Flirtation Walk Page 8

  I finally decided to take matters into my own hands. Laying a hand on my uncle’s arm, I smiled at Seth. “I can’t think that there are very many dances left before the refreshments we’ve been promised at midnight.”

  Seth shook his head. “Probably not.”

  I lifted a brow, hoping he would take it as an invitation . . . but he kept conversing with my uncle. When they paused once more in their conversation, I spoke again. “I so enjoyed our dance this evening, Mr. Westcott.”

  He bowed. “I did as well.” But he didn’t take that opening either!

  I’d never had to work so hard for a gentleman’s attention before. I was about to give up entirely when I noticed a sheen of sweat above Seth’s upper lip and saw the way his gaze kept drifting in my direction before he pulled it back to focus on my uncle. At the next opportunity I inserted myself into the conversation once more. “This is such a lovely landscape, and the river is so beautiful. I wonder, Mr. Westcott, is there any vantage point from which the whole of the valley can be seen?”

  “There’s Fort Putnam.”

  I sighed, putting my heart into it. “I don’t suppose it’s safe for a girl to go up there by herself . . . ?”

  He blinked. “It’s on the military reservation. I don’t think anyone would bother you up there.”

  “But I’ve the worst sense of direction. I’ve been known to get lost in my own house.”

  “It’s not so difficult to find. You can see it when you’re standing on the Plain.” He sent my uncle a glance. “You can see it from just about anywhere. It’s the perfect defensive position, towering above the military academy . . .”

  “Maybe you could point it out to me sometime.”

  “I would . . . That is, if it were possible, maybe . . .” His words had been directed at my uncle rather than me, which was rather curious.

  Taking a chance, I decided to try one last time. “I wonder, Uncle, could Mr. Westcott show me Fort Putnam sometime? Would it be permissible for him to accompany me?”

  He blinked his brows wide. “Well . . . Oh! Yes. Yes, of course. Mr. Westcott, I would be grateful if you could show my niece the sights here at West Point. Next Saturday, perhaps?”

  The ball ended around four o’clock that next morning. The moon was slipping behind the hills as we walked home, and a mist was rising off the river. Owls hooted somewhere out in the forest that swept up and over the valley’s steep hills. Despite the calendar, the early morning air was cool, and I made good use of my mantle.

  My uncle pulled a pipe from his coat pocket, paused to light it, and then smoked as we walked along.

  I felt quite satisfied with the ball. The impression I’d formed of Seth was confirmed. He was a genuinely nice man. Honest and noble, he could be depended upon to come to the rescue of a woman in trouble. I had used that trait in men like him more than once during my time with my father.

  Here, in my new situation, I found that very comforting.

  I felt badly for his sister, all alone out on the frontier. Chances were, he’d find her married when he went to retrieve her next summer. It didn’t do to be a woman alone. Of course, I’d spent half my life alone, waiting for my father to come take me from my boarding schools or finishing schools. But I knew a dozen different ways to make it look as if I belonged to someone. Without my particular skills of deception, it was difficult to imagine his sister could fend for herself.

  My impression of Mr. Conklin was also confirmed. Had I been searching for a husband out west, I would have decided upon him without a second thought. But there was something to be said for a man like Seth, who took time to do for others before he did for himself.

  Once home, my uncle bid me good-night, urging me to sleep as long as I could. As I climbed the stairs, he took his pipe into the sitting room. Its spicy scent followed me. Though I tried to be quiet, I woke Phoebe when I slipped into bed.

  She rolled over to face me. “Tell me all about it. I want to know everything.”

  “It was nice. A very many cadets and so many guests. There might have been five hundred people. And the refreshments were quite delicious.”

  “I mean everything. Please, Lucinda. I’ll never go to a ball, and I want to hear what it was like. You’re the only way I’ll ever know.”

  It didn’t seem like a good idea. Wouldn’t it only make her feel worse about the way things were? “Phoebe—”

  “Please. I won’t feel badly or left out or anything but glad that you told me. I promise.”

  “Well then . . .” I turned on my side to face her. “It was delightful, although the music was very regimented. The band was quite accomplished—I’m not saying that they weren’t—but it was very precise. Even the dances made me think of marches.”

  She laughed.

  “You should have seen all the cadets, dressed in their uniforms—gray and white—they stood along the edge of the room, straight as pins. There were ever so many people. I’ve never been to a bigger ball. And it felt as if everyone was staring at me as I walked in.”

  “Of course they were. You’re beautiful. Why shouldn’t they stare?”

  She didn’t know the first thing about how I looked, but the ferocity of her loyalty warmed me. “I danced nearly every song.”

  “With whom? Tell me about each one. And which was best.”

  “I can hardly remember all of them, there were so many! My first partner, you already know.”

  “I do?”

  “It was Mr. Conklin.”

  “Oh! I do know him.”

  “He whirled me across the dance floor, steering us right through the other couples, not caring who had to alter their path, and we never missed a step. But my next partner, Mr. Deacon Hollingsworth, was the most amusing. I was laughing so hard at the end of our dance that I could hardly catch a breath.”

  “But there was someone better than either of them, wasn’t there? I can tell by your voice.”

