“Jennifer. Oh, I’m sorry, you must have been lost in thought.”
“Oh … Griffin ...” She sighed, the pain in her small heart coloring her words. “I … well, I was … only dreaming.”
“About our happy life together?”
“Yes! Er, no. I mean, how did you …?”
“Damien told me you are disturbed by my forthcoming marriage.”
“He … he had no right to do that! Oh, oh, what can I do?”
“Jenny, I know you have rather special feelings toward me. I am remiss in that I assumed it to be only the affection of a younger sister for a friend of her brother. I hold you in special regard as well. But, after all, you are ten years old. I was your age when you were born.,,
“Girls have married as early as twelve,” Jennifer responded in defense. “Why can’t you wait for me? I’ll be grown up soon.”
“Quite true. Early marriages were common during Colonial times and for a while after. Such customs change, outlive their usefulness. I … You see, I really do care for you a lot, Jenny. Only … as I told you, so many years separate us. Some day, when you are all grown and married, I hope you will not forget me. I know I can never forget you. Won’t you consider coming along with Damien for the wedding? It would make me so happy to see you there and I know that Bobbie Jean would love you dearly.”
“But ...” Tears welled in Jennifer’s eyes, threatening to overflow. She brushed at them and put out a hesitant hand toward Griffin. He offered her his handkerchief, with which she dabbed at the salty trickles that formed despite her youthful intention not to cry. “But,” she repeated, “I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. I would be so … so miserable.”
“No you wouldn’t be. A marriage is a time to be happy. I love Bobbie Jean and she loves me. We planned to be married as soon as I was graduated. Everything must come in its own season. Believe me, the time will arrive when you find the real man of your dreams and you will be happy with him as I will be with Bobbie Jean.”
“Oh, Griffin, I can’t … I won’t.” Her arms went about his neck and he held her close while a sob shook her slender frame. After a moment, she turned huge, watery, brown-flecked green eyes up toward him and he gently wiped away her last tears. Then he tilted her chin upward and kissed her on the forehead.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
Griffin Stark cast a triumphant grin at his best man, Damien Carmichael, lifted the veil of his bride’s wedding ensemble and kissed her fully on the lips. She responded with a passion and eagerness he had not expected and he immediately began to respond. Their embrace lengthened.
“Ahem!” the minister cleared his throat. “The procession is waiting to begin,” he reminded them.
A moment later, Aunt Clara wheezed the upright, foot-bellows organ into life and the strains of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, which had recently come into vogue, began to sound through the large dining hall of Lakeland Plantation where the wedding had been held. Griff linked arms with Bobbie Jean and they walked down the aisle formed by stiff-backed chairs, through the wide double doors and into the reception hall.
From there they paraded out through the open main entrance. A double file of U.S. Army officers and Georgia militia, hastily gathered for the occasion, arched their sabers high in the traditional manner and the newlyweds swept through to a hail of rice and roses. Griff handed Bobbie Jean up, into an elaborately decorated carriage and joined her there. She threw her bridal bouquet to the bridesmaids, provoking squeals of delight, and sat down beside her husband. The old Negro on the driver’s seat clucked to his team and the barouche started down the driveway toward the reception at the Stark plantation, Riversend.
“It was lovely, darling,” Bobbie Jean enthused, “but I will be glad when this day is over.”
“So will I.”
“I’m looking forward to our first night together in our own home.”
“So am I,” Griff agreed through a leer.
“Why, Mr. Griffin Stark, I do declare you have a dirty mind.”
“A husband’s prerogative. Something about which you will soon find out.”
“Something I am quite anxious to discover. Let me assure you of that.” She moved closer, once more taking his arm possessively.
Chapter One
THE DELICATELY EMBROIDERED lace of Bobbie Jean’s wedding gown whispered over her stiffened crinoline petticoats and whale-bone hoop. Her soft brown hair gleamed in the candlelight and her creamy white complexion glowed with excitement. Across the room from her, Griffin Stark slowly undid the buttons of his stiffly starched white shirt. They had firmly dismissed the body servants, amid much giggling and rolling of eyes while the Negroes departed down the long second-floor hall of Riversend. Unaccustomed to undressing herself, Bobbie Jean struggled with the hook and eye arrangement that held together her first tier of three petticoats.
