The Lady in the Mist (The Western Werewolf Legend #1) (8 page)

“I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to step aside, ma’am.  These premises must be searched,” the major said.

Ty tensed as he waited for what would be his last act as a lieutenant in the Confederacy.  He couldn’t expect to take on many of the Yankees successfully, but he’d try for any who walked through the bedroom door.  Figuring he’d buy Sonja some time to escape proved all he could hope for.  Ty checked the rounds in the small pistol.  A short oath left his mouth.  Only five shots remained in the tiny gun.

“I would advise against searching the house, Major.” Sonja’s voice came to him on the breeze.  She sounded cool and calm.

The major dismounted without waiting.  He arranged his face in a scowl as he took in her words.  “What do you mean?” he asked before taking a step forward before tipped his hat to her.  “Ma’am, our orders are direct from the Major General of the 23
^rd
United States Cavalry.  We are to search the premises.”  He bent slightly at the waist in another courtly bow.  “We’ll be out of your way in due time.”

“That’s not a good idea, Major.”  Sonja stood her ground.

This woman had spine.  She wouldn’t be so easily placated, Ty mused.  Glancing back at the riders, he counted four others with the major.  Each one carried several weapons.  Apparently, he was the only one ill prepared for a gunfight as he looked down at the pitiful excuse for a gun in his hand.  Glancing back at the enemy, Ty gauged if he were accurate, he’d get one maybe two before they drew and filled him full of lead.

Noting the major’s arrogant attitude, Ty took an immediate dislike to the man.  He waxed too full of his own importance for Ty.  Physically, Perkins was a tall man, perhaps six foot four inches, muscular of build, while keen of eye.  He wore the chops men favored.  They were dark with a liberal peppering of gray, giving his face an ashen appearance.  He sat tall in the saddle and his mount appeared well tended.  Those keen eyes took in everything around him in brief, calculating glances.  Slapping his finely oiled gloves on his palm, Perkins finished with another of those lusty perusals of Sonja.

That did it!  Perkins would be Ty’s first shot.  The man was no gentleman even in front of a woman from his own side. He hated the men who called themselves Yankees.  The fact he could be so brazen proved abhorrent to his thinking.  How could the man be so bold with a lady?  Perkins was the kind of Union soldier he despised.  If not today, Ty vowed to see him again, perhaps in hell.

Sonja hadn’t said a word.  Her only response to Perkins directive had been to close the front door at her back.  Ty could hear the hinges squeak as she shut the door before turning back to face the major blocking his forward progress.  “Major Perkins.” her voice remained surprisingly calm.

From his position, Ty could hear her strength in her address of the major.  That a girl, Sonja.  Keep talking.

“I won’t presume to tell you what you can or cannot do, but my husband is down with the Typhoid.”  Sonja paused.  “You do know what Typhoid means don’t you?”

The Major’s expression slipped into uneasiness as he cleared his throat.  “Typhoid?  Yes, ma’am, I’m familiar with Typhoid.”

“He contracted the dreaded mess while logging in the swamp,” she said before raising her hand.  She pointed in the direction of the swamp.  “He’s been down with the fever three days now.”

Perkin’s boots scrapped the boards of the porch as he turned to speak to his men.  Once again, his voice rose in volume as he faced Sonja. “I am sorry your husband is ill, ma’am.  Of course, we won’t come in.  But we will search the barn and fields.”

“Thank you, Major.”  Clipped and cool came her response.  Sonja leveled her chin nodding briefly at the Yankee.

Ty breathed a sigh of relief.  The mention of the Typhoid had stalled their advance.  Otherwise, the Yankees would’ve barged in, making themselves at home.  When they discovered who the man in the bedroom was, they’d have left nothing but the well hole filled with debris and the bodies of Ty, the Confederate soldier, and Sonja, the Rebel sympathizer, swinging from the old oak tree out front.  There wouldn’t have been any trial or even an inquisition.  No, he’d already seen enough of their kind, pillaging, murdering, renegade Yankee cavalry, scouring the countryside in search of whatever they could take, all in the name of the United States Government.  His hands fisted at his sides.  Damn the Yankees!

