Kiss of a Traitor

by Cat Lindler

  She seemed taken aback by his resistance. Had she truly believed he would simply trot off to Virginia without her and his children? He perused her face and convinced himself he detected a softening.

  He blew out a sigh. “It appears I must resort to more desperate measures.”

  She gave him a quizzical look.

  He sailed the frivolous hat into the shell drive, withdrew a lacy handkerchief to scrub the paint from his face, and kicked off his high heels, leaving himself in stocking feet. They both watched the white velvet shoes tumble down the stone steps. Then he faced her once again. “If you refuse to marry Baron Montford, what do you say to a plain, ordinary commoner?” He opened up his arms. “Would you consider marrying Mister Brendan Ford? He lives on no rambling estate in England, nor does he allow others to address him by a lofty title. And seldom does he swathe his body in silks and satins. He is an American, not the King’s subject, prefers panther’s breath to brandy, and wild turkey to mutton. His heart beats faster only for a woman with an essence of swamp mud, not rosewater scent.” Hope trickled in when she grew pensive. “For our children’s sake, if not for mine?” he added. “Please? I love you, Willa.”

  She eyed him, and he prayed she could read the truth on his face. “More than you love Francis Marion?” she finally asked.

  “More than I love freedom,” he said without hesitation.

  She was weakening, and he could not suppress the smile pulling at his lips. Her shoulders relaxed. Her lashes swept down to veil her marvelous brown eyes. A little sigh whispered from her parted lips. He ran a finger through the pink frosting on her face and sucked the sweet from the pad of his fingertip. “Ummm, cherry,” he murmured, “my favorite.”

  Willa raised her lashes and gave him an impish smile that made his head spin on its axis. “I shall think about it. But only if you kiss me, right now, with a great deal of tongue, and put your heart into it.”

  Ford grinned and pulled her into his arms. She reached up, tugged the wig from his head, and tossed it over her shoulder. Dipping her over his arm, he bent over her. “You had only to ask, wildcat. I am at your command.”

  Epilogue

  The Journal of Wilhelmina Bellingham Sinclair, Lady Montford 12 May 1791

  Soft Virginia breezes and amber summer sun caress the meadows of Ford’s Folly, putting the joy of life into the foals as they kick up their heels in knee-high clover. Cherokee hangs his head over the rail fence, well beyond the antics of the youngsters. He gazes at me with soulful eyes. I know that look. He begs for an apple from the new orchard, but I have none to hand.

  Butterflies spin over the garden in graceful swoops, flitting from red to blue and yellow, sipping at summer’s bounty of nectar. Quinn and Jwana stroll among the paths with baskets over their arms, picking vegetables for dinner and cutting flowers for the vases in the front hall.

  ‘Twas no surprise when Jwana and Plato married soon after Brendan and I. Their boy, Aristotle, though only seven, is as much a devil as our own children. Plato remained behind at Willowbend for a time to help Richard rebuild the ruined Gray Oaks. Once the plantation was habitable, Richard took over its stewardship and Plato made his way to Ford’s Folly. Mary, Emma, and Rebecca are doing an exceptional job in taking up the mantle of caring for Willowbend and holding it in trust for Guinevere. From Emma’s frequent letters, I comprehend all is well. She is keeping company with a young Continental officer, a solicitor in the new government. I pray he is her heart’s desire.

  Earlier I watched as Lancelot, Guinevere, and Aristotle towed Brendan toward the pond. They had such earnest expressions on their little faces, and Brendan wore his “patience with animals and children is a virtue” look. I know full well he had a busy schedule of work facing him today, but he always manages to take time for the children. I long to join them in their excursion, but the prospect of leaving my chair in my current condition, with a belly as big as a beehive, is daunting.

  And I dare not leave Tristan and Isolde without supervision. I see them playing hide and seek with Sweetie among the roses. From the state of Tristan’s attire, Isolde appears to have pushed him into the thorny bushes more than once. Our second set of twins has proved to be as much a handful as the first. Though I love them all dearly, I vow, should this pregnancy yield twins once again, I shall drive Brendan off with a loaded musket.