“Here, let me help you with that?” Griff hurried to his wife.
“I, ah … no … ah, yes. Please do.”
Bobbie Jean felt the warmth of his nearness and her knees went weak. How good to be so close, to have the pressure of his lean, hard body against hers again. She stifled a gasp when he reached within her chemise and gently cupped one breast. The first time he had done this, the very first, had been in the summer of her fifteenth year, when Griffin had been home between semesters from the Military Academy. Had West Point made him so bold? she had wondered at the time. One thumb and a finger had begun to massage her nipple, as they did now, and she had experienced a swimmy sensation akin to her present delight. They had kissed, too, in a manner chaste, although ardent, quite unlike the passionate kiss that now nuzzled at her slender, graceful neck. Then her underthings came free, not one, but all three layers. They fell in a heap at her ankles.
Griffin held her hand while she stepped free of the clothing and turned to face him, only her shift between her and the man she loved. Her small, even teeth glowed in the flickering candle flame and her soft brown eyes went wide with expectation. He marveled at the flawless perfection of her old-ivory-hued complexion. Swiftly, Griffin removed his shirt and trousers. Bobbie Jean gaped at the masterful protrusion in his small drawers. It thrust out and upward and she seemed compelled to reach for it.
“Oooh,” Griffin moaned. “Be careful or it will be all over before it starts.” He had become acquainted with the coarser facts of life on occasional short leaves to New York City, gaining experience and confidence from the prostitutes he met there. And there had also been the sweaty fumblings in the haymow with distant, but amorous, female cousins in the years between eleven and fifteen. Somehow they had never seemed quite satisfactory. Oh, he had achieved completion often enough, twice while buried deep within the proper, warm, moist receptacle. Yet, it had not been all he had expected. Hardly different from the release experienced from the “secret sin” his father and the Reverend Price had lectured him on, once each, with considerable embarrassment on the part of the adults. Now, in the intimacy of the bridal chamber, he found his maleness in the grasp of his wife of six hours. The sensation it sent through his body seemed to sap his strength. He reached for Bobbie Jean’s shift.
“Ah, Griff, Griff. Hurry, my darling. Remember … remember the day out in the old oak grove? You thought you were alone, so you went swimming in the buff.”
“Only you came up, quiet as a Chickasaw warrior and caught me.”
A light trill of laughter broke from Bobbie Jean’s full, sensuous lips. “And I decided to join you.”
“I was embarrassed.”
“Oh? Even if you were, you were as hard as you are now, dearest.” Bobbie Jean’s hands had once more delved inside his underdrawers and sought his rigidity. Deftly she eased him out of his last piece of clothing and admired the rugged, muscular form, hung on a slender, six-foot-one frame. She blushed and lowered her eyes before speaking again.
“I must confess, I … I wanted you then as madly as I want you now.”
“And I you. What we did … I mean, we were merely children and … I, well, it wasn’t the same as the real thing. I ached for days because of it.”
“There’s nothing, no propriety or anything, preventing us now, is there?”
Griffin slid his hands over her smooth flesh and uttered a lusty chortle. “None, Bobbie Jean, none at all.”
She seemed even more lovely than that incredible day, when he had been fourteen and she a year younger, amid the oaks, when they had swum together and made tentative, exploratory contact with each other’s body. Remembrance brought a rush of desire and Griffin’s heart thudded in his chest. He reached out a hand.
Bobbie Jean took it eagerly and let herself be led to the wide, canopied bed. The servants had already turned back the covers and a warming pan had been placed thoughtfully at the foot, under the spread of linen sheet and brocaded coverlet. As though of one mind, their gaze met and they smiled.
“I don’t think we will be needing this,” Bobbie Jean offered.
