With This Ring by Carla Kelly Page A

for her father. “Is it dreadfully
cold and primitive?”
    Papa poured himself a drink, looked
at the decanter, then pushed it her way, to her surprise. She added
a spot to her empty glass.
    “ I was there once,” he replied. “It
was the summer I spent in Edinburgh. It is wild country, daughter.
Why do you want to know?”
    “ Some of the men in Battery B are
from there,” she explained. “I just wondered.”
    He nodded and leaned back in his
chair, after a wary look at the door through which Mama had exited
in such a hurry. “Then, they are a long way from home, my
dear.”
    Lydia sighed. “And some will never
see it.” To her surprise, she started to cry. She sobbed into her
napkin, wondering at herself, knowing that she would scare Papa
away from his after-dinner refuge over port.
    To her further amazement, he left
his chair and came to sit beside her. He put his arm around her and
held her close until she stopped crying and blew her nose on her
napkin. “Papa, I’m sorry,” she said. “If I did that when Mama was
around, she would forbid me ever to cross the threshold at St.
Barnabas again.”
    “ Perhaps it is too much for you,
daughter,” he suggested, tentative as always—a by-product of life
with Luisa Perkins—but with a warmth in his voice that she had not
heard in years. “I would not for the world have you
hurt.”
    She considered her years of life
bearing the lash of Mama’s tongue and sometimes more, and
overlooked that bit of fiction, content to feel his arm around her.
“Oh, Papa, there is so much that could be done for those soldiers,
if only someone cared enough!”
    He kissed her cheek. “It appears
that you do, my dear. Now, tell me about it.”
    She did, and he listened, as they
both worked their way through the port. Mama pulled her away to
arrange Kitty’s hair, scold her for drinking port with Papa, and to
animadvert on the subject dearest to her heart: the sore trials of
running an establishment in London with too few servants. “Few
people appreciate what we suffer,” she grumbled, as Lydia worked
her magic with the curling rod and judicious arrangement to cover
Kitty’s one flaw, fine hair.
    Mama, there are so many worse off,
she thought.
    “ At least you have achieved some
skill in arranging Kitty’s hair, and mending her clothes,” Mama
said as she sat later before her own mirror. “Now, position this
turban and don’t let me leave the house looking off balance, like
you did last night!”
    Yes, Mama, no, Mama, of course,
Mama, she thought as she watched them leave in the carriage. What a
pity that you have not a thought for others, Mama, you and your
kind. She closed the front door. “But they are my kind, too,” she
murmured to no one in particular. “And Major Reed’s kind, but he
does something about it, even in his own pain.”
    She returned to the dining room, but
Papa was asleep now—his head on the table, the decanter of port
empty. I would wish again that you were more brave, Papa, she
thought, and not for the first time. Perhaps if you were, I could
be, too.
     
     

Chapter Five
    W hen she
arrived at St. Barnabas the next morning, Major Reed was sitting in
a chair, waiting for her.
    “ Miss Perkins, you left your bonnet
behind yesterday,” he told her as she removed another bonnet and
set it by the first on the altar. “I regret to inform you that a
family of mice moved in after a brief reconnoiter during the
night.”
    “ Good heavens!” she exclaimed as she
leaped back from the altar.
    “ Never fear, my dear Miss Perkins.
After a skirmish, they were repelled. Your bonnet did suffer some
structural damage, however.”
    She went to the altar again,
cautious this time, and lifted the bonnet enough to see a hole in
the crown. “This is indeed a casualty,” she said.
    “ The battery owes you a hat,” he
said. “I’ll add it to the bill.”
    She smiled at him. “I’m not sure
there is enough money on ‘Change to pay me for services so