His Heart's Revenge (The Marshall Brothers Series, Book 2) (2 page)

Mary Catherine sucked in her lower lip. She wasn't going to cry. She already felt terrible for hurting her mother. "Not so much," she lied bravely. Then, because she felt just as bad about lying, she hedged, "Sometimes. I don't like Colonel Allen."

"I know you don't," Rose said gently. "Sometimes he can be a difficult man to get along with."

"But you married him!" It was less a statement of fact than an accusation. "You have his name and you let him kiss you and—" She bit back her next words because she saw she had hurt her mother again. Rose's dark eyes were bleak and it was as if a mask had been drawn over her face. And he's not Papa, Mary Catherine wanted to say. He's a Yankee and you let him touch you just as if he were Papa... and sometimes he touches me in a way Papa never did. Mary Catherine shivered as her mother's arm tightened around her. Had she spoken aloud? No, it was still her secret. Her secret and Colonel Allen's. She had promised not to tell and she wouldn't. Not ever.

Megan jerked her dress over her head and flounced over to her mother. "I can't believe you let her say things like that. Papa would slap her face."

"If your father were alive," Rose began quietly, "Mary Catherine wouldn't have this complaint. Turn around, Megan, and let me fasten your gown. The green silk is an attractive color for you. You thanked the colonel, didn't you? The material was hard to come by, even for a Yankee officer."

"Yes, Mama," Megan said dully. "I thanked him."

Rose's fingers paused on the cloth-covered buttons. "I'm sorry things aren't the way they used to be. Perhaps I wish for the past even more than either of you, but I can't bring it back. None of it. Not your father, not the Hollow, not any of the young men who used to race thoroughbreds down Stone Lane and across the pasture. Things have changed, and I'm determined the McClearys are going to survive this damnable war."

"Won't Papa hate us?" asked Mary Catherine. "You have a different name now. What if he doesn't know you? When he sees us from heaven in this Yankee house, won't he think we've forgotten him? He might think we're traitors."

"No!" Megan whirled on her sister. "Don't ever think that! We're using Colonel Allen and his Yankee friends and Papa knows what we're doing! We haven't forgotten whose side we're on."

"Megan!" Rose interjected softly. "You forget yourself."

"I'm sorry, but she makes me so mad. How could she think we like any of it or that Papa might think we would?"

"Mary Catherine's a child, Megan. You're five years older. It would be best if you kept that in mind. There are some things she doesn't understand. Her questions are honest ones." With a light touch on Megan's waist, she turned her daughter and finished buttoning the gown. "Perhaps it would be better if you waited in the garden. Mr. Marshall will be here soon and I think it would be nice if he saw you there. Sit near the dogwood. You'll look lovely with the blossoms behind you."

Mary Catherine stared at her hands. Her nails were ragged and torn where she had bitten them. She didn't look up until Megan was gone from the room. "I'm not a child," she said with quiet dignity.

Rose looked at her daughter carefully. The expression on Mary Catherine's oval face was serious. The full lower lip of her wide mouth was pushed out slightly, but her manner was thoughtful rather than petulant. "No, darling, you're not really a child any longer, are you? You haven't been one for quite some time." Rose realized she had no idea when it had happened. When had Mary Catherine's eyes become so old, so knowing? When had her chin developed that little determined thrust or the pared line of her nose taken the shape of arrogance? The dimples at the corners of her mouth, always in evidence at the Hollow, had disappeared. When was the last time her baby girl had smiled?

She tried to coax one now with a memory. "Do you remember when you used to play at being queen of all Virginia?" asked Rose. "The stable loft was your tower room. Young Neddie guarded your pony."

Mary Catherine nodded. "But that was silly. Virginia doesn't have a queen."

"No, you're right about that. It was just pretend, like a play. That's what Megan and I are doing now. Just as if we were actresses in a play. I married Colonel Allen because he can help us, and there are times I pretend that I like him. Megan pretends, too. We're acting, Mary Catherine. Your Papa knows that. He knows that we're helping the same cause he died for. There are secrets to be learned, secrets that the Yankees want to keep from us. When Megan and I discover one, we tell the right people and it helps our soldiers. That's why we have to stay in Washington. That's why it's important to live in Colonel Allen's home and not go back to Stone Hollow."