“Hardly, my dear. Let me take it away.”
“Oh … don’t leave me, not even for a second.” “Do you think I would run away, allow this to become a chivaree?”
“No, but that Yankee, Damien, might kidnap you. It’s happened to grooms on the wedding night before.”
“Damien isn’t a Yankee. He’s from Maryland. And I would fight a rank of tigers to get back to you. No one is stealing me away.”
“Not with that... that object poking out toward me like it is.”
Griffin affected a shocked, old-maidish pose. “Why, Lawdie me, Miss Bobbie Jean, you say the most awful things.” He pressed his burning body against hers and trembled at the delicious sensation.
They kissed.
Then, suddenly, Griffin lifted her and eased her back onto the thick eiderdown ticking of the fourposter. She gasped with delight and eagerly opened her legs to him. Deftly he reached for the core of her being and a pleasant haze descended. Only a brief, sharp pain interrupted her bliss as he skillfully transported Bobbie Jean from her life as a Southern girl into the status of a full-grown woman. And, oh how good, how exceedingly marvelous it was for them both.
“How I wish this would never end,” Griffin told Bobbie Jean during the late afternoon of their second day of honeymooning.
“It doesn’t have to.”
“Would that were true. We have only eight more days. Then I must report for my first posting.”
Bobbie Jean looked pained with grief, her sweet lower lip curled out in a small pout. Starlight danced in her wide-set brown eyes, though the sun shone brightly overhead. They had come to the oak grove, a foolish spirit compelling them to enact the first time they had thrilled to the discovery of each other’s body. Giggling and splashing like children, they had swum naked in the cooling waters of the deep-running creek, then made long, delightful love on the bank, a bed of moss and sweet-smelling grass beneath them, the warm summer sun above, dappling their bodies with leafy patterns. Each new encounter plumbed yet further depths of passion in the happy couple and they strove to match their endurance, prolong and enhance each tender contact of their most sensitive, secret parts—secret no longer, Griffin thought with humming happiness.
Despite her class and custom, Griffin had found Bobbie Jean as inventive as the slatterns of New York and as appreciative of variety and experiment as himself. They fit each other like nesting spoons in a drawer. When one’s ardor cooled, the other would inflame them both again. Never had he dreamed that married life could promise such bliss. He felt his body quicken as Bobbie Jean’s soft fingers found and encircled his manhood, drawing from it new life.
“Let us make the most of those days, then, beloved,” she sighed as she began to stroke him to fullness.
Parting had been more pain than sorrow. Despite the mores in which they had been brought up, Griffin Stark and his delightful wife had experienced ten long, wonderful days and nights of uninhibited joy. When, reluctantly and at last, he and Damien Carmichael boarded the rural Georgia stage coach to ride to the rail junction, Griff had left his seat at the last minute to embrace and fondly kiss his young wife for a final time.
“Ain’t got time for billin’ an’ cooin’,” the coach driver complained good-naturedly. “We got a schedule to keep.”
Not a mile had rolled under the wheels of the Concorde before Griff missed her. Even his appointment to the mysterious new company being organized at Fort McHenry, on the outskirts of Washington City, in Maryland, couldn’t lift his spirits to think of any future, except one locked in the long, ardent arms of his beloved. Privately, Damien thought him ridiculous.
“Pick that face up, old boy. You’ll get dust from the floor on your chin if you don’t. Think about the opportunity we are being given. Why, this new assignment is a marvelous opportunity to gain the attention of our superiors, impress them with our grasp of tactical principals and our prescient knowledge of the enemy’s intentions. That insures rapid promotion.”
“There’s nothing rapid about promotion in the Army, Damien. You should know that. Colonel Lee, our former commandant, now commands the Second Cavalry way out in Texas at Fort Mason, just a short distance north of San Antonio. That’s a long way from head of the Military Academy.”
