Beguiled (2 page)

“I’m going,” he said. “I should have gone as soon as we heard the Yankees were marching into Atlanta!”

Where I grieved, he raged. If only I were a man with the choice to snatch up a gun so I could avenge my father’s death.

Uncle Hewlett intervened. “Mr. Grayson, Miss Belle needs you around here. Those goats aren’t going to milk themselves, and your ma’s not any help.”

I could see that Grayson would not be dissuaded. He’d begged for years to join the army, and the only reason he hadn’t was because my father threatened to take a buggy whip to him if he even mentioned it.

“See reason, son,” Uncle Hewlett said. “Give yourself a couple of days to grieve and to think about it. You’re needed here even more than you’re needed on the front. Mr. Dalton signed up to do the fighting for this family. Sending one man to the front lines is enough.”

“And where’s Dalton now?” Grayson railed. His gaze locked with mine, and I shuddered at the cold accusation there—as if somehow this were all my fault.

My palm went to my apron pocket as if the wadded-up casualty list might not be there, as if it had all been a nightmare.
Missing…

Not captured. Not killed. Not wounded.

Missing.

Uncle Hewlett seized Grayson’s arm, and he gave him a fierce shake. Grayson yanked himself loose. He raked a trembling hand through his black hair. Tears suddenly flooded his dark eyes, and with a sob, he took off, darting back toward the house as fast as his bare feet would carry him.

I hung my head. “He won’t be there when we get back, will he?” I asked.

“‘See first that the design is wise and just; that ascertained, pursue it resolutely,’” Uncle Hewlett mused aloud.

“Don’t quote Shakespeare to me now,” I spat back, exasperated. My brother had run off, probably to be killed, hothead that he was. I’d just buried my father in a grave I feared would be ravaged by wild dogs. Right now, I simply couldn’t tolerate Uncle Hewlett’s eggheaded pontificating.

He clapped his hand on my shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll go see to the goats, Miss Belle.”

Numb, I nodded. Milking the goats was too much work for one person, but I just couldn’t face it right now. I dragged in a breath and lifted my face to the tender rain that had begun to fall before I took Ma’s hand and trudged wearily back toward the house. For the first time in my life, I thanked the heavens Ma didn’t have the sense to know her husband had just been murdered.

Dalton could dig Pa a deeper grave when he returned from Virginia, and besides, Uncle Hewlett was right. I couldn’t worry about Grayson. I couldn’t control him any more than I could control anything in this godforsaken world. I felt as if the world were crashing down around me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. When would this war ever end?

All I knew for certain right now was that Grayson would be gone by the time the rest of us returned.

As the big Georgian house situated in the center of the Rattle and Snap plantation loomed into view, I sighed. I’d always loved the shelter of that cavernous house with its half-moon-shaped porch graced with soaring columns. The elegant balconies on each side of the house made it look like a giant decorated cake to me. Now the plaster flaked from the columns. The roof desperately needed repairs. Inside, the stench of dampness and rot pervaded rooms that didn’t have an eastern or western exposure.

Rattle and Snap was weary too.

My heart grew heavier with the load I now shouldered almost by myself. And to add insult to injury, there would be two stinking Yankees in my house when I returned. I wanted to collapse and didn’t know what drove me to put one foot in front of the other. All I knew was that I had to do it. I didn’t have any other choice.

Immediately, Ma darted to the broken mirror in the entry hall and, singing, began inserting the flowers she’d picked into her wild gray hair. As I wearily climbed the stairs, it occurred to me that the sight of her behaving so childishly no longer shocked me as it had when I was younger.

Before I reached the top, I heard the moans. Loud, heart-wrenching moans that left a horrid taste in my mouth. What the hell had those damn Yankees left me?

To make the intolerable situation worse, the bastard lay entrenched in my father’s bed. “The pain!” he cried when he saw me. “Give me something for the pain!”

He clutched the sheets and rolled from side to side in the bed. Realizing that he
couldn’t
be still, I stared in horror. I’d seen one of the servants carry on like that with labor pains, but it shocked me to see a man writhing in agony. Darkly, I wondered why I couldn’t thrash about like this to fight the hole left in my heart from my father’s death.

“Sweet mercy,” he gasped. “Help me!”

