Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

TITLE: Paracelsus
AUTHOR: prufrock's love
GENRE: AU, Pre-X-files
RATING: Strong R
ARCHIVE: Gossamer & AO3 only
DISCLIAMER: FOX Network owns The X-Files. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made from the use of these characters.
SUMMARY: Georgia low country, summer, 1865. A lost soldier, a bend in the road, a passing stranger, and a chance at a life never meant to be.

*~*~*~*

Paracelsus: Prologue

*~*~*~*

The year before Fox Mulder’s birth, Mr. Robert Browning wrote of the great Paracelsus's love of a woman, saying Paracelsus and his lover were two halves of one dissevered world. When the hour is late and Mulder is alone beside the campfire, he thinks of the single line from the poem. He turns it over in his mind as he watches the stars and waits for sleep to come. Man and woman: two parts of a divided world, two halves of one severed soul, allowed to touch briefly in a lifetime.

Often, in Mulder’s dreams, they have a family of their own. Three or four dark-haired, high-spirited boys and a few pretty little girls run around. Or, sometimes, she carries their first child and rests one hand on her belly as she walks with him. They have a home in Boston or Georgetown near his parents, so they can visit. Mulder isn't fifteen anymore, but neither is she. She's grown from a beautiful girl into a stunning woman: intelligent, elegant, and in love with him.

In this dream, she's in her early twenties and wears a blue riding habit showing off her figure. She rides sidesaddle as Mulder leads the horse through the quiet woods. It's a warm afternoon, and wild rosebushes line the path. Mulder wears a dress uniform with the buttons and boots polished to a high shine. The insignia indicates he's a decorated officer in the US Army.

His father is proud of him.

"There's something on your mind, Fox," she says, her words slowed and gently polished by her southern accent. "About secession? Is it coming?"

"Yes," he answers. "I think it's unavoidable. Next month, Mr. Lincoln will be elected. South Carolina will secede, and the rest of the south will follow."

"There will be a war."

He nods. "Many officers talk of resigning their commission and returning home to fight for the south," he tells her as he leads the mare. "Robert E. Lee will go. So will other generals."

"What will you do?" she asks softly.

Mulder looks up at her. The sunlight outlines her head, making her black hair shimmer. Her eyes are rimmed with thick, dark lashes, and they shine as she watches him.

"I don't know," he answers honestly. "The north will need experienced officers, but..."

"But you do not want to fight. Not for the north, but not for the south, either."

"No," he admits. "There is no winning a war like this one. These proud, hotheaded fools do not realize it. A civil war ends in death and ruin. They are about to destroy a country they claim to love."

"You will fight, though."

He nods. She knows him well.

The date is September 1860, and a war brews a like dark storm on the horizon. Mulder will fight in the war and, November 1863, he will die in the war, cut down on a battlefield in Tennessee, near her home. She will hold him as he bleeds to death. She will cry.

But in his dream, they've reached a turnoff from the path. Mulder ties the reins to a tree branch. She slips her boot out of the stirrup, and he helps her slide to the ground. He kisses her. She takes his hand and follows him through the trees, to an abandoned stone church with the roof open to the sky. They have been here before; it is one of their secrets. Today, he unfolds a blanket over the grass in the church foyer in preparation for a picnic for which they've packed no food.

Their parents trust them. They've been friends since childhood, and everyone knows they will marry. Senator Mulder's only son and Congressman Kavanaugh's older daughter; Mulder’s mother will throw the society wedding of the year.

Neither of them particularly cares for society.

She takes off her jacket. Mulder takes off his. He slides his suspenders off his shoulders and loosens his collar. They kneel on the blanket, facing each other. He strokes her hair and she caresses his face. He puts his hand on her waist, pulling her body against his as they kiss. She does not object. Or stiffen, or pull away.

They've never made love. They kiss and touch, though, discovering together what feels nice. When he is away - at West Point and at his military post - Mulder remembers. He's memorized how her hair and skin smells, and how her breathing changes as he touches her. Alone at night, he thinks about her and touches himself. He's yet to go blind.

"I worry so much about you. With a war..." she confesses, her lips brushing against his. "I know you have to go, but I don't want you to. I'm so afraid you won't come back."

"I will," he promises her. "On way or another, I will. I'll find you. I'll wait for you."

He unbuttons the front of her cotton blouse and corset cover. Her breasts are pushed high by her stays, rounded into two globes. He kisses the valley between them, and she shivers. She does not object. Every minister and mother in town preached fear and frigidity to young women, but she likes it when he touches her; that is their other secret.

"When, when you're away," she asks in a hesitant whisper, "are there other girls?"

"No. Never." He raises her breast from the corset. He covers the nipple with his mouth, sucking. She gasps at the new sensation. Her fingers tighten in his hair. "There's never been anyone but you." He kisses across her shoulders.

He's telling the truth, and she believes him.

"If the war comes, Daddy won't let us be married next fall," she says. "Not if you fight for the north. Not until the war is over."

"I'll fight for the south."

"Fight against your father?" she asks. "For a cause you don't believe in? No."

He raises his head, looking at her pretty face. Their country chooses sides, and, as a soldier, he must throw in his lot with one or the other. War has no neutral ground. Either way, he will lose.

"Marry me now," he says impulsively. "Tonight. We'll run away. We'll elope."

"We can't," she answers, the voice of reason. "Your mother would die. Where would we live?"

"I don't care. We've waited so long. I can't wait any longer."

She studies him for a long moment, and looks away. They can't disappoint their families by eloping, and her father won't let them be married with Mulder out west, fighting the Indians. Once the war comes, their fathers will be enemies. Mulder will be lucky to get to see her, let alone marry her.

"Don't wait." Her hand slides across the front of his trousers. This fascinates her: how his body becomes hard for hers.

"We can't. We shouldn't- Oh God."

"Like this?" She rubs the hard bulge growing beneath the wool fabric.

He nods wordlessly.

She unbuttons his trousers, and the drawers underneath, and eases them down over his erection. She pauses. The last time she saw him nude, they were children. He doesn't look like the paintings of male cherubs she's seen.

She runs her fingertips delicately over the shaft. "Show me," she asks. He puts his hand over hers, teaching her how to touch a man. He lets his head fall back, gritting his teeth. The pressure of pleasure builds inside him.

"Are you sure?" he asks.

“Yes,” she whispers.

He moans, and his breaths come faster. “What if you have a baby?”

“What if I do?” she responds with a defiant streak he loves.

Silently, she lies back on the blanket, waiting for him. He pushes up her skirt, petticoat, and chemise, and eases his hands over her pantalets, to the opening at the crotch. The hair is soft, and her hips shift as he touches her. She isn’t a child anymore, either.

He's never touched her there before. He's never touched any woman.

She closes her eyes.

He slips one finger inside her, making sure he understands the female anatomy. She feels warm and slick, like the inside of his cheek. He pushes two fingers inside her. She whimpers.

"I love you," he says hoarsely as he covers her. He presses the head of his cock between her legs. "I don't want to hurt you."

He moves forward and feels his body slide into hers. She gasps and he stops, uncertain and frightened he’s done something wrong. She murmurs it is all right. He pushes again and shudders in pleasure. She opens her legs farther. Mulder feels her arms around his neck and her face pressing against his shoulder. Her breath is hot against and her hair smells like lilacs.

He rocks instinctively, each stroke taking him deeper. The sensation is so tight, so hot. He hears her panting in his ear. He thrusts again. She stiffens and cries out, and he's inside her. Not all the way, but enough. The feeling is so powerful he's afraid to move. He is still, trembling, as she is.

She looks up at him with her eyes full of wonder.

Slowly, he pulls back and thrusts again, watching the mixture of pain and pleasure on her face as her body is filled with his.

"I love you. I'll always love you," he promises her. "Only you."

She draws him down on top of her. He moves again, trying to be gentle, but the urge to thrust is strong. He hears her gasping and crying out, but he cries out as well. He thrusts harder. Tension builds inside his body like a wonderful pressure - a dangerous, seductive precipice. His orgasm comes, sending electricity convulsing through his body. There is a beautiful, blissful release so wonderful it nears pain, and waves of perfect calm. This is love, he thinks. The physical embrace. How a man was meant to love a woman.

He lies on top of her, spent, with beads of sweat dripping from his forehead. "Are you all right?" he asks as he catches his breath.

She kisses his neck tenderly and runs her fingers through his hair. He wants her to be pregnant. He wants to marry her, to have children with her, to spend his life with her. In that moment, all those things seem possible.

"It did hurt," he realizes, as reason returns to him. He withdraws with a final shudder, and presses up on his elbows. "Didn't it?"

Her face is flushed, and her hair is tousled. She's so beautiful. So alive. “It's supposed to, Fox. It's supposed to be like this."

"I know," Mulder agrees hesitantly, and kisses her.

This is how it is supposed to be.

In the abandoned church no one else knows about, for a stolen afternoon he lies beside her on the blanket beneath the infinite blue sky, holding her close as sleep comes. He opens his eyes, and the dream is over. Mulder is alone. It is night, and she is gone.

She always is.

*~*~*~*

End: Paracelsus, Prologue

*~*~*~*

Begin: Paracelsus I

*~*~*~*

My Dearest Wife,

I remain adrift in a world not my own. I am dead-reckoning, and I have lost track of even where I began. I am a wanderer, which sounds better than saying I am lost.

In each city, instead of searching randomly, I think where I would be if I was a teenage boy. At home, doing as my father told me, I answer, and so I try to think where I would be if I was Samuel.

I have taken to staking out the bakeries as they put out the apple turnovers, hoping the smell will lure him in. I buy one to take with me in case he is hungry when I find him. General Sherman destroyed most of the railroads in Georgia and the Carolinas, but I go to the train depot next, regardless. It seems like the proper place to wait and look expectant. I find a music hall and ask after him: might they have a handsome, mild-mannered, dark-haired, dark-eyed musical prodigy in their midst? I watch the children leaving the schoolyard in case he has had a change of heart and willingly opened a schoolbook. I check the hospitals, the orphanages, and cemeteries.

I wonder if I should even write to you I have looked for our Sam among the dead. I wonder if I should tell you I have begun to feel like Don Quixote tilting at his windmill. I am a remnant, and I need some truth I can tuck away inside my heart, some answer as I look up at the heavens and cry, 'Why?' Why am I here? Why didn't Death take me as it took so many others? I need not to feel so infinitely empty and alone. Afraid. I need so badly to believe there are happy endings in this ruined world. I am not sure if it makes me an optimist or a fool.

I suppose I need peace, Melly, and I will come home when I find it. Until then, I will keep searching.

With all my love,
Mulder

*~*~*~*

The humid air bordered on solid rather than vapor. Mulder’s shirt, fresh the previous morning, clung to his skin. Sweat stung his eyes. He felt the August sun glaring down at him through the trees, scorching the top of his head beneath his wool cap. Like yesterday and the day before and the dozens of days before which blurred together, the long afternoon refused to end. The sun's high path across the sky dragged on infinitely, defying the constraints of time and logic. The world stopped having rhyme or reason, end or beginning. He felt cut loose - adrift - disconnected from where he began, yet without any end in sight. Too tired to keep searching, yet unable to recall how to do anything else.

Mulder had spent two summers at the mercy of the sweltering Georgia sun. He first came with General Sherman during the Atlanta campaign. Now he roamed the low country, the local name for the expanse of low-lying swamps and dense forests beginning east of Savannah and spreading north, through the inlets and islands to the South Carolina coast. Throughout the fallen Confederacy, the rebellious cities remained under tight military control, but in the country the hungry, destitute people were lawless. It had been the same in the rolling farmland around Atlanta, in the mountains inland, in Charleston, and now along the coast. The old men, widows, and children narrowed their eyes as he approached their porches in his well-made blue uniform, atop a well-fed horse bearing a government brand. The southerners shrugged and spat in answer to his polite questions, pretending ignorance no matter how innocuous the query or honorable his mission. Once Mulder rode on, though, behind his back, they hissed, “Go home, you damned Yankee.”

Mulder yearned to go back, dismount, and grab them by their tattered shirtfronts and explain through clenched teeth all he ever wanted to do was go the hell home.

He never did, though. He kept riding.

Mulder sighed and gave Shadow a nudge with his heels so the big horse ambled aimlessly faster. Since Mulder hadn't passed another soul in hours, he unfastened the top button on his jacket, but got no relief. Having saturated his shirt, sweat converged between his shoulder blades and flowed down to the small of his back, soaking through his blue uniform and making him itch miserably.

The road wound on for miles, twisting and looping back on itself through the swamp and seemingly going nowhere. Spanish moss and determined vines gripped the trees with their gnarled fingers, slowly sapping their strength. Dragonflies buzzed past his head and birds called to each other - herons, gulls, hawks - warning of his approach, and warily watched him pass from their perches in the treetops. He was the outsider, dangerously suspect and out of place.

Fox Mulder was a tall man, as lean and long-limbed as thoroughbred racehorse. His tanned face was an eccentrically handsome blend of angles, with hazel eyes and full, almost feminine lips he'd been teased about as a boy. Beneath his cap, his hair was dark brown and curled in the humidity. He'd shaved off his beard during the Atlanta campaign, and let his goatee grow back, but shaved it off in summer. Two days ago, he was clean-shaven, but now stubble sprouted from his cheeks and itched along with everything else.

He rode well, comfortable in the saddle and in his uniform; he'd been a cavalry officer so long riding came as naturally as walking. An educated, well-read man, he spoke well and in several languages, but preferred to commit his thoughts to paper. By trade, he ran a newspaper in Washington DC, though his income came from his family's money; by class he was a gentleman, if that still mattered in the tattered, battle-weary world.

As the shadows lengthened across the path, Mulder rounded another turn in the road to find three soldiers standing too close to a lone woman. The government had troops stationed in Savannah and Charleston and at forts along the coast, but these scraggly fellows had no cause to be in the middle of nowhere. Bothering a woman who didn't seem to want to be bothered. A troublesome minority of the Union army thought they’d fought a war so they could rape, pillage, and swindle as they pleased afterward. They did not content themselves with putting down the rebellious south and restoring order; they felt entitled to pick the bones clean afterward.

Mulder encountered too many villains and no heroes these days.

"Leave her alone," he barked. "Let her be, soldier."

"We're paying our respects," the tallest man called. He didn’t look at Mulder approaching behind him. "Mind your damn own business."

One soldier stepped aside, and Mulder saw the pronounced roundness of the young woman's stomach. She was, as Mulder’s mother would say, far gone in the family way. The tall soldier held the woman’s wrist as she tried to pull away.

"The next time you're off duty, corporal, find a working woman in town and pay your respects to her," Mulder said authoritatively. "Get back to your post or I'll shoot you were you stand."

The soldiers turned angrily, but startled as his officer's uniform and insignia.

"Yes, sir, colonel," the ringleader said. The tall soldier nodded to the others. They remounted their horses and, after hollowly polite 'good days' to the woman, disappeared into the cypress trees. Mulder doubted they had any intention of rejoining their troop, but that wasn't his problem anymore.

The woman exhaled as the sound of their horses’ hooves faded away. Brown paper packages lay at her feet.

"Are you all right, Ma'am?" Mulder asked. He eyed her swollen stomach as he swung down from the saddle. "Where is your husband?"

No lady should be without a male escort in these times. Regardless, she looked too far gone to walk anywhere in the sun and humidity and relentless heat. In the city, no lady would appear in public obviously with child; out in the swamps there were few people left to care.

"Yes, I am fine, thank you," she answered quickly. She tucked stray strands of curly auburn hair underneath her broad sunhat. Mulder’s ear detected a soft Irish accent, not fresh to American soil but gently lilting. She glanced up, squinting at him in the sun. He got a glimpse of fine features on a small, pretty, heart-shaped face, with lips drawn into a determined line.

For a few seconds, he stared at her. The back of his neck prickled as if someone stepped on his grave or he saw a ghost.

"Ma'am..." Mulder’s stomach flip-flopped inexplicably.

He exhaled and swallowed, wondering what was wrong with him. The heat, probably.

"Ma'am, may I help you with those?" he asked, remembering his manners. He gestured to the parcels as she bent to pick them up. She missed them by several inches as she tried to reach over her belly. "I will help you with those," he decided.

"I am fine," she repeated for his edification, as though he might not have heard her the first time.

"I did not say you were not," he responded. He stooped down and gathered up the bags. Both packages felt heavy, and one smelled like coffee beans. Coffee was liquid gold these days; she must have been hoarding it. She reached for the sacks, but he moved back. She did not need anything else to carry besides her baby.

"Thank you for your help, sir," she said pointedly, and offered her arms again.

"I'm not the enemy, Ma'am; the war is over. I'm not interested in your packages, but if you want, I can carry them for you. Or put them on my horse. You shouldn't be out without an escort, wherever it is you are going.” He paused. “Where are you going?"

"Town." She watched warily as he began to secure the bags on his saddle.

"Which direction would town be?" All the burnt plantations in the low country had begun to look alike.

"Five miles north."

"You plan to walk five miles carrying these?"

She folded her arms above her belly as if annoyed he would question her. The part of Mulder accustomed to obedient women toyed with leaving her and her parcels beside the road. The bored, lonely part dismissed the idea.

"I would send a servant, but my husband's servants went with the soldiers," she explained. Her rhythmic Irish accent rounded her consonants and lilted the vowels. "I would drive a buggy, but his horses went with the servants. I would ask my husband to go, but he has not come home from the war. I would wait, but time is not going to wait on me much longer," she explained as he finished attaching her packages to his saddle. "I do appreciate your help, sir; I do not mean to be rude or ungrateful, Colonel. Those men... I am tired and unnerved."

“Both are understandable. Those men will not be the last of their kind you encounter, though. Unless you have a pistol, you will not reach town with your coffee beans.”

He felt her eyes watching him steadily. “Colonel, we had soldiers in Ireland. If those men wanted my coffee beans, they could have picked them up and taken them.”

Instead of agreeing, Mulder said, “I saw a river crossing a few miles back. If that is your destination, would you allow me to accompany you?"

"I could not impose."

"But if happen to be in possession of a pistol, a rifle, an officer’s uniform and a horse – and I was going in that direction..."

"But you are not," she reminded him knowingly.

In answer, he took the horse's reins and led Shadow in a tight half-circle so he faced north. Mulder gave her a half-grin, and she smiled back in tired amusement.

"Yes, Colonel. I would be grateful for the escort," she decided.

At her smile, the prickling at the back of his neck drained down his spine and created a curious warmness in his belly. Mulder blinked and wiped one hand across his brow, clearing away the sweat and the odd sensation.

"I-I would put you on Shadow," he said, stumbling over his words, "but he can be skittish. I would hate to risk you falling."

"It is all right. I am fine. I can walk."

"All right." He began to lead his horse by the reins, walking slowly to accommodate her pace. She was small; he could have rested his chin on top of her head. He did not, of course. "My name is Mulder, by the way. Since we will be traveling companions for a bit."

"Oh, I am sorry, Colonel Mulder; I am Mrs. Waterston." She offered her hand awkwardly. He glanced at his own, noticing it lacked a glove and was none too clean as he shook hers. "Mrs. Dana Waterston. My husband is Dr. Waterston."

"It's Mr. Mulder. I stopped being Colonel Mulder months ago; the horse and the blue uniform are convenient federal remnants I have not taken the time to address. Anyway, I am pleased to meet you, Ma'am. I am sorry those soldiers harassed you. They are supposed to keep order, not stir up trouble."

She nodded, and he started walking again, thinking their salutations were finished. Instead of following, she stopped. She put a hand on her belly. A curious expression crossed her face. "I need a second please, Mr. Mulder."

Her second stretched to a tense eon as he waited. Mulder tried to figure out a delicate way to say it. Delicacy and diplomacy came as naturally as setting himself afire, so he said bluntly, "Ma'am, you need to go home and rest. It is too hot for you to be going anywhere in your condition."

"I need things for the baby," she insisted. She drew a deep breath and stood up straighter. "The servants took everything from the house.”

“Your condition-”

“My condition slows my progress but at least gives ill-mannered soldiers pause.” She looked up at Mulder again. “How do you think I would fare with those same men in a month, when I will carry this baby in my arms?”

Her assessment of her predicament, though correct, gave Mulder pause. He’d never heard any female allude to rape, let alone regard her pregnancy as a strategic defense. After some thought, he offered, "Let me take you home, and I'll go to town and trade for whatever you want. I am going anyway, and I can ride there and back by nightfall."

"Or you could take my coffee beans and sugar and disappear," she countered. She pressed her hands against the small of her back as if it ached.

"Yes, I could. But I won't."

"How can I be sure?"

He slipped his wedding ring off his finger and offered it to her. "Here. I do not want your coffee or sugar, Ma'am, but you can be sure I will come back for that."

Clearly, the heat affected his judgment. Otherwise, he didn't know what possessed him. He had a wallet full of greenbacks if he wanted to offer her collateral on his return. His wedding band hadn't left his finger in fifteen years; his hand felt strangely light and bare without it. Mulder wanted to retract the offer, but he didn't.

"Some men would be happy to be free of such..." She paused as if searching for a word. "Tethers."

"Many men would." The ring glinted in the afternoon sun as he continued to hold it out between his thumb and forefinger. "I am not one of those men," he said. "You have my life; all I have is your coffee beans."

She looked up, scanning his face for something. Seeming to find it, she glanced away and held out her palm for the heavy gold band.

*~*~*~*

Mulder didn’t know the propriety of entering a deserted mansion. No maid or butler would greet him, but barging in seemed rude. He pushed the front door open, knocked loudly and called for Mrs. Waterson. His voice echoed in the empty foyer. He ventured deeper inside, through a battered shell once a beautiful plantation house. Discolored squares of wallpaper marked where paintings hung, and the mahogany floor and furniture looked naked, stripped of every object of value.

The Negro servants hadn't known what to take as they fled. Candelabras and silver spoons couldn't be traded for food if no food remained to trade for. With all the able-bodied men at war for four years running and the ports closed to cargo ships until last month, much of the south silently starved. Vast fields of rice, cotton, and tobacco went to seed. Mills stood idle. Smiths' and coopers' and carriage-makers' and butchers' shops remained closed. No fishermen cast nets, no hunters brought in meat and pelts. Included in the silence were the graves of a quarter-million men who died trying to defend their way of life.

"Here," Mrs. Waterson called from the back of the house. Her voice sounded small and lost in the darkness of the kitchen. "I am here, sir."

"I did not intend to be gone so long. I am sorry if I worried you, Ma'am." Mulder set the packages on the kitchen table, fumbling in the flickering light from a single candle. "You said the nearest boat dock was five miles away, but the nearest place to trade for anything is Savannah. I thought I could be back yesterday."

"I was not worried, Mr. Mulder," she said quietly, from the shadows.

"You should be worried: living here, alone. I would not be happy if you were my wife," he scolded as he untied the bundles. "I have seen no one for miles." He picked up the candle and stepped closer to her voice. She slouched in a wooden chair near the cold fireplace with her arms cradling her belly. "What if something would-"

He saw her jaw widen as her teeth clenched. Her eyes closed and her head tilted back in pain.

"Is it time, do you think?"

She nodded, keeping her eyes closed.

"Is there a doctor or a midwife?" he asked, knowing the answer. "A neighbor? I will get them. Is there anyone, Ma'am?"

"No." She exhaled slowly. "I will be fine."

"All right. Is there anything I can do?"

"No. I am grateful for all you have done, Mr-" She panted. Beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. “Mr. Mulder.”

"I, uh, um," Mulder said. "I will wait, and, uh- Outside. I will wait outside." He was a skilled hallway pacer, excellent at imagining the horrors happening on the other side of the door. “On the porch. In case there is something you need.”

"Thank you, Mr. Mulder," she answered between shallow breaths, "but I cannot think of anything I need from the porch.”

He suspicioned she made fun of him, but he wasn't sure. He assured himself she had a dozen children and could manage this easily – despite looking barely out of her teens and scared out of her wits.

"All right, I will, uh-" He’d started backing out of the kitchen, afraid to look away, but she moaned like an animal in pain. "Oh, Jesus Christ!" He returned so he could hover helplessly. "I am taking you to bed," he decided, glad to be of some use. He helped her stand, grabbed the candle, and asked urgently, "Where is your bedroom?"

"You are dashing, but I am a married woman. You are a married man."

"I mean you should lie-" He realized she made an off-color joke. "Oh, you are funny, Ma'am. Very funny," he said sarcastically.

He helped her to an adjacent room once belonging to the cook. She sat down, and he stood nervously at the end of the bed. "I will be outside. Call if you need me."

He reached the door before another contraction came and she cried out.

Now he loomed over her again.

"There must be something I can do," he insisted. He dripped candle wax on the old quilt. "Anything?" He reached for her hand anxiously and knelt beside the rusty iron bed. “Ma’am?”

"I am all right," she assured him, closing her eyes.

"Do you want me to leave?"

She shook her head no and murmured unintelligibly in Gaelic. He waited a few seconds, and she asked, "Do you have children, Mr. Mulder?"

"I think, in this situation, just 'Mulder' would be fine. Yes, Melly and I have a son. Samuel. Sam."

"Tell me about Sam," she requested, "Just Mulder."

"He's handsome. Talented. Kind-hearted. What do you want me to tell you, Ma'am?"

"Tell me about anything outside this room. Tell me about your family, Mr. Mulder. How long since you have seen them?"

"I saw Sam last fall with General Sherman. I looked up and discovered he'd run off and joined the Army."

"And your wife?" she asked.

"The last time I saw her? More days and nights than I want to count." He held her damp hand. The candlelight flickered over her face. "I was home on leave at Christmas. Home is in Washington, near the Capitol," he added, searching for something to say. "It's the big house with the constantly broken window; my son and I play baseball in the yard, and he keeps hitting the ball through a front window by mistake. Baseball is not his talent, it seems, and he can break windows faster than I can replace it."

She scooted farther up in bed, bracing herself against the headboard. She rested her head against the pillow and took long, slow breaths.

"You are all right? Nothing is wrong?" Mulder asked. He kept his eyes focused on her face rather than anything happening below her waist. "Or do you know?"

"My mother is a midwife. My cat had kittens, once," she answered and managed a tired smile.

He marveled she found any comfort in his presence. Both their medical expertise combined barely constituted half a nurse, and it was not his body this child tried to come out of. The one birth Mulder had witnessed involved a colt, and made him queasy.

"What can I do to help?"

"You have a nice voice. Will you talk to me? Tell me of Sam and Melly?"

"Tell you of Sam and Melly?” he echoed. “It is the usual story. Melly and I grew up together. We were neighbors. We married as soon as her father allowed it, and Sam came soon after. He was Melly's sixteenth birthday gift. We talked about more children, but I was away at school, and Melissa was ill for a time. The war, of course. Melissa had a baby coming, though, the last time I saw her."

"Your wife is going to have a baby?"

Mulder nodded as he set the candle aside. He cleared his throat. He put his arm around her shoulders to help her sit up farther. "I plan to be pacing my usual route in the upstairs hallway while the doctor delivers my daughter," he promised, and wondered what possessed him to say that.

*~*~*~*

"Can you hear me, Ma'am?" Mulder asked tensely. He watched her face for any response. "Ma'am, it is Mulder. Mrs. Waterston? Dana? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me."

Dana Waterston’s fingers pressed against his. He squeezed back and massaged her palm with his thumb.

"Thank God," he said, and exhaled. She opened her eyes. "I was worried. You were bleeding..." He lacked the courage and tact to finish the sentence.

"Baby?" she asked. She looked from side to side in the tiny, shadowy room. The candle died hours ago, leaving Mulder to deliver, bathe, and swaddle the newborn by moonlight - which might have been a blessing.

"She is fine," Mulder told her. "Be still. You have a little girl. Are you all right?"

She nodded, looking pale and woozy and uncertain what had happened. Frankly, he was uncertain what happened except for pushing and screaming - some from him - and, underneath lots of blood and tears, a new human being. God overlooked the war-ravaged nation, the endless fields of weeds and dead soldiers, and Mulder's ineptness, and slipped a bit of humanity between the cracks in civilization.

Mulder decided it best to let go of Mrs. Waterston’s hand.

"That has to be the most amazing, horrible thing I have ever seen. Birth, I mean, not your daughter. She is beautiful."

"Is she?" She turned her head tiredly to see. Mulder shifted the tiny bundle of towels in the crook of his arm to show her the child's face. The baby was cleaner and less red than earlier. Mulder had not realized they arrived so mottled and ugly, nor amid so much mess.

He laid the bundle beside her. "As far as I can tell, she is perfect, Ma'am."

"She is." She pushed away the towel to stroke the infant's tiny hand. "Hello, little girl," she told the baby, who pursed her lips in response.

As Mulder watched Mrs. Waterston meet her newborn daughter, a strange sensation came over him. It trickled down his backbone as it had on the road, when he encountered her. He felt the urge to push her hair back from her face and kiss her forehead, as if she was his wife rather than a stranger and the child theirs instead of hers. It seemed second nature to sit carefully on the bed beside her and lean close, with butterflies swarming in his stomach as he admired the baby with her. The baby would nurse and sleep; he would lie beside Dana, keeping watch as she rested. Those impulses were faded memories, something that happened eons ago and been long forgotten.

Mulder did none of those things, of course.

Instead, he said, "So many miracles in one small form. It is amazing what love and God can create." He studied the baby’s tiny face as the first flickers of dawn appeared on the horizon. "Welcome to the world, little one. Such as it is."

*~*~*~*

Mulder knew he wasn't a man who set women's hearts fluttering with his flowery complements, but he wasn't a gangly, tongue-tied adolescent, either. Mulder managed to string a sentence together - sometimes eloquently - to get his point across. He knew the difference between the male and the female of the species, and where babies came from, so he was surprised at his sudden bashfulness around Mrs. Waterston.

Once the crisis of birth passed, Mulder felt an immediate need to be anyplace else. He struggled to face her the next morning, like a groom who spent his first night with the bride. What seemed acceptable in the darkness now made his face feel hot and necessitated him sitting in a chair across the room and staring intently at a spot on the wall above the headboard. He feared leaving her alone, so he adopted a distant, overly-solicitous air, pretending he had no idea how her baby came into the world.

Since Mulder was the cook, he and Mrs. Waterston subsisted on whatever combination of flour, lard, water, soda, and salt he created. He could make tasty biscuits, except for the burnt part on the bottom. She ate without complaint and listened as he rambled on, eager to fill up the silence. She fell asleep in the middle of his story, but he didn't take it personally. She had called him dashing, with a nice voice, the first compliments he'd received from a woman in a long time. Granted, it was a married woman in labor, but still... Giving a man a license to talk about himself was like milking a bull: do it once and make a friend for life.

"How did your son get in the Union Army at thirteen?" She’d finished the not-black part of her breakfast and brushed the crumbs off the bed sheets. Mulder had moved her and the baby to a more comfortable room, and left long enough to clean up the mess downstairs and fix something to eat.

"By the end of the war, they took soldiers wherever they could get them. Sam was tall. He was a good shot. He slipped away from his grandparents and lied about his age. And his name, since I could not find a Samuel William Mulder-" He couldn't bring himself to say it. "I didn't know whether to burst with pride or put him over my knee when I saw him with General Sherman."

"He must have scared you and your wife to death."

"I wish I could have spared him the reality of war,” Mulder said, tilting his wooden chair back. "He's such a gentle spirit. He'll hunt and play ball to humor me, but he has an artist’s soul. Like his mother. If it has strings, he can play it. If it will stand still, he can draw it."

"You miss your Sam and Melly," she said, making a statement rather than asking a question. "It is good to see a man who adores his family."

"They are my life," he said easily. "My talented Samuel and my beautiful Melissa. They see a beauty in the world I cannot, and it is an empty place without them."

"Go home, Mr. Mulder. I am grateful to you, but your wife needs you. Emily and I will be fine, and you have better things to do than play nursemaid to me."

He had kept his face arranged in a friendly, polite expression, but turned to look out the window. "My wife is not going to have a baby," Mulder said. "Wishful thinking, I suppose." He sat the chair down on all four legs with a sharp thump, and stood quickly. "I am sorry I lied to you. I'll come back and check on you in a bit."

