Chapter 8

A full bladder woke Matthew up at daybreak on Tuesday. For a few moments he was disoriented, trying to remember where he was, and then he recognized the familiar surroundings of the room he'd occupied in Amanda's house earlier in the year and it all came back to him. Someone had shot at them the previous night, shot at them right in Amanda's own home, and he was determined not to rest until he found out who it was and saw the culprit punished.

He heard a rustle, as of women's skirts, and then a soft voice: "Matthew? It's Molly Thornton. I'm going to turn up the wick on the lamp so you can see better."

Light from the coal oil lamp across the room brought everything into sharper focus. He turned toward the source of the sound and saw her kind face as she came to his bedside.

"I'm sure you need the commode, so I'll step out, but I'm glad you're better. We were concerned that you might develop a fever, so we've been checking you periodically during the night."

"It hurts like hell, ma'am, but I'll be all right. How's Amanda?"

"Still asleep, I hope. I sent her to bed at midnight. She didn't want to, so I had to pull rank on her."

"I'm glad somebody can; she doesn't listen to me."

"Matthew, that is simply not true and you know it. Did she listen to you when you fussed at her about not eating properly while you were gone this last time?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"I rest my case. I'll step out now. There's a dressing gown on the foot of the bed if you want to put it on, but be careful with the arm."

She left the room. Matthew made use of the commode in the corner, shrugged into the dressing gown, not without some discomfort to his left arm, and returned to sit down on the bed to assess how he felt. As wounds went, this one could have been much worse, for which he was very thankful. His left arm was stiff, of course, and Amanda would probably insist that he see a surgeon, but no serious harm had been done.

There was a light tap on the door and Amanda's voice said, "Matthew? May I come in?"

"Please do."

Her hair, even braided for the night, reached over her shoulder and rested on the rise of her bosom; Matthew closed his eyes as visions of unbraiding that hair and spreading it like a curtain over her bare shoulders came unbidden into his mind. He opened them again when she said, "Matthew? Are you well?"

"I've never seen your hair down, even in a braid, before," he admitted huskily.

She blushed, but she didn't recoil from the heat in his eyes; instead, she said, " And now we're even, because I've never seen you without your uniform before. You didn't have too much trouble putting the dressing gown on?"

"Not too much. Was it your husband's?"

"Oh, no, Jim wasn't a 'dressing gown' sort of person, anymore than he was a nightshirt sort of person. No, that was Papa's. Are you hungry?"

"Ravenous."

"Good. You lost some blood, so I told Molly to cook you a beefsteak to build your blood back up, and I believe she's cooking fried potatoes too."

"Wonderful. Have you had breakfast?"

"Not yet."

"Will we shock the world if you eat with me, you in your wrapper with your hair down and me without a shirt?"

"The world isn't going to know."

Tom McGuire came into the room with a can of hot water.

"Mrs. Thornton sent this up, Miss Amanda, so you can change the major's bandage."

"Very well. Have you ever changed a bandage, Tom?"

"Not the way you do it, ma'am."

"Then you're going to learn. There are good jobs for hospital orderlies and even hospital stewards in this man's army, and it's a good skill to have."

"Yes, ma'am."

Under Amanda's supervision, Tom changed the bandage; when he finished, Amanda nodded her approval and said, " Good. We'll have the breakfast tray now."

Matthew and Amanda watched each other carefully to make sure that the other ate everything on his or her breakfast tray; they'd just finished when Harry Thornton arrived to tell Matthew that Dr. Notson would be coming by at eight to examine Matthew and give further instructions for his treatment.

"I've already got men outside looking for evidence about the man who shot at you last night," Thornton said. "If Dr. Notson agrees, I'd like to send the two of you to Philadelphia on the afternoon train. You need time to recover, Matthew, and you need to do it someplace other than here."

"Sir, I'm fine. A day or two of rest will set me to rights, and there's work to be done," Matthew argued. "By all means, send Amanda to Philadelphia or Boston to get her out of harm's way, but I can keep working."

"I'm not going anywhere if you're not," Amanda said. "It's clear that you were the target, not I."

"It's not at all clear," Matthew countered. "If I'd been the target, why didn't he wait until I was out on the street to fire?"

"Because he would have been shooting into the dark, that's why. The light from the hallway illuminated you perfectly."

"It's still not clear who was the target, and I won't take chances with your safety. I think you should join your mother in Boston and give up any ideas of assisting in intelligence operations."

"That's not your decision to make, Matthew. Why shouldn't you be the one to give up intelligence operations?"

"It's what I do, what I've been trained to do, and I'm good at it."

"No, what you were trained to do was argue cases in court. By that standard, you should be spending your days preparing court-martial charges."

"I didn't join as a lawyer. I joined an infantry regiment, to fight."

"But you're not in an infantry regiment, are you? Well, I may have been trained as a nurse, but I've proven that I'm capable of assisting with intelligence operations, and I'm not going to stop doing it just because you think it's too dangerous."

"Amanda….."

Neither of them noticed that Harry had left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He met his wife in the hallway and she looked a question at him. He drew into the room that was usually Dorothea's, closed the door, and started laughing.

"What is it, Harry?"

"They're arguing about who has to give up intelligence work. Of course, he wants her to, and she's arguing that the same rules should apply to him."

"Oh, my stars, how did you keep from laughing?"

"With considerable difficulty, believe me. They didn't even notice when I left the room, they were so busy squabbling."

"Harry, you have to keep them together. They're an unbeatable team."

"Oh, we will, my dear. We will, even if we have to bring in the heavy guns to overrule Matthew's naturally protective feelings."

"You mean – the president?"

"If necessary, yes."

"Oh, my."