When the Splendor Falls (47 page)

He saw Leigh standing with his men and signaled to them to let her go.

“You’d better get back to the big house.”

Leigh glanced around at Neil’s men as they checked their weapons, several affixing bayonets to their rifles, others, bloodied from the earlier skirmish, pulling out their cartridge boxes while struggling to their feet, their expressions hopeless.

“I came out here for a bale of hay. Could you oblige me by loading it into the wheelbarrow?”

Neil stared at her as if she’d gone insane.

“Oughta be a general, such brass has this lil’ reb.”

“Can’t let her go, Cap’n! She’ll tell the rebs we’re in here. Catch us like a bunch of treed ’coons.”

“They’ll find us soon enough when they search the stables,” was their captain’s curt response.

“I might be able to stop them from searching the stables,” Leigh’s voice came softly, but it carried enough to cause a nervous silence to descend on the men taking their positions in the various stalls as they prepared to fight.

Neil stared at her intently, and as Leigh held his gaze, she felt as if she stared into a stranger’s eyes, so impersonally assessing were they.

“If they don’t believe you, and search the stables, you and your family could be burned out,” he told her.

“I’ll just say the Yankee swine held a gun pointed at my back and threatened to murder me and my family if I didn’t lie to the rebels,” Leigh countered, quelling her fears, for she was well aware of the price she and her family would have to pay if she failed.

“Reckon we gotta trust her now,” someone breathed.

“Ain’ no way I’m fer trustin’ a damn reb!” someone else spat contemptuously, cocking his rifle.

Neil continued to stare into Leigh’s face.

“You do not have the time, Captain,
not
to trust me.”

He nodded. “Very well. You see, gentlemen,” he said, glancing around at his assembled men, “the lady and I are old friends. One might even say we have family ties that bind us together.”

The only man among them who wasn’t too surprised to do more than stare, chuckled wheezingly. “Damnation! Which one of us got himself a guardian angel?” he asked, slapping his knee with ill-contained glee. “’Cause one of us has been blessed, either that, or the cap’n sure as hell is the devil himself to git us outa this mess!”

“Whooptee!” someone said beneath his breath, another one whistling softly as he eyed the captain and the lady curiously, because, from the look of them, they didn’t seem like friends.

Within a blink of an eye, a small bale of hay had been carefully placed on the wheelbarrow, one of the men even going so far as to assist Leigh with guiding it through the door, ever careful, however, not to show himself.

Leigh glanced back once, meeting the pale-eyed stare of Neil Braedon for a brief instant before she turned and left the barn, then the door closed behind her.

The men stood silent, some unable to draw a breath as they watched her push the wheelbarrow across the muddy field. Leigh’s feet kept slipping, slowing down her progress, her slender back bent low over the barrow as she strained against the load’s greater weight, but, finally, she made her way into sight of the rebels.

They rode toward her, their horses prancing, raised hooves sending mud flying, yellow sashes waving. They encircled her small figure, closing in around her, but she stood her ground, the wheelbarrow looking as deadly as a cannon aimed at their heads as she stared up at them with the pride and arrogance of a Travers.

As still as stone statues, the Bloodriders watched as the young woman pointed back toward the stables, one of them cursing beneath his breath, thinking she’d betrayed them. And why shouldn’t she, a couple even had the temerity to think. They were, after all, the enemy. They might even have killed members of her family on the battlefield. What right did they have to expect this woman to protect them?

But to their amazement, they saw the rebel officer take off his hat with gentlemanly courtesy and laugh, then he signaled to one of his men, who quickly dismounted and came to her aid, taking hold of the wheelbarrow with a fine show of manly strength.

“What she tellin’ them?” someone finally had to ask, unable to bear the suspense any longer, his finger fidgeting on the trigger as he took aim on the rebel major who looked a bit like a portly pigeon sitting astride a long-legged Thoroughbred.

“Don’t know fer sure. Something about havin’ been in the stables. No Yanks there or she would’ve had them shoveling manure,” another voice contributed, sounding slightly offended at the notion. “Got ’em believin’ she hates Yanks.”

“Easy enough to do. She probably does,” another voice rasped, watching with amusement as the rebel troop moved smartly away, trotting behind the lone figure like a group of eager-to-please swains.

“Think the one, the major, knows her, or knew her brother. Seems real impressed, an’ not likely to question her word of honor. Now she’s tellin’ him something about his horse. Don’t seem quite so pleased with himself now. I think she’s givin’ him hell ’bout somethin’. Pointin’ to his horse’s hindquarters.”

