Triumph (12 page)

“I am a first cousin to Colonel Ian McKenzie, United States Cavalry,” she said, but she knew by the man’s sudden, snickering smile that he knew exactly who that made
her
. The McKenzie who had been instrumental in more than one prison escape from Old Capitol, the McKenzie who had helped break out her brother and a number of her countrymen dressed as a ladies singing group. She’d also helped her cousin escape by suggesting he slip into a coffin.

Yes, she was one of the McKenzies who had actually resided at Old Capitol for a while. Perhaps she could get into a friendly conversation here with this man and explain it all. Tell him how she had tended Jesse first in Virginia when he had been a wounded prisoner in the Confederate States of America. How much she had started to like him there, and how liking him had made her see more than ever that the war was a tragedy in which friends and brothers, fathers and sons, could walk out on a field any day, be ordered to fire—and shoot one another down.

But then Jesse had betrayed her, threatening to call out the guard should she attempt to leave the city with her brother Jerome.

Then came the part the guard would really like—there she was, a good Rebel stuck in the heart of Washington. Before she knew it, she was passing information, and before she knew it, she was a Rebel spy. She hadn’t come here with designs on espionage—she had really, truly just fallen right into it. Then, in a nutshell, Jesse—assisted by
Sissy
, who had ostensibly been living with her as a servant!—had learned what information she was to deliver, disguised himself to receive the information and prove her a spy, had her arrested, and seen her sent to Old Capitol. The man who had then been her downfall and total nemesis had come around at the urging of her cousin-in-law, Rhiannon McKenzie, Julian’s wife. Because she’d asked Rhiannon for help—afraid that all her male kin would feel honor-bound to storm the Yankee citadel for her release. Rhiannon had gone to see Jesse. And Jesse had come to the prison—where she was incarcerated because he had tricked and betrayed her. There was only one way to get her out, and that was because of his own reputation as a heroic cavalry commander. He could marry her, and take responsibility for her future actions.

Would telling the man any of this help? No.

“Sergeant, you have no right to detain me in this manner,” she told him firmly. “My papers are in perfect order.”

“You went back behind Rebel lines, Miss McKenzie.”

“
Mrs.
Halston,” she hissed impatiently. It seemed ridiculous that he was giving her trouble—for once in her life, her motives had been strictly within the law. “And my husband has been out of the city—fighting. He was wounded, imprisoned, and wounded again—fighting for the Union, sir. But without him being here, I took the time I was left alone and went to see my brother. He is not a spy, nor engaged in any manner of undercover activity whatsoever—he is a surgeon. I hadn’t seen him in a very, very long time. I left the city with permission from General McGee. But now I am back, because my husband is a Union soldier. This is his home, and this is where I will wait for him. Now I am weary, and I want to go home. Please let me pass!”

To her surprise, the man seemed to take a slight step back. “Mrs. Halston, you’ve got to realize that Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of snakes and spies. And with your known Rebel activities, I’m not sure it’s such a good thing for you to be coming and going. Whether you are or aren’t guilty of carrying information—”

“I am not carrying information!”

“Who are these people with you?” he demanded suddenly.

“What?”

“The Negroes?”

She straightened to her full height. Although the man naturally remained taller, she was aggravated enough to feel as tough as a little terrier. “This is a free woman who resides in Washington, and for your information, soldier, she has done the Union great favors upon many an occasion!”

He looked over at Sissy. “The Union—or other darkees?”

She stared at him, horrified and infuriated. “President Lincoln has taught us that the major issue we’re fighting over is slavery! I can imagine being challenged in the South, but how dare you detain me here any longer regarding the Negroes in my company!”

“Look, Mrs. Halston, the city is teeming with refugees and darkees with no jobs and no place to go.”

“This is Mr. Lincoln’s city, and they will reside here. Let me pass now with these people, or so help me, sir, I will somehow see to it that you are very, very sorry for the difficulties you have caused me!”

The soldier suddenly looked as irritated and angry as she herself felt. “You should have never been let out of prison, Miz McKenzie, and that’s a sad fact.”

“But I have been let out!” she replied with soft vehemence, but as she turned away from him, he had a rejoinder for her.

“Leave it to a half-breed!”

