by Gina Danna
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he called, his voice from above catching them by surprise. “To what do I owe this unexpected and unwanted visit?”
Wilcox looked up at him, moving the brim of his hat back to see, and lowered his revolver.
“Good day, Billy,” the man responded with insincere politeness. “We’re lookin’ for a traitor to the cause, the man who shot one of my men. Shot him dead in yer own barn.”
Billy was silent. The pain in his leg was deadening, along with his ability to think quickly. The last sip of John Henry’s finest was working, and he wanted to enjoy the moment free of agony. It wouldn’t hurt Wilcox to wait.
“That bastard of yours was here. Tried to rape my wife. He deserved to die,” he stated coldly.
Wilcox’s men raised and aimed their arms at him. Billy smiled when he heard them cock the rifles. Wilcox himself stood there, his head cocked to the side, and he shook his head and laughed.
“Phil could be a bit forthright with the ladies, but he ain’t ever got a complaint from them.”
Billy’s anger threatened to overtake him, but he fought it. It wasn’t time yet. Billy feared Jack hadn’t made it far enough away. “Ladies of the night will take money, even from trash like you and your men, without complaining about the stink you leave behind.”
Offended, Wilcox took a step forward, revolver in hand. “So, you be hidin’ this killin’ son-of-a-bitch, huh, Bealke? God knows, my men knew t’wasn’t you who went into that there barn, gun raisin’.”
Billy put his hand under the muzzle of the weapon and his fingers on the trigger, ready to strike. “Get off my land, you bastard. I don’t have anything here for you.”
Wilcox let out an evil laugh. “No, you ain’t, ya’ damn cripple. Maybe while we’re here, I’ll go enjoy the missus. Bettin’ she be missin’ a man inside her.”
Temper now out of control, Billy raised his rifle, cocked and aimed. “You bastard. Go to hell!”
Wilcox’s grin turned into a snarl as he aimed his revolver at Billy. “Afta you…”
Simultaneously, six guns exploded.
#
The wagon moved slowly. No one said a word. Even the baby had settled in Tilly’s arms, asleep. They could no longer see the house or its outbuildings, which he secretly was grateful for. He led them just southwest of the property, close to the James River. He needed to get them far away from Rose Hill. Silently, he prayed that God would grant him enough distance before all hell broke loose, especially before it got any more personal for Emma.
The air was still. It was peaceful, quiet, surrounded only by nature, yet fear gripped the travelers he led, threatening to explode.
Behind them, gunfire sounded. Jack recognized the faint short pops readily enough. Back at the house. He turned in the saddle to gauge the distance they’d covered and to check on Emma. Goliath snorted, his hind legs sidestepping as he picked up on the danger.
Emma reached over and pulled the reins from her father’s hands, yanking them back, trying to halt Petey. The stallion balked. John Henry took back the tack, uttering “Whoa.”
“Emma,” Jack said loudly, guiding Goliath toward the wagon. But he was too late. Despite her skirt, petticoats and crinoline, she leapt from the buckboard to the ground.
“Billy!” she cried, picking up her skirts with both hands and running back to Rose Hill.
Another round of gunfire roared through the air. She screamed and ran faster. Jack fully understood why Billy had made sure they all left. He knew the man’s pain was killing him and that Billy wanted to make this sacrifice to save Emma. But if she returned, it would be bad for her. Even if the patrol had left, she’d find Billy dead. That thought and fear for her safety drove Jack to urge Goliath into a gallop, quickly covering the short distance she had traveled. He could see her breathing hard, her face red from exertion. Her tight corset reduced her air intake and her ability to move fast.
“Emma!” He pulled the reins and jumped off the horse. Within two steps, he had her in his arms.
“No! Let me go!” she railed. “We have to help Billy!”
Jack bit his tongue as he pulled her close to him. “Emma, my dearest Emma,” he ground out, remorse filling his soul. “It’s too late.”
