Shades of Gray: A Novel of the Civil War in Virginia (41 page)

“Yes, dear?” Victoria leaned forward as well,
intent on hearing the question.

“… are usually married by the time they reach
your
age?”

Victoria’s
mouth gaped open, but otherwise she did not respond. Andrea decided to strike
while the iron was hot. “I was always taught that a woman’s virtue is presumed
until the contrary is proved, but, frankly, the appearance you present is
rather, well …” Andrea paused and waved her hand in the air. “La, never mind. I
believe I’ve gone and answered my own question.”

She barely had
time to finish and lean back contentedly in her chair before the room erupted
into a scene of pandemonium. Victoria looked at Alex in horror and then
shrieked so loudly the chandelier overhead rattled and jingled like a wind
chime.

Andrea
thought for a delightful moment she was going to faint dead away—as a true,
quality-bred lady probably should. Instead, she got a little of the uncivilized
hellcat about her and reached for the vase of flowers on the table. Andrea
ducked when the heirloom sailed in her direction and crashed into splinters
when it hit the fireplace mantel behind her.

Hunter, on
the other hand, stood in a rush, apparently afraid he was going to have to
catch a swooning Victoria. The movement sent his chair skidding across the
hardwood floor where it crashed with the sound of a massive explosion against a
small serving table, sending both pieces of furniture plunging to the floor.

Meanwhile
Izzie, who was a little skittish anyway, saw the coming tempest, and in
attempting to make her escape before the full storm hit, ran headlong into
Mattie, who was coming through the same door in a hurry to see what the
commotion was about. Dishes and food went flying, some of it landing in
Victoria’s hair, thereby causing her to scream all the more hysterically.

A darker shadow of tumult could hardly have
fallen on the domestic tranquility of Hawthorne had the enemy opened fire with
a full battalion of artillery. Andrea sat gazing straight ahead, her hands
folded on her lap, her eyes unblinking. She tried to suppress any indication
that she had been the cause of this macabre disturbance, but failed to control
a twitch at the corner of her mouth when she thought about the simplicity of it
all.
Oh, the power of words.

But her
triumph was shortly erased. As Hunter helped a bawling Victoria from the
room—so pale, so pathetic, so hysterical—Andrea let out a sigh of relief. The
displeasing evening had at last come to an end. She waited until Hunter and
Victoria were at the threshold before she stood to take her leave.

“Don’t move!”
Hunter’s voice from the doorway sounded so authoritative, so very convincing,
Andrea deemed it advisable to comply with his command.

And so she
sat and listened to his retreating voice trying to calm the insensible and
inconsolable Victoria. From what Andrea gathered from the vociferous howlings
emanating from above, the gallant Hunter was having little luck soothing his
fair maiden’s nerves.

 Andrea
tried to initiate a conversation with Izzie and Mattie as they cleaned up the
mess on the floor, but to her great surprise, they avoided her side of the room
as if she had just been stricken with some fearfully contagious disease.
Occasionally they threw anxious glances in her direction as if to see what
other calamity she was going to impart on their beloved master, but mostly
their looks consisted of angry glares and apprehensive scowls.

So Andrea sat pouting, her elbows on the table
in a most unladylike fashion, waiting for her host to return. Her mind began to
wander and her lips to twitch into another smile, and she feared she would not
sleep a week for the satisfaction of the whole blessed affair.

Those thoughts were forgotten when it suddenly
grew quiet upstairs. Andrea stirred uneasily in her chair, finding the silence
more disturbing than the noise. When she heard the unmistakable fall of
Hunter’s heavy boots coming down the stairs, she decided there was something
infinitely worse than the silence. Izzie and Mattie apparently had the same
evaluation and made a mad rush for the kitchen door.

Andrea held her breath as Hunter paused at the
door behind her, presumably taking in the scene of destruction. She felt his
eyes penetrating the back of her head and wondered if the intensity of that
glare would blind her if she turned around. She did not have the nerve to find
out.

“Miss Evans,” he said, striding across the room
in his usual dashing style. Andrea noticed he had removed his coat in his
absence, and was now rolling up his sleeves and shaking his head, the way men
often do when they are anticipating a long, drawn out battle.

