A Girl Called Samson (71)

There was nothing I could do about that now.

I reached for my breeches, but he grasped my arm and turned me around. “Why are you here?”

I shrugged away again, desperate to hide. To run. To wake up from this nightmare. I gathered my hair, trying to corral it into a tail, to pull myself together, but I had nothing to tie it with. I was unbound and unbuttoned. Undone. And he knew everything.

“I cannot believe this. I cannot believe this.” He rubbed at his face like he thought himself dreaming too. “You have to go. Immediately. Tonight. Dear God, I’m beginning to think I have no instinct for character at all.”

I sank to my knees, the reality of my situation too heavy to shoulder. “Please, General. Please. Don’t send me away.”

I had no pride, no thought in my head but survival, and I bowed before him, desperate.

“Cover yourself, Miss Samson!”

My shirt, the ties loose and my position lowered, created a gaping display of the bosom I had managed to hide from him and from everyone else. I gasped and clutched at my breasts, but it was too late.

Our combined horror pulsed in the air, and for a moment, neither of us spoke or moved. I stayed on my knees, arms folded over my chest, and he remained pressed against the door that connected our chambers.

“Please get up,” he begged.

I rose, my legs shaking so badly I thought I might crumple again.

“Send me back to the ranks with my regiment,” I pleaded. “I’ll go now. I’ll leave immediately.”

“I can’t. I can’t do that.”

“Why? I am a good soldier. I have never complained or failed to do my duty.”

“You are a woman!” he shouted.

I flew at him and pressed my hands over his mouth, horrified, trying to quiet him. Someone would hear. Someone would hear, and it would truly be over.

He grabbed my wrists, betrayal in every line of his face.

“It is not for the man who has everything and wants more that we fight, but for the man who has nothing,” I cried, quoting him with all the fervor in my heart. It was like begging for my life.

“What?”

“In no place on earth can a man or woman who is born into certain circumstances ever hope to truly escape them. Our lots are cast from the moment we inhabit our mothers’ wombs, from the moment we draw breath. But perhaps that can change here, in this land.”

He shook his head, not comprehending, but wonder had begun to replace his rage.

“Those are your words, General Paterson. Did you not mean them?” I challenged.

“My words?”

“Yes. Your words. You wrote them in a letter that I received on my eighteenth birthday. I thought they were a sign from God.”

“You memorized them?”

“Yes. I did. I wore out your letter reading them. They inspired me. Were they just words?”

He shook his head again, baffled. “I wrote them a lifetime ago. It’s been years. I hardly remember now.”

I repeated the lines, enunciating every syllable.

“Miss Samson . . .”

“I did not want my lot. So I enlisted,” I said, interrupting him. I could not bear to be Miss Samson again. Not here. I’d worked too hard and borne too much.

He searched my eyes, and when I bowed my head to collect myself, he barked out, “Look at me!”

My hair was loose about my face, and he released my wrists and brushed it back with rough palms, tipping my chin up so he could study me. He stared down at me like he was truly seeing me for the first time.

“God help me. What a bloody fool. What a bloody little fool,” he breathed. “Deborah Samson. Dear God.”

And then he did the most unexpected thing of all.

He drew me to his chest and embraced me.

I gasped and my knees buckled, but he held me up.

I had never been embraced. Not once in my memory had I been cradled in another’s arms, but John Paterson clutched me to his heart like the prodigal son come home.

I did not return his embrace. I couldn’t. My arms were folded over my bosom, keeping my heart in my chest, protecting the secret he already knew.

“Please don’t send me away,” I choked. “I will go back to the ranks. I’ll play the fife or beat the drum. But don’t make me go.”

“Can you play the fife, Miss Samson?” he asked, and his voice shook, the same as mine.

“No. But give me a day or two to learn, sir. I’m certain I can master it.”

I was sincere, desperately so, but his chest rumbled beneath my cheek. I’d made him laugh with my bravado.

But I could not laugh. I could not even breathe.

“I have been shot at,” I hissed. “I have been wounded, and I have killed. But I have served valiantly—is not valiance the most important trait of all?—and I have served well. I have earned my right to be here. Please don’t deny me that. Please don’t take that away from me. When this war is over, God willing I survive, then I will have to find my place in the world. But right now, my place is here. At your side. Grippy said I was one of you now. Please let me finish what I have begun. Please let me see it through.”

My throat ached with the need to weep, but I stood within the circle of his arms and awaited his verdict. He held me a moment longer, his embrace tight and his cheek resting against my hair. Then he set me away from him and left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.