The tri-horn cap I normally favor seems to sit more heavily on my head than usual. I resist the urge to fiddle with it, forcing my hands to clench together in my lap, reverting my focus to the report my admiral was rattling off before me.

"..and the troops are, overall, in well enough spirits, but we think it would be useful for morale if you were to perhaps do a few laps and talk to some of the men." He finishes with a bit of a flourishing motion, checking something off his list with fervor. A small crease mars his brow, and he chews on his lip distractedly as he stares down at the list.

I hide my smile. Jennings can be quite anxious, to the point of over doing it, but in part, that is what makes him an excellent assistant.

“Of course. I’ll start tonight. Any particular areas of unrest in the camp I should tackle?”

“Perhaps the lower folk? The cooks, the errand boys, that kind of thing.”

So that is how it came to be that I strolled through the camp at twilight, not at all reluctant for the opportunity to stretch my legs and stop here and there to talk to the men. War was a brutal master, and the camaraderie was one of its few perks.

I was just rounding a bend of the narrow, muddy path that wound its ways between several tents when the sight of a young woman, hands balled up at her sides, brought me to a dead halt. A pile of laundry lay in the path, which seemed the likely cause of the young lady’s colorful curses.

From where I stood, her side profile was enchantingly illuminated by the trail’s lanterns. A small, sloping nose, sat above a sinfully luscious mouth. Tendrils of curling brown hair had escaped the high bun atop her head, coming to rest along her face and down the length of her slender neck.

I cleared my throat nervously. Women in war camps were uncommon. How had she come to be here?

The mystery woman whirled to face me at once. Her dark eyes seemed to spark in the dim light. She was clearly spitting mad.

“What?” The tone she asked this in was so casually dismissive I wondered if I would do best to walk away. But I found myself entranced, captured by the endless depths of her eyes.

“May I be of assistance? You seem distressed.” In truth, distressed seemed too light a word to describe her ire filled expletives, creative enough to make a sailor blush.

“I think the only way you would be of assistance is if you were to take all this,” she gestured brutally at the pile of linens, “and rewash it before Madam Bufort sees it.”

She sank down gracefully onto a nearby rock and craddled her head in her hands. “Took me forever to do it in the first place and I’d only just finished.”

Her despair wrenched my heart, and before I could think on it further, I heard myself say, “By all means I can help wash it. I’m sure the task will go by much quicker with more hands.”

Her head snapped up, and instead of the relief I thought would grace her elegant features, it was distrust etched upon them.

“Why would you do that? You must have your own camp duties to attend to.“

“None that can’t wait,” my lips curving into a half smile at the thought of spending several hours with her, getting to know this intriguing woman over laundry buckets and suds. “I’m Benedict.”

She looked appraisingly at me for several long moments before saying, “Josephine.”