“It’s not any of the Gillett clan,” Alaina mused aloud, wishing that the pair would hold the lantern higher so she could see their faces clearly.
“They’re going into the stable now.”
“The stable!” Alaina sprang to the window, and her fears were realized as she saw the light of the lantern disappearing into the same outbuilding where she and Saul had hidden the chest.
“They’ll find it for sure,” she gasped.
“Find what? What is in there, Alaina?”
“Some old harnesses and things,” she mumbled, rumpling her hair in abject frustration. Why hadn’t she and Saul thought of hiding the chest in a more secretive location? Why did the thieves have to return so quickly for it? Why? Why? Why?
“You’re not worried about a bunch of old harnesses,” Cole pressed. “What are you afraid they’ll find?”
She groaned and wrung her hands. “Saul and I found something buried out there in the woods and put it in that old trunk in the stables.”
“What was it?”
“A chest of some type.” She avoided the more significant answer by rushing on. “Saul was here when they buried it, and he said they left one of their own men out there. We found him in a grave with the box.”
“They murdered him?”
“I would say.”
Cole grimaced and kneaded his leg as the pain continued to sear through it. “They’re coming out of the stables now. Carrying something heavy.”
Alaina knew exactly what the two had found. She pressed closer to the window and watched them, then her blood took on a sudden chill as the miscreants turned toward the house. She gasped. “They’re coming this way.”
Cole struggled to rise, but she pressed him back down into the chair.
“Be still,” she hissed. “You’re as weak as a starved kitten and certainly not strong enough to hold them off by yourself. All you’ll do is get yourself killed.” He made an attempt to argue, but firmly she settled the matter. “We’ll wait here together, or by heavens, you’ll have to walk over me to get to the door. Now stay where you’re put.”
She flew across the room and closed the portal, quickly locking it against any casual intrusion. As she came back to him, she opened the small cabinet door in the side wall that framed the fireplace.
“Sometimes voices carry up through the chute,” she offered the information in a detached frame of mind, more worried and frightened than she cared to let on.
They waited in breathless silence as a sound of splintering wood was heard, and Alaina knew that the board that barred the back door was being ripped away. The portal creaked as it was pushed open, and a moment later something heavy was dragged into the room below them.
The voices of the men echoed through the house, raised in a savage argument, though the words themselves were unintelligible. Cole reached up and reassuringly gripped the slender hand that clutched his shoulder. The thin fingers relaxed in his grip as if surrendering the weighty responsibility of their defense.
After a while a hush fell over the house and they realized that one of the men had left by the back door. From the window, a tall, dark form could be seen running back toward the woods. The man disappeared into the trees and a moment later emerged with two horses. As if anxious to rejoin his companion, he came back toward the house at a run, leading the animals. As soon as he stomped through the back door, the dining room became once more a center of verbal strife, yet only the words of the man nearest the fireplace could be distinguished clearly. His angry rebuttals evidenced the accusations of the other.
“If I had hidden it there, do you think I would have led you to it again?” The one who spoke laughed shortly. “Why, I would have taken it far away from here.” His tone became soft and wheedling, almost cajoling. “Good lord, I was the one who sent the little bitch scurrying away from here in the first place, and without me, you would never have thought of getting the whole countryside in an uproar looking for a female traitor while we made our escape.”
Alaina frowned deeply. That voice was strangely familiar to her, and what he said was most peculiar. They were obviously talking about her, but who besides Emmett—
“Didn’t I inform you of the shipment? And let me remind you, that it was I who stuck my neck out the night we dumped that fellow in the river. Had I been caught wearing his uniform—hell! This whole thing is too absurd for you to accuse me. If Banks’s troops hadn’t been driven back, this property would still be up for auction, and it could have been yours, just as we arranged. But you’re running scared now that the rebels have pushed us back.”
Us? A Yankee? Alaina canted her head, listening more intently.
