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“So,” she murmured, “that is why he is so unfriendly. Perhaps I remind him of the sister he lost.” Oh, no, it was more than that. The Confederates had hanged the colonel’s sister…and she was a Confederate!
Fong’s face wrinkled into a frown. “You Johnny Reb, missy?”
“Y-yes. From South Carolina.”
The Oriental nodded and plopped another pot into the wash water. “Luck is bad,” he muttered. “Two things Colonel Tom not like—pretty woman and Johnny Reb. Luck very bad.”
Meggy gulped. And here she was, stealing from the colonel’s food supplies. If he found out, he would hang her!
“You go home now, missy. Fong sit up, guard tomatoes from hungry deer.” He brandished a sawed-off broom handle.
As soon as she dried the last pot and suspended it on the rack above the stove, she clutched the tea towel containing the flour mixture and pressed the smallest of the iron skillets into the folds of her skirt. Keeping her back to the cook, she slipped out the screen door and fled down the porch steps.
Behind her she heard the click of the door latch and Fong’s tuneless whistling. The latter blended with the throaty croak of frogs and the scrape of crickets. She stumbled up the path in the dark, felt her way to her own front porch and yanked open the door.
The cabin interior was black as the inside of a chimney. She crept to the bed, found the tin of candles and lit a short, fat one that Charlotte had scented with rose petals. Meggy set it on the counter. The little puddle of light calmed her nerves.
One hour. She needed just one hour.
She dampened her under-petticoat in the water bucket and scrubbed the plank counter. Then, with shaking hands, she poured the contents of the tea towel into the skillet and dug her fingers into the center. Within a few moments the flour and butter mixture was crumbly.
Dumping the lump of dough onto the clean counter surface, she patted it into shape and rolled it between her hands to make a smooth, round ball. When she’d set it on the sill of the open window to chill overnight, she emptied her pocket of the apples and spilled the sugar into the lid of a hand cream container. Then she stripped off her dress and petticoat, sponged her hands and face, puffed out the candle and fell into the bed still wearing her shimmy.
Tom tramped off the cookhouse porch and down the well-beaten path to his tent. He’d left the quart of whiskey in Fong’s care, knowing his cook would guard it as zealously as the tomato patch he’d planted at the start of the season. He’d bet Fong would sit up in his garden all night, the whiskey bottle tucked beneath his tunic.
He chuckled. The deer that gobbled Fong’s tomatoes would be far bolder than a man hankering to sneak a shot of rye!
He snatched up his account book, thumbed the pages, then slapped it down on the desk again. Damn, he wished he had some of that turkey sauce now!
He whittled the tip of his goose quill pen, fiddled with the bottle of brown ink. Finally he rose and took four steps to the front of the tent, four steps back to his makeshift desk, then repeated the circuit.
He felt another sleepless night coming on. In fact, he was so out of sorts he should probably be guarding the tomatoes and let Fong get some shut-eye. Peabody’s death had stirred up old memories.
Every single time he got riled up over something he lay awake thinking about Susanna and the ill-informed junior officers with the oh-so-gentlemanly manners who had executed her. Tom had gotten there too late to save her; instead, he’d had to bury her. He’d spent the last seven years trying to forget his failure.
His belly tightened into a hard knot. Just the sound of a soft Southern drawl set his teeth on edge. Lucky thing Peabody hadn’t talked much like a Confederate boy; otherwise, he’d never have been able to stomach the man. But Walt Peabody had spent more years in Oregon than he had in the South and talked pretty Western before the war even started.
Walt’s widow, or fiancée, or whatever she was, was another matter. Mary Margaret Hampton was a Southern belle from her toes to her crown, and he’d hated her guts the minute she opened her mouth. A woman exactly like her had accused Susanna and, worse, had testified against her in court.
Tom flopped onto his cot, shucked off his boots and trousers, and stretched out full length with his head resting on his folded arms. He spent too many nights like this, staring at the canvas tent ceiling or out into the dark. He was wasting his life.
A light glowed on the rise beyond the cookhouse. He squinted his eyes. The cabin. Must be a lantern or a candle burning inside; the flame shone through the chinks in the split-log walls.
He watched the light wink on and off as something—likely Miss Hampton—moved back and forth in front of the source. What was she doing, pacing up and down like that? That’s what he usually did at night. It was damned unsettling to lie here and watch someone else do it. He felt like he was watching himself.