"Mr. Mulder-" she began, but he shook his head.

He tromped down the grand staircase, across the foyer, and out to the broad porch. Sitting heavily on the front steps, Mulder looked out at the vast swamps, so dense they remained dark at mid-morning, so hostile they could swallow a teenage boy as thoughtlessly and completely as a frog swallows a fly. Mulder slouched forward. He rested his elbows on his knees and let his head hang wearily, for the first time beginning to admit defeat.

*~*~*~*

"Is everything all right, Ma'am?"

Mulder reached the kitchen still pulling his suspenders over his shoulders. Long before dawn, he and a hoot owl began tense negotiations regarding who could sleep where in the old barn's hayloft. Mulder, in a strategic retreat, went to backyard pump to rinse off before daylight. He’d been mid-scrub when he noticed the smell of bacon frying.

"Should you be up so soon?” he asked. “I don't think you should be up so soon, Ma'am." He drew on his two-day-old knowledge of obstetrics. "Go back to bed. I will do that, Mrs. Waterston. You need to rest."

"I have rested. Now I am fixing breakfast," she answered casually. She poked at the contents of the frying pan with a fork and elicited a mouth-watering sizzle. "I cannot let you wait on me, Mr. Mulder. It is not right."

He wrinkled his forehead for a few seconds before he understood. “Oh, of course, yes, but circumstances- Uh. I understand how bad it looks for me to be here, but you just had a baby, for pity's sake. I did not even sleep in the house." He swallowed awkwardly. "I will take you to stay with your parents, wherever they are," he said decisively, "Or to one of the homes for widows and orphans. If you feel well enough to travel, leave your husband a message and he can come for you when he returns. You cannot live here alone. Your husband will understand. I would understand if you were my wife. You cannot endanger yourself or your daughter."

She stared at him long enough to be discomforting. Shaking her head, she laughed as she turned a slice of bacon.

"What is it?" Mulder asked defensively, caught off guard.

"I am not a soldier you can order around as you please and, as you have pointed out, I am not your wife, either. Not all women whimper and hide under the bed every time a shutter rattles or a Yankee passes through, Mr. Mulder."

"I did not say they did," he said, floundering through a novel situation. She might look like an angel, but she had the temperament of a mule. The charming dichotomy was challenging. More charming after coffee. "I did not mean to order you around, or say you had no vote in where you live. I'm trying to help, Ma'am."

"I am trying to politely say I cannot stomach any more of your biscuits. I had no intention of debating propriety or women's suffrage before breakfast. Please, sit down and eat."

"Oh," he said, and exhaled.

"Do you want coffee, Mr. Mulder?" She took a cup from the shelf above the stove and set it in front of him. "Then, we can debate."

He chuckled, sat down, and nodded yes.

*~*~*~*

End: Paracelsus I

Begin: Paracelsus II

*~*~*~*

My Dear Melly,

Perhaps idealism is the final luxury of youth, as Father says - a romantic's way of refusing to see life as it is: short, nasty, and brutish. According to Father, I am an idealist, among other distressing things. I search for the best in this world, like the Greek philosopher who carried an unlit lantern in his quest for the truth. Unlike Diogenes in Athens, sometimes I find it - but were I least expect it. In long afternoons of physical labor under the sweltering southern sun; in newborn babies mewing and steaming mugs of coffee at dawn; in lingering twilights and cool breezes off the swamp and quiet conversations about nothing of importance, to my surprise, there is peace.

In my mind, I see you wrinkling your pretty forehead in bewilderment. You do not need to understand my rambling. I have set down my lantern for a moment so I will not drop it in exhaustion. For a few heartbeats, I have a comfortable life - or lie - and a hundred excuses not to leave it. Normalcy, with its gentle routine and placid smiles, is as seductive as any woman, and I let it envelope me as if I belong.

Earlier, my friend saw a daguerreotype of you – the one where you were irritated with me and look as though ice water runs in your veins – and commented on how beautiful you were. I opened my knapsack and eagerly showed her the rest of my photograph collection of you and Sam. She said I had a lovely family. I agreed, not knowing what else to say. I had a lovely family, Melly, especially in the photographs. She wrinkled her forehead at me, like you did, and I wish I could bring myself to explain, because I think she might understand.

I know I won't post this letter, but I'll sign it anyway, with my love,

Mulder

*~*~*~*

Though Mulder couldn’t fathom why, this woman caused him to come down with a sudden case of idiocy. He composed a fine sentence in his head, but it left his lips as "Good day, Ma'am. I brought you cows, among other things."

Yes, Dana Waterston was pleasant to look at; Mulder had eyes. In fact, he thought her the third or fourth prettiest woman he ever encountered. Yes, he was lonely and they briefly shared as much romance and intimacy as an old slave's bed, moonlight, and a placenta offered. She listened to his Sam stories and gave him a shoulder to cry on, which didn’t mean she felt more than gratitude and friendship. As he felt toward her. Dana had her bed and baby - and husband - and Mulder had his barn and pictures of Melly. Never the twain would, or should, meet.

"Those are not my cows, Mr. Mulder," Dana told him. She carried a basket of eggs as she emerged from the chicken coop. "I thought you went to Savannah. Have you returned, or have you been wandering the swamps, lost, since Tuesday morning?"

"I did go to Savannah. As I returned to continue my search for Samuel, I found these cows near the river. They are not branded. Do you know who owns them?" Mulder kept one hand on each of the rope halters he had fashioned. She shook her, so he announced, "Until the cows say otherwise, they are yours. I thought they would be good, for the baby."

"I do not know if she likes cows, Mr. Mulder."

"For milk," he added, as though she might think he brought them to be pets. "For Emily."

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. He cleared his throat and found something on the horizon to look at. How underhanded: her being a woman on purpose to distract him.

"Thank you, but that cow does not have any milk, Mr. Mulder. She will not until she has a calf. Your other new friend-" She gestured to the big creature contentedly chewing on his sleeve, "Is a bull."

"I know," Mulder said defensively, and jerked his wet sleeve away. "They do seem fond of each other. In time, a calf - and milk - should be forthcoming."

If there’d been a doctor within twenty miles, Mulder would have consulted him about treating this sporadic case of verbal stupidity. He probably required cold baths and bottles of anti-idiocy tablets.

Dana’s arms remained crossed. "I apologize for my ignorance, but I come from a family of sea merchants. Please tell me, Mr. Mulder, how does one tell if cows are fond of each other?"

His first impulse was to respond saucily, 'Ma'am, I can't say in polite company,' but he restrained himself. Instead, he bit the side of his tongue before something else foolish tumbled out of his mouth.

"All right. Put them inside your posts," Dana decided. She leaned on one he had set. Mulder had found repair projects to keep himself occupied as she recovered, and rebuilding the corral seemed a fine, time-consuming idea. Unfortunately, he got as far as setting the fence posts; it lacked any actual enclosure. "Tell them where the rails should go. I am sure they will understand. From what I have observed, cows are bright, obedient creatures."

"You are a very difficult woman, Ma'am," he said in frustration. He could not blame her disposition on her heritage. His parents had Irish servants; those women did not behave like this. Dana was only the third or fourth prettiest, but by far the most stubborn, impertinent woman he ever encountered. And Mulder was the fool who kept returning to speak with her. Chop her firewood. Weed her garden. Rebuild her corral. "I did bring you cows. And coffee beans."

"Did you think I desperately needed cattle, or did you need an excuse to come back to check on me? I promise my daughter and I can breathe without your supervision for a few days."

"I noticed the cows wandering, realized I was near your place, and I thought you could use them. You can't have cows without a corral. And, and I do not like going off and leaving my fence half-done," he said, using a tone that he'd thought sounded like he meant business.

"I thought that was the case," Dana answered, managing not to collapse into a puddle of pliant womanhood.

"Are you telling me you want me to go? I will finish my corral and go," Mulder said firmly. He crossed his arms in imitation of her posture and hoped he didn't look like a child threatening a tantrum.

"I did not invite you to stay in the first place and I am not telling you to leave. You come and go like the tide. I could stand on the shore and yell, but the ocean would ebb and flow as it pleases. I might as well save my breath."

"It doesn't seem you save your breath," he mumbled low enough for her not to hear.

She surveyed him a moment, and shifted the basket of eggs to her other arm. "I am glad you returned, Mr. Mulder," she said more warmly, her Irish accent lilting prettily. "I was not certain you would this time. Where is your horse?"

"Shadow's tied near the first river crossing."

"With coffee beans in your saddle bags?" she asked.

"Yes. Along with some white sugar I happened across."

She considered another moment before she said, "Tie the cows up, and come inside and eat before you go back to get your horse."

"You would have preferred I brought the coffee first and gone back for the cows?" he said, teasing her.

"I would, but I suppose I will take you as you come."

He grinned, wiped the cow snot off the back of his hand, and followed her inside the house.

*~*~*~*

Mulder finished his letter, folded it, and tucked it safely inside his knapsack before adding enough kindling to the fire in the stove to keep it burning. As August ebbed away, the days remained stifling, and the nights slightly less so. The windows were open, so for the moment the breeze from the coast cooled the house enough it was bearable. Mulder sat on one wooden chair and propped his black boots up on another. Little flames danced behind the cast iron grate. As he waited for Dana to put the baby to bed and return downstairs, he looked around the kitchen, idly taking stock.

The wallpaper behind the stovepipe peeled, and the stove needed polishing. The kitchen window and floor were scrubbed clean, but the kindling box empty; he'd need to chop more firewood before he left for Savannah again. Dana had planted a garden in the spring keeping her in vegetables, for the time being. She had an orchard. The plantation was so isolated the army hadn't raided it for supplies, so a few hams remained in the smokehouse and chickens in the coup. She had cornmeal and flour, but the supplies dwindled.

Stray pigs and steers roamed the swamps, but she lacked the strength and skill to butcher one. There was plenty of wild game and fish if she'd known how to hunt or fish. Theoretically, she could make lye soap and tallow candles and other necessities, but that was time-consuming and hard, dirty work. Like most plantations, the land had a blacksmith’s forge, a cooper, a tannery – all idle. Dana would run out of old sheets and blankets to cut up for clothing for her and the baby. The barn looked ancient, and the main house fell into disrepair. Mulder patched the house and barn roof, but more tell-tale brown stains appeared on the mansion’s upstairs plaster ceiling. Outside, the front steps of the plantation house bowed, the paint peeled, and weeds sprouted in the yard where the lawn should have been.

Mulder entertained thoughts of returning to replenish her pantry and help with repairs, but it took dozens of slaves to run a plantation. He might keep her supplied with food and firewood, but one man could do little to stop the advancing decay.

He heard Dana making her way down the stairs, and he stood as she entered the kitchen. She carried a basket of soiled diapers on her hip and looked tired.

"She is asleep?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Are you wanting to wash those, Ma'am? Would you like me to carry in some water?"

"Thank you, but they can wait," she replied. "I am sure there will be more by tomorrow morning."

"I am sure." He took the basket from her and set it aside. "It never ends, does it?"

She looked up at him quizzically as she rubbed the small of her back.

"The work around here."

Dana straightened, rolled her shoulders, and squared them. "No, it does not seem to. But it does pause for a moment," she replied. "I think I will sit outside for a bit. Will you join me, Mr. Mulder?"

He nodded and followed her through the house and to the broad front porch. The rockers on the porch had been sacrificed for firewood at some point, so she sat on the steps. Mulder put his knapsack aside and sat on the step above her, a proper distance away. The sky was mottled with violet and orange clouds as the sun sank down. Vines crept up the pillars and moss grew over the stones around the empty flowerbeds, slowly taking back the big house.

"You finished your corral," she observed. The two cows stood penned inside it, chewing their cud contentedly.

"I have finished your corral," he corrected. "I covered the window upstairs with paper; I will get more glass the next time I am in town. I saw the kindling box was low, but it is nearly dark; I will have to see to that tomorrow."

"Thank you. I am grateful for all you do, Mr. Mulder."

"I am glad to be of some service, Ma'am," he answered politely. "I wish I could do more."

"I wish I could repay you. If you will permit me, I will speak to my husband about compensating you when he returns."

He tried to think of a tactful way to say, firstly, he did not want payment, and secondly, after so many months, he doubted her husband would return home.

She turned, looking up at him quizzically.

"It is kind of you to offer, but I would not permit you," he said. He added with mock seriousness. "Charity is a virtue and physical labor cleanses the soul; please do not tempt me from the path of righteous purification."

Her blue eyes twinkled. "Mr. Mulder, I know there is an English word for so much nonsense in one sentence, and I wish I could remember it."

He grinned at her impishly. "Malarkey. Hooey. Hog-wash."

"I think my brothers used a different word. They were sailors."

"I'm sorry; I was in the cavalry, Ma'am. We weren't as colorful."

She laughed.

The chickens clucked to each other in the hen house as they settled in to roost. Somewhere in the shadows of the empty slave quarters, a bullfrog sang. The breeze blew rustled the strands of hair escaping Dana’s braid. Little beads of perspiration collected at the base of her throat.

The step creaked as he shifted. "There is a way you could repay me, Mrs. Waterston."

He heard the tiniest hesitation before she asked, "How, Mr. Mulder?"

"Ease my mind. Allow me to take you and your daughter to Savannah, and to find a safe place for you to board until your husband can come for you. Ma'am, you cannot continue to stay here alone," he said earnestly. "The swamps are full of deserters and criminals, and you are defenseless. Sooner or later, someone will stumble onto you. Even if, by providence, you remain undiscovered, you cannot manage this place alone. Not and care for your daughter as well."

"But I am not alone. I have my sarcastic friend Mr. Mulder, who has appointed himself my intermittent champion, midwife, carpenter, and cattle wrangler," she replied, looking back at him with a smile.

His expression remained serious, and her smile faded. She turned away, toward the darkening swamp.

"I do know, Mr. Mulder. I have thought about that since you left. I did not realize how much work there would be in caring for a child, or how tired I was, or how much you helped until you had gone. As you say, it never ends. I do understand your concern but, regardless, my husband told me to remain here."

"Ma'am, I know you want to follow his wishes, and I would never advise a woman to disobey her husband. However, I cannot believe he would want you putting yourself and your daughter in harms way. If you were my wife, I would have expected you to go to Savannah as soon as you learned you were expecting," he said. "Your responsibilities to your husband include your responsibility for the safety of his child, do they not?" he asked sternly.

She continued to study the horizon and didn't respond.

He noticed his jaws aching, so he unclenched his molars and exhaled. "I am sorry. I was impertinent. You are not my wife and Emily is not my child. It is not my business and, of course, you are free to do as you like. I wanted to express my- my concern. Again."

He shifted uncomfortably, making the warped step groan.

"But I am not free to do as I like, Mr. Mulder," she said. "Am I?"

"I don't understand."

"After so long with no word, I know it is unlikely my husband will return. I know how vulnerable I am here. But, Mr. Mulder, in America, once I leave this place, there are rules for women in society. I have no family, no resources, nowhere to go, and a respectable woman cannot make her way alone. There must be a man to speak for her, however superficially. I understand those rules, but... But for now, I would rather remain here."

"You mean that if your husband is dead, you do not relish marrying again," he said. "Yet you know, as a respectable young woman and a mother, with no other prospects, you cannot remain unmarried."

In answer, she adjusted her faded skirt. She folded the fabric over so a patched place didn't show.

"So you hide out here in the swamps?"

"And you return to hide with me," she responded. "Intermittently."

"Intermittently," he agreed, and studied on her profile.

"I do not mean to, to, to cast aspersions against Dr. Waterston," she added, seeming uncomfortable. "Or against the sanctity of marriage or a husband's right to have dominion over his wife."

"I would never think that was the case, Ma'am," he responded politely. "You are correct, though. Society has rules. Even if you have no concern for yourself, you have your daughter's future to consider."

"Yes."

Her posture remained tense, and she stared at the horizon, avoiding eye contact with him.

Dana was bright, and too pretty and bright to not know her own beauty. She could look for work as a governess or cook or housekeeper, but legions of other young widows sought any respectable employment, as well. She lacked references, and wealthy men who hired pretty young housekeepers without references were not men Mulder wanted employing Dana. Even if she found work, there remained her daughter’s care. Mulder had published articles about desperate women dosing their babies with laudanum and leaving them hidden as the mothers worked. Those babies had not lived.

Mulder knew nice, marriageable men. Dana had been a doctor’s wife, and he knew many working-class men pleased to meet a pretty Irish widow. Even an older, wealthy widower. John Byers would like Dana, but Byers was married. Mulder tried to think of which among his unmarried acquaintances or employees at the newspaper he could introduce her – but realized none of those men still lived. Once he returned home, Mulder would be hard-pressed to find enough boys and maimed old men to run a newspaper, let alone a single, young, whole man worthy of Dana.

"I am not judging you, Ma'am,” he said. “Only trying to think of something helpful."

Her profile nodded.

"Men follow a leader who is worth following. My father taught me that. A worthy commander: his soldiers will defend him until their dying breath. If he is not worthy, though - if he is merely a noisy fool or a bully or another man's puppet - no oath can hold their allegiance. Yes, I know you are not a soldier," he said as she opened her mouth to remind him. "I mean this: perhaps it is not the following, but the man you follow."

"Perhaps," she agreed carefully.

"The woman is the weaker vessel, yes, but some are weaker than others. I expect to guide my wife, but she needs guidance. I think being married to you would be like driving a stubborn team of oxen; a man must watch the direction they choose carefully, and yell it out in a loud, authoritative voice to give the appearance he is in charge."

She laughed, and he saw her shoulders rise and fall as she exhaled and relaxed. "You are a smart man, Mr. Mulder."

"I'm a man who tries to pick his battles carefully," he responded. "A husband who knows on which side his bread is buttered."

She paused, still amused but perplexed.

"It's an American saying," he explained. "An idiom. It means I know what my priorities are, which of two things is the most enticing. In this instance, it means I would rather have a woman's respect than her perfect obedience. In my experience, one follows the other; it is that way with soldiers as well."

"On which side my bread is buttered," she repeated as if committing the saying to memory.

"There's also knowing 'which end is up' and 'where I hang my hat' and 'where I park by boots' and many, many more American idioms unfit for polite company."

She laughed again.

He leaned back, propping his elbows on the step above and crossing his ankles. The lightning bugs flashed at the edge of the yard, signaling each other. Above the trees, a broad stroke of violet lingered on the horizon, but the first stars appeared.

"I know an American phrase, Mr. Mulder. You coming all the way out here again to bring me coffee beans, and spending a pretty evening speaking with me? If I had neighbors, they would gossip we were 'courting.' Is that correct?"

His posture didn't change except he turned his head away, looking at the shadowy trees.

"Oh, it is not correct, is it?" she said regretfully. "I am sorry. Is, is it vulgar? It's something else my brothers said. Of course it is vulgar. Those boys- If Bill or Charlie said it, I should have known. I thought it meant a man and a woman spending time together; does it mean, does it mean they are lovers?"

"No. No, the phrase is not vulgar." He sat up and reached for his knapsack. "Your usage is correct."

"But my usage is wrong in this instance?"

"I wouldn't know about courting, Ma'am," he responded coolly. He knew he was being an ass, but couldn’t stop himself. "As I said, I married young, and I remained married. Like you, I know something of how societal constraints dictate our lives."

She gathered her skirt, preparing to stand. "Mr. Mulder, I am sorry. I did not mean to suggest your intentions were dishonorable. I have said something wrong, but I am not sure what."

He looked down at the steps, embarrassed. "I have said far more than I should."

Seeming flustered and upset, she said, "Mr. Mulder, I know you are devoted to your wife. I understand married people do not 'court,' if that is even the right word. I meant to make a joke: what neighbors might say if they saw us... Saw us enjoying each other's company."

He stood, slung his pack over one shoulder and descended a few steps. "I'll bid you goodnight, Ma'am. Your reputation with the neighbors and all."

She stood and, since she was on the step above him, was at his eye-level. "There are no neighbors, Mr. Mulder. Not for miles."

"Even more reason. Goodnight, Mrs. Waterston," he said softly. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Goodnight, Mr. Mulder," she responded as softly, and he turned away from her, toward the old barn.

*~*~*~*

He heard light footsteps approach the porch, and Dana’s voice asked, "Why did you not wake me?"

Mulder stopped rocking the cradle. He stood politely. “You were sleeping.”

“I was,” she agreed, and yawned and stretched.

She smoothed her skirt under her hips and over her knees as she sat on the porch steps. The air had changed, electrified. A storm approached, and she’d brought a shawl with her against the chill. Dana tried several times to drape it around her shoulders, but it twisted and wouldn't cooperate, so she stared at it in sleepy bewilderment.

Mulder sat down again. He leaned back against a peeling white column as he smiled at her drowsy disarray. "Emily's still sleeping; she's no trouble," he explained, gesturing to the tiny form in the homemade cradle beside him. "I didn't want to disturb you unless I had to. You-" He left off the words 'needed to sleep.' Melly had taken his lightest utterances as Gospel. If he'd said the sky was falling, Melissa would have agreed. Dana was not Melissa. An hour ago, he discovered Dana asleep on the sofa, a pillowcase she was mending crumpled on her lap and the baby asleep on a blanket at her feet. "You were resting," he said instead.

"Where did you find the cradle?" she asked as she put her shawl over the baby against the breeze starting to murmur through the swamps.

"I'd thought I would make her one, but I found this in the slaves' quarters. I scrubbed it and let it dry in the sun," he added, not sure how she would feel about her baby sleeping in a Negro child's cradle. "It is simple, but she seems to like it. If she was my daughter, I'm sure there would be pink satin bunting and gilded carving, so I could say she had the best. I am foolish, and my parents, far worse."

"Yes, if she were your daughter, I am sure there would be pink satin and gilded inscriptions and fireworks to announce her arrival." Dana looked past him, at the ominous clouds rolling in from the sea. The clouds toppled over each other in their hurry to reach the shoreline. "You have a son."

"It would not matter if I did not," he responded truthfully. "Son or daughter, I would welcome any child my wife gave me, and I would thank God for her and the baby's safe delivery."

"Again, I am not your wife, Mr. Mulder," she said softly.

She had never said it directly, but he sensed her husband wouldn't be pleased to find a daughter instead of a son when he returned - in the unlikely event he returned. Every man wanted a boy, but it wasn't reasonable to demand one, as if the woman had control over the sex of the child. Any husband who chastised his wife for having a girl was a fool, at least in Mulder's reckoning.

"Ma'am, I did not mean... Your child is as content in this bed, covered with your shawl, as she would be in the fanciest cradle. She is cherished and shielded from the evil in the world. Her mother loves her, protects her. No gold and satin can equal a mother's love. That is what I meant. I lavished Samuel with everything but silk diapers and pet elephants until he was old enough to fight back, and I'm sure I would have done the same if my daughter had been born."

He found Dana watching him with inquisitive blue eyes.

Mulder knew she wondered about the moody stranger who frequently took up residence in her barn. Dana was out of bed two days after Emily came and back to her chores in less than a week, and yet August blended into September and hedged at October, and Mulder still hadn't ventured far away. He chopped firewood, hunted, fished, mended fences, helped with the baby, and fixed the hole in the roof of the barn, much to the owl's dismay. He made several trips to send telegrams home and continue his search for Sam, but found an excuse to return to the low country to check on her. As she said, she let him come and go as mysteriously as the tides, as though he was something she accepted rather than tried to control.

"Melly became ill after Sam came," he explained, his words barely a whisper. "Even with the best doctors and hospitals, it was a long time before she could come home. At least, I thought she was well, and she wanted another baby - we wanted a little girl - but her illness returned even worse than before."

She blinked. He cleared his throat and fiddled with his wedding band.

"There's a storm coming," he said. He squinted at the black sky as the wind began to pick up. "A bad one. You're shivering. Take the baby inside before the rain starts. I'll carry in some firewood and water, and close the shutters."

"Mr. Mulder..."

"Yes, she is dead," he admitted. "She died last summer, and the baby died with her."

She tilted her head. "You write to her. I see you write to her."

"I write letters to her. She will never read them."

"I am sorry," she said. Dana put her hand on his forearm and slid it down until their fingers intertwined. “I am so sorry.”

"Now you think I'm insane," he mumbled miserably.

"No. I do not. The war killed both my brothers and my father with a single torpedo. All three were aboard the USS Tecumseh when it sank in Mobile Bay. For months afterward I was certain there had to be some mistake. I was a good wife and daughter and sister, and God would not do this to my family. To me. I had done everything everyone expected of me, and God would not do this to me. No, Mr. Mulder, I do not think you are insane," she said gently. "Do you know of Samhain?"

He shook his head.

"On Samhain, at summer's end, some people still believe the fairy gates open for the night, and the dead can roam between this world and the next. In Ireland, we would light candles so our loved ones can find their way home. I think that is all you are doing, Mr. Mulder. Summer ends and you hold a candle in the darkness for lost souls. Death does not stop love; it merely changes its form. You loved your wife and daughter, as I loved my family."

She squeezed and released his hand. The baby stirred. Dana picked her up and disappeared into the house. Mulder remained on the porch steps, but he watched her walk away.

*~*~*~*

Mulder didn't even have a house key. He realized as he stepped from the evening train onto the platform in Washington DC. His key remained in Georgia along with everything but his wallet, revolver, and the blue uniform on his back. When the telegram arrived, he'd gone straight from the officers' tent to the train station and to Washington. If his commanding officer had refused the emergency furlough, Mulder would have shot him and told the Federal Army where they could shove their damn war.

It spoke to Samuel’s own moral fortitude, despite his grandparents’ efforts at spoiling him, Sam Mulder was not a willful, ungrateful boy. He was imaginative, but not prone to whims or fits of temper. Even as a small child, Samuel was even-tempered and soft spoken and wise beyond his years. Having always possessed prodigious musical skill, he was puzzled by the attention his violin or guitar attracted – likely the way Mulder be surprised if people were awed by Mulder’s ability to stand. Samuel seemed born with a gentle spirit, and could calm Melissa when Mulder could not. Sam had not inherited Mulder’s love of the printed word but, in the last months, in his brief letters, Samuel wrote to Mulder of becoming an older brother.

"Mother ill stop come home now stop," Samuel had telegraphed on Monday morning. The urgent, terse telegram reached Mulder by noon, and Mulder had two days on a series of excruciatingly slow trains to imagine all the words his son left out.

Mulder spotted a familiar carriage approaching through the crowd, but he looked twice at the young man at the reins. According to his internal clock, Samuel should be eight or nine, and yet the calendar insisted the boy had turned thirteen.

"The train was late," Mulder said, stating the obvious as he climbed in. "I was ready to jump off and run the last ten miles."

"The stationmaster said a freight train derailed near Alexandria," his son responded. As soon as Mulder's backside met the padded seat, Sam clucked to the horses, forgoing any formal greeting.

"Thank you for waiting," Mulder said, not sure what else to say. "I came as quickly as I could."

The road in front of the depot was crowded with buggies and light gigs. Sam chewed his lower lip as he waited for a slow-moving wagon to pass. He had to stop short to avoid for a group of matrons paying more attention to their gossip than the buggies. Mulder did not need to ask about Melly’s condition; Sam keeping the horses at a racing trot through the congested streets and the tired purple shadows under his eyes were answer enough.

"I didn't know what to do," Sam said, not looking away from driving. "The doctor came, but she won't let him examine her. Poppy can't come to work. I didn't want to send for Grandfather; I, I was afraid he'd send Mother away. Maybe that's what she needs, but-"

"You did the right thing. I promised she wouldn't go back there. Why isn't Poppy at the house?" Mulder asked. "Has her time come?"

Sam nodded hesitantly. Their long-time housekeeper – who was Sam's former nursemaid - was unmarried and, as of late, quite pregnant. That was grounds for her dismissal, but there was a war. Poppy was family, more or less. Melly was expecting, as well. Mulder needed to rectify the situation, but so far successfully avoided doing so.

"Poppy didn't happen to find a husband, did she?"

"No sir," Sam answered as he drove.

"I'm not going to send her away, Sammy. Not Poppy nor her child. I'm not sure what I'm going to tell Grandfather once he hears of this, but I'm not sending Poppy away. We need her."

Sam let the horses slow a bit. He tilted his head as though his neck ached.

"You're tired, Sammy," Mulder said, again observing the obvious.

"Yes sir," Sam answered. He took another deep breath, seeming calmed a bit by his father's presence.

Mulder laid his arm along the back of the seat with his hand on Sam's shoulder. "You did the right thing," he repeated. "I'm proud of you. And, despite the circumstances, I'm glad to see you. My God, you're so grown up. You've grown a foot since Christmas. You’re as tall as I am."

"Poppy says I look like a string bean and eat like a draft horse."

Despite his exhaustion, Mulder snickered, and got a hesitant smile from Sam.

"Next time, tell Poppy you draw like Michelangelo and play like Mozart. She won't know who either of those men are, so she won't be able to say a thing."

His son nodded. His lips moved silently, repeating the line and memorizing it for later use. Sam glanced sideways, seeming to note his father's beard, and commented, "You look like a grizzly bear, Father."

"You look like the war's caused a scissor shortage. When was the last time you had a haircut, son?"

Sam flicked Mulder's beard. Mulder swatted at the back Sam's black hair, which fell past his collar.

"It seems like I was home a few weeks ago instead of months. Melly must be..." Logically, she must be obviously pregnant, but Mulder struggled to imagine it. "Is she, Sam?" he asked awkwardly.

Sam nodded again and said, "I sketched her yesterday. I know I shouldn't, but I don't think she noticed me, and I won’t show it to anyone. I thought... I didn't know how long it would be before you could come, and if... I thought you would want the drawing if something happened to her."

"Thank you. Yes, I do want it. But nothing's going to happen, Sam. Everything is going to be fine. Your mother's going to be fine."

Sam considered a moment and asked, "How long will it be, do you think, until she notices me?"

"It's hard to say, Sammy. A few days. Longer. Maybe a long time. When she got sick before, it was a long time."

"But she's going to have a baby soon."

"I know," Mulder said softly. “The doctor will be with her. Once the baby’s born, she’ll have a wet nurse. The nurse can take care of your sister. You and I can help. Poppy can help. Your mother can rest and get better. That’s what we did when you came.”

In the same hesitant tine, the boy asked, “Is it having a baby that makes her so upset?”

Mulder had survived one bayonet wound this war. Now, a dull, imaginary saber pierced his abdomen and made its way upward, aimed at his heart. “She wanted this baby, Sammy. She wanted you. I-” He would have said “I didn’t do anything wrong, Sammy,” or “I don’t know, Sammy” but since neither was truthful, he said nothing.

They passed the next several blocks in silence.

"How is the campaign?" Samuel asked, looking for something to talk about. Mulder owned the Washington Evening Star. The boy spent his days sketching amidst reporters and newspaper presses; Sam knew every detail of Sherman's campaign.

"We have Atlanta under siege. It should fall in a matter of months. Once we take Atlanta, we've cut the Confederacy in two, destroyed their supply lines, and there's no place else for them to run. I should be home for your and Melly's birthday," Mulder promised. "I won't miss it again."

Next year Sam would be fourteen and Mulder would be thirty, almost thirty-one. At an age other men first considered taking wives, Mulder had been married for half his lifetime. He'd been sixteen when Sam came, so they'd grown up together with Mulder floundering along as best as he could. Melly had been there, of course, but also, in her Melly way, not there.

The buggy stopped in the circular drive in front of a familiar brick mansion, and they were home.

"Father?" Sam said uncertainly, still holding the reins. "Will she be all right?"

"I'll see to her," Mulder responded with one foot on the ground. "It will be fine. You did a good job, Sammy. You did the right thing."

His son nodded, barely moving his head.

As the father, Mulder should say something of great moral comfort. Some pearl of wisdom for the ages. "Go rub the horses down,” was the one thing he could think of. “You've been pushing them hard, and it's hot. They could catch a chill."

Sam nodded again, and the buggy rolled away, swaying toward the carriage house and stable.

