“We are, of course, appreciative of your confidence in us,” said Mrs. Barrett diplomatically. “We should like, if possible, to remain another six to eight months to see our work truly brought to fruition.”
“Fritz might have a thing or two to say about that,” said Colonel Hayes. “If you do stay—”
“We intend to do so,” said Mrs. Barrett pleasantly. “As you can see, we have a great deal of work in hand. Have we told you about our spring planting?”
Colonel Hayes cleared his throat. Under the mustache, he was really fairly young, Emmie realized. And trying very hard to retain control of the situation. “As I was saying, if you do stay, there will be conditions.”
“Naturally,” said Mrs. Barrett, which meant, Emmie knew, that she meant to persuade him out of all of them. “Would you like more coffee, Colonel? Miss Van Alden, if you would be so kind as to ask Madame Gouge?”
“Oh, yes, of course.” Emmie fumbled for the coffeepot, a rather pretty one, which Mrs. Barrett had brought with her from Paris.
“Let me carry that for you,” said Captain DeWitt, and neatly scooped up the coffeepot before she could drop it. He held open the door for her with his other hand. “After you, Miss Van Alden.”
“There was really no need,” said Emmie as the door shut behind them. “I’ve spent the morning hauling bookshelves for Anne. I can manage a coffeepot.”
“I know you can.” Captain DeWitt paused on the path between the new house and the kitchen tent, which they were still using, despite Mrs. Barrett’s determination to move the one working stove to the new house. “Don’t you recognize a stratagem when you see one?”
“A stratagem? To abscond with the coffee?”
“It is very good coffee. But no.” Captain DeWitt looked at her over the coffeepot, the sunlight winking off the badge on his cap. “I mean to abscond with you—at least as far as the kitchen.”
Emmie didn’t seem to be breathing properly. “That isn’t much of an—is abscomption a word?”
“I don’t believe so,” said Captain DeWitt gravely.
They stared at each other over the coffeepot, like strangers but not. It had been two months since they had seen each other in person, two months since that bench by the moat. It was one thing to sit with someone at a party, flown on music and good food, and quite another to see them by day, in one’s official capacity. And wonder if he still saw whatever it was he had seen then, if he thought whatever it was of her he had thought then. Or if it had just been Christmas and loneliness and the front and a sympathetic ear. Well, lips, really.
The silence stretched between them, if it could truly be called silence with artillery pounding in the distance and one of Emmie’s roosters screeching.
It was so strange to be shy of each other when they’d been living inside each other’s heads since Christmas. But there was a world of difference between being invited into the private world of someone’s mind—all the odd thoughts and memories—and then presented, once again, with the living, breathing person in whom those thoughts resided, someone at once familiar and alien. And very, very much made of flesh. Emmie was strangely aware of the physicality of him, the way his uniform belted in at the waist, the breadth of his shoulders beneath the drab khaki, the ungloved hands holding the coffeepot.
“Or I can go away again,” Captain DeWitt said, watching her very closely, “and write you a letter.”
Emmie flushed. “That’s an idea, isn’t it? We could set up a postbox somewhere between here and the house and leave each other letters in it. You know, things like, ‘hello,’ and ‘fine day, isn’t it?’”
“It is a fine day,” agreed Captain DeWitt.
Emmie wished her uniform were cleaner. And that she’d washed her hair more recently. “Thank you for letting us stay.”
“It wasn’t my decision.” The captain shifted the coffeepot from one hand to the other. “The colonel really was driven half-mad by Frenchmen petitioning him on your behalf.”
Emmie couldn’t help but feel flattered. “On the Unit’s behalf, you mean.”
Captain DeWitt shook his head. “Not just the Unit. You. Your work in Courcelles is a shining model of what determination, hard work, and a warm heart can accomplish—I translate from the French, of course,” he added drily.
There was something in his tone that made a little of the light fade from the sky. “You sound as though you don’t agree.”