“Did you know,” one said in a booming voice, overriding the others, “that a train carrying three thousand Northern troops has been halted by a burned bridge at Cockeysville? That’s only seventeen miles from Baltimore. Seventeen miles, gentlemen!”
“The war’s here, all right, at our doorstep,” a fat man replied. “Now what are we going to do? Stand around and talk? I say we arm ourselves!”
“Yes! Yes!” A chorus of voices agreed.
“Guns! Rifles are what we need. Guns and ammunition!”
An older citizen in black broadcloth mounted a chair. “There’s no time to lose!” he exhorted. “Gentlemen, we must act now!”
“Now!” someone affirmed loudly.
Amélie felt their sense of urgency, their passionate need to join forces in the face of danger and meet it with bold action. The contagious excitement electrifying these men affected her as strongly as the sight of Thaddeus’s company going off to join the Richmond army. Of course they would prepare themselves to defend hearth and home against the arrogant Yankee hordes, now speeding down to crush the South. Barricades would be thrown up, guns made ready, sabers unsheathed, will and strength mustered to repel the enemy. That included Damon Fowler. He was one of them, the hostile aggressor, the foe. Only the thought that she owed him a courtesy for coming to her father’s assistance prodded her to complete her errand.
At the desk Amélie asked a flustered clerk if she might leave a parcel for Mr. Damon Fowler. “I haven’t the time to take it up to him, madam,” he replied. “Our boy’s run off to join the militia. Yes, Mr. Archer” —turning to an elderly gentleman with a red face—“I’ll see that your room is made ready. Just a moment. Now, ma’am, about that parcel. Mr. Fowler’s gone out, so if you could run it up yourself. . . . Otherwise I can’t guarantee. . . . Here’s the key. Just leave it inside the door. Room four.”
Amélie went up the carpeted staircase with its polished oak handrail and bracketed shaded lamps. In the narrow corridor the voices from the lobby percolated up in a muted babble. Room four was at the end. She stuck the key in the lock and turned it. As she opened the door a deep voice said, “Who is it?”
Amélie’s heart did a queer leaping jump. For an infinitesimal moment she thought of fleeing, just as Bessie had done, but the picture of herself taking the steps with bunched-up skirts and the owner of the voice in hot pursuit deterred her.
“It’s Mrs. Warner,” she replied calmly, coming into the room. “I’ve brought your shirt.”
Chapter
❖ 5 ❖
Damon Fowler was sitting near the window, his head turned, dark brows raised.
“Mrs. Warner!” He got to his feet, setting aside the revolver he had been cleaning.
“I thought—they said you were out. At any rate this is not a social call,” she added coldly.
Leaving the door open she came into the room and dropped the package on a chair. “Your laundry. And I thank you again for helping my father.”
“It was my pleasure.”
He was coatless, the white, frilled linen of his shirt accenting the swarthiness of his skin.
“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Warner? Could I offer you . . . ? Well, whisky is the only thing I can offer.”
“No, thank you. As I said—”
“This is not a social call,” he finished for her mockingly, a small dimple appearing at the corner of his mouth. Handsome, handsome as the devil, Babette’s words, rang in her mind.
“How is your father?”
“Much better, thanks.” Her hands, encased in their gloves, had gone unaccountably damp.
“Good. Well, if you won't stay for a chat. . .
“We have nothing to chat about.”
“We might touch on a topic or two if we tried. But I see you are poised for flight so I won’t detain you. However, I can’t permit you to return alone.” He reached for his coat.
“That won’t be necessary,” Amélie said haughtily. “I had no trouble on the way here and can manage my return without an escort.”
“But the neighborhood is turning ugly. Come have a look for yourself.” He gestured toward the window.
She moved across the room and peered out. The street, which had been fairly quiet when she arrived at the hotel, was now alive with men, some in militia uniform, some in civilian clothes, all of them carrying weapons and milling about like a swarm of angry bees.
“But how quickly . . . !”