Melly’s young maid met Mulder at the front door. She took his cap and whispered nervously, "She's upstairs, sir. Welcome home, sir."

People whispered when Melly was ill, as though whispering might help. The servants should know better, but everyone had gone home for the night except Melly's ladies' maid, a girl seldom in charge of anything more important than hairpins. The maid waited at the bottom of the front staircase as Mulder hurried up. He glanced back. She’d twisted her hands in her apron and watched him expectantly.

Mulder felt too young to have so many people look to him with a trusting, Mulder-will-take-care-of-it expression.

"Honey?" he called softly. He pushed open the door of their bedroom. The bed was unmade. Uneaten trays of food sat on the nightstand. The lamp wasn't lit and the sun set, so the room was a contrast of the fiery red and the encroaching shadows. "Melissa? Melly? Where are you, honey?"

He heard a frightened whimper, and saw her toes peeking out from the space between the dresser and the bed. The toes led to bare feet and shapely bare calves. Her arms were wrapped around her knees, pulling them as close as possible to her chest. Except for her hair, which covered her back and veiled her face with black mist, she was nude. Melissa huddled against the wall as though she could disappear into it, terrified.

"What are you doing down there, honey?" he asked, leaning casually against the foot of their bed.

She shook her head, sending her hair flying. "Shush; he'll come back," she whispered, childlike. "Be quiet. Fox's gone and he'll come back."

"He won't come back, Melly. Your father's dead. He's been dead for years."

"No. No, no, no, no," she repeated mechanically, and began rocking back and forth. "He'll come back."

"Do you know who I am? Look up at me."

"Fox?" Melly guessed in a tiny voice.

"I'm not going to let him hurt you. Come on out from there, Melly. I don't like it, and you've upset Samuel."

She stared up at him with huge, frightened eyes. Her chin quivered. She nodded no again and huddled even tighter. "Go 'way. He's bigger than you."

"I'm not going to let him hurt you. Trust me, Melly."

Mulder offered his hand, but didn't make any move toward her. He could grab her and wrestle her out, but it made things worse; he'd learned the hard way a few weeks after Sam’s birth. After a minute, she reached for his hand, grasped it like a lifeline, and let him help her to her feet.

As much as he would have liked to look at her, putting on a nightgown or chemise helped calm Melissa. To her, clothing was armor and she could never have enough.

"That's my good girl. We'll get you a bath, let you get some rest, and you'll feel better," he assured her. He slipped her arms into her dressing gown and tied the sash high to accommodate her belly. "Look at this," he said, running his hand over the swell. "What do we have here? What have you been up to while I've been off preserving the Union?"

Melly had been leaning her forehead against his shoulder, but looked down at his fingers stroking the silk fabric. She covered his hand with hers for a few seconds, and backed away.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"No. No, no," she started again, looking through him.

"What, honey? 'No,' what?"

She stroked her belly, staring at it as though it hadn't spent seven months in the making. She rubbed harder, like the pregnancy was a wrinkle she could smooth away, and harder until she kneaded so roughly it frighten him.

"Whoa; easy." He stopped her hands. "What's wrong? Try to tell me. Talk to me, Melly."

"He did this. He did this. He did this. Get it out. Get it out, Fox. And don't tell. It's bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad."

"Shush," he murmured. "No, he didn't do this. Calm down and try to remember. We did this, Melly. Not your father. Your father is dead. He's been dead a long, long time. This is our baby; I was home for Christmas, remember? I was wounded. We talked about a little girl and now we're going to have one; you wrote you were certain it was a girl. We did this. This is our bed, in our house. This is our baby - our baby girl. You wanted this; you were so happy when you wrote to me. Do you remember? Try to be my big girl and remember. I need my big girl back."

With his fingers still loosely around her wrist, she lowered her hand back to her belly, rubbing at it like a stain on the rug. She shook her head, her face crinkling to cry again.

"Trust me. We did this. Don't hurt the baby. I want you to take good care of the baby."

"What did he put inside me?" She sobbed in horror. Mulder had to stop her hands again. "What did he do?"

"No, your father is dead. We did this." He kissed her forehead and trailed his nose down her cheek. "Try to remember. This is our baby girl. I'm not your father. You're not a child. You're my wife and I love you and we didn't do anything wrong. I'd never do anything to hurt you, honey."

"You did this?" she said shakily, easing her rubbing. "You did this to me?"

He pushed her long black hair back from her tear-streaked face. He smiled bashfully. "I suppose I did."

"You did this? What's Daddy going to say?"

Mulder exhaled tiredly and put his arms around her. He rubbed her back. She stayed still, like a trapped wild animal realizing there's no escape.

"It's fine. You let me deal with him. You eat and rest and take care of the baby."

"You're still my friend?" she asked in that sing-songy babyish voice that made his stomach twist.

"Yes, we're still friends," he assured her.

He coaxed Melissa out of the bedroom, and down the hallway, and carefully down the elaborate staircase. The young maid waited at the bottom of the front stairs, twisting her hands.

"Mrs. Mulder needs to eat," Mulder told the maid. "She needs a bath. Heat some extra water for me to shave, too, before you go home," he added, "I think my beard is scaring her."

Seeming to recognize the maid, Melly started to follow her to the kitchen, but stopped and looked back.

"Go on," Mulder directed. "Go with her. It's all right. I'll be right there."

"You did this to me?" she asked with one arm cradling her belly. "You put this inside me?"

The sixteen-year-old maid's face turned scarlet.

"I did." He wanted her calm; they'd discuss propriety another night.

Her maid tugged on her hand, and Melly followed, seeming unsure what was happening. Melly was obedient by nature, and once she understood what he wanted, she'd spend hours trying to do it perfectly. He'd have to lift her out of the bathtub and carry her to bed to get her to stop scrubbing.

Mulder moaned as he sat down on the sofa, and pulled off his boots for the first time in days. He lay down for a few seconds. He heard hot water gurgling from the stove reservoir in the kitchen and the maid talking to Melly, trying to get her to eat. The stable door opened and closed: Samuel taking care of the horses. As the world grew dark and hazy, Melly's maid asked if he wanted to shave. Without opening his eyes, he waved his hand dismissively.

"Mother?" Samuel's voice asked sharply, and screamed, "Father! Daddy!"

Mulder bolted upright in the dark library.

"Daddy!" he heard again.

Mulder scrambled to the back of the house. His son stared through the open doorway of the room off the kitchen they used for bathing. Melly liked to soak until she pruned, so Mulder installed the biggest bathtub he could find, much to the chagrin of the Poppy and maids who had to heat and carry the water to fill it. There was a basin and a mirror too. The inexperienced maid had laid out a towel and his shaving brush, soap and a mug, and the strop to sharpen the razor. A lamp burned in the window, casting a gentle, peaceful yellow glow over the calm water filling the bathtub to the top.

He thought for a moment the young maid hadn't been able to find his old straight razor.

*~*~*~*

"Get the doctor!" he yelled into the blackness. Sam was crying. Melly was hurt and Sam was crying. Mulder heard it all around him. The pain was so tangible he tasted it in his mouth and it encased his world like a shroud.

Sitting up, Mulder scanned the dark barn as he tried to get his bearings. Army revolver in hand and naked to the waist, he scrambled to his feet. He listened and tried to place the noises into some context. His breath came hard and fast as his body prepared to take on whatever was out there. He'd kill it if he could find it.

It was the storm. The wind and rain punishing the roof and walls. It howled like a tormented soul, but it was a rainstorm.

Exhaling, he stared into the darkness and waited to relax. His fingers tingled around the Colt revolver and a trickle of sweat ran down between his shoulder blades. Every nerve was alive and alert, waiting, watching.

One of the shutters on the house had worked loose and banged. After listening to it slam back and forth for a few minutes and realizing he didn't want to go back to sleep, Mulder got up and dressed, deciding to get an early start on the day.

To his disgust, after he got his shirt soaked running to the house, stubbed his toe in the darkness, and had the parlor window refuse to stay up and bash him on top of the head, the shutter had the indecency to fall off. He leaned out the window, still holding it. The rain plastered his hair to his skull. With both hands full and the window sash threatening to brain him again, he blew a drop of water off the tip of his nose and considered his options. So far, the day did not look promising. He wasn't going to fetch a ladder and fix the shutter in the dark, and the worst of the storm had passed, so he let the shutter fall to the ground.

As he closed the window and contemplated making himself a cup of coffee, he heard it again: the baby crying. This time he recognized it as Emily and, without thinking, trotted up the steps to get her.

He stopped in the hallway. Dana's bedroom door was open. He had not meant to intrude. She'd never expect him the house hours before breakfast, and she would never expect him to be upstairs unannounced for any reason.

Through the doorway, he saw a woman's silhouette pick up the wailing baby and carry her to the window. She fiddled with the front of her nightgown as she walked. One handed, Dana raised the window and unfastened the shutters, looking out at the black and gray sky. The wind blew the wrong way for rain to come in the window, but a sudden swirl of damp, electrified air into the room made the curtains billow like the sails of a ship. She held the unhappy baby against her chest as she tilted her head back, seeming to enjoy the lighting-scrubbed wind as though a part of it.

He never would have guessed she'd do something so frivolous or sensual; she had her secrets, this woman.

Dana laid the baby down, making Emily squall louder. To Mulder's wide-eyed surprise, Dana gathered her nightgown up and pulled it over her head, revealing nothing underneath. No, there was something underneath; he could tell, even in the shadows. There was something nice underneath.

The droplets of water streaming down the back of his neck turned to steam.

Dana wrapped a big blanket around her and picked up Emily again. She sat down in a rocking chair beside the window. The baby stopped crying, and he heard greedy suckling sounds. Dana's profile stared out the open window again, watching the storm rolling over the treetops as she rocked.

Mulder realized he hadn't moved in a long time. He exhaled silently, blowing every bit of air out of his lungs. The baby was fine. He should never have been upstairs in the first place.

Without a sound, he turned, slipped down the shadowy hall, and descended the staircase, avoiding all the squeaky steps. Except for a few drops of water on the floor where he had stood, no evidence remained of his presence outside her bedroom.

He needed to go home. She was married. She had a baby. He had started to make a fool of himself.

'Started?' his conscience asked, recalling her joke about courting. Bringing a woman gifts - even banal ones like coffee and cornmeal – and keeping company with her into the night? Her use of the term was correct. Lingering in the shadows, watching a lady undress? The term was ‘voyeur.’ As much as he wanted to call himself her friend, Mulder didn't bring Byers or Frohike expensive gifts, nor want to see them unclothed.

He suspected his interest might be reciprocated, at least in some manner. She didn't strike him as a woman who casually shared her secrets, and yet she told him of her brothers' and father's death, of worrying about having no word from her husband in months, and of her concern about her husband's reaction to their daughter. Except for the night Emily came and yesterday evening when she took his hand, they'd never touched. She had a baby, for pity’s sake. Dana hadn't said or done anything improper, and maybe he imagined it. Or maybe he did not. Mulder wouldn't be happy if his wife was so friendly with a strange man in his absence.

He needed to go home, Mulder thought. He lay down on the worn sofa in what once was the front parlor. Mulder told himself he stayed in the house because of the storm and he'd get up long before Dana and she'd never know. Another shutter could work loose or the roof could blow off or - hell - something. Mulder wasn't picky. Truth could be beautiful, but so could lies.

*~*~*~*

Mulder had an important and proper reason to be in Dana’s bedroom, staring at her as she slept. Mulder would remember the reason any second.

She wore an old chemise rather than a proper nightgown. A chemise fit under a corset and below the neckline of a dress, so it draped low, revealing the tops of her breasts and the slope of her shoulder. She could have easily untied it to nurse, but she must have preferred to take it off so the baby was against her skin.

Any second.

The thin cotton had been washed over and over and dried in the wind and sun until it was transparent and probably soft as silk. The chemise should have reached her knees, but twisted around her hips up to her thighs. And, as if to torment him, she shifted, bending one knee up while the other fell outward. Back home, Mulder had a pornographic photograph of a woman in the same inviting pose.

Any second.

A thick braid of auburn hair fell over one shoulder, but countless strands had slipped out during the night and curled around her face and shoulders. Against the patched white sheet, she was a study in pale ivories and the crimsons of her hair, her lips, and under her chemise, the dark suggestions of her nipples and Mons Venus.

Any second.

Her hands lay on the pillow on either side of her head. All he had to do was unbutton his trousers and drawers, and lie down. Cover her mouth with his, her hands with his, her body with his. He had no desire to force or hurt her, and he would have to be careful, but if she did not object...

An insistent voice in his head, masquerading as the voice of reason, assured him she would not object.

Mulder couldn't feel his lips or fingertips, but his groin possessed plenty of sensation. Dana should learn how to close a door. If she was his wife, he'd teach her how to close a damn door.

She shifted again, and the lace hem of the chemise crept up farther. Mulder, fearless soldier he was, started feeling woozy.

For his own preservation, he covered her with the top sheet, managing not to touch her or make a sound. He backed slowly to the hallway, closed the bedroom door, took a deep breath, and knocked loudly.

Luckily, by the time she woke and answered, he remembered what was so important in the first place.

"It's Mulder," he called as though she might be expecting someone else.

The door opened a crack. She peeked out, smoothing the stray auburn wisps back from her face. "What is wrong, Mr. Mulder?"

"There are people coming up road from the river. A mulatto man and a White woman with two boys and a toddler. The man has a rifle. Could the woman be one of your friends? A neighbor coming to call?"

"There are no neighbors." She yawned, forgetting to cover her mouth. "Maybe they are lost."

"They'd have to be very lost. No one comes this far out in the swamp without a reason. What about the man? Could he be one of your people coming home?"

"Do you mean one of my husband's slaves?"

He nodded. "Some of the freemen who couldn't find work in the cities are returning to the plantations. He doesn't look like a field hand, but maybe a valet or a butler?"

She had the sheet wrapped around her torso so it covered her from chest to toes. She adjusted it tighter before she opened the door another few inches. "He is not one of my husband's slaves."

"How can you know without looking? It must have taken a hundred people to run this place."

"They will not return because I told them not to. This is my husband's country house and his overseer ran it, Mr. Mulder. We lived in Savannah, but he sent me here during the war so I would be safe. When the Yankee Army got close to Savannah, his overseer left to join the fighting. He left me in charge. As soon as the proclamation came from Mr. Lincoln, I had the Negroes to take everything they could carry and get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible, in case the overseer came back. Luckily, he did not."

"You little abolitionist." He leaned against the door jamb and grinned at her. "I wondered where everything went: the china, the silver. Our Army didn’t get out this far to loot, and this is the only plantation house I've seen without an old cook or mammy still with the family. What does your husband think of this?"

"He does not yet know.” She added in her defense, “I did nothing against the law."

Mulder raised an eyebrow but returned to the topic at hand. "If this man isn't one of your servants, and the woman isn't your friend or neighbor, who are they, Ma'am? Look and tell me if you know them."

He offered his binoculars. She re-wrapped the sheet around her one last time and opened the door.

"Do you have a dressing gown?" He felt uncomfortably warm as he trailed into the room after her.

"I did. Now I have clothes for the baby," she answered, going to the window she'd opened a few hours earlier. "No, I do not know them," Dana said, and handed the binoculars back to him.

Mulder looked again, watching the light-skinned Negro man carrying a rifle and leading two little boys on a horse. A stunning, dark-haired woman followed, also on horseback, riding sidesaddle with a toddler in her arms. "I'd say those are her children, but he's not the father. They are close, though: the man and woman. The boys know him. What could they be doing out here? Oh shit," he said under his breath.

Mulder shifted the binoculars, adjusting the focus. On the man's hip was a sleek pearl-handled pistol. Mulder hadn't been worried about the hunting rifle, but the stranger carried a dueling pistol as a regular sidearm, not stuck in his belt the way he would if it was new to him.

"What is it, Mr. Mulder?"

"Wait here."

He retrieved his weapons from the barn and returned to her bedroom. She still stood at the window, looking like someone gave the Venus de Milo a pair of binoculars. "The man pointed to the smoke coming from the chimney. He is having the woman and children wait at the edge of the trees. He kissed her, Mr. Mulder, and he is coming this way. He has a pistol, Mr. Mulder."

"I know. Ma'am, look at me. Look at this." He held up the .40 caliber single-shot Derringer he'd carried in his boot during the war. "You have one shot. It's ready to fire. If you need to, aim like you're pointing your finger and pull the trigger. You can't shoot far, so wait until he's close, and be prepared for it to knock you backward."

After handing the Derringer to her, he checked the Colt Army revolver. He made sure all six cylinders were loaded with a ball and powder, and the pressure caps were in place. He shoved the revolver back in the holster on his hip. His bowie knife and saber were on his other hip and, except he hadn't worn his uniform jacket in weeks, he looked the part of a Federal Cavalry officer again.

"I get this little gun? You get a big gun and two knives and I have this?" She held the Derringer by the handle with two fingers as if it smelled bad. "Do you have anything else, Mr. Mulder?"

Mulder stared at her, not sure if he was insulted or amused. "What would you like, Ma'am?"

"I feel like I should throw this at him, pick up the baby, and run."

He pondered for a second, but retrieved the rifle he'd left in the hall and unfastened the cartridge and cap boxes from his belt. From the expression on Dana's face, it was a more acceptable means of self-defense.

"It's a .52 caliber Sharps carbine, made to be loaded and fired on horseback. It will stop a buffalo at two hundred yards, and I can verify it will more than stop a man. And probably knock you back about ten feet. Would this be better?"

She handed the pocket pistol back to him, still held daintily between her index finger and thumb.

"I'll have to load it. Watch." In rapid succession, he pulled a linen cartridge from his cartridge box, opened the breech, shoved the cartridge in, closed the breech to ram the bullet and powder in the cartridge, opened his cap box, fished out a cap, and placed the percussion cap on the nipple. Cocking the hammer back, he asked, "Do you think you could reload if you had to?"

"I think I can hit him the first time." She took the rifle and seemed surprised at how heavy it was. Still wearing her Greek Goddess toga, with her loose braid hanging down her back, she held it up, looking through the sights. "Am I doing this the right way?"

"You're, uh, close enough." Sensation flooded his groin, and he cleared his throat. "I'm going to meet him in front of the house. I'll find out what he wants. I'll handle this, and it's probably nothing. Maybe they're lost. Don't shoot unless you have to, and for God's sake don't shoot me."

She squinted through the rifle's sights again and spread her legs farther apart to stay balanced. She tilted her head sideways, biting her lower lip in concentration and sliding her fingers over the long ribbon of polished steel. Mulder left the cartridge and cap boxes on the windowsill on the off chance she could manage to reload and, looking at her again, cleared his throat a second time and went downstairs to confront something less dangerous.

*~*~*~*

"Far enough," Mulder said from the porch. He came down the front steps. "What's your business?"

"Sir, I am looking for Dr. Waterston's place," the light-skinned Negro man said politely. He spoke in a New Orleans drawl with a faint hint of French behind it.

"You've found it." Mulder regarded him steadily.

The man's brown eyes stared back, not hostile, but unflinching. "Doctor Daniel Waterston of the Chatham Volunteers? Surgeon in Company E of the 47th Georgia Regiment?"

"Under Colonel's William and Edwards," Mulder added. "This is his place."

"You are not Dr. Waterston, sir."

Mulder's hand casually nudged the handle of the pistol on his hip. So far, the man hadn't made any move toward his own weapon. "What is your business?"

"Did you know Dr. Waterston? Is this his land?"

"I think I've answered," he responded, keeping up his end of the razor-edged banter. "What is your business with him?"

"I have his wife and family with me."

"His wife and family are upstairs."

The man's eyebrows twitched. There was a pause before he clarified, "His other wife and family. His colored family."

"Oh," Mulder said. He backed toward the house, standing clear in case Dana decided to shoot after all.

*~*~*~*

Dana beat those biscuits as though she had a personal vendetta against them. Mulder lurked near the stove and waited for her to cry, but she didn't. The more Dana didn't cry, the more Mulder wanted to.

"She seems nice," he said, trying to sound optimistic. "She is quiet, which is nice in a woman."

Dana exhaled loudly and didn't look up from making a late breakfast for seven. The kitchen table was floured. The biscuit dough was dumped out, and attacked with a rolling pin and a biscuit cutter.

In retrospect, Mulder could have said something more comforting.

He scuffed his boot against the edge of the stove and stared at the kitchen floor. "Do you understand what he is saying? What 'placage' is? She was not his wife. She was his legally contracted uh-" He worried the word around his mouth before he said it aloud. "Mistress."

"She was his wife and they have three children. Yes, I understand."

"She is an octoroon. One-eighth Negro. She was brought up to, um, please wealthy white men. Une femme de couleur. They are legendary. In New Orleans, light-skinned Negro girls are placed - placage - with white men and kept as mistresses, sometimes briefly, but often for months or years. Sometimes for life. The woman gets a house and servants, and the children of the, uh, arrangement are educated and inherit as the man's white children do. But she was not his wife. He could not have legally married her before the war. Do you understand?"

"I understand she has a ten-year old son, a six-year old son, and an eighteen-month old son. I understand my husband and I had been married six years. I understand his commanding officer wrote to her Dr. Waterson had died, but did not think to write to me. Yes, I understand."

"She did not come here to hurt or insult you - only to see what her sons inherited and make a fresh start. She never knew you existed, as you never suspected she did. In New Orleans, every wife is sure her husband is the one man who does not keep a placage mistress. Every mistress is sure her benefactor either will never marry or married out of duty, not love. Do you understand? It is-"

"Stop it!” she barked at him. “Please. My English is good. Thank you, but I understand, Mr. Mulder. Please do not explain anything else to me."

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, hanging his head. "I'm not sure what to say."

"Why not launch into one of your lectures about how you would not be happy if I was your wife?" She shoved the pan of biscuits into the oven. "Brag how your wife gave you a son at was sixteen, and my husband's mistress has three sons to my one daughter. Tell me I am too plainspoken and bookish and proud. Say I would be a lovely woman if I kept my eyes down and my mouth shut, and remembered my place and purpose."

"Ma'am, I never said those things to you," he reminded her, though he could venture a guess as to who had.

"Tell me again I am difficult, Mr. Mulder," she continued, not seeming to have heard him. "If I were your wife, you would think me irresponsible with our child and disobedient and far too friendly with a strange man."

"If you were my wife- I would never have done this to my wife. She was too delicate to be hurt."

"How nice for her." Dana slammed the cast iron oven door closed.

At a complete loss for anything to say - wise or otherwise - he turned and walked out of the kitchen without looking at her.

*~*~*~*

For a woman who'd become both a wronged wife and a widow in one day, Dana held up much too well. Aside from some well-mashed mashed potatoes at dinner and a tendency to talk without moving her lips, she acted normally.

Which worried Mulder.

Benjamin, the light-skinned mulatto man, had been the doorman at the quadroon balls where white men came to choose and mingle with their mistresses. That explained the contrast between his graceful, gentlemen's gentleman demeanor and the dangerous glint in his eyes; he'd watched a woman he loved follow Dr. Waterston into a bedroom for the last twelve years.

The breathtaking but silent woman, Dori, was exactly what Mulder told Dana: the daughter of a quadroon slave and a white Haitian plantation owner bought by Dr. Waterston at the age of seventeen. She'd been kept comfortably in New Orleans until Dr. Waterston stopped visiting her after Christmas. Emily was two months old, so the good doctor had been home to see Dana last fall. And fighting a civil war, too; he had been a busy man.

Mulder heaved himself up the ladder, into the barn’s loft, and flopped on his back on his bedroll. Sighing, he folded his hands behind his head. He crossed his ankles and stared up at the crossbeams of the old roof. His shoulder hurt, and the old scar on his chest ached. It was too early to go to sleep but too late to find some chore to keep him out of the house. Normally, he would go to the kitchen and read a newspaper or book aloud to Dana, or watch the baby while she had a chance to bathe or take a nap, but he felt awkward around her tonight, as though it was his fault she was hurting.

Something rustled in the corner. Mulder turned his head, thinking he and the owl would wage war again. Instead, he saw Dana sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and her face buried in her folded arms. The black tips of her shoes and the auburn knot of hair at the back of her neck were visible; everything else was obscured under a huddle of faded calico fabric.

Mulder’s heart hiccupped. He opened his mouth to say 'Melly,' but managed to reform it into "Ma'am? Ma'am," he repeated. He scrambled to his feet and bashed his head into one of the crossbeams of the roof, adding a companion goose egg to the one from his predawn encounter with the window. "Are you all right, Ma'am? Mrs. Waterston?"

Of all ludicrous things, Dana nodded earnestly she was fine as she sobbed.

"Oh." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Ducking to avoid any more headaches, he went closer and, squatting down, asked again, "Are you sure you are all right?"

"I am fine, Mr. Mulder," she said through her tears, still not raising her head. "Why would I not be?"

"Where is the baby?"

"With the woman. Dori."

"Is Emmy all right? Is anything wrong?"

"No, nothing is wrong with Emily. Why do you always ask me?" she asked in frustration. "Do you think something is wrong with my baby?"

"No, I-" He rubbed his fingers nervously over his trouser legs. "You have had such a horrible day. Do you want me to take the baby for a little while?"

She inhaled shakily. After another breath, the worst of her tears seemed to pass. "No. She will be hungry soon."

"Do you want me to go away and leave you in peace?"

"Yes," she said, so he sat down.

"I have been thinking, Ma'am. I understand Dr. Waterston left this place to Dori's sons, but he did not know about Emily. Right? He did not know you were expecting?" He waited for her nod. "Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves, but Congress hasn't made them citizens. We will, but the Constitution must be amended. Until it is, the freedmen are not American citizens. They are in limbo. Since the system of placage no longer exists, the contract your husband made to care for Dori's children is invalid. He made a contract regarding a slave and she is no longer a slave, and her sons are not yet citizens who can hold property. If you contest his will in court, you will likely win."

Dana wiped her eyes and raised her face enough he saw her flushed cheeks. "I had some choice about marrying him; she did not. If she wants this place, with the shutters falling off and the roof falling in, she can have it. I never want to see it again - this house or the one in Savannah."

"I fixed the shutter."

"It is not your shutter, house, or plantation, Mr. Mulder."

"Yes, I know." He picked at a mended place on the sleeve of his shirt.

She raised her head higher, staring at the sun setting between the cracks in the barn wall. "I tried," she said, and stopped to sniff. "I tried to please my parents and to be a good wife. I thought I understood what men wanted in marriage. I did whatever he asked."

"Some men want any woman they aren't supposed to have," he said before he thought.

"But you are you not one of those men?"

"Na- no I am not, I suppose," he said. "I have been tempted, but... No. It was not worth what it would have cost me. Melissa would never have known, but I would have. Sometime Sam senses things. To have to face Samuel, with him knowing I had betrayed his mother... To have to live with myself? I would not risk hurting so many people solely for my own pleasure."

He clamped his mouth closed, promising himself it would stay closed until he thought of something proper to say. Eventually, he arrived at the obvious. "I'm sorry, Ma'am. I'm sorry about your husband. What an awful way to find out."

"It is a relief to have an answer, at least. I know I should not feel that way, but I do. I feel relieved to at least know he is dead. The hardest part was the not knowing, the wondering."

"Yes," he said more to himself than to her.

"I think I have known for some time he was not coming back. I wanted to do the right thing, to wait, but there comes a time to stop waiting and go on with life. Which you advised me some months ago."

"Yes," he repeated. He wrapped his arms around his knees in imitation of her posture. She tilted her head to the side and he thought she might lay it against her shoulder, but she didn't. Through the cracks of the barn wall, the sun crept lower, painting the heavens with its last dying traces of scarlet and amethyst.

"I am going home, Ma'am. This time, I am not going to return. I cannot hide in the swamps forever." He hesitated, watching the sun teasing them through the weathered gray boards. "I have a house, a business. My mother is alive. Life will go on, but differently."

"I will miss you," she said without looking at him.

"I will miss you as well. Very much."

"Very much?"

"Very much. You are my friend. And Ma'am-" He inhaled, didn't think, and said it all in one breath. "Mrs. Waterston, despite what I have said, I do think I would be happy if you were my wife."

Turning her head, she stared at him. Mulder re-wrapped his arms around his knees and continued staring purposely at the hints of amber sunset flickering in from outside.

He cleared his throat. Damn dusty old barn.

Dana continued to gape, and the lack of romance in the air made Cupid shake his head in disgust and throw up his hands.

After epoch-like seconds, Mulder said, "I shouldn't have asked you so abruptly, and I shouldn't ask you to decide so quickly. I worry. You and Emily are alone. The world is not a nice place, Ma'am. I have a big house in DC with no one to live in it but me, and I do not want to be alone. There is a housekeeper, a cook, a half-dozen servants. You and your daughter would never want for anything. It is nice, and I promise I am not as odd or morose as I seem."

"Do you love me?"

He considered, trying to find the right way to say it. "I like you. I like being with you and talking with you. I care for your daughter; she fills a void inside me. You are a lovely woman. I care for you and I want you as my wife, but want and love: for men they are not the same."

"I would settle for being wanted."

"Are you saying yes?"

"I think I am," she answered unsteadily. He hadn't managed to sweep her off her feet, but he had confused her into matrimony.

He nodded as though they agreed on a price of a horse. "Good. Well... Fine. We can be married tomorrow in Savannah before we leave for Washington."

"All right," she agreed, looking unfocused. "Mr. Mulder..."

"Yes?"

"What is your first name?"

"Fox. Fox William Mulder. I am Bill Mulder's son."

"Oh."

After graduating at the top of his class from West Point, Senator Mulder served in Congress for decades, as had Jack Kavanaugh: Sarah and Melissa's father. The majority of the literate population of the United States knew who Bill Mulder's boy was, but Dana must not.

"Do you want me to call you 'Fox'?"

"No." Sarah, Melly, and his parents had called him 'Fox.' "My friends call me Mulder. You are my friend."

"All right.” After a bit, she drew a deep breath and said, “I should check on the baby."

"Yes, you should."

He stood. He offered his hand to help her up and cautioned her to watch her head, although she stood six inches below any of the crossbeams. She kept hold of his hand as they made their way across the loft. He felt her brush her thumb against his palm.

"If I had known you wanted to marry me, I would have been nicer to you," she said as he helped her down the first few steps of the ladder. "I can be more biddable."

"I doubt it, but you are welcome to try. In fact, please try," he answered sarcastically. "I will see you in the morning. I want to leave early."

"I will be ready." She looked up at him for a second, and climbed down the ladder to the floor.

Mulder waited until she closed the barn door and was walking to the house before he wiped his sweaty palm on his backside.

He felt strangely calm.

He'd get up early and bathe and put on clean clothes. It would be nice if he had a suit instead of his uniform. He should send a telegram from Savannah to let Poppy, the housekeeper, know he was coming home and bringing a woman and a baby. A wife. He was bringing a wife and a stepdaughter. They could stay at a hotel in Savannah tomorrow night, and he would book passage on a ship bound for DC. He did not want the baby on a dirty, noisy train, and Dana needed more rest than she was getting.

Mulder laughed - realizing he planned a honeymoon with an eye toward the bride getting some sleep - and felt his face get warm.

The memory of Dana asleep this morning flashed in his mind. The curves and shadows of her body beneath the thin chemise. Her silhouette in the darkness. The sound of the baby’s mouth against her breast. She was a lovely woman. His hand drifted to his cock and his mind drifted to how perspiration collected at the base of her throat and trickled down, disappearing between her breasts. The pretty pink bow at the top of her pretty mouth. He wondered what she had done to try to please Dr. Waterston.

Mulder exhaled, removed his hand, and pushed those coarse thoughts from his mind. He asked her to be his wife, not his whore.

Without bothering to undress, Mulder lay back again. He folded his arms behind his head and crossed his ankles: a favorite position for contemplation. He stared up at the rafters, knowing he would never get to sleep. For the first time in months, perhaps years, he felt eager for morning to come.

*~*~*~*

End: Paracelsus II

Paracelsus III

*~*~*~*

My Dearest Melly,

I almost wrote 'my dear wife.' It flowed automatically from my pencil to the page; I barely remember a time you were not my wife.

