When the Splendor Falls (45 page)

“All right, no need to stare at me like I was a Yankee raider,” Leigh said, pressing a kiss to Damascena’s velvety muzzle, feeling the mare’s hot breath against her cheek as Damascena snorted her recognition and neighed softly. Leigh’s hands touched her tenderly, calming the slight shivers she could feel shaking the mare beneath her thick winter coat, but the shivering came of nervousness, not cold, for Damascena still shied easily, rolling her beautiful oval-shaped eyes around and flattening her pointed ears whenever she heard a strange noise, or saw a sudden movement.

Leigh smoothed the rug across Damascena’s back, patting her comfortingly, not having to see the ragged scar etched deep from flank to buttock. She could feel it through the woolen rug, and she cursed anew the rebel officer who had stolen Damascena from Travers Hill.

Leigh spoke softly to her for a few minutes, but it took longer to calm her today than usual, and Leigh remembered the thunder at dawn—no, the explosion—and realized that Damascena would have been terrified by the sound, distant though it had been.

“There, there, girl, no one will hurt you ever again. I won’t let them,” she said, her voice familiar, and as gentle and soothing as if she spoke to a frightened child. “You’re all I have left, Damascena,” she whispered, resting her cheek against the chestnut coat, welcoming the slight roughness of it. “I’m not going to lose you too.”

Leigh jerked in surprise, feeling a painful nip against her hip. “Not jealous, are you?” she asked, turning around and running her hand through the Shetland pony’s shaggy mane as she stepped away from the mare. “Good thing you like hay and grass more than oats,” she said, her laughter soft and husky when she felt his muzzle pressing into her hip again as he searched for the apple that he still, in some hazy corner of his mind, seemed to remember as his treat. Not as fat as he once had been, Pumpkin was still a plump pony, and a good stall mate for Damascena, as was the cow that had never stopped chewing her cud, her large bovine eyes watching everything with contented detachment as she remained undisturbed by the war that had almost destroyed life at Travers Hill.

Leigh walked over to the small window and glanced out. There was a brisk wind blowing, but it didn’t seem to be raining as heavily. Now would be a good chance to get another bale of hay for their feed before the storm gathered force and broke over their heads again. Pulling a rough woolen blanket over her head and shoulders, Leigh let herself out of the laundry room, stopping for the wheelbarrow, left beside the door, then pushing it across the greensward toward the stables, the mud coating the wheel and slowing its movement through the rain-soaked field with each step she took.

Leigh glanced back at the familiar shape of the big house, the warmth of its mellow brick walls always beckoning. She stared up at the windows. Most of them were shuttered against the storm, the others were dark, except for the study window on the side of the house where Guy was, and the big kitchen windows. The trail of gray smoke rising from the chimneys seemed welcoming, and was certainly comforting, Leigh thought as she dug in her toes to keep from slipping, pushing harder, her slight weight straining against the wheelbarrow as she rolled it closer to the stables, anxious to return to the warmth of the great hearth in the kitchens.

Her hands were clumsy with numbness as she fumbled with the bar across the stable doors, then one of the heavy doors swung wide and she wheeled the barrow into the stables, hurrying to get out of the cold, gusting wind that had found its way under the blanket she huddled beneath, lifting it from her head and baring it to the light rain that continued to fall steadily.

Leigh stopped midway through the door and stared in disbelief.

She stood frozen, meeting the equally shocked gazes of the Yankee soldiers she had walked in on. Some were sitting propped against the stalls, a couple were stretched full length on the brick flooring, while others were leaning tiredly against the posts, but all had turned to watch the stable doors opening, and apparently had not been surprised until they’d seen her bundled-up figure. Because only now were some of them quickly drawing their pistols, others sabers, and one man was beginning to move threateningly toward her along the crowded passageway between the stalls.

“Sure as hell ain’t the cap’n.”

“Not with them pretty blue eyes, it ain’t, so reckon I’ve died and gone to heaven. Only thing that bothers me, is what the hell the rest of you cutthroats are doin’ here? Didn’t figure none of you’d see heaven,” someone laughed, then began to cough.

Leigh took one look at the bloodied and blackened inhuman faces, catching sight of the hellish grin on the one coming toward her, his eyes feeding on her face hungrily, and shoved the wheelbarrow in front of him. She dragged the door back, slamming the bar down with a strength she hadn’t known she possessed.

