Flirtation Walk Read online

  Deacon reached out with a penknife and cut off the top button of my gray coat. “It pains me to do this, but sometimes, sacrifices have to be made.”

  I shrugged them both off and pushed Otter away. “Just—just stop!”

  “All we’re trying to do is help you look the part.”

  “What part? Part of what?”

  Deke took me by the elbow and turned me around, marching me away from the library. “The part of a cadet who doesn’t care much about pointless things.”

  “If I go around with my coat undone and my shoes dirtied up, I’m going to get reported.”

  “Exactly.”

  “In front of everyone at formation.”

  “Yes. It’s going to be perfect. We’re going to find a way for you to beat the record for amassing the most demerits in the least amount of time. You need to get a hundred before the semester is over.”

  “There’s a record for that?”

  Deacon scoffed. “’Course there is. John Barns. No one’s beat it for nineteen years. But you’re going to. That way everyone will know you’ve embarked on a new endeavor this year.” He looked round, both in front and behind us, and then he pulled something from his sleeve and handed it to me.

  It was a cigar. I dropped it.

  “That was a perfectly good—!” He stooped and scooped it up. Holding it up in front of his nose, he blew some dust from it and then whipped out a handkerchief and wiped it clean. “You’d better hope it’s still smokeable.” He handed it to me again.

  “But I don’t smoke.”

  He grinned. “You do now.”

  We spent the afternoon’s short recreation period on the terrace of Battery Knox, above the river, as they coached me on the finer points of loafing about doing nothing in particular. Otter was held up as an example in dishevelment.

  “See there?” Deacon gestured toward him as he stood there before us.

  I surveyed him from my position on the ground. “I don’t quite . . . How do you do that, Otter?”

  “Do what?” He pulled his chin in, grimacing, as he glanced down toward his chest.

  There was nothing actually wrong with his uniform. He was wearing all the pieces. His coat was completely buttoned. His shoes were tied. His cap was firmly fixed to the top of his head, but he looked nothing like Dandy. His barracks mate was near to gleaming.

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  I appealed to Deke. “How am I supposed to duplicate that?”

  Deacon and Dandy sat beside me, scrutinizing Otter through narrowed eyes. It was Deacon who finely forfeited. “You’re right.” He stood and clapped Otter on the shoulder. “You’ve worked nonchalance into an art form. I don’t know anyone who can do it better than you.”

  Otter beamed at the compliment.

  “However, expecting the same of old Seth here might be asking for too much.” He squinted as he looked at me. “For the moment, we’ll just help you along.”

  “Help me . . . ?” I would have asked what that meant, but I decided I didn’t want to know.

  “Dandy.” Deke nodded at him. “You’re next.”

  Dandy drew himself to attention as he stood before us, chin tipped, chest out, hand hovering where the haft of a sword might have hung.

  “See there?” Deacon strode back and forth in front of him like a drill sergeant. “You have to let the rest of the military academy know you take this seriously.”

  “But . . . that’s just the point. You don’t want me to take any of this seriously anymore. That’s what you all are trying to do, isn’t it? Inspire me to . . . what exactly?”

  “What I’m saying is, you have to take the idea of not being serious, seriously. It’s not as easy as it looks. Take Dandy here.” Deke came to a halt beside him. “What you need to think about is, How do I look like that? How do I achieve that same look of scorn, disregard, and utter contempt?”

  “I have no earthly idea.”

  Deke tapped him on the chest with his forehand. “Why don’t you tell him how you do it, Dandy?”

  Dandy looked down at Deacon’s hand with distaste and took a step away from him.

  “There. Just like that! What is it you think of, Dandy, when you stand there looking that way?”

  Dandy’s face closed up. “Nothing.”

  “See there? That is . . . why, that is . . . That’s art!”

  Deacon wasn’t far wrong. And since he’d mention it, I did wonder what Dandy was thinking. What was it that made him look as if he wanted to keep the world at bay?

  “So you just stand up here.” He hauled me up by the hand. “And you give it a try.” He took my place, regarding me with a raised brow of encouragement.

  I probably couldn’t have felt more like a fool if I’d tried. But I stood there, chin up, chest pushed out, glaring as if I were mad at the world.

  Dandy’s glance flicked up and then away from me in apparent disgust.

  Otter was shaking his head. “Not working. You just . . . Hate to tell you, but Mother would say that you look constipated. And then she’d dose you with castor oil.” He shuddered.

  I let my chest deflate and flopped to the ground beside them.

  Deke nodded with something close to approval. “There. That. What you just did. That’s the way.”

  “What’s the way?”

  “The way you threw yourself on the ground—like you were so sure you couldn’t do it, why should you even try.” He grinned as he pulled the cigar out and sniffed at it. “I knew this would work.” He gave me a careful, studied look. “But we still got to figure out what to do about your uniform.”

  15

  Lucinda

  My aunt had introduced me at church as her niece, freshly graduated from finishing school. The former was true—the latter, most definitely not. In this new beginning to my life, I had determined to tell no lies that were not strictly necessary, but I couldn’t see how being honest about that would gain me anything. Especially as I had already filled Milly’s and Phoebe’s ears with stories about my accomplishments. I hadn’t expected, however, that they would share those stories with others.