My life has been full and your presence colors so much of it. I think of you as pink, Melly: the palest, most delicate shade of pink. You are the touch of fine lace on a hem and the tip of a rosebud as it unfurls. My mother I think of as soft yellow, the color of morning sun rays and sweet lemonade. My father was royal blue, a solid, proper color, and appropriate for any occasion. Samuel is red, like the human heart and the flag the matador waves at the bull. He is the color of passion and life and warm strawberry syrup. This woman, Dana, I don't yet know what color she is. Perhaps she is none, a clean slate. She is a chance to try again.

I know she is hurting. I see pain scour her like sand against porcelain. I do not think this is real for her. She is simply functioning, finding comfort in the mundane until reality catches up with her. You found comfort having me close to you, as though I could protect you from the nightmares and the monsters in the shadows. I wonder if she feels the same tonight.

I wonder if I should tell her the last woman I kissed besides you was your sister, and I was fifteen. I have not told her about Sarah, though I should before we reach DC and someone else does. There are so many secrets I should tell her, but I do not, and I am not sure why I do not. I lock them inside me in the most private place in my heart where I know they will be safe and I do not give the key to anyone.

When we left her home, she gave me one bag to put take to the buggy, and it is mostly things for the baby; I checked inside it. I am accustomed to your wardrobe, and I thought how sad she could fit everything precious to her into one bag and a makeshift-cradle. And I looked at my battered knapsack.

She sleeps like you do, Melly. She closes her eyes and is gone, oblivious to the world. I watch her sleeping and feel many things, but mostly comfort. I know how to do this, how to be someone's husband. I know how to be a father. I was both before most of my friends tasted their first drop of whiskey. Dana and her daughter need me, and I need to be needed, so perhaps she and I will fill in the cracks in the other's soul.

Trust I love you. Always. You are with me for eternity, locked safely away inside my heart where no one can hurt you.

Mulder

*~*~*~*

Shadow seemed perplexed at his demotion from dashing cavalry horse to lowly carriage nag, and kept turning his ears backward, listening to see if the joke was on him. He and Dr. Waterston's buggy got introduced before dawn and spent half an hour achieving a cordial, if stilted relationship before Mulder decided it was safe for Dana and Emily. The big gray animal looked back as if to plead 'What have you reduced me to?'

"Only for a bit, boy," Mulder interrupted his story to assure him.

Shadow answered with a haughty snort and picked up his pace, eager to reach their destination before any of his horse-friends saw him. It was a nice buggy; Shadow was a snob. He remained technically the property of the federal government, and like some civil servants, felt his place was to be competent, not versatile.

The Confederate Army requisitioned the horses in the south halfway through the war, so Mulder had found a collection of forgotten buggies in the carriage house. The slaves took some of the smaller wagons, but under a layer of dust were beautiful two- and four horse-carriages, remnants of when the stables held twenty horses, with four matching bay mares for church on Sunday and a pair of black geldings for funerals.

"That was my husband's favorite as well," Dana said of the first light gig Mulder hitched Shadow to, and so it one got replaced with a black, two-seated open carriage with a canvas roof to protect them from the sun. He and Emily conversed philosophically in the front seat, and Dana was sound asleep in the back, a jumble of dull black silk and white petticoats across the velvet upholstery.

Comfortable Shadow wasn't going to bolt or swerve, Mulder switched the reins to one hand and offered the baby his finger to grip while he searched for the right word. He could say 'regal,' but it didn't quite fit the tone and little touches were important. As he drove past, he looked at the crumbling chimneys marking where a plantation house had stood, across the broad lawn and down the hundred year-old rows of gnarled oak trees lining the driveway.

"Palatial," Mulder told Emily, who blinked at him sleepily. He thought a moment, pooling his editorial resources. "The palatial stone walls rise from the scorched earth, the broken-out windows dark, distant, distrustful eyes."

Deep in a towel-lined basket on the seat beside him, Emily yawned. The buggy swayed on its springs as the wheels rolled over the muddy road to the river, lulling her to sleep.

"I'm not going to finish if you're so critical of my consonance," he said softly. "Anyway, the Federal Army swept through the countryside, an unflinching blue force leveling anything in its path. It's called 'total war,' Emmy, and in the end, it looks like this. We won, but we ripped families apart and tore our nation in two to do it. I heard one of my men say, 'I love my country, but if this war - where we burn cities and turn women, children, and old men out to starve in order to win - ever ends, I swear to God I will never love another.' But we did win, and we marched through Washington as conquering heroes while ladies cheered and threw flowers. After the parade, here we are. We have crippled the south and hold it tightly by the throat. We are too angry to rebuild it and too proud to let it crawl away and lick its wounds, so we grind it under our boot heels when there is nothing left to grind. More than a million freed slaves are expected to make their way, most unable to read or write. Some go north to find the north is no more hospitable to Negroes than the south. Some go back to the plantations to find nothing but this-" he nodded across the fields to the burnt mansion. "-for miles. Some go to the cities, where the vultures are circling, waiting to pick the Confederate carcass."

Mulder filed the last phrase away for later use.

"We have so many widows there is a shortage of black crepe for mourning dresses. In our cemeteries lay two hundred and fifty thousand 'glorious dead', though I doubt a corpse cares if he is buried in blue or gray. The soldiers who survived, the heroes: the worst of our scars do not show and, I fear, will never fully heal. We fought for ideals and we ended up ankle-deep in our own blood and rhetoric, Emmy. After so much war, people forget what they are fighting for, and once it is over, whether they have won are lost, only remember they are tired. Tired, hungry people, colored or white, are easy prey. We have won the battles, but I think this country will spend the next hundred years finishing this war."

Emily yawned again, settling firmly into her morning nap.

"Daddy's opinions," he added as she closed her eyes, "are not popular, but Daddy owns a newspaper, so he can print what he wants."

In back seat of the buggy, he heard Dana shift. Mulder exhaled, blowing the dust off his husband role and putting his inner self away like summer clothes packed between layers of tissue in a trunk in the attic.

"I have her, Dana," he told her from front seat. "Are you thirsty?"

He heard her pat the empty space on the floor of the buggy in front of her, pat again, and sit upright quickly.

"I have her." Mulder looked back over his shoulder. "She's here with me."

The carriage tilted and her silk dress rustled as she moved. Blinking sleepily, Dana leaned over the front seat to check on the baby. She stared at the road as Shadow clipped along. "I did not mean to fall asleep. Where are we, Mr. Mulder?"

"Mulder," he corrected again. "The first dock is not far from here. We will be in Savannah by evening. Sit back before you fall."

Ignoring him, she rubbed her cheek and glanced at the sunlight blinking through the trees. Mulder got up to meet the sunrise, but Dana and the hoot owl would be compatible roommates; his definition of leaving early was two hours earlier than hers.

"Not long," he answered before she asked how long she was asleep. "Lie back down if you want."

"What am I doing in the back seat?"

"Snoring and drooling on the upholstery," he teased. "Well, a little and in a feminine manner. You fell asleep against my shoulder. I put you back there so you would be comfortable. Are you thirsty?"

He reached into the knapsack at his feet and handed his canteen back over the seat, accidentally, blindly bumping his forearm against her breasts.

"Sorry," they said at the same time.

He listened to the carriage wheels roll along for several uncomfortable minutes.

"The baby will need to eat soon," he informed her, as though he would know better than she.

"Not yet," she answered.

"No, not yet, but soon. She is asleep."

He realized touching her casually was acceptable and even expected. He'd held her hand and stroked her face, once leaning over and kissing her cheek, but each move got rehearsed in his mind beforehand.

"Which type of husband are you?" Dana asked after a long silence.

"Which type of husband am I?" He watched the road. "You make me sound like something you'd buy at the market. Do you mean 'what kind of husband' am I?"

"Yes. That is what I mean."

"You know me, Dana."

"No, I do not. You live far inside yourself, Mr. Mulder. I think you could walk for miles and not meet another person inside your thoughts. No, I do not know you."

He stared at the horse's haunches, trying to formulate an acceptable answer - some way to convey her faith in him wasn't misguided.

She was loyal to Dr. Waterston, to discover his affections were duplicitous, to say the least. Most wives would be relieved to have their husbands' physical needs directed elsewhere. Out of pride, if nothing else, Mulder doubted Dana was one. Aside from their conversation in the barn the previous night, she refused to discuss it. She'd been “fine, Mr. Mulder” several times since breakfast.

"You know me as well as anyone alive. Not which shirt is my favorite and how I like my tea, but those are details.” He tried to imagine what might be important. “I have a temper – more so now than before the war, and I startle more easily. I am inclined to snap and brood, but I’ve never struck a woman or child. ‘More bark than bite’ is the American idiom. I am headstrong. I tend to want my way and want it now. I have been known to confuse opportunism with recklessness. I pay for a pew at my parents’ church I rarely occupy, but I do not think of myself as ungodly. I do curse. I seldom drink, and I curl up and go to sleep if I do. I come home at night. Often I come home for lunch, too, but if I do not, my office is a few blocks away; send a servant if you need me. I like children, obviously." He nodded to Emily in the basket beside him. "Did I answer your question?"

"No, you answered everything but my question."

"Bidd-a-ble," he reminded her.

"I am trying," she said irritably. "I do not mean to be difficult. I want to know what you want from me, and you will not tell me."

Sighing, he tightened the reins. He stopped Shadow, set the brake, and turned back to look at her. "I think you have a case of wedding jitters. Come sit up front." He climbed down and offered his hands to help her. "I will tell you all about Washington. It's a nice place, except for the open sewage canal, Murder Bay, crooked politicians, and the pickpockets."

"What is jitters?" She scooted to the left side of the seat. "Like vapors? No, I do not have jitters."

He grinned, and reached to help her down. With his hands around her waist, he reminded her, "The wheels are muddy. Mind your skirt, Miss Difficult."

There wasn't much space between the high carriage and the muddy ditch alongside the road, so he stood close, and her body slid down the front of his as he lowered her to the ground. It was another accident, but one making his breath catch in his throat.

Instead of flinching, blushing, or jerking away, she stood still. Her hands remained on his shoulders as she stared up at him.

In the depths of his mind, he remembered kissing this woman passionately, devouring her mouth as he tangled his fingers in her long hair. He smelled her skin and felt the warmth of her body and the silkiness of her hair. In the vision, he gathered up her white chemise and jerked it over her head. He pushed her back onto a mattress, unapologetic about what he wanted. As he stripped off his clothing, she opened her legs shamelessly and watched him, impatient. He saw himself nude, with yellow candlelight flickering over his bare skin as he knelt in front of her on the bed, letting her wait a few more seconds. She wanted him inside her: hard, fast, forceful; he saw the lust in her eyes. She wanted him to revel in her body, to lose control - to fuck her, to use the vulgar term. And not for his own pleasure. To make her lose control until they were both spent and sated.

He blinked, and the memory vanished.

Mulder licked his lips.

"These," he answered hoarsely and put his hand over her heart, "are jitters."

For an instant, he believed he clarified the English language for her. His hand resting at the top of her breast was coincidence. He looked down at his hand, wondering how it got there. Queen Victoria would be appalled.

"Are they?" She whispered as if anyone could hear.

"Yes," he answered automatically. His body hummed. She felt electric, and his fingertips tingled like he touched a telegraph wire. Dana wore what must have been her Sunday-best, pre-war, pre-baby black dress, and he suspected her corset was laced tightly to get it to fit. With no way to take a deep breath, her chest rose and fell rapidly under his palm.

"Is this what you're asking? What kind of husband am I? What kind of man I am with a woman?"

Her head nodded. He covered her lips with his, tilting her face upward. He intended a chaste kiss, but he closed his eyes and the ruined world receded except for the feel of silky fabric, the scent of her skin, and the taste of her mouth.

When they parted, he whispered "Is this what you wanted to know?" with his face close to hers. “What I am like as a lover?”

"Yes," she mumbled, leaning heavy against him.

"Have I answered your question?” he asked, brushing his mouth against hers as he spoke. "Or do you require further explanation?”

To Mulder, they stood still and the planet pivoted around them, a brilliant swirl of greens and blues. Sunlight and shadow. Closing his eyes, he urged her lips apart, needing to be inside her. He slid his fingers down, weighing and exploring her breast. She gasped as he ran his thumb over her nipple, and he felt her hands tighten on his shoulders.

“I told you I wanted you,” he reminded her in a low, gravelly voice he barely recognized as his. “Yes, I am eager to discover what lies beneath this tightly-laced exterior. No, I do not enjoy hurting or humbling women. As your husband, I will be with you as politely or passionately as you require.”

Her head nodded.

“I am skilled at politeness, Dana. Politeness is gentle. It brings babies and sleep. Politeness is...” He hunted for the right word. “Satisfactory. Passion is a different, dangerous animal. As my wife, do you have a preference?”

"I do not know." She gasped as he found her nipple again with his thumb, passing over it in long, luxurious strokes.

"I think you do," he whispered into her ear. "I think you wanted me in your bed yesterday, and even before. Even before you knew your husband was dead.” He slid his other hand down her back and over her bottom, cupping it and pulling her pelvis against him. She murmured in Gaelic, but didn't try to pull away, although she must have felt him hard against her abdomen. Against his neck, her breath came in short little pants, like sparks against his skin. "Didn’t you?" he asked huskily. “You cannot want another baby so soon, and you sleep far better than I do, so it was not politeness you considered inviting into your bed.”

The carriage rolled an inch as Shadow shifted his feet, bringing reality and morality back like an explosion of light.

Mulder recoiled as if he'd tried to embrace fire. Staring down at Dana's swollen lips, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, trying to figure out what happened. It wasn't real. He wasn't doing this. Another minute and he'd have her on the wet grass in the field like they were the rutting animals Darwin claimed.

She opened her eyes, seeming dazed as she looked up at him. He hoped she'd faint in mortification and forget what happened, but Dana didn't seem the fainting type. He let her go and braced himself to be slapped.

She stood there, trying to catch her breath.

Mulder took another step back. He avoided eye contact. He couldn't be more horrified if he was caught in an alley with a prostitute with his trousers around his ankles. By his mother. And all his mother's socialite friends.

"My God, Dana, I am sorry," he said earnestly, not sure what to do with his hands except not put them on her again. "You aren't yet my wife; I shouldn't have touched you. I should never have said those things to you. Not ever. I don't know what I was thinking. I do not."

She nodded and stared at the ground. She smoothed her already-smooth hair.

"Dana?"

"I am fine." She looked up, but lowered her gaze again. She cleared her throat and moved away. “Whatever you want, Mr. Mulder,” she said automatically.

She didn't look fine. Her face was flushed and her eyes had shone like the surface of a lake in the moonlight. She looked as drunkenly wanton and dangerous as he felt.

He stared at her as she studied the muddy road. He exhaled forcefully. He could belabor his apology, but it was easier to save both of them the embarrassment.

"Up you go," he instructed primly as though nothing had happened. She put her hands on his shoulders again, letting him lift her onto the front seat. She slid the baby to the corner and scooted over, making room for him beside her.

He climbed up after her, picked up the leather reins, released the brake, and told Shadow to walk on. The buggy lurched, and rocked from side to side as the horse trotted. As they turned a bend on the road, he looked back, wondering about the rash, shameless man who had briefly taken control of his body. He couldn't imagine what Dana must think of him.

"I met you here," he commented, needing to say something. "On this road. Before Emily came."

"Yes." She stared at the cypress trees and kept her hands folded on her lap.

"Had I met you before?" he asked curiously. "In New York? You said your family settled there."

"No. I do not recall meeting you," she said politely.

"I travel to New York on business. I thought..." He knew he talked nonsense. Her family arrived in America a year before she met and married Dr. Waterston and moved to Savannah. Two years after, Waterston sent her to his plantation in the swamp for safekeeping, where she seldom saw a soul except the servants. "When I kissed you, you seemed familiar to me - as though I had known you."

"You do know me, Mr. Mulder."

"Of course," he agreed, dropping the subject.

She agreed to be your wife, his rational self argued silently. She has been married before; she knows what marriage means. He turned his heart over, examining it for signs of guilt, but instead found fear. He was not raised to treat women disrespectfully, and it frightened him it came so naturally.

She had not objected. It bothered him she had not objected. However, why bother to object? Mulder was honest about why he wanted to marry her. Aside from concern for her and Emily, he wanted a home, a family, and her in his bed. To know her in the Biblical sense. It was a common reason to take a wife, but didn't seem so romantic in the prudent light of day.

A generation of marriageable men lay dead, leaving a generation of well-bred ladies brought up exclusively to marry and make homes but lacking husbands to do that with. Some widows took comfort in their black veils and destitution, but others married far beneath their social rank out of desperation. Any single man found himself knee-deep in adoring young women, most with small children, no money, and no place to go. It was flattering if one didn't think too hard. Many women chose between tolerating a new husband's demands and tolerating starvation, and he wondered if Dana was making that choice.

He opened his mouth to apologize - to even lie and say he loved her – but closed his mouth without speaking.

Mulder slapped the reins against the horse's rump, ordering him to trot faster. Next, he decided the pace was too bouncy for the baby and tightened the reins, slowing them. Shadow glanced back, looking annoyed.

As if searching for something to do, Dana picked up the sleeping baby and held her. She put the basket in the back seat.

"She looks like you," he commented, searching for a neutral topic.

"I had thought she looks like her father."

"Bald?"

"No, not bald," she responded, sighing.

He grinned at her, letting her know he was joking. "Well, regardless, I think she looks like you and she is beautiful. Even bald," he could not resist adding to his roundabout complement.

"You can be difficult as well, Mr. Mulder."

Chuckling, he tugged gently at her sleeve, making physical contact again. "It's part of my charm."

"Did you pay money for this charm?" she responded uncertainly.

At first he thought she misunderstood, but realized he was the one being teased. “Bidd-a-ble,” he mouthed at her, and smiled. She laid her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes again.

*~*~*~*

Mulder didn't consider himself a rugged, kill-it, skin-it, and eat-it-bloody-and-raw frontiersman, but he wasn't a limp-wristed city boy who sat around buffing his nails all day, either. He could spend the night on the dirt floor of the nasty clapboard shack, huddled near the fire and playing poker with marked cards. He could take his turn as they passed around the bottle of cheap rum, laughing and slapping each other in the back as they choked it down. He even had some off-color jokes he was saving to tell Frohike, and those were sure to make him some friends among the rough men at the dock. It could turn out to be a pleasant night.

The problem was what to do with his soon-to-be wife and stepdaughter.

Mulder looked back at the buggy. Dana jiggled the wailing baby against her shoulder and watching him expectantly. She'd suggested waiting for a river boat at the dock nearest Waterston's plantation, but Mulder wanted to drive to Savannah and catch a steamer the next morning; he saw no sense in spending the night on a boat if they could spend it in a nice hotel. With his hands on his hips, he turned back to survey the churning, muddy river. They crossed the other rivers with no trouble, but all the water from the storm two nights ago ended up here. Perhaps Mulder was about to marry a woman with an opinion worth considering.

"Ferry's done washed away," some Goliath of a man wearing buckskin informed him. "Ya ain't gettin' 'cross tonight. Best try in the mornin'"

"What about a flatboat?" Mulder asked as the water lapped over the edge of the pier. "Could we rig a rope and pole across on a flatboat?"

"Ya could try." Goliath nodded toward Emily. "How well ya reckon that woman and baby can swim?"

"You're not being helpful."

"I ain't sayin' ya cain't try it. It's a free river. That's an awful pretty young Missus ya got there. Tell ya what: you tie a rope to the dock, strip down, jump in, and swim it 'cross to the other side. After, say, ten minutes, I'll pull yer body back, no charge. Leave them breeches here, 'cause I'm thinkin' they'll fit me fine. Always did favor blue."

Mulder gritted his teeth and exhaled slowly through his nose. Dusk approached. He could sleep outdoors, but Dana and Emily couldn't. They could turn back, but even if he had lamp oil for the lamps on the buggy to see to drive at night, they hadn't passed a standing house in more than an hour. The low country was a series of swamps, inlets, and islands. If this river was cresting, the others would as well. They were trapped, and the motley river men standing outside the bunkhouse didn't look like promising roommates for a lady and a baby.

"We'll need a place to sleep. Is there anywhere else? A barn? Anything?"

"Why, there's a fine hotel up a piece. Shine yer shoes while ya sleep an' everything," Goliath answered sarcastically. "Set 'um outside the door."

Mulder gave up and walked away. Groping her like a savage this morning followed by a night in a shack with a half-dozen strange men, a bed on a dirt floor, and a colicky baby: what better way to impress a woman?

"Ya'll can put up here," the man yelled from behind him. "Won't charge ya much. And we stink fer free."

*~*~*~*

Melly was breathtaking. Not pleasant, not pleasing, not lovely: stand-there-and-stare-at-her breathtaking. Ethereal. Agelessly, classically
stunning. Of the two Kavanaugh sisters, she was prettier, and Sarah, even at fifteen, had been strikingly beautiful in her own right. Melissa had been tall, with high cheekbones and thick, black hair recalling Cherokee in her ancestry. Deep brown eyes, full breasts, a tiny waist, and long, shapely legs; an artist couldn't have drawn her more flawlessly. Mulder used to run his fingertips over the broad, red slash of her mouth and down the delicate skin of her throat and marvel at the perfection.

Dana was pretty. She was fair, with beautiful, wavy auburn hair and big blue eyes, like a china doll. She was petite, and it made a man feel masculine to stand beside her. Being Irish added a mysterious, exotic air of crumbling stone castles and fairy-people. And, if one didn't mind bright women, she could be dryly, unexpectedly funny.

Dana was quite pretty. Mulder noticed. He hadn't expected anyone else to.

It took him a while to realize the men outside the bunkhouse made excuses to talk to him to be close to Dana. Many were crewmen waiting for the next boat. Some were hunters or trappers, and a few merely had enough of civilization for a while. They were coarse, cautious, lonely, and as delighted as children at Christmas to see a pretty lady.

Dana seemed unaware of the surreptitious attention. She had been quiet since noon - never a good sign. Mulder suspected she had begun realize how much her life changed in the last thirty-six hours, and needed time inside herself to be still. Mulder remembered how he felt after Melly's death. For weeks, he lived in a separate world of muted colors and sounds and tastes. He understood, and as much as possible, he wanted to give her time.

"Little 'un ya got there," Goliath observed as they sat around the campfire.

Dana sat on a bench beside Mulder, and Goliath squatted down to examine Emily, who squalled in Dana's arms. Dana had nursed her, burped her, changed her, held her, walked her, put her down, and picked her up again. Emily seemed to be crying because she felt like it.

"I got three myself. This little one six weeks old?" Goliath guessed.

"Eight weeks," Mulder answered for Dana. He would have taken Dana elsewhere, but, unless they wanted to sit in the buggy or the stifling bunkhouse, there was nowhere else.

"Umph," Goliath responded. He took a good look at Dana as he sat down heavily on the ground. "He ain't happy."

"She," Mulder corrected. He took the baby, who started to settle down.

"She wanted Daddy," Goliath said decisively.

Dana kept her head down, but Mulder saw her glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

As Mulder focused on the baby and avoided eye contact with Dana, a hush fell over the men. He looked up. Two men had stepped out of the woods: an old trapper and a teenage boy barely old enough to have a mustache.

After surveying the group, the old man focused on Mulder and demanded, "You steal that uniform?" His gray beard fell halfway down his chest and tobacco had stained his teeth yellow. He held a Revolutionary War-era musket.

The day got better and better.

Mulder had been in his shirtsleeves all day, but brought his uniform jacket from the buggy in case Dana got cold after the sun set. He planned to put the coat on long enough to get married, and never to wear it again for the rest of his life. "No," Mulder answered coolly. "It's mine."

The old man stepped closer. "Says yer an officer, Yank. A Colonel."

"I was."

"I lost an arm to the Yanks at Gettysburg," Yellow-Teeth informed him, and tilted his head toward his empty left sleeve. He fingered the Bowie knife on his hip. He took another step forward, close enough Mulder smelled whiskey on his breath. "My nephew here lost his Pa. You at Gettysburg?"

"No."

"Antietam?"

"No," Mulder repeated. Dana edged closer to him. He felt her hand on the small of his back. He had two pistols and bowie knife and the rifle and a saber – all in the buggy.

The other men gathered in a half-circle to watch. Mulder didn't want to begin married life with a knife fight, but this fellow itched for a brawl.

"Fredericksburg? Bull Run?"

Another "No."

The old man paused to spit. "Where the hell were ya, Colonel Yank? If you didn’t steal that uniform?"

Goliath looked up, and Yellow-teeth and a half-dozen other men smirked.

"I was with General Grant at Shiloh," Mulder answered evenly. "Chickasaw Bluffs. Vicksburg. Stone's River. Chickamauga. I served under General Sherman in Chattanooga. Missionary Ridge. Lookout Mountain. Dalton. Kennesaw Mountain. Peachtree Creek and on to Atlanta, and Savannah and the Carolinas."

Dana tensed on the bench beside him.

"You get wounded?"

Mulder handed her the baby, and Dana focused intently on Emily. He came home with his limbs and face intact, but not unscarred. Standing up, Mulder unbuttoned his shirt and revealed a scar crossing diagonally from the left side of his chest to his abdomen. Later in the war, a minie ball grazed his shoulder, but the wound was a scratch compared to the one from Tennessee. The bayonet slash had been an “another inch either way and it would have killed you, son” wound, and the scar had a sobering effect on the river men.

"Chattanooga," Mulder told the old man, who leaned forward to examine the long, raised, jagged line, tracing his dirty fingernail over it. "My father died during the siege of Richmond. One of my uncles was killed at the first battle of Bull Run. My only son went missing last fall. The fighting's over. Even if it wasn't, I've seen enough blood and death for one lifetime. So has every other soldier, regardless of which side he was on."

"Amen," Yellow-teeth decided, and settled down. He produced and offered a jug of some mysterious liquid. “Drink?”

Mulder buttoned his shirt, sat down, and ran his hand over Dana's back. She exhaled.

The old man offered his bottle again.

Since it seemed unwise to refuse, Mulder reached for the jug. As he put the bottle to his lips, several men dispersed into the woods, disappointed, but others grinned expectantly. He swallowed against his better judgment, and gasped. "My God. What the hell is it?"

"Mother's milk." The old man grinned as Goliath reached for the bottle. "No offense to the lady: my language at all."

"None taken," Dana answered.

It was the first time she'd spoken, and the men looked at her again. After two months, Mulder didn't notice her accent. It seemed as natural for her to speak with a faint Gaelic accent as it was for Melly and Sarah to speak with a hint of the Tennessee Smokey Mountains behind her words.

Mulder felt the home-brewed alcohol burning its way down to his stomach.

A quiet, red-haired man sitting on a stump near the bunkhouse addressed Dana, saying what sounded to Mulder like, "Gobledy-gobledy-guke?"

"Gobledy-gook," Dana responded, and shifted the baby to one arm.

"Gobledy-gook-guke-gobledy-guke?" the Irishman asked. He came over and plopped down on the ground beside the bench where Mulder and Dana sat, as if they were old acquaintances.

As their conversation continued, Mulder cleared his throat, trying to be subtle. He shifted his feet. He told Dana he wanted a drink. Dana got up and, still carrying the baby, brought Mulder a dipper of water, and sat back down without ever pausing her captivating discussion with the young, rather handsome Irishman. They could be discussing running away together for all Mulder knew. He couldn't remember Dana ever being so interested in anything he said.

"Dana," Mulder said firmly.

She glanced at Mulder as though she'd forgotten he existed. "I am sorry; I did not mean to be rude. This man was in one of the Irish brigades from New York. He asked about his brother, and I asked if he knew my father and brothers." She patted Emily a few times.

"Did he?"

"No, I-" She paused as the Irishman said something, and produced a wrinkled, yellowed envelope from his pocket. "He wants to know if you can read. He paid a, a-" The Irishman repeated a word. Dana shook her head and blushed. "A mistress. No, not a mistress, but like a mistress for money. He paid this kind of woman in Savannah write a letter to his brother's commanding officer for him, and this is the response. It is in English. He would like for you to read it, and for me to tell him what happened to his brother."

Mulder took the letter. The edges were brown from being carried around for so long. In theory, the Army posted lists of the dead, wounded, missing, and
captured, and notified families of changes in their loved one's status. In practice, one mangled body might be mistaken for another. A deserter was thought to be missing in action. A man deserted under one name, re-enlisted, and died under another. A soldier directly in front of a cannon blast vaporized. In practice, many men remained 'missing' months after the war ended, and would remain so for the next fifty years.

Mulder skimmed the paper and summarized. "His brother was captured and sent to Andersonville. It was a Confederate prison camp in Georgia where captured Federals - Yankees," he clarified, "Were housed. After that, the commanding officer does not know. He offers condolences.”

While Dana translated, Mulder reread the letter. "The commander suggests writing to a nurse named Miss Clara Barton.” He turned the letter to show the Irishman where to find the name on the paper. “She went to Andersonville after the war to organize the records and graves of the dead. If there's any record of his brother, the commander believes she might know of it."

Again, Dana repeated that.

“Tell him Federal soldiers took Andersonville in May and freed the remaining prisoners,” Mulder said. “If he has not received word from his brother, he is unlikely to. It's not in the letter, Dana, but tell him the government tried Henry Wirz, the man who ran Andersonville, and sentenced him to hang for conspiracy and murder. The newspapers say more than thirteen-thousand of the soldiers sent to the camp died. About one out of three men. Most starved to death or died of disease."

Dana looked at Mulder, wide-eyed. After a pause, she looked at the Irishman and softly repeated what Mulder had told her.

The other men around the campfire stared into the flames. The Irishman nodded curtly, said something to Dana, repeated the same words to Mulder, and stood and disappeared into the woods.

"He said to tell you 'Thank you.'" Dana turned to look at Mulder. “How could the government let soldiers starve to death in a military prison?”

“The world is not a nice place,” Mulder reminded her softly. “The South could not feed their own soldiers, let alone prisoners.”

“How horrible.”

Since Mulder could not argue, he took her hand. After a moment, he brought his hand to his lips, kissed it, and slid off the bench to sit on the ground in front of her. Mulder stretched his boots toward the fire. The bottle came around again. He took a turn and passed it on. Someone thought it would be a good joke to offer the moonshine to Dana, but glanced at Mulder's face and changed his mind.

As it grew dark, the men continued to drink and the stories started, each more outlandish than the last. Mulder’s head began to feel heavy. He leaned it against Dana's skirt, forgetting about the Irishman as she ran her fingers through his hair. "How much do I have to drink not to be a Nancy-boy?" he whispered to her as everyone else laughed uproariously at a vulgar joke he hoped she didn’t understand.

"I think that might be enough," Dana answered. Her manner appeared casual, but her eyes watchful.

"I think you’re right. I'll fix you and Emily a place to sleep," he said nonchalantly. He got up and waved away another swallow from the bottle. "Come with me. I don't want you out here alone."

No one noticed their absence; the hour was late and the voices loud around the campfire.

Dana waited inside the doorway of the bunkhouse while Mulder hung the canvas fabric of his Army tent from the ceiling like a curtain, cordoning off one corner of the cabin and creating privacy for her. His bedroll wasn't luxurious, but it was warm and would keep her off the dirt floor. She could cover up with his uniform jacket, too. From the carriage, Mulder fetched a second blanket and the basket Emily slept in earlier. He brought his rifle and pistols back to the bunkhouse with him, as well.

"If you must go outside during the night, wake me. I'll go with you," he instructed. "What I mean is, don't go alone. I don't think any of these men mean you harm, but they’re drinking. With any luck, they'll pass out around the campfire and we can be gone before they wake up in the morning."

Dana nodded. She laid Emily in the basket and looked around.

Mulder raised the candle, showing her their sparse surroundings. The bunkhouse had four cots on the opposite wall, one grimy window with a pane missing, and not much else.

"Dana, I am sorry. This is not where I planned to spend the night."

"I know," she answered softly. "Do I, do I undress?"

"Take the baby and go behind the curtain. I will wait here.”

