1901

“Honestly? I don’t know. I can tell you that my role in it has apparently changed. MacArthur has told me my brigade will not be going into the line.”

“Wonderful!”

“Hah! Beware of generals bearing gifts. We have been ordered to practice maneuvering on the attack. Apparently we will be used as assault troops if the Germans breach our lines.”

“You’re right. That’s awful.”

“So we’ve been out learning how to operate as a whole brigade. It hasn’t been easy. Even the 9th and 10th have rarely operated as whole entities. They’ve usually been broken up into small frontier garrisons. The men are willing and they’re learning quickly. I just have no idea how much good my little brigade will be if the German army comes through. I’ve also been working on different tactics to minimize the awful losses now possible thanks to repeating rifles and machine guns.”

Trina shuddered at the thought. Enough of war. “Patrick, I do like sports. I’ve golfed, played tennis, swum, hiked, and ridden. You should be well aware there are few opportunities for women to play anything. Men have concocted a fiction that we are frail little creatures, incapable of honest physical effort. Worse,” she sneered, “there are many foolish female creatures who like to live that way and they simperingly conform to the myth, thereby perpetuating it.”

Patrick put his arm around her shoulders and she moved slightly toward him. She was slender but hardly frail. “Patrick,” she continued, “when this is over, where do we go? You and I.”

It was a question he almost dreaded finding the answer to. “I don’t know. I’ve come to depend on you so much. I want the war to end, but not us.”

She moved a little closer. “Why, Patrick, that actually was almost romantic.”

He smiled. She hadn’t rejected him. “I mean it,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

She put her arm around his chest and squeezed. “I don’t want you to go away either.” She disengaged herself and sat up straight. “Brave general, can you get some time off, say about a week?”

“I think so. Why?”

“I forgot to mention, but my father is in Albany. We have a small house there.” Katrina smiled pleasantly. “Most people would call it a castle, but we rich folk call it a house. I would like to take you there to meet my father. We could eat like little pigs, and hike and swim off all the food. Father could watch.” If he hasn’t brought along a girlfriend, she thought. If he had, they both could watch. Oh dear. That was something she would never have thought before.

Patrick could see her eyes shining brightly in the clear night, and he made the easy decision. “I will inform MacArthur that he will have to continue the war without me. Give me a few days to arrange things and we can go.” He paused. “Uh, what about Heinz and Molly?”

“Molly can handle him. She already informed me of that and in no uncertain terms. If she does need any help, there are people around, like Annabelle Harris, and I’ll arrange for them to look in. Somehow I think they’ll revel in the privacy, broken arm or no broken arm.”

They leaned toward each other and kissed deeply. Both were aware that a new threshold in their relationship had been crossed. Patrick had never been to Albany, never wanted to go. Now he wanted more than anything to go there and be with Trina. And he knew she wanted him there as well.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The bridge across the small stream was a fairly solid-looking stone structure that easily supported the weight of a wagon loaded with materiel or the marching feet of fifty or so armed men. Until recently, the bridge hadn’t even been necessary. Generations of Long Islanders had simply eased themselves down the gentle banks on each side and walked across the stream, sometimes barely getting their feet wet. Even in a flood, the stream was rarely more than a few feet deep, and today it was quite shallow.

But a bridge was meant to be crossed and that meant traffic took advantage of its existence all day long and sometimes into the night. Blake Morris sat comfortably in the shade of a shrub and watched the quaint little bridge, barely two hundred yards away. The three men with him were all of his little band that he’d allotted to this task. The rest were in the warehouse area of Brooklyn, or what was left of that lovely city, and had their own assignments. There had been some discussion as to the wisdom of dividing up their small force, but the men in charge of the Brooklyn operation were more than qualified. They would hurt the Germans in the area of materiel; he would hurt their souls. As the Apaches on the mainland made the Germans fear the night, he, Blake Morris, would make them fear the day and cause what had been familiar and friendly to suddenly seem sinister and hostile.

Which was why the bridge, so quaint and charming, gently spanning a stream whose name he didn’t know, was such an appropriate choice.