***

The last of the cavalry horses disappeared into the dense growth surrounding the road, which passed near her cabin.  Not wanting to think about what could’ve happened, she wrapped her arms about herself, laying her head against the cool pane of the leaded glass window.  Robert would’ve said, “Now, now, don’t worry, Sonja. We’ll get another chicken.  They left us one.  The hen will be enough.”  If she closed her eyes she could hear his voice.  She could still hear the voice of the man she’d lost over three years before.  Was she going mad?

The merciless demons had taken the goat. The goat for heaven’s sake!  The Union Army expected people to survive on little more than nothing.  She forced the thoughts out of her mind.  She and the lieutenant had missed a bullet and they were both safe.

Grateful the Yankees were gone, she turned to get about the noon meal and came face to face with the lieutenant.  Her hand came up, clutching at her throat.  The fingers trembled for an instant before she remembered to tighten them around her arms once more.  “You startled me.”

Stepping away from the window, Sonja made a pretense of gathering up her skillet she kept near the stove on a peg in the wall.  “I’ll have lunch started in a few minutes.”  She glanced over her shoulder.  His somber eyes watched her.  His stare bore into her with the intensity of a knife.  If he’d sliced open her heart he wouldn’t have seen into her soul any more clearly.  “You shouldn’t be out of the bed.”  The shake of her head she intended to scold him with made her feel lightheaded.  “If you open your wound again, you won’t like the way I have to close a tear.  I promise you.”  The vision of how she’d had to lay a hot poker across his flesh to cauterize the wound came back to her.  With such primitive measures, she’d managed to stop the flow of blood.  Somehow the Rebel had actually lived.  He should’ve died.

The memory of the night she’d come upon him on her way home from Hortence remained blurry and muddled.  Sonja blamed the fact she’d fled in terror of the great monster in Hortence’s tiny cottage.  The creature had been the ugliest vermin she’d ever seen.  Gathering a bowl to mix cornbread in, Sonja caught herself before she dropped the wooden spoon.  The spoon shook in her hand.

When Ty’s hand touched her shoulder, Sonja jerked.  The bowl fell clattering to the floor.

“Easy.  I won’t bite,” he said, his voice laced with good-humored comfort.

His efforts annoyed her. Turning her before she could step out of reach, he gazed at the expression of start on her face.  “I’m sorry I frightened you.  That wasn’t my intention.”

Sonja looked into those blue eyes, the color of the sea she imagined.  “No, it was my fault.  My mind wanders sometimes.  That’s all.”  She tried to shrug away the embarrassment at being startled so easily.  Her heart was still lodged somewhere in her throat, while her hands now fisted at her sides, still wanted to shake.

“You saved me again.”  His words though evenly modulated, bore a hint of amazement.  “I’m grateful.”  Ty’s mouth creased in a smile as warm as any summer’s day.  Sonja’s heart thudded unwittingly in her chest.  From the depths of her woman’s core, a sensation broke free surging through her, sending a wonderful feeling through her tense muscles.  His nearness wasn’t as awkward as it should have been.  His words spoken so earnestly filled her with a kind of desire.  The need to be held and loved, she mused, flowed through her.

“I could have done nothing else.”  She tried to step back out of his arms.

Ty held on. The look in his eyes spoke of longing.  Sonja found herself drawn to him.

“Yes, yes you could have, but you didn’t.  Why?”

His question simply asked proved too much for Sonja to answer.  Ty’s hands held her like vices, making her heart pound in her chest.  “I couldn’t turn you over to them.”  Her face burned with the knowledge she wouldn’t have for any price.

“If they find me here, they’ll hang us both.”  He dropped his head before glancing back from hooded lashes.  “Now, if I intend to seek justice, Jeb along with everyone else out there will know I’m staying here.  No way to change the fact that I’m on Yankee land.

