Authors: Heather Graham
Triumph
The Old Florida Series
Heather Graham
To Donna Rausch
with lots of love, thanks, and
prayers for a beautiful lady.
Prologue
Home Fires
Fall, 1864
The West Florida Coast, Near Tampa Bay
T
HE SKY WAS STRANGE
that night. Though dark, the lingering effects of a storm at dusk had left crimson streaks across the shadowy gray of the sky. A cloud passed over the moon, which seemed to glow with that strange red light. Tia McKenzie shivered, feeling an uneasy sense of fear and foreboding. Indeed, the color of the blood that stained a country torn apart seemed to touch the night, and the house that stood before her.
Ellington Manor had once been one of the finest examples of a large working plantation in the South. Once. Once the white-columned porches had borne fresh, snow-colored paint, and elegant ladies in their silk, satin, and velvet had swept up the stairs of the Greco-Federal home, had laughed, teased, danced, flirted, and prayed for the right Southern boy to come along.
Then had come the time when Southern troops had trained on the lawn, and Southern boys had given out their boastful battle cries, and in time, all those good Southern boys who had graced the steps along with the beautiful girls had been called forth to war. There they had fought, and there, by the tens of thousands, they had died.
Looking up at the now decaying, weed-covered facade of Ellington Manor, Tia felt a familiar pain sweep through her. She had come here often as a girl. She had danced here, laughed here, and imagined the world to come. Now the lawn was overgrown, the paint was gray and cracked and faded, the dense Florida foliage was encroaching, steps were broken, windows smashed, and spiders spun their webs where once youthful trysts had taken place. Old Captain Ellington had died early on at Manassas, and young Captain Ellington, who should have inherited the house, had died at Shiloh. Not even his bones had come back. Miss Liza Ellington had loved her family home and would have never let it come to this ruin, but she had gone forth to war as well, contracted measles while nursing boys at a camp outside Richmond, and died there. Her remains, at least, had come home, and lay beneath the marble angel in the family graveyard behind the main house.
Yet tonight, there was a small beacon of light within. Colonel Raymond Weir, Florida regulars, had come. Her friend, her countryman. Once upon a time, he had been a boy upon those steps, flirting with the girl that Tia had been. She had seen him since then, and she knew that he had lost none of his youthful ardor for her. Indeed, with time, his feelings had become something deeper, while she, herself, should have been in sympathy with his cause if not his intent—he meant to burn out a known Union sympathizer.
Yes, she should have understood. She should have shared his fury. Except that ...
The Union sympathizer was her father.
Tia could hear the sounds of men and horses from the dilapidated outbuildings to the south of the main house. Weir’s men were here, preparing to attack. Just as she had been warned. Five companies of them, ten to twenty men remaining alive within each of those companies. They were to ride out at Weir’s command, eating the miles between here and Cimarron—her father’s property, her home. The house was to be burned to the ground. Her father, should he survive the shelling, was to be given a mock trial and executed. While her mother ... well, word was that Weir would turn a blind eye to whatever might become of the devoted wife of such a traitor. Raymond Weir was a Confederate officer taking military law into his own hands. This was what the war had become.
The soldiers had yet to see Tia; she had come alone. She had watched the house, biding her time. She was afraid tonight, afraid as she had never been before. In the last few years of the war, she had grown hardened and wary, but she had also learned courage—sometimes by accident. Tonight would be no accident. She had to stop Raymond, or at the least, delay him. Help would come, but only in time, because between her family and her state, life was divided. Her father was a Unionist, her brother Ian a Yankee hero. She and her other brother, Julian, a year younger than Ian, were ardent Rebs. Once she had believed in her cause with all the passion in her heart, but that was when the war had been fought on more decent ground, when honor had still meant something to men in both blue and gray.
She had left an urgent message for her Rebel brother to get hold of her Yankee brother, and she knew that help would arrive at her father’s home. For a moment she breathed deeply, bitterly regretting that she could not call upon another Yank, but there was no help for it—he was fighting in the North—and if she’d possibly had the time to reach him, she wouldn’t have known where to do so. It was only because Ian’s wife had just had another baby that she dared to hope he had reached Florida, and would receive her message. So she’d come here herself. She had no choice. She had to buy time.
How? she asked herself for the thousandth time. How? All things could be done, she reminded herself. She had ridden from the camp alone, traveled nearly a hundred miles in just a few days—alone. How ironic, for her father would be furious; the men in her life would all be furious. But still—how could she waylay Raymond Weir?
Then the answer came back the same as it had each time she had asked herself.
Any way that she could. Tonight, she wasn’t a Rebel. She’d done enough in the name of the great “Cause.” Played dangerous games, begun by sheer chance perhaps, but perpetuated in the name of all that she had held dear—honor and freedom, and what few pathetic, battered lives she might save. And she had paid a strange, anguishing price for those efforts, swore she’d not ride out again ... but tonight ...