She didn’t know if he had meant for her to hear him or not. But it was the wrong night for him to come out with such fighting words.

She swung back around on him, catching his jaw with a sturdy slap that must have stung like the venom of a hundred bees.

“Quarter-breed soldier, and you can count on it. We just keep fighting and fighting, one way or the other. We are survivors!”

“Why ...” the soldier began, incensed, his cheek reddening, his hand rising reflexively to touch the spot where she had struck him. “Why you—”

“Breed? Rebel? Just what would you like to call me?” she inquired. “Take care, sir, with what you do, since you must recall, you are dealing with someone carrying the blood of pure savages in her veins!”

She was startled by a sudden sound of applause. Swinging around, she saw that the group of Yankee soldiers standing by the trees had been watching her. They had kept their eyes on the entire altercation.

“Teach him his manners, ma’am!” a young soldier called out.

“And if he takes another step toward you, don’t you worry none, we’ll do some of the teaching for you!” another man said. He wore a sergeant’s stripes on his arms as well, an older man, with rich gray whiskers, heavy jowls, and a round, muscled body. “Are you forgetting you’re speaking to a lady, Sergeant?” he demanded sharply.

“The lady has been a Confederate spy!” the checkpoint sergeant argued.

“If we had to hang every lady in Washington who had lent a sympathetic ear to the South, we might be plumb out of ladies in the capital. As to Mrs. Halston, well, doesn’t seem to me she’s doing anything much against the Union now. Looks to me like she might be doing something for those poor people there in that wagon. There’s been refugees by the hundreds piling into the city—I can’t see what harm Mrs. Halston’s bringing in two more can do to anyone.”

“Why, she’s Jesse’s wife, is she?” a cavalryman asked. “Why, then, here’s to you, ma’am. Jesse saw fit to marry the lady, and she seems like a fine, fierce beauty to me. To Jesse’s wife!” he declared.

The rest of the soldiers let out encouraging calls, clapped, and saluted her, appearing to be well entertained—and pleased with her show of courage. Flushing, she was tempted to bow, while at the same time, she wanted to run away. She’d been attacked for being a Southerner, then for trying to help blacks into the city—and then for her own Indian blood!

“Sergeant Walker!” one of the men, an artillery colonel who had been leaning against an old oak, called out sharply, approaching the guard on duty. “Let the lady pass!”

“Lady! But, sir—”

“Sergeant, let the lady pass!”

“But—”

“Now!”

Sydney met the colonel’s eyes. He looked fifty—like the darkees, he was probably twenty years younger. His hair was stone gray. His eyes were as old as the hills. She managed a small smile to him in acknowledgment.

“Thank you, sir.”

He bowed low to her. “Mrs. Halston, my pleasure.”

She hurried swiftly back to her wagon, crawling up to take the reins.

She felt incredibly weary—and confused. It didn’t help that Sissy was staring at her with pride. “My, my!” Sissy said softly. “It’s a Rebel Yank!”

“I’m not a Rebel Yank!” Sydney lashed out. “Honestly, I wish you were my darkee! I’d skin your hide!” she threatened.

Sissy broke into peals of laughter.

“You made me a conspirator in stealing contraband!” Sydney charged her.

Sissy shook her head. “No, Mrs. Halston, you just helped two human beings gain their freedom and their lives. I thank you with all my heart, and I know that God himself thanks you as well. Sydney, you were magnificent!”

Sydney shook her head. “Sissy, I didn’t want to be magnificent! What I did was wrong, your tricking me was wrong—”

“The end defends the means, Sydney—Machiavelli.”

“What is a slave doing reading Machiavelli?” Sydney asked.

“I was educated, Miss Sydney. Don’t you see—it’s all in the education.”

Sydney shook her head, staring at Sissy. “Hundreds of people, thousands of people, have no education. Plantation slaves surely aren’t all like you, Sissy! What will they do, how will they manage? This war will leave a world destroyed. Farms will be ruined, people will be homeless, and when this fighting is over, new fighting will begin. Life will be horrible.”

“But freedom is the first step!”

“What is freedom if people starve?”

