. You’d been roping steers by the time you were eight.”

By the time he was eight, Holt could read the Aeneid in the original. And his father had broken his wrist for the first time. Snapped it, like a twig.

Holt broke into Paul’s indignant litany. “The papers say a lot of things.”

Not Holt. He’d never claimed any of it. He’d just omitted. A whole lot of omitting. As if he could omit away everything he’d been before. Just a blank slate with a new name. Wasn’t that what America was all about? Individual initiative, that’s what Colonel Roosevelt had said.

Paul glared at him, his face flaring red and orange in the light of the campfire. “You lied.”

Holt rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, which refused to focus. Paul was going in and out like a funhouse mirror. “I never lied.” He just hadn’t shared. There was a difference. He thought. Maybe. “Look. It’s complicated.”

“Like our being here is complicated? No wonder you took sides with the Spaniards.” Holt’s rum-soaked brain couldn’t quite make sense of the logic. Paul seemed to be suggesting that Harvard was in league with Spain. “Why are you even here?”

Holt’s mouth felt thick and gummy. “Same reason as anyone else.” Just don’t ask him what those reasons were.

“Impersonating someone you’re not?” Paul turned abruptly away from him. “Thede. You got room in your tent now that Teddy’s gone?”