  Or that those others would talk my aunt into allowing me to establish a sort of finishing school for the daughters of Buttermilk Falls. By the middle of my second week in town I found myself agreeing to welcome a half dozen of Milly’s contemporaries into the sitting room three afternoons a week for a course of study dedicated to turning them into accomplished ladies.

  Surprisingly, however, the tasks I enjoyed the most were those I had first been given—acting as companion to Phoebe and aiding my aunt in the kitchen. It wasn’t the cooking or the scrubbing of pots I looked forward to so much as the opportunity to find out more about my mother.

  After Susan had gone home on Friday evening, my aunt put me to work scouring a pot while she assembled a pie for the next morning’s breakfast. It gave me the chance to ask a question that had been plaguing me. “My father had intimated that your father, my grandfather . . .” There was no way to put it politely. “He said my mother was disowned when they left, that she was denied an inheritance.”

  “An inheritance!” My aunt laughed. “That would have tickled your mother’s fancy, to be thought of as an heiress!” She laughed some more, wiping tears from her eyes as I stood there in utter consternation. “I’m sorry, my dear. It was just so unexpected. My family was never well-to-do. We had enough, we had each other, but . . .” She smiled again. “We were never wealthy. Perhaps you’ve mistaken your father’s family for ours.”

  “He always said he was denied my mother’s inheritance.”

  Her brows drew close. “He was denied his own inheritance. What he considered to be his inheritance in any case. Perhaps you misunderstood him.”

  “He always said—”

  “In my remembrance, a person could never trust anything he said. He said whatever was needed to make himself look better, and he said it with such confidence it was difficult not to believe him. He could convince anyo
ne of anything. But the truth is that his own family was quite wealthy.”

  I didn’t know anything about my grandparents. I’d asked . . . I was sure I had. He’d somehow always managed to change the topic. I’d seen him do it a thousand times to other people. It was the first time I’d realized he’d done it to me as well.

  “It was rather sad, really. His mother remarried after his father died and had another family. Your father never saw eye to eye with his stepfather, and when his mother died . . . that would be your grandmother . . .”

  She was talking about people I ought to know, but didn’t. I’d never even known they existed. It was all very unsettling.

  “When your grandmother died, all of her money, all of the wealth from the first marriage went to the second husband and the children she’d had with him.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Your father didn’t think so either. He’d been counting on an inheritance, and when it didn’t come to him . . . well . . . it changed him. He’d tried to be the son his stepfather wanted. He tried, for a while, to be the cadet the army said they needed. But if you’re following the rules simply to get a reward . . . ?” She shrugged. “Sometimes you can do everything right, obey all the rules, and still end up with nothing. I think he finally decided it wasn’t worth it.”

  I wanted to know more. “What was my mother like?”

  She paused in rolling out the pie crust as she seemed to consider. “Very much like you.” She started rolling again.

  “How?” I already knew she hadn’t looked anything like me.

  My aunt paused in her work again, mouth working, brows knotted. Finally she put her plate down altogether. “In almost every way. You could be her twin but for your years.”

  Her twin? “But I look nothing like her!”

  “You’re her very image. Her hazel eyes. Her auburn hair. The way you speak. The way you hold yourself. Perhaps you’re not so flirtatious as she was . . .”

  “But I don’t look anything like her.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My mother had blond hair. She was very fair, and she—”

  “She was not.”

  “She was blond.” I stopped scouring and dried my hands on my skirts, heedless of staining it. Then I pulled my locket from the depths of my bodice, opening it with shaking hands. “She had blond hair.” I tilted the necklace so my aunt could see it. “Blond.” It was important that she understand.

  She dried her own hands and came beside me, cupping her hands around my own, cradling the locket with me. “This isn’t your mother’s hair.”

  Taking my hands from hers, I snapped the locket shut. “My father said I looked nothing like her.”

  She waited until I settled the locket back beneath my blouse, and then she took my hands in hers. “Your father was known to . . .” She glanced down at our hands, squeezing them, and looked back up into my eyes. “Your father didn’t always tell the truth.”

  “Why would he lie about that? Why would he lie about my mother?”

  “I don’t know. Why did he lie about anything?”

  I turned back to my pot. “But I don’t look anything like her!”

  My aunt turned away and I heard her rummaging through the cupboard. Then she came back to me, metal platter in hand. “This was from our mother, passed on by her mother, and her own mother before that.” She held it up in front of us. It reflected back our faces. “The Curtis women have always been known for their hazel eyes. And their auburn hair. Like mine, and hers, and yours.” She set the tray down.

  “Phoebe’s blond.”

  My aunt smiled, her eyes washed in tears. She put a hand to a tendril that had escaped my bun and pushed it back behind my ears. “Phoebe takes after the Hammonds.”

  My chin began to tremble, and then my mouth collapsed and I couldn’t hold back my own tears anymore. “I can’t be like my mother because I don’t know who she is. Don’t you see?”

  “Oh, my dear.” She enfolded me in her arms.

  I clung to her sobbing, hot tears coursing down my cheeks. “Why would he lie to me? Why would he lie to me about that?”

