Shades of Gray: A Novel of the Civil War in Virginia (13 page)

At first all she saw was a tall figure
silhouetted in the faint starlight along the road. But then the reflected gleam
of his Colt revolver, held low by his thigh, caught her eye, followed by the
distinct click of its hammer reaching her ears. Mounted on a dark bay tonight
instead of the gray, Andrea fathomed she could actually feel, rather than see,
his eyes upon her. The sensation his vengeful stare produced unnerved her more
than the gun.

Andrea pulled the horse to a stop while
contemplating her options. Concealment was impossible at this point, and flight
all but hopeless. In an effort to mask the fact that her insides had distilled
to jelly, she drew her gun. The act of defiance did little good. Attempting to
control her mount with one hand was not a realistic proposition.

“Ah-ha, Stuart was right. My fox has finally
left the henhouse,” Hunter said coolly, seeming to enjoy her struggle with his
horse. “And I see you’ve met Stump. Interesting choice.”

Andrea would have answered had she not been so
intent on staying on her mount while he reared, circled, and pranced in sheer
rebelliousness. But she was rather glad for his antics. It gave her time to seek
a way out.

“You’ve got two commands of cavalry behind you
and
me
in front of you,” Hunter said as if reading her mind. “I’d say
you’ve set a pretty good trap for yourself—on a stolen horse no less.”

He smiled with a kind of contented look that
brought to Andrea’s mind the image of a vulture preparing to feed on a carcass
that is not quite dead.

“Perhaps I have,” she said, pretending a calm
she did not feel. “As for the horse, he carries the U.S. brand. Indeed he was
stolen by
someone
.”

Her voice did not falter. Yet Andrea could not
suppress the urge to glance at the sky with the hope that God would furnish a
lightning bolt to strike Hunter down, or perhaps a squadron of angels to carry
her away. And then she worried, just a little, that these were the only two
possibilities for escape that appeared feasible to her at the moment.

“All the angels in heaven cannot save you now,”
Hunter said, again seeming to divine her thoughts. He continued watching her
struggle with his horse for a moment with a look of vague surprise mixed with
anger. “I lost a good man yesterday,” he said then as if to remind her of it.
“And woe to the hand that shed that costly blood.”

Andrea shuddered—not so much at his words, but
at the odious tone in which he said them. Numbness began to set in now,
numbness and fear. And the glob in her stomach started to congeal in her veins.
“It was not my intention. Nor was it my bullet that took his life.”

 “It was not your intention or your gun, yet
still he is gone. A costly sacrifice of a man who would have served his country
well had his life been spared.”

Hunter’s voice seemed suddenly raw with emotion.
Andrea thought she heard it crack, and the compassion in it panicked her. “Save
in defense of my country and the Union I would never have had to take up arms.”

“Speaking of arms,” Hunter said, his voice calm
and cool again, “it’s high time you surrendered yours.”

Andrea’s arm trembled from the strain of the
weight of the gun, yet her mind battled with her stubborn pride. J.J. had given
her this gun. She could not just toss it away. Then again it was of no use to
her right now, not with the trouble she was having controlling the beast
beneath her.

“If you surrender, you’ll be treated kindly as a
prisoner of war despite the blood you’ve cost me,” he said, riding toward her,
his voice louder than it needed to be since she was so close.

“And if I do not?” Andrea was proud that her
voice did not shake like the rest of her. She already knew his edict—surrender
or die—and neither alternative appealed to her at the moment.

“There’ll be no quarter,” was the unemotional,
merciless reply.

From the tone of his voice and the challenge in
his eyes, Andrea felt he would much prefer she put up a fight, that he would
take great pleasure in extracting the worth of his dead lieutenant in her
blood.

The sound of pounding hoofbeats suddenly echoed
from behind her, removing all thoughts and hopes of escape. The men at the barn
had probably grown suspicious about the lending out of Hunter’s mount.

“For your own safety, I must ask you again to
drop your weapon,” Hunter said, his voice sounding almost jovial now. “The
fellows coming behind you get quite offended when the enemy is pointing a gun
in my direction.”

Andrea wondered if his words were an attempt at
humor. She yielded to the inevitable and allowed the gun to drop to the ground
with a thud.

