“And if he doesn’t?”
Jesse shrugged, cutting pieces of pie as she stood over him. “We’ll storm the firehouse, I imagine.”
“And there’s no danger in that? The both of you? You’ve really no right to risk both your lives that way. I’m telling you—”
“And I told you not to leave the house today,” Jesse interrupted suddenly, waving the pie spade before her nose.
“The whole town was out on the streets, Jesse,” she told him.
“The whole town,” Daniel laughed, “including Doc Whalen. He told me that you were out on the street, and he’d heard tell Jesse had already gotten his hands on you.”
Kiernan quickly lowered her eyes. “Indeed, he had,” she said sweetly.
“Whalen’s suggestion, so I heard,” Jesse murmured, “was that you should be trussed like a turkey over a shoulder and taken to a woodshed. I wasn’t nearly as crude.”
“You were barely short of it!” Kiernan responded quickly.
Jesse raised a brow to her, and she felt a hot flush rise over her body.
“Do I detect a note of tension here?” Daniel asked.
“No!” Jesse and Kiernan snapped simultaneously.
“Oh, excuse me!” Daniel said, and grinned.
“I wasn’t at all crude,” Jesse said.
Kiernan leaped up to see how the coffee was doing, but she suddenly felt a clamp of steel upon her arm.
“This time,” he told her softly.
“This time?” She arched a brow. Storms were brewing between them, she could feel it. She felt tension hot and sweet on the air. She wanted to do battle with him. She wanted to argue and fight—
And touch him.
“Hey! The coffee is boiling over!” Daniel cried out. Jesse’s eyes still burned into hers. He released her wrist slowly, and she tore her gaze from his at last and hurried to salvage the coffee.
Daniel started talking and he kept talking, eating his pie with relish.
Kiernan and Jesse drank their coffee, listened, and watched each other warily. Thankfully, Daniel didn’t seem to need much help with the conversation.
Jesse stood up suddenly. “We’ve got to get back,” he said.
Daniel nodded regretfully. “Yes.” He stood up and pulled Kiernan to her feet and kissed her cheek then hugged her tightly again. “Tomorrow, Kiernan, please stay in until it’s all over!” he begged her.
“She’ll stay in,” Jesse said with an edge. “I can guarantee it.”
“Oh?” Kiernan said sweetly.
“Yes. Because I’ll be around tomorrow. And I will see to it, even if I have to carry you around like a sack of potatoes.”
“Sir, your gallantry is overwhelming!” Kiernan drawled.
“I call it as I see it,” Jesse told her.
“I can’t imagine your being so cavalier if my father were here!”
He arched a dark brow and grinned. “Kiernan, I would be the same no matter who was here, and you know it.” He paused a second, his grin spreading. “Including the saintly Anthony!” He turned around, heading out. Daniel grinned and followed him. Kiernan hurried along the hall behind them to the rear door.
“Please take care!” she urged Daniel on the back porch. Their horses were tethered in back beneath a tree by the uphill trail, sheltered by the cliffs.
He paused. “I promise.”
Jesse reached his horse and mounted smoothly. The roan trotted over to the steps, and he smiled down to her. “Am I to take care, too, Miss Mackay?”
“Of course, Jesse,” she said coolly. “I’d be deeply grieved to see anything happen to you. For Christa’s sake.”
“Only for Christa’s sake?”
“You are a good neighbor,” she said sweetly.
He laughed and dipped low from the horse’s back to find her hand.
He kissed it lightly. “How very sweet and honorable, Miss Mackay!” He freed her hand. “Now, please make sure that you keep your very sweet and honorable derriere indoors tomorrow!” he charged her firmly.
“Jesse, darlin’, you do have the manners of an orangutan. Someone should take a horsewhip to you—sir!” she told him sweetly.
“I mean it, Kiernan.”
“So do I.”
“I’ll find you if you’re out, I swear.”
“A promise, Jesse, or a warning?”
“A threat—and take it that way,” he advised. Then he smiled and lifted his hand to his hat in salute.
The big roan swirled, and he was off into the night.
“Jesse, take care!” she whispered softly. It was far too late. He was gone, and he never heard her words.
Standing next to her in the moonlight, Daniel was still watching her. He shrugged, laughter in his eyes. “He has his way,” he told her, offering no explanation and certainly no apology.
“Yes, he does. Oh, Daniel, do take care. Both of you.”
