To Love a Rogue

by Valerie Sherwood

  “Not so much heat,” Raile cautioned her. “You are attracting attention.”

  Reminded that in her case attracting attention could be disastrous, Lorraine subsided.

  They had not long to wait to learn the governor’s decision. He was going back to Accomack, and the entire population of the town, together with all their goods, was going with him. It was September 14, and he had given the inhabitants five days to pack up.

  “Mollie should not have left all this to me,” wailed the landlord of their inn, awash in a sea of packing.

  “She could not know it would come to this,” pointed out Lorraine reasonably.

  “Aye, but with all her signs and portents, she should have foreseen that we’d be uprooted and moved out!” was his gloomy rejoinder.

  Lorraine forbore reminding him that his wife had sensibly removed not only her treasured hats and petticoats, but their valuable plate as well.

  It was strange to see the entire city loading up, emptying out their houses, piling up great carts that lumbered ceaselessly through the streets. It made Lorraine vaguely uneasy to think that she and Raile would soon be left in a deserted town with the rebel forces only a gunshot away.

  Aside from that unnerving thought, Lorraine found those five days when the city packed up to leave were five of the happiest days she had ever known. Her days were spent strolling with Raile through an emptying city where guns were leveled at guns across the isthmus, dining among the diminishing crowds of loyalists, spending long luxurious nights with him in their borrowed room at the inn.

  A paradise, she knew, that could not last.

  But the days flew by and suddenly it was the eighteenth. By now only a hardy few of the loyalists remained in Jamestown and even that small contingent— their landlord among them—would be sailing, together with their goods, down the James and across the Chesapeake on the following day. Across the earthen barricades, with big guns now to support them, Bacon’s troops had made no move to stop the evacuees. Perhaps Bacon welcomed a withdrawal without bloodshed, Lorraine thought.

  She was walking with Raile down the empty street toward their inn when that thought crossed her mind. Even she and Raile, she supposed, would be leaving tomorrow, for how could they explain their desire to stay and wait for Bacon to come in and occupy the town without proclaiming themselves on the rebel side? She was sure that although Raile had not spoken of it, the Likely Lass would arrive tomorrow and swoop them away.

  As they walked, they ate bread and cheese they had purchased because all the taverns were closed and shuttered. Even their inn was empty of guests.

  “But not for long,” was Raile’s comment as they went through the inn’s open door and made their way through the silent common room and up the wooden stairway. “Soon the town will be filled with Bacon’s men.”

  Even their room had been dismantled—like all the rooms save the innkeeper’s apartment, which would be cleared out tomorrow when the innkeeper, who was spending the night aboard ship, returned for the rest. It was strange to see that the chairs were gone, the small table, the pillows and sheets from the bed, even the big unwieldly four-poster. Only the lumpy mattress remained as being unworthy to move. Lorraine sank down upon it gratefully.

  “At least we can sleep here tonight,” she said.

  “We will have to,” sighed Raile. “Unless we choose to march under a white flag up to the barricades. And that might require a deal of explaining, for after all, it is not our battle. Why should we appear to be surrendering?”

  Once again she and Raile were staying in a deserted city—only this time the city was not the seat of an ancient and exotic people, this time it was the capital of colonial Virginia.

  In the quiet empty town, with the moon aglow above them, they spent another shining night on the old lumpy mattress—loving, touching, certain the magic would last forever.

  Lorraine—whose eyes seemed to her to have just closed—roused suddenly. She saw to her bewilderment that even though it was barely dawn, Raile was up and dressed and standing at the window.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve been out already!” she protested, sitting up.

  He turned to her, smiling. “Just checking on the rebels,” he said. “But they’re still quiet behind their barricade. ’Tis plain Bacon means to let Jamestown’s population go quietly.”

  “Will Bacon pursue the governor, do you think?”

  “In what?” was his rejoinder. “The governor has the ships. Bacon commands the land, but Berkeley commands the sea.”

  “What will Bacon do now?”

  “That is the problem he faces, all right.”

  “What would you do?” she challenged him.