“Freedom is not feeling the crack of a whip on your back, Miss Sydney. It’s knowing that your sons and daughters aren’t going to be sold off to a master in another state who may or may not be a good man. Freedom, Sydney, think about it. You knew prison. Isn’t freedom worth any cost?”

Sissy pleaded so eloquently.

Sydney shook her head slowly. “My God, Sissy, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Sissy smiled. “I still say thank you! And when Jesse hears about this—”

“Oh, my God, don’t you dare tell Jesse!”

“But—”

“No! I mean it. I swore I wouldn’t be involved in any kind of espionage.”

“But you just helped—”

“Sissy, you must understand! We were behind Rebel lines. We could have been arrested, killed!”

“You were determined and brave.”

“Don’t you dare tell Jesse! You promise me!”

Sissy reached out suddenly, touching a strand of Sydney’s deep auburn hair. “Soldiers watch you and waylay you, Miss Sydney, because you are beautiful.”

“For a quarter-breed,” Sydney breathed through half-clenched teeth, and she was startled to realize the bitterness she had felt at the soldier’s remark. She had seldom felt the stigma of prejudice; her grandmother might have been a Seminole, but her grandfather had been a McKenzie, and though her parents had chosen to live deep in the unsettled south of the state, she had attended dinners and balls at her uncle’s house in Tampa, as well as those she’d been invited to throughout the state, and in her mother’s native South Carolina as well. She was a child of privilege—very rich, no matter what her bloodlines. No man had ever dared taunt her, not with her brothers and cousins. And yet, sometimes, she had heard whispers when she entered a room. Heads turned toward her ... men and women watched her, and sometimes they thought that it was such a pity that she should be “tainted” with Indian blood. She had never felt tainted—she had known nothing but love and pride from her grandmother’s people. Before this war between the states, she had determined that she would never play a marriage game—she would far rather become a reclusive, but educated and intriguing, old maid. If and when she married, she would marry for love, and love alone, and if society happened to be against that love—and she had foolishly fallen for a man too weak to defy society—then she would surely fall out of love as quickly as she had fallen into it.

But then she had met Jesse, and he had found her background interesting, not tainted. He had fascinated, he had charmed ... but he had been the enemy, and he had betrayed.

And still ...

He had married her, and asked nothing of her. What came between them had nothing to do with color, race, or creed. It had simply been North and South.

“Miss Sydney, you silly
mostly
white child. It’s because of all that you are that you’re as stunning as you are!” Sissy said, shaking her head. “And yet ...”

“And yet what?”

Sissy shrugged; but kept her eyes level on Sydney’s. “Well, there are whites, you know, who consider a man or woman black, no matter how pale that black may be. Great-grandmother, great-great-grandfather ... and you know, in your heart,
you know
, that there are lots and lots of slaves with the white blood of their masters running in their veins. But did you know, Miss Sydney, just how many whites consider an
Indjun
just as color tainted as a black man, and any amount of color tainting makes you just as colored.”

“Sissy, you’re not going to get beneath my skin and change me into a rabble-rousing fool like Harriet Beecher Stowe because I have Indian blood!”

Sissy shook her head again. “Sydney, I don’t want to change you into anything. I just want you to realize that the world can be a hard, wicked place.”

“I know that.”

Sissy turned toward the road and the night. “Jesse is a real cavalier. He sees people.” She turned to Sydney. “And he loves you.”

“That’s why he prefers the battlefield to coming home,” Sydney murmured.

“I fell in love with a white man once,” Sissy said quietly.

She was being baited, Sydney knew. But she couldn’t help herself. “All right, Sissy. What happened.”

“He lied and insisted he owned me, then he raped me, and we had a child.”

“Sissy! I didn’t know you had a baby—”

“I don’t have a baby anymore. It was a healthy boy, but before he was born, my white ‘owner’ fell out of lust with me. He sold the baby.”

“Sissy, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t be. You see, that’s the world. He could lust for a Negroid woman, but certainly never,
never
marry her. Can you imagine, he
sold his own child
!”

“No, I cannot imagine,” she said. “And yet, such things are true.”

“Jesse
married
you. Just to help you, to keep your family safe, for God’s sake!”

“I know that Sissy—”

“He’d be very, very proud of you tonight.”