She stilled. He felt a tremor go through her. A sob escaped Emma, and his shirt became damp as she cried, her face muffled against his chest. He ran his hand up and down her back as he held her, falling to his knees when she crumbled in his arms. Nothing else existed for him but her. He wanted to absorb her pain, her guilt for leaving her husband. And he wanted to continue holding her in his arms.
He rocked her back and forth, murmuring softly that everything would be fine, though he knew better. Her crying slowed, her gasps for air lessened. He eased his hold on her when her spine began to straighten. She turned stiff in his arms, and he dreaded what he knew was coming. He deserved it but still hoped against it.
Emma looked up at him, her face red and wet, her eyes bloodshot. Her lips thinned, colorless under the noontime sun.
“Damn you,” she said tightly. “You planned this. You wanted to make me a widow.” Her voice held a venom that made Jack’s blood turn cold. “I hate you, Jack Fontaine.”
I cannot spare this man. He fights!
—Abraham Lincoln, when asked to remove Grant from command
Chapter Nineteen
Virginia, Winter 1862
The skies turned gray as thick storm clouds moved into Virginia. Riding ahead of the wagon, Jack grimaced, mentally cursing the weather. Rain. For those on an open buckboard, it was not good. He had spent the previous afternoon rigging his canvas tent on tree limbs bound upright to the wagon sides and had stretched the canvas over the wagon as cover. All he had was his dog-tent, a square piece of material used as a last resort by enlisted men and big enough for two soldiers to occupy. His wall tent was in the Union army’s supply train. So his makeshift cover had no sides and left the wagon driver exposed. He prayed Emma would take cover when the skies opened.
They’d been traveling for a week at a snail’s pace. Not because of the horses or the baby, though Nathan did slow them down. Jack never realized the amount of energy and care such a tiny being needed. Tilly was his wet nurse, which rather surprised him. Unfamiliar with how that worked, he had no idea how the timid slave fed his son. The only answer his questioning looks got him was that Sally bid her do it. Emma offered no explanation so he dropped the subject.
Next was laundry. Not for their clothes but for the little one. Diapers. Had to be done daily. At first, Jack insisted they stop for that only every other day, but all it took was one skipped afternoon and the stink that came with it before he reconsidered. Thank heavens women took care of babies, he mused, because men would be utterly lost.
The other problem with their trek was the James River. The banks were too soft on the direct route for the heavy buckboard to navigate it. Jack had to take them closer to Richmond, beyond Petersburg. Forever thanking the good Lord, Jack had counted on dry weather continuing so the water level remained low. His prayer was granted, and, finally, at a solid bank, they had crossed easily.
Once across, though, Emma became almost catatonic. She hadn’t spoken a word since that fateful afternoon they’d escaped Rose Hill. The day she became a widow. She said little to her father and Tilly and nothing to Jack. She refused to even look at him if she could. She ate sparsely. Jack knew she didn’t sleep. He himself slept lightly, his loaded gun in his grasp, and he often walked the area around them, looking for signs of mischief. She was usually awake. And he discovered that even at two o’clock in the morning, she refused to acknowledge him. She blamed him for Billy’s death. There was no point in trying to explain that Billy’s sacrifice had saved her, or that setting himself up as he did had relieved him of dying slowly and painfully from the infection following his surgery. Jack’s worry over her increased daily as she seemed to be losing herself and nothing he did could change it.
The only savin
g grace for her was Nathan. She played with the lad, rocked him to sleep murmuring sweet nothings to him. Jack actually caught her smiling at the boy.
John Henry walked up behind him and slapped him on the shoulder. “Give her time, my boy. She’s in mourning and deserves that right.”
He shook his head but answered stoically, “Yes, of course. I’m just worried.”
“So am I, so am I,” the elder Silvers muttered.