“Yes, Major?” She gazed up at him innocently
with her chin planted on her hands.

“Tell me, is this your idea of a truce?”
Hunter’s eyes flashed with a look that could halt a lightning bolt in
mid-strike.

“She fired the first shot.” Andrea focused her
attention on a painting over his shoulder.

“
She
fired the first shot?” Hunter hit
the table with his fist so hard it made Andrea jump and caused the chandelier
to jingle again. “Had you a gun in your hand in place of your wicked tongue,
I’ve no doubt not a soul in this room would have been left standing!”

The thought of such a scene tickled Andrea so
that she snorted trying to suppress a laugh. She covered her mouth with her
hand to hide her amusement from his gaze.

“This is a monstrous affront to my hospitality!”

“Hospitality? I thought I made it clear I would
prefer crawling into bed with a nest of rattlesnakes than accept the
invitation.”

Andrea again tried to conceal a grin with her
hand, but the attempt did nothing to screen her mirthful eyes.

“You think this is great fun, don’t you?” Hunter
waved his hand at the mess. “Is there no deviltry to which you will not stoop?
Are you driven by some mad inner force to do whatever you should not?”

Andrea looked around the room and surveyed the
devastation. “One would not think such carnage could be created without
gunpowder, would one?”

“And yet you are no doubt proud to have created
such havoc armed only with your wit and tongue!”

 “I am not proud. I simply attacked at the weakest
point, which is to say her mind … a strategy with which you are not altogether
unfamiliar, I am sure.”

Hunter
scowled at her attempt to be clever.
“This is an outrage! We had a
truce. How dare you disobey!”

“That is not true.” Andrea’s smile vanished in
an instant. “You
demanded
a truce. I did not submit to it! I would never
submit to a truce with a conniving, manipulating
she-Rebel
. Did I not
warn you that this was the inevitable outcome of your ill-conceived scheme?”

“Warned me? I do not believe I was forewarned of
a major engagement in my dining room!”

Andrea sighed and gazed around the room. “I was
not desirous of bringing on a general engagement, but please, sir, the battle
was inevitable. Alone as I am on enemy soil, I am obliged to defend myself, am
I not?”

Hunter seemed for a moment almost devoid of
speech. “Defend yourself? Can you not curb your propensity for warfare for one
evening?”

“I believe I showed great powers of restraint,”
Andrea said with a toss of her head. “And as for warfare, surely you cannot
believe I’d attend here tonight, outnumbered two to one, without anticipating
and preparing for premeditated malice from the enemy.”

“This was no occasion for hostilities,” Hunter
said in a voice that trembled with anger. “You could not have done more bodily
damage had you beaten her with a horsewhip.”

“You are much deluded if you believe
that
to be true.” Andrea failed to suppress a grin. “Yet I would be willing to test
your theory.”

“Don’t trifle
with me, Miss Evans. Since you have been here this home has been the scene of
perpetual turbulence, a cauldron ever ready to boil over.”

Andrea smiled gleefully and then pretended to
cough when he fixed his eyes upon her.

Hunter gazed at her sternly. “Will you not try
to get along?”

“Frankly, sir, I’d be more inclined to watch her
Rebel carcass being picked clean by the birds of hell.”

“Good God, Andrea!” Hunter pounded his fist on
the table again to gain her attention.

Andrea looked up at him curiously when her first
name and the Almighty’s rolled off his lips like they were both old
acquaintances whom he had addressed as such a thousand times. Yet she could not
recall him ever calling her anything but Miss Evans, and was fairly sure
discussions with his Maker were even more infrequent.

“You are greatly mistaken, my dear, if you feel
my leniency with you will last forever.” Hunter started to walk toward her side
of the table, causing Andrea to retreat to the other.

“I believe leniency has been reserved for
Victoria and well it should be. One shouldn’t be too hard on someone who
wouldn’t know a rock from a ramrod. Surely, even
you
must find her
obtuseness tiresome.”

“On the contrary. Sometimes I believe she has
infinitely more wisdom than you.”