“Did they leave you anything? Any laudanum?” If they had, I thought about taking it myself and letting the Yankee rot.

Although I wanted to close the door and blot out his screams, I trudged into the room and prowled through his knapsack. Nothing. They’d left him with nothing.

I went to my father’s chifferobe where I knew he’d kept his stash of whiskey. I stared at the amber liquid and took a deep breath before knocking back a draught of it myself. The acrid flavor curled the edges of my tongue and warmed as it slid down my throat. I’d never tasted anything so awful in my life, but the instant calm it offered overrode the foul taste. I carried it to the bed and held the bottle to the soldier’s lips. “Not too much,” I warned him. It wouldn’t do for him to drink it all up. As far as I knew, this might be the last.

His screams faded into a pitiful sort of whimpering. The dirty bandages around his belly indicated he’d been shot in the guts. I didn’t know much about wounds, but instinct told me this man was going to die and that he would take his sweet time about it.

Even if he was a Yankee, I couldn’t just leave him to suffer. I unfolded a quilt and threw it over him to keep him warm.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he mumbled before he fell into a feverish doze.

I inhaled and immediately wished I hadn’t. The soldier reeked of rot and blood. Grimacing against the rancid stench, I left the room. I couldn’t face the other one. Not now. I longed for the days when Mammy would heat a bath for me, and I’d soak until my fingers and toes were pruned. But those days were long gone, and Mammy was long dead. I no longer had the luxury of relying on anyone but myself.

It was as if I had been ripped into tiny pieces and spread as thin as the butter we strove to procure. I couldn’t rest. There was another damn fetid Yankee to see after. I said a silent prayer that I’d find this one already dead.

Trying not to think about the man sleeping on the same sheets on which my father had awakened this morning, I closed the door to his bedroom. My heart sank when I realized they’d put the other Yankee in my bed.

The door was slightly ajar, and when I pushed it open, I heard the unmistakable
click
of a pistol cocking. Anger flared that someone would hold a gun on me in my own home, but at this point, I didn’t care if the bastard shot me. I flung the door open so hard it bounced against the wall.

“See here, I don’t want you in my house any more than you want to—” My voice stopped short. I had expected a burly, bearded cretin like the one in my father’s bed. Instead, a mere slip of an auburn-haired boy lay in
my
four-poster bed—aiming a pistol at me. In my mind’s eye, I saw Grayson in such a state, and even though this boy was the enemy, my heart went out to him. Somewhere he had a worried mother, maybe even a sweetheart.

“Put that gun down,” I snapped.

He eyed me warily before he lowered his weapon.

“What happened to you?” I inquired.

“Got shot to pieces by Cleburne’s boys,” he said. His voice hadn’t changed yet, and as I neared him, I guess he was only fourteen at best. His creamy freckled face looked as soft as my own.

“You’re not old enough to be fighting,” I scolded. Although I didn’t have children of my own, something about him brought out a mothering instinct in me I couldn’t explain. I leaned over him and pressed my palm to his forehead. As I feared, it was hot.

“I’m twenty-two,” he said, the Irish ire evident in his faint brogue. He watched me with wide grayish blue eyes.

I was twenty-three and found it difficult to believe he was nearly as old as I was. He didn’t have the look of the local boys my age I’d seen go off to war. I stared, wanting to hate him as I loathed the burly Yankee in the other room, but I couldn’t.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Alice.”

My shocked gaze collided with his. “Alice? That’s an unusual name for a boy.”

“I’m not a boy,”
she
said softly. “And you can save your pity for someone else.”

Stunned, I gaped. “You’re a woman?” Even as the words left my lips, I realized my mistake. Cropped as short as any man’s and looking direly in need of a trim, her hair framed a bone structure that appeared far less than feminine. Angular cheekbones accentuated narrow eyes. Rather than delicately arched eyebrows, hers brooded straight but not overly full. Her lips, however, were all woman, plush and pink and pouting. If her auburn hair had been longer, I might have ventured to refer to her as pretty in a common sort of way. As it stood, I was…intrigued.

“My company left me here to die in this hellhole,” she said dismally.