“Oh, sure, it was a good thing we came after the chest, because somebody undoubtedly planned to come back for it. But don’t go stampeding me because a few of our plans have gone awry. The property may yet be taken and put up for auction. In the meantime, the chest is safe with us, and we can split up our shares right now.”
As if his words finally appeased the other, the two quieted, and only the sound of some mild labor being performed issued upward through the shaft. After a while, the muted noise ceased, and the voices sounded again in laughing relief. Then abruptly, the gaiety was broken by a shout, the noise of a struggle, then silence.
Alaina held her breath as she and Cole strained to hear some sound from the room below. A single set of footsteps, heavy and uneven as if under a considerable burden, left the house and, in a moment, returned quick and light, only to leave again with another load. Then quietness reigned for an eternity of time. No sound of horses’ hooves came to indicate any departure from the house, yet all was stillness until a slight noise came from the front porch. After a while, the steps returned to pause again near the back door. A new sound intruded, a splashing and gurgling, and the heavy, cloying essence of coal oil seeped into the bedroom, prompting a mutual fear.
Alaina’s nails dug into Cole’s bare skin, but he hardly noticed as he struggled up from the chair. In too brief a time, choking smoke roiled up through the chute, and the crackle of flames confirmed their fears. The rattle of hooves was heard outside, moving away, and Alaina ran to close the small cabinet door.
“Blast them! Blast them all!” she railed. “I should have killed them the first moment I laid eyes on them!” She choked on the sobs of bitterness and at the airless, breath restricting smoke. All of her being seethed with hatred for those who had set fire to her home. Her pained, keening moan trembled from her shaking lips, the cry mingling with the growing roar below. Cole grasped her roughly by the shoulders, his hard fingers biting into her flesh, and shook her until some sense returned.
“Alaina—listen! We’ve got to get out of here before we’re trapped. Do you understand?” He gave her a quick shake, demanding her answer. “Do you understand?”
She nodded a confused answer barely discernible in the deep shadows. She coughed on the choking smoke and took his arm over her shoulder, ready to help him, but at the door, she let him lean against the wall while she flew back to the bed.
“Alaina! Come on!”
“You can’t go gallivanting about the countryside half naked!” She came back to him with his garments and boots and a patchwork quilt from the bed. Quickly snatching on his blouse, Cole slipped a small miniature which his hand had brushed on the wall into the folds of his shirt, while Alaina fumbled with the key in the lock with no results. Cole reached out and brushed her trembling hands aside then, unlocking the door, flung it wide. Heavy dense smoke rolled upward from the stairs, filling their nostrils and stinging their eyes, nearly driving them back.
“Let’s get out of here!” He caught her arm, and hobbled painfully into the hall.
“Look!” Alaina gasped and pointed. “They must have touched off a fire at the front of the house, too! It’s all in flames!”
“Let’s try the back!”
She led him down the stairs, bearing as much of his weight as her slight frame would allow. Hobbling around
the balustrade as he left the bottom step, Cole paused a moment in the hall. The far side of the dining room was in flames and the back doorway was engulfed in a fiery inferno that prevented any passage to the safety beyond.
Alaina smothered a scream and quickly drew Cole’s attention to a pair of legs that jutted out across the doorway near the hall. Cole dragged his own injured leg behind him as he struggled to reach the portal. The man was oddly hunched over an open, empty chest that bore the letters “U.S.A.” boldly stenciled on the side of the coffer. Cole bent, briefly examining the two stab wounds in the man’s back, and reached to find a pulse in the neck. There was none.
“Is he dead?” Alaina questioned, trembling as she came to stand beside Cole.
“Yes.” He rolled the man over from the awkward, half-crouched position. The legs straightened slowly, and a bright yellow stripe flashed on the britches of dark blue as the long coat he was wearing spread open.
“A Yankee!” Alaina gasped. Then she saw the face and recognition dawned. “Why, it’s Lieutenant Cox! He was the one who branded me a spy!”
The officer’s half-drawn pistol was tangled in the bulky coat, while his other hand clutched a corner of bright, brocade silk. Cole pried the dead man’s fingers open, taking its prize, then reached within the chest to draw out the only thing that was left in it, the sheaf of papers.
