But not as much as she hated him for wearing blue—when all of his family had donned gray.
When she had fought for the life they had always known, for Virginia, for love, honor, and family.
She rolled over and stared at the ceiling.
If only it were Daniel Cameron who had come. The brother who wore gray.
Not so long ago, they had all dressed in blue. The Camerons had both come riding into Harpers Ferry during John Brown’s raid.
Jesse had come to her rescue then.
Back when the world had still seemed sane.
How very much had happened since then!
One
October 16, 1859
Harpers Ferry, Virginia
Near Midnight
“A shot’s been fired!”
Kiernan bolted upright in her bed. Lacey Donahue, her gray hair covered in a nightcap, was carrying a candle to the foot of Kiernan’s bed, and hovering over her in distress.
Half awake, Kiernan struggled to understand what was happening. “A shot? Fired by whom?”
“I don’t know!” Lacey murmured.
“When? Where?”
“I don’t know, but I know that I heard it!” Lacey swore.
“Lacey, I didn’t hear a thing,” Kiernan assured her.
What Lacey wanted was companionship, Kiernan realized as her plump hostess curled up on the foot of her bed. “There’s something going on in the streets. I woke up and there were people out there!” Lacey said.
“Lacey, out where? These are public streets—” Kiernan began, but Lacey nervously interrupted her.
“No, no, dear! There are strangers running around with guns. No, wait, they’re not running around—they’re sneaking around. Oh, Kiernan, you must know what I mean. They are people with no right to be out there!”
Kiernan leaped out of bed and hurried to the window, drawing back the frilled curtains. To the far left she could see the Potomac and the railroad crossing over to Maryland. A little closer, she could see the buildings of the armory. The moon was out, and the street was gently lit.
“I don’t see anything,” she said.
“Step back!” Lacey warned her. “Don’t let anyone see you there!”
Kiernan hid a smile and moved back. She looked out, thinking that she loved the night and the beauty of the mountains and valleys here where the Shenandoah and the Potomac rivers came together. There was a beautiful story about the Indian maiden Shenandoah, who had loved her brave, Potomac, too deeply and too well. And when they were parted, it was her tears that had formed the rivers.
Kiernan’s home was in the Tidewater region of Virginia, far down on the peninsula, right on the James River, and not at all far the from the original Jamestown settlement. Virginia was a big state, and she’d come a long way to reach Harpers Ferry, several days ride. But the country was beautiful. She loved all of it. From the low-lying land along the James to Williamsburg, to Richmond, Fredericksburg, and all the way over here, where they were in the point of the state that joined Maryland, and where one actually had to look to the south to face Washington, D.C. She loved the peninsula where she lived. But; at night, when the moon beat gently down upon the town, with the Blue Ridge Mountains rising all around and the waters rushing between, she didn’t think that any place could be more beautiful.
Or more peaceful, like tonight.
Lacey was just nervous, Kiernan thought. Her husband, Thomas, was away with Kiernan’s father and Andrew Miller and his son, Anthony Miller. They were looking for a site farther south on which to build a second factory. Since the federal armory was at Harpers Ferry, Andrew Miller wanted to stay in production there, but he also wanted to expand and explore new possibilities. And he wanted to be away from the ever-watchful eye of the federal government to do that.
The political situation was not an easy one at the moment. Southerners were swearing that if Abraham Lincoln was elected president, there would be war. Discontent was sweeping the country. If it did come to war, the federal government would have to take an immediate interest in Harpers Ferry because of the armory.
Kiernan was fascinated by politics. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be—her aunt Fiona had told her it was a most unladylike trait, and that she would pay for it somewhere down the line. Her father had chastised her, too, mainly because Aunt Fiona had done so.
But Kiernan was an only child, and she had been her father’s companion and his best friend as she grew up, except for the time she had gone away to Lady Ellen’s Finishing School for Girls. She knew her father’s mind very well, and she thought that he had been right when he warned his friend Andrew Miller that no one really knew what Virginia would do in the end.
