Kiss of a Traitor (53 page)

Darkness descended by the time they reached Juliet’s small farm. Ford drew a grateful breath to see it still standing. Juliet’s father, Cecil Crawford, strode through the yard toward the barn with a lantern swinging in one hand and a musket clutched at his side in the other.

Cecil turned his head at the horse emerging from the darkness, placed the lantern on the ground, and lifted the musket to his shoulder. Ford dropped the reins and raised his hands.

“Pa,” Juliet yelled. She slipped from Dancer’s back and ran to her father. “Don’t shoot Mister Ford. He was only bringing me home.”

“Ford?” Cecil said softly. He lowered the gun and caught his daughter about the waist, hugging her to his side. After setting her aside, he hurried over and vigorously shook Ford’s hand. “Brendan, God’s truth but ‘tis splendid to see you.”

Relief that a friend and not a stranger had found his daughter filled Cecil’s voice. Ford dismounted and handed Dancer’s reins to Juliet. “Give him what you can spare,” he called after her as she led the horse toward the barn. “We rode a long way this past week and traveled at a hard pace.”

Juliet gave him an exasperated look. “Don’t worry. I shall take exceptionally good care of him,” she said, then whispered in Dancer’s ear, and the horse nodded back. Ford knew she would. Juliet would offer Dancer the corn off her own plate, were her family to allow it.

With a frown settling on his mouth, Ford faced Cecil. “How has it been?”

Cecil rested an arm on Ford’s shoulders and steered him toward the house. “Come inside and bide with us awhile first,” he said. “Miriam will be delighted to see you. We were sitting down to supper when we realized Juliet hadn’t returned. With all that’s happened in the past year, I was going out to track her down.” Cecil angled his head toward the barn. “Juliet! Hurry up now, or you’ll miss supper and your mother will be vexed.”

Her voice drifted faintly from the barn door. “I’m coming, Pa, as soon as Dancer is settled in.”

“That girl and her animals.” Cecil shook his head. “I should leave her be, I suppose. She’ll not eat a bite until your horse is comfortable.”

Ford ducked his head to enter the low lintel of the log house. The inside was warm and light. The smell of rabbit stew and baking cornbread made his mouth water. Miriam was bent over the hearth stirring a large pot on the fire. She straightened her plump, womanly body and came about when they entered. “Did you find—” Her spoon clattered to the wood floor. “Brendan!” She ran across the room. Her hair, as red as a sunset, flew behind her, and joy suffused her round face as she enveloped Ford in a fierce hug. As she pulled back, she looked into his eyes. “We worried so for you, out there fighting the redcoats. Thank God you’re whole and returned to us.”

He gave her a broad smile.

Miriam’s button nose wrinkled when she laughed as she ushered him to a seat at the hand-hewn table. “I can scarcely believe it,” she went on. Whisking a coarse cotton napkin from the table, she smoothed it across his lap.

“Miriam,” Cecil said in a chiding voice. “Brendan is as old as you. Stop treating him like a child.”

She threw her husband an affronted look and a huff. “Then I shall let you men talk. But later I’ll expect to hear all about Brendan’s adventures.” After a peck on Ford’s cheek, she made her way back to the stew and resumed her preparations.

Cecil walked over to the wall and squatted down to lift a loose floorboard and extract a bottle of homemade corn liquor. He returned to the table, settled in a chair at Ford’s elbow, and poured the clear liquid into two mugs, offering one to Ford.

Ford accepted the drink with thanks and tossed back a hefty swallow. “Tell me what happened to the Folly,” he requested after clearing his throat.

Cecil’s amiable features hardened. He imbibed a long drink from his mug and drew the back of his hand across his mouth. “The British came through back in the fall as Cornwallis and Arnold marched to the coast. We’d seen plenty of them before then. As you know, most of the planters are Tories. They depend on exports of tobacco to England.”

Ford nodded and took another swallow, which went down smoother this time.