“Rumor does that. The good citizens of Baltimore are convinced that Union soldiers are going to attack.”
“And you believe they are not?”
“I see no military reason for it. The Union hopes Maryland will not secede, with good reason, I might add. There are an astonishing number of Federalists in the state.”
“Traitors,” Amélie said.
“From your point of view, Mrs. Warner.”
Suddenly the deep-toned bells at the clock tower began to clang. Full-throated church bells joined in, pealing portentously over the city. A drum rolled, another beat a rapid tattoo. The noise on the street rose in pitch. A woman screamed, “They’re here, they’re here!”
“What is it?” Amélie asked.
Damon leaned on the sill next to her, looking up and down the street. “I can’t see anything. It's probably some bulletin issued by the newspaper. The only harm that will come to those people will be what they do to themselves. Mobs!”
His sleeve brushed her arm and she drew it away as if it had been scalded. He turned and looked at her for a long moment, his dark eyes imperturbable.
“You can’t leave with that going on out there,” he said.
“I can’t stay, either.”
A wayward draft caught the door and banged it shut. Amélie’s heart jumped and with a whirl of hooped skirts she started across the room.
“Don’t be a fool!” Damon’s voice halted her midway. “Do you want to catch a stray bullet as your father did? Simply because you’re scared of me?”
She turned, drawing herself up. “And what makes you think I’m frightened of you, Mr. Fowler?”
“It’s written all over your face.”
“Why, there isn’t a man alive I’m frightened of!”
“I wonder.” He was standing with his back to the light, a broad-shouldered masculine figure that seemed to fill the room with a commanding presence. She was aware of him at that moment more than she had ever been before, conscious of him down to the marrow of her bones as if an electric current had leapt from his body to hers. He made no move toward her, nor did his features betray the slightest emotion.
“I should be going, Mr. Fowler, and I prefer to do so alone.”
He did not contradict. A tic moved in his jaw but he said nothing. And yet his silence was overpowering, almost mesmeric. It held her, and suddenly she knew why she had come. It was to see this man again, to hear his voice, to feel those dark, hypnotic eyes on her. There was something about him that touched a hidden elemental strain in herself, a wild romanticism she never before guessed existed.
But he’s a Yankee, her mind tried to tell her. He stands for everything I abhor.
“So you’re not afraid, Mrs. Warner.” He came closer, looking at her intently.
“No.”
He took her hand. She tried to wrest it from him, but he held on. “Liar. You’re trembling.’’
Again she tried to jerk her hand away. His fingers crushed the wedding ring into her soft flesh.
“Amélie—look at me.’’
Hardly conscious of his using her Christian name, she forced herself to meet his eyes. His were dark, shadowed with desire, but there was something else, too, something she could not fathom.
“You’re so very young,’’ he said softly and released her hand.
She stood for a moment absently flexing her fingers, caught in the web of his pensive gaze. She felt undressed, vulnerable, trapped.
“I must go,’’ she said weakly. And still made no move.
�
�Must you?’’
Slowly, with a dreamlike quality, he drew her into his arms.
“No,” she heard herself say, “no.’’
His mouth smothered her protest, a sure, strong mouth that drew her lips into a possessive kiss. She broke away.
“No,” she repeated, “no.”
Suddenly from the street below a shot rang out followed by the sound of shattering glass. It startled her and her body jerked involuntarily.
Damon put out his hand to steady her and when she trembled again took her into his arms.
“You see what I mean?” He held her tightly, his warm strength soothing her momentary panic. Her bonnet had slipped to the back of her head and she felt his lips in her hair. Raising her chin, she looked into his eyes.
Then he was kissing her again, tenderly at first, his kisses becoming stronger, deeper. Amélie felt herself go limp as a rushing darkness enveloped her senses. Dimly aware of teeth, rough tongue, and hard cheek, of the masculine odor of bay rum and shaving soap, of unyielding arms, her own desire kindled. Borne on dark, swift wings Damon’s sensuality was carrying her into a spiraling world of sheer delight and wonder. Flesh and blood tingled and burned with a feeling of thrilling danger. Then suddenly from the deep recesses of her dizzy enthrallment a piercing thought stabbed: He's made love to Babette.
