One Wore Blue (28 page)

“A bad day, eh, girl?”

“Oh, Papa!” she whispered.

He looked into her eyes, smoothing back her hair. “I’ve heard, Kiernan, I’ve heard all about it.”

He led her up the steps, calling for someone to come and take Riley. He sat her down and slipped an arm around her, and in a moment he was pressing a glass to her lips.

“Brandy,” he said.

She looked at him through damp eyes. “You hate it when I drink.”

“Take a sip now. I’ve a dozen things to be mad with you for, girl, a dozen more this day. But I’m not mad, and I wouldn’t think of punishing you, for it seems to me that you’ve punished yourself enough already.”

She took a sip, then more than a sip. Shuddering, she swallowed it all down.

“You were right about Jesse.”

He rocked quietly for a minute. “I like Jesse Cameron. Always have, always will.”

“I hate him.”

“Yes. Well, maybe that’s for the best.”

“I don’t ever, ever want to see him again.”

John Mackay didn’t say a word to her. He just sat with his arm around her, rocking on the swing.

The night passed on as they sat there. John spoke at last.

“Ah, Kiernan, time will tell, eh? Many a young man we’ll not see again. For honor is a splendid thing. But blood and
death are forever. And if there’s anything in this world I’m certain of, Kiernan, it’s that we’re headed for war.”

The swing creaked upon its hinges, and her father drew her close.

“War.”

Thirteen

Events suddenly moved very quickly in the Old Dominion. Virginia had officially passed her ordinance of secession on April 17, and within a week, the Confederate vice president, Alexander Stephens, arrived in Richmond to negotiate a military alliance between the Confederacy and Virginia. Stephens alluded to the possibility of Richmond becoming the Confederate capital, and the Virginia delegates quickly reached an agreement with him.

In May, the Confederate government dismantled its offices in its first capital, Montgomery, and moved to Richmond. They had chosen Richmond as a capital because of its close proximity to the approaching conflict. Only a hundred miles lay between Washington, D.C., and the new heart of the Confederacy.

John Mackay, staunch Confederate that he was, watched the happenings in his home state and shook his head. “It’s a mistake,” he told Kiernan. “Mark my words. It’s too close to the conflict. Northern armies will cross that hundred miles. There will be a bloodbath. Why, they’re already screaming, ‘On to Richmond!’ in the North. They are determined that the Confederate Congress will not convene this month.”

Kiernan, listening to him at the dinner table, smiled bitterly. “But Pa, I hear the Southern boys are going to tear up
those Yanks in a matter of weeks. I’m quite sure that Richmond will be safe.”

He narrowed his eyes on her. “You’re one of the most ardent little rebels around.”

“I am,” she assured him. She moved her fingers up and down her water glass idly. “I’ve listened to some of Daniel’s friends. They’re spoiling for a fight, like little boys. They think that they’re bigger and stronger and that they can just beat the Yanks up and then everything will be fine.”

John reached across the table and patted her hand. “We’ve the very best horsemen, and the very best marksmen. And the very best military leaders. How can we lose?”

But one of their very best men was in the North.

She had vowed that she was no longer going to think of Jesse. It was July, and he’d been gone a long time now. They had been quiet months for Kiernan, easy months in the Tidewater region. A hot, lazy summer was coming on.

As Kiernan had watched the events taking shape around her, she had avoided Cameron Hall. It was too painful to go there. As it was, her nights had been torture. Due to the pain that Jesse caused her, she really began to hate him. She prayed that the pain would ease. She had even avoided Daniel and Christa.

But they were her friends and her closest neighbors, and she couldn’t stay away forever. Daniel, a cavalry captain, had recently left for the Confederate Army. Troops were gathering at an important railway station, Manassas Junction, and Daniel was with them.

Anthony was with those troops, too, or would be soon. The army was still being organized, and Anthony’s company had yet to move in from the western side of the state.

She didn’t know where Jesse was.

She tried very hard to convince herself that she didn’t care. At some moments she actually felt numb, and she relished those moments.

The conflict moved ever closer.

Alexandria, just across the Potomac from Washington, was occupied. It was the Union’s backyard, and it had surprised
no one when forces marched in. The first Union casualty had occurred there. The very popular young colonel Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth had spotted a Confederate flag atop the Marshall House hotel. He climbed to the roof to tear it down. Coming down the stairs, he was shot to death by the hotel’s proprietor. The proprietor, in turn, was shot to death by one of Ellsworth’s men.

Kiernan felt sorrow that a Union man had been killed. From what she read, he had been a handsome, gallant, and giving man—and a very close personal friend to Abe Lincoln. His body had lain in state at the White House before it was sent home to upstate New York for burial.

Ellsworth, like John Brown, became a martyr in the North, stirring men to cry out and clamor for more bloodshed.

It seemed very sad.

But it also seemed very sad that Robert E. Lee, after refusing an offer from the North and accepting a commission in the Confederacy, had been forced to leave his home. She could imagine Lee and his wife talking through the night of the decision that he’d been forced to leave. He would have known that the Federals couldn’t possibly let him be there at Arlington House. And so his wife and his children had been uprooted along with him. The enemy now tramped through the halls where his children had played.

So much seemed so very sad.