The light flickered out, reappeared. It reminded him of the signals the Cheyenne made with hand-held mirrors. He stared at it, trying to clear his mind of Miss Mary Margaret Hampton, until his eyelids drifted shut.
Meggy woke with a start. What was that?
Something rustled in the brush outside the cabin. She raised her head, listening. A shaft of moonlight fell through the open window above the sink, silhouetting the ball of dough on the sill and the six lumps that were her stolen apples.
The rustling came again, closer this time. Without a sound, she sat up and swung her feet to the floor. Pulling her father’s revolver from under the heap of garments where she’d hidden it, she hefted it in both hands, crept to the window and peered out.
A huge, soft brown eye peered back at her. A sleek brown head ducked, then lifted again. A wide rack of antlers gleamed in the pale light.
A deer! Probably the one that foraged in Fong’s tomatoes. The animal took a tentative step forward, stopped, then sniffed the air.
Oh, no! Not my piecrust!
“Shoo!” she cried. Her voice came out no louder than a whisper. “Go away, please!”
The stag took two more steps. Meggy raised the revolver, closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.
The shot brought Tom out of bed so fast he smacked his head on the tent pole. Great jumping catfish, what in the—
A woman screamed.
He yanked on his pants, jammed his feet into his boots and began to run. In the dark he could barely see the trail. Keeping low to the ground, he headed in the general direction of the noise.
Moonlight, he thought as he stumbled past the cookhouse, was one of God’s greatest ideas!
Chapter Four
All the way up the hill, Tom could hear the sound of a woman crying. It cut into his belly like a shot of rotgut whiskey and made him blind with rage. He didn’t know why, but he’d never been able to stomach a woman’s tears.
When he could see the dark outline of the cabin in the moonlight, he slowed to a walk. If she could cry, she could breathe. That answered one question.
The other question—Why?—he answered when he stumbled over the carcass of a deer.
Someone had killed tomorrow’s supper. The shot must have scared the ginger out of her, but the thought of venison steaks made him smile. He stepped around the dead animal and headed for the glimmer of white on the porch ahead of him.
“Miss Hampton? It’s Tom Randall.”
When he stepped forward, she jerked upright. “Oh! Please come no farther, C-Colonel Randall. I am not p-properly attired.” She sounded like she had the hiccups.
Tom spun on one heel so his back was to her. “Who shot the deer?”
“I—I did,” she confessed between sobs. “At least I think I did. I had my eyes closed.”
Tom knelt to inspect the animal. “Mighty good shot, ma’am. Clean and true, right into the head.”
“Oh, the poor, dear thing. I meant only to scare it away, not kill it!”
Poor dear thing? He sneaked a look at her. Arms locked about her white-shrouded legs, she rocked back and forth, her forehead pressed against her knees.
“I feel just awful about shooting it. It had such big, soft eyes.”
Two things warred for Tom’s attention—the revolver lying beside her and her hair tumbling loose about her shoulders. He struggled to keep his mind on the gun.
“Where’d you learn to shoot?”
She choked back a sob. “My father taught me, before he went off to his military post. He said I had a g-good eye.”
“And a steady hand, it would appear. Miss Hampton, you might as well dry your tears and make the best of it. The boys’ll be grateful to you for supplying some good meat.”
“I—I will try.” She gazed at him with a stricken look. “I just feel so…mean!”
He stuffed down a chuckle. “You ever shoot anything before?”
She nodded. “I shot a Yankee once. In the backyard of the parsonage. He was after our last two chickens, you see, and I…I hit him in the shoulder. I offered to dress the wound, but he swore something dreadful and skedaddled over the back fence.”
So she’d lived in a parsonage, had she? A preacher’s daughter with good eyesight and guts. Now, why should that surprise him? All Southerners were murdering bastards hiding under a cloak of gentility. He’d learned that in Richmond. His jaw tightened.
“I hear somebody coming, Miss Hampton. You might want to put on a robe.”
Meggy scrambled to her feet. The colonel stood before her, both hands jammed in his trouser pockets. Mercy me, he wore no shirt!
She stared at the bare skin of his chest, at the muscles cording his broad shoulders. Never in her whole life had she seen a man without his shirt, not even Papa. She gulped. Even her intended, Mr. Peabody, had been laid out in his coffin fully dressed.
