“Amélie . . . ?”
Her spoken name echoed in her mind. “Amélie . .
Jolted fully awake now, she felt as though a curtain had been torn away. Everything returned with unclouded memory—the fall, Damon bringing her to the farmhouse, undressing her, their lovemaking.
“Oh, my God!” she whispered hoarsely.
She slipped out of bed, not wanting to face him, not wanting to see the triumph, the knowledge of their shared intimacy in his eyes. How had it all happened? Was it possible for such a thing to occur again when she had sworn never . . .
Oh, how she wished she could erase the whole episode as a nightmare, a bad dream in which she had played an unwilling part. But her aching muscles where he had compounded her bruises by the pressure of strong hands were a nasty reminder. He was a cad, a rotten bounder for taking advantage of her when she was in a state of shock. No gentleman would have behaved in such a manner, no gentleman would have pretended she was his wife, no gentleman . . .
Oh, what was the use! Angry tears stung her eyes as she hastily got into her clothes. Her boots were still damp, but she tugged them on, snapping buckles, adjusting straps. Her hat. Where was her hat?
“Amélie . . .”
He was sitting up, watching her, his broad, naked shoulders dark against the pillows.
“I don’t want to talk,” she said, still searching for her hat.
“You’re angry.”
She said nothing, and stopped looking for the hat, reasoning she had lost it in the stream.
“If you remember,” he said, “you were in no condition to ride.”
Her cape was still wet at the edges but she threw it around her shoulders, ignoring Damon, who had left the bed and was getting into his trousers.
“We’ll go down together,” he said. “I’ll take you back over the stream.”
“No, thank you.”
She had her hand on the doorknob when he commanded, “Wait! Turn around, Amélie, and look at me! I don’t like talking to your back.”
“There’s nothing we have to talk about, nothing to discuss. You used me like you would any—any trollop.”
“You’re wrong,” he said softly, his dark eyes resting on her flushed face. “You’re not any trollop, nor any woman for that matter. And that’s the whole puzzle, the whole mystery to me. You’re in my thoughts too often, Amélie Townsend Warner, and I can’t quite understand why. You are opinionated, a fanatic—”
“Stop!” She clenched her fists. “Do you think for one moment that you are not?”
“I have my principles, just as you do. Why else would I be fighting in this bloody war? But I can unbend, I can see things, sympathize—”
“Oh, bosh! I don’t want to hear about your nobility. You are a powerful, greedy man who takes what he wants.”
He contemplated her from narrowed eyes. “Did it ever occur to you that you might have power over me?”
“Words!” she scoffed.
“Not words, but fact. You are a beautiful woman, even in crow’s black, but I’ve known many beautiful women. Why Amélie Townsend? I ask myself. And yet when I see you, when I look at you, when I take you in my arms with your heart shining in your eyes, those clear, guileless blue eyes ...” He broke off and ran his hand through his hair. “It’s a pity you hate me so. You do hate me?”
“Yes.” But did she? Yes, of course, of course. Amélie didn’t like to be confused. She wanted things to be black or white, right or wrong. She wanted to hate him with a pure, undiluted intensity. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, that the dark, wild streak in him found an answering chord in herself. She didn’t want to admit that she was drawn to his pagan vitality, his pride, his cool, nonchalant courage.
“By the way,” he said lightly, almost mockingly, “in the rush of things I neglected to ask why you are in mourning. Dare I hope it’s your husband?”
She threw him a scathing look. At that moment it was easy to hate him. Easy. “My child died,” she said.
“Oh—forgive me. I am sorry.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Fowler.”
He followed her down the stairs. The farm woman was nowhere in sight. Amélie suffered Damon’s hands under her armpits as he lifted her into the saddle.
“Since you refuse my attendance,” he said, “I’ll stay and see if I can reimburse our hostess.” He put a gloved finger to his hat. “Au revoir, Amélie.”