Rose did not say there was nothing left of their home. Mary Catherine had slept while the main house and outbuildings burned to the ground. The Hollow, caught in an all-day siege between Rebel and Yankee forces, was the last victim of the bloody struggle. She fell, not to the Yankees, but to the Rebels who did not want the enemy to have her. Animals that could not be taken were recklessly slaughtered. The grain sheds were set ablaze. From a position on a knoll just east of the farm, Rose and Megan watched an indifferent wind direct fire to the roof of the stable, then to the summer kitchen, and finally to the main house.

A Yankee scouting party from Colonel Allen's forces found them huddled beneath the soft, sparse boughs of some loblolly pines. Shortly after they were taken to headquarters, neighbors came in search of them, offering shelter and support. Rose would have none of it. She made no secret that she wanted revenge on the army who had left her homeless. Her shocked neighbors thought she was turning against her own kind. No one understood that Rose McCleary did not blame the men who burned her house and destroyed her land. She blamed the men who caused her home to be burned. Her enemy wasn't the South. It was the Army of the Potomac. Colonel Allen could not have suspected then that the woman he courted, the woman who eventually agreed to become his wife, despised him. In bed her passionate hatred felt much the same as desire.

Had it really been a year since she married Richard Allen? It was such a very long time to be numb, Rose thought. She blinked, surprised to find there was the pressure of tears at the back of her eyes. Mary Catherine was watching her steadily, searchingly.

"Do you understand?" Rose asked earnestly, pushing the question past the lump in her throat. "Some of our dear old friends don't realize what we're doing, so they judge us harshly and shun us. But your Papa knows. He approves of our acting. Do you remember when we went to the theatre last month?"

Mary Catherine's head bobbed once. "As You Like It."

"That's right. 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.'"

Mary Catherine thought that over. It was true, she decided. She even had her own role and her own secrets. Mama had said they must remain in Washington, and Mary Catherine realized then that her part was to keep the secret. Colonel Allen warned if she told even one person, that something bad would happen to Rose and Megan. He would make it happen, he warned her. Terrible, horrible changes would come to pass once Mary Catherine said anything. For the sake of her mother and sister, she had to keep her silence.

"I understand," she said. "I think I shall be an actress, too."

"Of course you will," said Rose. She hugged Mary Catherine. "And you won't tell Colonel Allen? That's important. This play has to be our secret."

Mary Catherine's attention was caught again by the toes of her red patent leather shoes. Even though she did not like Colonel Allen, she liked his last gift to her. The shoes were bright and shiny and red was her favorite color. "Don't worry, Mama," she said, sliding off the padded window seat, "I'm quite good at keeping secrets."

Rose's smile faltered at the oddly adult tone in her daughter's voice. "Mary Catherine? What do you—"

She kissed her mother on the corner of her mouth. "I think I will wait in the garden with Megan. Don't worry. I won't spoil anything. Next to Megan and the dogwood blossoms, Mr. Marshall won't even notice me." The mask of premature adulthood slipped away for a moment and Mary Catherine was a child again, fly-away braids and a cheeky, dimpled smile.

Shaking her head in bemusement, Rose slipped a lace-edged handkerchief from beneath the cuff of her dove gray day dress. She coughed gently a few times, then more forcefully as pressure built in her chest. Gradually the spasm lessened. With morbid fascination she looked at the wrinkled handkerchief. The metallic taste of blood was still in her mouth, the proof of it in her hand.

She stood and looked out the window, as Mary Catherine had done earlier. A young man in a dark blue jacket with gold braid was opening the gate. Rose could not help thinking the curtain was drawing on her final performance.