Mulder waited on the other side of the makeshift canvas curtain, near the door. He blew out the candle so the only light came from the moon glowing through the small window. He heard rustling as Dana unfastened her dress. There was a deep, relieved inhalation as the corset came off, and more rustling for petticoats and shoes.

"All right." She peeked around the canvas curtain in her old chemise.

Mulder had the sudden, warm realization she did not expect to sleep alone. He swallowed and joined her behind the curtain. "Do you need to feed the baby?"

"She is asleep," Dana reminded him. She’d set the basket nearby, in the corner of the bunkhouse.

"All right." He cleared his throat and nodded to his bedroll. "Lie down. I'll be right here. To get to you, those men must get past me, which won't happen. Again, I don't think anyone will cause trouble, but if you get scared, wake me. I'm a light sleeper." He paused. “I have nightmares, sometimes. You’re welcome to wake me from those, as well.”

Dana’s chemise rustled against the wool blanket as she lay down. She rolled away and reached to check the baby, and then back toward Mulder again. Once she was still, he unrolled his own blanket. The rifle, he put between Dana and the bunkhouse wall, and the pistols, beside him and beneath his uniform jacket. Mulder lay down, facing away from her, cushioning his head with his forearm. He wore his shirt and uniform trousers and boots. The canvas curtain hung between their feet and the cabin door. As promised, he lay parallel to Dana, a few feet away.

"Are you all right?" he asked into the darkness. “Do you want my jacket?”

He remembered he had not kissed Dana goodnight. That seemed impolite, but to rectify it laying down might frighten her. He remained on his own blanket.

"I am not sleepy, Mr. Mulder," her voice answered. "I do not think I can sleep."

"I know. It is stuffy and smelly in here, but you cannot be outside. Close your eyes and rest, even if you don't sleep."

She exhaled, shifted, and several minutes of silence passed. Dana had napped during the day, but Mulder had not. The homebrewed alcohol made his arms and legs heavy and relaxed. He was dozing when she asked, "Does it snow in Washington, D. C.?"

She pronounced the city as three separate sentences. Washington. Dee. Cee.

"Yes, it snows," he mumbled.

"It does not snow in Savannah. I am not sure what to expect."

"It snows, sometimes." He opened his eyes and thought a moment. "Right now, in Washington, the leaves are changing colors. The trees are orange and scarlet and yellow and even lilac. Winter will come soon, but now DC is beautiful. The wind blows the leaves across the yard and into heaps beside the road. When it rains, you hear the raindrops landing on them, sounding fat and lazy. Part of the house has a tin roof, and you can lie in bed and listen to the rain pattering like little bells chiming, and running down and dripping off the eaves."

"It sounds nice."

"It is nice," he assured her. "I had forgotten how nice my life was. The closets have their skeletons, but I keep them locked. I get up, put on my suit, go to work, come home, enjoy my family, and sleep in a soft, warm bed. It is nice. That's what I meant to tell you this morning. I did not intend to be so vulgar."

"What is your work?"

"Oh," he said. He hadn't told her. "I have investments, but also I own a newspaper."

"Oh," she echoed. He heard her jump as a glass bottle broke outside and the campfire exploded. Someone must have tossed alcohol into it. A dozen male voices laughed drunkenly, like wild dogs howling at the moon.

"They are letting off steam," he promised. "Don't pay them any mind. They've forgotten we're even here."

She said nothing for so long he started to worry.

"Are you all right?" He rolled over and reached out, searching for her in the blackness. Finding her shoulder, he asked, "Dana, are you all right?"

As soon as he touched her, she was still – not flinching, but not relaxing, either. "I am fine," she answered, sounding like she held her breath.

"No, you aren't." He stroked her shoulder. "Relax," he urged. "It's all right. Those men aren't going to hurt you. I'm not going to hurt you."

Her head nodded tensely. Dana’s eyes glistened in the moonlight, but she looked at his chest rather than face.

"We're not married." Mulder removed his hand from her shoulder.

"We are to be married. I was not sure if it mattered to you," she answered, still not looking at him.

"It does. The Irishman earlier, the word you could not translate? ‘Prostitute,’” he told her. “The English word is 'prostitute.' ‘Whore,’ to be crude. That is not what you are. Not here, Dana. Not like this," he promised. "Go to sleep."

She nodded again.

He closed his eyes, but opened them as a thought struck him. He told Dana the truth during the embarrassing wave of lust that overcame him this afternoon: he could not imagine she wanted another baby so soon. Nor did he expect she enjoyed the act of coitus itself. Perhaps, though, tonight she might want to get lost in the closeness leading up to the act.

“Dana,” he said hesitantly, struggling to find a polite way to ask. He had no vocabulary for discussing sex with a woman. “You presumed what I wanted tonight, but perhaps I presumed as well. I know the ache and emptiness of losing someone, but I had lost my wife. I was alone.” He hoped he spoke out of kindness, not intoxication. “You and I will be married by this time tomorrow. If there is anything I can do tonight to ease your pain, I will not think badly of you.”

Her hand found his. Her fingers felt small and cool. “You have been drinking.” She said it as an observation, not a refusal or accusation.

“I am not so drunk I would forget myself with a woman. Of my own accord, I would go to sleep.”

She said softly, “You are the first man who has offered to love me out of charity.”

“No man offers such a thing entirely selflessly, but – yes,” he admitted. “I am tired and sore and tipsy. Our lavish accommodations give me pause. That you just had a baby gives me pause. But I will make love to you if you wish, however you wish.” He added with courage bolstered by alcohol, “And stop or not – as you wish.”

Her fingers stroked his. Sounding lost, Dana said, “I do not know. I am afraid and empty. A few minutes with a prostitute does not seem to ease emptiness for men. I cannot imagine a different outcome for me if I ask you to act against your better judgment.”

“What do you want?” he asked quietly.

“I want to be warm inside."

Mulder didn't ask how Dana could be cold on an eighty degree day with a campfire blazing outside. He understood what it was to be cold. Not outside, but inside. To shiver like he'd eaten too much ice cream. It was a different kind of cold.

Every phrase he constructed in his mind was a euphemism for lovemaking. He arrived at the ungainly, “If I lie down beside you – and sleep there, and do not touch you as a husband would – would you want that? My- Melissa liked me close, if she was upset. It feels less like you are the only soul in the world.”

“Yes,” Dana responded, barely audible.

He got up, moved his blanket, and lay down behind her. He put his hand on her shoulder again but otherwise did not touch her. To his surprise, Dana moved back against him and pulled his arm tight around her. She exhaled shakily, as if struggling not to cry.

Mulder raised his head to kiss her cheek. “You are not alone. I'll keep you warm and safe,” he promised. “Go to sleep."

*~*~*~*

End: Paracelsus III

Begin: Paracelsus IV

*~*~*~*

Dear Melly,

I like to believe in true love - each soul has one perfect counterpoint - because I like to believe in beautiful ideas. The world needs more of them. I like to believe in destiny, and each life has a purpose. After you died, I was surprised - and angry - the grass dared continue to grow and the clouds to move across the sky. Yet they do. The world continues to turn, so I trust Fate has a reason as it nudges me through a door or around the bend of a country road.

She is more. That is a complete sentence, and as clear as I can manage. She is more.

I do not compare her to you because there is no comparison. No one will take your place or be to me what you were. I struggle not to think 'If she was Melly, she would...' because it is unfair to Dana. No woman compares favorably to a ghost.

That is her name, in case I hadn't told you before: Dana Katherine Mulder.

She is more than I expected. I do not mean more beautiful or attentive, though men turn to stare at her as they did you. I could not ask Dana to be more attentive to me, and I certainly do not mean she is more obedient. Her hard head puts granite to shame, and I think a spanking might greatly improve her demeanor. She is more the way a six-horse team is more than a pair. Stronger, more intense, more of a challenge.

And I am fond of her.

If you saw this letter, you would find a thin place on the paper where I wrote and erased two-dozen words besides 'am fond of,' trying to find ones that fit. Women can choose hats easier than I can put into words what I feel for Dana. I think of love as the overwhelming, heart-wrenching emotion I feel for you, and I do not feel that for her. I think of Sarah, and I do not feel that for her, either. I am comfortable her, as though I have married my good friend, which I suppose I have.

If it is love, it is a lesser love, but it is still pleasant. And pleasant is several steps above being alone.

Mulder

*~*~*~*

'Expect me home by end of month stop bringing new wife and baby stop make arrangements accordingly stop'

Fifteen words. Mulder reread them one last time, and handed the slip of paper to the clerk. The clerk began pecking away at the telegraph machine, sending electronic pulses through the miles of wire between Savannah and Washington D.C.

It was done. Even if he or Dana wanted, it was too late to back out. Entering into the holy covenant of marriage was significantly less binding than telling his housekeeper she would have a new baby to fuss over.

A new wife, however, might get a cooler reception from Poppy.

Dana waited beside the door. If she slept at all the previous night, Mulder hadn't noticed it. It took the men around the campfire until dawn to pass out. The baby wanted to nurse every few hours; he'd pretended to be asleep so he couldn't notice that, either.

When they reached Savannah, Dana saw what the Army - his Army - had done to the city she briefly called home, and what public reaction was to a Federal officer looking to marry a Confederate widow. General Sherman's troops wintered there, and the city looked like an elegant lady dragged through the mud: disoriented, bedraggled, and incensed, but still a lady. She still had her standards. Anyone in a blue uniform was the enemy, and anyone giving quarter to the enemy was a traitor. It didn't matter Dana was less of a southerner than Mulder; New York had been a free state, whereas Washington DC allowed slavery. Two ministers politely declined to perform the ceremony, three impolitely declined, and one suggested Mulder get out of his church before he had time to load his pistol.

Mulder began to think Dana was either the most tolerant woman on the planet, or the most stubborn.

"Think of this as a great adventure," he said, taking the baby and trying to get her to smile. "A quest."

"A quest," she echoed softly.

"Dana, are you all right?" he asked for the hundredth time. "This is so much, so quickly. Are you sure?"

She inhaled, opened her eyes wider, and forced a smile, nodding.

"Please don't,” he requested. “I hate falseness. Please don't pretend what you don't feel."

"I am sorry."

"If you've changed your mind, tell me. If it's a matter of money - I'm in debt to you for months of room and board. You could collect and take a grand tour of Europe," he said, still trying unsuccessfully to get a genuine smile. "Above all, you are my friend, Dana. I won't have you do something you don't want to do. I'll take you anywhere and I'll make sure you and the baby are taken care of once there. Would you want to go to your mother's? After Washington, this ship goes on to New York; from there, I can put you on a boat for Ireland, if you want."

"I want to go with you, if you want me."

It was the longest sentence he'd heard from her all day.

"I do," he responded honestly.

He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the lips. Her mouth moved belatedly in response. Mulder made a conscientious effort to touch her, and she seemed to make a conscientious effort to respond - though she seemed surprised, like she'd momentarily forgotten whom he was or why he was there.

The telegraph clerk cleared his throat in disapproval. The baby mewed, and Dana pulled back, tasting her lips.

The ship's whistle blew, screaming impatiently at the sky. On the other side of the window, men with broad shoulders and strong backs carried trunks and cargo up the gangplanks, feeding the ships like insects swarming a hive. Mulder put his hand on Dana's back. He carried the baby and escorted Dana out of the telegraph office and across the bustling dock.

*~*~*~*

One nice thing about being a man: there was little to spruce up. Once Mulder bathed, combed, shaved, and buttoned, he was ready. Except for the green tint beginning to creep into his face as the ship cut through the waves, he looked as presentable as he would get.

Dana stood at the dresser in their stateroom, staring at her reflection in the bedroom mirror. She turned her head from side to side, watching herself.

"I look so shabby," she said unhappily, and ran her hands over her black dress. The dress was in good condition, probably from lack of wear, but at least five years out of fashion. She must have put aside one good dress at the beginning of the war, and Dana would pick basic black silk: suitable for church, mourning and, in a pinch, an evening wedding. The too-tight bodice ended in the deep V, and the skirt flared in a circle, meant to be worn with a hoop, though she didn’t wear one. The shoulders sloped into full sleeves gathered below her elbows. Instead of the elaborate, looping styles popular before the war, she had parted her hair in the middle and gathered in a simple knot at the base of her head. The overall silhouette recalled a wilting flower - which had been appropriate in 1860. "I did not realize how shabby."

"The world is shabby; we blend in," he answered. Mulder came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. "You look fine."

She frowned at her reflection. She picked up the brush and started pulling out hairpins, showing every sign of starting over. He had encountered this feminine routine; it did not ended well. Mulder should have known. If a woman asked how she looked, the proper answer was 'beautiful.’ Any further comments required tact and were sure to get him in trouble. Unfortunately, he'd opted for 'fine.’

"You look beautiful," he added belatedly. "Anyway, who cares how you look?"

She turned to stare at him, her lower lip sticking out a bit and her forehead creased.

"Dana, you've been living hand-to-mouth, spent last night on the floor, in a shack, and had a baby-"

She picked up a hairbrush. "Mr. Mulder, any charm you have, you must have gotten at a discount."

He would have laughed, but his head hurt and his stomach rocked side-to-side. "I'm not making it better, am I?"

"No." She paused, dissatisfied with the woman in the mirror. "Nor am I."

"The ladies I saw on the street had their hair atop their heads." He gathered her auburn mane into a loose ponytail at her crown, trying to demonstrate. "Smooth on the sides, and some curls, with a stupid little hat on top."

"I do not have a stupid little hat, Mr. Mulder."

Untangling his fingers, he handed her a hairpin and promised, "The next time the ship docks, I'll buy you some new dresses and a stupid little hat so you'll be the height of fashion. Until then, do the best you can."

There was a soft knock at the door of their stateroom. Mulder opened it to find the captain of the ship looking dignified with his matching white uniform and whiskers. The captain had agreed to marry them once the ship reached the open ocean.

"Thank you," Mulder told him as they shook hands in the foyer. "I appreciate you taking the time to do this. Captain, this is Mrs. Dana Waterston," he introduced as Dana appeared from the bedroom. "This is Emily," he added, gesturing to the cradle beside the sofa. "Who we're hoping will sleep through this."

One of the maids had offered to watch Emily during the wedding, and Dana had reluctantly agreed. And requested the wedding be as brief as possible.

Although a dozen women in steerage class likely yearned to earn a few dollars as a wet nurse, Mulder hadn't worked up to broaching the subject. He should put his foot down and insist Dana get some rest, but she liked having Emily close. To be honest, so did he.

"It's nice to see a young couple so in love," the captain answered tactfully. "I haven't married anyone in a long time, but I think I remember how the ceremony goes."

"We've done it before," Mulder offered, and earned an odd look from the captain.

"You're wearing wedding rings. Did you want to use those?"

"Oh, uh, no. No, I don't think so. I'll get new ones the next time the ship docks. Is that all right?"

Not only did he and Dana wear wedding bands, they wore them on their left hands, not their right as was customary for a widow or widower.

"It's fine." The captain's eyes looked amused at their disarray. "I'll be on deck whenever you're ready. Take your time." He closed the door, leaving them alone in the opulent rooms.

Mulder tried not to fidget, and blamed his rebellious stomach on the early stages of seasickness. "The captain's ready," he informed Dana needlessly.

Dana frowned in concentration as she tried to work her wedding ring off her finger.

After hesitating a heartbeat, Mulder did the same. He held the heavy ring, tilting it to read the worn Latin inscription inside. Amorem meum tibi semper dabo; in English, 'I will give you my love always.' He did not think he broke his vow by marrying Dana.

He looked up. Dana rubbed the pale, indented skin on her finger. She handed the gold band to him for safekeeping. Mulder dropped both rings in his pocket without comment.

"So I'll need to buy wedding bands, dresses, and a stupid little hat at the next port," he listed nervously. "Anything else?"

She shook her head.

"The captain's ready," he repeated, and offered her his hand.

*~*~*~*

Mulder watched his dream from above, like an patron in a balcony taking in a play of his own life. He recognized his bay mare and his father’s high-stepping gelding; both animals had gone to the knacker years ago. Many of the boarding houses and shops they rode past had closed during the war, but in the dream their windows weren’t boarded or their signs faded. As evening rose over Washington, the lamplighters began their rounds through a prosperous, manicured city. Mulder studied every detail, feeling nostalgic for a simpler time – though he hadn’t thought simple at the time.

"We're not lying to your mother," Mulder’s father had explained as they tied their horses to the hitching post outside the saloon. "We're just not mentioning this. We’ll tell her you stopped by my office after your lessons, and we arrived home late for dinner. We won't mention any stops in between. Do you understand, Fox?"

Mulder, with all the hero worship a teenage boy had for his father, nodded. This was a nefarious adventure into the darker side of life, and he would have given his left arm to do something nefarious with his proper father. "I won't tell her," he answered earnestly.

The uniformed doorman opened the ornate doors to a whole new world. In the dream, Mulder followed his father inside, trying not to look as out of place as he felt. He remembered to take off his hat, and tugged nervously at his vest, pulling it smooth. His hair was a lost cause, but he ran his fingers through it anyway.

Bill Mulder was well-liked, so it took them several minutes of hand shaking and waving and head nodding to reach the crowded bar. The barkeep greeted them with, "What will it be, Senator?"

"Whiskey. Two." Bill Mulder tapped the bar with his index fingers as he slid onto a padded stool.

Mulder’s father had brought him to an elegant establishment near the Capitol,
specializing in catering to the tastes of DC's politicians and wealthy businessmen. Mulder looked around, taking in the mirrors and the heavy chandeliers. Across the room, pretty girls wearing pantalets, short chemises, corsets, and ridiculously high-heeled slippers leaned over the railing of the balcony. The girls flirting with the men downstairs were flashily dressed in low-cut dresses or elaborate dressing gowns - some with rouge and face powder - but the ones upstairs were barely dressed at all.

"Sorry, son," his father said in an amused tone. "I'm not quite that traditional. I'll teach you to drink, but let's put that off for another birthday.” He paused. “Besides, you have acquainted yourself with the fairer sex, whether I like it or not.”

Mulder flushed and looked away.

Bill Mulder cleared his throat. “How does it feel to be sixteen? Do you like your present?"

"It's wonderful," he responded dutifully, still watching the prostitutes upstairs. He'd walked past fast women on the street, and he knew brothels existed. Gentlemen in polite company pretended they didn't see such things, as they didn't see a woman's figure when she was to have a baby, or Negro housemaids mysteriously having mulatto children resembling their white owners. Theirs was a society skilled at not noticing.

One of the upstairs doors opened. Jack Kavanaugh stumbled out, pausing for a farewell kiss from a girl who looked to be about thirteen or fourteen. Mulder’s father didn't comment, so Mulder swallowed hard and shifted his attention back to the bar as the bartender filled two shot glasses.

"Drink it all at once. Tilt your head back and swallow," his father instructed, picking up his own glass.

Mulder did as he was told. Seconds later, as he gasped for breath, he wondered how anyone could find this a pleasurable habit. No wonder the Indians called it firewater.

"Another, Senator?" the bartender asked, holding the bottle ready.

"I'll have brandy next. What do you want, Fox?"

"Cider?" He didn’t see anything else palatable listed on the sign over the bar.

"And an apple cider," his father repeated. He teased his son, "You aren't having another whiskey?"

"Not unless you say I have to, sir," Mulder replied. His head felt funny and his nose tingled. This might be what being drunk felt like; he wasn't sure. They had wine with dinner and beer if he had lunch with his father, but whiskey was different. Whiskey seemed illicit, like the women upstairs.

"Good boy." Bill Mulder hesitated in what was, Mulder recognized years later, indecision. As a boy, he'd thought his father omnipotent, an easy assumption if one's father was a Massachusetts politician. "You are a good boy, Fox. What happened with Sarah was- You and Sarah learned to crawl together. Your mother let the two of you run wild, thinking you were children. I was a young man once; I knew you were not a child, but I thought Sarah would insist you behaved yourself. Obviously, you got carried away and I misjudged her."

Mulder gritted his teeth. “You did not misjudge her, sir.”

“Did I misjudge you? Did you force the girl?” his father asked disbelievingly. “I did not raise a son who would do such a thing.”

"I didn't do anything to Sarah." Mulder’s tongue felt thick. "Sir," he added respectfully.

"All right," his father responded, sounding unconvinced.

For months, Sarah Kavanaugh's death had been the most covertly discussed event in DC. Her father, Congressman Kavanaugh of Tennessee, said she'd died of cholera. Gossip insisted she miscarried and bled to death, and cast a curious eye at Senator Mulder's son: Sarah's friend and, though the engagement hadn't been announced, her fiancé.

"I didn't," Mulder insisted. He stared at Kavanaugh as the man stumbled down the steps and to the opposite end of the bar. Kavanaugh made his way across the noisy saloon, staggering and bringing a whiskey bottle with him.

When Congress was in session, the Kavanaughs and the Mulders were neighbors. Mrs. Kavanaugh died when the girls were small, and Sarah and Melissa often fled to the Mulders' house, sleeping in a spare bedroom until their father sobered up and came to collect them. “Poor Jack Kavanaugh never got over his wife's death, bless his heart,” the ladies had said for a decade, but now “Poor Jack Kavanaugh drinks to forget his oldest daughter's tragic death, bless his heart.” In the House of Representatives, Poor Jack Kavanaugh was a political legend, a bastion of the community for reasons no one, if pressed, could remember anymore.

"The ill wind which blows no man to good," Bill Mulder quoted, watching Kavanaugh approach. "I don't like that fellow, Fox," he said quietly, which surprised Mulder. While his father would debate a bill hotly for weeks, he seldom voiced a negative opinion about his fellow man. It made Mulder feel as if he'd been taken into an adult confidence. "I can't quite put my finger on it, but I don't. Even though it would have been a good match, I'm glad he isn't going to be your father-in-law."

"I want to be married," Mulder announced.

His father put down the brandy snifter and raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"I want to be married right now."

"Don't be ridiculous, son. You can't go to West Point if you're married."

"I don't want to go to West Point. I don't want to go in the military. I didn't know how to tell you. I thought you'd be disappointed."

"I'm not disappointed. Just surprised. Well-" His father picked up his glass again, tilting the golden liquid. "You could have mentioned it before I bought you all those uniforms. You want to go to Harvard?"

"No. I don't want to be a lawyer. I don't want to be a politician. I'm proud of you. I know you do good things in Congress, but I don't think I want to do that. I want to marry Melly. Right now."

"Melly who? Sarah's sister Melly? Melissa Kavanaugh?" Bill Mulder said in disbelief. "Right now? Calm down, son. There's smoke rolling from your ears. I thought you were looking forward to going off to school."

"I am, but I want to marry Melly, too. It’s the same family. It’s still a good match."

"Fine. You want to marry Melissa Kavanaugh,” his father said, clearly pacifying him. “That's an, uh, interesting idea. Let me think about it. For now, you'll go to school, see the world, and if you still want to-" There was a long, uncomfortable pause while feet shifted and glasses sloshed. "Why her? I thought Melly annoyed you. You called Sarah's sister is a stupid pest, but I suppose you aren't nine any longer. They do look alike. Does she remind you of Sarah?"

"Yes. No," he corrected. "I don't want to wait four years. I want to marry her now. Please, Father. You can't say no."

"I can say no," his father responded sternly. "And I am. Stop this foolishness, Fox. You're too young, and I think you're lonely and nervous about school. I know you miss Sarah..." Bill Mulder hesitated again, and his voice softened. "You made a mistake, Fox. A tragic mistake, for her. If I had known... But it can’t be fixed.”

Mulder stared at the polished bar.

“I know you miss Sarah,” Bill Mulder said. “It's been months, and you’re still so lost. It worries your mother. I've been thinking about it and I've decided... Fox, you are sixteen. Kavanaugh's colored girl, Poppy: she looks like Sarah, too. A great deal. I can arrange..." His father swallowed. "Fox, if it would make you feel better, I can arrange to have Poppy work for us. I can arrange for her to go off to school with you, even. But please, do not let your mother catch you."

Mulder shook his head. He understood what his father offered, but did not want it.

"All right," Bill Mulder said gently. "I'll go with you to Harvard, get you settled in. It will be fine. It will be a good change of scenery. And Melissa- Well, in a few years, we'll see. I think you'll grow out of this notion."

Kavanaugh was halfway down the bar. He paused to shake hands and have a shot of whiskey with a businessman.

"Melly's going to have a baby," Mulder blurted out.

Bill Mulder's face fell. He looked so disappointed Mulder cowered. In the dream, Mulder saw the silent 'where did I go wrong,' self-incrimination in his eyes, but his father said, "Oh, Fox. No. What are you thinking? Tell me you could be mistaken.”

Mulder shook his head; there was no mistake.

“You have been with Sarah’s sister?”

He nodded miserably. "We want to get married, Father," he pleaded. "Please. I'll go to school wherever you want if Melly and I can get married, and if she can stay with you and Mother while I'm at school."

"Fox-” His father exhaled. “Son, even if she is with child – your child - are you sure you want to spend your life taking care of this girl? Yes, she's beautiful, and she seems sweet, but she's also- She's delicate. She's not very bright, even for a woman. Sarah was perfect for you. She kept you in line, kept those wild ideas balanced. Sarah was like a curb bit. But Melissa... I would not have let you walk away from your responsibility to Sarah, but Melissa... I fear Melissa will not be an asset; she will be a burden. Fox, sometimes I look in her eyes and there's no life there."

"Because Melly's the pretty one," he'd responded. "and Sarah's gone."

"I don't understa-"

"Happy birthday, boy!" Kavanaugh announced loudly. He slung his arm around Mulder's shoulders, making him jump. "Fourteen, right? Or fifteen? Good to see you're teaching this boy some propriety, Bill," he said to Mulder's father. He added in a stage whisper, nodding to the girls upstairs, "See boy: that's where your prick goes. Not in my daughter."

"He's drunk, Fox," he heard his father's voice say as the world went red. "Let me handle it."

Working on eight months of hurt over Sarah's death, his first drink of hard liquor, and the lithe grace of an angry young man, Mulder jerked away. He slid off the bar stool and, with one punch, knocked Kavanaugh sprawling on the expensive Oriental rug. "Yours doesn't go in your daughter, either," Mulder hissed through clenched teeth. "You son of a bitch!"

Bill Mulder stared at his son with his mouth agape and his brandy snifter at a precarious angle.

The drinking and flirting and piano playing paused, took note of the scene at the end of the bar, and continued at the same frantic, hollow pace.

"Why didn't you tell me the truth, Fox?" his father said a few minutes later. Bill Mulder folded his arms as he leaned against the hitching post outside the saloon. Inside, Kavanaugh still lay on the rug.

"Sarah never told me. I didn't know what was happening until after- Until after she died. I had no idea. Sarah would not have let me do that do her."

“But Melissa would?” His father scrutinized him. "Fox, are you certain - very certain - this child Melissa is carrying is yours? You have been with this girl and you are the father of her child?"

Mulder bit lower lip before he nodded. Poppy had taken Melissa to a doctor; Melissa was with child. And, however awkwardly and briefly, Mulder had been with Melissa the way husbands were with wives. The way the men in the saloon were with the women upstairs.

Bill Mulder’s jaw broadened. “I never thought I would say this to my son, but I advise you to deny it, Fox.”

“No,” Mulder said, the first time in his life he defied his father. “Everyone will know soon, and I won’t deny it. I know Melly is not bright, but she is kind. She is talented. She does love me. I did this to her. I want to marry her, and I want to take care of her.”

“Which is what you will do, Fox. Take care of her. You could be President of the United States. You could lead armies. You could help build this great county-”

“No,” Mulder repeated.

There was a long silence.

"All right,” his father said. “We have to tell your mother. She’s going to cry, faint, and cry some more. She's going to be a grandmother at thirty-three. I won't hear the end of this for years."

"Sir," Mulder said uncertainly, as they mounted their horses. "I am sorry."

"It's done," his father said tersely. "You've made your decision. I pray it turns out the way you want it to." He tried to smile, but didn’t.

Bill Mulder had put on his hat; he was the only man in the world who could ride a horse at a trot without his top hat falling off. He'd been thirty-six; not much older than Mulder was the year Melly and his father died and Samuel disappeared.

“After you tell your mother – and you are telling your mother about this, not me, Fox,” his father informed him, “Invite Melissa to stay with us tonight. I doubt her father will sober up enough to stagger home but I want her at our house tonight. She carries my grandchild. Have her sleep in her and Sarah’s old room. I want you in your room at the other end of the hall. No nocturnal visiting or, sixteen or not, I will take a razor strop to your backside. Melissa can sleep there until the wedding, and she can stay in your bedroom while you’re away at school.”

“Yes sir.” His stomach quaked at the thought of facing his mother, but he guided his horse after his father’s.

“Samuel is a nice name for a boy,” his father told him. “I thought of naming you Samuel after your grandfather on my side. It was your seventeen-year-old mother who insisted on ‘Fox.’”

“Yes, sir.”

Bill Mulder twisted back in the saddle and added, “I wish you would have hit that son-of-a-bitch Kavanaugh harder,” which had made young Mulder feel better, and his adult self, watching the dream from above, grin.

*~*~*~*

As long as Mulder didn't move or breathe, he existed in moderate agony. His brain had absorbed several gallons of water, so it squished whenever he tried to move his head. His stomach - the miserable battlefield between his ribs and hips - had revolted and been beaten into submission with a rock hammer.

A cold, wet cloth passed over his forehead, and his cheeks. Mulder opened his eyes.

"You were smiling," Dana said quietly. She turned away to rinse the washcloth. She wore a white chemise, and her hair hung over her shoulder in a long, thick auburn braid. The clock indicated four in the morning. "In your sleep, you were smiling, so I did not wake you. Were you dreaming of Melissa?"

"My father," he rasped, his lips dry. The lamp beside the bed burned low, barely illuminating the ornate mahogany furniture of their stateroom. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and took a careful, shaky breath he regretted. "I was dreaming of my father."

She turned away again, and this time returned with a cup of warm liquid she held to his lips.

"Ginger tea," Dana explained as he tried to pull away. "It will help your stomach."

"That's not tea; that's horrible." He scooted up on the pillows so he wasn't at her mercy, and took the cup before she tried to make him drink it again.

His chest was bare, as were his feet underneath the blankets, though he didn't remember her undressing him.

The only thing less romantic than their nonexistent courtship, brief engagement, and hasty wedding was the wedding night.

"So, Mr. Mulder… You get seasick," she said gently. "I promised 'in sickness and in health,' but I did not know I would be tested so soon."

He frowned, dipped his fingertips in the teacup, and flicked them at her. She wiped the drops off and went back to bathing him, running the washcloth over his shoulders. She examined the small scar from the minie ball, and went on.

"Nice," he mumbled. He set the cup aside and relaxed. Not much felt good, but at least this didn't feel worse.

"The ship's doctor was here. He said you should drink the tea, and to go for a walk on deck in the morning. He said you would be sicker if you stay inside."

"I'll take it under advisement." He closed his eyes. The cloth passed over his eyelids and down the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry, Dana."

"Why are you sorry?"

He didn't answer.

"Tell me about your dream," she said quietly.

"Why?"

Water swished in the basin. It splashed and dripped as she wrung out the washcloth. She pushed the sheet down, bathing his chest. This time the cool cloth traced the raised scar from a rebel bayonet.

He remembered lying under the merciless sun in Tennessee, listening to flies and death buzzing around him. The grass had been dry and prickly, the dirt parched. They beat the Confederates – butchered the Confederates - so gray-clad bodies and dark red splotches of dried blood littered the grass field. Mulder remembered thinking he was near the Kavanaugh's home at Missionary Ridge, and wasn't surprised to see Sarah walking toward him in a white dress. She trailed her hands along the tops of the dead weeds. She'd been dead a decade, he realized, and if he saw her, he was dead, too. There would be no one to take care of Melly and Samuel. Sarah shook her head and turned away, and disappeared into the trees at the edge of the field. His next memory was of waking in a hospital a week later.