“Saul and I found it,” Alaina rushed to explain. “It was the gold shipment taken from New Orleans. They buried it out in the woods with the body, and Saul and I, we hid the chest in the stables.”
Cole tossed the papers back into the box. “Well, there’s one less to share it now.”
“Saul said there was a fancy man and a woman who came out here with Lieutenant Cox the night they buried it.”
The fire roared up suddenly, scorching their faces and driving them back a step. Cole grabbed Alaina’s arm, stumbled across the hall, and pushed open a door leading to the opposite side of the house. The room was relatively free of smoke, and he swung her inside, closing the door behind him as he hobbled in after her. They had stepped through the only door in the room, and there was no escape from here except through the boarded windows. Cole wrenched a wooden leg from a broken table and smashed the windowpanes, then began to pry at the closed shutters that were boarded shut from the outside. Then suddenly from without strong hands began to pluck the planks away as if they were thin shakes and soon the shutters were flung wide. Saul’s black face briefly appeared in the opening before Cole reached back and, lifting Alaina bodily, unceremoniously stuffed her through the window. As soon as she was clear, he thrust his own head and shoulders out and found himself taken in the black’s powerful grasp. He gritted his teeth in pain as his bandaged leg was dragged over the windowsill, then gratefully leaned on Saul as the man whisked them away from the house to the shelter of the stable. Cole collapsed beside Alaina on a pile of musty straw where they coughed the smoke from their lungs. Absently Cole wondered if he would ever again savor the taste of a good cigar.
He found Saul’s anxious gaze on them and waved away his concern. “Did you see,” he gasped, “another man ride away from the house?”
“No, suh! Ah comed lickety-splittin’ it across the field when ah seen de fire comin’ from de back do’. Ah ain’t seen hide nor hair o’ nobody.”
Alaina sat huddled in a small heap staring at the burning house. The fire was licking upward from the back door, curling toward the second level, while the front of the house was nearly encased in flames. Tears trickled down her cheeks and muffled sobs began to shake her slim form as she relented to the turmoil of sorrow roiling within her. Seeking to hold her close and give her comfort, Cole slid an arm about her, but with a ragged snarl, Alaina ducked away.
“Don’t touch me, Yankee!” she snarled and glared at him with tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks. “You and your damnable blue army have cost me almost more than I can bear!”
He let her sob out her grief, his face grim with the knowledge that he could not stop this fiery ravishment of her home. “Don’t you think we’d better get out of here,” he suggested after a while, “before someone gets curious about the fire?”
Alaina stopped crying with a choked gasp and shot to her feet. “The Gilletts! They’ll be coming down here as soon as they see the fire. We’ve got to get away from here!”
“Yas’m,” Saul agreed fervently. “But which way? Dem white trash gonna be comin’ up de road, and dere’s Confed’rate cavalry patrols in de other d’rection. An’ anyways we ain’t gonna get fur in de dark.”
Alaina felt much like a fox being hounded from its den, but found welcome distraction from her sorrow as she rose to the challenge. “Hitch the team to the hearse. We’ll head back across the fields and hide out by the bayou tonight.”
She turned abruptly and presented Cole his boots, then brushed quickly past to gather their supply of food from the cookhouse, not caring to lend her assistance as he struggled to pull them on.
Putting the beacon of the burning house behind them, the oddly matched trio set out to cross the wide field in the hearse. Saul had pushed the heavy casket aside, and Cole lay beside it where he could stretch out his leg. An eruption of sparks and flame shot high above the treetops and made the tears sparkle in Alaina’s eyes when she turned back to look. As they crept across the open space, the wavering light of the fire brightened the field, stretching fluid, black shadows ahead of them. They could hear the excited shouts of the Gilletts as they swarmed down the road toward the burning house, and it seemed that any moment the hearse would be seen, and a hue and cry raised, but the Gilletts were too intent on watching the fire, allowing the escaping party to make it safely to the woods.
