The doctor, Jon Beauvais, was a skilled young surgeon. Tia worked with him throughout the night. The man’s leg had to be amputated. The little boy’s arm was broken, but they set it, and the doctor believed he would be all right. The fight to save the little girl lasted until morning. Tia tried to soothe her. She was very brave.
“Does it hurt badly?” Tia asked her. “The doctor will make it better. The medicine helps, doesn’t it?”
The little girl offered her a tremulous smile. “Doesn’t hurt too bad! It’s all right, I know. If I die, the angels will come for me. They came for my brother, Daniel. He died at Gettysburg, and so he is in heaven, and if I die, he won’t be so alone.”
“You’re not going to die. You’re going to live. Listen, hear that? Your mommy is out there, and she’s crying. You have to live so that she won’t cry.”
But no matter how hard the doctor worked with her, and despite the healing touch of Rhiannon’s hands, the little girl died. Tia was at her side when, just before dawn, she struggled to draw in one last breath. She was a beautiful child with strawberry ringlets and cherry-red lips. In death, she seemed to sleep. Tia drew her into her arms and cried, unable to believe that the little girl was gone. She still held her tightly, crying, when the doctor came and said the mother needed to be with her child. Tia sat numbly in the doctor’s surgery, listening as a photographer was called. It was common practice, she knew, for photographers to take pictures of dead children so that their parents could remember them. The mother sobbed, holding her baby for the photographer. The child did, indeed, look at peace, as if asleep, and yet it all seemed so horrible to Tia that she could scarcely bear it.
Both of her sisters-in-law went back to cradle their own babies. Risa as well went to her Jamie.
Tia sat outside the surgery, feeling ill. She could still hear the mother’s sobs. They would haunt her all her life.
When dawn broke, she told Rhiannon she was ready to go to Richmond.
As it happened, things worked out very well. Ian’s traveling papers had awaited his return to St. Augustine.
He’d be leaving by a Yankee ship in the harbor.
Tia would be leaving soon after, slipping out of the city and down river to board a blockade runner.
Taylor arrived late, having not received the documents he needed until late that morning. Then, though the weather was excellent and he had moved along at a fair clip, it was still nearly two hundred miles southwest from James McKenzie’s home to the Union naval base at Key West. With the captain of the small vessel eternally nervous that he would meet a heavily gunned blockade runner along the sandbars and shoals that haunted the coastline around the islands, it seemed slow going.
Taylor came into the lagoon by dinghy, and though it was late, again he was being watched. He rowed in alone, planning on rowing back out to meet the ship that night.
As he stepped from the dinghy onto the wet sand of the beach, he almost expected another ambush, but this time, as he dragged the dinghy high up on the sand, it was Jennifer who came running out to throw her arms around him. “Taylor! Taylor, what happened? Please tell me, quickly! Will it be okay, did they believe you, did—”
“Jennifer, Jennifer, whoa!” James McKenzie was right behind his daughter, slipping an arm around her, ready to draw her from Taylor before she could drag them both down into the sand.
Teela was there as well. “Let him get out of the water and into the house!” she chastised. “The night is cool; let’s get inside.”
But Taylor could see Jennifer’s tortured eyes, and he felt a strange pain in his throat, in his gut. She loved the Yankee she had fished from the sea. He had never expected to see it; her first husband had been killed at Manassas. And she had mourned deeply, and recklessly. But seeing her eyes, hearing her voice, the passion, the care, the concern ...
“Jennifer, they accepted the despatches, and my statement that he was far too ill to be moved.”
“Oh, Taylor!” Escaping her father’s hold, she threw her arms around him again. She kissed his cheek, hugged him. “Oh, Taylor!”
“Jen, Jen!” James warned quietly. “He’ll eventually have to go back—”
“No, sir,” Taylor interrupted quietly. “That’s part of what has taken me so long. I have an honorable discharge with me. I took the liberty of suggesting that he’d never be much use to the Yankee Cause again. Of course, I swore in turn that he’d never take arms against the Union, as well.”