  “Dey done had ‘nough sun, I be thinkin',” Jwana said, interrupting Willa’s writing. “You, too, missy,” she added. Jwana rescued the roses and the elderly dog and came up with one smaller hand clutched in each of hers.

  “You, too!” Tristan and Isolde parroted and played peekaboo around Jwana’s wide skirt.

  “I expect you are right; my nose is blistering,” Willa said, replying to the trio’s receding backs. “I shall come inside as soon as Brendan and the other children return.”

  She went back to her journal.

  Frogs croak from the pond in chorus with the quacking of ducks on the river. Robins call from the young apple trees, their sweet song of cheer-up, cheerily, cheer-up, cheer-up causing my soul to fly. ‘Tis a perfect day, and—

  “Shut up,” Ford snapped at the birds, setting them to wing as he stalked over the hill toward his wife.

  Willa looked up from her journal and smiled. He was soaking wet and as mad as a hornet, judging from the scowl on his face. From the distance came the children’s tittering laughter.

  He stopped two steps from her chair and braced his fists on his hips. When he glared down at her, his gray eyes cut into her as sharply as sabers. “I insist you do something about your children, Willa.”

  She assumed a look of innocence, causing him to scowl even more fiercely. “My children?”

  He ignored the inflection in her voice. “You will never guess what they did to me this time.” Fishing a handkerchief from his pocket, he attempted to wipe the pond water from his face, but the cloth was as wet as the rest of him. “Blessed virgin,” he muttered and threw it to the ground.

  Willa calmly reached into her cleavage, retrieved her handkerchief, and offered it to him.

  He snatched it from her hand and mopped his face. She sat back and waited for him to continue.

  “Gwen informed me that Killer somehow got over to the island and now could not return,” he said. “I expressed my opinion that the cat would make it back the same way he got there. ‘But, no,’ she insisted. And you know what a chucklehead I am for her pleading. Nothing else would do but I rescue that damned devil’s cat. Lance added his persuasion to his sister’s. And their cohort in crime, Ari, even managed to squeeze out a few tears. Of course, I was unaware they had sabotaged the rowboat. I should have suspected something when they declined to join me in the rescue.”

  Willa stifled a laugh behind her hand. He glowered and pointed a finger at her. “This is your fault. You felt compelled to entertain them with tales of our courtship. Now they must outdo you in pranks.”

  Willa forced her features into a semblance of sympathy. “Did you not notice the rowboat had a hole in the bottom? I collect that is what you mean by sabotage.”

  He nodded curtly. “Indeed. Those children are geniuses at deviousness, Willa. They drilled out a hole and mixed up a putty of flour and water to plug it. They colored the plug the same hue as the boat with a dye of walnut stain. ‘Twas indistinguishable from the wood. I vow I could not have done a better job myself.” His tone gradually went from affronted to a grudging admiration. “By the time I was halfway to the island, the paste soaked up enough water to disintegrate, and—”

  “And you sank,” she finished for him, her chest heaving with laughter.

  He grimaced. “Like a rock. Hell’s bells, Willa, one would assume I would have learned my lesson after the incident with the exploding cigar.”

  “Now, dear,” she said, “Guinevere had a perfectly adequate explanation. She felt there might be a commercial market some day for such a clever prank. ‘Twas incumbent upon her to test her theory.”

  He fl
ung his arms wide. “She damn near blew off my nose!”

  She shook her head. “Brendan, you know you exaggerate. Guinevere takes vastly too much care in her chemical mixtures to do you any real harm. You had a mere blackened face.”

  He rolled his eyes and snorted. “For an entire fortnight. Enlighten me, my dear, what did I do to deserve such hellions for children?” He suddenly swept his gaze over her figure, lush with her pregnancy, and lingered on her swollen breasts. “Oh, yes,” he said softly with a seductive smile. “Now I recall.”