“That reb major reminds me a bit of that fat-assed General Pope, talkin’ so big an’ sayin’ his headquarters were in the saddle an’ how he’d have ridden right through to Richmond, then on through the South to New Orleans had he been in command ’stead of McClellan. He wasn’t there in the Shenandoah. But reckon he’d blow right down there into Cajun country fast enough havin’ so much hot air in him. Figure they was right sayin’ he don’t know his headquarters from his hindquarters, ’cause he’s been sittin’ on ’em too long,” someone said, spitting.

“Let’s jus’ hope this reb major is as windy.”

“Lord love her, gettin’ that one to push the wheelbarrow for her an’ now even to unload it, an’ him such a scrawny-lookin’ lad,” one of the Bloodriders breathed in awe.

Neil smiled humorlessly as he watched Leigh flirting with the rebel captain who’d been so quick to come to her aid, her long braid of hair swinging provocatively around her hips as she walked alongside him, her face turned up to his as if she waited breathlessly on his every utterance, yet ever careful not to forget the pompous major riding beside her.

“It’s them bonnie blue eyes,” someone said. “Go right to a man’s heart, they do,” he added, thinking of his own blue-eyed sweetheart back home in Ohio.

“Don’t s’pose she’s asked them to stay fer supper, d’ye?” a worried voice asked, his growling stomach remembering her earlier offer of hot broth. “We was here first,” he added with a resentful look at the gray-uniformed soldiers riding up to the house so boldly, as if certain of their welcome within.

To his great satisfaction, however, the rebels, after a moment’s conversation, turned their mounts around and rode back toward the road, where the soldiers on foot had waited for them.

Someone sighed audibly, for the rebels were riding away to continue their search elsewhere, and at least for now they were safe.

“Think she’ll come back?” Someone voiced aloud the thought most were worrying about silently.

“She gave her word,” was all their captain said as he stood by the partly opened door, waiting for her to return.

* * *

“Yankees! Yankees! Out in the stables!” Jolie choked, sucking in her breath. “What were them rebs doin’ leavin’? Everybody’s gotten crazy as coots ’round here, ’ceptin’ for me,” she added as Stephen entered the kitchens, looking as if he hadn’t a care in the world as he picked a piece of lint from his faded sleeve. “An’ what were you doin’ saunterin’ ’cross that yard like you were out with your beau for a Sunday stroll?” she asked, startling Stephen from his preoccupation with his sleeve.

“Who’re you talkin’ ’bout? I never left the house after seein’ Miss Althea back to the study,” Stephen said, looking properly shocked.

“I’m not talkin’ to you, ol’ man. Knew where you were all the time, or at least where you’d better have been,” Jolie told him dismissingly, returning to eye Leigh now that she had dealt with Stephen. “Saw you flirtin’ with that officer who was pushin’ the wheelbarrow. Betcha turned all mealymouthed on him, just the way I know you can, lil’ honey. What’re you up to? You tell Jolie,” she demanded, hands on hips as she planted her feet in a battle-ready stance.

But Leigh wasn’t listening. She was staring across the yard toward the stables, where
Captain Dagger
and his men, the notorious
Bloodriders
, were waiting for her return.

Leigh shook her head in disbelief, wondering anew what madness had seized her. If the rebels ever found out she had hidden Captain Dagger and his Bloodriders in the stables, and had lied to them, they would ride back to Travers Hill and burn the house down with a vengeance.

“What’re you shakin’ for, lil’ honey?” Jolie demanded, peering into Leigh’s pale face. “I don’t like this at all. I got a feelin’ ’bout this.”

“Saw you limpin’, figure it’s that big toe again,” Stephen said softly, avoiding Jolie’s eye as he got the tureen down from the cupboard.

She’d never made the connection between the infamous raider Captain Dagger and Neil Braedon—at least not until the rebel major had damned the name of the murderous Yankee raider they were searching for, and had given her a very colorful description of him and his parentage. She should have remembered.

Sun Dagger.

What had she done? Leigh asked herself, for Neil and his men were not just ordinary Yankees hiding out at Travers Hill. Then she remembered the wounded men in the stables, and thought of the shooting, and the dying, that would have been the outcome had she given away their hiding place. And then she saw the image of Neil lying dead and bloodied, those rebel officers standing over his body and gloating, and she suddenly knew she could never have betrayed him.

