“And the rest of Benny’s name?”
“Benjamin Hannibal Goddard, his middle name chosen for the famed Carthaginian of old. Why?”
Miss Pearson swung the kettle over the coals on the raised hearth that took up half of the kitchen’s outside wall. She’d made a pretty picture in the garden, and she made a different sort of pretty picture in the kitchen.
Rye should have tarried longer in France, where a call upon a certain good-humored and friendly widow in Reims could have figured on his itinerary.
“You had no idea, then?” Miss Pearson asked as she withdrew a loaf from the breadbox and took a knife from a drawer.
“No idea of what?”
She wielded the knife with a mesmerizing sort of competence, the slices perfectly even. “Not Benjamin Hannibal, Colonel. The child’s name is Benevolence Hannah.”
Orion was hungry enough to risk snitching a slice of bread. He tore a crust off and stuck it in his mouth. Reasonably fresh, probably made that morning.
“Strange names for a lad.”
Miss Pearson paused in her artistry and slanted him a look.
The bread abruptly got stuck in Orion’s throat.
Benny’s indisposition that had visited last month and was back again a few weeks later. The use of grime as camouflage for cheeks that would never grow a beard. The reticence around the other boys, the knit cap worn in all weather.
“Rubbishing hell.”
Cavalrymen had a reputation for rash behavior, though after offering his brief profanity, Colonel Goddard merely stared at the kettle steaming over the coals.
“Benevolence Hannah? And his—her—ailment is of the female sort?”
“You are not to blame Benny for her subterfuge, Colonel.”
A muscle flexed along his jaw, and a good square jaw it was, too, shadowed with a day’s growth of dark beard. Like the typical cavalryman, Colonel Goddard was big and lean—he wanted for some decent meals, in Ann’s professional opinion—though he moved quietly despite his size. He had something in common with Monsieur Delacourt, too, in that both claimed the slightly Romanesque features of the handsome Gaul.
Monsieur, though, had learned to use a winsome smile on occasion. Ann could not recall seeing Colonel Goddard smile, ever.
“The blame is mine,” the colonel replied, stalking away from the hearth. “I am the commanding officer in this household, and Benny is my responsibility.”
“You cannot command her to be other than she is.”
“Why not? The army does that all the time. Commands a weaver’s fifth son to become a sharpshooter, turns a seamstress’s pride and joy into a sapper.”
What had the colonel been, before the army had turned him into a saturnine officer sporting a piratical eye patch and a slightly uneven gait?
“Benny is female, sir, and she cannot change that. She said you don’t take in girls, but once you take a lad on, you never throw him back. You cannot abandon her now.”
The colonel rummaged in the window box and produced a tub of butter. “Can you tolerate crusts on your bread?”
“Of course, besides, you cut the crusts off last thing so the bread is less likely to fall apart as you spread the butter and mustard and so forth.”
“If there’s mustard to be had, I would not know where to find it.”
Ann went to the pantry, found the mustard by scent, and set it at the colonel’s elbow. “You truly had no idea Benny was female?”
“None. I’m hoping the lads knew and helped her perpetrate her subterfuge. Her. Benny is a her. Of all the perishing… What else have I missed, and am I the only one she hoodwinked?”
“How old is Benny?”
“I have no idea. She’s been here for about two years.”
“Then she was at a dangerous age to be on the streets. This is mustard à la dijonnaise.”
“There is no safe age to be on the streets, Miss Pearson. You can detect the wine?”
That he knew how Dijon mustard was made surprised her. “The verjus, which gives it that pungent, slightly grape-y nose. The wine reinforces the same impression on the tongue.”
He began applying mustard to bread in even, careful swipes of his butter knife. “I did not know mustard had a nose.”
“Everything has a nose to some of us.” Ann took up the cheese knife and wrestled a half wheel of cheddar from the window box. “What will you do about the girl?”
The colonel helped himself to the first slice of cheese Ann cut. “Nothing, for now. I will consider options, discuss them with the affected parties, and present Benny with some choices. I know little of females beyond the obvious, but I do know ordering them about generally produces poor results.”
The cheese was a pale cheddar, an unreliable sort of cheese in Ann’s opinion. The flavor changed with location, age, packaging, and storage conditions. This wheel was in the palatable phase between little flavor at all and the nearly acrid qualities of a cheese aged too long.
Rather like the colonel—mature, a bit sharp, not yet bitter? “What do you consider obvious about females, Colonel?”
He paused with the butter knife in one hand and cocked his head to the side, raising one brow. He did not smile, but by the light of the hearth, Ann saw merriment in his gaze.
“Probably the same qualities you consider obvious about the male?” he replied, collecting slices of cheese.
“The male? You mean the gender that assumes a tiny set of peculiar appendages renders them the lords of creation, superior in intellect, wit, strength, and all worthy measures?”
“You disagree?”
“Superior in stupidity and arrogance, perhaps. What are you doing?”
“In my stupid, arrogant way, I’m trying to make sandwiches and stave off starvation. The cheese goes between the slices of bread, as best I recall.”
Was he teasing her? About food? “If we are to enjoy the bread, butter, and cheese, then the sandwiches are better served toasted, and that means the spices must be dusted over the cheese before we melt—” She reached over to remove the top bread slices from the sandwiches he’d proposed to ruin. The colonel did not budge, which meant she nudged up against his arm.
“You barely come to my shoulder,” he muttered, “and yet, you scold me.”
“I scold you in the kitchen because I am a professional cook. You might scold me in the stable because your expertise lies there. You will talk to Benny before you do anything?”
The colonel jammed the cork lid onto the crock of mustard and tamped it down with one large fist.
“The difficulty,” he said, “isn’t Benny. The difficulty is what to tell the other lads. If they don’t know Benny is female, then they have exhibited all manner of vulgar and unseemly behaviors around her. The lads will be mortified, and Benny will lose her friends, while I will be branded a traitor because I knew and didn’t warn the boys. Morale will suffer. Regimental politics are more complicated than waging war.”
Something wistful in his tone caught Ann’s ear. “Do you miss the military?”
“Not in the least. You mentioned spices?”
“Tarragon, thyme, a dash of dried onion if you have it.”
He waved a hand toward the pantry. “Explore to your heart’s content, but mind you, I am truly hungry, and all of your subtle art will be lost on me.”