Perhaps the duel between Jesse and Anthony had been fought over her, but it never would have happened without the prospect of war. And if not for the prospect of war, she would have married Jesse. No questions of honor would have been raised. Jesse would never have had to tell his brother good-bye, and he would never have had to walk away from his home.

But she wouldn’t waste her time thinking about Jesse. If anything, she would worry about Anthony.

She had gone into Williamsburg to see him the day after the duel. She cared very much about him, but she had to admit to herself that it was guilt that forced her to visit him rather than deep affection.

In Williamsburg, she had felt more guilty than ever, because Anthony had assured her that he was fine, that his pride was wounded more than anything else.

He had told her again that he loved her, that he’d fight a thousand duels for her, that he’d die over and over again for her.

But Jesse, who claimed to love her too, would not even remain to fight in his own state for her. He claimed that as a doctor, he wanted to save lives, but lives could be saved on this side of the conflict just as well.

She had been thinking about Jesse when Anthony had demanded, “Well, Kiernan?”

“Well?”

“Will you marry me now? Or will you at least think about it? I’ll march soon enough, now that Virginia has seceded, I know that. We’ll be going off to whip those boys in blue. Let me carry the memory of your love into battle with me!”

“Anthony, I don’t—”

He pressed his finger against her lip. “Don’t say no to me, please. Tell me that you’ll think about it. Let me live on that hope.”

She hadn’t had the heart to tell him no.

It would not be only Anthony against Jesse. It would be Daniel against Jesse too. Brother against brother.

But that was war. And as Kiernan’s father had told her, war was coming. Everyone spoke of it. Everyone seemed to long for it. “On to Richmond!” As her father had said, the North was very determined to swiftly end the rebellion. Patriotism ran high on both sides.

One morning in July, John Mackay lifted his head and quickly folded up the paper he had been reading at the table. He frowned. “Listen!” he told her.

She didn’t hear anything at first, but then she heard horses, a large group of them, coming down the long drive.

John stood quickly, and Kiernan followed him to the door. Suddenly, she heard a loud Rebel cry, and the sounds of pounding hooves came closer and closer.

“What is it?” Kiernan asked.

“Seems to be a Rebel company,” John replied, grinning. “But what it is doing on my front lawn, I surely don’t know.”

He strode out onto the porch, Kiernan following him.

There was, indeed, a Rebel company on their lawn. They were a handsome lot, even if they moved with a wild confusion, their horses prancing everywhere. They were dressed in butternut and gray, the handsome new uniforms of the South. The uniforms didn’t seem to be government issue, but ones specifically designed and lovingly hand-sewn for this particular company. The Rebs wore cavalry hats, just like those in the Union cavalry, except that these were gray. Gray, pulled low, and finely plumed.

There were about twenty-five in the company, tramping across the lawn, reckless, loud, and constantly cheering.

“What in the Lord’s good name—” John Mackay began. But a rider broke away from the melee and trotted toward them. He pushed back his hat.

“Anthony!” Kiernan gasped.

He grinned broadly at her. He was wonderfully, engagingly handsome with his warm, dancing brown eyes, his golden curls beneath the fine plumed hat, and his perfectly curved moustache and finely clipped beard. He sat his horse so well, and his smile, so endearing, touched her that night as it had never touched her before. She did not love Anthony. And she could never love anybody with the wild and desperate passion with which she had loved Jesse.

As he stood before her that night, so gallant and so comical, she laughed in delight as she had not laughed in some time.

Not since Jesse had left.

“Mr. Mackay!” Anthony called, and he grinned at Kiernan again. “Despite your daughter’s very inappropriate laughter at such a fine pack of soldiers for the Confederacy, I have come to ask you for her hand in marriage. No, sir! Your pardon, I take that back! I have come to beg you for her hand in marriage!”

John Mackay’s brow shot up.

“Well, son, if you’re going to be begging and pleading, I’m the wrong one to be doing it to!”

Anthony grinned, and he leaped down from his horse. The men of his company quit their wild prancing and brought their horses to a standstill behind his, as disciplined now as they had been unruly just seconds before.

Anthony walked toward the steps to Kiernan, pausing with a booted foot atop the first step. He reached for her hand. “We’re riding even now for Manassas Junction. We will barely arrive when we were ordered to. But all these fine fellows know how deeply I pine for you. I have told them, of course, that you have moments of heartlessness. I have told them that you have refused me for years. But the last time I spoke with you, you didn’t actually refuse me. So you see, we decided to waylay our journey just a bit—”

“Just a bit!” Kiernan exclaimed. “You’ve ridden well over a hundred miles out of your way! You came all the way over here to the peninsula!”

He grinned again. “Yes. So it would be churlish for you to refuse me still again!”

He walked up the last step and pulled her close against him. “Kiernan, I’ve no time, no time at all. Not even a night to spend with you, not a day to take you anywhere, not even home. But I’ve got a preacher with me—Captain Dowling is also Father Dowling of Charles Town—and if you would consent to be my wife this night, I promise that I’ll come back for you. And I’ll take you anywhere in the world that you want to go once this skirmish is over. I’ll take your kiss into battle, and with the sweet promise of you in my future, I swear I shall lead these fine gents to sure victory.”

Kiernan stared at him blankly for several moments. She felt numbness steal over her.

Yes. Yes, marry him, marry Anthony. She had known him so long, and she did care for him very deeply. And she owed him, because she had led him on in a way, when she had known in her heart she loved Jesse.