Kiss of a Traitor (16 page)

Willa recovered from the stressful encounter with her fiancé and shrugged off his final vindictive words. And thankfully, her father returned unharmed from the battle at Camden. When she learned of the brutal engagement, her heart beat in her throat. Her father’s brush with death hardened her resolve. Someone had to stop Frances Marion. Tarleton and his legion seemed unable to complete the task.

Marlene added to Willa’s worries by stepping up her campaign to rid herself of her stepdaughter. Two days ago, Willa was at her wit’s end with the evil woman.

Marlene had breezed into Willa’s bedchamber without even a cursory knock and moved with slow deliberation to stand in front of the cheval-glass mirror and examine her reflection. She struck a pose, adjusted the position of a silver-blond curl, and turned. Her pale blue eyes narrowed on Willa, who lounged barefoot on her chaise while she wrote in her journal.

“Wilhelmina, dear,” Marlene said with false sweetness. “Your predicament troubles my mind lately.”

Only Lord Montford and her stepmother refused to call her “Willa,” the name she preferred. The woman’s dismissal of Willa’s wishes was given and taken as an insult. She sighed and eyed Marlene. “What predicament?” she asked, though well aware of the folly involved in conversing with her stepmother. The act was as perilous as stepping into a nest of rattlesnakes.

Marlene’s eyes sparkled wickedly. The flesh at the back of Willa’s neck crept. “Why, your marriage. I am of a mind to convince your father to move up the wedding date.”

Willa’s journal hit the floor with a thump. Tension tightened across her chest like a vise. She rose from the chaise with her hands balled into fists. “The devil you will.”

Marlene’s lips spread in a spiteful smile. “I beg to differ. Very likely, I shall.” She strolled around the room and ran her fingers over the belongings with an acquisitiveness that boiled Willa’s blood. “As I see it, there are two perfectly logical reasons to delay no longer. Your father has given you sufficient time to become comfortable with Lord Montford. I fear should we dally further, the baron will conclude that you are, in fact, a willful, disobedient child with an appalling temperament.” She retained her vindictive smile as she looked back at Willa. “After all, we should not want your fiancé to take to his heels when he discovers how unsuitable a wife you will make. How would that benefit me, I ask you?”

Willa forced herself to sink down on the chaise and seethe in silence. An overt reaction to Marlene’s venom would only goad her into spitting more. Willa had not a prayer of winning a battle with the woman. The colonel always took Marlene’s side.

“It also came to me,” Marlene said as she handled and sniffed the perfume vials on the dressing table, “as though I saw it in a vision, that George may not survive to see you married should we procrastinate too long. And to see you well wed is his dearest wish.”

Willa swallowed the gasp in her throat. Why was the woman talking about the colonel’s death as if it were a foregone conclusion? She could not give credence to what she was hearing and viewed Marlene in a new light, as a potential murderess rather than merely a grasping, greedy whore. She knew of Marlene’s assignations with a British officer and suspected the unfaithful woman dallied with more than one man. One night when Willa made her silent way from the barn to the house after a moonlight ride in the swamp, she spied Marlene and a uniformed officer in the gazebo. Willa failed to see the man’s face, but she noted his blond hair—a common enough feature characterizing any of a dozen officers of her acquaintance, including Lieutenant Colonel Tarleton and Major Digby.

Willa had never seriously considered broaching the subject of Marlene’s infidelity with her father. He would decline to believe her and accuse her of disparaging his wife’s perfect image due to jealousy or spite. Her reticence to speak to her father also stemmed from what, precisely, she had seen that night. Marlene’s tryst in the gazebo caused Willa’s innards to rebel. She could not imagine describing the disturbing acts to her father … or anyone else. She’d not even told Emma, and normally she confided all to her best friend.

“You are aware that your father participated in that dreadful battle at Camden,” Marlene went on. “He all but lost his life in service to the Crown. On all occasions you must keep that fact in mind. Until the insurgents have been put down for good, your father faces death on a daily basis.”