She couldn’t back down. Her father ...
Yet playing her very strange role in the war had been one thing. She had hurt no one except herself. While now ...
What she planned was wrong. She didn’t want to do it ...
Stop. No time for morality, no time for thoughts of honor—or even promises given at another time when the world had seemed to spin too quickly. She couldn’t stop the war. Nor could she help the fact that love must come before battle—she would die for her parents, for her brothers, for any member of her family. But she didn’t intend to die here tonight.
No! Merely trade her heart and immortal soul for the lives of those she loved.
She was grimly aware of how it might all go. Weir would see her, of course. He had said that he would always do so. Perhaps he would allow her to plead and beg and flirt ...
Then he would apologize, tell her that he was sorry, but her father was a traitor born and bred, to be hanged that very night if not shot down dead ...
He would think himself the victor—he wouldn’t know that she had bought the time she needed, all that she had come for that night. Her father employed a lot of men—black, white, Seminoles, Creeks, Germans, Irish, and more—in his defense. But Weir had made arrangements to meet up with another cavalry unit from the north of the state. Her father would fight, but his forces would be overwhelmed unless his Yankee son or some other soldiers—friend or supposed foe—brought reinforcements before the battle commenced.
Now. Time to move. To act.
Tia nudged her horse, moving quickly and quietly forward into the front yard. She rode straight to the steps that had once graced so many a lighthearted soiree. There, in a pool of light cast out from within, she slipped from her horse’s back and started to the porch.
“Halt!” commanded a thick voice, and a slim picket stepped from the shadows to accost her. “Madame, what—”
“I need to see Colonel Weir, sir. You may tell him that Tia—”
“Why, Miss McKenzie!” the man gasped, recognizing her, his gaunt cheeks turning red. “Why, yes, Miss Tia, I’ll tell him right away. It’s Thackery, ma’am. I met you at General Roper’s ball, soon after the battle of Olustee.”
“Oh yes, good evening, sir.” Thankfully, she did have a reputation as a devoted Rebel herself, despite her father’s being a Unionist. But the way the man looked at her, with a gaze between guilt and pity, she knew he had to be wondering if she was aware of their purpose that night. She shouldn’t have been, except that a soldier who had seen her own sacrifices had told her about the treacherous plan. The official government had long ago determined to leave her father be. His empathy for the Union was known, but he had chosen to practice a staunch neutrality throughout the war. Soldiers from both sides had, upon occasion, found a haven for a dying man there. Cimarron cattle had fed a number of Yanks, yes, but their cows had often fed the Confederacy as well. Tia dug her fingers into her palms. This was an act of judgment by a few men with power and troops, a depredation, one that must be stopped.
Thackery opened the front door to the house and started in. Tia followed him, despite the fact that he had surely wanted her to wait.
Raymond Weir was standing before the fireplace, hands clasped at his back. His uniform was threadbare, but very properly worn. He was tall, a formidable man with long blond locks, bright blue, seemingly all-seeing eyes, and a handsome face now richly darkened by the sun, despite his cavalry hat. He turned quickly at the sound of their entry, frowning as he saw her.
“Colonel, sir, Miss—”
“Tia!” Raymond exclaimed. Then he gazed sternly at Thackery. “Private, I haven’t time tonight for visitors. Especially Miss McKenzie.”
“Don’t blame your soldier,” Tia said quickly. “I followed him without permission.”
“I can’t see you now, Tia,” he said gravely, and had the grace to flush. “I have business this evening. What are you doing here? I’d heard you were with Julian.”
“I was heading home,” she lied, meeting his eyes, “and I heard you were in the area.” She hesitated. What was she going to do? “I felt I had to see you!” she declared passionately.
Raymond looked at her, then past her to his soldier. “You may leave us, Private Thackery.”
“Are there orders, sir? For the men?”
“When the time is right, I’ll give the orders, Private.”
“Aye, sir!”
The private saluted sharply, then turned to exit the house. The heavy wooden front door closed behind him. Raymond stared at Tia. She held her ground, returning his stare. A log snapped on the fire. He lifted a hand toward a sideboard that held a crystal decanter.
“Tia ...” he murmured softly, emotion naked in his voice. Then he cleared his throat. “We’ve nothing so fine as sherry to offer, Tia, but I imagine you’ve become accustomed to the coarser taste of a good Kentucky bourbon over the years?”
“Before the war, sir, I became familiar with Kentucky bourbon,” she said and walked to the decanter, pouring out shots for both of them, the larger for him. She walked to him boldly then, offering the larger whiskey. He took it from her, studying her with longing—and suspicion. Once, he had courted her properly, flattered her to no end. She had flirted with him, entranced by his attention. He was a striking man, as impassioned about the South and their state as she had once been herself. She still loved her state, but she loved her father more. She had come to despise Weir.