  Striding toward the bed as he spoke, he reached down and drew her to him. “I would take an hour off and clasp my lass in my arms. And while away the time because life is fleeting for a soldier.”

  “Oh, Raile!” She was laughing as she struggled. “Stop it! I asked you what you would do. Is your heart not with the rebels?”

  He grinned down at her. “My heart is always with the rebels, Lorraine. It is one of my great failings.” His voice softened, grew deeper. “Still, I would embrace my love—thus. And bear her to the mattress—thus.”

  Lorraine had stopped arguing. She made no remonstrance when he undressed and joined her on the lumpy mattress. Making love, after all, was a splendid way to while away the day!

  But the afterglow had barely faded before Raile was up and into his clothes again. He astonished Lorraine by handing her a purse. “I’ve arranged with the innkeeper,” he told her. “He’ll take you with him to Accomack, where his wife will care for you until I come for you.”

  “But what about you?” she demanded in bewilderment.

  “I am journeying upriver. A loyalist deserter is even now waiting for me.”

  “But Tav will come for us here,” she protested. “He won’t know what to do when he doesn’t find us.”

  “I’m leaving Johnny Sears, my cabin boy, behind to give the word to Tav. He’s hiding in an empty tavern on a pallet behind some barrels right now. He can melt into the crowd when Bacon’s men come in—and come in they will tomorrow.”

  He was serious, he was actually going to ship her off to Accomack along with the innkeeper’s furniture! Lorraine tossed back her tousled blond hair and regarded Raile in consternation.

  “But why must you go?” she demanded. She threw her legs over the edge of the mattress and made it to her feet. “Why can’t you negotiate the armament sale here?” she demanded in exasperation. She pulled on her chemise as she spoke, ignoring the wistful look he was giving her. “After all, Bacon is just over that barricade with all his men.”

  He hesitated, unwilling to tell her the real reason that was driving him upriver—only Tav knew that, and Tav strongly disapproved. The truth might send Lorraine blundering after him. Or once back aboard ship she might be surprised into blurting it out. And in case things did not work out here—and in any rebellion there was a good chance they might not—going upriver, when he could so easily negotiate with Bacon here, might make the men aboard the Lass distrustful of his leadership—something a commander could ill afford. So instead he told her a half-truth.

  “Not all,” he corrected her. “The man I want to see is upriver. I have made inquiries through my deserter friend, and the man I want was with Bacon when he rode into the Dragon Swamp, but he did not join the march on Jamestown. Some think he may be hurt—at any rate he has been detained. He will tell me who is to be trusted—and who is not.”

  Lorraine’s eyes glinted dangerously. Raile was lying to her! She would make him tell her to her face that his true reason for going upriver was to find Laurie Ann!

  “The whole thing is ridiculous,” she said contemptuously, giving her petticoat a jerk as she fastened it. “The rebels have won. How can you sell them guns now?"

  He looked at her curiously. “Guns will be needed more than ever now, Lorraine.”

  “It is over!
" she cried in an impassioned voice. “The capital is deserted, the governor has fled.”

  “It is not over,” Raile corrected her wearily. “You forget, the governor has fled before. And returned before. He will be back—and perhaps this time he will be backed not by green recruits but by redcoats sent by the king to quell this rebellion. These colonists have the fight of their lives before them and I tell you they will need more guns."

  “At least you could take me with you,” she said sulkily.

  His face hardened. “That I will not. The main body of Indians may have been defeated, but there will still be roving bands eager to take a white woman’s scalp.”

  She hated him for sounding so reasonable. “You will need buckskins and moccasins if you are going upriver.”

  “Perhaps I will find some,” was his crisp reply. And then, because he wanted her to understand the situation here: “Lorraine, I have had more experience of war than you. And this one has come to a ticklish impasse. The settlers have been with Bacon thus far—success breeds success. But now Bacon finds himself between the devil and the deep. He holds the capital, true, but Berkeley has the ships—and the heavy guns. If Bacon dares to leave, Berkeley will take Jamestown back again. His ‘hearts of gold,’ as he calls his men, could find themselves on the run. This war could last a long time.”

