“What?” Alaina gasped.
“So the man was0 your contact!” Risa mused.
Alaina ignored her blunder, feeling absolutely ill. Lewes had been so young, so brave. He’d had so much life ahead of him. “He was… hanged?”
“No, no—he was shot; he refused to respond when a picket demanded to know his purpose. He tried to run. He was killed.”
“Oh, God!” Alaina breathed, reaching for the tree to steady herself. Poor Captain Lewes!
“Alaina, please understand. I’m sorry, but I am telling you this so that you will realize the seriousness of this situation.”
Alaina inhaled sharply, studying Risa. “Why did you come? Why are you helping me?”
“I—” Risa hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe I respect your loyalty to the South. Maybe I’ve acquired a certain affection for you.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “And maybe I still care about Ian, and know that your death or incarceration would wound him beyond measure. What difference does it make? I’ve got a carriage down the next road. I can’t be seen here. Get the baby—and Lilly. You can travel with a maid. Keep her quiet, though, and hurry.”
Alaina briefly bowed her head; she had never known so great a misery. It was war; it was no game of flirting and spying. Ian had probably been right that it would last a very long time and they would all be bathed in blood.
“Alaina!”
She raised her head, squared her shoulders, and nodded. Impulsively, she hugged Risa, and Risa hugged her tightly in return.
Alaina hurried into Ian’s bedroom, pulling writing paper, pen, and ink from his desk drawers. She agonized in the seconds she dared take, wishing there were words that could explain how she could love him—and the Confederacy as well. There were no words that could begin to suffice. She wrote simply:
I’m so sorry. So very sorry. I need to go home. I do love you.
Alaina
She left the note on his desk.
She turned and studied the room. She hadn’t wanted to come here. But now, she didn’t want to leave. She’d learned here just how much she loved her husband. Her baby had been born here. It had become their home.
She closed her eyes, fighting the threat of hysterical tears.
She hurried back to her own room, gently cradled her son in her arms, and, with Lilly silently at her side, left her home.
Left the North.
And her husband.
Chapter 23
By the end of September, Risa received a letter from Alaina assuring her that she and the baby had made it safely from Washington to Richmond. She went from there, via the railroad, to Charleston, where she was welcomed by the cream of Confederate society. She wrote with enthusiasm regarding the kindness of those she met—and with renewed patriotic fever for the Confederacy. Alaina had actually come out of the situation quite well and Risa could assure herself wryly that she had been a good friend to both Alaina and Ian.
Risa had suspected that Alaina might stay in Charleston for quite some time. Although Brent had so far refused to accept a commission with either a Florida or South Carolina volunteer unit or the Confederacy itself, he and Sydney could certainly be construed as Rebels— but they were McKenzies. However, Alaina didn’t stay with them. In the last letter she had managed to get friends to smuggle through Union lines, she told Risa that, after stopping in St. Augustine, she was going home. She wanted to be with Jennifer, at Belamar.
It was November when Ian finally returned to Washington. Risa had been out at the home of a friend, working on a flag for a newly formed Maryland home guard— and feeling absolutely restless with her mundane part in the events shaping the country.
She rarely saw her father now; he was with the Army of the Potomac under the man Lincoln had brought in from a previous acquaintanceship in Illinois—McClellan. McClellan was dashing and charismatic, inspiring to the troops, but Risa had already heard from her father— who complained privately, but with great aggravation— that McClellan was like an old woman in many ways, exaggerating the number of enemy troops, no matter what the intelligence reports. He would wage far too careful a war, a defensive war, when he was supposed to be bringing ambivalent Southerners back into the fold of the Union.
More men were dying. There had been action at Ball’s Bluff, Virginia, and skirmishes east and west. Risa prayed that winter might stem the flow of blood—and cool down some very hot heads.
As she came back to her house that early evening in November, her maid, Nelly, came rushing out to meet her. “Major McKenzie, ma’am, Major McKenzie is here!”
