“If you continue to stand there,” she said with controlled fury, “I shall call for help.”
“That bad, is it?” The dark eyes held an amused gleam.
“I don’t speak to Yankees on principle,” she said angrily. “And even if you weren’t a Yankee I would cut you dead. You’re ill-bred, a boor, a cad!”
“I still think of you, Amélie,” he said soberly, passing over her invective. “I think of you often.”
Too often, he silently mused. She had intruded on his life in a way that made him uneasy. He had a war to think about, not a woman. And yet this girl with her steady, angry gaze and proud carriage had captivated him.
“I can’t help your thoughts,” she said.
“But you can.” He placed his gloved hand on hers. She snatched it away, her fingers closing on the buggy whip. “If you don’t leave at once I’ll use this.” She brought the whip up. “I don’t care if I do make a scene.”
Damon didn’t step back, but eyed her steadily. She had been wonderful in bed, all virginal and trembling at first, but once passion was kindled she had become a firebrand. The satiny curve of waist and buttocks, the fragrance of her skin and hair was enough to bedevil any man. Even now, pregnant with another man’s child, she was desirable.
He picked up her free hand and holding it tightly brought it to his lips.
The whip trembled but Amélie could not bring herself to use it.
Damon stepped back and gave her a short bow. “I know we’ll meet again, Amélie. I feel it, don’t you?”
“Certainly not. And I hope some brave Confederate with unerring aim sends a ball through your black heart.”
He smiled. “How sentimental you can be. Good-bye, Amélie.” Then he was gone, walking down the street in easy strides.
She was still incensed when John Harper emerged from the post office a few minutes later. She had planned to tell him about her encounter, but an odd reticence held her tongue. She told no one, not even Babette.
The National Hotel opposite Camden Station had been made into a Federal hospital, one of several that had been converted from suitable buildings. More fortifications were erected, prisons established. Arrests occurred daily. Thirty members of the General Assembly were thrown into jail and given no trial. Ordinary citizens were detained on charges of recruiting for the Confederacy or of planning to join the Southern forces. The November elections were a farce. Military authorities by coercion and outright fraud saw to it that only men loyal to the Federal government were chosen. Day by day there were reports of some new restrictions, some new attempt to weed out the opposition.
Through all this John Harper moved like a wary mackerel swimming among a school of sharks. He still went to business every day but was gradually phasing it out, pleading ill health. It galled him to go on dealing with Northern firms and it was becoming risky to continue openly with his Confederate accounts. He knew he was being watched, yet he managed to divert several of his ships to the blockade runners by staging mock piracy raids. He quit his club, rarely went out in public, less often had friends to the house. More than once he regretted having taken the Townsend girls in, castigating himself for lack of foresight. They would have been much safer with the Warners. But it was too late to think of that now. Amélie’s time was fast approaching and he only hoped that once her baby was born she could return to the southern part of the state.
November was cold and bleak with bare-limbed trees clacking in the wind, rain pelting at the windows. Amélie sat for hours before the stove in the parlor, a piece of untouched crewelwork in her lap. She had had only a brief note from Thaddeus mentioning that he had been appointed to Colonel Beauregard’s staff. He did not indicate where he was or if he had seen fighting. There were so many postmarks and smudges on the letter she could not even guess from where it had been mailed. The miracle was that it had reached her at all.
On November 18 the Confederate under General Polk drove the Yankees back from Belmont, Missouri. At Carnifex Ferry both sides claimed a victory. Rumors of similar encounters flew about—more skirmishes in Virginia, a Federal defeat at Camp Bartow. Amélie took heart from these small successes while John Harper wondered when the armies would come face to face in a decisive clash.
On the morning of the twentieth Amélie awoke from a nightmare in which a monstrous creature with features oddly like Damon Fowler’s was tormenting her with a pair of fire tongs, plucking at her swollen stomach, pulling her legs. She lay for a long while under the covers, steadying her breath, assuring herself she was safe. It was raining, and gusts of wind were flinging streams of water against the panes. She heard a clock downstairs strike the hour in deep, musical peals. Five—six—seven.