“We will,” Daniel promised her. He hugged her again, then leaped up onto his mount, as comfortable on horseback as his brother was. He lifted his hat and waved to her. “Scrape up a good dinner for us tomorrow night, eh?”
“I promise!” she called. “Daniel!”
“Yes?”
“See that you—that you and Jesse come to me as soon as you can!”
“I will.”
He waved, and rode into the night after his brother.
Kiernan shivered fiercely, then hurried back inside. There was certainly no comfort in this night. She was suddenly very much alone. All the warmth had gone from the evening, and it was very chilly indeed.
And like Jesse, she was afraid.
Of love—and war.
Five
Jesse hadn’t ridden more than a minute or two before Daniel was beside him, watching him and about to say something.
Because of the way that they had left Kiernan, he thought.
No, because of the way that he had left Kiernan.
It was probably a good thing that Daniel hadn’t been around during the day, Jesse reflected. He’d be fielding questions right and left if he had.
But now he was in for some brotherly concern no matter what, Jesse realized.
“You’re awfully quiet, Jess,” Daniel told him.
“Reckon so,” Jesse murmured. He knew darned well that Daniel wasn’t going to leave an answer like that alone.
“Because of tomorrow and John Brown? Or because of Kiernan?”
Jesse cast him a quick glance and discovered that his brother’s eyes were dancing. Maybe Daniel had seen a lot more over the years than Jesse had imagined. Maybe there was more to see than he had even seen himself.
Who was he kidding? There had always been something about Kiernan. Even as a child, she’d had the most extraordinary eyes, green eyes that defied and challenged and laughed and dared.
By ten, she’d had a certain way of walking. Jesse remembered feeling darned sorry for her father because she had become such a brazen little piece of Tidewater baggage so quickly. Kiernan was beautiful, and Kiernan could steal the heart and soul and taunt the body. But she was also proud and stubborn, and no one was ever going to sway her mind.
She could play and she could tease, but she did so only within the bounds of propriety. Naturally, she liked attention. She could flirt with the best of them, but she was certainly no sweet and naive creature—she had her opinions about life and about her place within it, and she never minded voicing them.
He knew her so well, Jesse thought, because he’d watched her for years from Cameron Hall. He’d watched with definite amusement when she was little. She’d always had her way. She was sometimes gentle, sometimes kind, but always proud, and always inquisitive about the world around her. She had been quick to test her powers, and she had been very quick to realize that she was a woman in a society where women were born to be revered. She was just as quick to understand her father’s business, but she still loved to dance and to ride, casting aside her cloak of innocent femininity when necessary, donning it again w
hen it was convenient. She was a little witch in her own way, Jesse thought. But she was all woman, with a mind like a whip and a heart like steel.
Jesse had retained some of his amusement as he watched her grow older. But at her coming-out party, she had been stunning, so stunning that she had taken his breath away. And maybe that night he realized that he had always been waiting for her.
Anthony Miller had seemed to be just perfect for her. He was the son of the perfect family—southern, aristocratic, rich. And he was more—he was the perfect gentleman. Anthony Miller was handsome and could be charming. He was quick to compliment her and quick to be at her side to fulfill her slightest whim.
Actually, Jesse had to admit, he liked Anthony Miller. There wasn’t a thing wrong with Anthony Miller. At Montemarte he had mastered all the things a young man was supposed to master. He was cordial, proper, a loyal son to his father, a fine young man with a code of ethics and all the right ingredients of southern chivalry.
It was just that he wasn’t right for Kiernan. Kiernan would run him ragged in a matter of months.
Jesse grinned, realizing that he considered himself to be the only man right for Kiernan. When he had watched her play with others, he had always thought that he was the right one for her. The one to love and understand her, the one to let her win upon occasion, yet the one who knew her ways enough to stand firm when she wanted or need a steadying hand.
A certain tension gripped him. Until today, he had never known just how much he felt that way. Until he had touched her with the breeze stirring by them on the top of the cliff and he had felt the lightning and the longing that swept through them both, he had not known.
He had not known how hungrily he would crave her, how the desire would grow to be something unimaginable. Yes, he was the man to tame her, to seize the fire and the flame, and to watch it burn in beauty.
The right man for her …
Except that suddenly he wasn’t right for her anymore. She believed passionately in causes, in her sense of loyalty, of right and wrong.
Maybe he was wrong himself about the things that the future might bring. Congress had been fighting and squabbling about many issues for years. South Carolina had wanted to secede once before, and old Andy Jackson had had to go down and assert that a union was a union.