“Stop her, Buck! Don’t let her git away! Probably a troop of rebs comin’ up the road right now!” someone warned. “That sweet lil’ reb gal will bring them down on our heads.”

“Don’t worry, ’cause she’s not goin’ far,” a voice called out from the far end of the stable near one of the side doors where the man had been standing guard.

Leigh turned away from the barred doors and ran, but not before she heard the incredible sound of laughter coming from inside, as if they were unconcerned about her having seen them, or of her alerting that rebel patrol they were so worried about discovering them holed up in her stables.

Leigh didn’t wait to learn the reason for their jesting as she sought the safety of the big house—where she had foolishly left the pistol and the rifle. Her feet slipped in the field that was little better than a mire as she struggled across the greensward, cursing herself for her slowness, expecting to hear the soldiers behind her any second, for they could easily have opened the stable doors from inside and given chase.

She was about to glance back over her shoulder when she felt a painful tug on the long braid that dangled down her back, then an iron band clamped around her waist, tightening as it lifted her feet from the ground. She tried to scream, but a rough hand, her chestnut braid of hair wrapped around it, closed over her mouth, muffling her cries for help.

She fought like a wild creature, her feet kicking at her attacker’s legs as she tried to free her arms, tangled in the folds of the blanket caught between their bodies. But the man held her easily, his great strength terrifying her as he carried her back toward the stables and the men waiting there.

No
, not like this, Leigh thought, hot tears scalding her cold cheeks, her heart pounding sickeningly as she remembered the laughing men, the one with the lustful glint in his eye, and realized what her fate would be once inside the stables where no one would hear her screams. Desperation lent her renewed strength, and Leigh swung her leg between her attacker’s, risking breaking hers as she wedged it behind his knee, halting his long stride and causing him to lose his footing in the slippery mud. Suddenly they were falling. Her arms were freed as the blanket loosened, but she didn’t have time to catch herself and roll away as she hit the ground, because the man came down hard on top of her, trapping her beneath his heavy body.

Her chest heaving beneath his, Leigh struggled to draw breath into her lungs as she stared up into the man’s face, raising her arm to fend off his attack, but her small fist was caught and held, his steely fingers closing around her hand, holding their hands clasped together.

Leigh closed her eyes, feeling a strange lethargy seeping through her limbs and she knew she must be dreaming. Then she opened her eyes, thinking the vision that had haunted her for so many years would have disappeared—as it always did in her dreams. But, instead, she saw again the hawkish-featured face, sun-darkened, the carved angle of the jaw, hard and unforgiving, the gray-green eyes, so cold in their crystalline depths. The dark gold hair was even longer than she remembered, and it had been woven into a heathenish-looking braid that just touched his shoulder, while around the strong column of his neck, a leather pouch, which she knew the contents of, hung suspended by a rawhide thong.

It was a face she’d thought never to see again.

Fifteen

In many ways doth the full heart reveal

The presence of the love it would conceal.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Leigh stared up into the face of Neil Braedon.

“Neil.” Silently, she mouthed the word, unable to speak aloud his name, a name she had cursed silently for so long, a name branded deep by her own heart’s betrayal.

She closed her eyes again, shaking her head in disbelief and denial. She had been so frightened…but to discover the Yankee who’d attacked her was Neil Braedon was a cruel jest indeed. Neil Darcy Braedon. No friend to her, or to her family, she realized, remembering the violence of their last farewell. How many times since that night had she been haunted by his face in her dreams, his mocking voice sounding in her ears, longing to see him again yet hating herself for not being able to forget him?

“Leigh.” He spoke her name softly now, a gleam of amusement, or perhaps malice, in those pale eyes looking so deeply into hers, his breath warm against her cold cheek. She felt his body tensing above hers, then watched as he glanced over her head at the house and the green-shuttered windows peering down on them. Then his gaze traveled across the greensward toward the woodlands and the river beyond, his eyes narrowing intently as if searching for something. With catlike agility he was on his feet, easily pulling her up with him.

“Not frightened of me, are you?” he chided, not having missed her worried glance back at the big house. “We are, after all, old friends.”

“You had better let me go,” Leigh warned in a low, furious tone as she found her voice and began to struggle against him as he headed toward the stables. “You’re trespassing. This is Travers land—or have you forgotten?”