From the kitchen came the faint sounds of Bessie clattering the pots, and lighting the stove.
Amélie heaved herself to a sitting position and had one foot over the side of the bed when a sharp cramp twisted her insides. She gasped and held onto the sheet until it was over. Perhaps the stuffed cabbage leaves Bessie had fixed for supper the night before had disagreed with her.
Slowly she got into underclothes (the corset had been discarded a month ago), her gown, and stockings. She was easing into her shoes when the cramp caught her again. She waited, gradually letting out her breath. It wasn’t the cabbage. Her time had come.
She left her room and entered Babette’s. Her sister lay on her back, one arm outflung, her reddish curls tumbling over a white forehead. How angelic she looks in sleep, Amélie thought with a surge of affection. She had debated for a few moments, deciding not to waken her, when Babette’s eyes flew open.
“What is it? Oh—it’s you, Amélie.’’ She yawned. “What time is it?’’
“Seven.”
“Early,” she said sleepily, turning over on her side. Another pain gripped Amélie so suddenly that she made a small sound in the back of her throat as she clung to the bedpost.
Babette sat up. “What is it, Amélie? You look white as a ghost.”
“I think—I think it’s coming.”
“Oh, my God!” Babette flew out of bed, belting her wrapper about her. “Lie down, Amélie.” Babette grasped her sister’s hand.
“Don’t be silly. It will take hours. Hours.”
Bessie was sent to fetch Dr. Tanner. While they waited Amélie was put back to bed. Hot chocolate and toast were brought to her on a tray. Ella sat by Amélie’s side, holding her hand, instructing her to breathe deeply whenever another contraction came.
The pains lasted longer, grabbing her at more frequent intervals. Amélie tried to be brave. She was determined not to scream and carry on, having heard her mother speak with scorn about the women who did.
At last Bessie returned. Amélie could hear her loud, frightened voice on the stair as she spoke to John Harper. “He been ’rested!” she cried. “De Yankees come and took him away.”
“Hush!” John tried to quiet her. “Hush up. Do you want the whole house to hear?”
Amélie, lying in bed, her body wracked with another shuddering assault, felt her courage drain from her. Dr. Tanner arrested! It was for his skill and knowledge that she had come to Baltimore. She had depended on his quiet, deep voice, his air of authority. Why had they arrested him? Couldn’t they have done it next week, tomorrow?
John Harper came to the door. “Dr. Tanner is detained,” he lied. “He’ll be here. But in the meanwhile I’ll run out to see if I can get Dr. Peterson.”
Ella said, “You’d best hurry. And John, have Bessie heat water.”
Ella sent Babette from the room. Her future daughter-in-law might be engaged but she was still unmarried and the sight of a woman having a baby was not for her virginal eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Amélie said apologetically. “I didn’t mean for you—oh, God! God!” She bit her lip, tasting blood.
Ella brought out a blanket from the clothespress and twisting it into a rope firmly tied one end to the foot of the bed. Knotting the other end she gave it to Amélie.
/> “Pull when you feel another pain coming.”
An hour went by. John Harper had not returned. Fear that Dr. Peterson had met the same fate as Dr. Tanner hung in the room. Ella did not speak of it but Amélie, despite her own misery, sensed her anxiety.
“Cousin Ella, you needn’t—” A tearing, grinding, twisting pain prevented her from continuing. God in heaven! Why had no one prepared her for this? She was being punished for her transgression with Damon, punished for breaking God’s commandment.
Another wrenching pain gripped her and from then on everything was chaos. Through a black maelstrom she heard someone shrieking like an animal. A pause—one breath, two, three—as she lay drenched in sweat, panting. And then she was plunged into the chasm again, torn asunder, flayed, her mind fleeing in panic.
“Push!” Ella’s voice reached her through the tumult.
Gathering her last ounce of strength, Amélie obeyed. She could feel the thing that caused her such unbearable agony sliding, rushing from her into the world.
