For now, as he drifted toward dreaming, what came to him were not images of grappling and lust, but a sort of phantom copy of the bed where he lay, a dream of future days where he shared such a bed with a woman who had a claim on him, and who claimed him in return.

He took her hand in both of his, feeling the warmth of it and the strength of her fine, long fingers. He was rather loath to let go and be escorted out.

Joshua levered himself out of bed. He’d shave, get dressed, and take a walk with Major before frying himself some breakfast.As a boy, if he could have even imagined himself so old as thirty-three, he’d have assumed he’d be leaving a wife behind staying warm in bed or making breakfast, or better yet, accompanying him on his morning amble. But things change. War changes them. And solitude suited him, these days.

Joshua took a gulp of his own brew. “Need I have some other cause, when this plague could devastate so many of my patients and neighbors? When, if some of the reports prove true, we might see the town reduced painfully in size, as farmers abandon their holdings and flee to the East?”If the thought of one particular family leaving town, of Clara Brook’s tall figure climbing aboard a wagon and vanishing beyond the horizon, gave him a peculiar twinge, he was hardly obliged to say so.

Joshua awoke, sat up slowly, and looked around the railroad car. No ghosts, no trauma, nothing but Clara sleeping in apparent peace in the berth below him, and curtains growing bright with morning light.