Page 19 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“So you shall search for . . . kitchen things?”

She’d never really thought of it quite like that before, but now that he’d said it, Betsy felt a wonderful sense of rightness, like stepping into the proper pair of shoes after trying on ones that pinched. She could pioneer a new sort of archaeology, not jostling for showy finds but painstakingly putting back together the lives of ordinary people, people like her.

Betsy glowed up at him, alight with her new inspiration. “Didn’t your own Napoleon say an army marched on its stomach? An army marches on its stomach and everyone needs kitchen things.”

Monsieur de Robecourt looked at her wonderingly. “Napoleon never said that.”

“No, I did.” Betsy beamed at him, dazzled by her beautiful new idea: the history of ancient Greece, told not through epics, but through the little daily things.

Monsieur de Robecourt lifted her hand, as if it were something infinitely rare and precious. Betsy thought he meant to kiss it, as he had before, in Aikaterini’s drawing room. But he didn’t.

Holding her hand in his, he said softly, “Wait until you see Mycenae tomorrow before you swear off royal regalia. Or better yet . . . come to Delphi with me next month. We’ll see if one of the most sacred places in Greece can make you change your mind about kitchen things.”

Betsy tilted her head back, looking Monsieur de Robecourt in the eye. “I don’t change my mind easily. But you’re welcome to try.”

His fingers twined with hers. Betsy closed her eyes against the glare of the sun, letting herself sway forward.

There was a pointed cough behind them. Ethel tapped Betsy sharply on the shoulder. “Betsy. Betsy. You dropped your hat.”

“Bless you,” said Betsy, feeling thoroughly bemused. “Now Monsieur de Robecourt can stop courting sunstroke.”

“Are you sure sunstroke is all he’s courting?” asked Ethel.

Chapter Five

The Red Cross ship the State of Texas, filled with food and clothing for the suffering Cubans, daily awaits the order to sail—as do our troops.

The State of Texas is not, as people suppose, a hospital ship, but was chartered solely to carry medicines, clothing, and food to the reconcentrados, about whose plight you can read in last week’s edition. However, the troops were so convinced that any ship bearing the insignia of the Red Cross must be intended for the treating of their ills that the doctors and nurses on board bowed to the inevitable and converted the smoking room into an operating room, the purser’s room into a dispensary, and state rooms into wards where our patients might receive rest, quiet, and watchful care under the expert eye of the nursing sisters.

Nonetheless, none of us has forgotten our true mission, or that of our brave boys in uniform: to free the people of Cuba.

Due to a lack of transports, not all of our boys will make it over, and it would do your heart proud to see them fight over who should have the honor of liberating the reconcentrados from the suffocating yoke of Spain. . . . Millionaires’ sons and cowboys alike beg for the privilege of firing a shot for freedom.

The word about who will go and who won’t changes daily, but this reporter has heard that among the chosen are William Tiffany of the New York Tiffanys, Oklahoma broncobuster Bill McGinty, Harvard football player and famed yachtsman Woodbury Kane, and the fearless bounty hunter Hold ’Em Holt, who brought the Jakes Brothers to justice.

Let’s hope he can do the same for the reign of Spain. . . .

—Miss Katherine Carson for the St. Louis Star Ledger, June 7, 1898

* * *

Tampa, Florida

June 8, 1898

“Better put on your hat before you get sunstroke,” said Holt.

Paul obediently crammed his hat down on his head, squinting along the tracks. “I’m sure the train will be here any time now.”

“Uh-huh,” said Holt. There was dust in his eyes, dust in his nose, dust in places he didn’t want to think about there being dust. They’d been standing on this train siding since midnight the night before, waiting for a train they’d been told was coming to take them the nine miles to Port Tampa for immediate departure for Cuba.

“You don’t happen to have a cracker on you?” asked Paul hopefully.

“Not a crumb.” They’d left in such haste, so sure they’d be on shipboard by dawn, that no one had bothered to pack any provisions. It was the coffee Holt missed; it helped keep the headaches at bay.

Paul shrugged that aside, undaunted. “It could be worse. At least we get to go. Think of those poor mugs back in camp missing all the fun.”

“You call this fun?” But Holt knew what he meant. Back at the camp were men who’d rushed from all over the country to join up, and, after all that, they wouldn’t even get to be part of the big moment. There’d been a problem with the boats, the problem being that there weren’t enough of them. There were rumors that Colonel Wood and Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt had tossed a coin to see which troops would go.