“Perhaps there was—”
“Don’t even think it. Colonel Robert E. Lee is the best tactician and most efficient officer in the Army. There could be no stain on his record. It is the fortunes of a military career. These setbacks come. One either accepts them or resigns.”
“How very philosophical for a brand new, twenty-year-old second lieutenant. Now, tell me, really, what do you think of this new branch?”
Griff thought for only a second. “I’m not all that certain a company can be considered a new branch of the service.” Griff glanced to left and right and lowered his voice, even though only the two of them occupied the coach. “As to this intelligence service … it smacks of spying to me. At the very least we will be expected to have dealings with spies. You know the reputation they have. Granted, the purpose sounds logical and necessary enough. I only wonder if one can associate with such individuals of questionable honor and not become tainted one’s self?”
“Come now, old boy. You leave little to debate. Such absolutism? It doesn’t become an officer and gentleman.”
“On the contrary, it is the essence of a good officer. We do not question, we do not debate, we follow orders and give them as necessary and at all times, trust to the authority over us.”
“Right from the manual on conduct, I dare say. Of course, that’s why you had to plunk a ball through poor Albert’s left palm, eh?” The thunderclouds that gathered in Griff’s eyes and wrinkled his young forehead hastened Damien to amend his remark. “Only tweaking you, chum. It’s this accursed sense of humor I have. Can’t leave a thing alone so long as it promises some bon mot. But, go on. I’m intrigued at your theories.”
“Damien … sometimes I... I wonder why I let you try my patience like this.”
“Because we’re fast friends, bosom chums, comrades together in our struggles against the upper classmen. Why, we’ve even walked punishment tours together, which forges a bond stronger than between twin brothers.”
“Can you never be serious?”
“Whoa! Whoa up there!” Before Damien could answer, the driver’s strident command to his team of six bellowed out. “Whoa, Nellie, Aggie, Herkimer. Gather in, Sam, Ned, and you Sally.”
Wooden brake blocks shrieked on the steel tire rims and the coach jolted to a dusty halt. Over the snorting of the horses, the two young men heard a voice demand in a grim tone:
“Stand and deliver!”
“What the hell?” Damien declared.
“I think we are being robbed,” Griff allowed. From the corner of his eye he saw two men confronting the grumbling, frightened driver. They sat astride well-groomed steeds near the front of the coach, each with his face masked and a brace of long-barreled horse pistols aimed in the general
direction of vehicle and passengers.
“Throw down that mail pouch and the little tin box you haul valuables in, driver. And be quick about it.”
“Now see here—”
One of the horse pistols gave out a flat report. The coach rocked violently. “That was only by way of an object lesson. You can survive with a ball in your shoulder. Hand over the sack and box and your personal valuables, too. Meanwhile, my friend here will relieve your passengers of their possessions.”
Pebbles grated while the one bandit dismounted. He crunched up to the side of the coach, confident of the ease with which they would take this fat prize. Larded with a heavy Irish accent, the highwayman’s voice seemed almost cheerful under these circumstances. “All right, me hearties …” He swung open the door. “Why, strike me bucko, if it isn’t a couple of toffs. Empty yer pockets, gentlemen. A small contribution from the likes of you will be most pleasant indeed.”
Griff, who had his hand under his coat, gave him a benign smile. “Wrong.”
Then he drew a Philadelphia Model 2 Derringer out from under the broadcloth of his suit. The flat report of a black powder charge sounded horrendous in the confines of the coach and smoke obscured the scene.
A heavy .45 caliber ball struck the road agent in the forehead. His eyes crossed and rolled upward, as though seeking to examine the round black hole above the juncture of his bushy eyebrows and the small, commalike trickle of blood that seeped from it.
He fell limply to the ground, a soft sigh of departing soul escaping his lips. Instantly, Damien leaned out the opposite side of the coach and fired his own concealed pistol, a Hopkins and Allen, five-shot .31 caliber. It took three of the small, underpowered balls to down the second outlaw. He reeled in the saddle, groaning with each impact, then toppled to the ground in a disarrayed heap.
The Confederate Page 2