“If you have said your piece,” Willa said, her stillness so unnerving Marlene that the woman’s smile waned, “you may take your leave.”

Marlene quickly recovered her composure. “Oh, I’ve not finished yet. When I have, you will know.”

“Then spit it out.” Willa lost her temper, when she told herself she would not. “You try my patience, and I enjoy your company no more than you enjoy mine.”

“Very well, I shall,” Marlene said slowly. She narrowed her eyes to slits. “To spare your worrying, your father has said naught to you of his weak heart.”

“You lie,” Willa accused. A cold sweat sprang from her pores.

“The doctor informed your father of his precarious condition.” A faint, caustic smile curled the corners of Marlene’s mouth. “Why, he could drop dead without a moment’s warning. George disclosed his malady to me, naturally, because he had concern for my welfare should he suddenly pass away. He desired to assure me that should the worst happen, I would be well provided for. His serious condition is an additional reason for you to marry soon and ease your father’s last days. As I see it, your reluctance for this marriage and outrageous behavior have contributed to his current state of health.”

“Have you finished now?” Willa modulated her tone though she was on the verge of tears. Yet she would never give Marlene the satisfaction of seeing her reduced to that state. Surely Marlene lied.

Marlene’s smile broadened—a death’s head grin on a Madonna’s face. “Indeed, I am quite through. Do have a restful day.” Sweeping up her skirt in one pale hand, she left in a whisper of satin and a stream of magnolia scent.

Velvet-soft evening light settled kindly on Gray Oaks, the Richardson plantation house. It hid the peeling paint, ravaged landscape, and minor damage left behind by the occasional visit from a British or Loyalist patrol seeking information on the patriot general Francis Marion.

Stately oak and beech trees loomed in the darkness, gnarled arms spread wide to welcome travelers. Graceful willows swayed in the night breeze, branches dusting the ground like ladies’ skirts at a ball. Frogs chorused from a nearby pond, adding their music to murmuring leaves and creaking branches.

Tarleton spurred his mount onto the plantation grounds, placed the two cannon, and sent out patrols to lure Marion into his net.

At the appearance of the Butcher, the Widow Richardson dispatched her son, Richard, a paroled Continental officer, to warn the general of the British presence. Richard stumbled into a partisan patrol when Marion, attracted by the dragoons’ campfire, drew close to the plantation to investigate.

“Bloody Ban is waiting for you,” Richard told Marion once the sentries brought him forward. “He knew you were at Jack’s Creek. He set a trap with two cannon and Harrison’s Provincials, as well as his own damned dragoons.”

Marion dared to pit his men against Tarleton’s troops any day of the week, but he had eluded capture for so long because he weighed the strength of his enemy and the consequences of his actions. Brave he and his men might be, but Marion was, first and foremost, a prudent man. His common sense in taking a conservative tack continued to frustrate the British, who trained and drilled to hold their ground regardless of certain annihilation.

Marion knew when to fight and when to retreat. With Richard’s report in hand, he judged this situation a time to retreat. He spurred Ball to guide his band around Woodyard Swamp and away from Gray Oaks, never slowing his pace until they safely withdrew over the Richbourg’s Mill Dam crossing Jack’s Creek.

During their flight, a Tory prisoner escaped. A dragoon patrol picked him up and took him to Tarleton. At dawn’s light, Tarleton, Harrison, and their combined troops galloped in pursuit of Marion.

Marion fled before his hunters, through pine barrens between the Santee and Black Rivers, crossing roads, fields, and pine woods, and traversing swamps with ease. Tarleton chased the rebel for close to seven hours and eventually lost his prey at Ox Swamp where conditions became so perilous, he dared not order his men to enter.