Risa stared at Nelly, then quickened her footsteps.
Ian’s back was to her when she hurried into her parlor. His shoulders were very broad, trimming to the leanness of his hips, and with his dark hair, he wore his uniform very handsomely. His hands were on the mantel; his head was just slightly bowed in thought. She was so very tempted to run to him, to put her arms around him and lay her head against his back, to whisper some gentle words to ease the strain of war. A war in which he fought his own kin, his own wife.
She opened her mouth to say his name, but no sound came. She gently placed a hand upon his shoulder. He didn’t turn immediately, and she realized he had known that she was in the room from the time she had first entered it. He turned at last, eyes very dark, face leaner, sharper than ever.
“Ian. It’s good to see you,” she said, moving back just slightly.
He smiled. “You, too, Risa. You look as well as ever. Very beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she said softly, then paused. “I assume you know that Alaina—”
“Oh, yes, I know that she left Washington. You know, it’s amazing how slowly military orders can move about the country and how quickly the affairs of men and women can travel. I had actually been right off of New Orleans with my men, chasing a Southern sloop from Pensacola, when I met up with an officer who had recently spent time here. He was saddened by Rose’s arrest, and anxious to find out if I knew how deeply it had disturbed others of the Southern persuasion in the area, including my wife. The officer seemed to think that Alaina left in protest regarding Rose. But I don’t think that’s true. I think she left because she had been in league with Rose. What do you think?”
Risa stared at him, hesitating. “I—well, of course, you know that I’m a Union patriot all the way, so it would be unlikely that anyone would share their thoughts on the matter with me…. Tea, Ian? A whiskey? What can I get for you? It is good to see you, even if being here is not all that you had planned. Let me get you something to drink.”
She started to walk away from him. He reached out, gripping her arm. His hold was firm but not hurtful, and it felt as if his cobalt eyes penetrated right through her. “You know more than what you’re telling me.”
“She’s written to me,” Risa said quickly. “She knew, of course, that you’d be furious with her decision to go South, but … I think she wanted to go home, to Belamar, though I would assume that she’d still be in St. Augustine now.”
“The baby?” he demanded, and Risa bit her lower lip, suddenly hearing the pain beneath the anger in his voice.
“Sean is doing well, thriving,” Risa said. “You haven’t heard from Alaina—at all? Well, I suppose it would have been difficult. … I’m not sure I would be able to reach you, Ian, if I needed to.”
“Alaina left a note on my desk from three months ago, and that is the last I have heard from her,” Ian said, and the steel note of deadly anger was back in his voice.
“I’m sure that she would have contacted you if she had known how, Ian. She loves you.”
“Perhaps.”
“I would have contacted you if—”
“If you should ever need me in the future, for anything, go to General Brighton. He knows how to find me.”
Risa nodded. “You really shouldn’t be too angry; all she did was go home. I think that you must see her position.”
His dark look betrayed his doubt.
“Ian
, she is a Southerner. Her home is in the South.”
He turned away from her, staring into the flames of the fireplace.” And I should be a Southerner, too?” he inquired lightly.
“Oh, no, of course not…”
“There are but two issues here: The Union must be preserved, and slavery is morally wrong. Alaina knows that!” His aggravation and confusion mingled in the deep anguish of his voice.
“I’m sure she knows that slavery is morally wrong,” Risa said. “In fact, very few enlisted men in the Confederacy actually own slaves. Many Southerners don’t believe in slavery—they just feel that they have the right to be free and independent.” What in God’s name was she doing, defending Alaina? “Oh, Ian, if the two sides just tried to understand each other there wouldn’t be a war,” she insisted. And, hoping to slip from the conversation, she asked quickly, “Can you—can you stay for dinner? I doubt if we’ll see Father; he is constantly drilling with the army and meeting with McClellan and his generals. Father is being promoted to brigadier general himself—had you heard?”
“Yes, I hope to see him and offer my congratulations. And yes, I’d love to have dinner, thank you.”