“Oh, my God, I have to tell Michael!” Jennifer kissed his cheek again. “Taylor! Thank you so very, very much!”
She sped off.
Teela and James remained, staring at Taylor. He could hear the lash of the waves against the shore. The moon was dimming, but it still cast a gentle glow down upon them. Palms rustled gently in the breeze, a whisper against the night sky.
“For my daughter’s sake, I thank you sincerely,” James told him.
Taylor grinned. “Well, I admit, I’d thought about reporting him dead. I had that suggestion made to me a few times, and it did sound like a good idea. But one day, the war will end. And I don’t want any of us to be haunted by this in later years. I was afraid ... it was a gamble, and Jen might have wound up hating me, but the gamble has paid off.”
“Come, let’s go on into the house,” Teela said, stepping forward and taking his arm. “It’s a cool night. You need some hot food, and a good night’s rest—”
“Teela, I would deeply appreciate sharing a meal with you and James. Afterward, however, I must return to the ship. I am going to be ordered back to Virginia, and I want what time I may have in St. Augustine with Tia.”
Teela seemed to pale suddenly. “Um ... well, let’s have something to eat first, shall we?”
She turned and headed quickly for the house. Taylor looked at James, frowning.
“What’s going on?”
“We received another letter from Risa. Tia has headed toward Virginia herself, to spend time with Brent at the hospital outside Richmond.”
“She ... what?”
“Perhaps she thought you’d be gone much longer. There was a ship on the river—”
“A Rebel ship?” Taylor asked tightly.
“Yes,” James admitted. “Not Jerome’s,” he added quickly. “Under the circumstances, he might have refused her passage. I don’t really know much; all I have is the information in my daughter-in-law’s letter.”
Taylor felt as if a band were tightening around his insides. Fear and fury combined to make him feel sick.
Damn her. He’d trusted her.
He pulled the papers he carried—correspondence and Michael Long’s honorable discharge—from the inner pocket of his frockcoat and handed them to James.
“Sir, I beg your forgiveness, but I must forgo dinner.”
“What is your intent?”
“I’m going after my wife.”
“She will be in Rebel territory.”
“I am accustomed to seizing her from Rebel territory.”
“Take care, Taylor. Take the gravest care.”
“Aye, sir, that I will.”
He pushed the dinghy from the shore, hopped into the small boat, and picked up the oar, rowing with a vengeance.
What in God’s name was she doing? What reckless game did she play? Was she torturing different troops now, leading them into an ambush? No matter how good she was, no matter how swift, how careful, how cunning, she would eventually be caught.
He felt a tightness clamp around his throat. He couldn’t lose her ...
He paused in his furious rowing, staring into the dark velvet of the night, listening to the water lap against the small boat. His heart slammed bitterly against his chest.
Prison. A Yankee prison camp. It seemed the only answer.
Chapter 19
GOING NORTH WAS PRECARIOUS, at best. War was to be hell, the Yanks had determined, and they were practicing a scorched earth policy throughout the South. Train tracks had been destroyed, and travel by ra
il was very uncertain. The Yanks had constantly been bombarding the forts protecting Charleston, making travel by ship equally dangerous.
But throughout the journey, Tia cared little. She couldn’t shake the vision of the beautiful little girl who had died. She couldn’t forget the way that the photographer had posed the dead child to take her picture. Memories. Memories that would haunt her a lifetime, she thought.
She’d had little to do with her own travel arrangements, leaving all the details to Risa and Alaina, who argued over her route and just how and when she should travel. In a way, however, there was little choice—she would have to travel by the whim of the war, with little help otherwise. Her sisters-in-law and Risa were rather like a threesome of maternal hens, leaving St. Augustine with her and braving whatever dangers might face them to accompany her south down the river to the blockade runner. They made certain the captain was a respectable man, and obtained his assurances that he would see to Tia’s welfare above all else.
