Chapter 12
Feeling more confused than ever about her marriage to Sloan, Sabrina spent the following day moving Sloan’s belongings into one set of the dresser drawers and unpacking the few things that Meggie had sent along for her.
She found a soft aqua dress with an underskirt of linen and an overskirt of wool and chose it as a serviceable gown for the day.
When she had dressed, she combed and pinned up her hair, opting for dignity—since she knew that sooner or later she was going to meet up with the gossips who had been discussing her.
Around sunset, there was a knock on her door. When she opened the door, she saw that it had stopped snowing.
The evening was very cold, and her visitor’s breath fogged before her. “Hello, Mrs. Trelawny. I’m Cissy. I met you at your sister’s house the other night.”
“Of course,” Sabrina said. Cissy. The giggler. But she smiled sweetly enough now. “Come in, please.”
“Oh, no, I’ve come for you. A number of the menfolk are busy playing soldier with their maps and plans, and we thought—well, we were hoping that you’d join us.
Maggie Calhoun, Tom’s and Colonel Custer’s sister, has planned a nice supper…
we’ll have sherry and talk, and hopefully the men will be along before the roast pheasants turn into stones! ”
“Why, that’s very kind, but—”
“Oh, do come!” Cissy encouraged her. “Please? We might all have been terrible gossips the other night, but we do form some tight bonds out here. I mean—we never do know if our men really will come back or not each time they ride out. It’s not easy being army women.
We’re not half so bad as we may have seemed.
Honestly.” She grinned suddenly. “Besides, if you join us, we can’t talk about you behind your back, right? ”
“You’ve a point.”
Sabrina found herself smiling, and she remembered that she wasn’t accustomed to spending time feeling sorry for herself. She moved forward and lived life, no matter what obstacles arose.
Besides, if she had enemies among the women at the fort, she wanted to know exactly who they were.
“Thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation. Just let me get my cloak. Perhaps I should leave a note for Major Trelawny—”
“Don’t worry. He’ll know where to find you.”
As she walked with Cissy, the other girl pointed out the different buildings at the fort and explained what they were used for. “Officers, of course, get very nice quarters. Well, perhaps they get nicer quarters in the East, and this may all appear a bit rustic, but…”
“Sloan’s quarters seem fine,” Sabrina said.
“Oh, I’m glad,” Cissy told her. “I do hope you’ll be happy here.”
“Well, I do admit, it’s a different life from what I’m accustomed to,” Sabrina murmured. She added dryly, “I’ve already met such interesting people.”
“Well, I’m not quite sure whom you’ve met as yet, but I suppose that circumstances do make us interesting people, at the least. Please don’t judge us too harshly,” Cissy said.
“We do live a strange life,” she added, then gave Sabrina a searching glance.
When she saw that Sabrina was watching her in turn, she flushed.
“He must have simply fallen head over heels in love with you,” she said with a soft sigh.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Major Trelawny. Oh, I am sorry, we’re all just so startled that he married.
He’s come and gone as he has chosen for so very long…
he can be so devastatingly charming, yet dry and distant.
I confess, we’ve all rather had a few fantasies about him.
Oh, what an awful thing to say. You must think I’m terrible.
I’m sorry, I’m babbling again. Forgive me.
We’re happy to have you here, and happy for the major.
Ah, here we are; follow me.” She ran up two short wooden steps to the porch of one of the residence buildings, tapped quickly on a door, and opened it.
Sabrina followed her in. A gust of wind blew the door shut behind them.
“I’ve brought Mrs. Trelawny,” Cissy said happily.
Sabrina quickly surveyed the women in the room as Cissy led her to a tall, solid, but attractive woman whom she introduced as Margaret Calhoun, known to her friends as Maggie, the sister of George and Tom Custer and the wife of Lieutenant James Calhoun, acting commander of Company L, of the Seventh.
Cissy then went on to introduce her to Sarah, the minister’s wife, and Jean, the very shy wife of a captain—and then Cissy brought her to two ladies she had already met, Norah and Louella.
To Sabrina’s surprise, Louella came to her quickly, in a no-nonsense manner, taking her hand.
“I’m afraid that I must apologize. Living on the frontier makes us far too blunt at times, and far too quick to gossip.”
“It’s all right; it’s surely natural that you might speculate about the welfare of an associate,” Sabrina assured her, ready to attempt to make peace between them.