  Still angry, Lorraine turned her back to him and pulled on her dress. “Go then!”

  Raile stared at her rigid back for a moment. Then he turned on his heel and departed.

  Lorraine paced the floor, wondering what she should do. Last night she had been so certain of him, but now that certainty had dissolved like Berkeley’s forces at that first volley from the rebels.

  She strolled disconsolately down into the town, where a few men were still at work busily dragging heavy cabinets and cupboards out of the houses. Afterward she walked along the waterfront looking at the ships. There were only three left in the harbor and one was about to depart.

  The innkeeper bustled by her, stopping to point out the ship that would take them downriver and across the Chesapeake. As he hurried on, beckoning to a wagoner with a team of draft horses, he called back, “My wife will make you comfortable in Accomack, you’ve nothing to worry about!”

  Lorraine nodded unhappily—and suddenly her resolve hardened. She wanted to stay and she would stay! And as soon as the rebels opened up a road out of town, she would find a boat and pursue Raile up the James. She would find out for herself how matters stood between him and Laurie Ann MacLaud! But . . . she must be crafty about it.

  Waiting there on the waterfront, she bided her time. The landlord came back, shouting at the wagoner not to let that cupboard slide, it was his wife’s pride and joy. A moment later he spotted Lorraine.

  “Come on, come on,” he said testily. “Into the boat! The ship is about to up anchor, we must be aboard!”

  “Yes, of course,” agreed Lorraine meekly—and then in sudden excitement, “Oh, I forgot my gold locket. I had stuffed it under the mattress—I must go back for it. Don’t wait for me, I’ll take the next ship.”

  The landlord frowned at her. His wife would have his hide if he didn’t personally accompany this cupboard to Accomack!

  “Very well,” he sighed. “But hurry back. After my ship leaves, there’ll be only one ship left. You mustn’t miss the last one!”

  “Oh, I won’t,” promised Lorraine with a glint in her eyes.

  She picked up her skirts and fled down the deserted street to the inn. Once there, she went to her room and closed the door. In the confusion no one would notice that she was not on the last ship to leave. They would take note of it in Accomack, but then it would be too late.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE NEXT DAY Bacon’s victorious forces swept in and occupied the city.

  From the second-floor window of her empty room, Lorraine watched with some trepidation the rebel troops pouring into town. Most of them were hardy buckskinned men from the foothills of the western reaches—that wild frontier of split-rail fences and notched log cabins. Men who walked lightly on their Indian moccasins, wore leather belts as bandoliers slung easily over their shoulders, and carried long guns, mainly flintlock muskets, with an ease that told the world they were used to carrying them—and used to firing them with deadly accuracy.

  Such were Bacon’s seasoned troops, which had formed the nucleus of those who had stayed with their leader through the last battle of the swamps and returned triumphant to storm the capital and take it, though outnumbered almost seven to one. They were men to reckon with! Lorraine, impressed by their almost bloodless victory and their determination, could not resist clapping her hands as they went by. Some of those weathered faces looked up and grinned.

  Her fresh young beauty, her enthusiasm, easily won the sympathy of the rebel forces.

  Astride a gray horse, the wealthy Scot, William Drummond, who had been Carolina’s first governor and was now one of the powers behind Bacon, solemnly rode into the town. Beside him, richly garbed and looking every inch the brilliant Oxford scholar and man of parts, rode that other ringleader of the rebellion, the wealthy widower Richard Lawrence. Governor Berkeley had called him, cynically, “the thoughtful Mr. Lawrence,” believing him to be the main schemer behind Bacon. Both men had handsome homes in Jamestown, and both had fled those homes when Berkeley and his troops swooped down and occupied the town. Both had been described bitterly and at length to Lorraine by the loyalists with whom she had dined. They were returning now to claim the homes they had been forced to desert in such haste.