“South Carolina is the one screaming states’ rights the loudest, Andrew,” he had stated at the dinner table. “Why, the majority of the Founding Fathers were Virginians! Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe—all Virginians. Patrick Henry—a Virginian. Why, Virginia is the very heart and soul of this country. It has never been proved that a state can secede!”
“If Lincoln is elected,” Andrew had argued back, “then South Carolina will secede. And once she leaves the Union, I promise you, her sister cotton and tobacco and slave states will follow suit. You mark my words.”
Kiernan wondered if it would happen, or if the uproar was just the political climate of the day. The real trouble was out in the wilds of the West. Abolitionists were racing out westward to Missouri and Nebraska and Kansas—“bleeding Kansas” as they called it, for all the bloodshed. There was a war going on in the West already. Proslavery men and abolitionists were at one another so viciously, it had become a string of raids and murders rather than battles. Slaveholders were racing out, too. Everybody was trying to claim the new states for their own side.
Horrible things were happening, really horrible things, things that made some of the stories about Indians seem tame. A war was already going on between the slaveholding factions and those determined that Nebraska would be a free state. Cities had been attacked. Unarmed men, women, and children had died. Among the abolitionists, one name stood out: John Brown. Even in Virginia, they had heard stories about him, about the way he had taken his followers into Missouri, ripped unarmed men from their houses, and butchered them then and there in front of their loved ones. Retaliation, he had claimed it was.
But it was murder, Kiernan thought, horrible, heinous murder. She was grateful that such things didn’t happen in Virginia, even this far west in the mountains. She was convinced that anyone who was running around killing people in either Kansas or Missouri ought to be prosecuted.
The problems weren’t just in the West, she knew. A woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe had written a book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and in it she had created the cruelest human being who could be imagined to own and persecute slaves.
But it wasn’t always like that! Kiernan wanted to shout to the newspapers. Most of the slaveowners she knew were good people, determined to enforce good conditions for their slaves, seeing to it that they received proper religious training. There were some cruel men, she had to admit, but none she knew were as bad as Simon Legree!
Most southerners didn’t even own slaves. The problem really had to do with the economy. The South was a cotton kingdom, and slaves were necessary to work the plantations. That didn’t mean that everyone was happy about it. Why, Jefferson, when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, wanted all men to be free—including the slaves—when he had been a slaveholder himself. Other statesmen had convinced him that the Declaration would never get past the Continental Congress if it contained such a clause, for the very reason that the South still needed slaves today—the economy.
But whether a master or mistress was a good person or a bad person wasn’t the point in the long run, the way Kiernan saw it. The point was freedom. She couldn’t begin to imagine being owned by anyone. Her father was a wonderful man. No master could be kinder, or more gentle. But he was an old-time Virginian—the son, grandson, and great-gra
ndson of planters. Her view on the slavery question was not the same as his, or that of any of their neighbors or business associates.
Kiernan didn’t know Lacey Donahue’s thoughts on the subject, but Lacey and her husband, Thomas, owned no slaves. They had no servants living in the house at all, for that matter. Her maid was an Irish girl who came in every morning, and Thomas, a lawyer, had a clerk and an assistant who came in every day to his office below the living floors of this three-storied house right on the main street of town.
The women were very much alone in the house tonight. That was surely why little bumps in the night and the idea of people walking about in the street bothered Lacey. She was a sweetheart. Childless, she clung to her husband. To the best of Kiernan’s knowledge, Lacey and Thomas had never been separated before, but Thomas and Andrew Miller and Kiernan’s father were all planning on investing in the new armory together.
Kiernan was aware, too, that her father and Andrew Miller were interested in another alliance—a marriage between her and Anthony. She cared for Anthony, cared for him deeply. He was tall and almost gaunt, with golden hair and mahogany eyes and the most charming and elegant manner imaginable. He was dedicated to his father, and to Virginia. He was bright and fun, a wonderful dancer, a man quick to plan a picnic with her or a daring horse race with a friend.