“Until Cornwallis ambled by,” Cecil said, “the redcoats pretty well left us alone in the county because of the Loyalist leanings. Course, they confiscated the horses for their cavalry, those at the Folly, too, and all the food they could find in the fields and houses, but they stopped short of burning us out. This time was different.”

As the level of liquid in Ford’s mug lowered, Cecil reached over and topped it off. Then he hefted his own mug and leaned back to balance the chair on its back legs. “The war was going poorly, especially in the south where Francis Marion kept Cornwallis in a froth. I figure his lordship had a premonition the end was near. For all his bluster and lordly ways, he secretly feared Washington would win regardless of what actions the British took. You see, he underestimated the Americans, saw them as rabble and a disorderly mob he could whip into order in a short time. He soon realized his assessment was naïve. He failed to take into account the Americans’ determination and downright stubbornness. Instead of giving up like obedient little colonists, the militias and the Continental army kept on fighting, even when overwhelmed by the odds. And Cornwallis never understood the strategy of men like the Swamp Fox. Considered Marion’s fighting methods ungentlemanly.” Cecil laughed. “Ungentlemanly! Can you imagine? As if burning homes and raping women are acts of gentlemen.”

Miriam set a bowl of stew in front of each man and a plate of cornbread in the center of the table. She wiped her hands on her apron and went outside to look for Juliet.

“Don’t wait.” Cecil gestured to Ford’s bowl. “Tuck in. I know you’re hungry. Miriam would want you to eat while ‘tis hot.”

Ford complied, dipping into the pungent stew.

“When Cornwallis came through this time, he seemed bent on devastating all he could before he lost the war,” Cecil related between bites of stew. “He burned every plantation between here and Norfolk, even those of his Tory friends. Guess he reasoned even the Tories were Americans and deserved his wrath for preferring Virginia to England. He bypassed the smaller homesteads. Sent out patrols to take as much as they could carry off but left us our houses and enough livestock to get by.”

Cecil laid down his spoon and looked into Ford’s face. His expression reflected his anguish. “Sorry about the stud, Brendan. I know how hard you worked for it. Once the war is over, all the tenants will help you rebuild. You’ve always been good to us, fair and generous, and ‘tis the least we can do. No one wants to see you lose everything.”

Ford knew then that he’d not lost everything. He still had the goodwill of his friends … he might even have a fortune waiting. According to Hiram Brooke, he had only to sail to England to claim it. With hope in his words, he told Cecil about Baron Montford.

The farmer expressed astonishment while he listened. Ford had never had reason to reveal his background as the bastard of an English baron; therefore, he’d not spoken of it.

By the time Ford finished, Miriam and Juliet also hung on his words. “So then you will come back here and start over?” Cecil asked.

Ford hesitated a moment before speaking. Would Willa agree to leave her beloved South Carolina and put down roots in Virginia? “I’m not certain, yet,” he replied as he rubbed his chin. “First, I must find a way to England.”

Cecil guffawed and slapped his knee. “You shouldn’t find that a problem. I hear the Brits are taking to the sea daily and scurrying back to the Mother Country like rats leaving a sinking ship.”

Christmas and the New Year heralded in celebrations at Willowbend. The twins grew apace and became dreadfully spoiled from all the attention they received. Guinevere began small but soon caught up to Lancelot, in length if not in girth. Everyone remarked that she would develop into a tall, young woman.

Richard mentioned during one of his visits in February that Brendan Ford had returned to his farm in Virginia. As if Willa cared. She knew it would happen one day. He would leave and go back to his old life, the life he had before she gave him her innocence and he left her with two babies. She told herself she was relieved he had left now instead of waiting for the war’s end. He had saved her many months of hopeless longing and pointless expectations. Though the British House of Commons advised King George to end the war, the fighting continued. Peace was in sight, but none could predict when it would come.