She couldn’t deny the truth of his words.  The Yankees hung people for merely being suspected of harboring the enemy.  Why had she lied for him?  Sonja dropped her eyes.  Was she that lonely?  Had she sunk so low as to hide a man, a Rebel for Christ’s sake, simply to have someone to talk to, to share her cabin with?  To share her bed?  The last question, though unbidden, hit home.  Sonja shoved at his arms in an urgent attempt to break free.  She couldn’t be having these feelings now!  Not with the full moon rising within days.

***

“Act natural.  You’re too jumpy.”  Ty kept a hand on the back of the rickety buckboard.  “Remember, I’m your cousin from upstate coming to pay a visit.  Okay?”

Sonja’s jaw clinched before released.  “This is a stupid idea, Lieutenant.”

He winced.  “Don’t call me that for God’s sake.”  Glancing around, he whispered, “Do you want to bring down the whole Union Army on our heads?  I, for one, like my neck right where it is.”

Sonja gave an exasperated huff.  “Seems to me, you like sticking your neck out to see who will try and chop the dang thing off.  You like that a whole lot more than you value your neck as part of your body.”

He laughed before giving her back a solid rub with his hand.  She had hit the nail on the head it seemed.  Coming to Spotsylvania disguised as her cousin may prove to be the stupidest thing he’d done in a long time.  But he had to find out what had happened to his men.  Those loyal fellows deserved at least that much of his efforts.  With a sidelong glance from under the brim of the borrowed hat pulled snug over his forehead, Ty could see the sidewalks littered with Union soldiers.  “Keep it slow, don’t make a sudden moves,” he told her.  “I want to find the sheriff’s office and see what they have posted on the warrant board.”

“Shouldn’t we stop in front of the mercantile or the hardware store first?” she asked.  “We look that much more suspicious heading straight for the sheriff’s office.”

He took his eyes off the sidewalk before giving her a wicked grin.  “Why, Mrs. Brooks, you astound me.  One would think you capable of something covert with talk like that.”

She clinched her teeth, before whispering, “Stop calling me that.  Folks will think that strange, you calling me by my married name if you’re my cousin.”  Giving the mule his head, she sniffed before shaking her head at him.  “Haven’t you ever gone undercover for the cause?”

Ty couldn’t help the look of scrutiny he sent her.  “No, all my dealings with the enemy have been face to face or hand to hand.  But, I’ll keep it in mind.”

Sonja twisted her mouth into a purse as she guided the mule to the sidewalk in front of the mercantile.  “I simply meant you need to watch what you call me.  People will be listening, especially to a newcomer.  I’ve never had any relations visit me besides my sister, Brianda.  The town’s still small enough to enjoy local gossip.  You fit the bill.”  She sent him a sidelong perusal.  “Robert never looked like you do in those clothes,” she murmured.

He could hear her.  He could hear everything these days.  His sense of smell had heightened as well.  Probably the fresh air, he mused.  Having breathed air filled with gunpowder and smoke for three years probably harmed a man’s senses. .  Listening to rifles discharge directly next to your ears reduced your hearing as well.  Now with clear air, he could hear and smell better.

“Help me down, cousin.”  Sonja fell into her role quickly.

Ty obeyed.  With his hand in the small of her back, they ventured into the Cromwell Mercantile & Sundry Store.  The shift to a semi light interior played havoc with his eyes, but they adjusted quickly.  Ty smelled the aroma of fresh ground coffee immediately.  He glanced to his right glimpsing a fellow dressed in a Yankee uniform admiring a set of dueling pistols in a large, wooden case.

“How much for the pair of these?” the fellow asked. Ty recognized the voice immediately, which seemed odd because to his knowledge he’d never met the man.  ‘Let’s see what’s in the gun case, cousin.”  His reference caught her off guard a moment.  Ty had to steer her toward the long, wooden display case.