#sagiow

She was nothing like Emma. It was nothing like the woods, the creek, the War.

“Yes, I do,” he said. He knew what he was capable of. Assault, ravishing, uttering lies as though they were God’s word.

“You are broken, cheri. I am not. I shall break you.”

“Promise?” he asked.

The forecast had called for two inches of snow; ten had fallen. It was still falling even now, beginning to drift, burying Mary’s trusty Honda Civic as Jed called out local school closings as they came in, the way he usually reserved for election results and other people might call out scores on Super Bowl night or during March Madness. Mary rolled her eyes as he called out another one, coming back from the kitchen with two glasses of wine that were probably just a little more full than they should have been, but hey, what else were they supposed to do while they were being snowed in?

“You are such a nerd,” she told him affectionately as he passed him a glass, settling down in the crook between his body and the corner of the couch.

“Takes one to know one, Phinney.”

“We don’t even know anyone in school, or with kids in school. I don’t know why you care so much. You know that we’ll have to go into work tomorrow regardless.”

“Hospitals don’t get snow days,” Jed agreed sadly. “I know. I just enjoy seeing which schools are wimpy enough to call off early, and who’s going to wait until tomorrow at 5 AM to do it instead. Why?” he asked suddenly. “What would you rather do instead?”

“Rather than watch my boyfriend triumphantly yell the name of every school district in DC? How about literally anything else?”

She took a sip of her wine, missing the look that came over Jed’s face at her words. The moment her glass was safely on the coffee table, he was in motion, grabbing hold of her by the waist and pulling himself so that he was hovering over her on the couch. His face was only inches from hers as he murmured, “Was this more what you had in mind?”

“Lissette wouldn't mind,” Mary said, with a look that said she might mind but I certainly don't and Emma wondered if those rumors about Dr. Foster and the artist were true.

The boots had surely been in the room when Emma moved in, but she hadn't noticed them shoved under the bed as they were.  She had barely spent any time in the room Matron Brannon told her to call her own. There were always needs among the soldiers downstairs, or in the Contraband camp just outside of the Mansion House doors, or out on the battlefields when Henry could get the wagons.

Emma thought about the events she had been to where boots such as these could be worn, the beaded silk so delicate it looked like frosting. Her debutante ball.  Perhaps a Christmas Eve service.  But nothing now, not during war.  Though, perhaps…

“Come now, Emil, thou must explain thyself,” Friedrich said, gesturing at the many spots daubed in flour, in place of an antimacassar on his favorite armchair, scattered on the worn Persian rug like a spoor, streaks on the dark curtains and Josephine’s equally dark skirt, the similarity of the fabric making him wonder if she’d actually cut up a dress to keep the sitting room from being in the public view. Franz himself was head-to-toe made ghostly with what was supposed to have been tomorrow’s loaf, his soft blue eyes perplexed and his chin set stubbornly. His golden curls were completely white. He had refused to make any confession, admission or allegation, citing the universal rule of childhood, to band together against adults, any adult, however kindly, even Onkel Friedrich. Jo had shrugged, her lovely grey eyes bemused; she seemed unaware there was a trace of the flour across her cheek, making her look like a young girl. The matching dusting in her chestnut curls was a vision of her future.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” Emil said stoutly.

“And yet there shall be no fresh bread at breakfast in the morning. The rug must be taken out and beaten, the curtains brushed. Tante Josephine’s dress will need to be laundered,” Friedrich said, watching his nephew’s narrow shoulders droop. He suspected it was the trouble to Tante Josephine and not the sparse breakfast that made Emil sorry and was glad that his nephew’s heart was bigger than any appetite.

“No need to fret about my dress, Emil. It’s been treated far worse by me, as Onkle Friedrich knows—I have a bad habit of standing before the fire still,” Jo interceded, giving their nephew a comradely grin. She found it very hard to be stern with the boys but they rarely needed much correction.

“I’m awfully sorry, Tante Josephine. I’ll help with the laundry and all the other mess. A good first mate will always swab the deck if he needs to! And I won’t take any popovers at Sunday dinner,” Emil said, biting his lip at the true sacrifice of that March delicacy, the golden popover.

“You’ll hurt Hannah’s feelings then. We’ll find another way for you to make amends,” Jo said.

“I still haven’t heard any explanation, Emil,” Friedrich said. They were good boys but they must still be disciplined, called to account for their faults, though they would never be beaten for any transgression. They feared his disappointment, not his belt or his hand, and that was as it should be.

“It was the assignment about bees, mein Onkel. It was talking about how they go from flower to flower, picking up pollen and leaving it behind…how one bee could only touch so many flowers by itself but if it touched other bees, well, it would be so many more flowers thou canst hardly believe it! And Franz didn’t believe it, so I told him to get some flour, for the pollen, and we’d see. Because that’s what the word in the book was about, experience, experential, and now he does see, don’t you, Franz?” Emil said.

“It meant numbers. Like the ones on a graph,” Franz retorted. “I said so but you didn’t believe me.”

“Exponential? That is the word, is it not?” Friedrich interrupted, only smiling a little at the confusion. There was a great deal of flour strewn about and the account books were so tightly managed, it was a feat to keep Jo in ink and himself in the cheapest pipe tobacco. And yet, he could not help his amusement.

“Amy was that way, when she was a girl. I think hardly fifty per cent of what she said was the correct word. Though in her case, she was always concerned with elegance, not science,” Jo laughed. Friedrich could easily imagine his graceful sister-in-law as a little girl most occupied with her little vanities; even now, he noticed how she carefully arranged the fringed ends of her silk sash or straightened her lace collar and cuffs upon entering a room. Her sisters had grown used to it and her husband beamed at her for the simple act of breathing. Friedrich was certain he was the only who observed and considered what it meant for a grown woman to act so.