To Dana, Mulder said, "I dreamed of the evening I told Father he was going to be a grandfather. He was more worried than angry, I think, but he did the right thing. Once Samuel arrived- For the next thirteen years, people crossed the street so he couldn't buttonhole them with stories of his remarkably talented, sinfully handsome grandson."

"You told the river men your father died."

"Yes, he died. It was sudden. Father was a senator, and he was trying to negotiate the surrender of Richmond. The doctors think it was his heart, but his heart never troubled him before. It happened a few months after Melly... After Melly passed away."

He tilted his head from side to side as she washed his neck, deciding the pleasant coolness outweighed the discomfort of moving.

"How did Melissa die?"

Seconds passed before he responded. "An accident. She was not well. I was supposed watch her but I fell asleep. Samuel found her.” He paused. “Why did it bother you last night when I was drinking with those men around the fire?"

Water swished and splashed again. "I am not sure it is proper to discuss one husband with another," she answered slowly.

"Oh," he responded. He shifted painfully to his side and scooted back on the mattress. "Come to bed. Get some sleep."

She put the basin aside and folded the blankets down beside him.

"Try not to jiggle. Or be warm. Or breathe," he requested as she blew out the lamp.

*~*~*~*

Women were soft; he'd forgotten.

Mulder was accustomed to touching them; all gentlemen were. Lifting them into or out of a buggy, helping a lady who had fainted, or being a solicitous escort, but contact through the merciless whalebone of a corset, and layers of hoops and petticoats. In their natural state, like asleep beside him, women were infinitely soft.

His hand rested comfortably in the valley of Dana's waist as he opened his eyes. The coal-fed engines droned, pushing the ship through the darkness. A lamp flickered across the room, casting long, yellow shadows on the wall behind it. Dana's back fitted nicely against his front, and her skin, through her nightgown, felt warm under his fingertips.

Mulder was about to go back to sleep as Emily mewed. The baby did not cry. Rather, she announced she was awake and thinking of a late-night snack.

"Baby," he mumbled to Dana. He jostled her. "Dana, the baby wants you."

She said something unintelligible in Gaelic and cuddled against him as if she planned to hibernate until spring.

Emily reiterated her request, stressing its urgency.

After three days, the seasickness subsided to the point he no longer dreaded moving, though he didn't look forward to it. Mulder pushed up on his elbow. He checked the room stayed level, and swung his bare feet over the side of the bed.

He owned a nightshirt at some point, but he didn't now, and he wasn't likely to in the future. He did own and usually slept in undershirts: short-sleeve cotton for summer and long sleeved wool for winter, but abandoned both two Georgian Augusts ago. What remained of his sleeping attire were the bottoms; in this instance, the loose fitting, cream-colored summer flannels with a row of tiny buttons at the fly. The form-fitting wool drawers he wore in winter were the same way; anything a man might need to remove his underwear to do, with all those buttons, he better be able to wait a minute to do it.

He rubbed his arms briskly against the onslaught of cool air, and leaned over the cradle. "You do realize it's midnight, don't you?" he asked Emily, who
appeared unashamed.

Dana left a blanket spread over the floor beside the cradle, and he laid Emily on it. He gave her his finger to hold while he got everything ready. After a few tries, he had a dry diaper folded and pinned so all the important parts were covered - not an easy trick with a baby who'd discovered she could roll over and escape. First class maids were a wonderful thing, so he left the wet diaper for the laundress and settled Emily against his shoulder. He put one hand on her head and the other on her dry behind.

"Would you consider going back to sleep for Daddy?" He rubbed her back encouragingly. "Let your mother rest?"

Emily snuggled against him, radiating baby-heat. She let Mulder rock and murmur to her for several minutes before she decided, no - that wouldn't do after all.

He sat on the edge of the bed, watching Dana. He put his hand on her shoulder. "The baby," he whispered, hating to wake her. "Dana, the baby."

"Yes?" she mumbled. She rubbed her eyes, blinking at him as she sat up. "What is it? Is something wrong, Mr. Mulder?"

"The baby," he repeated with an amused smile. She woke like a kitten: happy to be here, but unsure where ‘here’ was. Small words worked best. He pushed a loose strand of hair back from her face and brushed his thumb along her jawbone. "Dana, the baby."

She blinked at him again, trying to focus her eyes. She caressed his face in return and laid back down, watching him and waiting.

"Oh. Dana, no,” He amended quickly. “I am not calling you ‘baby.’ I mean the baby. Emily. She's hungry."

"Oh." She sat up again, seeming to notice the infant squirming against his bare chest. "Oh," she repeated sheepishly, and reached for her daughter. "All right. I will feed her. Thank you for telling me."

"You are welcome," he answered, very politely for a man wearing drawers.

Mulder lay down. He tucked his feet under the blankets and crossed his arms across his chest. As he waited for sleep to come, he watched Dana gather up a spare blanket, preparing to take Emily to the next room to nurse her.

"Dana," he called as she started to leave, his voice carefully casual. "It's warmer in here."

Equally neutrally, she agreed. The large bedroom had a sofa and several chairs, but no wall or screen to provide privacy.

"I'm going back to sleep. It's dark. There's no sense in you and the baby being cold or uncomfortable."

"You need to rest. I would not want to disturb you."

"You won't."

In silent invitation, he scooted back a few inches so he was in the middle of the broad mattress, leaving ample space for her in front of him. He pushed up on one elbow, ignoring the protest from his stomach. "You brought her to bed last night to bed to feed her."

"I thought you were asleep. Were you pretending, Mr. Mulder?"

"I woke up and peeked," he admitted tiredly.

"Will you be peeking again?" she asked with a note of embarrassed amusement in her voice.

"I can't promise either way. I am your husband. Stop shivering, bring the baby, and come back to bed, Dana."

After a few seconds, the mattress dipped as she sat. She laid down with the baby in front of her and her back to Mulder. A ribbon whispered as she untied the top of her chemise, baring one breast. In the dim light, he saw Emily's tiny hand resting on Dana's breast, and her glistening eyes looking up at her mother as she nursed.

"Sammy used to do that," Mulder said softly. "With his hand. As a baby."

Her profile smiled and nodded. “Melissa nursed Samuel?”

“No. Of course not. He had a nursemaid. Poppy. I remember watching her feed him.” Realizing how odd that sounded, he added, “Poppy is colored.” He would not have watched a white nursemaid.

“Oh,” Dana responded neutrally.

Mulder scooted closer to Dana. He pulled the blanket up to their waists and pillowed his head on his folded right arm. With his left hand, he traced down her shoulder and along her arm until his hand covered hers on Emily.

The ship rocked as it cut through the waves along the east coast, carrying them home. The ache in his gut faded, leaving behind a weak, wrung-out feeling. With his eyes closed, he heard the water crashing against the hull and the baby's mouth moving against Dana's breast. Dana's bottom was warm and round against his pelvis, causing a pleasant sensation in his belly and groin. Not an arousal; a comforting reminder he wasn't dead.

Soon, he told himself. Home, intimacy, normalcy.

Soon.

*~*~*~*

As much as people liked to think themselves enigmas, they weren't. What they owned and how they conducted themselves all said much more about them than they realized. It was a matter of taking time and caring enough to notice.

Mulder sat in the deck chair, watched the waves, and toyed with the cuff of his new sweater, considering.

Still too sick to go shopping himself, he'd sent Dana ashore with one of the ship's officers. It wasn't an optimal solution, but she desperately needed new dresses, and Mulder craved anything that wasn't a cavalry uniform. She returned with wedding bands, clothing and underclothing for him and the baby, and two dresses: both stylish, both properly-fitting and flattering, and both jet black.

She was welcome to wear whatever she liked, but it seemed odd to mourn one husband while honeymooning with another. Maybe she wore black for other men she'd lost, for her father and brothers. Or she thought black versatile and serviceable. She did not know Melly kept the dressmakers in business; Mulder had better things to do than scrutinize and complain about his wife's expenses. Maybe those dresses were all the stores had. Or Dana liked black.

With formerly wealthy southern families selling off heirlooms, fine jewelry was plentiful. The northern vultures coming south to feed looked like they'd been dipped in gold batter and floured in diamonds. Mulder told her to pick whatever rings she wanted, and Dana had chosen two plain wedding bands identical to the ones they replaced. She returned to the ship wearing hers, but his new ring was in a box on the dresser this morning.

He hadn't figured her out yet, but he working at it. He was in charge of this dance and he knew the steps, but part of being a good dancer was knowing his partner.

He knew she didn't like tomatoes. Not fresh, not stewed, not in sauces. If Dana was in charge, tomatoes wouldn't be permitted to grow, let alone be eaten.

He knew she liked fine things against her skin: underclothes, nightgowns - even the navy blue sweater and tan trousers she selected for him were petal soft. There was nothing frilly or fru-fru about her clothing, but neither was she severe. Her taste was elegant and understated; it was expensive, but it wasn't designed to specifically look like it was expensive.

In his opinion, she merely pretended to dislike his jokes.

Unlike Melly, who would cower or burst into tears if he raised his voice, Dana either ignored his black moods and sarcasm or seemed discomfortingly amused. Her promise to be more biddable had yet to materialize.

She liked sleeping beside Mulder at night, and he liked her there. Their berth had several bedrooms. She could have designated his as the sick room and slept elsewhere, if she wanted. Emily's cradle started out in the parlor and each night crept closer to their bed until the baby slept a few feet from them. Mulder had yet to object. The subject of a wet nurse had also yet to be raised. There were no further midnight trips into the next room to feed the baby in private.

Dana was comfortable caring for him while he was ill, and did not seem to think of his body as boorish or dirty. Most girls were raised to be fearful and prudish, and young men taught to expect their wives to be good mothers, but less-than-enthusiastic bedmates. For ladies, marital relations were a weekly chore: like laundry, but less pleasurable. If a gentleman wanted passion, or even to break a sweat in bed, he should look elsewhere rather than embarrass his wife. Dana had the middle-class notion men were touchable, and - though he should not be - Mulder was secretly glad of it.

Dana thought more than she said, but what she said was worth listening to.

He couldn't say for certain she was happy, but she didn't seem unhappy, and that was a start.

When he kissed her, she kissed back.

He watched Dana walking across the deck toward him. Her skirt and the blanket covering the baby fluttered in the breeze. She walked gracefully on a ship. Mulder preferred to sit and not press his luck. Not recognizing him at first, Dana started to pass him to take Emily back to their rooms, but stopped and looked puzzled. She'd never seen him out of uniform.

Mulder held out a white silk flower to her. He twirled the wire stem between his fingertips so the petals spun.

"For me?" she asked.

"I stole it off an old lady's hat." He gestured for her to sit on the deck chair next to his. "She'll never miss it."

She smiled and sat, setting Emily on her lap so she could watch the ocean. "How do you feel? Better?"

"I feel less bad."

"Good."

"No, not good; just less bad."

She wrinkled her forehead as if not quite understanding.

He grinned and reached for her hand.

"You found your ring," she observed. "Is it all right?"

"Um-hum." Mulder propped his boots up on a wooden footstool and let their entwined fingers rest on his thigh. He felt the salty wind on his face. It was definitely less bad.

*~*~*~*

It sounded odd to say Mulder had barely talked with a woman in fifteen years, but he hadn't. He exchanged information. He politely filled silence. He had talked to, but seldom talked with a woman.

He and Sarah used to talk about everything. At five, they sneaked up to the hayloft, stripped naked, and examined the differences between Methodists and Presbyterians. At nine, they sat on the limb of the maple tree in his backyard and decided to kiss each other to see what all the fuss was about. Not much, they concluded at the time, later to revise their opinion. At eleven, she persuaded him not to run away and join the circus, pointing out he'd miss a dinner of roast beef with carrots and new potatoes. And at fifteen, two months before she died, they were bent over their books in the Mulders' kitchen, studying, when he asked Sarah if she loved him. “How could I not?” she'd replied calmly, and returned to her French verbs.

Those memories belonged to a different person. A brother, an old friend, or a cousin. A man he shared a common background with, but not Mulder. As he set aside and guarded the husband he was to Melly, he packed away the boy he was to Sarah and pushed it far into the attic of his heart.

There was nothing remarkable about the story of Dana's life except it was hers, and Mulder wanted to hear it. She didn't discuss Dr. Waterston, but he didn't expect her to. Her memories of her childhood in Ireland, of her family, kept them talking late into the night. As the hours passed, shoes were discarded and top buttons loosened until they were as comfortable as two people were allowed to be and still be decent.

"Were you caught?" he asked as she started to pour him another cup of repulsive ginger tea. She thought the stuff had medicinal properties, which it did; it made him gag. "Don't bother. I won't drink it."

"I can put sugar in it."

"Put sugar in it, leave out the ginger, and add tea leaves, and I'll drink it."

She set the teapot down on the silver tray, leaving the cup unfilled.

"Did you get caught?" he asked again. He leaned back on the sofa and crossed his long legs casually at the ankle. "Throwing rotten apples?"

"No. My brothers got whippings, but they were too embarrassed to admit their apples had not hit anyone and mine had. My apple hit our neighbor in the back of his head. I ducked back behind the tree, so he turned to see Bill and Charlie in the orchard with apples in their hands. They took a whipping rather than admit they had missed, and their baby sister had not. I think my father suspected, though." She smiled sadly, looking past him and into distant memory. "It does not seem like so long ago."

"Would you like me to check with the Navy and see-"

"No," she answered quickly. "They are dead. There is no mistake. I cannot do what you do, Mr. Mulder. I cannot live on hope and whispers. I have to live with what is, not what if."

His arm was resting along the top of the couch, and he rubbed his fingertips over the rich upholstery as he worried his lips. "Is that what you think I do?" he asked, careful not to let anger creep into his voice. "I refuse to believe the truth? If someone would bring me a body and prove it is Samuel, I would not believe them?"

She turned to him, putting her hand over his. "I did not-"

"Don't you think I know he is dead? I know." Rage boiled dangerously inside him. "I know it, but I don't feel it. Don't you think I've seen him die a thousand times in my nightmares?"

"I know-"

"No, you don't know. He is my son, Dana - my baby boy. I raised him. Nothing and no one is more important to me. He trusted me. I said 'go put up the horses; your mother will be fine,' but I fell asleep and his mother is dead. And his baby sister with her. I went back to the war and left him alone. To hell with the Goddamn war! Let the south secede; I don't care. Let the south take their slaves and cotton and state's rights and build a wall through the middle of the country. But, no. 'Father has to go, Sam. Stay with Grandfather. Everything will be all right.' It won't be all right, Dana. My son is gone. My father, my wife, and my baby are all dead. It will never, ever be all right. Don't tell me you know, Dana, because you have no damn idea."

He swallowed angrily, clenching and releasing his teeth and embarrassed.

"You are correct, Mr. Mulder. I do not know how it feels to lose a child," she said evenly. "But I do know how it feels to lose everyone else."

He leaned forward, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers and keeping his eyes jammed shut until the urge to cry passed. He had raised his voice and swore at her; the last thing he intended to do was start sobbing in front of her. Mulder hadn't cried since he was ten. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "You didn't deserve that."

"I did not mean to upset you. I meant..." She rubbed her hand over his back as if she tried to smooth out the pain.

"I know what you meant." He turned his head to look at her. Dana's face was close to his. He kissed her and smirked unenthusiastically. "Aren't I a laugh a minute? Say the word and I can arrange an annulment and a ticket to Ireland."

She put her hand on his cheek, stroking her thumb over his skin. "Please do not pull away. I see you hurting, and I am not sure how to help. You have been so kind to me-"

"Snapping at you: yes, so kind," he interrupted.

"-and to my daughter." She smoothed his hair back from his temple. "You are so alone. When I ask if you are all right, you seem surprised, as though no one has asked you in a long time. You are so hungry-"

"Hungry?"

"I think that is the right word. Hungry. Men can hunger for the truth. Can men also hunger to be cared for? To be loved?"

Caught off-guard, he wet his lips. "Do you love me? No, never mind," he amended quickly. "With all that's happened in the last week, what an awful question. Never mind."

Her hand left his face and smoothed her black skirt anxiously. "I-I do not know what I feel. I know I am not Melissa-"

"I don't expect you to be Melly. I do not want you to be. I don't, Dana," he said earnestly.

"I do care you are hurting. I would like-" She slid her lower lip between her teeth. "I would like to lessen your pain, if I can."

He still slouched forward on the sofa, elbows on his knees, with his head turned toward her. "Do you? Love me?"

"I will," she answered softly.

"You will what?" he asked.

"I will love you."

To his surprise, Dana stood, and began unfastening the buttons on the front of her new dress. She watched her fingers. One buttonhole was tight, and she worked determinedly until she got it undone. She pushed the fabric back from her shoulders, down over her hips, and draped the dress over the opposite end of the sofa and started undoing the waist of her petticoat.

"Dana," he said quietly, reverently, "I think we were talking about two different kinds of love."

She paused, looking self-conscious. "Oh no. I should stop?"

"Under no circumstances," he responded in the same reverent voice.

She let the ruffled petticoat fall to the floor so a pile of white material as high as her knees surrounded her. Mulder should leave and let her undress privately, but he sat mesmerized. Except for stumbling onto Dana in her bedroom the night at Waterston's plantation, he'd never seen a woman undressing. Undressed, yes, but not undressing. Propriety be damned - he wasn't leaving or looking away unless she told him to. Normally, there would be more layers: a corset cover, and a hoop or more petticoats. He was sorry there weren't more clothes, since he couldn't watch her take them off.

Staring at her like a hungry wolf must have been disconcerting, because her fingers created knots in the laces of her corset.

"Permit me," he offered. "Do I untie it?" he asked. She nodded and turned around. He worked the tight laces loose until she could slip off the stiff, boned fabric. "You don't have to do this," he reminded her. "I won't insist. Is it too soon?"

"I have never had a baby before. Many women have a child every year, so it must be all right, I would think." She turned around, looking at him uncertainly, as though he might know.

Mulder had no idea.

"Why don't we go slowly?" he suggested, standing up. “All right?"

"All right," she murmured. She untied the waist of her pantalets. They fell to the floor, and she wore a chemise.

She let him lead her toward the big bed.

"You'll tell me if you want me to stop?"

She nodded again. He did too, like they'd reached a binding contractual agreement.

He stopped beside the bed, looking down at her, an unwelcome thought taking root where passion should have been. She would love him physically. She was his wife and it was the correct - and overdue - thing to do. Dana liked knowing and doing the right thing; he'd learned that about her. Whether it was conjugating a verb or consummating a marriage, she liked to follow rules. She would please him in bed, run his house, and meet his every need - and he would never know if it was because she wanted to or because she was obligated.

She exhaled and began unfastening the buttons of his shirtfront. He let her strip it and his undershirt off, leaving him bare-chested. He resumed watching her. He didn't move to touch or kiss her, and after a few seconds, she looked away, flustered and awkward.

"Mr. Mulder, you can say if this is not what you want. If you are still unwell. Or if I am doing something wrong. When you asked me to marry you and on the road that day, I thought... Please tell me what you want. I am confused."

"I think I'm confused about what I want." He raised his hand, tracing her cheek with his fingertip.

"Tell me. I will do whatever you want."

He sat on the edge of the bed and guided her to sit facing him. "There is something I want to know. Something I want to ask you, first."

"What is it?"

He took her hand, toying with it as he asked slowly, "If there were no vows. No marriage. No potential of a baby. No sin," he said, trying to preempt her potential objections. "No consequences or expectations. If it was us, a man and a woman, would you want this?"

She watched him intently for some clue as to how to proceed, and he saw her blink.

"Would you be with me because you wanted to?" he asked, boiling his question down to a single sentence. “Do you care for me that way?”

"I, I-" she started uncertainly. "I do not know how to answer. We are married. We could have a child. Fornication is a sin. There are other factors."

"But if there were no other factors, Dana," he pressed her.

"There are, Mr. Mulder," she insisted. "For a woman, regardless of what she wants, there are other factors."

"You told me if Dr. Waterston was dead, you did not want to marry again."

"I did. You offered me some kind advice I have tried to heed."

"The advice was about..." He looked at her steadily. "About choosing to follow a man who is worth following."

Her voice softened and she looked down. "Yes."

"All right," he said after a moment, his tone matching hers. "You are correct; there are other factors. You cannot answer me, and I should never have asked you to."

"All right." She took a slow breath. Her breasts rose and fell beneath the white chemise.

He smoothed his thumb across her palm. "We aren't off to the best start, are we?"

"At marriage or at, at this? At this type of love?"

"Yes," he answered, and earned a smile.

He kissed her forehead, letting his lips linger against the cool skin, and leaned down and rested his cheek against hers.

She shifted closer, and he felt her hand on his forearm. "It is a quest, you said. The beginning of an adventure," she whispered.

He slid one hand across the fabric covering her back and let his fingers caress her neck. "I like mysteries. I wonder what we'll discover?"

She didn't respond aloud, but her lips touched his jaw and made their way diagonally down his neck. Each kiss sent sparks to his spine.

He closed his eyes.

"I cannot separate the other things I feel - friendship, gratitude, affection, duty - to say what I would want if I felt none of those things," she explained with her lips close to his ear. Her warm breath made the tiny hairs stand at attention. "But, if I am allowed to consider them - to be close to my husband, to please him, to give him another child - my answer would be yes, I think."

"All right," he answered softly. He pressed his lips in a trail along her jaw and to her mouth. As they kissed, he felt the tension drain from his body. Something pleasant built inside him. Affectionate. Trusting. Instead of pulling back, he let the flow of emotions carry him along, the way the tide carried a raft away from shore and out to sea.

Mulder slipped beneath the covers with her. He untied the ribbon at the neck of her chemise and watched her chest rise and fall with each breath. He touched her through the fabric, tracing the slope and peak of her breast. He pushed the thin cloth aside and cupped her breast with his hand. His fingers molded to the yielding flesh.

She inhaled, and he glanced up at her face. He had minimal experience with breasts serving a practical purpose. "Dana?"

"Fine," she assured him. She pulled her shoulders back as he stroked her nipple. "The baby will need to eat soon," she added, explaining the drop of milk that appeared.

"Is this all right?"

She nodded, and he lowered his head. He pressed his tongue flat against her nipple and licked and teased rather than sucked. Dana's breath caught again. She rested her hand on his shoulder as he switched breasts.

"Nice. Soft. Sweet," he mumbled.

“It is nice,” she told him.

He ran one hand down her hip and up her thigh. His fingers whispered against her skin, tracing invisible, secret paths. She raised her hips so he could push her chemise up, and she pulled the chemise over her head and tossed it aside. Nightgowns, in Mulder’s experience, came up, not off, preserving modesty, but her body was bare. Blankets covered her from the waist down, and he would cover her from the waist up.

The lamps on the walls were lit. She didn't ask him to snuff them.

She lay back, and he laid down beside her. Undressed, she seemed so small.

Mulder touched her breast again. When they kissed, her lips parted. Her mouth tasted sweet and faintly of mint. He felt her leg drape over his hip. He kissed her neck, her shoulder, her earlobe. “Still fine?" he whispered.

"Fine," she answered softly. “Nice.”

He pulled back a few inches. "Dana, I can count on one hand the number of women I've kissed," he admitted. "I married Melly at sixteen; there hasn't been anyone since. Not in the carnal sense. Melly was- she was different from you."

"Am I doing something wrong?"

"No.” He swallowed. “Close your eyes." He slid his hand down her soft stomach and beneath the covers. His fingers drifted through the silky patch of hair and to the moist, delicate skin beneath. "Spread your legs," he whispered huskily, and she did. Her breathing changed as he touched her, exploring, stroking. He found the little lump of flesh that – according to the marriage manuals – was the center of female pleasure. Her legs remained apart. She turned her head to the side and clutched a handful of the blanket in her fist.

"It's all right," he assured her, and explained, “If I do this first, you will be more comfortable in a moment.”

Dana gritted her teeth and, as he requested, kept her eyes tightly closed. Her mouth moved, making silent vowel sounds, and her thighs trembled. Mulder explored with one finger, and two fingers, and heard her gasp. Her expression looked pained.

"Does that hurt?"

"No," she managed.

Not completely convinced, he stopped, and withdrew his fingers from the warm, slick entrance to her body. After a second, she opened her eyes.

He knelt between her legs, still wearing his trousers. The blankets had gotten pushed aside, and the soft curls of hair covering her sex were dark auburn. He smelled her. He looked down at her, transfixed. He had a collection of expensive – and illegal - pornographic photographs and tintypes locked in his desk in DC; Dana put the women in those pictures to shame.

Dana hesitated, but sat up and brought her hand to the bulge at the front of his trousers. She rubbed, and he gasped. He touched himself, sometimes, but no one else had touched him there since he was a teenager. The sensation of a woman’s hand remained as pleasant as he remembered.

“Do you want me to undress you?” Dana asked.

“I can do it,” Mulder said, though her undressing him seemed an appealing plan for another night.

She lay back against the pillows. "Like this, or turn over, Mr. Mulder?"

Mulder stopped unbuttoning his trousers. He stared at her, taking a few seconds to figure out what she meant. Did he want Dana on her back or on her hands and knees? It wasn't a choice he'd encountered before. Again, an appealing option for another night.

"Like this. You do aim to please," he commented.

He finished unbuttoning and lay down, pulling a blanket to cover their hips and legs. He pushed down the front of his trousers and drawers, and move over top of her. Her sex felt hot against his erection. Slick. Inviting. She inhaled as he pressed against her.

“I do want to please you,” she whispered, and ran her fingers through his hair. Her fingernails grazed his scalp.

“I do not want to hurt you,” he confessed.

“I know.”

He kissed her again. As they embraced, Dana shifted beneath him, opening her legs farther. She put her hands above her head. He had liked her touching him, and again he had to puzzle out why she had stopped.

“I do not want to hold you down,” he told her. “Nor do you need to be still.”

Mulder again felt her hands on his shoulders, stroking, scratching lightly. Her breasts pressed against his bare chest. Her mouth found his earlobe, which he'd never realized had so many nerve endings. He pushed his erection an inch into her sex, and she inhaled. Her fingers tightened on his shoulders. At the second gentle thrust, she gasped and managed, “Nice,” in a manner he judged to be partially true. At the third thrust; he pushed harder, and the tight chasm of muscles relented. She moved beneath him and cried out. He made sure the fourth stroke was slower.

He tried not to be eager, but a few more thrusts and he filled her: a delicious, hot sensation. The feeling was melted chocolate and warm honey and sunshine and all the goodness of life concentrated into one tight place. “Oh God,” he said as an electric shudder traveled through his body.

The sounds Dana made and her quick breaths suggested the sensation was less than delicious for her. He slid back, and forward, deeper this time. She gasped and cried out again.

“Dana?”

She said something in Gaelic, and in English, “Big. You are big.”

Mulder had not thought so, but he had never lined up and compared, either. “I can stop,” he promised, despite every instinct to the contrary.

“No.” Dana took a slow breath. He stayed deep inside her, but remained still for a moment. “Do not stop.”

“It hurts?” He could finish quickly, if she needed him to. If she could stand it, though, he would rather prolong his pleasure.

“It hurts some. Just big. Not bad. Maybe even nice,” she promised.

“Yes,” he said in whole-hearted agreement, and began moving again. Slow, deep thrusts. “So nice.” If this was married life, he’d been doing it wrong.

Her fingers slid through his hair again. He felt her exhale. Her hips began to move, raising and falling, making each stroke harder and deeper than he intended. He had never had a woman to that before.

“Do be reasonably still,” he amended.

“How still?” Dana seemed to want precise guidelines.

He stopped again, buried between her legs and with no room in his brain for specific perimeters. “I don’t know,” he told her breathlessly. "Still enough I do not accidentally hurt you. Somewhere between playing dead and having an epileptic fit?"

To his surprise, she laughed. And so did he.

*~*~*~*

End: Paracelsus IV

Paracelsus V

*~*~*~*

Dear Melly,

It is late. The fire burns low, crumbling into its last glowing orange and crimson embers. Dana and the baby are curled together in the center of our bed, and it comforts me to listen to their soft breathing. Everyone is asleep. Sometimes I think the whole world is asleep, and I am the only one awake and watchful. I look into the fire and wonder, does no one else see what I see?

Dana does, I think, to some degree. She told me she needs to see life as it is, not as what it might be in some perfect world - in the perfect world I create inside my mind. She has never looked away. I am turning back to look again, to take stock, to calculate the vast amount of water that has passed underneath the bridge.

Do you realize I am thirty-one years old? I would say I am much older, but the calendar is firm. Thirty-one.

I wanted to keep you safe, Melly. To wrap my arms around you and protect you from the world, but I could not. I don't know if I ever did. How could I keep away a darkness stalking the soul from the inside? I did try, and it makes me angry others stood by and watched me try, and fail, and said nothing. We smile and we go about our pretty, polite routines, and inside we die.

Each choice I made seemed like the proper one at the time I made it. Duty, honor, country: those are the foundation on which my world is built. If I was a good boy and ate my vegetables, I got pie. I was a good boy, Melly. A good husband, and a good father, and son, and student, and businessman, and soldier, and all the things a man is expected to be - most before I was finished being a boy myself. There is a star beside my name in the Book of Dutiful, and yet I watched everyone I cared for being taken from me, one by one.

It made me angry. I am beginning to realize how angry.

Now, something selfish and insolent inside me snarls and says, “It is my turn.” Life has taken from me until I felt the wind blowing through me as if I was a sieve, so to Hell with the rules. I want this woman, Dana, because I want her: by my side, in my bed, across from me at the dinner table. I want this child, Emily, because I love her, because I held her when she was born and watched her take her first breath and pretended she was mine.'

My father was fond of Shakespeare, so I'll say it this way: What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

I am healing, and I do it by degrees. Each day, I roll my shoulders, shake my arms, and marvel at this new freedom to move as I please. It is heady, and it is frightening. I have spent years tiptoeing across the thin ice of normal, and Dana and her daughter draw me farther and farther out onto the frozen pond.

If I want to be truthful, I married Dana, in part, because she could not hurt me. I did not love her; I do not love her - not the way I loved you or Sarah. Over the years, I built a wall around me brick by brick, and I allowed no one inside. Yet Dana chips away at my wall, and I do not even notice her doing it. She sticks her pretty red head through the opening she has made and asks in her lilting accent, “Are you ready to come out, Mr. Mulder?” If I growl and snap, she answers, “All right; I will be outside waiting when you are ready.”

Everything I learned since I was sixteen tells me to hang back, to stay at the edge of the pond where it is safe. Safer. To make her to come to me instead of following her across the ice.

But I step forward, exposing myself, and I wait for the ice to crack.

Mulder

*~*~*~*

The clouds slid silently across the moon, dense and black and promising a storm before morning, but the air was still. Not tranquil, but hesitant. Cautious. It was too warm for an overcoat and too cool for shirt sleeves: an indeterminate no-temperature for which no one can prepare. What should have been late autumn in Washington DC felt like spring. People squinted at the night sky, sucked at their teeth thoughtfully, and waited.

The Italianate mansion sat back from the street, partially concealed by manicured hedges and a collection of trees clinging to the last of their scarlet leaves. The Mulder’s was a new house build with old money, an exercise in clean lines and elegant simplicity. Mulder's taste tended toward Spartan, but Melly had a brief love affair with wrought iron, so metal balconies decorated each of the five large arched windows, and a wrought iron fence outlined the corner lot. Overall, the brick walls had a solid, placid look, like a lion settling down in the grass to watch the gazelle.

In the yellow glow of the street lamp, Mulder helped Dana, who held the baby, out of the hired carriage. As she waited on the sidewalk, turning slowly to take in her surroundings, he paid the driver and collected their bags. The driver tipped his hat and clucked to the mare. The horse's hooves clopped hollowly away into the darkness, leaving them standing in front of Mulder's house. The twin gas lamps on the front porch twinkled, welcoming them home.

"This way," he said for lack of something more profound. Mulder unlatched the iron front gate, letting in swing wide open. They were halfway up the walk when it banged shut behind them, making him jump and shattering the genteel silence.

He paused on the porch as a feeling of dread covered him like a wool blanket. Sometimes, traveling was easier than arriving. Going had an optimistic, purposeful feel to it, whereas being required facing reality.

