Page 20 of Christmas at Carnton

Mrs. McGavock exhaled, her expression darkening. She descended the short staircase, and Jake followed, his curiosity more than a little roused.

“Miss Boudreaux.” Mrs. McGavock’s tone was polite yet had gained an edge. “I trust you’re getting settled into Tempy’s kitchen.”

Jake didn’t miss the emphasis on ownership, nor the tiny black woman he’d seen at the door a while earlier whose eyes were downcast. But the young woman who turned to face them, she was new.

Her white-blond hair was piled high in a chaos of tight curls and her hands were fisted at her waist. She smiled and her expression lost a degree of its censure, though not enough to cover the fire in her eyes or her demeanor that reeked of disapproval.

“Yes, Mrs. McGavock, I am. Though I am finding the conditions considerably more . . . rustic than I was led to believe. But I’m certain I can still work here. After all—”

She tossed Jake a look that he thought she meant to be coy and perhaps even alluring. It had the exact opposite effect.

“—I am Katharina Boudreaux, a professional chef trained in Paris.”

Mrs. McGavock smiled, yet Jake felt the air crackle with warning, much like the moment before a battle ensued.

“Yes, Miss Boudreaux, I’m aware of your accomplished résumé. Mrs. Tyler presented it to the committee when she insisted we hire you. However, Mrs. Tyler did not share that you would denigrate a trusted and beloved servant in this household. Nor did she convey how you would criticize my home. The home in which you were—ever so briefly—a guest and an employee. Tempy, please collect Miss Boudreaux’s trunk from the room upstairs. Miss Boudreaux, if your carriage has already departed, we will happily lend you use of ours. Allowing that it’s handsome enough for your taste.”

The woman stared, slack jawed, and Jake looked between the two women, liking this Mrs. Colonel John McGavock more by the minute. And starting to believe she’d earned that title.

Miss Boudreaux huffed. “I have never been asked to leave a position before!”

“Well, there’s always a first time. As I tell my children when they stumble and fall, learn from the experience. Take the lesson and just enough of the pain to remember not to repeat the same mistake again. I’ll see you out now.”

The tiny black woman skirted by Jake, a ghost of a smile touching her mouth. And Jake looked over at Mrs. McGavock. “I’ll help her with the trunk, ma’am.”

“That would be much appreciated, Captain.”

Minutes later, Jake stood inside the open front doorway alongside Mrs. McGavock and Tempy as the wheels of Chef Boudreaux’s carriage struggled for purchase on the ice-slicked drive leading back to town.

He smiled. “And I thought that by coming here I was leaving the front lines behind me.”

Mrs. McGavock laughed. “Life is too short and our days too few to willfully spend time in the company of people who insist on telling us how much better they are than everyone else.”

“Amen to that,” Tempy whispered, which drew more laughter. “Come on back to the kitchen now, Captain Winston, and I’ll get you some potato soup that’ll warm up your insides real good. And how do you feel about butter cookies?”

Later that night in the cabin, Jake ran a hand over his smooth jawline, his face cool without his beard.

“My, my,” Tempy had said when he’d shown up freshly shaven for dinner with the McGavocks. “Miracle what a difference a razor can make in a man.”

Remembering the mirth in her eyes, he smiled as he added more wood to the hearth. But he still couldn’t get the chimney to draw properly. Marking the chimney as an item to be investigated tomorrow, he settled for what heat it provided and crawled into bed—a clean ticking stuffed with fresh straw—and pulled the blanket up over him. How long had it been since he’d slept in so nice a bed?

For nearly two years now his bedroll and whatever patch of hopefully dry earth he could find had been where he’d laid his head. To have a cabin with a roof over his head and a fire burning in the hearth seemed an extravagance. And felt almost wrong. Especially when he thought of his fellow soldiers encamped in the bitter cold and snow.

The cabin boasted two rooms down and two up, and—all but for this room—was being used as storage. It was clean enough, but he looked forward to getting it into better shape. The front door stuck on one side and needed planing. There were spaces around the windows where the mortar had cracked and fallen away and cold air poured in. He could patch those spots easily enough. And the chimney was already on his list. He’d be here for the better part of a month, after all, much to his dismay. And he’d been taught to leave a place better than he’d found it.

The flame in the oil lamp flickered on a tiny side table and cast undulating shadows on the walls, the darkness playing hide-and-seek with the light. He wondered about the slaves who’d lived in this cabin through the years. Mrs. McGavock had said they’d been sent south. And depending on who won this war, they might or might not be back.

But he wasn’t fighting this war to keep Negroes enslaved. If he had his druthers, he’d free the lot of them. A free man worked harder and contributed more to society than a slave ever did. And he’d known enough Negroes throughout his life to know that they weren’t so different from white men. There were good men and bad, be they dark skinned or light. It was what lay within a man that really counted.

At supper tonight he’d met Colonel McGavock and found the man to be formidable. Rather a suitable match for Colonel Carrie, as he’d taken to thinking of Mrs. McGavock upon learning her first name this evening. Had a good ring to it, he thought, even if he’d never dare use the name aloud. He’d met the couple’s children too. A girl, Hattie, around eight, he thought. Then the young boy, Winder, whom he’d already seen running with Andrew.

As he leaned to turn down the lamp, an image from earlier that day returned and Jake reached for his notebook and pencil instead. He sat up, shoved the pillow behind his back, and turned to a fresh page, choosing to ignore the familiar twinge in his left shoulder. This notebook was almost full. He needed to get another one from town soon.

He closed his eyes for a moment, the image of Andrew looking up at his mother returning with clarity. The adoration in the boy’s eyes, the confusion warring with the desire—the need—to trust and believe that his mother really did know best.

The curves and planes of the boy’s face took shape on the page as Jake paused frequently, patient for the image to resurface in his memory, and to sharpen. He rubbed his eyes, then reached into his knapsack on the floor for his eyeglasses and slipped them on. Just like that, the lines cleared.

No sooner did he finish that drawing than another came to him, and he turned the page. But he found her face less clear to him. Yet her eyes, he remembered her eyes and drew them as she’d looked peering up at him, a sadness lingering beneath her expression even as she’d smiled. And her smile, he remembered that too.