In the pitch black darkness beneath the trees, Saul’s unerring skill brought them to a well-masked grove beside the bayou. The black dismounted and, after seeing to the horses, went back to the edge of the copse to post a watch lest one of the Gilletts stumble on their path and a pursuit develop. Hunching in her oversize coat, Alaina curled up on the seat and stared sadly at the crimson glow of the low scudding clouds.
Sometime around midnight the fire died down and not long after a light misting rain began to fall. Saul gathered a slicker around his broad shoulders and settled himself against the bole of an ancient oak. Alaina climbed down from her perch and sat in the open rear door of the hearse, resting her head on her drawn-up knees and keeping the best distance from Cole she could manage. At least with the advent of rain, the voracious mosquito attacks abated, and some sleep could be found.
Morning came, but the day remained dark and gray as the low clouds and drizzle persisted. Cole dragged himself out of the hearse and stretched to ease the aches and cramps born of a night on its hard floor. Saul had started a small fire and was warming some ham over it, but Alaina was nowhere to be seen. Saul lifted his gaze as Cole hitched himself around to lean against the front wheel of the hearse. The black laid a slice of ham and a hearty chunk of cornbread on a tin plate.
“’Tain’t awful fancy, suh,” he said, grinning as he offered the breakfast. “But it’ll stick to yer ribs till nightfall.”
Cole indulged his curiosity as he accepted the plate. “Where’s Alaina?”
“Oh, Miz Alaina she took h’self off fo’ a walk.” Saul fixed a plate which he covered and carefully tucked beneath the seat of the hearse, then began preparing another for himself. “Ah ‘spect she done gone back to de house. Ah’ll hitch up de team in a bit, and we’ll meander ’round dat way afo’ we leaves.”
The remains of the house could not be seen until they were nearly to the gate, then the charred ruins came into sight. The nearest of the large oaks that had once sheltered the house from the sun were denuded and seared into twisted, grotesque caricatures of their former shapes. The charred beams that thrust up from the cinders resembled the bones of some gigantic beast that had died in agony. Wisps of smoke curled upward, while the droplets of rain hissed on still-smoldering embers. The stench of wet ash w
as heavy in the early morning air.
They found Alaina just beyond the stables, on her knees in the red mud, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. The top hat lay unheeded beside her. Saul swung down and went to her, placing a huge, gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Miz Alaina?” He spoke softly, as if reluctant to disturb her. “We gots to leave now—afo’ dem Gilletts git up and about.”
She lifted red-rimmed eyes, and her lips trembled as she took a deep breath. “It’s all gone, Saul. There’s nothing left.”
“Ah know, Miz Alaina.” He nodded, then stared at the smoking rubble, his own eyes filling with moisture. “But ah ain’t gonna say good-bye. Someday ah is gonna come back an—”
His throat thickened, and he swallowed as the lump of sadness made further words impossible. He heaved a laborious sigh and turned away from the sight of the ruin. “But we’s got to be goin’ now, Miz Alaina.” He lifted her to her feet and bent to retrieve the hat, wiping it on his sleeve before handing it back to her. She jammed the thing on her head and turned up the collar of her bulky coat, becoming in that instant a tawny-skinned, spindly boy. From where he sat at the open end of the hearse, Cole could only stare at her, amazed at the transformation. Where, now, was the soft, yielding woman he had once upon a night bedded and thereafter yearned to recapture?
Alaina came around to the back of the hearse and cocked her head thoughtfully as she considered him. After a moment, she turned to Saul who joined her.
“Whatever, on this green earth, are we going to do with him?” She asked the question quite innocently, but Cole had the distinct and uneasy feeling that she had already arrived at an answer.
“Wal,” the black drawled as he rubbed his chin reflectively. “Ah been doin’ some powerful thinkin’ ’bout dat.” His eyes went to the coffin, then he raised a questioning brow to Alaina who nodded slowly in agreement as an evil smile spread across her countenance.
“Oooh nooo!” Cole moaned as he caught the drift of their unspoken pact.