Page 2 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Well, that was it, then. All she had to do was follow the tracks.

She’d scarcely gone more than a yard before one of the dark shapes peeled away from the shadows, blocking her path. “Ma’am. May I help you back into your compartment? This is no place for a lady.”

Ha. She hadn’t been a lady in years. Possibly ever, if her brother was to be believed.

Betsy straightened, trying to ignore the way her hair straggled down the back of her neck, half out of its pins. “It’s very kind of you, but . . . no. Good night.”

Those particular cut-off consonants had always had great success in squashing the pretensions of university men who believed her to be a sweet little thing. Little, yes. Sweet, no. Unfortunately, this man seemed to be made of tougher stuff.

“Let me help you back in,” he said, and made the mistake of reaching for her elbow. Betsy jerked her arm out of the way. The man stepped back, saying carefully, as to someone delicate and nervous, “Is your chaperone in the compartment?”

Betsy had given up chaperones years ago, along with her illusions. “If you must make yourself useful, I need a cart or wheeled conveyance. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Just something sufficient to take me the two miles to Tampa.”

The man looked at her as if trying to figure out if she was joking. “Ma’am, everyone is trying to get to Tampa.”

“Yes, but there are a great number of you, and just one of me,” said Betsy, quite reasonably, she thought.

Another man ambled up out of the darkness. “Holt, what are you—” He stopped abruptly, leaning practically double to squint at Betsy. “Betsy? Betsy Hayes?”

Betsy’s stomach dropped. She’d know that loping walk anywhere. “Paul? What on earth are you doing here?”

“What do you think I’m doing here? Fighting the Spaniards,” Paul said happily, the same way he might have said, “trouncing Harvard,” as if this were the Yale-Harvard game and not a war, not a hideous excuse for men to exterminate their fellow man and leave them bleeding. “I’m with the First United States Volunteer Cavalry.”

He was bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement. Betsy would have taken him by the shoulders and shaken him if they’d been alone. And if she could reach.

“What made you do an idiot thing like that?”

“Betsy! We’re going to free Cuba!” Paul laughed. He actually laughed, as though it were all a joke, as though they were in the dining room of Delmonico’s and not on a humid train siding somewhere in Florida. “What are you doing down here? Not that I’m not happy to see you, of course, just, it’s not the place for a lady.”

Betsy rubbed a hand inelegantly across her nose. “So I’ve been told.”

“Oh, I forgot to introduce you!” Paul clapped the other man on the back in an excess of hail-fellow-well-met. “Miss Hayes, may I present to you my comrade in arms Private Holt, also of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. Holt, this is Miss Elizabeth Hayes of Smith College, who once did me the honor of being my guest for Yale prom.”

The other man was slighter than Paul, but what he lacked in bulk, he made up for in sheer disapproval. “You’re a long way from New Haven, Miss Hayes.”

“Really? I’d hardly noticed.”

Paul gave a happy chuckle. “We’ve so many Yale men about you’d think you were at Mory’s. There’s Thede Miller—did you ever meet Thede? He was a year behind me. And Teddy Burke and David Goodrich. . . . We’ve more than our fair share of Harvard men here too, but we’ve decided to count them friends under the circumstances.”

“Given that the same people will be shooting at both of you.” Betsy’s mouth felt very dry. All the chivalry of Yale and Harvard, to be turned to food for buzzards. Did men learn nothing through the generations? They’d died to a man at Thermopylae and called it honor.

Paul ignored her, too buoyed up by his own excitement. “And then we’ve the real cowboys, like Holt here, men who’ve studied at the University of Experience.”

“A degree in cattle rustling, I take it?”

“Don’t be a snob, Bets. You must have heard of Private Holt. Hold ’Em Holt? The man who single-handedly hunted down the Jakes Brothers?”

“It wasn’t single-handed,” interjected the object of Paul’s adoration.

“As good as!” In the light of the train lamps, Paul’s eyes shone with hero worship. Paul’s enthusiasms, when they lasted, tended to be all-consuming. In her case, it had involved whole hothouses full of flowers and reams of letters speckled with detailed accounts of his sporting activities, which he had assumed, for some incomprehensible reason, must be of interest to her.

It had suited them both, at the time. Paul had wanted a woman on his arm; Betsy had wanted an invitation to Yale prom, largely to annoy Ava. It had been such fun annoying Ava, and so ridiculously easy. Besides, Ava had enjoyed it too. Nothing made her happier than getting to be all purse-lipped and disapproving. It was how their friendship worked. Betsy did something appalling and Ava clucked at her and they both felt entirely themselves.

Then. Back before it all went wrong. So very, very wrong.

I’m not saying what you said in Athens is right. Betsy had Ava’s letter in her pocket, folded into eighths, read and reread until the scrap of paper had all but disintegrated. We are to undertake a training course . . . take ship for Florida . . .

“Brilliant.” Betsy cut Paul off mid-encomium, something about hornswoggling or hog-tying, goodness only knew. “I’m sure Annie Oakley will be terribly impressed. Do you have Buffalo Bill here too?”