“Hellhole? Rattle and Snap is hardly a hellhole. There are worse places to die,” I retorted, fighting the lump that rose in my throat when I was reminded of my father. The woman—Alice—sparked something in me I didn’t like, and I wasn’t sure what
it
was. Perhaps I admired the fact that she’d clawed her way into a man’s world or that she’d at least tried to make a way for herself. I didn’t know. Still, I didn’t like her attitude or the fact that she’d held a gun on me in my own house. I could see why they’d left her behind. And yet I asked, “Why’d they leave you? Were you too wounded to travel? Did you ask to remain behind?”

Her thick lashes dropped as she averted her gaze. “Hell no! They left me because I’m a woman.”

I’d never heard a woman with such coarse speech before. She fascinated me, and I couldn’t resist asking, “What possessed you to don a uniform and invade a country?”

“Invade?” she inquired haughtily, her eyes clashing with mine once more. “Tell me, Miss Priss, do you
own
slaves?”

I swallowed thickly and crossed my arms over my chest. “I see. You’re an abolitionist.”

“Damn right.” She tried to sit up higher in the bed but winced when she moved.

She looked to be in pain. Casting our differences aside, I moved to help her. She swatted my hands away. “Don’t touch me,” she ranted as if being southern were contagious.

“What happened to you?” I hardly believed a woman had been shot masquerading in a man’s uniform on a battlefield.

“I don’t need your compassion,” she said, pursing those girlish lips at me. Her narrowed eyes flashed.

My hands found my hips. I dragged my gaze from her mouth and held her stare, wanting to tell her if she didn’t want or need my help, then she could move her ungrateful self out of my bed. Instead, I exhaled sharply. I was too tired to fight her now. Too tired and too heartbroken.

Grayson’s bed remained empty. I’d sleep there, if I could get any sleep at all with that other Yankee wailing like a teat-starved baby.

“Very well.” I whirled and left the room, slamming the door behind me.

* * *

Sometime during the night, I awakened. The haze of sleep faded, and I realized I was in Grayson’s bed and that I’d been dreaming fitfully. It took me several moments to remember why. And then a wrenching hollowness permeated my gut.

My father had been murdered. My brother had run off to join the already bedraggled Confederates. Two strange Yankees occupied in my house, one of which was the most hateful woman I’d ever met.

The male Yankee’s moans drifted through the closed door and in through the open window, hanging in the air like a fetid stench. He kept calling for his mother, and I knew if he kept it up, he would upset Ma. I wanted to pull the pillow over my head to shut out the sounds, but I couldn’t. My inborn sense of compassion wouldn’t allow it. Sighing, I threw back the covers, intent on going to see if I could offer him some comfort, but just as my toes touched the braided rug, a loud
thump
came from somewhere in the house.

My heart hammered. I jumped up and groped frantically for my robe. Where had I put it?

Heavy, uneven footsteps echoed just outside my door. Someone was in the house! More Yankees? Had Ma gotten out of bed, or had Grayson come to his senses and returned? Intuition that it was neither overrode hope—and then I heard the shot that resounded through the entire house.

Chapter Two

Forgetting all about any sort of covering, I crept to my door and pressed my ear against it. The footsteps, the moans—all of it had stopped. A chill swept up my spine. Now only grim, terrifying silence came from the other side of the door. My hand shook as I reached for the knob. I twisted it slowly and pulled open the door, wincing when the hinges groaned. After easing through the narrow opening, I stole down the hall.

“For the great war is nigh, and we will win or die, chanting our battle cry, ‘Freedom or death’—” Ma’s raucous singing voice startled me so much that I fell back against the wall. I covered my flying heart with my hand as if I could prevent it from drumming its way out of my chest. Apparently oblivious to the blast, Ma wandered the downstairs, singing as she often did when she awakened at night.

My gaze riveted to the two rooms across the wide upstairs hall. Both bedroom doors gaped open. Mine and Pa’s. I squinted. A tall figure stood out against the darkness in Pa’s room. I froze, staring as the shadow turned and took one lumbering step toward me.

Moonlight cast its eerie bluish glow on Alice’s haunted face. I gasped. Dressed in nothing but a long white shirt and a dirty bandage around her thigh, she wearily leaned on the doorjamb, her pistol resting against her good leg. She heavily favored the wounded one.

I blew out the breath I’d been holding. “Alice?”