Maybe she did love Anthony. They had everything in common, and she enjoyed him tremendously. Yet for reasons she didn’t understand herself, she waited and stalled about marrying him. She didn’t mind flirting with him in the least, and she loved dancing with him and being with him, it was just …
She had dreamed of love being something different, something that would make her whole body tremble. She would feel a vast excitement knowing that she would see the man she loved, of feeling a rush of heat and fever every time that he was near.
Feelings she tried to push to deep corners of her heart and mind plunged forward despite her best efforts.
She wanted love to feel the way she had once felt about Jesse Cameron.
Oh, but that was so long ago! she thought. When she had been a very little girl, she had thought that the sun rose and set on him. No man had ever sat a horse better. No man had ever managed to shoot quite so well, or tease a little girl so gallantly.
Jesse was ten years her senior. She had just been leaving her dolls behind when he had first returned from West Point in his uniform. No one had been as fascinating as Jesse in that uniform. No one had ever had quite such an effect upon her. He was always cordial when he saw her, his flashing blue eyes filled with humor and affection when he greeted her in his husky Virginia drawl. “Mornin’, Miss Mackay. I swear, but you do grow more lovely by the day.” Naturally, he teased her. He was always surrounded by girls, the belles of the South—and the North.
Or at least he had teased her until recently, she thought. Not that she saw him very often. He had come out of West Point to move on to medicine, and he had been spending an awful lot of time in Washington. And then she had spent time with her father, and with Anthony Miller.
Now she had to remind herself that her feelings for Jesse had been a childhood infatuation and nothing more. Their families had been friends for decades. Jesse’s brother Daniel had been one of her best friends, and he had admitted to her that Jesse had often laughed at her mischief-making and said that she was a “wayward little dickens,” and that any man had best watch out when she was in the vicinity.
Of course, she’d never really been a “wayward dickens.” Jesse had overreacted. She had simply been careful to stand up against some of the pranks that others played around her. In school one day Tristan Tombey had tried to get her attention by dipping her hair in an inkwell. Well, she’d just gotten back at Tristan. Admittedly, she’d flirted with him, teased him, smiled, tugged upon his heartstrings. But that had been the only way to attach the inkwell to his suspenders so that every single thing he was wearing and his body could be coated in ink. As it happened, Jesse had just been on his way home, passing by the schoolyard, when Tristan had first put up his fuss.
Jesse had laughed, but he’d also pulled her up on his horse and insisted on taking her home. “Miss Mackay, you are an outrageous little flirt, and I pity the poor young lad who falls for you next!” Jesse had told her firmly.
Then he’d taken her home, and despite her outraged protests, he’d laughingly told the entire story to her father. She’d gotten into horrible trouble, of course, but Jesse had still been amused. On his way out he had taken hold of her chin, and those striking eyes of his had lit like blue fire into her own. “Take heed, Miss Mackay, you’re too young to be practicing such a talent for flirtation. Someday, some poor soul may fight back.”
“A gallant southern gentleman?” she had taunted sweetly in turn. “Such as yourself? To cause a lady—oh, no! a child!—distress?”
“Ah, but men will not always be gallant southern gentlemen,” he had warned her. And with a tousle of her hair, he had left.
And she had been furious.
But even then, she had dreamed about him, about those blue eyes of his, and about the deep, husky taunt of his voice.
Because Jesse didn’t always tease. Once before, she had determined to go swimming down in one of the creeks and on her way she’d come across little Cissy Wade, one of Old Man Evan Turner’s slave children, and on an impulse, she’d talked the skinny, frightened-looking little girl into coming with her. When they’d come back, Kiernan had been astounded by Evan Turner’s fury with Cissy. Kiernan had confidently explained that it had been all her fault, but Turner had taken a cane to Cissy and warned Kiernan—rich little lady that she might be—that she’d get the same if she didn’t run along. Poor farmers needed what slave help they had.