An odd, restless feeling crept over her as she gazed at the colonel’s tall frame. Why, he looked strong enough to—
Sergeant O’Malley crashed out of the trees and into the clearing. “For the love of God, Tom, what’s goin’ on? I heard a shot, and when I found your tent empty…well, I thought maybe you’d—What’s this, now?”
The Irishman stared down at the dead stag. “Well, I’ll be smithereened! You killed us a deer, Tom.”
“I didn’t exactly…”
Meggy slipped inside the front door and listened to Tom’s voice floating from the porch. “Think we can dress it out here?”
“Nah. Too dark. Let’s lug it down to the cookhouse. I’ll go rustle up Fong and some other help. Maybe those two rascally Claymore lads you took on.”
She held her breath. Tom had sidestepped telling Mr. O’Malley who had killed the animal. True, she didn’t want to confess the deed, but she doubted the colonel would understand why. No Yankee soldier could fathom Southern sensibilities.
She tiptoed to the counter and rummaged in the pile of garments for her night robe, drew it on over her shimmy and underdrawers and tied it about her waist with a jerk.
No Federal officer she’d ever encountered paid the slightest attention to the feelings of civilians. When the Northern army overran Chester County, the soldiers had swaggered and shouted and stolen her mother’s ruby ear-bobs. Why, they did not even look like gentlemen. Even the men she and her sisters had tended in hospital were hopelessly ill-mannered and unlettered.
Through the open doorway she watched the two men drag the deer away from her porch. Then Mr. O’Malley tramped off down the hill toward the cookhouse and the colonel settled himself on the planks, his back toward her.
A long minute dragged by. Meggy became acutely aware of the noises around her, the breeze sighing through the treetops, the low hoo…hoo of an owl. The uneven breathing of the man sitting not three feet away from her.
What was he thinking?
The silence hung on until she thought she would scream. All of a sudden his low voice made her jump.
“Might as well go on back to bed, Miss Hampton. We’ll haul the carcass down to the cookhouse so you won’t have to look at it in the morning.”
“Thank you,” she managed, in a tight voice. But she stood frozen to the spot. Why could she not move?
Because…Meggy’s entire body trembled. Was the sight of a half-naked man outside her front door so disturbing?
Certainly not! It was because she was a tiny bit afraid of him.
Because she disliked him.
Because he, well, he was a Yankee.
Because he was a man.
Her heart hammered. Most definitely not! She put no stock whatsoever in such things. She and Walter Peabody had contracted a union of souls, not bodies. She always wondered at her sisters, who had grown dreamy-eyed and absentminded when they were smitten by some young gentleman. Oh, Meggy, just the sound of his voice gives me the shivers!
She had no time for such sentimental nonsense.
Besides that, she most certainly harbored no such feelings about a man she had known just half a day and was a Yankee besides.
She was tired, that was it. And overwrought. Her nerves were frazzled. This entire day—and night—was a dreadful nightmare, and any moment she would wake up.
“Go to bed,” he repeated.
“I would,” she murmured, “if I could make my feet move.”
He rose and half turned in her direction. “Are you all right?”
“No. I—I mean, yes. Of course.”
He stepped up onto the porch. “Need help?”
His movement toward her jolted her into action. She inched backward until her legs touched the cot against the far wall.
“Miss Hampton?”
Her derriere sank onto the blanket. With a supreme effort she closed her eyes to blot out the bronzed skin of his bare chest, his sinewy shoulders and arms. Mary Margaret, you are hallucinating!
Voices came up the hill. Someone—it must be Colonel Randall—stepped across the porch and pulled her front door shut.
“Tomorrow…”
She heard his words as clearly as if they were spoken at her bedside.
“Tomorrow, Mick, I want a lock put on this door.”
Oh, yes, Meggy thought with relief. A lock was exactly what she needed. A lock would surely keep her safe.
By the time Meggy woke, the sun was high overhead in a sky so blue and clear it looked like a cerulean-painted china bowl. She breathed in the warm, pine-scented air and bolted upright. Mercy, she’d overslept!
With hurried motions she washed her face and arms, pulled on her blue sateen skirt, a white waist and a plain cotton apron, and bound up her hair in a neat black net.
Cautiously she cracked open the front door. No sign of men. No sign of the deer, save for a mashed-down patch of dry grass. Skirting the area, she gathered small sticks and an apronful of pinecones, then started a fire in the wood stove. When it caught, she fed it pine chips apparently left over from construction of her cabin and small sections of a tree stump that had been chopped up and left in chunks. Then she rolled up her sleeves and set to work.
