The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (30 page)

“But—”

“I know. I know. If I were you, in your shoes, I would submit to my duty for the militia too.”

Mathew smiled and nodded. “Thank you for understanding. I must admit there have been multiple times when I thought I should just take you away from all of this. We could runaway together, like a couple of star-crossed lovers.”

“Who aren’t star-crossed at all, my love. Truly, you’d want to run away?”

“My first memory, Violet, was of wanting to tuck you into my arms and take you somewhere completely safe and make you the happiest of all women. Well, back then I wanted to kiss you and hide you in my trunk, like you were my wee, little doll.”

Hot tears floated down my cheeks as I wrapped my arms around his neck. “I don’t know what I did that was so right to make you love me, but I’ll be forever grateful . . . darling Mathew.” I reached up on my toes and kissed him, tenderly. Then asked, “Make love to me before you leave.”

“But I’m already so late.” He shook his head, but I knew his body was rebelling.

“Please,” I coaxed, and jumped up to sit on the counter before him. I held his hands and slid them up my legs, revealing more and more each escalating second. My white shift bunched up to my mid-thighs, and I let my legs widen to surround his hips. He groaned.

I released his hands, and he kept moving the gown higher and higher while I reached for his breeches. Suddenly, he captured my hands. “Tell me you love me, Violet. Please, tell me you love me, like you did earlier.”

I swayed closer to him, holding his hands and placing them over my heart. “I love you, Mathew, my husband. I love you so much. I need you.”

He growled and pinned me to the counter with a kiss.

Nearly out of my mind with wandering through the house without a soul to occupy it for almost an hour, it was 2:30 in the morning, I heard the clop-clop-clop-clop of Cherry and raced to the kitchen window, and noted how the full moon was so bright I could easily see Mathew trot up our drive. I tore from the kitchen and waved. I had decided since the Regular Army were coming, to wear a dress, which meant running to my husband was troublesome around all my skirts, and I almost laughed at how ridiculous I felt.

Perhaps the Regulars changed their minds. Mayhap, I thought on a giggle, they turned around, thinking what lunacy and barbaric acts it was to search through men’s houses and barns, forsaking that man’s right to privacy, for the sake of keeping the peace. I couldn’t read Mathew’s shadowed face and held Cherry’s reins before Mathew said, “We are to regroup if given word that the Regulars are on their way. Some of the others are at the Barrett’s farm to make travel plans with a left over cannon and arms, but since I have a new wife, I was told I can be back in my bed with . . . said wife.”

At that I did chuckle.

It was close to daybreak, about six in the morning, when we heard the impatient sound of a horse thundering up our drive. Mathew flew down the stairs and out the house, but with a window open for the coolness of the night to creep into our home to counter the spring’s early warmth that had budded into heat, I could hear the entire staccato conversation.

“Lieutenant Adams, you are requested to meet with Major Buttrick for a war council.”

“Of course. Please inform the major I will be there shortly. Is there intelligence, Ed?”

There was a short pause then an adolescent voice cracked, “There were shots fired in Lexington. Eight militiamen dead, more wounded.”

Newton’s third law: for every action there is a reaction.

I closed my eyes wondering what my fellow Provincials’ response would be. Eight men dead. More wounded.

Mathew interrupted my thoughts as he was getting ready a second time for the approaching redcoats, minutes after the boy had left with the devastating news.

“This morning, oh dear Lord, Violet, I took you on that counter. . . you didn’t have the sponge combination—contraption. Good Lord, what does one call it? Child-stopping-mechanism you got from the midwife. Oh, you might be pregnant. I’m so sorry, dear. I wasn’t thinking. I know you don’t want children yet. I was so caught up in the moment, and—”

That was what Mathew said to me only moments before he was to leave to meet the other officers of the militia. I tamped my laughter down by biting my bottom lip, blushed and shrugged, so happy that he thought of our making love instead of my darker worries. “I was caught up in the moment as well. In fact, if my memory serves,
I
was the one that asked you to . . .” I tilted my head toward the ceiling of our bedchamber, almost ready to say
make my legs shake while I screamed out in ecstasy
, but I wasn’t sure if I was bold enough to say that sort of thing . . . yet.

“Oh, right, right, my naughty wife. What am I saying? You’re completely brilliant. That idea in the barn—undeniably genius, of this I’m sure.”

I chuckled more.

“And if I had more time, wife, I’d take you again. My goodness, I think I’m insatiable concerning you.”

“Well, I am the same, Mathew.”

He veered closer to me, then growled and stopped himself. “What you’ve done to me. What you’ve done to my body, but,” he cleared his throat and nodded, making fists then flexing out his fingers, “but we have to be more careful. You need time to grieve.” He softly caressed one of my cheeks, the other hand slipping to my waist.

I shook my head. “I’m done with grieving. Or, to be more precise, I’ll always miss my sister and mother, but I don’t want to be stuck with the dead. I want to start living. I’m ready for children. I’m ready for
your
children. I want to have children that look like you. Do you think you’re ready for that?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I want our children to look like you.”

I laughed and blinked. When I closed my eyes I saw an image of me as an old withered woman, like some of the stalks of oats as they pushed their way through the soil. I saw my back stooped with the test of time, heavy on my shoulders, burdened my neck and head with wrinkles. Happy wrinkles. I saw me smiling with blond grandchildren and Mathew beside me, his age-spotted hand on mine. I saw love all around us.

As Mathew mounted Cherry, fresh from his brief nap and prancing about to make getting in the saddle a challenge, I called out, “Remember what you asked to be on the kitchen table when you return?”

He blinked and shook his head.