Coldness washed over her. With a wrench she freed herself. “You—you must think me an idiot!” she gasped, her cheeks flushed, her heart beating violently.
He said nothing but stooped to pick up her bonnet, which had fallen to the floor.
“Seducer!” She snatched the bonnet from his hand.
“How melodramatic, Mrs. Warner,” he said with a smooth mockery that aggravated her anger.
If she had been less irate she might have noticed the heightened color in his dark face, the pulse throbbing at the base of his throat, but she could only think of her own outrage. “Oh, I hate you!”
“You didn’t a moment ago.”
Speechless with fury because he had hit on the painful truth, Amélie lifted her hand to strike him. He caught her wrist.
“No, you don't.” Again he crushed her to his broad chest, claiming her mouth, holding her so cruelly she felt the breath go out of her lungs. He was hurting her and her mind cried out but her body gave no protest, gave no struggle.
Finally, lifting his head from her aching mouth, he looked down at her. “Now you can add ‘brute’ to your list.”
Amélie, grappling with the storm of emotion he had aroused, stared speechlessly at him.
Damon’s hold relaxed. He bent his head and brushed his lips lightly against her cheek, then bending lower found the sensitive hollow of her throat. His hand touched her breast, at first tentatively, then more firmly caressing the full curve. She was conscious of a weakness in her thighs, a trembling in her knees.
“Stop,” she whispered. “You must stop.”
Languor had overcome her again, a sweet, willing surrender, and she let the bonnet drop from her fingers.
He was unbuttoning her bodice, his hand reaching in, slipping under the worsted wool, under the cotton camisole to fondle the coral point. Her breath suspended in sheer magical sensation, she leaned toward him.
Oh, but he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t!
But into her drugged mind the words came to her, echoing, echoing, echoing, “There isn’t time—there isn’t time.” War had been declared, not in some foreign country, not in some obscure place thousands of miles away, but here, along the rivers of the South, in the bays, in the harbor, in the cities. In Maryland. Not too far from here men were already marching to their deaths. And in the streets outside there was violence. But in this room for a short span of time this man holding her now, caressing her, made it all seem distant and remote. His strength, the power of his embrace, the hands and mouth pushed back the darkness. She would never see him again. He might be killed. It was only a moment in time, an odd, capricious moment that had nothing to do with Thaddeus or Damon or with Amélie Townsend Warner. Only that she was a woman and he a man.
Somehow he was undressing her, slipping the gown from her shoulders, releasing her from the hoops, the corset, her stockings. Trancelike she wondered how she could stand before him naked and unashamed. As he lifted and carried her to the bed she felt a strange jubilant voluptuousness and she clung to his arms as he laid her upon the pillows.
They did not speak. To talk, to converse even in monosyllables would have shattered the spell. Propped on an elbow he lay beside her, kissing her rapidly, hungrily, as if in another moment she would disappear. His lips trailed downward, finding her shoulders, the cleft between her breasts. He took each nipple in his mouth, savoring, licking and sucking until Amélie had to clench her fists to keep from shouting in pleasure.
His hands, his wonderful, strong, brown hands moving along her bare skin with strokes that evoked sensation after sensation, liquefying her bones, turning her blood into molten fire. Never, never had she believed that human flesh could experience such rapture. When he entered her she clasped him in wild excitement, her nails digging into his bare back, her hunger for him a sweet torment. He began to move and her mind turned inward as she concentrated, gritting her teeth, every nerve and fiber yearning, clawing for release until her body quivered uncontrollably in the final spasms.
He lay beside her again and drew her head on his shoulder. After a long while he said, “Amélie . . .” He did not finish for suddenly he found himself without words. The experience had moved Damon more than he cared to admit. He had bedded many women, some of them hoydens who knew all the tricks to rouse and excite and satisfy a man. And yet this girl, this narrow, inbred, parochial Southerner, had touched some mysterious depth he could not explain.