The captain, a man named Larson, was a kindly, gnarled little fellow, a man dedicated to the south. Tia took her meals in his cabin, where he talked fondly about his two little girls, the wife he had lost in childbirth, and how he despised the men who claimed to be Rebels but ran the blockade purely for the profit they could make. They were bleeding the South worse than the Yankees.
Charleston had been under heavy fire. He would best be able to deliver her to Wilmington. He didn’t consider the seas a safe way for a woman to travel—not that there was a safe or sure way to travel through the South anymore.
As it happened, she was able to disembark in North Carolina just off of the Virginia border. Captain Larson received word from his contact at the port that Brent had arranged for an escort to bring her to the hospital where he was working, on the outskirts of Richmond. She was disheartened to meet the two men who would take her to her cousin; they were so thin, their uniforms so very threadbare. They had both been wounded, and weren’t ready yet to return to the front line, yet were able to take on the duty of protecting one woman along a path that might be peopled by cowardly deserters or a stray Yankee. Both men were polite, courteous to a fault, and determined that she should have decent accommodations each night. Her first evening she spent at a small, still-functioning plantation that had thus far avoided Yankee depredations. Her hostess was the wife of a lieutenant who had known Ian before the war. The woman thought that Tia must now hate her brother.
She was careful not to mention that she had married a Yankee as well. Her blindly loyal hostess might have thrown her right out. Thankfully, the woman seemed to think that her cousin Jerome was single-handedly keeping the South in the war.
The next morning, they started riding early again. They avoided riders when they heard them coming; Sergeant Brewster, the older of her escort, told her that they never really knew just where they might run into a party of scouting Yanks. In the towns, however, they dared the main roads. They were able to buy meals, and there were places where it even seemed that there was not a war on. Everyone, however, seemed to be wearing a mask. They would win the war, yes, of course, the South could still win the war, and though Europe had refused to recognize the government thus far, well, they would simply be proven wrong. The South could never lose. The spirit of the people still remained too strong. They were still thrashing the Union army at most engagements.
Whether that was true or not, Tia didn’t know. The gaunt, weary soldiers helping her across the countryside didn’t seem convinced that they were doing so well. Costs for food had soared—what little could be bought.
The second night she slept in a hotel thirty miles south of the city. She awoke the next morning to a fierce pounding on her door. She bolted out of bed in her nightgown, still exhausted from her long ride, startled by the pounding and blinded by the long tangle of her hair.
“Yes?”
“It’s me, Tia, Brent.”
“Brent!”
She didn’t care the least about decorum but opened the door, delighted to see her cousin. She threw her arms around him, hugged him fiercely, then drew away from him. Brent looked good. He was all McKenzie, tall and dark, Seminole in his features but with a touch of his mother in the shade of his eyes and the hint of red in his hair. He was lean, as seemed to be the tendency with men in the South, but there was something about him that made up for his thinness and the slightly frayed quality of his uniform. He seemed alive with hope, as few people did these days, she thought.
“Tia ... my God, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you! You are still as beautiful as ever, little cousin, though I hear that the beaus of the South will be forever wailing. You have gone off and married a Yank—my own relation—so I am told.”
Tia stepped back, still holding his hands, studying Brent. “Taylor, yes, of course. I keep forgetting that he is your relative as well.”
“How is Taylor?”
“Very well, the last time I saw him,” she murmured, trying to keep all sound of bitterness from her tone. “I have heard that he went to see your father.”
“You sound indignant!”
She shook her head. “Well, he was off on orders, and naturally, he shares nothing regarding his orders with me.”
Brent shrugged. “It’s a war, Tia. You’re not on his side.”
“Neither is your father.”
Brent smiled. “Well, Risa’s letter, informing me that you were coming, arrived just a few days ago, along with a long, long missive from my mother. It seems there was a Yank sailor tossed up on their shore after a storm. He carried confidential despatches. Taylor was sent to find him, and bring him back.”