Jack stared at the man as he went over to Petey, producing a piece of carrot for him. The man’s thinking bewildered Jack. Times like that, he seemed lucid, knowing what was happening, only to change without notice. Sometimes he was like the man he’d met as a West Point cadet years ago. John Henry often referred to Jack as Charles or Billy and said that Emma or Caroline was his wife. But there was also a negative to his changing personality. John Henry, if the mood hit, became violent. His language because rude and outright hateful, including cursing, until he switched back to behavior and speech of the refined planter, the gentleman he had been. Jack wanted to ask Emma about it. How it had happened and how long had he been ill, what the cure was and length of the illness, but anytime he got close to her, she flitted away, beyond his reach. He ran his fingers through his hair as frustration settled in. How was he going to get them across four states, avoiding the War and authorities, without her cooperation? Damn.
Jack knew the bulk of the Union Army, McClellan’s command, had been up in Maryland back in September. The damage from that day on the field in Sharpsburg, near Antietam Creek, had been hell for both sides. Those images still haunted him. The ghosts hovered and the guns echoed in his sleep, another reason why he rarely slept for long. Who could with those horrific scenes playing again and again and again? Even now, when he heard a snap in the woods, he flinched. He thought he was numb to it but discovered that wasn’t so.
But as to where the fighting raged now, he was lost. He needed to find out. The group he led headed into southwest Virginia. Who would they find? He had no doubts both armies would hinder them. Both would want him to either fill their ranks or be shot as a traitor. Pulling his frock coat tighter around him, he kept his Union regalia–his greatcoat and officer’s frock coat–in his saddlebags. The fact that he’d have to pretend in order to protect everyone worked on his nerves, but too many lives were at stake.
The clouds thundered.
#
Emma cradled Nathan in her arms, rocking back and forth, humming softly to him. The baby’s cries all afternoon brought the wagon to a halt. Tilly tried to feed him, but he wouldn’t take her nipple. They changed him although he was still dry. And as he cried, his little face scrunched, turning red.
Neither her father nor Jack were worth a penny in help. Men never knew how to handle babies, but because Emma hadn’t given birth, nor really been around babies, she had no idea what Nathan wanted either.
“Here, Miss Emma, try this.”
Emma stopped staring at the child and bounced him lightly as she looked at Tilly. The slave handed her a wadded piece of cloth that was wet.
“What am I to do with this?” She frowned, confused.
The slave sighed loudly and took the next step. When the baby’s mouth opened for another wail, she shoved the wetted knot into it. The child’s eyes opened wide, amazed at the piece in his mouth and quickly started to suckle on it.
“Cloth?”
Tilly beamed. “Wetted with sugar water,” she replied. “He be startin’ to teethe.”
Jack walked up. “He’s sucking a rag? That’s all it took to make him quiet?”
Emma’s lips curved in a smile as she watched Nathan’s mouth work on the rag. She glanced up at Jack. “He’s teething.”
Jack nodded. He looked so handsome, ruggedly so, out here in the wild. The slight warm breeze blew at his shirtsleeves. He had left his frock coat on the wagon when he went to get firewood. His brown waistcoat and tan trousers were dirty from days in the saddle. A lock of his dark hair, now longer than usual, fell across his forehead. The late afternoon sunlight highlighted his angular jaw, high cheekbones and nose. That once straight aristocratic nose now angled slightly. She wondered when it had been broken. Knowing his rakish past, some man probably broke it because Jack seduced his attacker’s woman. Those emerald eyes sparkling in the sun tugged at her.
Jack’s luscious mouth, those lips she remembered touching hers, ravishing hers, curled slowly in a smile. Oh, how she wanted to taste them again.
Nathan spit the rag out and wailed, breaking the spell Jack had on her.
“Shush, my little one,” she cooed, placing the rag back in his tiny mouth and rocking him. She’d been a fool to fall back under Jack’s magic. He had made her a widow. She had to remember that. Heavens, she was barely two weeks into mourning for Billy. Jack was a traitor to all. But, a small voice in the back of her mind interrupted, could she ignore the man and the blatant fact that Billy had more or less given her to him? Fury washed over her at her thoughts. She gritted her teeth and forced her desires away.
For her own best interests and everyone else’s, if the opportunity presented itself, she should turn him in as the killer he was. But her heart screamed no.