All the way back to the Mortons she had the terrible desire to weep. It was the beginning of a cold, she told herself. The ache behind her eyes, the void in her heart signified the start of a bad cold brought on by her icy immersion in the stream. It had nothing to do with Damon Fowler.
Damon Fowler had his own thoughts to sort through as he rode back to Annapolis. He had spoken the truth when he had told Amélie that his continuing, almost obsessive, attraction to her was a mystery to him. Why? he asked himself once more. He had known many women, some of them as aristocratic and as beautiful as Amélie. What, then, did she have that the others lacked?
Recalling the various women who had moved through his life he noted that none had exerted more than a passing influence. Except, perhaps, his mother.
Certainly Amélie was a far cry from Martha Fowler, the pious, rather ineffectual daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Not that he disparaged his mother—poor soul, dead these past ten years. A good woman, she had given him by example fine manners, a sense of fair play, and a compassion for the underdog. From her he had learned that the poor and dispossessed, like the black slaves of the South, were human and therefore worthy of human dignity. She had been a kind and loving mother. What had galled him about her was her placidity, the way she had knuckled under to his father, accepting his infidelities and alcoholic sprees with Christian meekness.
As a young man his father, a Bostonian descended from the third son of an English baronet, had inherited a lucrative wine merchant business. Through the years he had managed by ineptness and negligence to dissipate his inheritance so that when he died in an apoplectic fit on a barroom floor at the age of forty-five, he left to his eldest son, Damon, an establishment on the verge of ruin, a host of debts, and three younger brothers to support.
Damon, with no particular love for the wine trade (he had been trained in the law), nevertheless rolled up his sleeves and set about rescuing the family business. Seeing that only draconian measures would work, he became ruthless, weeding out dishonest employees, refusing to accept inferior spirits or to take part in the rampant bribery of the wharves. Once he found himself facing a piratical captain, a belaying pin in his hand, threatening to do damage to anyone who laid a hand on him, demanding the casks of Madeira he had bought and paid for. He fought thievery and chicanery, sometimes in the courts, sometimes in the streets with bare fists when the need arose. He met his competition, the grog shops and wholesalers, with fair prices and honest service. Gradually he rebuilt Fowler and Son, reestablishing clientèle and credit to the point where the company was turning a neat profit. He went on to expand, opening stores in New York, New Haven, and Providence, setting his brothers up as merchants there. A year before the war broke out he bought a large farm in western Massachusetts where he intended to raise apples, hay, and horses. It was the latter that had brought him to Maryland—and to Amélie.
Thinking of her now as he saluted the corporal at the gate of the compound where he stabled his horse, he wondered again why Amélie should appeal so strongly to him. What was there about her that drew him, that he longed to get close to, to possess? Not the beauty or the hidden sexuality that responded so excitingly to his own. The smooth belly and curve of thighs were factors, yes. But he had gone over those before in his mind and found that these tantalizing charms alone did not offer a satisfying explanation. Perhaps it was the tenderness he sensed underneath her scorn and anger. Or perhaps it was her youth, her vulnerability, her touching pride. Whatever it was, the chances for seeing her again were slight, perhaps nil. Just as well, he reminded himself.
Amélie and her kind stood for everything he was fighting against—an arrogant, feudalistic way of life that had no place in the republic his great grandfather had died for at Bunker Hill.
Amélie Townsend Warner had been an episode in his life, a memorable episode. But he would not allow it to interfere with his own objective, his determination to see that the Union came out of this present bloody mess victorious and intact.
Chapter
❖ 11 ❖
Amélie returned to Baltimore with Mrs. Trumble’s list and waited for Sister Beatrice to come to collect it. A week went by, but the nun and her companion did not appear. One morning Babette, perusing the Exchange at the breakfast table, exclaimed, “Amélie—look at this!” It was an item on the front page.
SPIES CAPTURED
A man and woman disguised as nuns of the Sisters of Charity were arrested today for helping prisoners escape from Fort McHenry. They gave their names as Mr. and Mrs. Howard Rush of 10 Pratt Street. . . .