My smile grew as I said, “That dish we had in the barn this morning; that same dinner we had after you read me your letter to your cousin. Do you remember it now?”

His eyes widened as the rising sun streaked a crimson ray into the horizon and beyond. That scarlet hue made him look like he shined in heaven’s own light. His blond hair took more gold into it, his skin glowed, his light blue eyes shone out like a beacon for my soul to come back to him, always to come back to him. He reminded me of the stories I’d heard of God’s fighting angels—a guardian angel, even with the shock on his face once he caught on to my meaning. He swallowed and nodded.

“I’ll have that same dish for you on the kitchen table when you get back to me.”

Mathew gave me leering smile and tipped his hat. “You’re a brilliant wife. You do know that, don’t you?”

I giggled.

“I love you, brilliant wife!” he said as Cherry crow hopped, then stopped with a firm pull of the reins by Mathew.

“I love
you
, husband of mine!”

Hours later I was weeding in one of Mathew’s coats as the west wind bit with ice. The warm spring weather had drained away the second he had left. I was blowing hot air on my frozen fingertips covered in dirt when I heard the subtle thunder of men marching. It had too much rhythm to be a natural sound, and was muffled by the dirt and gravel of the highway in front of my house, the North Road, but it was distinguishable nonetheless. Thud-thud-thud-thud, thud-thud-thud-thud. Men marching toward fate is an eerie noise whose meaning cannot be mistaken for anything other than anxiety or doom.

There is a sense of tragedy within a military. No, it’s not just the presence of a soldier that brings about this feeling of calamity and catastrophe; it’s not just that a soldier wears a sword, holds a musket; it’s also not just that a military man can endeavor to kill: it’s the knowledge that destiny is riding beside the soldier. Flanked close, predestination, whether grave or triumphant, is the mistress of a soldier.

While I wiped the moist earth from my hands, I knew not what the future was with the redcoats. Shots fired in Lexington? Men dead? I couldn’t believe it. Surely, the shots were merely gunpowder–a normal warning tactic. Or was the powder truly mixed with lethal lead balls?
Please, please, let there be peace
, I whispered to the black soil as I stood.

I walked gingerly to my house. Once inside, I took off both Mathew’s coat and the lavender apron that shielded me from staining my mossy green dress from the dirt, hung them on hooks, then with shaking hands, found a cold cup of coffee to indulge.

I stood at one of the windows at the front of the house, sipping the bitter black brew, waiting for the crimson color to cut up the road, but instead saw all manner of men—Provincial men—hurrying over the North Bridge, and there on the west side of the bridge was Cherry and my Mathew waving an arm in the direction of the copse behind our house. Had I truly been that involved in the garden that I hadn’t heard what looked like hundreds of men run up the hill west of my property?

Apparently.

My white knuckles gripping the coffee cup was evidence enough of my nerves. I took a deep, shaky breath, hoping to calm myself. But the thudding of men, professional soldiers marching greeted my ears, and I looked back to the highway, over the North Bridge and there they were: the blood-bedecked soldiers. The last few Provincial men raced up the hill, as the Regulars arrived on the east side of the bridge.

Although the clouds hung low, they never did shed one drop of moisture. The wind was steady and strong, and there was enough sun peeking through the clouds to see the gleam of the redcoats and their bayonets as they approached.

I raced to the other side of the house, in the parlor, to see that my husband and all the other militia were standing on the hill, just northwest of the house, looking down at the Regulars making their march.

Then, I flew back to the kitchen where I saw a gorgeous gray horse smoothly sail over the North Bridge with a captain and lieutenant leading what looked like hundreds of lobsterbacks. I sipped more coffee, and counted the rows of soldiers. Four men in a row, and one—two—three—four—five—six . . . ten . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . and more . . . My God. Two-hundred? Almost two-hundred men marched across the North Bridge while the captain in a huge black hat with gold feathers plumed over the edge sat in front of my property talking with a couple of his lieutenants.

My fingers nervously rapped against my lips as I watched the captain look down at a piece of paper then up, inspecting the countryside and then me. I gasped as I realized I had walked out of the kitchen and stood on the porch with three Regular officers staring at me.

Could I have been more thoughtless? I could have kicked myself for my careless actions, and blinked as the captain waved at me.

Quivering, I waved back.

Not more than a couple rods from me, I saw the young captain give me a small smile and then talk to his officers. At that instant, to my utter dismay, the captain spurred his horse, and he came trotting up my drive to me with one of his lieutenants, or was it another captain? I chewed a wild mint leaf I had picked from the Concord’s widened shores earlier that morning—my morning absolutions, both forgiving the river and hating it–while the officers approached.

“Good morning, miss!”

Tonguing the mint to the side of my mouth, I nodded and croaked, “Morning.”

“I am Captain Parsons and this is Captain Laurie. We were wondering if we might trouble you for some information.”

“They hid all the cannons under my corset.”

All right, now, I’ll admit I’m not the best when I’m nervous, but there’s something about being nervous and angry that can make me a bit of a lunatic. I internally cringed at my bawd statement, when both the captains began to laugh, then laugh in hysterics.

“Oh . . . oh . . . she’s got a sense of humor!” Captain Laurie exclaimed.

I arched my brow at being talked to as if I weren’t in their presence anymore—Lord, I detested that–but held a small smile on my face, the same kind of granite smile I had seen Jacque bestow when he was his most uncomfortable.

“Now, those smart colonists have us,” Captain Laurie said. “We can’t search this kind lady’s person for the cannons. Or can we?”

“No . . . although . . . no, we can’t,” Captain Parsons said, and stole a look at my chest before he continued. “Thank you for the laugh, good woman. Pray, may I ask for your name?”