“Did he do so?”
“No. You see, my older sister had decided she wanted to keep the fellow, and so Taylor went off to return the despatches—and report the soldier unfit for duty so that he could get an honorable discharge.”
“How wonderful,” she murmured.
“So it seems. Jen has now married the young man.”
“Jen remarried—a Yankee?”
“Ah, well, he’s not a military man at all anymore, so I understand.”
She lowered her head, amazed at the information about her cousin Jennifer. No one had been more passionately hateful regarding anyone involved with the Federal government. Jen had been ready to lay down her own life rather than give up the fight. And now ... she had married for a second time. “Everyone is getting married, so it seems. I didn’t know about Jen.”
“I believe the wedding just took place.” He cleared his throat. “Well, I guess I should tell you now—I have just married as well.”
“What? Oh, my lord, Brent! We didn’t know, we had no idea.”
“Well, you didn’t ask me about marrying Taylor. You didn’t ask your own father, so I hear, young lady!”
“The war changes the way we do things,” she murmured. “But tell me! What is her name, where did you meet?”
“Mary. You’ll meet her later. I met her at the special hospital where I was last working.”
“Brent! I know where you were last working! Did you marry a ... a ...”
He laughed, tapping her chin. “Prostitute—is that the word you’re looking for? No, I didn’t marry a prostitute. But I wouldn’t have cared in the least what she did in her past. She’s the most wonderful woman in the world. Her father was my patient. He passed away, I’m afraid, but thanks to him, we’re together, and. it’s horribly ironic—I still spend my days patching men together, but I’ve never been happier in my life.”
“Oh, Brent, I’m so glad!” she said.
“Well, you must know what it’s like.”
Know what it was like ... to be loved, as Brent loved his Mary? No, she could not begin to imagine, being so cherished.
She kept smiling.
“Marriage is ... different.”
He laughed. “It must be—with Taylor. Especially ...”
“Yes?”
“Well, with you being so opposed on your views of the war. Frank
ly, I can’t see how it ever came about, but then ...” He shrugged, grinning at her. “Well, actually, I’m just very lucky that I do have Mary, I suppose. Still, you and Taylor! You are the very soul of independence and Taylor ... well, Abby was the sweetest little thing in the world, living by his very word.”
“You knew Abby?”
“Of course. Taylor is what ... my second or third cousin or second cousin once removed, or something of the like. His family lived further north, but he came south often enough.” He grinned at her. “You’ve got to remember, you’re from the all ‘white’ branch of the McKenzie family—I’m from the branch with the red blood. Taylor has a similar background. Such a history in the world we live in can create a unique relationship.”
“So Abby was—sweet?” she couldn’t help but asking. Her curiosity was morbid, she told herself. Abby was dead, gone. Yet Abby remained a ghost in her life. The perfect wife, while she ... well, she was a decadent, infamous Rebel spy.
“Charming. But very strong when she chose to be. I can’t imagine what he felt, watching her die ... oh, sorry, Tia. Well, of course. That is the past. He’s married to you now. And here you are deep, deep in Rebel territory. Does he know?”
She lifted her hands. “I—don’t know. You know more than I do. I came here because of Rhiannon. I felt I had no choice.”
“Yes, of course. I understand. Well, surely Taylor will understand as well. Pity he isn’t on our side. He would have been quite an asset. I’ve never met a man with sharper vision, clearer hearing. When we were kids, he could put us all to shame in the Everglades. He could hear the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, I think. See in pitch darkness. He’s the perfect scout—the Pinkerton Agency wanted him to work with them, but he stayed with the cavalry despite his engineering skills.”
“Engineering?”
Brent looked surprised. “Engineering. He studied at Oxford for a while, before entering West Point. He’s a regular genius with bridges, roads, pontoons ... his first love is actually architecture. He used to talk about the building that time would bring to Florida, You didn’t know?”