“Jolie, I—”

“Don’t like that tone, missy,” Jolie said, watching Leigh like a fox.

“Jolie,” Leigh began again, “it is too late now not to help those Yankees out in the stables. And do you know why?”

Stephen’s eyes widened slightly. “Yankees? In the stables?” he muttered beneath his breath, shaking his head.

“I’m sure you’re goin’ to tell, an’ I’m sure I’m not goin’ to like it.”

“Because, if we help them they’ll leave Travers Hill sooner than if we didn’t, an—”

“I like that.”

“—and since I did lie to those rebels, we have to help those Yankees now so they’ll go, or they’ll get angry, an—”

“Don’t like that,” Jolie declared.

“—and, one of those Yankees out in the stables is Neil Braedon.”

Jolie looked as if she’d swallowed her tongue, and poor Stephen splashed some of the broth he’d been ladling into the tureen onto his shoe.

“And those rebels, if they ever discovered Neil Braedon was Nathan’s cousin, might think we, and certainly Althea, who bears the Braedon name, had been helping them all along,” Leigh hurriedly told them.

Jolie finally managed to find her tongue. “I’ve never, an’ I mean never, known a body who could talk herself in an’ out of trouble like you do. Oughta be one of them no-good, fancy po-lu-ti-cians!”

“I just hope the rebels don’t come back before I can treat those wounds,” Leigh said worriedly, but perhaps looking a little too innocent as she pulled down a large gathering basket from a hook and began to fill it with various bottles.

“What wounds?” Jolie asked, watching her every move.

“I didn’t tell you?” Leigh said, her back to Jolie as she selected one of the clean sheets that had dried and began to tear it into strips.

“You know you didn’t,” Jolie said, staring in amazement as she watched Leigh’s actions.

“Bandages,” Leigh said. “The Yankees were in a skirmish, and several have bullet wounds, and one has several broken ribs. I’ll have to bind him up tight before he can move again. I don’t think he has a punctured lung yet. And we should feed them. They’re shivering with cold.”

“You’re touchin’ no man, an’ no Yankee like that, Miss Leigh. Not fittin’ for a daughter of Miss Beatrice Amelia’s. Never liked it much before, you bloodying up yer hands, but at least you were here in the big house, an’ under my eye, an’ jus’ helpin’ them doctors,” Jolie said, sniffing her disapproval even as she gathered several more bottles of her cures from the shelf and added them to the basket.

“Are you coming with me?”

Jolie snorted. “You know I am, missy. You haven’t fooled me with that sweet talk since you was that lil’,” she said, holding her hand about knee-high.

“An’ once you serve Miss Althea and the children luncheon, an’ Mister Guy, an’ don’t you say a word to him ’bout anything, Steban,” Jolie warned, “you get yourself right back over here an’ bring that pot down to the stables. We’re goin’ to get them fed an’ out of here before them rebels return,” she said, selecting a worn sheet she had been meaning to mend, easily tearing it in two.

“Yes, ma’am,” Stephen said, his tone causing Jolie to stop what she was doing and give him a suspicious stare. “I’ll be doin’ jus’ dat,
Miz
Jolie, an’ I’ll jus’ bring down dat shootin’ rifle o’ Mist’ Guy’s. Jus’ to make certain dem Yankees doan ’cause no trouble fer Miss Leigh, ’cause dis ol’ man ain’ as dumb as some folks been thinkin’ all dese years,” he said, casually tidying his green jacket before picking up the heavy tureen and walking with great dignity from the kitchens.

Jolie opened her lips, then closed them tight. Adding a pair of scissors and a butchering knife to the basket, she said indignantly while trying to take the basket from Leigh’s grasp, “Well, I’ve never heard such tomfoolery in my life. Where’d he learn to talk like a chawbacon? My Steban’s fine as any gentleman. Let me have that basket, Miss Leigh!”

Keeping a firm hold on the handle, Leigh bent over it and kissed Jolie’s coppery cheek. “And you’ve always said Stephen didn’t have a sense of humor,” she teased.

Jolie drew in her breath, puffing out her thin chest, then a slow, reluctant grin started to cross her face, followed by a laugh that started out silently, then gradually grew in tone until her shoulders were shaking and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“Isn’t he somethin’, that Steban of mine,” she said, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, while she held onto the basket with the other, but Leigh wasn’t going to give up and jerked even harder, pulling the basket free from Jolie’s grasp.