“Emil, experiential means based on experience. Exponential is a term from mathematics, about an escalating growth that is greater than the arithmetic addition of one and another. We will review it at thy lesson tomorrow. Go now and fetch a dustpan and cloth so you may begin to clean the sitting room. Franz, thou must wash. Thoroughly,” Friedrich said. The boys trotted from the room briskly, both satisfied than the matter had been resolved without much more than Onkel’s gentle scolding. Friedrich walked over to Josephine, still smiling over the malapropism and the memories it had provoked. She was irresistible.

“Thou hast something, just here, liebling,” he said, brushing at her cheek.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, shaking her head slightly. He leaned in, put a hand at her slender waist, and kissed her, rather more ardently than the wasted flour might merit. Jo, however, merited the most ardent, most tender, most passionate of caresses and had begun to be shyly pleased by them, instead of brusquely dismissive. He hoped next for the shyness to disappear, leaving her desires unapologetic, confident. His to gratify.

“Amy, it’s patently obvious you cannot hold a ball tonight,” Jo said, attempting to temper her exasperation given Amy’s even more obvious misery. Amy had always been the most conventionally beautiful of the March girls and her station in life as Mrs. Theodore Laurence had only allowed her to enhance her fair loveliness with elegant gowns, jewels, and apparently simple coiffures which required an hour of time from Amy’s skillful French maid Marie-Claudine; today, all anyone would see was a woman suffering from a terrible head-cold, her blue-eyes glassy and blood-shot, a fever blister on her Cupid’s bow mouth. She was pale instead of rosy and her much-lamented nose was red and raw from frequent sneezing and what Jo supposed must pass for ladylike blowing. Amy clutched a sodden, lace-edged handkerchief in her hand and took another sip of China tea from a delicate fluted tea-cup. Jo was fairly certain a rude crockery mug full of Marmee’s best tonic, always bitter despite a liberal dollop of honey, would have done her sister more good but Amy had never liked advice and she was already trying to convince her to postpone her spring ball. She’d learned from Fritz to consider what arguments she must win and those she only wanted to.

“I cannot reschedule a ball, Jo. Even you must see that,” Amy said.

“EvenI? I gather I inhabit the realm of centipedes, trolls and various uncouth creatures who still must grasp, however dimly, that a ball, once announced, cannot be changed,” Jo replied, rolling her eyes. Amy was not ill enough to forgo any expression of derision.

“It will be fine. A bit of rouge, more powder, a dose of Marmee’s tonic—I’ll be fine,” Amy said. She might have been more persuasive if her voice hadn’t been raspy from catarrh and if she hadn’t sneezed explosively between the word moreand powder.

“Amy. My dear. You cannot be serious. You belong in bed, with a hot brick at your feet, a compress on your lily-white brow and Teddy hovering over you with various delicacies you waved away. Not strapped into thirty yards of cerulean watered silk picked to match your eyes. Unfortunately, your eyes are mostly red right now and crimson has never been your favorite,” Jo said.

“They’ll all say I’m a fool. I’m an embarrassment to the Laurence name, that Laurie made a mistake marrying one of those March girls, poor, uncultured, graceless,” Amy muttered.

“No one will say that. Not a Moffat, not a King. Not a blasted Lowell! And even if they did, Teddy will laugh and then go to war to defend his Lady’s impugned honor. You might have to sacrifice a scarf but I believe you have a half-a-dozen,” Jo said patiently. She herself had one woolen scarf, in a bright cherry hue, knitted by Meg for her Christmas gift, and one worn, lace fichu Fritz had given her, his mother’s. She saved it for Sundays and knew she could never repair any rent in the tatting.

“Nine. Laurie thought I hadn’t enough,” Amy said. She wasill, if she admitted to an actual number.

“I’ll get a calendar and you can pick another date. Teddy and I will make sure all your ices and pink lilies and violinists are rescheduled. Your ball can wait. It’s not cancelled, it’s only postponed,” Jo said. All this talk of balls was inspiring her; she’d either write a story about one, a story that might fetch ten dollars and a new pair of shoes each for Emil and Franz. Or convince Fritz to take her in his arms and riot across the nearly empty parlor at Plumfield the way they once had in a tavern in New York. Perhaps, if she convinced Amy soon enough, she might have both, Fritz’s dark whiskers delightfully rough against her cheek as he kissed her at the end of her mad gallop, already breathless before she kissed him back.

“Do you really think it will be all right? I do feel positively dreadful, like an old rug Hannah would beat on the clothesline,” Amy said.

“Yes. I am most exceedingly confident it will be no trouble at all and whatever little frisson there might be is something Teddy will manage most beautifully. He’s a credit to you, Amy,” Jo said.

“He’s not my child, Jo.” Amy sounded fretful, sharp and sour as milk going off. She looked it too. Jo was not above a bit of spitefulness she wouldn’t utter aloud.

“Never you mind. You’re a perfect match and he loves you dearly and now you need your bed, a proper flannel nightgown without a stitch of French lace, and some beef tea.”

“Lace won’t hurt,” Amy said, standing clumsily, but still herself in all the ways that counted.

“I suppose not. Off to bed, now,” Jo answered, putting her arm around her sister’s waist and guiding her from the room. She hadn’t even had to remind Amy of the time she’d insisted on lobster salad and a wagon-lit during a summer rainstorm to win her point. She could most certainly get Fritz to dance with her, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his collar undone. He’d speak to her in German afterward, his voice low, rich, husky. Well beyond admiration. She was finding she understood him that way quite, quite well.