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about Mrs. Kinnard and her
bossy nature—unless things had changed radically, everyone in this town longer
than a day would know. But he only made the remark to see if she would smile. It
pleased him that she did.
    “All your mother’s friends vouched for you. If they hadn’t, I
suspect you would have awakened in the stockade rather than in your own
bed.”
    “I...don’t look the same.”
    “Even so, they didn’t hesitate.”
    “I’m most grateful, then.”
    They stared at each other until she became uncomfortable and
looked away. It was time for her to identify herself, and he wasn’t sure why she
didn’t. He supposed that hiding was one thing, and introductions were something
else again.
    “Miss Woodard,” she said finally.
    Robert frowned, trying to remember if he’d ever known a Woodard
family. “Miss Woodard,” he repeated. Half a name was not helpful. He still had
no idea who she was. “And that would be the...Miss Woodard who...hides.”
    “The very one,” she said agreeably. “I do apologize for
intruding. I didn’t intend to come in here at all, but I thought you were still
unaware, and I was quite...trapped. My only excuse is that I’ve been charged not
to upset the occupation by offending Mrs. Kinnard. I’m finding
it...difficult.”
    “Yes, I can...see that. Tell me, do you often...go through
men’s pockets?”
    “Thus far, only when Sergeant Major Perkins insists,” she
said.
    “If he’s like the...sergeants major I’ve known, he does that on
a...regular basis. Insists.”
    “Well, he is formidable. They say my brother knows everything
that goes on in this town and in the occupation army. If that is true, I believe
the sergeant major is the reason.” She stood and smoothed her skirts. “I must go
now and tell him you’re awake.”
    “Your brother is...?” he asked, trying to keep her with him
longer, though why he wanted—needed—to do that, he couldn’t have said, except
that she was an anchor to the reality he suddenly found himself in.
    She looked at him for a long moment before she answered.
“Colonel Maxwell Woodard. Your brother-in-law. Which makes us relatives, I
suppose, by marriage.”
    Robert heard her—quite clearly. He even recognized the
implication of her brother’s military title. He just didn’t believe it. Maria
married to a Yankee colonel was—impossible. It would have been no surprise to
him at all to learn that she had wed during his long absence, but she would
never have married one of them. Never .
    And then he remembered. Never was
for people who had viable options, not for the ones who found themselves
conquered and destitute and occupied, especially the women. He should have been
here. Who knew what circumstances had pushed Maria into such a union, and he had
no doubt that she had been pushed.
    A sudden downdraft in the chimney sent a brief billowing of
smoke and ash into the room. He realized that his alleged sister-in-law was more
concerned about him than about the possibility of a singed hearthrug. She was
looking at him with a certain degree of alarm, but he made no attempt to try to
reassure her. He stared at the far wall instead, watching the shifting patterns
of sunlight caused by the bare tree limbs moving in the wind outside. It was his
own fault that he was so ignorant. He supposed that some might find the
situation ironic, his little brother dead at Gettysburg and his sister married
to one of the men directly or indirectly responsible.
    “I’m sorry to have put it so bluntly,” she said after a moment.
“I should have realized that the news might be...difficult to hear.”
    He dismissed her bluntness with a wave of his hand. “Your
brother and Maria...?” He couldn’t quite formulate a question to ask; there were
so many. Seven years’ worth.
    “They live here,” she said, apparently making a guess as to
what he might want to know despite her misgivings about him. She couldn’t know
if he had been so uninformed by choice or