Amélie felt the blood drain from her face. It could only mean Sister Beatrice and Sister Irene. A man and a woman! In heaven’s name—Arrested! The article did not say where they had been apprehended but it could have easily been in her own parlor, and then they all would have been taken to prison.
“I always felt Sister Beatrice was more masculine than feminine,” Babette said. “Do you imagine they’ll come after us, too?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Rush would never betray us,” Amélie answered firmly, though she felt it was a distinct possibility.
However, no jack-booted Yankee or policeman came knocking on their door. A stout, matronly woman wearing gold-rimmed spectacles arrived to collect Mrs. Trumble’s list. She did not give her name, did not ask questions. They never saw her again.
One morning John Harper dropped by with an armful of jonquils from his garden. Amélie offered him a cup of coffee.
“Thank you, Amélie. I suppose you know people are beginning to hoard coffee. They say if the war continues it will be impossible to get.”
“Do you actually think the war will go on long enough to make food scarce?”
“Lord knows.” He sighed. “I read in the Exchange that the Yankees are marching on Richmond.”
“They’ll never take it,” Amélie said, sugar tongs poised. “Two lumps?”
“Three, please. No, I don’t think they will. Now that General Robert E. Lee is in command they’ll have a hard time making any kind of headway.” He stirred his coffee and sipped at it. “I’ve heard—and I won’t tell you from whom—that you have hidden Confederate prisoners here on occasion. It’s a perilous business, Amélie, and I would strongly advise against it.”
“But surely someone has to take the risk.” She had never told him about Mr. Baxter’s visit or her three-day stay with the Mortons, afraid that such revelations would make him insist on her joining her parents at Waxwing. The Townsends, now able to receive mail again, had learned belatedly of little Charles’s death and wanted the girls to come home.
“There are more than a few people who are willing to help,” John said, “people who are less vulnerable than you and Babette. I would rather not have you do anything that will attract the attention of the authorities. Do you get my meaning?”
“Of course,” Amélie agreed, glad he hadn’t extracted an outright promise.
Because of this noncommitment Amélie did not feel honor bound to refuse a Confederate officer who came to her door two nights later. An escapee from a Delaware Yankee prison who needed shelter for two nights, she took him in.
He was the first of several, some of them like the officer, dressed in gray frock coat and trousers that hardly seemed worn, others in faded butternut with down-at-the-heel shoes, some whole and healthy, some with festering sores and lice. They would appear after dark, scratching at the window or quietly rapping at the back door. The next night they would leave as they came. Where they went or how they would reach the safety of Confederate-held territory was never discussed. It was as though a tacit agreement had been reached to keep the exchange of information at a minimum.
The months went by. On April 25 New Orleans fell to General Butler. But in May, to balance this defeat, the Yankees were routed at Winchester by Stonewall Jackson. In June battles were raging up and down the Virginia peninsula with the bluecoats again trying to capture Richmond. News in the Federally-censored Baltimore papers only spoke of Yankee victories. Amélie and Babette had no way of knowing whether the reports of Southern losses were true or exaggerated. John Harper could not help them either. He himself expected to be arrested any day and was secretly arranging to leave Baltimore, taking refuge in Roanoke, Virginia where Ella had kin. He offered to take the sisters but they refused to go.
“It’s becoming too dangerous for you here,” he said. “If you insist on staying, however, I’d strongly advise you to confine your activities to a mundane routine— marketing, churchgoing, that sort of thing.”
The sisters agreed, but afterward told each other they really had nothing to fear by carrying on as they had before. At that point they felt invincible. And why not? They were careful, took no chances, and, as always, appeared like a pair of sisters forced by the war to remain in Baltimore, waiting it out. Except for Mr. Baxter’s “inventory” visit they hadn’t come close to being caught. Others, who talked loosely, made their views public, trusted the wrong people or who drew attention to themselves by being either too fashionable or too unfashionable, courted trouble. But how could anyone suspect Mrs. Thaddeus Warner, going about quietly clothed in black bombazine, mourning a dead child, and her younger sister, devoted enough to keep her company?