* * *

Logan Marshall gave the white picket gate a kick with his boot heel to knock it back in place. The gate wobbled then stuck and Logan felt an absurd measure of relief that something was finally going his way. This morning it had been a horse that was more mule than horse. The animal had refused to jump a single fence while Logan was on reconnaissance. The obstacles had to be removed, and when they couldn't, as in the case of the stone fence surrounding most of the Fecklie property, they had to be skirted. The pack mule carrying his photographic supplies was more cooperative than the army issue Morgan. Logan was more than halfway convinced the animal had been raised somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line and was protesting his use by the wrong army.

But the horse hadn't been his only problem. The sun disappeared almost as soon as Logan set up his tripod and camera near the right flank of the enemy camp. He had to wait for hours, cooling his heels and risking detection, until the sun cooperated with enough light for a decent exposure. Moving swiftly then, Logan took pictures and developed them in a makeshift tent, which he erected in the dense scrub forest known as the Wilderness. He traveled in relative safety, scouting General Lee's army as they made camp all around Chancellorsville. He hoped his pictures would confirm the rough estimate he had made of troop strength. By Logan's reckoning, Lee had less than half as many as Major General Hooker's 134,000 recruits. With any luck, should Lee choose to fight, it could prove to be a decisive victory for Hooker, who already held the high ground. When the actual battle would take place was anyone's guess. Men were still moving into position and strategies were being planned.

At the main encampment they thanked Logan for his efforts, gave him twenty minutes to catch his breath, then sent him to Washington with secret correspondence for President Lincoln. Military intrigue had its own peculiar protocol and Logan had to go through the paces before he could get to the president. One flesh and blood obstacle was Colonel Richard Allen, a staff aide to Lafayette Baker, head of Lincoln's fledgling espionage campaign. Allen insisted that everything be checked and rechecked for veracity before reaching the president. Logan supposed it made sense, given the fact that Washington was fair to overflowing with spies, but in more cynical moments he thought Allen's dictates were the result of a small-minded man searching for a large role.

Still, Logan Marshall cooperated. He had mustered out of the army eight months earlier. Instead of going home to New York and the family newspaper business, Logan sought employment as a photographer's assistant to Mathew Brady. Brady, with a solid reputation as a portrait photographer, was using his own resources to finance the documentation of the war. Although Brady rarely left his Washington studio, his photographers were already compiling a photographic chronicle of the War between the States. Logan was one of a half-dozen men who gave up rights to his photos in exchange for the experience and challenge of fieldwork. Logan was, to his knowledge, the only Brady photographer who doubled as a private field scout for the army. His field scout status had everything to do with his cooperation with the colonel.

Logan Marshall, though he wouldn't have admitted it, was also little more than a boy. All of twenty years old, he still had the bloom of youth on his cheeks and the soft down of early manhood on his chin. His dark brown hair was highlighted with strands of copper. Square-jawed, with sharp, rugged features, Logan was cast in much the same mold as his older brother Christian. His eyes were coolly colored, a soft pewter gray that could, on occasion, mirror everything but his own thoughts. He had a strong Roman nose which flared when he was angry, which was rarely. He was tall, a couple of inches over six feet, and carried himself with quick strides and barely contained energy. There was a light bounce in his step, a jauntiness that warned more staid men of a certain recklessness, perhaps even of irresponsibility.

These same cautious and considering men never hesitated to use Logan Marshall. His youthful exuberance, his immature belief that he was somehow charmed, that death couldn't happen to him, made him ideal for risky missions. They planned; he performed. In general it was a happy arrangement. Easy-going and adventurous, Logan Marshall was still growing into himself.

Logan shifted the packet he carried from his right hand to his left. As he raised his fist to knock at the door to the Allen home, he heard a high-pitched giggle from the garden area at the side of the house. He grinned and lowered his hand. It couldn't hurt to allow himself to be sidetracked for a few minutes. Stepping down from the stoop, he circled to the side.

He saw Megan immediately. Her smile was coy, her eyes downcast at just the right angle to affect surprise at his entrance. Logan wasn't fooled. He supposed she had seen him sometime before he reached the house. He was more surprised to see her. The heady giggle that had drawn him like a magnet hadn't belonged to Megan.