Kiss of a Traitor (55 page)

Digby looked up in confusion at her command and sudden movement. Rebecca shielded the baby in her arms and fell through his slack arms. A knife whirled through the air with the speed of a bullet, moving almost too fast for the eye to see. Digby fired the pistol in reflex. But Rebecca was no longer there, and the ball dug into the wood door frame. Disbelief flooded his face when the ten-inch blade tore into his throat, driving him back and pinning him to the wall. His mouth worked, opening and closing. A geyser of blood sprayed out instead of the words on his tongue. A glassy sheen crept over his blue eyes, and his chest heaved once, once again, then remained still.

Plato pounded down the hall from the kitchen, pulling his suspenders onto his shoulders as he ran. Doors opened upstairs and voices called out. Willa knelt beside Rebecca and helped her to sit. Then she took Lancelot into her arms. While he squalled at the top of his lungs, she hugged him tightly.

Killer sidled around the corner from the parlor and rubbed his head against the door frame. Willa glanced up. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Meow,” Killer replied, whipped his tail back and forth, and strutted back into the parlor to curl up in front of the banked coals of the fire.

With Cornwallis defeated, events moved swiftly. Francis Marion, who granted Major Ford permission to go to England with the proviso that he return at his earliest convenience, longed to get out into the field again. He rode from Jacksonboro to discover that Major John Doyle had attacked his men at the Durant Plantation and forced their retreat, causing his brigade to scatter throughout the swamps and countryside to tend their wounds and humiliation. When the rebels heard Marion was in command once again, they began creeping back, bloodied and battered from their humiliating defeat.

General Guy Carleton took command of the British army in America on March twenty-sixth. Everyone knew the general’s only task was to round up the remnants of his army and retreat to England. Yet no one voiced it aloud, as though to do so would tempt fate. On July eleventh, the British evacuated Savannah, Georgia.

Marion continued to patrol the area east of the Cooper River. After a brief skirmish, he sat down with Micajah Ganey, a notorious Tory raider, and hammered out a treaty allowing the Tories to return to the fold as Americans with all their rights intact. Five hundred of Ganey’s followers laid down their arms and accepted the terms.

Major Ford returned to South Carolina in July by catching a ride on a British supply ship into Charles Town. His business in London had turned out satisfactorily. He rode out with a light heart and caught up with the Swamp Fox at Fair Lawn near Wadboo. Fair Lawn contained a large manor house with wings of slave quarters on either side. Cedars grew along the long drive, their dark, needled branches dragging the ground. The buildings were strong, the cover exceptional, and Marion saw it as the perfect place to quarter his men.

Marion welcomed Ford with a hearty slap on the back and questioned him about his trip. In particular, he asked about the mood in London.

“At the routs and balls, the gentry seem relieved the war is nearly over,” Ford replied. “'Tis been a burden on their purses and a pain in their backsides. They will not mourn our loss.”

Ford resumed his duties, patrolling with Marion and on the lookout for stray British patrols or overzealous Tories and partisans who burned with the desire to exact revenge on their neighbors. And on the morning of August twenty-ninth, the British attacked Fair Lawn.

Major Thomas Fraser came across the Cooper River with a hundred dragoons and surprised the rebel pickets at Biggin Bridge and Strawberry Ferry. Marion immediately sent out a small reconnaissance patrol under Major Ford. When the two groups ran into each other in the woods, Fraser charged, driving Ford and his men back to Fair Lawn.

Ford let his men fly by him and hung back at the entrance to the lane to protect the retreat. The dragoon on his heels darted forward, drew his sword, and tried to cut him down. Ford whipped out his pistol and shot the dragoon off his horse. A cheer arose from Marion’s men, concealed in the cedar branches along the drive.

The British gaped at the cedars, then charged. The American marksmen fired, taking down twenty men and five mounts. The shots spooked the horses hitched to Marion’s ammunition wagon. They bolted. When five Americans ran out and pursued the wagon, Fraser’s men drove them back, and the ammunition was lost. Out of powder and shot, a situation with which Marion had a great deal of experience, he ordered his men to retreat to the Santee.

They had no way of knowing the action at Fair Lawn was to be their last battle. Marion commanded the brigade until the end of the war but never again engaged in combat.

Indian summer came softly in September, and Marion’s Brigade continued to roam the countryside, keeping the peace. Formal peace negotiations began in Paris, France, at the end of the month.

Brendan’s children celebrated their first birthday at Willowbend. Lancelot pulled himself up to his feet, his little hand clutching a table in the parlor. He was walking within a week. At the end of the next month, around the time of the signing of the preliminary treaty recognizing American independence, Guinevere took her first steps.

Two weeks later, six years and six months after the British attack on Fort Moultrie, General Leslie and his British troops prepared to evacuate Charles Town. A British fleet had arrived in the harbor earlier, not to bring in more troops but to take them away. Leslie promised to spare the town if the Americans allowed them to leave in peace. A cannon fired in the early morning light, and the British abandoned their positions. The Continental army, under Anthony Wayne, moved in soon after.