After John and Ella shut up their house and left for Roanoke Amélie and Babette continued hiding Confederate soldiers. It was from a jaunty, rotund corporal that they learned about the Second Battle of Bull Run and the Confederacy’s great victory there. What a triumph! It was wonderful to give the Yankees such a drubbing at last! James Longstreet’s seasoned veterans had routed Pope’s Union army, driving them north in confusion.
“We have them, by jinks!” the corporal chortled. “Our boys are splashing across the Potomac now, singing, ’Maryland, My Maryland.’ ”
But after a brief victory at Harper’s Ferry and terrible bloodshed at Antietam on September 17, 1862, the Confederate army was forced to retreat, recrossing the Potomac back to Virginia.
Reverberations from Antietam reached Baltimore when the overflow of wounded from Frederick and Washington counties were brought in. The facilities at the Fort McHenry prison hospital became so strained that many had to be shifted to tents erected near the army general hospital at Union Dock. It was there that Amélie and Babette, together with a group of civic-minded women, were given permission to visit the wounded. They brought clothing, blankets, and food. Babette, who had come only under prodding from Amélie, took one look at the maimed and the dying and fled. Amélie herself had not been prepared for what she saw.
The September heat made the air in the tents stifling. On cot after cot the mutilated and feverish lay elbow to elbow, white faced, glassy eyed, groaning in pain. Those who were not fortunate enough to have a bed were lying on blankets on the hard-packed floor. Green horse flies buzzed over the wounded, who were too weak to brush them away. The stench of unwashed bodies, abscessed lesions, and running sores was so suffocating Amélie felt faint. But she fought through the grayness and nausea, ashamed of her weakness, telling herself she could endure it.
“Ladies!” the surgeon called to the women. “There are basins and tin cups at the pump outside. Wounds need bathing. The men want water and food. Some haven’t eaten for two days.”
The women went to work. Jugs of hot coffee were dispensed, bread and meat divided for those who were able to eat unaided. Those who could not were fed. There were not nearly enough women to tend to the sick, but they did what they could.
Amélie rolled up her sleeves and went out to the pump to wait her turn to fill a basin. She had brought with her a pa
cket of bandages torn from old sheets and a few towels which, in her ignorance, she thought could be used for morning washups—Morning washups! My God!
The occupant of the first cot at which she knelt was a young rebel whose shoulder had been shattered by a mini ball. It had been hastily done up with a kerchief to stanch the flow of blood, and she pulled the grimed, bloody rag off as gently as she could. As she worked she spoke to him, asking where he was from and what he did before the war. She bathed his festering wound gently, then put a clean bandage on it. Before she finished she was conscious that her knees were getting wet and looking down, saw that she was kneeling in a pool of blood.
It was only one of the many horrors she endured that afternoon, one of the many reasons to renew her passionate hatred for the enemy. Amputations were performed in the tent next to theirs, and the screams of the patients turned her heart cold. She tried but did not succeed in disassociating herself from the scene, the sight of so much suffering, the smells, the hoarse shouts for mercy. Every cry, every moan struck her through and through. Yet she went on working, emptying basin after basin of reddened water, pumping fresh ones, reentering the hellish tent, going from bed to bed, giving what comfort and relief she could.
The afternoon passed into evening and evening into night. She had not eaten since lunch but did not feel hungry. She had not sat down once and did not realize how exhausted she was until one of the women took her arm and said, “We’re going home now, Mrs. Warner. If we don’t get some rest we’ll be hospital cases ourselves.”
“But the men—”
“We’ll come back in the morning. Perhaps we can get others to volunteer their services, too.”
Amélie returned with the others the next day. She had tried to get Babette to come, had shamed and threatened her, to no avail. For the first time in years Amélie fought with her sister, calling her selfish, useless, a disgrace to Southern womanhood. But Babette said she’d rather be shot than go back to that smelly place.
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