“I’m glad to see you are a reasonable young
man.” Hunter sat his horse with easy arrogance, watching her try to regain
control of Stump. “That horse is accustomed to being ridden with a strong bit
and a heavy hand—not a rope. I’m surprised you made it this far.”

“He should be hooked to a blasted plow,” Andrea
said miserably. Hunter sat only a few paces away now. He would soon be close
enough to grab the horse’s halter, and her fate would be sealed. “What do you
use him for anyway? Pulling artillery?”

“No.” Hunter displayed a lazy, confident smile,
apparently finding her comment amusing. “He’s certainly not a blooded horse, or
the easiest to ride, but he’ll jump a house if asked.”

The hoofbeats behind Andrea grew steadily louder
as Hunter drew steadily closer. “That’s how he got his name. He’d actually
rather jump a stump than go around it.”

Andrea
supposed Hunter made the remark thinking she had surrendered or had no means of
escape. But in a flash she assessed the wall and appraised the possibilities.
Nerved with the courage that God gives the desperate, she buried her spurs deep
into the most sensitive part of her unruly mount’s flanks, causing him to bolt
forward in confusion and irritable protest. The resulting collision between the
two horses made Hunter briefly lose his balance and his aim.

Before he had time to recover, Andrea turned the
horse at a right angle toward the wall, clutched handfuls of mane in tight
fists, and closed her eyes. Airborne for what seemed like minutes, she landed
so hard on the other side that her teeth rattled in her jaw and she had to gasp
for the breath knocked from her lungs. But through it all she clung to the
beast with leg and hand, somewhat stunned at the horse’s ability, and
completely astonished she was still alive.

From behind her, Andrea heard the sound of
Hunter emptying his revolver into the wall. But the action did him no good—and
her no harm.

“You’ve made your choice,” he yelled loud enough
for her to hear. “There’ll be no quarter next time!”

“There’ll be no next time,” Andrea said to
herself as she rode away in an uncontrolled gallop, recalling the words
Daedalus said to his son Icarus on their escape from the labyrinth.

“Escape may be checked by water or land, but
the air and the sky are free-ee!”

* * *

Neither J.J. nor Daniel was at Colonel Dayton’s
headquarters when Andrea wearily reined Stump past the pickets. She endured an
interrogation by Dayton, but welcomed the unexpected—and temporary—reprieve
from the other two colonels.

And then she slept, slept so deeply she didn’t
hear the commotion caused by Daniel’s arrival when he received word of her
return. But when her eyes finally fluttered open, she saw him pacing.

He stopped and knelt beside her. “Holy Jupiter,
Andrea. You gave me a scare. You’ve been unconscious for hours.”

“Really?” Andrea forced a smile as she sat up
stiffly. “I just needed some sleep. A little food now and I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be
fine
?” His voice grew distinctly
more hostile. “You were more dead than alive a few hours ago.”

Andrea barely heard him. Despite the fact that
both hands were wrapped in gauze for the rope burns caused by her makeshift
reins, she fell upon a table of leftover food like a ravenous wolf.

“Andrea.” Daniel stopped and swallowed hard.
“Andrea, I’m afraid I must agree with Colonel Jordan. This is getting far too
dangerous. You—”

“For me? And it’s not too dangerous for you?”

“That’s different. I know this means much to
you, but—”

“Have I not succeeded so far?”

“Of course you have.”

“But you can replace me without a second
thought?”

“Of course I can’t.” He began to pace again,
then stopped and faced her. “If they catch you, they’ll show no mercy.”

Andrea shrugged, but said nothing. Something in
Daniel’s eyes told her he did not expect an answer anyway.

“I admire your courage, but darn your judgment,
Andrea.” His voice grew stern again. “You came within an inch of losing your
life yesterday!”

“No, not an inch,” Andrea replied, her face
serious. “More like four feet.” She burst out laughing at the thought of
jumping the wall and slapped the table repeatedly with the palm of her bandaged
hand.

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
Daniel threw up his hands. “How dare you ride into an enemy camp, Stuart’s no
less, with no orders to do so!”

You gave me
permission to reconnoiter,” Andrea said, defending herself.

“I did not give you permission to fall in with
the ranks!”

“You did not explicitly tell me not to,” she
replied, deeming her argument was no weaker than his.