“A boy!” came a triumphant voice.
And Amélie closed her eyes in exhausted thankfulness.
Chapter
❖ 8 ❖
The infant was a wrinkled, mewling mite; Dr. Peterson when he finally arrived, despaired of him.
He was frank with Ella, giving her his honest opinion. “He’ll not last the year out, I’m afraid.” But to Amélie he was less blunt, merely cautioning her that the baby, because of its size, would require extra care.
Amélie needed no urging. She doted on the child, fussed over him, thought he resembled Thaddeus, and was certain he would grow up to be as handsome and strong as his father. She refused to have a wet nurse.
“But you’ll lose your figure!” Babette exclaimed.”No decent woman nurses her own child.”
“Then I’m going to start a new fashion for decent women.”
She named him Charles. Charles Thaddeus Warner. He was christened at the Cathedral of the Assumption on Cathedral and Mulberry streets. Jiggled, held, and soothed, he nevertheless cried throughout the ceremony.
Babette, listening to his wails, could have screamed herself. She saw nothing glorious about motherhood.
Babies were a nuisance, constantly demanding attention. They smelled, they yowled, and they were ugly, to say nothing of what they did to a woman’s waistline before they came into the world. Watching Amélie with Charles, she decided that she didn’t want children. How she would reconcile that with Willie’s wishes or with the known fact that women who went to bed with men sooner or later had babies had yet to be worked out. But she had heard the whispered rumor of a girl “in trouble” who had taken a dose of some mysterious purge and had quite painlessly lost the cause of her embarrassment. Of course there were also tales of women who had died of such purgative nostrums. Still, the alternative—a redfaced screamer in her arms—seemed almost as fatal.
Three weeks after the christening .Dr. Tanner was released from jail. “They had nothing to hold me on,” he said, when he came to see how Amélie was doing. “No specific charges, only suspicions. The usual thing for so many who are arrested these days. Fortunately I had a friend with some influence who managed to convince the authorities to set me free.”
He was happy to see that Amélie had come out of childbirth unscathed and was recovering so nicely. He, too, had doubts about the baby, but unlike Dr. Peterson felt it his duty to give Amélie a more realistic assessment.
“Charles is not a strong child,” he told her. “He’s too small even for six weeks old. Can you tell if he has gained weight?”
“Oh, I’m sure he has!”
“Does he spit up a good deal?”
“Yes, but don’t all babies?”
“Some do, many don’t. Try weaning him gradually, feeding him barley water. Goat’s milk sometimes helps. For the rest we’ll wait and see.”
“Will he be well enough to go home with me at Christmas?” The Warners had written, begging her to come for the holidays. They were, of course, anxious to see their grandson.
“Christmas is too soon,” Dr. Tanner said. “I wouldn’t advise it.”
A letter arrived from Waxwing stating that Garvin and Therese expected their daughters to join them now that the child was born. Amélie, still angry and alienated from her father, had no intention of living under the same roof with him. In her reply to her parents, she cited Dr. Tanner’s admonition, using it as an excuse to remain in Baltimore.
A week later they heard through the grapevine that the army of northern Virginia was giving many of its men Christmas furloughs and that Thaddeus might be among them. Logic told Amélie that if Thaddeus did get his leave he wouldn’t chance coming to a Baltimore so heavily guarded by the Union army but would go to Bancroft instead. She immediately made plans for joining him there. Dr. Tanner when informed said he absolved himself of responsibility. His last words of advice were to make no changes in the baby’s diet and to keep him well bundled.
The Harpers, on the supposition that Willie too, if granted a furlough, might also come to Bancroft, accompanied the two sisters and the baby.
When they arrived at the Warner plantation, Garvin and Therese, previously informed of the girls’ visit, were already there. It was a noisy, happy reunion. The first few minutes were spent in an effusive round of hugs, kisses, and exclamations with Charles the center of attention. Therese relaxed from her usual cool constraint to dandle the baby on her knee. A moist-eyed Mary waited her turn, chattering and cooing when at last she held Charles in her arms, while Garvin and August beamed on the sidelines. No one had heard from Thaddeus but they were all certain he would arrive in a day or two.