#
Jack saw it. The flicker in her eyes, the one that showed him the beauty of Emma. Her anger and hostility had vanished, only for a moment, but he’d take that moment and her quick smile. Hope danced inside him but quickly died when her eyes turned cold again and her smile disappeared. He groaned in utter frustration but should have known better. It was the first time in two weeks that she actually talked to him, even looked at him. That alone was a triumph. His heart raced at that second.
She walked away, singing some lullaby to his son. He glanced up. Twilight was settling across the Virginia countryside. They’d stay there tonight, but he needed to move them faster. They had the mountains to tackle before the first snow. And before that, they needed supplies. Game would be hard to find in the winter, and with armies foraging across the land, it would be even worse.
Tilly walked past him, carrying a bag over her shoulder. “Massa,” she greeted, heading to the wagon.
He grimaced. He’d lived the past six or more years without needing to own a servant. He’d heard the abolitionists’ rants but never considered himself one. Life could be lived without holding a person in bondage to serve him. When Emma brought Tilly with them, it rubbed him wrong, but he didn’t have time to argue.
In the long run, and as much as he disliked it, that slave was feeding his son. She shouldn’t be burdening herself with all the chores, particularly if their food supplies dwindled. He knew that starving cows barely produced milk. Human women had to be the same, regardless of their status.
Tilly fascinated him. She had cowered under his wife’s rule, but now, she wasn’t so afraid. As she hung clean wet diapers on the side of the wagon near the fire, he saw her confidence building. Maybe being a wet nurse made her feel important.
He gathered more firewood and returned to camp as Emma walked up to Tilly with Nathan. As he got closer, he heard them speaking but couldn’t distinguish the words. Emma handed the boy to the slave. Tilly sat, unbuttoning her bodice, and Jack spun away. It’d been way too long, but for the love of all that’s holy, this wasn’t the time to think about any of that.
Dropping the firewood near the wagon, he stormed off to get Goliath.
“Where are you going?”
Jack’s foot faltered. John Henry stood in the shadow of the trees near his horse.
“John,” Jack said, bringing his breathing under control. “Don’t stand back there.”
The older man chuckled. “Site of her titty got you going? Don’t deny it. I’m rather enjoying it myself.”
Not the conversation he wanted to have right now. “Sir, if you’ll excuse…”
“Surprised you haven’t bedded her yet. Hate to see you so hard up, son,” the older man stated. “Emma’s got a year and a day of mourning ‘fore she can wed you. That’s a long tim
e. Not sayin’ for you to take my girl down the wrong path, but you can definitely use…”
“Sir,” Jack buckled the girth and swung up in the saddle. He would not have this conversation with the man. He wasn’t about to take the slave. A shudder passed through him as a vision of the past reared its ugly head. Of another slave girl being forced to service him and his brother. He shook his head. “I’m scouting the area. It’s too quiet. Makes me nervous.” He squeezed his knees and Goliath bolted.
#
Emma stirred the pot again. Cooking wasn’t one of her virtues, but neither was it Tilly’s. Oh, she had no doubt the slave knew more than she claimed, and Emma was beginning to think the woman was using Nathan’s nursing as an excuse to get out of a lot, but she had no recourse. Emma couldn’t nurse the baby. Resentment coursed through her veins. She’d a husband who wanted her sister and Jack who gave Caroline his child, and there she was, stooped over a low fire out in the fields of some godforsaken part of the state, mixing vegetables and rabbit in broth.
The fire kept her warm as a chill settled in with the night. She wondered how she could possibly sleep in the cold. The fire wouldn’t last all night. In fact, Jack had made them extinguish the flames early last night, claiming it was a beacon to everyone else. With no heat from the fire, it was too cold. They had wrapped Nathan tightly inside a wool blanket, and he slept between her and Tilly in the wagon bed. His little body stayed warm, but she froze. The cool air seeped into the space despite her own wool blanket and being fully dressed underneath it.
With a sigh, she remembered having had Billy to keep her warm when it was cold. She vanquished the thought. When had he been there when it was this cold? Never. And when he came home last spring, his pain and thrashing made it necessary for her to sleep on the edge of the bed. No, he had offered no comfort.