If he opened the door, the house would be empty. Sam would not come running to greet him, clutching sheet music and a horsehair bow. Mulder would not find Melly at her sewing, nor would he discover his father had dropped in to visit and decided to stay for dinner. A chapter of his life had ended. If he opened the front door, the page would turn and a new chapter would begin.

Dana held the sleeping baby against her shoulder and watched Mulder.

His old key still fit the lock. "This must be the place," he said to Dana. His hand shook as he turned the brass knob.

On the other side of the door, a dog's claws fidgeted impatiently against the wood floor, but Grace was too old to bother barking until he saw who it was.

"Hello, Grace," Mulder told the basset hound, who sniffed them. Grace turned away, disappointed, and waddled back toward his bed behind the kitchen stove. "Sam's dog," he explained to Dana, who nodded.

The dog paused, looking back as he heard the name. He sighed and disappeared to the back of the house.

"Grace is a boy," Dana observed.

"Yes." He set the bags down. Mulder lacked the energy to explain the story of how seventy-five pounds of fat and wrinkles on three inches of legs came to be called 'Grace'.

As Mulder lit an oil lamp, the grandfather clock chimed eleven-thirty, and went back to its polite ticking, acting as if nothing had happened. A landscape Melly painted hung over the credenza. The canister on the floor beside it held two umbrellas, a walking stick - his father's - and a baseball bat - his son's. The servants wouldn't return until morning, so except for Mulder, Dana, and Emily, the only things alive in the house were memories. Far too many memories.

"Upstairs," he told Dana. She shifted the baby to one arm and gathered her skirt up to clear the steps. He raised the lamp and followed Dana like she knew the way.

When the architect showed them the plans a decade ago, the first thing Mulder noticed was the grand front staircase. It spiraled gracefully up to the landing, seeming to defy gravity. He had to stop sliding down the banister when Samuel was six, after Sam tried to imitate him and fell off, spraining his wrist.

For Melly, the highlight of the house was the ballroom on the second floor. “We could have a party,” she'd said excitedly, though they never had. The ballroom got used on rainy days if Samuel and Mulder played ball in there or pretended to ice-skate in their sock feet. The door sat ajar, and the big room remained dark and empty.

The door to Samuel's bedroom was closed. Mulder put his hand on the knob, not sure if he wanted to open it or not.

"Are you all right, Mr. Mulder?" Dana asked, startling him.

The lamp cast a glow over her face, making her blue eyes look bottomless, as though she saw directly into his soul.

"I'm fine," he lied, and let go of the knob.

The housekeeper must have gotten his telegram. The nursery had been repainted, and a new cradle and rocking chair waited. He found drawers of clean diapers and blankets and baby clothes, more than one infant could ever manage to wear.

He left Dana in the nursery to get the baby settled in, and walked to the master bedroom at end of the hall. Mulder swallowed against the dry lump in his throat. The big bedroom held the same ornately carved bed, the same furniture, but everything else had been removed. Melly's clothes were gone from the wardrobe, and her perfume bottles absent from the dressing table. The room smelled like lemon oil and clean linens. Mulder could have been a bachelor returning home. No hairbrushes, no earbobs, no fashion magazines, no trace any woman had ever been there.

Mulder saw his housekeeper’s silent comment on his new marriage. He recognized the beautiful quilt covering the high mattress. Melly had finished the quilt before she died. Mulder's mother had the idea to drape it over her coffin like a flag on a soldier's casket. Before they lowered Melly’s coffin into the ground, the minister took the quilt off and handed it to Mulder, who'd dutifully carried it home, still certain he was about to wake up from his nightmare.

He jerked the quilt off the bed, folded it, and put it away in a chest. He'd deal with Poppy in the morning.

He heard soft footsteps in the hall. As the bedroom door opened, he remembered to expect Dana, not Melly.

"Is she asleep?" Mulder asked in a perfunctory non-tone. "Is the nursery all right?"

"It is fine. This house is- It is grand."

"Good," he said, barely hearing her.

“You work at a newspaper?” Dana asked, and looked around the big bedroom.

“I own the newspaper.”

“Oh,” she said, seeming perplexed. “A large newspaper?”

“Not particularly.”

He stared at her, and sat on the sofa in the corner of the bedroom, beside the cold fireplace. A book he'd been reading before bed two Christmases ago was on the table, his place still marked. Normally, Melly's sewing basket would have been close by. He would read to her as she sewed, but the space was empty. Time had stopped in this house and erased one woman's life before it restarted.

"Are you all right, Mr. Mulder?" Dana stood in the center of the bedroom and waited like a bottle of wine presented for his inspection.

"You have asked me and I have answered," he said curtly. "I am fine. How are you?"

"There are ghosts here."

He couldn't tell if she spoke literally or figuratively, so he didn't respond.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No. You must be tired," he said, changing the subject. "It is late. Long past time for bed."

"Yes," she agreed.

She stepped closer, though still yards from where he sat. Seeming uncertain what to do, she began to unbutton the front of her dress.

"Dana..." he said softly, with no idea how he planned to finish his sentence.

She stopped, her fingers holding the black silk fabric.

"I…" He focused on the empty bed behind her. He remembered the last time he shared it with Melly. It had been Christmas night. He was on leave from the cavalry, his chest knitting back together after the bayonet gash. Samuel was asleep. Melly had invited shyly and, carefully and gently, they'd conceived a child. Months later, after he'd found her in the bathtub, he carried Melissa to the bed and sat beside her, watching helplessly as her life bled away.

He noticed Dana again, who stood before him with her bodice unbuttoned. The pretty half-moons of her breasts showed above her corset.

He could not do this.

Washington offered fine hotels. He would take Dana and Emily to one and live there until he could have another house built. He’d start over. This dead room and this haunted house: he would padlock the front door shut and never reenter unless Samuel came home.

"Is this, is this your bedroom, Mr. Mulder?" she asked, breaking the silence. "Did you mean I should leave? Do you and your wife sleep separately?"

"No," he whispered hoarsely. "Please do not leave." Me, he added silently.

"All right."

"You are my wife, Dana," he reminded both of them. "No, you and I do not sleep separately."

She nodded.

He looked at the pale hollow of her throat and at her lovely breasts again. “Take off your dress,” he said, telling rather than asking.

He was home. This was his new life. Reality. Not playing at lovemaking in their stateroom on the ship, or tiptoeing around something more than friendship on the plantation. Dana was his wife, and he, her husband. The only way he would cast the awful memories from this room was by replacing them with new ones. Mulder could make love to Dana and have children with her and grow old with her, and never go back to the man he was.

He could love her, and she might love him in return.

She stripped off her black dress, and her petticoats and underclothes, down to her corset and pantalets. She stepped out of her shoes and rolled off her stockings. As she untied the laces at the back of her corset, Dana looked up at him.

Mulder had stood, but remained across the bedroom. He could love her, he thought again. The idea terrified him.

Dana pulled pins out of her hair. It fell down her back in a cascade of auburn curls. “I am real, Mr. Mulder. You look at me as if I am not.”

“Are you? Real?”

“If you want me, come to me and find out,” she invited.

In a heartbeat, he stood in front of her with his mouth on hers and his hands cupping her face. He needed something warm and real to put his arms around to keep away the darkness. She felt warm and real. Beautiful and delicate and strong and imperfect. If he closed his eyes, he could convince himself she loved him - not because she did, but because he desperately needed her to.

He kissed her like he had beside the road, not hesitating or apologizing for wanting her. As she had that day, she put arms around his neck and parted her lips and let the rest of the ruined world fall away. He touched her breasts, her bottom, brought his hand between her legs and slipped a finger inside her. He stroked the knot of flesh at the top of her sex that made her whimper. He touched her where he pleased, as he pleased, and heard no objections.

Taking off Dana’s corset and pantalets was too much trouble, so he picked her up and set her on the edge of the bed. “Turn around,” he told her for the first time.

His boots hit the rug in two dull thumps, and he had his trousers and drawers unbuttoned in seconds. He knelt behind Dana, who waited on her hands and knees. He ran his hand over her bottom again and, pushing the cotton fabric aside, touched her sex. Her knees parted. He slid his fingers inside her a few times, and his cock. Inch by inch, he watched his body sink onto hers. He heard her gasp. He put his hands around her waist, holding her hips still. She spread her legs farther and, still on her knees, leaned down on her elbows rather than hands. He could penetrate fully with each stroke, hard and fast, deep enough to hurt her if he wanted.

He discovered, within moments, he did not want to hurt her.

He withdrew and told her urgently, “Turn over.”

As soon as she was on her back, he was on top of her and inside her again. He could not kiss her mouth easily, but he felt Dana’s lips against his throat and her breath hot against his neck.

He found her hand, interlaced their fingers, and held her hand against the pillows. “I want to fuck you hard,” he heard himself whisper to her huskily – words he never assembled in a sentence to anyone before, let alone a lady.

Dana’s head nodded. Her free hand slid down the back of his trousers, guiding his hips as he thrust. Deep. Hard. Her hips rose to meet his. Over and over until every thought left his brain and his existence concentrated into a pool of tension inside him desperate for release. He heard Dana’s gasps and cries. Her hand remained on his hip, guiding and encouraging each stroke. Her fingernails pressed sharply into the cheek of his buttock.

He opened his eyes, ready to order her to look at him, but found she was. He kissed her. Her forehead, her temple, her hand, her wrist – anything within reach. His orgasm came. As soon as he could move again, he kissed her lips – long and deep and hard.

In this end, his definition of ‘hard’ – and ‘fuck’ - did not live up to the standards of ravishment in the pornographic novels locked in his desk. He found the sweaty experience rapturous, but lay staring at the ceiling as Dana undressed, wondering what in the hell he would say to explain himself.

She'd weighed the consequences and chosen to marry him, despite what anyone on the planet, including Mulder, would have advised her. He had promised to make love her as politely or passionately as she allowed. He supposed this constituted ‘passionately.’ He hoped so, at least; if there was still more to passion than he had discovered in the past week, he might not survive it.

“Will you sleep in your clothes, Mr. Mulder?” Dana asked. She returned to bed, nude, but having braided her hair and found a glass of water. He had remembered to tuck in and pull the front of his trousers together.

“For now.”

She didn’t question him. She did share her glass of water, and had him move so she could fold down the blanket and sheet. “Is ‘to fuck’ is the infinitive of a vulgar verb for lovemaking?” she asked casually.

He blinked. “Yes. It is very vulgar. Do not repeat it again.”

“I am sorry,” she said. “I wanted to be certain.”

She slid beneath the covers, paused, but rolled away from him as if to go to sleep.

“Dana,” he began hesitantly, as he lay down. The morning after they first made love on the ship, he wanted her again. She had asked him to go slowly; she was sore. Since – and there had been six times since – she did as he asked. She never made excuses or questioned him or even frowned. Once, she requested he take his forearm off her hair. “Do not tell me that was pleasant for you.”

“I am fine,” she assured him. He curled up against her back. She was warm and sweaty and soft, and smelled of lovemaking. “It is not unpleasant. Nor more than uncomfortable. Each time hurts less. You are good to me, and I want to be good to you.” She teased, “Do you want me to say I barely noticed, Mr. Mulder?”

His mouth twitched in amusement. “No.”

“Sore? No, I am not sore, Mr. Mulder,” she continued sarcastically. “Why would you think so? Try again with a French rolling pin, Mr. Mulder. My knees should be strangers to each other, and I prefer to stand rather than sit at the dinner table.”

He swatted her bare bottom with his hand, and she jumped and giggled. “You are bad.” He chuckled. “I worry am I becoming coarse, but you are wicked. For that, I may bend you over the dinner table sometime and enjoy the miracle of those split-crotch pantalets.”

She shifted against him, laying her head on his outstretched arm. Her head fitted nicely beneath his chin, and her round bottom against his pelvis. He rubbed the spot affectionately where he had spanked. She exhaled. “So long our dinner guests do not mind, please yourself.”

He put his other arm around her shoulders. “I am teasing,” he said, though the dinner table idea had taken root. “I have been a long time between bedmates, and we are newlyweds.” He hedged at the truth. “I know you want to please me, but do not let me hurt or humiliate you. I told you, you are my wife. Not a prostitute.”

She paused. “I do not think you know how to hurt or humiliate me, Mr. Mulder. I think-” She stopped. “Mr. Mulder, I am worried you will say I am wicked again if I tell you what I think. Or be angry with me.”

“I will not,” he promised. “Tell me.”

He felt her inhale. “I think you are a noble, passionate man who married young, and to a woman you had to love gently. Which you did. For years.” She paused again. “Mr. Mulder, I told you I would settle for being wanted. If you want me on my hands and knees, or on the dining room table, or on my knees beneath the table? Fine. If you want silk scarves and riding crops? Fine. It is not humiliating to please my husband, any more than you are humiliated to open doors for me or bring me the baby to nurse. You may play at being rough, but you are not. Nor is being curious and playful the same as being sinful or perverse. And to be cruel, to truly hurt and shame a woman? I do not think it is within your character.”

“Your offer is a slippery slope. I worry you are mistaken,” he admitted to the darkness.

She was either tired enough or certain enough she did not argue.

Silence lapsed so long it seemed rude to interrupt it. Mulder curled up to Dana tightly and kept his arms around her until she fell asleep. Without her clothing, she felt small next to him. She was correct; he played at being rough, but he had no desire to hurt or humiliate her. Dr. Waterston’s appetites must have differed. Dana knew far better how to please a man than Mulder knew how to please a woman.

He lay wondering what people might do in bed with silk scarves.

He got up and checked on the baby. Stripped off his shirt and trousers. Found a washcloth and wiped off. He pulled Melly’s quilt out of the chest and lay down with it on the sofa, on the opposite side of the room from the bed where Dana slept.

The clock downstairs struck midnight. Outside, the rain began.

After a few minutes, Dana got up, nude. She took his hand, left the quilt, and led Mulder back to their bed.

*~*~*~*

Another dream of another time. In this one, a mournful whistle sounded, and two-dozen heads turned in unison.

"That's the train," Mulder informed Byers excitedly, in case John Byers didn’t recognize a train. Railroads had been around for decades; they weren't a novelty in the East. "The train, it's coming."

Byers looked less than impressed.

Most of the young men on the platform were university students going home for the break, but Mulder would stay at Harvard, hoping to get ahead on his studies. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could go home. Instead, his parents came for a visit. More importantly, his parents were bringing Samuel, who Mulder hadn't seen since the beginning of the term.

The engine clacked past, and the coal car, and a series of red passenger cars smudged black with soot. Mulder loped through the steam, hurrying to catch up and craning to see a familiar face in any of the windows.

Before the train came to a stop, his father leaned out from the steps of the first car. Bill Mulder held the railing with one hand and raised his walking stick with the other. "Fox!" he called, jumping down.

"Father!"

Mulder threw his arms around him, cherishing the scent of cherry pipe tobacco and brandy and home. Even at eighteen-years-old, even married with a family of his own, a son was allowed to miss his father.

"How was your trip?"

"Horrible. Your mother may never be the same. The engine hit four cows; you're going to hear about it."

The train groaned to a stop. The engine sighed with relief, and passengers spilled out of every opening.

"Oh, Fox, it was horrible," his mother informed him as he lifted her down from the steps and set her safely on the platform. "The train hit four cows." She paused for breath and to kiss him on each cheek. "It was horrible. What an awful, belching, unnatural monstrosity. I don't think I'll ever be the same."

"I don't think my hand will ever be the same after your mother's death grip,” his father said. “She was certain we would derail at every curve."

"I couldn't help it, Fox. Your father said trains reach twenty miles an hour. I was sure every second was my last. It was horrible. I don't know how I'll survive the trip back."

Mulder smiled. If his mother wanted to take the stagecoach instead of the train back, all she had to do was ask; she had a good time pretending to be afraid and his father had a good time comforting her. Even in a crowd of people, his parents connected, as though they shared some secret they didn’t tell the rest of the world. His father offered his arm and his mother took it, resting her gloved hand lightly on the fine wool fabric of his overcoat.

"Twenty miles an hour," Mulder echoed dutifully. He knew trains could go much faster and his father hadn't told her. "How terrifying."

Senator Mulder winked at his son, and reached over to rumple his hair as though he was still seven. Mulder grinned and submitted, stooping. He stood several inches taller than his father.

"Mother, you look beautiful. Is this a new dress?"

She answered it was, and his father said it cost millions of silk worms their lives before Mulder stopped listening.

A light-skinned Negro woman had stepped out of the train car. She carried a carpetbag in her hand and a little boy on her hip. Her hair was covered with a white kerchief, and the steam made her calico dress flutter, showing the outline of her legs. Her father's Cherokee heritage showed in her face, as it showed in Melly's. It gave her a proud, exotic air and caused a murmur among the well-bred men on the platform.

If anyone looked closely, the child she carried resemblance her, but few people looked closely. It was a regrettable, yet unforgivable error of birth: Melly and Sarah's mother had been Jack Kavanaugh's wife; hers was his slave.

"That's one pretty nig-" a young man near Mulder said before he realized he wasn't in South Carolina. He amended, "colored girl."

"That's my boy," Mulder shouted, and reached up to take Samuel from her. "My baby boy," he announced victoriously. He held the toddler high in the air before lowering him and hugging him tightly, afraid he might get away. Mulder closed his eyes, savoring the warmth of his son. "Oh, my Sam. How's my Sammy? Was he good on the train, Poppy?"

"He did fine, sir," she answered, keeping her eyes down. Another of the Mulders' servants took the carpetbag, and Sam's nurse disappeared back into the train car.

"Da-dee, Da-dee, Da-dee," Samuel chanted, pounding his fist against Mulder's chest.

"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy," Mulder answered, spinning him around so he squealed. "My Sammy boy! You're so big, baby boy."

The crowd of young men on the platform grinned indulgently, but fell silent.

"Surprise, Fox," his mother murmured. "Happy birthday, sweetheart."

Mulder looked up, curious. Another woman had exited the train car, her pink dress fluttering.

Behind him, he heard Byers whisper "My God." His roommate had seen pictures of Melissa, but he'd never seen her in the flesh. Melissa had been away, ill, so no one at school had. Byers had dubbed her Mulder's “phantom wife,” much mentioned but never glimpsed, and said he'd begun to doubt her existence.

Melissa hesitated on the metal steps. Spotting Mulder, she smiled uncertainly. He smiled back, relieved. She was Melly again, instead of the tearful, erratic stranger who'd taken her place after the baby came. Her skirt swayed, showing her petticoats and the tops of her dainty boots as she took one step down, holding tightly to the railing.

The crowd edged closer to the train, making Melly shrink back.

"Mah-mee," Samuel announced, pointing to and naming her the way he'd point and announce 'dog' or 'cat.'

"This wasn't my idea, Fox." Bill Mulder raised his hands to declare his innocence. "The doctors think it's too much excitement for her and I agree, but she wanted to come for your birthday. She and your mother have been conspiring."

"Oh, you think it's too much excitement to eat a peach, you old fuddy-duddy. Melissa's been fine on the train, haven't you, dear?" his mother responded. Melly nodded. She still watched Mulder from underneath her eyelashes. People tended to call Melly “dear” a lot, and it would never have dawned on her to object. "She misses Fox, and it's not too much excitement at all. Stand up straight, dear; don't slouch," she reminded her. Melly obediently squared her shoulders.

"Still watch her 'round the baby," Poppy reminded him softly, and Mulder nodded. He smiled, shifted Samuel to his hip, and went to kiss his wife's cheek.

Another murmur swept on the platform as they embraced chastely. His classmates knew Mulder was married - an oddity for their age and station - but he'd become a much-envied young man. At eighteen, he had what they dreamed of: a healthy son, a beautiful wife, wealthy, loving parents, and nothing but great prospects. Mulder seemed ahead of the game. His future was as set as the stone walls of Harvard.

Years later, when John Byers had a family of his own, Mulder asked him if life ever seemed too tight, like a suit cut a quarter-inch too snug. Although it looked fine and was perfectly wearable, it felt confining, never allowing him to completely relax. Life was fine, as long as he didn't want to take a deep breath.

When Mulder and Byers were twenty-three, he'd asked, after a few glasses of wine, if Byers ever felt that way. His wife Susanne had refilled their goblets, and they sat in the parlor, watching Byers' young daughters take their first steps.

Byers had said no. Mulder remembered him shaking his head and not seeming to understand. Despite the hardships Fate had thrown at Byers, he was delighted with his young family and little home and lot in life. Susanne was not the breathtaking beauty Melissa was, and she never gave John Byers a son – though, watching them at home together, Mulder suspected they tried frequently. Byers never moved out of the little house he bought with the last of his late parents’ life insurance money, and he never left his first job as editor at Mulder’s newspaper.

Mulder never asked again.

*~*~*~*

At its conception in the year Caesar first noticed Cleopatra, it was a brilliant system, but by 1582 the faulty Julian calendar had accumulated ten extra days, so March 21st fell on March 31st. To correct this, the Gregorian system was developed, and in October 1582, Pope Gregory XIII moved everyone two hundred and forty hours backward and started over. Medieval Popes must have been able to roll back the sun.

Those hours became the lost time, the violet-black, surreal no-time between the last bit of night and the first breath of morning. Between lovers, between a down mattress and soft blankets, between strong arms and yielding flesh, the universe cast down its eyes demurely and looked away. Time held its breath, denying anything had happened - although it had.

Mulder told Dana through chattering teeth, "She's still asleep," as he returned from checking on the baby. He set the lamp on the bedside table and slid beneath the covers. "Someone should light a fire in here. Maybe I'm used to Georgia, but it's freezing."

As if half awake, Dana moved toward him, thoughtfully bringing all the heat in the bed with her. To get him to stop shivering, she put her arms around him and fitted her body against his. Her breasts pressed against his chest, and her hair tickled his nose. He stroked her bare backside as he lay with her. Her body felt soft and lazy. And warm. Some secret places warmer than others. A pleasant tingling gathered in his groin.

"Are you awake?" he asked, and was 'um-hummed' from the back of her throat. Her breasts were full, and he weighed one in his hand. He drew his thumb across the erect nipple. “I want you,” he told her in the lamplight. “Before I must leave for work. Lie back.”

Dana shifted obligingly to her back without opening her eyes. She purred as he kissed down her neck, across her collarbone, and to her breast. The faint yellow lamplight played across her ivory skin. Mulder reached up, lacing his fingers through hers, while her other hand rested on the back of his head.

She winced and opened her eyes as he touched between her legs. She felt slick, though, and inviting. She smelled sour and salty – of her sweat and his. He slipped his fingers into her sex. She gasped and shifted her hips back.

He wasn't a moron, nor as naïve as Dana seemed to think. Yes, sexual intercourse was uncomfortable for women, but he knew some women enjoyed being close to a man: touching, kissing, caressing. Sarah had, as far as their teenage fumbling had gone. Mulder’s parents had been affectionate toward each other. Dana either enjoyed being close, or she was good enough at pretending to convince him - though it wasn't hard to fool a man who desperately wanted to be fooled.

He wondered if he could get Dana to enjoy intercourse more – the way he had read some women did. Doubtful, he supposed. If a man decided to put his prick in any orifice of Mulder’s body, Mulder would want him to remove it as quickly as possible.

He rubbed his slick finger in little circles over her clitoris, gauging her response. Dana seemed pained. He watched her grimace as he slid his index and middle finger in and out of her sex. He was not sure what the female orgasm looked like – but not like a man poured salt into her most private of wounds.

“I am sore, Mr. Mulder,” Dana said, with her hand clutching the sheet beneath her. “Please-”

“I will be careful.” He felt sore himself, but erect and impatient beneath his drawers. “And quick, if you want.”

“Would you like something else?” She started to sit up.

“No, this is fine. If you turn over, I am more likely to forget myself.”

Giving up on her pleasure, he pushed his drawers down and lay down on top of her. He came to her under the guise of sex, but in truth, if he could stay in bed with her in his arms, he might be able to face the coming day. Let troubles come to him rather than going out to meet them.

“Mr. Mulder-”

"I like being close to you," he whispered to her. 'I love you' was a betrayal and 'Thank you' seemed pitiful, so he told her, "I like this. I do. I've missed you."

"You have missed me?" She rolled her thumbs along the lower vertebrae of his spine and opened her legs. “It had been at least four hours, Mr. Mulder, and I have been asleep right beside you. How have you missed me?”

He wasn't sure why he'd said that. He wasn't inclined to stop and think about it, so he answered, "Oh, it's a long walk to the nursery and back."

He pressed his erection against her and closed his eyes, savoring the prospect of lovemaking before he began a long, tense day.

"Ouch,” she said unhappily, and asked, “Does a two-minute trip to the nursery do this to you?"

Mulder stopped and pushed back from her. "No," he said icily. "It is not. How dare you!"

She stared at him with her forehead crinkled. She was nude, and her chest and neck reddened from the stubble on his face.

"I'm going to work," he decided, sitting up. His erection was uncomfortable, but he would live. "The housekeeper is Poppy. She's here by six. She'll see to anything you and Emily need and she'll be polite about it, or I'll have her head." He paused. “Do not ever say that again.”

"I do not understand. What did I say? Why are you angry?"

"I'm not angry," he lied, his words clipped. He got as far as the edge of the bed before he exploded, "How dare you! How dare you think I would-" He searched for the right words. "Harm Emily."

“Harm Emily?” The bed shifted as Dana sat up. She tried to touch him. He jerked away. "I did not say that."

"You did. You said I had been to the nursery and come back wanting you.”

"Yes. You were gone two minutes and returned saying you missed me. How can you miss me in two minutes? How can you not be spent from last night? I am beginning to wonder about your preternatural libido and stamina, Mr. Mulder, but I was being silly. Maybe I said it wrong. Or misunderstood you. What do you mean 'harm Emily?' You care for Emily. You ask me a hundred times a day if I think she is all right. I see you with her. I hear you call her 'Emmy' and say you are 'Daddy.' I think you pretend she is your daughter. The baby Melissa carried. Why would you harm her? I do not understand."

He exhaled, knowing he overreacted. "No, of course I would never hurt her."

"Please tell me what is wrong or I have done."

For a heartbeat, he thought about it, and for the first time since before Samuel was born, he almost told someone the truth.

Still sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her, he answered, "Melly had a sister named 'Sarah.' That was what our daughter would have been called. I just call Emily 'Emmy.' I will stop, if you like."

Dana succeeded in putting one hand, and both, on his bare back.

"Sarah died," Mulder added after an uncomfortable pause. "Melly's older sister Sarah. She died. We were fifteen and Melly was fourteen. Sarah was my friend."

"I am sorry."

It took several tries before he continued. "Sarah was my fiancée, Dana. We grew up together, our fathers served in Congress together, and it was one of those 'everyone expected it' situations. Except I loved her, and I know she loved me."

"How did she die?"

He wet his lips. "They say, of cholera. Which is untrue."

"How did she die, Mr. Mulder?"

"She miscarried. Whether accidentally or purposely, I will never know. Hemorrhaged. There was an infection..."

"I am sorry," she repeated in the same soft voice, still stroking his bare shoulders. “How horrible.”

He listened to the rain drumming on the roof above them.

"Did you know about the baby?" she asked cautiously.

"No. Not until it was too late. She must have known, but she was afraid to tell me. I would have married her. I saw her the day before, and she didn’t tell me." He shifted and rearranged his hands on the crumpled sheet. "I did know about Samuel, though. Before Melly and I married."

"Oh," she said.

“So there it is. The truth. I am not as noble as you thought.”

“That is not a rare circumstance, Mr. Mulder. Not where I come from,” she told him. “That is young for a man to be married, but if you loved the girl and wanted the child? Some people would say a small sin gave way to a great blessing.”

"This is not where you come from. People here say many things, Dana. I'm sure they'll relish saying them to you."

He hung his head, unwilling to look at her. He examined his bare feet as they dangled a few inches above the rug. He felt cold again. As he sat, gooseflesh formed on his shoulders and arms, and the dark hair rose protectively.

“Would you take back your son?” she asked. Before he could say no, she continued, “No. No more than I would take back my daughter. Or moving to Savannah, or meeting you. You are an idealist, Mr. Mulder, but sometimes circumstances are not ideal. Forgive yourself for being fallible.”

He looked back at her. She sat on the mattress with her hair in a pretty disarray, with her breasts swollen, and not wearing a stitch. “You are wise, for a woman with no secrets.”

“Oh, I have secrets,” she assured him. “Will you come back to bed?"

"It's past five. I'm usually up by five. I won't go back to sleep."

"I did not ask you to go back to sleep. I asked you to come back to bed."

"But I won't sleep," he insisted.

"I am not asking you to sleep, Mr. Mulder."

"Oh." The tips of his ears warmed as he took her meaning. "Oh. You want me?”

“To come back to bed, yes. And, if you like, lay back, and let me show you how we resolve matters when you have been rough and I am sore.”

“I lay back?” he echoed. “What happens?”

“Good things.” She drummed her fingers against the mattress. “Or I can lay back, and you can be very, very gentle.”

“May I have both?”

She nodded, and he slipped back beneath the warm covers and into another few minutes of no-time, forgetting himself and the world outside their bed.

*~*~*~*

He realized, after he wrote the note, he'd never seen Dana read anything. She enjoyed him reading aloud to her, but it possible, as a woman, she couldn't read well. And it wasn't likely she had any acquaintance the poem, published in 1860 and not widely known before the war.

Mulder initialed it, regardless. If she didn't know the verse, she wouldn't know he misquoted. Also, merely being literate did not guarantee she could decipher his handwriting.

'Passing stranger, you do not know how longingly I have looked upon you. You must be she I was seeking. You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, and you take of my beard, breast, and hands in return. I will see to it I do not lose you. M.'

He looked at the slip of paper, hesitating. Mulder had never written a love letter, and bastardizing Walt Whitman wasn't the way to start. Lust wasn't love, and he'd rather Dana read Mark Twain's stories if she wanted something to laugh at.

Mulder picked up the pencil again and wrote across the bottom of the page, 'Sleep well. I am going to the newspaper. I will see you and Emmy at noon. The housekeeper's name is Poppy. She will see to anything you need. Make yourself at home. M.'

He tore off the top half, tucked the original note in his coat pocket, and propped the bottom of the page against the lamp for Dana to find once she woke. He fenced Emily in beside her with heavy pillows so the baby couldn't roll off the bed, kissed them both, and blew out the lamp as he left.

*~*~*~*

The streetcar from the White House down Pennsylvania Avenue could have him at work in ten minutes, but Mulder walked as he tried to recapture the rhythm and flow of the city he called home. He whistled to himself.

Wagons of produce rolled past, bound for Central Market, wheels splashing over the cobblestones. Shopkeepers' brooms whooshed over wet sidewalks, clearing the way for the first patrons to arrive. In the cafes, gossip hummed over cups of coffee. Raindrops slipped from the edge of his umbrella and horse-drawn trolleys squealed past as Washington woke.

Samuel was Mulder’s first child, but The Evening Star was his second, born a few years later, to his own father's dismay. Bill Mulder tried to dissuade Mulder from buying the business, and to persuade him to adopt a more proper, hands-off approach to the newspaper trade. Gentlemen owned businesses; they didn't run them. To that end, Mulder invested in several publishing houses - and railroads and telegraphs and other companies - and tallied his quarterly profits in a most genteel manner. The Evening Star, however... Poppy said he shouldn't wear suits to work; he ruined them. Mulder started the day with his collar buttoned, his hair combed back, and his waistcoat on, and ended it with his sleeves rolled up and his collar and waistcoat off, cursing and getting ink stains on his trousers as he climbed inside one of the huge presses to fix it.

The newspaper was his passion and his refuge. In a society clothed in fine linen and white lies, Mulder printed the truth. He might not be able to right the wrong, but he could expose it. Politics, women's suffrage, slavery, the war: regardless of his views, The Evening Star welcomed debate while most newspapers couldn't find both sides of a coin. Avoiding the rumor-mongering filling his competition's pages, he challenged hypocrisy, he exposed the liars and the thieves - and he signed his name, regardless of the consequences.

