“Why don’t you sit a spell and have some breakfast?”
“Ain’t got time for lollygaggin’. Folks is expectin’ their bakin’.” Pale skin stretched tight across the gnarled knuckles he used to brush dust from his sleeve. “Now, where is them cakes?”
One of these days, the old gentleman would collapse from starvation. A man couldn’t live by whiskey alone. “They’re in the pantry boxes on the sideboard. Oh, and four dozen ginger cookies, too.” Wiping her hands on her apron, she joined the dear wraith at the counter and stacked the boxes in his arms. “The cookies are for the mercantile. The chocolate cake is for Janie Sims’s birthday, and the pound cakes—”
“Are for Miz Gibbons, same as every Tuesday.” He fixed her with a scowl, eyes bloodshot but focused. “Drink ain’t killed all my brain cells.”
Not for lack of trying. She hurried to open the door. “By the time you get back, Mrs. McPherson’s bread will be ready.”
Henry rolled his eyes heavenward. “Thank the good Lord. For a preacher’s wife, that ol’ biddy’s sure got a mouth on her.”
Winnie giggled and kissed the old man’s cheek. When he reached the ground at the bottom of the second step, she set his hat on his head and gave the flat crown a light tap. Henry pointed a grin over his shoulder, then shuffled down the alley…in a straight line.
A pinch in her heart sank her teeth into the corner of a fading smile. Every now and then, wisps of the man she remembered—hale, with a booming voice and a hearty laugh—drifted onto the stooped shoulders beneath a tattered coat.
Dear Henry. Bless his tortured soul. Only strong spirits gave him peace. She found hers in baking.
And if she didn’t immerse herself in peace right away, she’d never complete the rest of today’s orders.
She’d only begun to knead the dough on the work table when the bell over the café’s front door jingled. Hope arose in her bosom. Perhaps some famished individual with a poor sense of smell had come to brave the stew. She whipped the apron over her head, filled the ironstone coffeepot from the battered vessel on the stove, and hastened into the dining room.
Sunlight streamed through chintz curtains, kissing vases of daisies atop yellow-checkered tablecloths. So bright, so cheerful, so…
…empty, except for the newlyweds nibbling pastries at a corner table.
And the three men tromping toward the center of the room. Their sky-blue trousers and dark-blue sack coats bruised an otherwise lovely morning.
She glanced at the young couple. They stared at the soldiers for only a moment before exchanging a whisper, slipping from their seats, and scurrying from the café.
The Yankees tossed kepis onto a tabletop. On the smashed-forward crowns, sunlight glinted from crossed sabers. Chair legs scraped the floor, no doubt scarring the boards in the same way the Union Army’s presence gouged Injun Creek.
Their backs to the door, the soldiers plopped onto seats. One threw back his head on a raucous laugh and clapped another on the shoulder.
A still-raw memory flashed through her mind. Yesterday, a boy balanced on a crutch to offset his missing leg spat on a corporal’s boot. A rifle butt slammed his temple and sent him sprawling in the street. While his mother fell to her knees beside her crumpled hero, the Yankee vermin cackled.
Bluebellies? More like yellow-bellies.
Insisting the corners of stiff lips tip upward, she forced herself to cross the room. Thank goodness for the coffee. The nutty aroma rising from the pot dulled the Federal stench.
One beast drew a daisy from the vase and began plucking petals. The others studied her with undisguised lust.
One by one, she met each man’s sneer as she sloshed steaming brew into his cup. “Good morning, gentlemen. What may I get for you?”
Rough fingers snatched her wrist. “You’ll do.” A brutish tug dropped her into the soldier’s lap.
The coffeepot crashed to the floor. Hot liquid splashed her ankles.
Male arousal punched her hip.
The cur lowered his head. “How ’bout a little kiss, honey?” Even his breath stank of Yankee.
She wrenched from the lout’s grasp and scooted backward, crunching ironstone shards beneath her heels. Hoots of glee bounced off the walls.
Animals. Nails digging into her palms, she jammed fists into the pocket slits in her skirt and smoothed the sharp edge from her tone. “I’ll thank you to be on your way.”
Her former captor scraped an insolent stare from her slippers to her bosom, paused for a visual grope, and then fixed on her face. “Well, that’s gratitude for you.”
One of his comrades elbowed the barbarian. “That’n a little too hot-blooded for you, Jeb?”
“Nope.” The philistine shot to his feet and jerked her to his chest. “Is them…biscuits…of yours is as tasty as they look?”