  Next, on a sleek black stallion, Nathaniel Bacon himself rode by. Lorraine recognized Bacon not only because he had been described to her, but because he was obviously in command, rising in his stirrups with jingling spurs to give orders. She saw that he was a slender black-haired man of medium height who rode with the easy grace of an English country gentleman born to the saddle. Here was no unlettered frontiersman but a polished aristocrat who had made the Grand Tour of Europe and who was said to be the forty-ninth member of his family to study law at prestigious Gray’s Inn in London. He looked bone tired but he waved his wide-brimmed hat in jaunty salute. When he looked up and saw Lorraine leaning out of the window—conspicuous in her pink silk dress and with her pale hair shimmering—he flashed her a smile and made her a courtly bow from horseback. She blew him a kiss and the troops cheered.

  Lorraine turned from the window flushed with pleasure. She thought of the heavy-browed governor with his prominent nose and puffy eyes and large jowls. Bacon was different. Young and carefree, with a reckless air. A man she could admire.

  Now that she was alone in this world of men sweeping by, she was uncertain what to do. But elsewhere in the town the reckless young rebel leader had come to his own decision.

  He put Jamestown to the torch.

  Lorraine was still standing undecided in her room, puzzling over what to do next, when she heard a voice calling from the street. She went to the window and looked out.

  A detachment of rebels marched by shouting, “Out, out, everybody! General Bacon’s given orders to set the town alight!”

  The governor, it seemed, had known what he was doing when he had packed up the inhabitants and sailed away.

  Lorraine came downstairs and went out on the street into pandemonium. A general air of merriment reigned, with cheering and hats tossed into the air as if it were a celebration.

  When she asked one of the passersby why all the excitement, he told her that both Lawrence and Drummond, whose houses had been looted during the governor’s occupation, were off to set their homes afire.

  Lorraine gave him a look of disbelief. Through the loyalists with whom she had been consorting, she had learned quite a bit about both those gentlemen. Richard Lawrence, Oxford graduate and enigma, setting fire to his own fine house? Or William Drummond, solid Scot and former governor—what would his wife and four children say about that?

  “They wouldn’t!” she said, repelled.


  But she followed along with the crowd, and sure enough, both Lawrence and Drummond solemnly put the torch to their own handsome homes. She was told that Bacon himself had fired the old red brick church and the State House. The public warehouse, the storehouse, all the taverns, inns, and private homes were set ablaze. Soon everyone was driven back by a wall of orange flames as raging fires consumed the city.

  Nothing was spared.

  “It seems such a waste,” mourned Lorraine.

  “Waste it may be, but now this city will no longer give sanctuary to our madman of a governor,” said a grim voice nearby.

  “Nor will it shelter Bacon,” she countered.

  His only answer was a shrug as he turned away.

  By nightfall the capital of a colony whose dominion reached from the Atlantic to the Mississippi lay in ruins, a smoldering heap of ashes and charred timbers that flared up sporadically, sending showers of sparks and occasional bright tongues of flame shooting into the smoky night air.

  Lorraine was standing on the steep riverbank looking at the ruins. Behind her she heard a twig snap and she turned instinctively, looking down toward the dark waters which rippled with a reflected red glow from the smoldering embers. In the near-darkness she made out a man’s form. In buckskins. He was seated upon the ground with his back leaning against a tree, a darker silhouette against the shining dark surface of the river. It was his sudden rising that had alerted her. He came to his feet in a single lithe movement as a boat approached. At that moment a shower of sparks from the not-yet-dead fires of Jamestown cascaded through the air and the man’s profile came briefly into view.

  Lorraine’s heart contracted—it was Raile!

  She was about to speak, to call out to him, but as the boat touched the shore she saw that there was a woman in it. A woman with wide skirts and hair like flame. Could her hair really be that fierce glowing red-gold or was it just the fire’s leaping light that made it so? As Lorraine watched, the woman brought the boat up to the bank, the man reached down and pulled it higher. The woman stood up in the boat, tossed aside her oar, and leapt lightly out upon the bank. The buckskinned man staggered backward for a moment under the impact of her body careening against his. But his arms went around her and he clasped her to him. The fiery sparks had subsided but even in the near-darkness Lorraine could see that they were embracing joyously, swaying there upon the riverbank.