Hunter’s words had the effect of a match to
gunpowder. “Retrieve that,” Andrea screamed, seizing a knife on the table and
slamming it down so that it stuck upright on the table. “That is an
unpardonable insult!”

“She is not to blame for your constant
discontentment, nor is she in anyway responsible for the circumstances that
brought you here,” he said calmly. “That is the fault of no one but yourself.”
He paused but only for a moment. “I must ask that you apologize. She has
requested such.”

Andrea had,
at that moment, been taking a drink of water. Only with the greatest effort did
she manage to swallow, rather than discharge the fluid in her throat. She
whirled around and glanced at the table, obviously looking for something to
throw. But what was not already lying smashed on the floor had been cleared,
save the knife, which Hunter snatched and placed out of reach.

“Hang me if I will! Andrea paced erratically for
a moment, then took a deep breath for control. “Major, I would tell you what
else I think of your suggestion, but fortunately for you, I’m a Christian lady.”

Hunter laughed. “I do not know from what great
nation of Christendom you hail, but you’ve never concerned yourself with
holding your tongue in check before on that basis. In fact I dare say I’ve
heard you say some things that would blister the lips of a sailor on shore
leave.”

Andrea studied her fingernails to show she had
no interest in continuing the conversation. “She has but to stay out of my way
and no further transgressions shall occur. Perhaps you can persuade or coerce
or convince her to comply.”

“Tell me this,” Hunter said, leaning toward her.
“Are you even now? Has the appropriate justice been meted out?”

“Sir, why must you place the blame on
me
?
Why do you not place the blame where it belongs—on her distemper and
wickedness?”

“I
do
place the blame where it belongs—on
your
defiance and rebelliousness!”

“I take issue with that. Rebelliousness is an
admirable trait when associated with the men of your Command, yet an offensive
one when linked with my … free will.”

“Free will? Is that what you call your
intolerable, insolent behavior?”

Andrea closed her eyes until there was barely a
slice of green to be seen. “I cannot help but find it quite fascinating, sir,
that you are determined to defend and support such a supremely selfish,
notoriously insincere and disgracefully vain woman, who would sell her sense of
honor, which I fear is not of much value, for influence and power.” Andrea
raised her eyebrows to their highest elevation. “One can only speculate as to
your motivation.”

Now it was Hunter’s turn to lose his temper.
“You may speculate all you want, young lady,” he said, shaking his finger at
her. “And I’ll determine it my justifiable duty to put you in your place.”

Andrea’s eyes narrowed. “
She
is the one
who needs put in her place. Did you not notice that she attempted to insult me
tonight?”

“You are too obstinate to be insulted,” he said,
throwing his hands in the air. “Your behavior today is most certainly only
going to fuel her fires!”

 “If I were you, I’d counsel her to the
contrary. Nothing in her life could become her like leaving it.”

Hunter leaned forward with his hands on the
table. “Is that a threat?”

“Take it as you may,” she responded coolly. “And
pass it on.”

“Do you believe that comment will go unavenged?”

Andrea recognized the limit of his patience and
felt the color drain from her face. But much to her surprise, the cause of the
evening’s disturbance became the source for her escape. Victoria’s shrill voice
pulsated through the room, causing Hunter to cast an eye to the room above them
at the sound of his name.

His gaze fell again upon Andrea, and it was one
that caused her insides to writhe. “This conversation has come to an end.” He
strode to the door, then turned and looked her dead in the eye. “But that does
not mean I’m through with you.”

Chapter
40

“Wisely and slow; they stumble who run fast.”

– Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare

Andrea eased herself into the chair with her
book just as a loud knock sounded at the door. She cringed, knowing Hunter had
returned, and that they had not yet finished their last conversation.

“Yes?” She attempted to keep her voice from
shaking.

Hunter walked in buttoning up the coat of a
dress uniform she had never seen. He wore a look of deep concern that surprised
her. “I’m having some guests this afternoon.” He gazed at her with his head
cocked to one side, apparently testing her reaction to his words. “It’s a
business meeting. And it is imperative that everything goes smoothly.”