  She spent long moments rubbing my back and stroking my hair as if I were a child. “Shall I tell you about your mother?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  “I hear her in your laugh. I see her in your smile. She had a very winning way about her. It was no wonder she caught your father’s eye. She caught everyone’s eye. She always did, even as a child. She was such a pretty thing. Everyone thought she was flighty, but she wasn’t. Sometimes I think maybe I was the only one who knew that.”

  I took a long snuffling sniff and moved from her embrace to wipe at my eyes.

  “I was timid. I still am, if truth be told. But she protected me. She took care of me in much the same way you take care of Phoebe.” She tipped my chin up, making me meet her eyes. “That’s how I know that I can trust you.” She smiled.

  As I smiled back, I vowed to make myself worthy of that trust.

  16

  Seth

  They wouldn’t let up about my uniform. On Saturday morning, right before we reported for drill, Dandy and Otter crowded into the room just as Deke held his hand out toward me. “Let me have it.”

  “Have what?”

  “Your coat.”

  “I don’t think so. We’re going to be late if we don’t leave now.”

  “I keep telling you, you got to quit caring so much about things like that. Next lesson, we’ll talk about how to be unashamedly tardy. So hand it over.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything bad to it.”

  I didn’t trust him, but I didn’t have any reason not to do it, so I undid the buttons, took it off, and handed it to him.

  He dropped it on the floor and started stomping all over it. Though we’d swept the floor for inspection that morning, it had already become dirtied with the muck we’d tracked in from breakfast.

  “What in tarnation are you—!” I lunged at him, but Dandy was quick. He got between me and Deacon and stood there until I stepped away. Then he put a finger to my chest and made me back up one step more. When he moved away, I could have sworn it was with the sound of a sword being sheathed.

  Otter was looking sadly on. “I told you about boys getting dirty and all . . .”

  “There.” Deacon gave it one last stomp. “Now you can have it back.”

  I reached down and grabbed it up. “This doesn’t even look respectably worn. It just looks like I rolled around in the dirt.” I searched for something to beat it on but couldn’t find anything. My chair would have to do. As I clapped it against chair’s back, a great cloud of dust arose. Half of it stuck to my trousers.

  “Hope you don’t mind, we’ll just step away for a minute.”

  “Oh, sure. Go on. After you’ve been lecturing me on how to look worn and moth-eaten.”

  “Hey! Look at that, Dandy. He might just turn into you after all.”

  I gave them both a glare filled with pure poison.

  Deacon winked.

  I went after him, but Dandy grabbed me by the collar and hauled me off. For loafing about so much, he was a quite a bit stronger than he looked. “No need to be fractious about it. It’s us doing you the favor, remember?”

  I gave the coat one last shake and then pulled it back on. Starting off for the stairs, I buttoned it as I went. In twenty paces, I had stepped out well ahead of the rest of them. I was out the door before they even appeared . . . which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, for when I encountered Campbell Conklin, I was all alone.

  He tilted his head as his cool-eyed gaze traveled from the top of my cap to the tips of my shoes. “You lose your way, Mr. Westcott? The home for widows and orphans is back down the river a mile or two.” He smirked.

  It was awfully hard to feel righteously indignant when I knew I looked the truant. And then I thought of Dandy and remembered my position as ca
det captain. I felt my chin lift. Though I didn’t say anything, his smile disappeared.

  “I feel I have to report you for appearance unbecoming a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy.”

  What would Deacon say to that? I shrugged. “Do what you have to do.” I moved to pass him as if I didn’t care that my coat had just been trampled and there was dust clinging to my trousers.

  “And for defacing government property.”

  Touching the brim of my cap, I sauntered on past.

  I paid for it, though, as Campbell Conklin announced my name later at parade in a voice that echoed through the ranks. “Conklin; Westcott, first captain; appearance unbecoming, defacement of government property.”

  Deacon and Otter took turns slapping me on the back afterward. “That’s the way to do it. See how easy that was?”

  It didn’t make me feel any better. What sort of example had I been to all of those plebes and yearlings who’d borne witness to my shame? “Maybe I can get out of it with a written explanation—”

  Deke was shaking his head. “For appearance unbecoming? Isn’t worth it. Besides, you need all the demerits you can get!”

  Otter grinned at me. “Cheer up. Just think what that fellow . . . Penworth?”

  “Pennyworth.”

  “Just imagine his face when you walk up to him and tell him who you are and would he rather pay you back now or talk to a judge. It’ll all be worth it. You’ll see.”

  I hoped so. It had better be. If I’d been allowed leave to take my sister to Kentucky, she never would have met Pennyworth, and he’d never have taken our money. “Maybe I should just go home.”

  Deke looked at me askance. “Home? You mean leave?”

  “Have you ever been in Nebraska Territory in the winter?”

  “I’ve been in Ohio in the winter.”

  “Then you’ll know what it’s going to be like at Laramie.”

  “You can’t go now. Leaving now would be desertion. Federal offense. They catch you, they’d put you into prison. You’d be locked up and Pennyworth would still be free. Unless you want to get yourself dismissed. I said I’d help you. Offer still stands.”