“Fine. I’ll tell Cook, and get you a drink. Please, make yourself comfortable here.”
His eyes were on hers, and he smiled warmly. “I always have, Risa,” he said.
She smiled, feeling a strange slam in her heart, and hurried away to see about dinner.
“Are you in Washington long?” Risa asked him in the course of the pleasant meal.
His eyes darkened; his mouth tightened, and she felt a little chill streak through her. “I’d had a little time, but now … I think I may head out on a mission of my own.”
Risa convulsively curled her fingers into her palms and stood, nearly knocking her chair over. Ian stared at her in startled surprise. “Don’t you go getting killed over her, do you hear me? And I don’t mean that with any evil intent—believe it or not, Alaina is my friend. But you are my friend as well, and she is the enemy, and you shouldn’t go getting killed for her!”
He smiled, rising as well, walking around the table to her. He took her by the shoulders and kissed her forehead. “Risa, I am continually ordered into enemy territory. I know what I’m doing, and I don’t take chances. But I thank you very much for your concern, and I swear to you, I will be careful.”
Risa looked up at him. She felt as if her heart were pounding a staccato beat that he couldn’t help but hear. Her flesh felt as if it were on fire. It would be so easy. Damn convention, and society. He was married, but his wife was the enemy, a thousand miles away, and he had been hers first, and he should have been hers now, and they would have understood one another perfectly, and these moments could have been a balm for them both….
He was touching her. She could feel his breath against her face. It would be so easy to slip into his arms, and she was certain that he felt it as well.
“Ian…” she murmured.
“Oh, God, I wouldn’t hurt you, Risa, I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said.
Again his lips brushed her forehead.
“What if you weren’t hurting me, what if I wanted just a memory, what if…”
His arms tightened. He lifted her chin. She felt his lips on hers. Grinding down on them with an openmouthed fever and passion that inflamed her senses, set fire to a longing that was as yet only imagined.
Then suddenly, with an oath, he released her.
“I’ve got to get out of here, Risa!” he told her hoarsely.
“Because you love your wife,” she said softly.
He was quiet a moment. “Because I love you both,” he said.
And then he was gone.
Alaina had always loved the city of St. Augustine, with its handsome and impressive fort standing guard in the harbor. The fort—called Fort Marion now, in honor of the Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion—had originally been built by the Spanish as the Castillo San Marcos. The British, who had held Florida during the Revolution, had called the edifice Fort St. Marks, anglicizing the original name. Whatever it was called, it was beautiful and looked indomitable, like an ancient medieval castle.
Alaina arrived in daylight, in December 1861, and alighted almost directly in front of the fort with Lilly and Sean. Lilly was delighted that it wasn’t even a chill day—Lilly hated the cold of the North, and had accompanied Alaina south with little protest. Alaina was happy to be there. She was still well over two hundred miles from home, but they were Florida miles, and it felt good. If thoughts of Ian didn’t plague her continually, she might well have been content. Of course she had tremendous support for her position once she was in the South, and it was encouraging to feel that she was right, that she was part of a great revolutionary cause. But her nights were torture.
She had left Ian, and she didn’t know where he was, nor how he would feel, if he would ever forgive her, if she would ever see him again….
“Warm is good,” Lilly announced with a happy sigh. “Warm is good.”
“Yes, nice.”
“The street is nice. When Major Ian comes home, then it will all be nice.”
“Lilly,” Alaina murmured, “I’m not so sure he’ll be home—for quite a while.” But she, too, looked up and down the street and managed to smile. The city was charming, with its ancient Spanish architecture blending in with the growth that had been continuous since the mid-1500s. It had always amused Alaina to think that St. Augustine was the oldest permanent European settlement in the United States—especially when so many people still thought of Florida as being such a wild and new frontier.