“Why do you have no fear of death?” He stopped
in front of her and leaned down with his palms on the table, his face even with
hers. “Perhaps I should rephrase. Why are you so foolish with your life?”

“Why do you believe I’m foolish with my life?”
She batted her eyelashes. “Why do you and Colonel Jordan always think capture
and death are not far away?”

“Perhaps it’s because you go more than halfway
to meet them,” he thundered. “Life is sufficiently short without shaking the
sand that measures it!”

Andrea stood and tried to sound serious.
“Colonel Delaney, I promise you I won’t die until my times comes.”

 “I don’t find you the least bit amusing,”
Daniel answered dejectedly, turning his back.

“I’m sorry,” Andrea said, walking around to face
him. “I know you’re in earnest, but I—” When he looked down at her with his
brilliant blue eyes, Andrea lost her train of thought.

“You’ve nothing to gain by giving your life.” He
gazed into her eyes almost wistfully. “Andrea, I couldn’t bear it if you—”

She grabbed his hands with her bandaged ones.
“Nothing will happen to me. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that,” he said sullenly.

“Nor can you.”

“You worry about
me
?” He put his hands on
her shoulders and searched her eyes as she searched his.

“Of course I do, Daniel! I—”

A knock on the door interrupted them, quickly
followed by Daniel’s adjutant walking in without waiting for an invitation. His
eyes shifted from one to the other as they each took a hurried step back.
“S-sorry, sir, an urgent dispatch for you.”

Andrea felt the heat rising in her cheeks as the
adjutant shot one more questioning glance in her direction before turning
toward the door. “I’ll wait for your orders outside.”

Chapter
13

“Wilt thou set eyes upon that which is not?”

– Proverbs, 23:5

Captain Hunter pulled on a clean shirt and
sighed with exasperation. “A ball for bloody sakes,” he said out loud.

Inwardly, he cursed the events that had brought
him to Richmond. “You need to relax, Captain Hunter,” General Stuart had told
him, “and spend an evening off horseback.” Then with a twinkle in his eyes and
a knowing nudge Stuart had said, “Reap the rewards from a social engagement
rather than a military one for a change.”

Stuart’s remarks would have been well received
by any of Hunter’s men, but to Hunter, they were aggravating. He rarely allowed
himself time to rest, let alone actually relax.

That is why Stuart had made it an official
mission. “It’s business, Captain. I need your eyes. We have reason to believe
that spies have infiltrated the city.”

A sense of duty overtook Hunter’s reluctance at
attending, but he still envisioned the evening with disdain. Spending time with
the social elite of Richmond, who knew little of the war and even less about
fighting it, seemed a miserable and constrained affair at best.

But by the time his carriage rolled to a stop in
front of the estate, Hunter had talked himself into making the best of it.
After making his entrance, he slowly surveyed the crowd. From across the room
he saw a familiar face frantically waving at him in a striking, and quite
revealing, red gown. Nodding his acknowledgment to his old friend Victoria
Hamilton, Hunter began to relax.
Perhaps this will not be such a bad evening
after all.

Turning to accept a drink from a servant, he
caught a glimpse of another striking face he thought he recognized reflected in
one of the tall mirrors in the ballroom. But when he turned to locate the
original visage, it was not to be found.

* * *

Andrea fiddled with the ornate brocading on the
side of her gown, then forced her hands to her side. She knew how perilous this
night could be, yet the amount of information she could glean made it well
worth the risk.

She mused about how quickly things had moved
since her ill-received trip into Stuart’s camp. Daniel and J.J. had each
chastised her, then closeted themselves away in one of their secret meetings
for hours. The next day she had ridden with Daniel to Fredericksburg, where he
had explained how she would get into Richmond and what was expected of her. She
had been rehearsing ever since with her new “aunt,” who escorted her here
tonight.

It seemed unreal to Andrea that just over a week
ago she had been dressed as a young boy and riding Justus through the gauntlet
at Thoroughfare Gap. The only reminder of that life now was a still-sore ankle.
Tonight, dressed in a pale green gown draped in layers of shimmering silk, she
felt like a princess. And when she stood in the entrance to the ballroom, the
thought of war seemed like a far-off dream.