Kiss of a Traitor (38 page)

His limbs trembled as fiercely as hers as he sagged on top of her. Willa expelled a long, satisfied breath, heavy with her love for him. His confession of love and the gamut of emotions besetting her the past weeks—anger, fear, and anxiety—combined to drain her strength. She told herself they had sufficient time and slipped into an exhausted sleep.

Metal bits jingled. Saddle leather creaked. A horse snorted as it stamped a foot against the frozen ground. The bitter stink of black gunpowder. A saber rasped against a scabbard.

Ford came upright with a start. He reached for his pistol. It was not there. Willa stirred beside him.

Major Digby sent him a grin from his seat on a chair at the table. One booted foot propped on the knee of the other leg, and a pistol rested on the tabletop. Ford heard Willa’s startled gasp and her scrambling around to sit up. The blanket slithered over his groin when she yanked it up to cover her breasts.

Digby clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “My dear Wilhelmina, you have brought me the wrong man. I shall take him, of course, though he is not the one we agreed upon.”

Ford brought his head around slowly to look at Willa—her face as white as parchment, mouth open, lips trembling, limbs shaking—and speared her with a look of condemnation. “Why?” he asked. A suffocating band of perfidy constricted his chest.

“But … but, this is not—”

Digby’s chair scraped on the wooden floor as he got to his feet and palmed the pistol. “Indeed. ‘Tis not. Had I known you had bedded such a great number of men you could no longer tell them apart, I should never have given you a toss.”

Willa dove across Ford and grabbed for the knife in her boot. He shot out an arm, caught her, and pressed her back into the bed. Digby’s words chipped out pieces of his heart. He had expressed his love to her, bared his soul. He could not be bothered by Digby or the soldiers milling outside the door. Capture and his eventual fate seemed insignificant in comparison to Willa’s treachery. Bold as brass, she punched a hole in his heart that would never heal.

He pinned her with a look expressing the force of his wrath, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and stood.

Digby arched a brow. “My, my,” he said as he assessed Ford’s body, “I had no notion your tastes ran to such coarse, earthy sorts in addition to gentlemen, my dear Wilhelmina. You’ve been slumming, and I shall not forgive you for that.”

The sound coming from her throat sounded like a spitting panther. “I warned you once before that I should kill you,” she said. “Now I relish the prospect and consider it a pleasure rather than merely a chore.”

Ford turned away from Willa and pointed to his clothes. “May I dress? ‘Tis overly cold outside. I trust you prefer to deliver a live body to the hangman.”

“By all means,” Digby replied with a twitch of the pistol. “Do dress for the executioner. However hanging, I regret to say, is unlikely to be your fate. In Britain we reserve a more traditional death for traitors.”

“Brendan,” Willa pleaded. She scooted over on her knees to hang onto his arm. “I had no intention of this happening. I swear it. Digby is lying.”

He shook off her hands with a twist of his shoulders and shot her a scalding look that caused her to shrink back.
“Is
he lying? I have difficulty accepting your word. The major obviously received precise instructions on when and where to locate us. My only consolation is that you trapped me in your spider’s web instead of General Marion.”

As he walked away to retrieve his clothes, her wretched sobbing failed to touch his heart, which shriveled up to form a hard ball. As Digby escorted him to the cabin door to join the green-coated dragoons outside, the major twisted around to face Willa. “You may return home now,” Digby said. “We shall discuss your failure tomorrow.”

“You may go straight to hell,” she screamed through her tears. “And I shall be the one to send you there. Say your prayers, Digby, and see whether God will forgive you for what you accomplished tonight, for I shall not rest until you lie bleeding at my feet.”

Digby failed to return to Willowbend that night, or the next day, or the day after that. He was wise in that decision. Willa would have shot him as soon as he came into range had she believed it would free Brendan. As it happened, she could scarcely keep her hands off Marlene, whom she strongly suspected of conspiring with Digby. As she lay in her bed and stared up at the canopy, Willa recalled Brendan’s accusative eyes and blistering words. Her eyes teared to imagine what he must think of her. He had no idea of the truth. Were she simply able to see him and explain, he would understand and forgive her.

She cradled her belly with one hand to draw comfort and strength from the new life in her womb. But the child was too young to make its presence known. “I vow,” she whispered, “I shall not allow this travesty to happen. They will not kill your father. I shall find a way to save him. And though he may continue to despise me when this matter ends, he will love and cherish you.”

Schemes and plots flitted through her mind like winging butterflies. She discarded the main portion, aware that on her own, she could not rescue Brendan. She learned from Jwana that the redcoats were holding him in the Georgetown garrison until his transfer to Charles Town. The British sent most partisan prisoners to one of the five coastal sea islands, such as James or Edisto, to await release or exchange. They escorted Continental officers and highranking partisans to Charles Town and placed them on ships for England, where the men faced incarceration until the end of the war. Brendan’s status as a traitor changed his situation, especially since Cornwallis planned to punish him as the treasonous peer, Lord Montford. That Montford was already dead was knowledge limited to only a few officers. The Crown would send him to Charles Town for a public execution as a deterrent to other potential traitors.