She also learned that Francis Marion, after meeting with the State Assembly in Jacksonboro, had resumed command of his militia brigade. That Brendan failed to rejoin his former commander, more than anything else, convinced her of his intent to leave for good and never return. ‘Twas quite liberating, actually, and the tears she occasionally shed were tears of joy.

She had persistently held this ridiculous fantasy of Brendan showing up unannounced on her doorstep one day, a wide grin on his face. Every time a visitor pulled up into the drive, she had run to the window, hoping. Now she could put that foolishness aside and concentrate on making a comfortable home for her family. And someday, when she forgot the taste of Brendan’s kisses and the scent of his body, she would look for a quiet, stable husband and father for her children. One who did not turn her insides to boiling tea and her brains to pudding.

Winter howled down on the state, making the nights bitter. A jacket of ice coated the trees and caked the frail yellowed grasses. Blue jays puffed up their feathers as insulation against the biting wind, and chickadees sought refuge in hollow tree crevices where they stacked their little bodies on top of each other like cordwood. Ice covered the creek in a slippery sheet and slowed its flow to a trickle.

Willa’s breath fogged the window glass as she wondered about the winters in Virginia, which lay much farther north. When she grew conscious of the direction of her thoughts, she drove them back into that dark hole she had hollowed out inside her heart and turned away from the wintry scene.

She went to her bedchamber after checking on the children, stripped off her day dress, and swathed her body in a heavy wool night rail and her feet in thick wool socks. She threw new logs on the fire, taking delight in the earthy scents of pine and maple. Pine sap snapped, tossing sparks against the fender and firedogs.

Jwana had passed a bed warmer filled with hot coals beneath her sheets, and when Willa climbed into bed, cozy warmth surrounded her. Despite her fatigue, she was unable to sleep and lay awake to reflect on recent events.

When Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown, Willa felt only relief that the killing would soon end. The event and its ultimate implications did not overset her as much as she once believed they would. ‘Twas now a certainty. America would win the war. Britain would withdraw. The redcoats would sail their ships back to England. Once she would have abhorred even the mention of a rebel victory. Now she welcomed it. Americans such as Francis Marion, Jwana, Plato, Brendan, and her dear friends, the Richardsons, had changed her outlook.

She now sounded like a rebel in heated discussions with Loyalist acquaintances. “Should people desire the freedom to dictate their own affairs without interference from a country, no matter how well meaning, thousands of miles away,” she would say, “they should be listened to and afforded that option. ‘Tis their right.” A radical idea in a country such as England, where one’s station in life dictated how high he or she dared reach. Where Society determined even to whom one spoke.

Freedom and equality for all men, regardless of birth or wealth. The principle had overwhelmed her, and in a moment of egalitarianism, she freed all her father’s slaves. Many elected to remain and work for wages, but no longer were any constrained to labor for merely the roof over their heads and the food in their bellies. Another radical concept and one garnering a great deal of criticism from her neighbors. Nonetheless, she steadfastly clung to her decision.

Digby and Marlene. There lay another riddle. Gwen MacGovern informed Willa that Marlene had taken her ten thousand a year and gone off to Europe. Some said she was living with a French count; others reported that she had made her way to Italy to pursue an Austrian prince in exile. No one knew for certain.

Digby remained behind, seemingly content with his lover’s desertion. Willa had seen him only a few times since his departure from Willowbend. Those meetings occurred while she visited Georgetown on business. Invariably he approached her and, with an obsequious smile, inquired about her health and the welfare of her children. Her skin still crawled when he drew near, but his solicitousness made her feel perhaps she judged him too harshly.

Could she truly blame him for attempting to trap the Swamp Fox and capturing Brendan instead? He had only followed orders. Had she still been a loyal British subject, her position for so many years, she would have accepted that fact earlier. And Brendan’s treatment at the garrison? Was Digby or the garrison commander responsible? In regard to her father’s death, Willa still entertained doubts as to whether Marlene acted alone or with Digby’s complicity. And the authorities blamed the attack on Willowbend on a Tory deserter named Daggert. They suspected kidnapping for ransom.