Cissy seemed to exchange a glance with Louella, as if Sabrina were a bright young student who had managed to give the right answer.
“Good! Now that’s all settled, and we’re all great friends,” Norah said, setting down her knitting so she could take Sabrina’s hands and lead her to a love seat in front of a central stove. “Mrs. Trelawny, if you’re sure you don’t mind, please do tell us what happened with Senator Dillman.”
Sabrina was startled, but her stepfather’s death had been big news, and it had created a scandal.
She realized suddenly that it might have been a very damaging scandal to her.
Although she and Skylar had inherited a great deal of money, they might have become off-limits to “nice” families, despite their own innocence.
Scandal and prejudice were such that a man or a woman might have to pay regardless of whether he or she was guilty.
To many men, she might not have been marriageable material at all.
These women were being blunt, but she found that she was able to smile. She was glad for their straightforwardness. She didn’t mind being asked about something; she minded when people talked behind her back.
“I’m afraid it’s a rather sad story,” she said, sitting.
Maggie Calhoun approached her with a cup of tea, which she accepted with quick thanks.
“Please, we’d like to hear a long story,” Louella urged.
“Well, when I was very young, Brad Dillman and my father were best friends,” Sabrina told them.
“We trusted him completely. Then my father’s brother was in trouble and needed to get back into Virginia.
My father was trying to help him and…well, the story came back to us through Dillman that the Confederates who were supposed to take my uncle turned around and viciously murdered my father.
But my sister reached my father before he died, and he tried to give her a warning, and then, later, she saw Brad Dillman cleaning his knife—”
“The very knife that had slain your poor father!” Tom’s wife said, her hand against her heart.
“The very knife,” Sabrina said.
“How sad!” Jean echoed.
“How terrible! Naturally, your sister told you—”
“She told everyone, but no one believed her, you see. My mother was devastated, and Dillman was being kind and handling everything for her, and he was the most incredible actor you could imagine.” She lifted her hands.
“My mother thought that Skylar and I were being cruel to Brad Dillman because we simply couldn’t accept our father’s death, and she tried to be patient with us, but strong as well. Eventually, she married Brad Dillman.”
“Oh, how awful!” Sarah said. “But sometimes God will have his say in the end! And that’s what happened, isn’t it?”
Sabrina smiled. Sarah was very young and wore her sandy hair in pigtails, but she seemed to be strong in her convictions.
How strange. Some of these women had been talking about her so viciously before—and now they seemed completely eager to make amends.
Maybe she did have a great deal to learn about living on the frontier.
And maybe it was important to reach out and accept friendship when it was offered.
Especially when it seemed that she might so badly need to have a few friends here.
But the door suddenly swung open again, and with a burst of wind and motion, Marlene Howard came into the room, sweeping off her cloak and stamping her feet together for warmth.
“What a bitter, bitter winter!” she announced.
“Norah, dear, grab me a sherry, will you—something against this terrible chill! We should be like the men, swilling whiskey against it, lighting up cigars and such just to keep some fire near us!”
“Here’s sherry,” Norah announced.
“Do come in and sit, Marlene—Mrs. Trelawny is telling us a most fantastic story.”
“Ah, Mrs. Trelawny!” Marlene Howard saw Sabrina and walked over to her, her arms extended.
Sabrina rose while the other woman took her hands, smiling at her.
“Welcome into our fold!” she said, her beautiful eyes flashing with amusement.
“And a most fantastic story—how wonderful. We will all await this story most anxiously.”
“About Senator Dillman!” Sarah warned.
“Oh, of course!” Marlene said. She sipped her sherry and sat elegantly across from Sabrina.
“My late husband was a congressman, you know. I had occasion to meet the senator. He seemed a most charming man, intelligent…I’m quite afraid that half the world must still believe you and your sister to be ungrateful stepchildren! ”
The woman said the words very sadly, as if she was so sorry people could be so misguided, yet Sabrina sensed that she meant to injure with every inflection of her voice.
Sabrina forced a smile. “Thank God there were witnesses to what the man did!”
“But you didn’t tell us the rest!” Sarah pointed out, and Sabrina glanced quickly at her, her smile deepening. Sarah was such a wonderful minister’s wife, so it appeared. But she did love a good, scandalous story.