He came in the early morning of the twenty-first, cantering up the drive in a lashing rain, wet to the skin. Having made a hazardous crossing of the Potomac he then was forced to run a gauntlet of Yankee enclaves through two counties before arriving home. No mail had reached him from either the Warners or Amélie in months, and he was delighted to find he had a son.
Amélie, helping him out of his sopping uniform, paused as each garment was shed to cover his face with quick kisses, laughing, close to tears. It had been a struggle to pry him loose from Mary Warner’s arms, to bring him upstairs, to have him to herself even for this short time before he went down again to a breakfast that was now being prepared for him. But Amélie had been adamant. Thaddeus could visit his mother and the others later. He was hers now.
“I can’t believe it!” she kept saying. “I can’t believe you’re actually here!”
He had changed little. Still clean shaven, still handsome, his brown, curly hair damp now, glistening with rain drops, he was still the man she loved.
“Do you like your son?” she asked, releasing his arms from his shirt.
“Do I like him?” He hugged her. “He does look a little like me, doesn’t he?”
“The spitting image. Oh, Thaddeus!” She ran her hands over his smooth chest. “How I’ve missed you.”
“Not half as much as I missed you.” His arms went about her and his lips found hers. At their touch Amélie clung to him, pressing her yearning body into his. She could feel the slight bulge in his crotch and her hold around his neck tightened.
“Not yet,” he mumbled into her eager mouth. “Wait . . He drew himself away. “They’re downstairs—we can’t now. Tonight . . .”
“Oh, Thaddeus, why must we wait until tonight?” Why did their lovemaking have to be done in the dark, in secret? She wanted to ask him but couldn’t, knowing that a lady abided by certain unwritten rules. A husband and wife made love under the covers, in inky blackness where they weren’t supposed to see each other’s nudity. Physical union never took place in daylight, and never anywhere except in bed. And if one were Catholic, intercourse was performed to have babies, never for enjoyment or desire. Sex was encumbered by proprieties that a respectable woman did not question. But Amélie wasn’t particularly religious or respectable in that sense—she was passionate. Damon Fowl
er had taught her that. But she didn’t want to think of Damon now, not with Thaddeus here; it was like committing adultery all over again. Damon, dark and . . .
She flung her arms about her husband once more. “Thad, I do love you,” she cried, kissing him fiercely, blotting the other image out. “Say you love me too. Say it!” She began to work his belt loose, unbuttoning, pushing his trousers over his hips.
“Amélie—don’t, darling, not now. ...”
She undid her bodice and pressed her full, corseted breasts against his bare chest. “Say you love me, Thaddeus. You haven’t said it.”
“Amélie ... I do.” He groaned, burying his face in her neck.
“Then come to bed, sweetheart,” she coaxed, sliding skirt and hoops into a heap about her ankles.
The bedsprings creaked under their weight. Thaddeus, on top, his eyes closed, searched blindly for the opening to ease his engorged manhood. Amélie, clasping his naked shoulders, deliberately kept her knees together, wanting to be fondled first. She longed to have him caress her breasts, to touch, to stroke, to rouse the nipples to turgid fullness. She burned for hands to squeeze and cup, to run light fingers over her hips, between her thighs, to palpitate and excite. But Thaddeus, single-minded and urgent, forced her legs apart and entered her with a hard, dry thrust. He began to pant and groan, moving erratically as she lay under him trying to respond. For one lightning instant she imagined Damon’s dark head above her, the broad, bronzed shoulders pinning her to the mattress, the strong hands wresting from her little cries of tortured pleasure.
Just as she began to feel a mounting tension in her loins, Thaddeus shuddered to a climax. She swallowed her disappointment, holding his panting body, thinking it would be better next time. They had been separated so long; he had been denied a woman for months. When they went to bed tonight, there would be more time, time for caressing, time for—
Honor's Fury Page 9
