"What's Chandra ever done to you?"
"She spent at least an hour this evening trying to get me to talk about what Nathan has been doing in Frankfurt and quizzing me about why he decided not to come to Grantville for a visit. If he thought it was any of her business, he would tell her himself. And nagging me to tell her why he doesn't want her to go with him. He's given her his reasons, and that's actually more than she deserves. If he doesn't want her to come, then she should do as he wants and stay here without all this griping."
Lenore stopped walking. "Since when doesn't a wife deserve to know her husband's reasons for how he treats her?"
Bryant turned toward her.
She pushed the baby stroller so that it was between them. "We'd better get Weshelle home. I have her all covered up, but this wind is chilly."
Chapter 33
Grantville
"Because I don't really want to be at home, Veda Mae, if you want me to be brutal about it. Every time I turn around, I see another German, and not a servant, either. What is it about Lenore's family? They collect Krauts like cat hair on your best dress slacks." Bryant Holloway finished off his coffee. "At least Nathan Prickett had the sense not to come home for the holidays."
"You're acting like a fool about Lenore, Bryant," said Trent Dorrman.
Bryant glared at the other man sitting at the table. Brother Green had sicced Dorrman onto him. He hadn't gone to church, so Green had come around knocking on the door, saying that he hadn't been at services for a while. The pompous Reverend Doctor Albert Green.
Blasted preachers, wanting guys to come in for counseling, and then when he had refused, this "peer counseling by laymen" stuff. He'd been stuck with Dorrman all vacation. What did Dorrman know about marriage? He'd been divorced for years before the Ring of Fire and remarried even less time than he'd been married to Lenore himself.
Bryant said as much.
Dorrman spoke very softly. "I think that Brother Green thought that maybe I'm a little smarter for the experience of living through a broken marriage once. I count myself lucky to have Caroline. For a guy like me, it was sort of like hitting the jackpot. I don't intend to make the same mistakes again." He smiled. "New ones, maybe, considering that I'm a human being. But not the same ones."
"You're on a collision course, Dorrman," Veda Mae predicted. "She's got more education than you, just the way your first wife did. History repeating itself. The way Laurie tried to do to Gary. The way Lenore has more than Bryant. Mark my words, it's a recipe for disaster."
Dorrman looked at her. " 'I'm proud of my wife and her accomplishments.' That's a place to start. That was my first resolution, this time, after she said she would marry me. To be proud of Caroline. Not to try to put her down or pull her down. To do a better job of understanding her interests than I did with Pam."
"Then go home and drool over her for a while, but leave me alone." Bryant had his suspicions about Caroline Jones. Caroline Dorrman, she should be now, but since the Ring of Fire, the women weren't changing their names when they got married because the Krauts didn't do it.
Jenny Maddox and those uppity women in the genealogy club were at fault, too. They said it was easier to keep track of people if they kept the same names. Lenore, though some people called her Mrs. Holloway, was still signing stuff as "Lenore Jenkins." If he was looking over her shoulder, she would add "(now Holloway)."
Maybe Caroline had put her uncle Simon Jones up to putting Brother Green up to this counseling stuff, somehow. Through the blasted Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance or something. She was almost exactly the same age as Lenore and they were friends. Methodist Sunday school together and all that. Maybe Lenore had been tattling. If so, she'd regret it. Whether Lenore had been telling tales out of school or not, Caroline was probably meddling.
He turned back to Veda Mae. "And I'm between assignments. Hell, I'm supposed to be on vacation for two weeks, between finishing in Frankfurt and going back to Magdeburg. Steve Matheny said that he didn't want to see my face at the fire department the whole time, so I don't have any place else to go except home or to my sister Lola's and she's working. 'Relax,' says the chief, 'relax, relax.' "
"You should talk to Jacques-Pierre Dumais. You really should. Even if you don't drink, you can talk to him at the 250 Club. Ken Beasley doesn't like him a lot. He calls his corner the "dry table" and complains that he loses money on it. But that would give you someplace to be, evenings at least, where you can get away from Lenore."
"I talked to him a couple of times last fall."
"Well, talk to him again."
That was all he needed, Bryant thought. Another lay peer counselor.
Trent Dorrman looked at Holloway, frowning. Brother Green was probably right to be worried about him. There had been some kind of meeting that Brother Green had attended, with Mayor Dreeson and Steve Matheny, the fire department chief. About stress problems. That was when Brother Green decided to train lay peer counselors.
He'd taken apart an old fashioned alarm clock once, when he was a kid. After he had the back off, he'd taken the key and wound the spring inside so tight that it snapped. He hoped Bryant Holloway wasn't getting to that stage.
Scotland
"I agree. There's no direct connection with our greater purpose." Andre Tourneau gestured at Antoine Delerue.
His fellow silk weaver, Abraham Levasseur, made a calming gesture. "Guillaume is getting impatient, Andre. Here, we are planning. Focusing. Preparing various projects, such as the one we have already given to Abraham Levasseur. In Frankfurt, he and the others are merely waiting. These little enterprises will occupy their minds and give them something to do."
"I disagree." Delerue waved one hand at the report that had just come in. "They are only using the demonstrations as excuses to not make any real effort to carry out the assassinations we ordered. A piddling attack on a hospital. A minor action against a synagogue. What is the point?"
Ducos chimed in, very forcefully. "I don't intend to let them lose sight of the ultimate purpose. Reiterate my instructions to Guillaume. Between the election and the transfer of power. No matter who wins the election, Stearns or Wettin. Think-the emperor, Stearns, and Wettin dead. All that welds these Germanies together gone. With Kristina dead, the new union of Kalmar, fragile enough at the best of times, will be broken. There is no other obvious heir in Sweden, either, so Oxenstierna and Brahe will be pulled out of Germany to handle civil strife and two generations of attempts by the Vasas to build a centralized kingdom will collapse. Poland will intervene, again. Which will tempt Russia to send another tentacle toward Poland. Which will distract both Wallenstein and Ferdinand III, opening a gate for the Ottomans."
Ducos sat back, in happy contemplation of the impending chaos. Armageddon would be welcome, if that was what it took to remove Richelieu from his post.
If only the lever he needed to move the world proved adequate to the task.
"Again, Antoine. Repeat my instructions in your reply. Remind them again. All five. On the same day. In the same place. As soon as possible after the election."
"Guillaume has brought up the difficulty of getting them all in the same place at the same time. Not to mention security."
Michel Ducos narrowed his eyes. "Guillaume, too, is a tool in the hand of God. I have seen a vision. He has done better, perhaps, than he believes. These demonstrations that he is planning-minor in themselves, just as you say-will occur in Grantville. If they should turn out not to be so minor? If the consequences of these actions should become greater? All five of our real targets might, by some happy chance, gather in Grantville itself. Leaving, necessarily, most of their excessive security apparatus behind."
Delerue clasped his hands behind his head. "I read the newspapers, too. On this 'Thanksgiving' festival, Stearns and his wife went to Grantville by plane. Leaving the sturdy Yeoman Warders behind in Magdeburg. Accompanied, the whole time they were in the town, only by a few soldiers from the SoTF forces who met them at the air field with a single truck. Standing for a period of time, quite out in the open, on the sidewalk in front of his house."