“You are exactly the same,” he hissed, wagging a finger in my face. “I do not know how I missed it for so long.”
“I am exactly the same,” I cried. “Exactly the same as I was last week and the week before. When I was allowed to carry out my duties. Nothing has changed.”
“That is not what I meant. You are exactly the same as in your letters. So confident and persistent and . . . and annoying!” He fisted his hands. “But I am not amused anymore.”
The idea that I had annoyed him was like a slap to my face, and my cheeks grew hot in affront. “I annoyed you?”
He expelled a great gust of air. “You did not. Not then. But I am greatly annoyed now, and you will tread lightly and . . . and keep your distance until this thing is done.”
“Keep my distance?” I asked, baffled. “How am I to do that if I am your aide?” We were mere feet apart even now.
He ran both hands through his unkempt hair and collapsed into his desk chair. His meal sat untouched, and he was visibly distraught.
I left the room and returned with his shaving kit. He still sat, dejected, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Without asking his permission, I put a cloth around his shoulders, prepared a lather, and gently spread it over his cheeks.
“This whole situation is indecent,” he whispered.
“How so, sir? You have treated me with impeccable decency.”
“I have treated you with incredible familiarity.”
“Familiarity is not indecency.”
“And you are being purposefully obtuse.”
I was, and I allowed silence to settle around us as I scraped the bristles from one half of his face and then the other. I was almost finished, and his eyes were closed when I spoke again.
“Can you not . . . simply put it out of your mind?” I asked. “I expect no special treatment. I never have.”
“But you deserve it,” he answered, weary. “It is your right.”
“My right?” I scoffed, and he opened his tired eyes. “I have so few rights, sir, but being handled like a woman, in these circumstances, is not one that I want. So if it is my right, I renounce it, and ask that you let me do the job I was selected to do.”
“You renounce it?” His mouth twitched.
“I renounce it.”
I finished shaving his face, blotted his cheeks, and pulled the drape free. When I attempted to dress his hair, he waved me off and tied it back himself. I poured him some coffee, and he split his supper in half, dividing it on the trencher.
“Eat, Samson,” he said softly, and I sat down in the chair on the other side of his desk.
“Did you enlist to find me?” he asked.
“No. In your last letter, when you told me Elizabeth was gone, you said you’d returned home. I did not expect for you to be here. It was quite a shock. But you had never seen me, I had never seen you. There was nothing about my appearance that you would recognize.”
“I can see why you used Robert, but why not Samson?”
“I didn’t want anyone to think of Deborah Samson at all or be reminded of her in any way.”
He nodded slowly. Deliberately. “We will not speak of this again,” he said.
“Very well, sir.”
“If it is discovered, I will deny any knowledge of it. You will face whatever consequences follow—”
“Of course. As I have always done,” I interrupted.
“I will not be able to protect you. You must understand this.”
“No one has ever protected me, General. I have only ever had myself.”
He winced, and his shoulders drooped slightly. “That is a tragedy, Miss Samson.”
“Please call me Rob. That is what the brothers called me. And no. It is not a tragedy. It is a victory. One I am proud of.”
He was quiet then, and we ate in companionable silence.
“What has happened to Morris?” I asked softly.
“He is here.”
My heart leapt. “And Maggie and Amos?”
“You know their names?”
“Yessir. Maggie made the salve that healed your wound and kept my leg from festering.”
“Hmm. Well then it is good that she will be at the hospital at Robinson’s house. The boy too. Morris has experience in the forge and will work there. They have not been separated. As I told him, we have much need of good men. All good men. And good . . . women.”
I almost wept then, overcome by the general’s goodness and God’s mercy, but I tucked into my meal instead, swallowing my emotion with bits of ham and potato and gulping back my gratitude with coffee I didn’t taste.