Neil laughed. It was a rough sound, as if he had seldom found reason to laugh during the last few years. “No, I haven’t forgotten,” he said in a hardened voice. “Some things never change, do they? I seem to remember being warned about trespassing on Travers land the last time you and I met so unexpectedly. We seem destined to meet under the most amazing circumstances,” he said, ignoring her struggles as he kept walking, roughly pulling her behind him, her stubbornly dug-in feet sliding through the mud and hindering him little.

“A tumble in the hay, now a tumble in the mud,” he said mockingly as she lost a shoe and he stopped just long enough for her to slip it back on her mud-soaked, stockinged foot.

“Damn you,” Leigh said, not trying to hide her animosity as she glared at his broad back and tried to pry loose his ironhanded grip, but she was far angrier with herself than him. She had known a momentary gladness in her heart when seeing him, having wondered if he still lived, for Adam had told her his cousin had joined the Union army to fight. And now, her heart was pounding with its traitorous beat even though she hated him for the man he was, and for the blue uniform he had chosen to wear.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend? I thought you’d be pleased to see me after all these years. You haven’t missed me then? No sweet peck on the cheek to welcome me back to Travers Hill? Where is that famed Travers hospitality?” he taunted her cruelly, unable to contain his own anger as he saw the intense dislike in her beautiful blue eyes, and suspected she would without the slightest remorse turn him and his men over to the rebel patrols searching for them.

And he hadn’t given her much reason to feel otherwise. They had not been the best of friends when last they met. And she had little reason now to befriend him, he thought, recalling the empty shabbiness of her home and the poor condition of the stables—once the pride and glory of Travers Hill. He saw again the six brick chimneys rising so forlornly from the ashes; all that remained of Royal Bay. He still couldn’t believe Royal Bay, his father’s home, was gone. They’d ridden first to Royal Bay, where he’d thought he and his men could rest, and the wounded could have been treated, but he’d been stunned to find the grand old house in ruins, the outbuildings tumbled down. He remembered seeing Althea Braedon, Nathan’s wife, lying ill on the sofa at Travers Hill, and he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to the rest of the Braedon family. Where were they now? Did any of them still live? And the Travers family. What of them? He could understand now Leigh’s hatred of Yankees—especially one particular Yankee.

Damn, he thought to himself. Why couldn’t he and his men have remained safely hidden in the stables until nightfall, when, rested, they could have made their escape under cover of darkness, no one at Travers Hill ever having been the wiser? Instead, they had been discovered, and now he found himself in a devil of a predicament.

What was he to do with Leigh Travers? No, Mrs. Matthew Wycliffe, he reminded himself. She certainly had a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there was nothing he could do about it; his men were in no condition to move. They were cold and tired, and half of them were seriously wounded. And their wounds, especially McGuire’s and young Chatham’s, needed to be tended before they moved to another, safer hiding place. They had just barely made Travers Hill before McGuire had fallen from the saddle, weak from loss of blood. The lieutenant had been unconscious when they’d hauled him down from his ignominious perch—but at least he still breathed.

Dragging Leigh behind him, they reached the stable doors. The doors opened almost magically, but Leigh knew someone had been waiting and watching, and then she found herself once again inside and facing the hostile looks of a score or more of federal soldiers.

“See you caught the lil’ reb spy, Cap’n,” someone said.

Captain
, one of the soldiers had addressed him. Leigh was not surprised to learn that Neil Braedon was the leader of this scruffy band of Yankees.

“But not without a fight,” another gruff voice commented, reminding Leigh of her own muddied gown, and drawing her attention to Neil Braedon’s odd appearance. No Yankee she’d ever seen had worn a uniform quite like his, and she wondered how he managed to do so without having been reprimanded by his superiors. But then, Neil was the kind of man who did as he damned well pleased. Beneath his caped overcoat, she could see the dark blue belted jacket of a Union officer, but his trousers were hardly standard military issue, and were only too familiar to her. Buckskins. And on his feet he wore moccasins and buckskin leggings, which looked far more water-resistant than the shoes and boots his men were wearing. All of the men had long and shaggy, almost shoulder-length hair, which meant they seldom stayed at Headquarters for long, and had apparently been living a rough-and-ready existence behind enemy lines for some time. But none wore their hair woven into a braid as did their captain, and none were clean-shaven, as was Neil, and Leigh could suddenly envision the Comanche brave he once had been. No one would hear him prowling or sneaking up behind, Leigh found herself speculating, a suspicious thought entering her mind as she wondered just what Neil Braedon and his men were doing behind enemy lines.