In a fit of anger precipitated by his inability to follow Marion into the swamp, Tarleton turned to his men. “That damned old fox!” he shouted. “The devil himself could not catch him.” His words spread throughout the countryside. Marion’s men caught wind of it and changed Tarleton’s outburst to “Swamp Fox,” adopting the sobriquet as a proud title for the wily general who always succeeded in eluding his British pursuers.

Humiliated again and filled with the fury General Marion had raised in him, Tarleton backtracked to the Santee and accelerated his punishing tactics. He burned thirty houses between Jack’s Creek and the High Hills, in spite of his suspicion that the Richardsons had warned Marion. His wrath unassuaged despite the damage he wrought, he turned once again toward Gray Oaks. When he reached the house, he ordered his men to drag Mary Richardson and her children—Emma, Richard, and young Rebecca—outside into the torch-lit night.

Emma Richardson watched the scene unfold that night as though through a stranger’s eyes.

Tarleton handed Mary a shovel. “Madam,” he said, “I wish to look upon the face of such a brave man as your husband.”

Mary’s body trembled as she pleaded with the stoic commander to spare her this ungodly ordeal. But her pleas fell on deaf ears, and he gestured brusquely for her to begin.

With her children watching, she dug into the hard earth of the family graveyard and unearthed the coffin of General Richardson. While she labored, Tarleton’s dragoons scoured her house in search of valuables. What the soldiers could not carry or deemed of no use to them, they destroyed, pitching the furniture and paintings into a pile in the front yard and breaking them into kindling.

Tarleton threw back the coffin lid and revealed to Mary and her children the face of General Richardson’s corpse, ravaged by six weeks of decay. Mary fell to her knees while the children wept.

“And now,” Tarleton said, his stony face looking down on her bent body. “My men and I have an appetite. If you can succor traitors, you can surely supply the needs of a few loyal men.” He motioned to a dragoon standing beside him, indicating that Mary should be taken inside so she could prepare their dinner. The man grasped her elbow and jerked her to her feet. He pushed her ahead of him as they entered the house.

Hair tumbling about her shoulders, cheeks wet with tears, and fists clutching her skirts, Emma witnessed her mother’s abuse in silence. When she examined Tarleton’s men, she paused on Major Aidan Sinclair, Willa’s betrothed. She silently begged him to bring to an end the madness Tarleton visited upon her family. The major quickly dropped her gaze and walked up the steps away from her. Her hope that he would somehow intervene died a swift death.

Due to her father’s position as a patriot general, Tarleton had harassed them before when seeking word on the partisan bands. Yet never had he gone this far, been this cruel. His dragoons had always respected their house and possessions. Never had they wreaked on the Richardsons the personal injury or indignity they perpetrated on some of the neighboring planters. In truth, once her father died, the British in Georgetown treated the family with an unspoken respect, if not cordiality. Emma supposed that respect resulted from her father’s position before the war, when he was an important man in the county, well liked and admired.

If only Willa’s father were here.
Colonel Bellingham and General Richardson had been friends for many years, since long before the war. The colonel would not allow Tarleton to mistreat her mother and their home.

Days ago, when Tarleton last visited the Richardson plantation, Emma watched her mother send Richard into the woods to warn Marion of the dragoons’ trap. She had difficulty understanding why her mother interfered with Tarleton’s business when her husband was already dead, a martyr to the same cause that now threatened to tear apart her children’s world. Had her mother not meddled, Tarleton would have passed them by rather than descending on the plantation with all the hell of the furies. She could scarcely manage to hold back the tirade she longed to unleash on her mother.

Aside from her anger, bitterness constricted her heart. Tarleton’s behavior had served one useful purpose. It opened her eyes. She now saw him in his true colors as a merciless soldier. No longer was he the handsome beau she had swooned over.
Just think, not so very long ago I pined for his attention.

Emma shook her head at the death knell of her infatuation. She picked up her skirts and mustered her courage, then mounted the steps and walked into the house under the lustful eyes of Tarleton’s men.