Standing in the street where the coach had left them, Alaina stared up at Fort Marion. She felt a small, sweet thrill of excitement just to be here. She had enjoyed her stay in Richmond and Charleston, and she had experienced a wave of patriotism for the Confederacy in those stalwart Southern cities unlike any she had known before. The seat of the Confederate government was in Richmond, and she had even attended an evening’s soiree at the White House of the Confederacy, where none other than the gaunt, intriguing President Davis himself had paused to thank her for her loyalty to her people. In those two cities, it seemed impossible that the South would fail in its mission for sovereignty. It had been wonderful to see Sydney and Brent, and frighteningly easy to lie, telling them only that Ian was so seldom in Washington, she felt it a dangerous city in which to be alone—the same story she intended to tell Julian when he met her.
She closed her eyes for a moment, listening to the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, feeling the sun, the sea breeze, and the warmth of being home.
“Alaina!”
She swirled around and saw that Julian was leaping down from the driver’s seat of a small carriage. A little tremor streaked through her, for he looked so very much like his brother. She hurried forward to hug Julian, to be lifted up and swung around, and hugged again. But then he let her down in front of him, and his eyes were grave. “All right, young lady, just what are you doing here? I know damned well my big brother didn’t give you permission to leave Washington!”
Alaina exhaled a breath of irritation. “Well, your big brother wasn’t in Washington, and it was becoming a very dangerous place for Southerners.”
“Oh? For Southerners—or guilty Southerners?”
“Julian, don’t be cruel—and don’t forget that Ian is a Yankee when you …” she stepped back, surveying him from head to toe. He was very handsome in a uniform-gray frock coat with his medical and military insignia upon the shoulders. “You’re a Reb,” she reminded him bluntly.
“Fine. Let’s not argue. Let me take you home. Lilly, welcome! And this … is Sean! He’s so big already. I can’t wait for my folks to see him, their first grandchild—they’ll be so very proud!”
Alaina smiled. It was good—and strange. She felt that she was indeed welcomed home. Welcomed warmly by her husband’s family.
When her husband was the enemy.
Alaina wrote a letter to Ian
the first night at Julian’s. Though she tried to pour her heart into it, her words seemed lame. She wrote again that she loved him, but given her escape and the rumors of her spying that must be all over Washington, he wasn’t likely to believe her. Still, Julian took her letter, and she hoped that it would reach her husband.
She began working with Julian. He spent most of his days at the barracks, tending to the ills and injuries of the men. In the evening, he saw to the civilian population of St. Augustine. She enjoyed the feeling of working with the soldiers; it gave her a sense of usefulness and kept her from dwelling on her own situation.
She had been there about a week when the men from the Confederate States ship Annie May came in. The Annie May had been a blockade runner, and she had been destroyed at sea by the United States navy. Most of her seamen had been taken prisoner, but some had escaped. Many were seriously injured. Following Julian around from bed to bed, she was appalled by the bloodshed and the anguish of the men. At the beginning, she nearly passed out. Then, coming upon an already infected and pus-laden saber wound, she nearly threw up.
But she steeled herself to the carnage around her; she sopped up blood so that Julian could see clearly enough to suture. She applied pressure upon wounds when told to do so, she bandaged and bathed. When the ten survivors had been patched back together due to the skill of Julian and the other doctors, she wrote letters for the men.
That night, Julian and Alaina and a Dr. Reginald C. Percy dined together at an inn near Fort Marion.
Percy was perhaps sixty, a dignified man, ramrod straight, who had served in the Union army before secession. He told Alaina that in all his years, he’d never worked with so fine a surgeon as Julian McKenzie. He hadn’t joined up with the Confederate forces, feeling that he could better assist in Florida’s war effort by remaining a civilian.
“There was no reason for any of this last, tragic round of death!” he complained, slamming a fist against their dinner table. “From what the boys told me, they knew they were outmanned and outgunned, and they were surrendering their ship. The wretched Northerners killed those boys on purpose. They know that they haven’t got the sheer gumption of the South—but they can keep replacing their own dead men, so they figure the only way to beat us is to kill us all!”