Undaunted Love by Jennings Wright

apron, flour in her hair, and smear of something shiny across her nose. Her puffy sleeves had been pushed up and then tied so that they were out of her way, but Rafe thought the best reason for it was so they wouldn’t catch fire. Next to the stove was a pile of burnt, misshapen pancakes, with only one marginally edible one resting on a plate. Nackie was standing next to her, arms folded, shaking his head.
    “Good morning, my love,” he said, as he strode over to her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She smacked him with the spatula and Rafe laughed and released her.
    “Don’t laugh at me! I’m trying to learn to make flapjacks. Looks like you’re going to have a lean breakfast…” She flipped the cake, which hadn’t fully set so that blobs of batter speckled the pan. “Nackie’s being very patient, but obviously I should have set my sites on something a tad easier.” Turning, she handed Nackie the spatula. “I’m afraid you’d better do it, else we’ll starve to death.”
    Nackie took the implement with a smile, making a concerted effort not to laugh out loud. Livvie shrugged. “I’ll have to speak with Emmy about some cooking lessons. It seems it’s a bit harder than it looks. We do have coffee, love, and no, before you ask, I didn’t make it.”
    Rafe grinned and poured himself a cup, mixing in sugar until it was syrupy sweet. He took her hand, kissed it, and led her to the table on the porch.
    “I’m sorry about breakfast,” Livvie began.
    “I don’t care if you can flip a flapjack, Liv, I’m still the happiest man alive.”
    “You’ll care later when you and our children are starvin’!” she grumbled, but he just chuckled.
    “You’ve got plenty of time to learn, and if you don’t, well, I’m not too bad at the basics. It’s just been Nackie’n me for a while now. And just about anythin’ is better than what we get at the regiment.”
    Livvie smiled, then her eyes clouded. “Why did they give you this furlough, Rafe? Not that I want to be heard complainin’, Lord knows, but four days is an awful long time.”
    Rafe looked out over the land. Before he’d sold off the timber, his view was of a pine forest, dark and cool. Now he saw an endless field of stumps. He hadn’t really considered the stumps when he talked to Mr. Greene, and he didn’t regret selling the trees, since it had kept them fed after their land was taken. But before anything could be planted on those five acres, all the stumps would have to be pulled out or burned, and that was as daunting a task as he had yet faced. Sighing, he turned to his wife.
    “We’re shipping out to Virginia on the fifth. President Davis has ordered us to join with the North Virginia militia, to fortify that area. They think Lincoln’ll send his troops out of Washington, as that’s where he’s been fortifying. Word is there’s a lot of spies for the Confederacy in Washington, so I guess they know where we’re needed most.”
    “So you’ll be fightin’ soon.” She said it as a statement, not as a question. She knew a good bit about the doings of the Confederacy through her father. He was still hosting almost nightly meetings of influential men from Edisto and Wadmalaw, and sometimes as far away as Charleston and even, once or twice, Savannah. Unfortunately, Wyman Phelps was often there, having taken a position in Hugh Byrd’s law firm as a clerk and, unofficially, Hugh’s assistant. She supposed she should be thankful her daddy hadn’t offered him a room in their house. At least propriety won out while he still had – he thought – an unmarried daughter at home.
    Rafe shrugged. “I guess. Not that the Federals seem able to do much a’that. At Big Bethel they were shootin’ at each other, so they say.”
    Nackie brought out a platter of blissfully unburned pancakes, a jar of honey, and a bowl of hard cooked eggs. “You be needin’ anythin’ else, Mistuh Rafe? I gonna take a tray up to yo mama now, if’n that’s