Well, Kiernan hadn’t run. She’d stayed to see Turner strike Cissy. And she understood why her papa had always called Turner white trash, but that hadn’t helped any. She’d heard Cissy scream, and she’d come running for help, though she knew she’d never reach Papa in time to do Cissy any good.
As soon as she had hit the roadway home, she had nearly plowed right into Jesse on one of the Camerons’ beautiful black racing horses. He dismounted and caught her before she could race on.
“Kiernan! What now? Who did you tempt into doing what?”
She didn’t care if Jesse teased her or not. There were tears in her eyes. Jesse held her shoulders and tried to shake free. “I took Cissy swimming. Just down to the creek, just for an hour. And he’s beating her! Old Man Turner is beating her with a cane. Jesse, he’s going to kill her!”
Jesse stepped back with a weary look in his eyes.
“Kiernan, Turner owns Cissy. By law, he can beat her.”
“He’ll kill her!”
“Kiernan, you should have thought about Cissy’s position before you invited her along.”
“I just wanted her to have some fun. He works her so hard. She always looks so very tired. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I’d never hurt her! Oh, I’d like to tear his hair out!”
“A few more years on you, Miss Mackay, and you’d probably try,” he said lightly. Then he added, “All right, all right. Go on home, Kiernan. I’ll do what I can.”
She hadn’t gone home. She’d followed Jesse back to Turner’s farm, and she’d hid back in the bushes. Jesse had ridden in on the action, dismounted from his horse, and stripped the cane right out of Turner’s hands. Old Man Turner swung around, but even though Jesse hadn’t quite reached twenty, he was very tall and broad-shouldered and Turner wasn’t about to wrestle with him. Still, he had his say.
“You ain’t got no right, boy, you ain’t got no right. Even if you do come from Cameron money!”
“You’re going to beat this child to death, Turner!” Jesse had exclaimed.
“She’s mine, and she was a runaway.”
“She wasn’t any runaway, and you know it!” Jesse said angrily.
Turner’s voice lowered, and the two of them argued onward.
At the end o
f it all, Jesse produced a large wad of money, and suddenly Cissy, dazed and silent now except for her sniffles, was on the back of Jesse’s horse.
Jesse had bought her from Turner. A week later, the Camerons bought the rest of her family—her mother, her father—a rickety old field hand—and her baby brother.
Maybe it was then that her infatuation really began.
Ah, but Jesse could still infuriate her! He treated her like a child!
When her father had staged her coming-out ball, she’d thought that Jesse was off with the military, either in Washington or out in the West fighting Indians. It had been a wonderful night for her. She was tied into an incredible corset, wearing what seemed like a million petticoats. For the first time her father allowed her a fashionable adult gown with a daring, daring bosom. Her hair was curled and elegantly piled on top of her head. She felt beautiful and very grown-up—and more. She felt very confident with herself as a woman, and she had the time of her life flirting, smiling, and dancing. The young men flocked to her, and it was wonderful. She knew that she must never really torment a young swain, but it was certainly proper enough to be a very charming flirt, and she couldn’t help but enjoy her power.
That is, she had enjoyed it until she saw Jesse. He had been leaning in a doorway watching her, and she realized that he had been watching her for quite some time. There was a very irritating amusement in his eyes and in his lopsided smile.
And then he came to her to claim a dance and swept her into his arms, even though she had promised the dance to someone else.
“Ah, but you are growing up to fulfill your every promise of beauty, Miss Mackay!” he had assured her. But his blue gaze had still been alight with laughter, even when he had bent over her hand and brushed it with a kiss. The kiss brought a flush to her cheeks, and she wanted to kick him even as she felt palpitations pulsing beneath her breast, right in the area of her heart. “So who are you out to dazzle tonight?” he asked.
“The world, Jesse Cameron,” she told him sweetly. But when he laughed again and released her, she had been careful to accidentally tread upon his toes with her new leather pumps.