She must see to his rescue before the British transported him to Charles Town. Fewer men and arms protected the Georgetown garrison than at the bastion of British presence in the larger port city. His captors would hold him in chains on a prison hulk in Charles Town Harbor and make his release all but impossible.

Willa set aside the memory of Brendan’s look of revulsion and loathing at what he believed to be her betrayal and examined every recourse. One avenue continued to surface—to approach Emma and again beg for assistance in sending word to General Marion. But would Emma even receive her? Digby had bragged widely of Willa’s heroic participation in capturing the rebel traitor, and Tories hailed her in the Georgetown streets as a heroine for the Crown. Dared she trust Emma and her family had heard naught of the gossip? She feared she had no other choice.

Flinging off the bedcovers, she arose and dressed with care in preparation for her visit into town.

They shoved him into a room rather than a cell. But to all accounts, ‘twas still a prison. The sole window had stout shutters secured with chains as strong as the metal cuffs fastened around his wrists and ankles. His amenities included a pallet of straw with no blanket, one chair so rickety it would splinter into sawdust before breaking through the shutters, a bucket of water, and a bucket for waste. The door slammed behind him, and a key clicked in the lock. Ford flung himself down on the pallet.

His deliberations deviated from his imprisonment to dwell on the duplicity of the woman he loved.
Why?
his mind screamed, producing an echo in his heart. He did not have far to look. He had forced his body on her and driven out any feelings she might once have held for him. Now it seemed fitting only revenge remained. However, one image from the night of his capture persisted in badgering him. Her surprise and outrage at Digby’s sudden appearance seemed genuine. That or she was a bloody good actress. He recalled the muddy farm boy he met in Socastee Swamp. Acting came naturally to Wilhelmina Bellingham.

After savoring his anger for a time, it began to subside. Once before he allowed anger and jealousy to override his common sense. It culminated in an impulsive action he would never forget or forgive. He now questioned whether he was not traveling along that same stony road. He longed for vengeance but forced himself to analyze the situation logically. At Willowbend he denied Willa the opportunity to explain herself. Was he falling into the same trap again? One crucial point needled him at the time: Digby knew where to find them. But the major could have followed Willa to the Daily Plantation without her cooperation or knowledge. Taken in that light, Digby’s presence did not necessarily point to Willa’s guilt.

The soldiers’ invasion followed so closely his avowal of love, the shock had caused him to utter words of anger. Now he allowed that anger might have been misplaced. But all his speculation was neither here nor there. Cornwallis was unlikely to grant him the opportunity of determining Willa’s guilt or innocence before his appointment with the executioner.

The bolt rattled. Ford sat up straighter and rested his back against the wall. When the door opened, Digby strolled in, followed by two armed guards.

“Are your accommodations adequate?” The major’s smile fell short of his eyes as he made a sweeping gesture around the bare room. After flicking dust from the chair with a white handkerchief, he seated himself, and crossed one knee over the other. “But of course,” he said, “you have divined the reason for this visit, Captain Ford.”

Ford’s mouth kicked up at one edge. “You plan to bore me to death?”

Digby’s smile disappeared. He shifted forward in an aggressive manner. “It will avail you naught to take this matter lightly.”

Ford spread open his arms as far as the chains would stretch. “I have nothing more pressing to occupy my time, Major. Should you have a burning desire to wag your tongue, I am willing to listen.” He rattled the chains. “I am, after all, a captive audience.”

Digby settled back in the chair and directed a scorching gaze at Ford. “I shall go straight to the point as I have no desire to interrupt your day unduly. I want Francis Marion. You know where to find him. You will take me to him.”

Ford gave a bark of laughter. “You are certain of that, are you?”

Digby uncrossed his legs and brought himself down to eye level with Ford. He rested his elbows on his knees and threaded his hands in front of him. “I am quite certain,” he said as he inclined his head toward one of the guards. The man uncoiled a whip held in one hand.

Ford glanced at the guard and licked his dry lips. He swiveled his gaze back to Digby. “It will take a greater inducement than a beating to persuade me to betray Marion. As Lord Cornwallis has discovered, we Americans are cut of sturdier cloth than you British foresaw. And for that reason, we shall drive you from our land.”

Digby thinned his lips into a line. “We shall discover how sturdy you truly are.” He lunged to his feet and flung the chair back against the wall. When he nodded to the guards, they rushed forward, seized Ford, and fastened his shackles to a ring high above his head. He gave them no resistance, even when they ripped his shirt away from his back and began to ply the whip. Ford bit his lip until blood flowed and swallowed the groans extracted by the cut of the whip’s leather strands. Nearly an hour passed before he fell unconscious.