Even though it would be easier on him if she stayed home. They worked so closely together, and yet she was untouchable. She was an itch he couldn’t scratch. Securing the president’s safety required his full attention, and he couldn’t afford to indulge this inconvenient infatuation.

She’d been out of sorts for the past few days, ever since Gray Delacroix visited late at night, and he suspected it had something to do with her brother in Cuba.

It wasn’t hard to guess where Caroline had gone after getting banished from the first lady’s presence. Taking the stairs two at a time, he made his way to the White House roof and quickly spotted her staring out over the back lawn. Several cigarette butts lay near her feet, and she puffed on another. She must have heard him approach, for she swiveled and shot him a glare.

“Don’t you dare give me any grief about smoking,” she warned.

He held up both hands in surrender. “I wasn’t planning on it. It sounds like you’ve had quite a day.”

He joined her at the rail. She was on the verge of cracking. The signs were all there. The trembling of her hands, the stiff spine, the look of vulnerability swirling amidst anger and exhaustion.

“What’s wrong?” he said softly. “This is about more than blueberry muffins.”

The hand holding the cigarette trembled harder. “My brother has pneumonia. He might die. Even if he recovers, the army is going to keep giving him shoddy treatment until he really does die, because then they won’t have to deal with the scandal of a trial.”

“Where did you hear about this?”

She told him how a navy lawyer filled her in on the legal proceedings. President McKinley had given her a glimmer of hope for a pardon in four years, but she didn’t think Luke would last that long. In the meantime, she was frantically trying to lean on her connections to get him transferred to the mainland and decent legal help.

“And now he has pneumonia,” she said. “I can’t bear thinking of him struggling for every breath of air just to stay alive. And then Ida has conniptions over burned muffins.”

She dropped the cigarette, and he covered it with his boot to crush it out. She braced her hands on the railing, her head sagging. Her voice became so faint, it was a struggle to hear her.

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this,” she whispered. “I can barely string a sentence together, and she orders me to turn the city upside down in search of blueberries.”

He laid an arm across her shoulders, wishing he could provide better comfort. She didn’t deserve this. It hurt to see her so despondent, for Caroline was usually a Valkyrie, ready to stride forth into glorious battle. Not today.