  Willa shouted with laughter when he scooped her out of the chair, sweeping her up into his strong arms. Her journal tumbled to the grass. “Stop it, Brendan! Put me down! You will make me wet!”

  The devil danced in his eyes. “Indeed, my dear, I bloody well hope so.”

  “You are an incorrigible flirt, Lord Montford,” she came back with a sputter.

  His smile stretched into a grin. “And you love it, wildcat.”

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  Author’s Note

  Though I come from good South Carolina stock and am distantly related by marriage to Revolutionary War Colonel Wade Hampton—or so I’ve been told—like most children of my time, I learned about the American Revolution through such battles as Bunker Hill, Lexington, Concord, and Yorktown, and was bombarded with the names of heroes like Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Paul Revere. South Carolina scarcely merited more than a page or two in my school history books.

  My fascination with Francis Marion began with the 1959 television series Swamp Fox starring Leslie Nielsen (later of Naked Gun fame) as the wily partisan general. The image of Francis Marion as a man who was a forgotten hero in the annals of our country’s history stuck with me through the years. I knew that someday I would come back to him.

  When I researched Kiss of a Traitor, I was shocked to my Southern toes. I discovered that of the one hundred eighteen battles of the Revolutionary War, sixty-seven were fought on South Carolina soil. And through the majority, including the first and last, Francis Marion was present. If not for the actions of this small, brave, deeply religious man, who never commanded a real army nor won a major battle in his own name, America would have lost the Revolutionary War. Without pay or uniforms, arms or ammunition, food or medicine from the Continental army, Francis Marion and his band of ragged partisans got the job done and kept South Carolina from being overrun by the British. He exemplified the virtues of humanity, judgment, benevolence, and courage. Despite his small size, quiet nature, and unassuming demeanor, he held the respect of his men and engendered an almost superstitious fear among his enemies. He wasted no lives nor took any unnecessarily. He was a genius at strategy and introduced the British to a method of warfare they could neither understand nor defend against.

  Today Marion’s legacy lives on in the at least seventeen counties and nineteen towns throughout the United States named after him, and in Lake Marion, under which lies the grave of his beloved home, Pine Bluff. And most of all, his spirit resides (I would like to think) in Francis Marion National Forest, a 250,000-acre coastal forest along the Santee River in Berkeley and Charleston counties. This enormous protected area was established in 1936 by President Franklin Roosevelt, and
its swamps and woodlands provide one of the few remaining refuges for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. I believe Francis Marion would have liked that.

  Historical Notes

  Kiss of a Traitor is a fictional account of a particular moment in history and not intended to be historical treatise, though I attempted throughout to follow, as closely as possible, the actual events of Francis Marion’s campaign in South Carolina during the Revolutionary War.

  In all wars, atrocities are committed by both sides. The American Revolution is no exception. The winner, invariably, writes the history books, and, in ours the British are often portrayed as villains. Unfortunately, many gallant acts by British and Tory combatants have been overshadowed by the depravations of men such as Tarleton and Wemyss. Please forgive any seeming bias and rest assured that I, as well other Americans, am aware that there are two sides to every story. My depictions were taken, for the most part, from partisan accounts, written shortly after the conflict.

  In some cases I found myself required to manipulate dates and people to insert my fictional characters into the events of the time. Many individuals in the story are true historical figures, such as Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton, the major military officers on both sides of the conflict, and the Richardson family, though Emma Richardson is my creation.

  Colonel George Bellingham’s character is based on Colonel (later General) Nisbet Balfour, a Scotsman who was the British commander of Charles Town from August 1780 until the end of the war.

  Some of Brendan Ford’s accomplishments must be laid at the feet of others, most notably, Lieutenant Colonel Hezekiah Maham, a Continental officer from St. Stephen’s, who conceived of and built the siege tower that took Fort Watson. These devices became known as Maham Towers. During the engagement at Fair Lawn, which resulted in the loss of Marion’s ammunition wagon, Captain Gavin Witherspoon was the leader of the partisan patrol who clashed with British Major Thomas Fraser.