  “You know him too. He’s Mr. Westcott.”

  “Mr. Westcott! Is he handsome? I’ve always wondered.”

  “In a quiet, confident sort of way. He looks like a soldier. A very competent one.”

  “More competent than Mr. Conklin?”

  “Mr. Conklin has the look of a politician. And his grandfather is one.” I rolled onto my back. “But I can imagine if I were in the middle of a battle and Mr. Westcott rode up on his horse, I would know that everything would turn out right.”

  “And the one who made you laugh? What was his name again?”

  “Deacon. Mr. Hollingsworth. I’ve met dozens like him on the—” I stopped myself before I could say too much.

  “On the . . . ?”

  On the riverboats. In the gambling saloons. “I meant out west. On the frontier. When I traveled with my father.”

  “Do you mean to say he’s . . . Is he a rough character?”

  “No. He’s quite safe. But very flirtatious.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t—”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t pay him any mind.” I let my thoughts wander back through the night’s events. “Mr. Conklin will do very well for himself. He has that way about him. He made me hope my skirts were straight and my hair in place and that I was performing the steps of the dance correctly.”

  “I would think that would be tiring, trying to make sure you were perfect all the time.”

  In the dark, I smiled to myself. Looking perfect was what I had been trained to do. How happily coincidental I’d come to a place where that was considered a virtue.

  “But you said you danced with more boys than those, didn’t you?”

  “Boys? My goodness. They aren’t boys—if they ever were. They’re most definitely men! And what nature didn’t see fit to supply them in looks or stature, the uniform more than makes up for.”

  “Lucinda!” I could feel the bed shaking with her laughter.

  “It’s true. You would have thought the same.” My laughter died. “I wish you could have seen it.”

 
“Don’t feel badly for me. You’re the one who had to do all the dancing. I should tell you that I heard Mama and Papa talking to you. About finding someone to marry. I’m so glad I’ll never have to. Deciding on a man would be the hardest part.”

  Not for me. I’d already decided. At least . . . I think I had. The hardest part would probably be helping Seth Westcott work up the courage to ask for my hand!

  12

  Seth

  How had she done it?

  I asked myself that question in the mirror as I washed my face back at the encampment. I’d been talking to Professor Hammond, trying to figure out a way to ask him if I could see Lucinda next Saturday, and then all of the sudden he was asking me. To ask her. Or . . . he didn’t ask me at all, really. He just told me to show her the Point next Saturday. We’d been talking about geometry . . . and then I was agreeing to take her up to Fort Putnam. In military tactical terms, we’d call that a masking maneuver.

  It was a West Point tradition to break camp the day after the grand ball. We emptied our tents of cots and belongings and tramped a path to the barracks as we carried it all inside. Once in the barracks, the echo of footsteps and the creak of doors summoned visions of the academic year to come. Of courses and study hours, recitations and examinations. As the new second classmen who’d spent their summer on furlough began to report to the barracks, their tales of home only added to our misery.

  But it wouldn’t do for the first captain to be so melancholy on this day.

  I ordered the corps of cadets back to our tent city. As the drums beat a cadence, at my command, lines were untied, and then tent poles were withdrawn to allow the canvas to collapse. The tents were folded and the wooden floors swept. Trusting the other company captains to divvy the plebes and yearlings up by pairs, I placed my own men at the back corners of my company’s tents. The first classmen already knew what to do. They took up brooms and clubs. When everyone stood at the ready, I gave the signal. As the wooden floors were lifted and tilted from their back corners, dozens of rats scurried out and into the waiting ambush of the upperclassmen.

  They must have flattened a good hundred of them before I halted their efforts.

  After tidying up the Plain and carrying the floors into storage, the corps fell in for the march back to the barracks. Soon after, we found ourselves marching to chapel.

  After our return from chapel, I decided to see if Otter had received any letters from his mother. Some of the fellows gathered round whenever somebody received a letter from a sweetheart, but Deacon, Dandy, and I preferred his mother’s missives to the sighs and promises of lovers. Though heavily scented, the pages were always filled with news about Otter’s young brothers, the state of the homestead, the wanderings of the neighbor’s cow, the preacher’s sermons, the price of flour, and other homely details that made a man feel as if he’d been allowed a glimpse of life beyond the academy’s gates.

  A life that wasn’t calibrated according to bugle calls and orders to “fall in.” A life that wasn’t based on how many equations you could recite or the condition of your uniform. A life I increasingly worried I might never have again.

  I’d put countless hours into doing the right thing. Studying. Obeying orders. Conforming to the shining ideal of what every cadet should be. And now it looked as if none of it had mattered. If Deacon was right, I had to find the quickest way to shed all of those high marks and all of the goodwill I’d earned.

  Was everything I’d done here a waste of time and effort? Was coming to West Point a mistake?

  The only people who could help me, the only people who seemed to care about my mother’s death and Elizabeth’s plight, were the Immortals. But they were the repudiation of everything I would have said I believed. If they were my only hope, then what use were all those principles and fine morals the academy taught? If the gentlemen I had looked up to for so long wouldn’t allow a man to care for his own family, why was I trying so hard to become one of them?