Before the British departure, the state’s new civil authorities issued an order that prohibited partisan militias from joining the triumphal patriot reentry into Charles Town. They feared the ragged, undisciplined partisans might cause trouble by fighting with the embarking British troops. William Moultrie, being exchanged as a prisoner of war that day, wrote in his journal:

Marion had returned to Fair Lawn on the Wadboo when he received word barring his men from the celebratory march into Charles Town. Hurt and angered by the snub, for his men’s sake, not his own, he summoned the brigade to muster for the final time. He thanked them for their service, for the good fight they had given the redcoats. He praised their gallantry, courage, and patriotism and wished them happiness and prosperity. Then simply and quietly, he disbanded the brigade and said good-bye.

But before leaving, Marion met once more with Brendan Ford. The two men shook hands and embraced. When the Swamp Fox mentioned it was time for Ford to visit Willowbend, the major replied, “I have one more task I’m obliged to complete before I ride that way.”

Marion sighed and shook his head, believing Major Ford was the blindest, most thickheaded fool he’d ever met—other than himself, of course. Then he mounted Ball and rode off to his ruined plantation of Pond Bluff to pick up the pieces of his life.

Ford swung up onto Dancer and made his way to Charles Town, which lay closer to Fair Lawn than Georgetown. Once there, he loaded his horse onto an American trading ship and sailed to Norfolk, Virginia, where he deposited the letters of credit from his bank in London. He penned missives to horse breeders in England, whose acquaintance he had made, and sent for his new breeding stock. Then he rode up the James River toward home to rebuild his house and stables.

His construction encountered difficulties when the coldest winter in memory descended on the James River farms. Ice storms and deep snow hindered progress. Ford heard from a traveling peddler in February that Britain had announced the end of hostilities with America. Winter released its grip on the Virginia countryside in April, and his horses arrived with news that the American Congress had ratified a preliminary peace treaty.

Ford threw his workers into a frenzy of activity, desperate to finish the building and return to South Carolina. Heavy spring rains and flooding frustrated his intentions. The wagons carrying timber for the barns and fences mired down in ruts and a sea of mud. A fierce summer storm brought freakish lightning that set fire to the newly built stables, and he nearly lost everything again.

On September third, 1783, eight days prior to his children’s second birthday, Ford boarded a ship at Norfolk to sail once again for Charles Town. That significant day also marked the signing of the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the war.

“Come here, you little imp!” Willa sprinted after Lancelot, who charged through the house, his face and hands painted with birthday cake. His gleeful shriek sent Killer and Sweetie running for cover. Maids and footmen hid behind doors and crouched beneath tables. Lancelot sped onward, smearing cake and cream frosting on brocade draperies and mahogany antiques in his slipstream.

The knocker on the front door pounded over the chaos. Richard failed to locate Quinn in the vicinity and walked over to swing open the door. His eyes opened wide, then he doubled over in laughter at the most amazing creature standing on the porch.

The man wore powder-blue satin with crimson roses embroidered on his knee-britches and the sleeves of his coat. Bilious-green stockings encased his legs, which ended in white velvet shoes with ruby buckles and two-inch heels. His violet waistcoat sported rows of Venetian lace. The same lace covered his hands to his fingertips and swathed his neck to his ears. A wide-brimmed cavalier’s hat with a sweeping egret feather cascading over the front and tickling the man’s nose was the yellow of a summer sun. A fiery red wig of corkscrew curls peeked out from under the hat and grazed the man’s shoulders.

Richard could not quell his laughter long enough to catch his breath. He heaved and hiccupped, finally straightening to catch the man’s eyes. They gleamed with the clear, sharp gray of steel. A heavy layer of paint, powder, and at least a half-dozen beauty patches of all shapes covered the remainder of the face. Control over his laughter slipped again, and Richard bit his lip to hold it back.

“May I help you?” he choked out.

The man drew a lacy handkerchief from his pocket and lifted it to his nose, sniffing loudly. He searched through a pearl-beaded purse hanging at his waist, pulled out a card, and passed it to Richard. “Kindly inform Miss Wilhelmina Bellingham that I have come to call.”

Shrieks, laughter, and shouts came from the back of the house, causing the man to scowl and crease the thick powder on his high brow. Richard glanced down at the card:
Brendan Edward Sinclair, Baron Montford.

Richard stifled a cry. “I shall see if she is receiving,” he said and closed the door. Pocketing the card with a grin, he strode off to find Willa.

A frown tightened the line of Ford’s mouth when Richard slammed the door in his face, leaving him standing on the doorstep like a messenger boy. Richard had recognized him. Perhaps not at first, when he all but suffered apoplexy laughing, but afterward.