“Amélie,” he repeated softly.
Her name on his lips drew a closed circle about their intimacy. She felt sated, spent, unaccountably happy. Shame and guilt would come later. But now, in the relaxing aftermath of love, she wanted to prolong time, to draw the moment out before she must face reality and her own conscience.
“You are quite a woman, Amélie,” he said. “How in God’s name did you ever get yourself married to a creature like Thaddeus Warner?” .
She sat up abruptly, covering her naked breasts with the blanket. “He’s my husband, not a creature! I love Thaddeus.”
“I can’t believe it. Not after what’s happened between us.”
For the first time she became aware of her surroundings: A varnished commode with a blue chipped pitcher, a wardrobe, a chair, and a large gilt-framed mirror, and faded wallpaper with roses climbing up ionic columns. An impersonal hotel room. Drab, commonplace.
“Oh, God!” she groaned. “How could I?” In bed with a man not her husband and he a Yankee. She had betrayed Thaddeus, betrayed her marriage vows, betrayed her convictions. And yet yesterday she had scolded Babette for being a loose woman, for having no morals or principles. Was she any better? “How could I allow myself—”
“Don’t,” Damon said, placing his hand on her arm. “Don’t berate yourself. You’re only human. You have some feeling for me, I can tell. We were wonderful together.”
“Animals!” she said contemptuously.
“Animals are noble creatures. There’s a man now in England, Darwin, I believe, who claims we might be descended from apes.”
“Poppycock! Even if it were true the idea does not excuse my—our behavior.”
Adultery and with a Yankee! All she wanted to do was to leave, to get as far away from this man as she could, to never, never see him again.
“Close your eyes,” she ordered in a cold voice. “I’m going to get dressed.”
He obeyed. She had trouble with her stays, nervous fingers slipping at the hooks, and in her haste and exasperation she almost cried out for his help. But she finally managed to get the corset done up, though in a slipshod manner. As she finished dressing she caught a glimpse of her flushed face in the mirror and saw her hair in disarray, half ou
t of its pins. She wanted to weep with shame, but kept herself in control.
“Amélie,” Damon said from the bed, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Indeed.” She put on a glove, smoothing the fawn suede down with quick, decisive movements.
“Why don’t you run away with me?” he asked.
She gave him a derisive look. “This isn’t the time for humor.”
“I’m not joking.”
“I’d sooner run off with Abe Lincoln,” she said.
He laughed. “Well, I guess that leaves no doubt as to how I stand.”
She moved toward the door.
“Wait!” He bounded out of bed. “I’m still not going to let you go out on that street without protection.”
“It’s you I need protection from,” she sneered, turning her eyes away from the body that had captured hers so completely only a short time earlier.
“Be sensible. I’ll only be a minute. And if you don’t wait I shall run after you just as I am.”
When they emerged from the hotel the street was still thronged. A passerby, stopped by Damon, explained that volunteers were hurrying to Holliday Street where the organization of new companies of the militia was taking place. “We’ve got to defend ourselves against the Yankees!” the little man concluded.
Damon didn’t argue. Taking Amélie’s arm he guided her along the pavement, skillfully keeping the press of excited people from jostling her. When they reached the comparative quiet of Madison Street, Amélie paused.
“I think I can make it from here. Thank you for escorting me, Mr. Fowler.”
“You’re very welcome.” After a slight hesitation he said, “I probably shan’t see you again.”
Amélie hoped not, but kept silent.
“I’m leaving this afternoon,” he said. “I’m going on to join my regiment.”
Still she said nothing.
“Aren’t you going to wish me luck?”
“Why should I,” she retorted, “when you might be shooting at my husband?”
“But, of course, he might be shooting at me.”
“He might.”
Damon stood looking down at her. “Do you hate me so? Don’t lie. I want a straight answer. Do you?”
Honor's Fury Page 6