  Otter’s mother always had something to say about everything, and I was hoping he might share some of her advice. As I ducked into their room, I nodded at Dandy. Otter grinned at me as if I were the person he’d been waiting all day to see. “Mr. Westcott! General! To what do we owe this great honor?”

  “I was just . . . uh . . . wondering . . . Heard you got another letter.”

  His smile seemed to grow even wider. “Got a letter from Mother just today.” He reached out and pulled an envelope from beneath his pillow. Even as I was overcome by the scent of flowers, Dandy was using his book to push the odor toward the open window.

  Otter extended it to me. “You want to read it?”

  I deferred. “You can.”

  He pulled the pages from the envelope and opened them with a snap of his wrist. Dandy and I sat on his bed. As we settled in to listen, Deacon appeared in the doorway. “Heard there was a letter.” He flopped onto Otter’s bed and propped his head in his hand.

  Otter looked up from the pages and nodded a greeting. Then he turned his attention once more to the letter. “It’s dated July 15.”

  “My dear one, I suppose I ought to start with first things and tell you that the youngsters been missing you something terrible, asking after you, wanting to know when you’ll be coming back. Course I tell them what I always do about you having to be up there at that academy and how you make us all proud, but I know you’ll understand that’s little consolation when Junior’s kite got broke and we haven’t been able to fix it yet.”

  Deke interrupted. “Is that the same kite that broke last year before furlough?”

  Otter nodded. “I fixed it when I was there.”

  “You should tell her to make sure that frame is made of soft wood. Spruce, maybe.”

  I added my own opinion. “Or yellow pine. Won’t break so easy, then.”

  Otter was chewing at his cheek. “Hadn’t thought of that. Wished I had when I was there. I’ll let her know.” He took up a pen and bent to the table to flatten the letter out. Then he scribbled a note in the margin. He continued reading. “‘Mr. Chisholm’s cow got into my petunias again. I’m at my wits’ end trying to think of a way to keep that beast out of—’”

  I interrupted him. “Did she try a hedge? Do you know?” That had always worked for my mother.

  Otter beamed in admiration. “Fancy you knowing a thing like that!”

  He bent to write again, and after he was done, he continued. “‘. . . been trying to think of a way to keep that beast out of my pretties.’”

  He looked up from the letter. “I put in two more of those flower beds while I was back home last summer. Mother loves her petunias.”

  He cleared his throat. “Where was I? ‘That shep dog you got me isn’t any use at all, except to chew on my shoes and keep the garden dug up. But they say the thought is what counts and that’s most important.’”

  “Had a dog once . . .” Dandy was staring off toward who knew what. We waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t.

  Otter kept reading. “‘Apples are ripe for the picking. We’ll have more this year than I’ll know what to do with. I suspect some of those Faircloth boys are sneaking around, taking some off the trees for their moonshine.’”

  Deke stopped him. “Didn’t she say back spring before last that one of those Faircloths was jailed for . . . What was it again?”

  Otter looked up. “For thieving. Only the judge is a Faircloth, on account of being married to the sister of the cousin of that Faircloth’s mother, and he got let out. Had a talk with him when I went home, wore my uniform even. I thought we’d settled everything, but I guess . . .” He sighed. In the sound was the echo of all the men at the Point who ought to be allowed to do as men do instead of being cooped up here like a flock of chickens.

  He returned to the letter. “‘I been making sauce and jams. Wish I could figure out how to send you some pies.’”

  I wished she could too.

  “‘You always did say apple was your favorite. D
on’t forget to tell me what I ought to do about that sale of land. With love in my heart.’”

  With love in my heart. That’s how she always ended her letters.

  Otter folded the paper back up and pushed it down into the envelope. “That’s all she said.”

  “What land is she talking about selling?” Deke had pushed himself up to sitting.

  “The Holifields asked about buying a parcel that sits next to theirs. They made an offer when I was home.”

  I had a bad feeling about the offer. “The Holifields? Aren’t those the ones you said weren’t to be trusted? What kind of offer did they make?”

  “Wasn’t a bad offer . . . Not exactly . . .”

  Dandy snorted. “But it wasn’t good either? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “They’ve been real helpful since I’ve been here at the Point.”

  Dandy was scowling now. “Don’t mistake a helping hand for them helping themselves to your land.”

  “Well . . . it’s a tricky kind of business. See, Mother’s related on account of—”

  Deke called out from the bed. “Is everyone related down there where you’re from?”

  “I’m not related.”

  We looked at each other in puzzlement. “But if she’s related . . .”

  “Oh. Well. I guess that follows. My daddy, he wasn’t from there, but with Mother related by marriage . . . That’s the way it works, doesn’t it?”

  I don’t think any of us were quite sure the way it worked down where Otter was from. I suppose that’s why we tried to help him and his mother any way we could. We weren’t much use to anyone, secluded as we were at the Point, but it made us feel as if we were making a difference if we could pass on suggestions for fixing a kite or keeping the cows out of her petunias. For a few short minutes every day, Otter’s mother made us feel as if we were normal men doing things that men normally do.