His father gave up trying to dissuade him, and regarded his son's passion for newsprint as an eccentric hobby - like growing orchids or building tiny ships in bottles. Until Senator Mulder died, if asked profession his son chose, his father took a deep draw of cherry tobacco smoke from his pipe and said, 'Fox is an idealist.'

The building was still quiet as Mulder arrived. It was The Washington 'Evening' Star; the presses would run after lunch. In the morning, reporters wrote copy, telegraph operators on the top floor scanned the ticker-tape for Associated Press stories, and the editors laid out the pages. Once the people in Byers' part of the building decided what to print, it went to Frohike's men to print it. To set the type, prime the machines, feed the rolls of paper into the presses, and to cut and fold, by hand, a quarter-million newspapers each afternoon, six afternoons a week.

John Byers greeted Mulder with a smile and a warm handshake that would have turned into a hug if Mulder hadn't pulled back.

"How are you?"

"I'm glad to be back," Mulder answered. He slid into the old chair behind his desk. Someone had emptied the waste bin and cleared away the coffee cups, but unfortunately left the clutter. Once things made it to his desk, they tended to stay there until they grew legs and escaped or crumbled to dust.

"I'm sorry I wasn't at the, at the funeral,” Byers said. “I wanted to tell you I'm sorry. About Melissa. And your father. I didn't know until Susanne wrote to me. I am so sorry."

Mulder straightened a stack of papers he'd left out four years ago. "Thank you," he said formally.

"Susanne spoke with Poppy last week at the market. She said you've remarried and have a new baby. Congratulations. Susanne and I would like to have you and your wife join us for dinner."

"Again, thank you. Another night. I'd like to let her get settled in."

Byers cleared his throat, uncomfortable. They were old friends, but different men than before the war. The years of fighting and blood and loss hadn't broken them, but they each changed - altered enough their friendship no longer fit as it once did.

"Is there any news about Samuel?" Byers asked.

Mulder looked up. "No. Not yet."

"Many soldiers are still making their way home. More men return every day."

Samuel wasn't a farmer's son who had to walk home coatless and barefooted. All he needed to do was make his way to any government office and say he was the late Senator Mulder's grandson. Byers knew as well as Mulder.

His editor-in-chief shifted his feet. "Anyway, it's good to have you back."

"It's good to be back," Mulder responded honestly.

Byers nodded. "Is there anything you need? The books? Do you want to look at the accounts?"

"I think... I think I need to get settled in again. It feels- I don’t know.”

His office felt the same as his bedroom had the night before. Like a set awaiting the performer’s return. Except his role was played by a different actor. Mulder half-expected someone to notice and tell him to leave because he didn't belong there. Months ago, he was knee-deep in blood, killing men and boys he had no qualm with so they wouldn't kill him first. At least at home, he had Dana and Emily. At work, he wore his suit again and sat at his desk, like a few days had passed. To him, eons must have passed, and the life he returned to belonged to a stranger.

"It gets better," Byers assured him. "I returned home to my wife, my children and... It does get better."

Mulder nodded, and opened a desk drawer, avoiding eye contact.

"I'll let you get settled back in," Byers said and closed Mulder's office door as he left.

Once Byers’ footsteps faded, Mulder unlocked and opened a bottom drawer. Frohike hadn’t managed to pick the lock; the drawer still contained a collection of pornographic books, drawings, photographs, and tintypes Mulder remembered finding riveting before the war. He remembered arriving early to work and staying late to look at or read them. Alone. With his office door locked and a handkerchief close by. The images of nude, beautiful women had once been a refuge and a release. Mulder thumbed through the familiar pictures and remembered Dana touching him an hour ago. At her invitation. The feel of her hand, the scent of her skin. How her back arched and thighs trembled as he entered her, and how her breath and lips felt against his neck. How she whispered in his ear for him to hurry, but not stop.

The pornographic pictures no longer seemed as captivating. Appealing in a pinch, yes – but buying stale bread when he had cake at home. “Love sought is good,” Bill Mulder had said, quoting Shakespeare, “but love given unsought: better.”

Mulder put the old photographs and marriage manuals and novels away, locked the drawer, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work.

*~*~*~*

He made three trips to the vast AP telegraph room on fourth floor and two to the reporters' desks on the third floor. He watched Frohike supervising the typesetters piecing together the evening's front page, and followed Byers around like a shadow for an hour before Mulder realized why he was so restless. As much as he enjoyed having dusty newsprint under his fingers again and the acrid scent of hot metal and ink around him, he found himself eyeing the clock as it edged toward lunchtime.

In the last two weeks, he hadn't been away from Emily and Dana for more than a few minutes. He missed them.

"Why don't you go home?" Melvin Frohike asked, as Mulder stared over his shoulder again. Frohike had run the mechanics of a newspaper longer than Mulder had been on this Earth, and didn't need a supervisor. "You're worse than a bitch without her puppies. Have lunch, check on the new wife and baby, and come back and accomplish something."

"Do you want to come along?” Mulder asked on impulse. “Meet Dana and Emily?"

Mulder noticed covert glances between the typesetters and engravers. Anyone who thought women the worst gossips had never worked in a building of newsmen. The baby was a girl and named Dana or Emily. By two o'clock, everyone who was anyone in DC would know. He’d received somber congratulations all morning, but no one had the nerve to ask him details. Most of the men, like Byers, had been at war when Melly and Bill Mulder died, and found it awkward paying condolences in one breath and asking after Mulder’s new wife and baby in the next.

Frohike held up stubby fingers stained black with ink. "I'd love to come, but I have to look my best if I'm gonna to meet a pretty lady."

"You mean you know some way to improve on this stunning façade?"

"Everything's under control here. Go home, Mulder," Byers agreed. He brought in another stack of handwritten stories for Frohike's men to translate into print. The deadline for articles was eleven, but Byers forever rushed downstairs with “just one more” at eleven-fifteen.

"I'm going home for lunch," Mulder decided, and rolled down his sleeves.

"What an original, brilliant idea." Frohike scowled at Byers and snatched the new articles. "Stunning façade," Frohike muttered.

*~*~*~*

Mulder looked around the kitchen nervously. He almost went back outside to make sure he had the right address.

Lunch was nearly ready; the old cook offered Mulder a taste from a wooden spoon and a welcome peck on the cheek as he passed. Loaves of bread came out of the oven; their mouth-watering aroma permeated the air. The long dining room table was set for two, with a vase of flowers decorating the center. The fireplace crackled, and a maid he didn't recognize smiled and resumed polishing the silver. The little maid screwed up her face in concentration.

This is how it feels like to come home to normalcy, Mulder thought, but felt guilty. No crisis, no tears. He came home for lunch and found lunch.

He discovered Dana in the nursery rocking Emily, and paused in the doorway to watch them. Samuel was five when Mulder built the house, so the nursery had been an optimistic afterthought consisting of the architect crossing out 'bedroom' and writing in 'nursery' on the blueprints. Until Melissa become pregnant two Christmases ago and come down with decorating fever, it sat empty - a reminder of things that weren't.

"Hello," he said quietly.

Dana looked up. "Hello," she whispered back, smiling. "She's asleep. How was your work?"

"It was fine. Perhaps I will take you to my office, later." He sat on the window seat with his back to the steamy window. Outside, the storm passed, sounding like it rained out of habit rather than malice. "How are you? Is everything all right?"

"Everything is fine. I keep getting lost in this house."

"Did Poppy come today?" he ventured. "I didn't see her downstairs."

"I sent her home. She was upset, I think."

Mulder sighed. "I'll deal with her. I'm sorry, Dana. I should have warned you. Poppy is - She was Samuel's nurse and she's protective of us, but I didn't expect her to be rude. She’s high-strung, but I won't have that."

"She was civil. She took care of Emily: changed her, bathed her. She is good with babies. I had the feeling I was being - oh, what is the word when you decide how much a thing is worth?"

"Appraised?"

"Yes. I was appraised this morning. She asked if your son went to work with you. I said he had not, and she was confused. Poppy thought you returned home because you found Samuel."

"Oh no." He hadn't dreamed Poppy would interpret his telegram to mean that.

"She has his room ready," Dana continued. "I told her you had not found Samuel, and she asked if she should put his things away, like she put Melissa's things away. I told her not to. To wait. You were still looking for him. Was that all right?"

He leaned forward and kissed her warm lips. "Perfect."

*~*~*~*

After lunch, he trailed his fingers over the ivory keys, aimlessly striking a few chords. The piano remained in tune, but Melly and Samuel were the performers. Mulder's musical gifts best suited being in the audience.

This was his favorite room. His books lined the walls, so they called it the library, although Mulder usually got relegated to the desk or the comfortable chair in the corner. The piano had been his present to Melissa, but the other instruments were Samuel's. If it had strings or keys, Sam could play it. What begin as violin and piano lessons for a five-year-old moved on to cello and guitar and - to his music tutor's horror - banjo and harmonica. Sam even had an accordion Mulder agreed to in some fit of overindulgent insanity.

Two wooden easels stood near the windows where they could catch the morning sun. One - Melly's – was empty, and her boxes of oil paints and brushes had been removed. A few of her paintings still hung on the walls, but the unfinished ones had been stored away somewhere. Like the quilt on the bed the night before, her paint-splattered easel had 'accidentally' been left behind like skeletal remains.

"Did Melissa draw this as well?" Dana asked as she paused in front of the other easel.

The pad bore a charcoal sketch of a man, a teenage boy, and a dog in the woods. Snow covered the ground and blanketed the tree branches, pristine except for their footprints. The man carried a rifle, and the basset hound loped ahead of them in pursuit of a rabbit. The dog’s long ears flew and his tongue lolled happily.

"No, Samuel." Mulder sip from his wineglass. "Melly liked oils; Sam likes charcoal or ink. That's Sam, my father, and Grace hunting."

"I do not know art, but this seems excellent. I can feel the chill in the air, and their excitement. It is as if I was there."

Mulder set his glass on a table and joined her at the window.

"Sam has a gift. He draws what he sees, like he plays whatever he hears. We've published some of his sketches, and there are probably more." Mulder folded down the sheets of paper flipped over the top of the easel. "Poppy." He showed Dana the sketch of a tall, pretty, pregnant mulatto woman standing on the back porch with a basket of laundry. Behind her, on the clothesline, rows of sheets billowed in the wind.

He flipped again, and grinned.

"Me." A man in an officer's uniform sat astride a horse, looking heroic. The picture was drawn from the perspective of a small child, making the rider seem god-like. "Dramatic, but me."

He folded another sheet down. His grin went from indulgent to wistful. On the easel, a woman in a nightgown waited at the window where Mulder and Dana now stood. Her dark hair was down, falling over her shoulders. In the sketch, one hand rested on her pregnant belly as she stared through the glass, frightened and watching for her husband to come home.

"Melly." His chest ached and his throat felt tight. "That's- I didn't know this was-” He inhaled slowly. “I've shown you photographs, but this looks more like her. That's Melly, before... The day before she died. Sam told me he drew this for me.” He added, “That's Sarah," and rubbed his fingertip over the figure's belly, smudging the charcoal lines.

"I did not realize she was so far along."

"Seven months." Mulder answered, but looked away from the drawing.

"She was very beautiful."

"Yes, she was."

"Mr. Mulder..." she began soothingly.

"Melly's been gone for fifteen months. The wound is not as raw as it was. I love her and I miss her, but what pains me is knowing Samuel drew this. I know what he was thinking, feeling as he sketched her. As he waited for me to come home.” He said hoarsely, “I miss him so much."

"I know you do."

Dana put her head on his chest and her arms around his waist, steadying him. For Mulder, returning home hadn’t required surviving a single, horrific pain, as he’d expected, but enduring a seemingly endless series of tiny, random, wounds. One onslaught on his heart, he could steel himself and bear. Instead, every hour brought another unexpected little wound. A series of minor scratches, compared to some of his past injuries. If given a choice, though, he’d prefer to be beaten to a pulp once, and by some painful memory with the decency to announce itself beforehand.

Since the universe remained indifferent to his preference, Mulder closed his eyes and stood with his chin nestled on top of Dana’s head.

As the ache began to lessen, someone nearby cleared her throat.

Mulder glanced up, let go of Dana, and stepped back. A tall, pretty mulatto woman stood in the doorway, holding a baby on her hip.

"Poppy. Hello."

He might have hugged her, or at least shaken her hand, had Dana not been there. Mulder didn't want to give Dana the wrong idea, and regardless, Poppy kept her distance. She watched Dana the way one sized up fellow bidders at the auction.

"It's not right, me staying home," Poppy answered tersely. She shifted the toddler to her other hip. "I belong here."

She wore her work uniform: a black dress, a starched white apron, and a white kerchief covering her black hair. She was a striking woman in her mid-thirties, an octoroon, with African, Indian, and mostly white blood. She was tall, with high cheekbones, skin the color of cafe au lait, and dark,
vigilant eyes. An ex-slave, she was a competent and loyal housekeeper, but she lacked the dignity and effortless efficiency most senior house servants possessed. Rather, Poppy had a high-strung intensity, as though she was at the edge of a storm. Like Waterston's mistress, Dori, Poppy's mother had been the Haitian slave mistress of a white plantation owner. The greatest Voodoo priestess of her time, at least according to Poppy.

Mulder responded, "Dana told me there was a misunderstanding. About Sam."

She shook her head brusquely. "There anything I can get you, sir?"

Poppy once caught him perched on his parents' dining room table shrieking like a girl and about to wet his trousers because of a spider on the floor. He'd been five, and it had been a big spider. Poppy, seven, had joined him, and also refused to come down until Sarah smashed the spider with her shoe and rescued them. Needless to say, Mulder was only 'sir' in public.

"No. We were looking at some of Sam's drawings. Did you know he'd sketched you?"

"No. Sir. I did not, sir. Can I have my girl here?" She gestured to the light-skinned, dark-haired toddler she carried. "For today. There ain't nobody to look after her, and she won't be no trouble."

"You may," Dana answered. "For today."

Poppy waited for Mulder to speak.

Mulder looked at the pretty little girl, and his cheat hurt again. He felt another thread pulled from the threadbare fabric inside him. She should have been his daughter, but wasn't.

"What's her name?" he asked.

"I been calling her Sadie," Poppy responded.

He nodded. "That's a nice name."

She shifted the toddler again.

"It's fine, Poppy," he said. "You know me better than that."

Poppy nodded. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Good to have you home again. Congratulations about your daughter. Ring if you need me.” In afterthought, she added, “Ma'am.”

Once Mulder and Dana were alone again in the library, Dana asked, "Is she married?"

"No, she isn't married," Mulder answered. "She was Sam's nurse, Dana. She took care of Melly, and she been loyal to us. I'm not dismissing her for making a mistake."

"No, of course. I understand." Dana’s forehead wrinkled. "How old is her daughter?"

"Fifteen months."

"Oh."

He said quickly, "I'm not the father."

"I had not considered you might be," Dana said thoughtfully. "She thinks Emily is your daughter, though."

"Yes. Well, Poppy is Melissa and Sarah's half-sister, so she thinks Emily is her half-niece by marriage."

More creases appeared between Dana's eyebrows as she tried to follow the tangled genealogy.

"Poppy's daughter was born the night Melly died. That's where Poppy was and why she thought I might not want to see her child. I don't care if she brings the baby to work, and she knows I wouldn't dismiss her - not for anything short of murder." Mulder clapped his hands together, which sounded overly loud in the quiet library. "Well, I should get back to work. Have a nice afternoon."

*~*~*~*

Mulder was back in his office by twelve-thirty, and out the door again as soon as the last edition rolled off the presses at four.

He walked home, but turned a block too soon and entered through the back gate rather than the front. After a stop at the stable and a quick rummage through the old Negro groom’s wardrobe, Mulder drove the buggy around the corner and up the gravel drive to the front of his house.

Remaining in the seat, he called to the maid in a bad cockney accent, "I'm looking for the lady of the house." Mulder wore the groom’s livery and kept his head down, hiding under the top hat he’d borrowed.

Luckily, the pretty little maid who answered the front door was the same one polishing the silver earlier, and she didn't recognize him. And, though it didn't speak well of her powers of observation, she didn't recognize her employer's horses and buggy, either.

"Of course, sir."

Mulder struggled not to laugh. He tightened the reins as Athos and Porthos began to fidget, as if knowing something was afoot.

A minute later, Dana appeared, in the process of taking off a white apron and dusting flour from her hands. "Yes, sir?" she answered politely. "How can I help you?"

"Are you the lady of the house?" he asked, barely understandable.

"I suppose I am. How can I help you?"

"Is your husband here?"

"He is at his office. Is there something I can do for you, sir?"

"Love, I can think of a great many things I would like you to do for me.”

“Sir, you forget yourself,” Dana cautioned him icily.

“Make a man out of me, love, and I’ll not soon forget it.”

She gaped until he raised his head, grinning at her.

"Mr. Mulder? Do not dare call me wicked! You are awful."

He took off the hat and jacket, and leaned down to offer his hand. “Climb in.”

"Dinner-"

"You asked about DC. I thought you'd like to see the city since the rain's stopped. Is Emily all right for a moment?"

“She should be.” Bringing her apron, Dana climbed up and settled in. She covered her skirt with the lap blanket.

Aside from being the seat of democracy, Washington DC boasted the finest collection of potholes and whorehouses in the nation. A week seldom passed without a body found floating in the canal or a political scandal hitting the front page. If a man wanted a case of the French Pox or to sell a load of junk railroad bonds, DC was the place. Mulder saw it for what it was - the powerful center of a government struggling to rebuild itself - but he tried not to jade Dana's introduction to her new home.

"The White House," he told her as they reached Pennsylvania and turned right down the broad, muddy street. "Where the President lives," he added as they passed, thinking she might not know. "There used to be a good swimming hole on the south side until the Army started using it to pasture cows during the war."

He was glad he made time to take her for a ride. Dana twisted from side to side to see, peppering him with a dozen questions per block.

Mulder showed her the new Treasury Building, and made a side trip, remembering she'd liked a ghost story they heard during their honeymoon. Supposedly, as the ship was built, a hapless iron-worker got trapped between the dual hulls and, in the interest of economy, left there. The crewmen swore they still heard the worker tapping with his hammer to be let out. On a whim, he and Dana took a lantern and investigated, to no avail.

"Here’s the Octagon house." Mulder slowed the horses. "President James Madison lived there. It has six sides, but eight angles, hence 'octagon.' Some say it's haunted. There's a dead Colonel who rings bells and, sometimes, the ghost of a murdered slave girl screams."

"These are musical ghosts?" she said skeptically.

"Are you making fun of me?"

"Well, yes," she admitted.

He cleared his throat, turned a corner, and continued. "All these are newspapers. This part of Pennsylvania Avenue is called Newspaper Row. The Washington Post, The Washington Times,” he listed, and added, “We don't like them. Here's Tom Bradley's Saloon, where my father bought me my first drink of whiskey. I used to meet him for lunch near here."

"Did your parents live close by?"

"No. My mother and stepfather have a house in Georgetown when Congress is in session. I suppose Mother still has it. They live in Boston."

"Your mother has remarried?"

"Yes," he said tightly, and changed the subject. "If we would keep going, we'd pass Center Market and get to the U.S. Capitol Building. Poppy can show you the market. I thought you might like to stop here, though, before we return home."

"What is here?"

"The Washington Evening Star. Would you like to see my newspaper? Some of the typesetters are still cleaning up, but the reporters and the office staff are gone. I thought you might like the penny tour while it's quiet."

Mulder tied the horses to the hitching post in front of the building and helped her down.

Byers was carrying a sheaf of papers across the lobby, which he dropped and stopped short. He turned his head sideways, looking like a reddish Labrador Retriever who heard a funny noise. Mulder's editor-in-chief, by comparison, made Mulder look like Romeo with the ladies.

"Dana, this is John Byers. He's the man who runs things around here."

"John Byers," Byers repeated. He pumped Dana’s hand. "My name is John Byers."

"Byers is the soul of wit and grace," Mulder commented, and Byers let go of Dana's hand. “And married. Do not be swayed by his silver tongue.”

Dana flexed her hand as if getting the blood flowing again. "I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Byers."

"You are Irish. My mother was Irish," Byers responded, and launched into a long discourse in gobbledy-guck.

Byers and Dana were mid 'guck' when Mulder gave him a stern look. The tour continued in English, with Byers at their heels.

"The lobby, obviously. My office." He showed her the cluttered desk and collection of junk and dust, and moved on. "The first floor is offices: circulation, advertising, accounting. In the back are the loading docks. Wagons take each edition to the street corners for the newsboys to sell, to the train deport to be shipped locally, and to the boat docks to go overseas."

Mulder opened the door to the stairs and offered Dana his arm as they climbed. On the second floor, he told her, "This is where the paper is printed. Byers approves all the stories and images, and the typesetters-"

Like a badger popping up from his hole, an almost bald, scruffy head appeared from behind one of the machines. Frohike pursed his lips and whistled softly. "I should have come to lunch. Hello, pretty lady."

"Don't touch him," Mulder warned. "You don't know where he's been. Dana, meet Melvin Frohike. He was part of the deal with I bought the paper; I had to take him. Rumor has it he sleeps underneath one of the presses at night and lives on the raw flesh of apprentice typesetters. Don't ever believe anything he says."

Frohike grinned and offered his filthy hand. After examining it, Dana smiled back and shook it. Frohike asked, “How did a pretty lady like you come to be married to this over-grown fool?”

“Just lucky, I suppose,” she answered easily.

They showed her how the metal type was set and, after the presses ran, broken down to be cleaned and reused. At the engravers' benches, Frohike explained how sketches got transferred and carved into pieces of wood or metal in order to be printed. It was an exacting craft; one mistake made the engraving unusable.

"Samuel's," Mulder said. He put one hand on her back and pointed with the other to the framed prints on the wall above one bench. "Most drawings you see in a newspaper or magazine are drawn by one man and engraved by several others, so they're unsigned. Sam signs his, since he does all the drawing and carving himself."

"Did you meet Samuel?" Frohike asked - a roundabout way of asking how long she'd known Mulder.

"I have not met him yet," she answered.

Frohike and Byers waited expectantly, but she didn't elaborate.

Frohike tried a different tack. "I understand there's a new baby at your house."

Mulder intervened. "She's Emily, she's three months old, and she's beautiful. Stop fishing for information and show her the presses."

The presses weren't running or Mulder wouldn't have let Dana in the room. If the hem of her skirt or sleeve accidentally caught in one of the huge machines, it would pull her in. Many of the men who ran the presses had nicknames like 'Stubby.' No one in a skirt or below the age of fourteen - or however old Samuel happened to be – was allowed near the presses.

The third floor was deserted as they walked through. Scribbled, crumpled papers littered the floor, waiting for the janitor's broom. Reporters arrived at their desks at six in the morning and left by two. Once the presses ran and they had tomorrow's assignments, their job ended until the next day.

In contrast, the top floor was a manic symphony of tapping telegraph machine.

"A.P.?" Dana asked. She pointed to the sign.

"Associated Press." Mulder had to raise his voice to be heard. "Stories come into this office from all over the country and are sent out by telegraph. If a ship comes into port with an interesting article from Europe or Brazil or China, we can send it to another US city over the telegraph and it's there in seconds."

"And soon, to and from Europe," a gangly blond man told them as he sidled over to meet Dana.

Mulder said, "The ship we were on - The Great Eastern – will lay a telegraph cable from New York across the Atlantic. If it's successful, we'll be able to transmit messages instantly to London and Liverpool. To Dublin." Mulder smiled at her. This was his element. As awkward as he felt dealing with people, he felt equally at ease with facts and words.

"Mr. Langly," the blond man introduced himself, since Mulder had forgotten.

"Mrs. Dana Waterston," she said, but quickly corrected, "Dana Mulder."

To cover the awkward pause, Mulder had her sit at one of the vacant telegraph machines, explaining how it and Morse code worked. "Langly can tell you the name of the operator hundreds of miles away sending the telegram to him."

"I know their dots and dashes," Langly said cryptically.

"Same way you tell a boy kitten from a girl kitten," Mulder said into her ear, and she smiled. "Go ahead. Press the key." She did, sending a single electronic click amid the thousands of others in the room. "Someone heard you in New York."

"Opie heard it," Langly supplied.

Dana stared uncertainly at the machine. "In New York? Are you teasing me again, Mr. Mulder?"

"I promise I'm not. Press it again; confuse Opie."

Mulder stepped back and let Langly and Byers show her the protocol for sending a message. Dana pressed the key a few more times, fascinated.

"She loves you," Frohike observed quietly, standing beside Mulder. "Of course she loves you. All the pretty ones do. Damn it, at first I thought I had a chance with her. Alas, my poor heart is breaking."

"Oh, hush up," Mulder said, laughing and watching her.

*~*~*~*

Night brought silence. The servants left, the baby slept. The fire snapped and crackled, and occasionally a log split and disintegrated into molten-orange coals.

Mulder sat on the floor near the hearth in their bedroom, leaning back against the sofa with his bare legs outstretched. Dana faced him with one knee on either side of his hips and a blanket draped loosely around her. No gentleman would let a lady shiver in bed as he made love to her. The proper thing to do was pick her up, carry her closer to the fire, and make love to her there.

"Are your feet warm?" Mulder outlined the ridge of her collarbone with his lips.

"They are, thank you. Would you like to feel?"

He slid his hands under the blanket, down her backbone, and to the hot flesh of her backside. "Yes, I would. I think I'll start here and work my way down. I want to be thorough," He stroked the back of her thighs, and slipped his fingers between them. "And check-" He slid his hands higher, urging her legs apart. "Every-" Higher, to the soft, damp patch of hair. "Inch," he finished huskily.

Watching her face change as he touched her was intoxicatingly erotic. She - this - was opium in female form: equally dangerous and twice as addictive.

Mulder wondered if Frohike was right. If she did love him.

He tugged at the blanket. It fell to the floor, leaving her bare in the firelight. Her cool breasts grazed his chest, a delicious contrast to the warmth of her back and the hotness inside her. At his request, she'd left her hair down, and it hung to her waist in thick auburn waves. It shimmered as she moved and felt soft as silk as he ran his fingers through it.

"There's a science called phrenology claiming you can tell someone's personality by the shape of their skull." He ran a hand over her scalp. "For instance, this ridge at the back indicates physical lust, and above it, this one, a love for children and family. Loyalty. Here is kindness, intelligence, idealism, and this: stubbornness. Yours is frighteningly large."

She trailed her index finger down his profile to his lips. "I bumped my head this morning, Mr. Mulder."

He sighed, pretending to be relieved. "Thank God. I was worried."

"You are making up this phrenology science."

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"No, sir. A creative truth-teller."

He smirked and kissed her fingertip. "It's true. Please don't start calling me 'sir.' 'Mr. Mulder' is bad enough. Can't I be 'Mulder?’"

She leaned forward, her hips poised over his. "'Malda,'" she said into his ear, "is 'gentle' in my language.”

"'Malda,' I promise. Are you still sore?”

“Yes.” She started to get up, as if thinking he wanted to go back to bed.

"No. Here,” he requested. “Like this. So it will not hurt as much. And so I can watch you."

"Here?"

"Here."

He positioned and guided her hips slowly down, biting his lip as her inner muscles enveloped him. She slid down farther until her hips rested flush against his. She stopped, breathing heavily.

"Oh, God. Jesus, Dana." He groaned at the sensation of being a thousand kisses deep inside her.

He gritted his teeth and let his head fall back on the sofa cushion. She shifted; he gasped. He put his hands on her hips and rocked her against him.

"That's nice," he whispered to her. "So nice. Don't stop."

She let him guide her into a slow rhythm. Dana rested her hands on his shoulders as her hips rose and fell over his. Mulder raised his head, opening his eyes to watch her, fascinated.

"You are beautiful." A fine sheen of perspiration covered her breasts, and her mouth moved silently as she rocked, exhaling with each thrust. "You are. I like watching you."

She tilted her hips, changing the angle and taking him deeper inside her.

"Don't stop, Dana. Make love to me."

She murmured something in Gaelic that sounded like his name, and rested her forehead against his shoulder. He put his arms around her and closed his eyes.

"Don't stop," he repeated with increasing urgency. His feet shifted against the floor. “Love me.”

Her thighs trembled, and her breath was hot and labored against his shoulder, but she didn't stop. “Mr. Mulder-”

“Don’t stop. Harder.” He put a hand on her hip again, guiding her to thrust harder, faster. He gritted his teeth as the pressure inside him built, blocking out every other sensation. He felt her muscles spasm and heard her gasp and moan, and gasp again. Her fingers gripped his back desperately. She thrust hard against him a few more times, cried out and, panting, went limp.

“Dana?” he said breathlessly. He was so close it hurt, but she was spent and boneless. His ‘don’t stop’ command seemed forgotten. “Are you all right?”

She nodded stupidly. “I am sorry. Come,” she said, and brought him with her as she laid back in front of the fireplace.

Mulder entered her again, sliding easily inside. Her hips rose to meet each of his desperate thrusts. “Too rough?”

If there was an answer, he didn't hear it. A dozen more deep thrusts and her fingernails dug into his shoulders. It happened again: a quick series of inner contractions, more powerful this time. Dana stiffened beneath him and cried out in what he would have sworn was waves of pain, but did not seem to be. His response was an ineloquent curse and release so intense he saw stars.

One of life's mysteries solved, Mulder realized, once he could think again. The rapture, he assumed, was the female orgasm.

Dana opened her eyes. She lay beside the hearth, looking flushed and uncertain in the firelight. This was, in no way, ladylike. She should be ashamed it happened and, as a gentleman, Mulder should be mortified by her behavior.

"It's fine," he assured her, before she could apologize. He pushed her hair back from her sweaty face. "I won’t tell anyone.”

She licked her swollen lips. He sat beside her, wearing a sheen of sweat, a stupid expression, and what he was born in.

"A secret I will gladly keep.” He swallowed. “Will it happen again? If I want it to?”

Her hair was mussed and her chest flushed. Still on her back, she blinked up at him and asked, “Now?”

“No. I cannot move now. Later. Tomorrow morning,” he assured her. “And perhaps also while I am home for lunch.”

*~*~*~*

Mulder floated in a blissful haze as he stumbled back to bed, leading Dana with him. Possibilities he had read about applied to him. To have a woman truly enjoy lovemaking: his world felt pleasantly rearranged.

He had yet to feel mortified, though he did wonder what Dana thought of him. Letting her - in fact encouraging her to – climax was as perverse as bringing his razor strop to bed.

Mulder suspected Dana lay beside him and wondered what he thought of her.

Bone-tired, he spooned up behind her, closed his eyes, and asked, “Why, Dana? Why did you do it?"

"In front of the fire? Because you asked me to, Mr. Mulder," she answered. “I did not plan for it to happen, but you told me not to stop. I could not make it stop.”

She did not have a word in English for it. “Orgasm,” he said. “The word is the same for men or women.” He rephrased his question. “Why did you marry me?"

She sighed. "Again, you asked."

"There's no shortage of men who would have asked. Why me? Because I was your friend? Because I was there?"

"Because you wanted me."

“Dr. Waterston was unfaithful, but you knew I would not be?"

Dana didn't respond for a long time. He knew she was embarrassed, and he thought he'd upset her further by mentioning Waterston. Except for slipping at the newspaper this evening, she hadn't mentioned her late husband since they left Savannah. Neither had Mulder.

"Mr. Mulder, have you ever wondered if there is something more?" Dana asked quietly. "Have you laid in bed at night and – despite the comforts life has blessed you with - stared up into the darkness and wondered if what you have is all there is to life?"

Mulder stroked her arm.

“The yearning is foolish and ungrateful,” she told him. “To covet a life not yours. To want to live and love as others do - or, at least, as you think others might. Have you ever, against all wisdom and people’s expectations, wanted a life not yours?”

Yes, he thought to himself. He had. And so he had married her.

“And so I married you, Mr. Mulder,” Dana said in the quiet darkness.

“So you did,” he responded softly.

*~*~*~*

End: Paracelsus V