But maybe Jesse wasn’t wrong. Maybe the nightmare he felt brewing before them was destiny, and it really would be a storm that no man would be able to stop. Jesse couldn’t condone the actions of a fanatic like John Brown, but it was hard not to listen to some of the things that the man had to say.
John Brown was going to die one way or the other. But things wouldn’t end here in Harpers Ferry.
He couldn’t say certain things to Kiernan. He could try to tell her that Anthony wasn’t right for her—he wasn’t hard enough, he wasn’t strong enough, dammit, he just wasn’t passionate enough. But Jesse himself had nothing to offer her, nothing that she would want.
Anthony, too, was caught up in her spell, Jesse thought. Few men could be immune to her. Her sweet backside should be met with a hickory stick for what she was doing to Anthony Miller. She didn’t love Anthony, Jesse was convinced of it. But Anthony was everything that she should want—the perfect southern gentleman again—and she was definitely entertaining herself with him.
Waiting, Jesse thought wryly with humor. There were times back home when he was convinced that she watched him just as he watched her. There were times when he was convinced that they had been made to be together, bred to be together. And maybe it was something even deeper than that. He felt it when he touched her, he tasted it when he kissed her. Something sweet and electric and so volatile that it had to be older than time itself.
He caught himself in his thinking and unconsciously he squared his shoulders and straightened on his horse. He was wrong, dead wrong, to be thinking about Kiernan so. The world was revolving differently these days. His world was moving on an uneven axis, a very precarious axis. He was very much afraid that the world he knew and loved was coming to an end. He wasn’t sure where he stood, but he was becoming more and more aware that he was going to have to choose sides soon. He would have to choose by his conscience. A number of the people he loved dearly would hate him for making that choice. He would have to learn to live with their hatred.
But a man couldn’t betray himself, then learn to live with his own betrayed heart and mind and soul. It couldn’t be done.
Kiernan might be the one to hate him the most fiercely when he made up his mind. There would be no areas of gray for Kiernan.
Then again, it could all unfold differently from what he was imagining, he told himself. Maybe South Carolina would not vote to secede. Maybe none of the other southern states would want to go with her. Hell, Virginia had provided four of the first five presidents of the United States. Maybe Virginia would not pull out of the Union. A number of the state’s western counties had no wish whatsoever to pull out.
“Well?” Daniel said.
“Well, what?”
“What’s bothering you? The situation or the girl?”
“Both,” Jesse said briefly.
Daniel was silent for a moment, then said lightly, “Seems to me like there’s been something brewing between the two of you for a long, long time. Seems to me like—”
“Seems to me like it isn’t your business, brother,” Jesse cautioned him lightly.
But Daniel laughed. “I’ve known you both all my life. You’re my blood and she’s a whole lot of my spirit, so I reckon I’ve a right to my say.”
“You reckon so,” Jesse said dryly.
Daniel grinned. “Do something!” he told Jesse. “Marry her, before she does decide to marry Anthony Miller.”
Jesse sighed with exasperation. “I can’t marry her.”
“Why the hell not?”
“She wouldn’t be happy.”
“Oh? And she’s going to be happy with Anthony Miller? Well, hell, all right, if you say so.”
“She shouldn’t marry Miller. She doesn’t love him,” Jesse said flatly.
“Lots of people marry people they don’t love,” Daniel commented. “And some of them do damned well. Just like Kiernan might. She and Miller have everything in common to make it right. They’ve the same background, the same loyalties. But then, so do the two of you.”
“Yeah,” Jesse murmured, “so do the two of us.” But conviction was missing from his voice. He didn’t know how to explain what he was feeling to Daniel, because they, too, came from the same background. They should have shared loyalties. He turned to his brother, determined to say as much as he could. “Daniel, there’s going to be a war.”
“It’s not going to be a war, Jesse. It will be a skirmish at best. After today, old John Brown can’t be in very good shape. He’s had men killed, and he’s had men wounded. It won’t be much of a battle. If he doesn’t surrender, it’ll be over in a matter of minutes.”
Yes, old John Brown did have men sick and wounded. He’d seen young Oliver Brown, and he couldn’t forget his father’s words to him. Die like a man. He saw the light, all right. Old John Brown saw the light.
“Brown’s frightening,” Jesse said out loud. “He’s just about the most frightening man I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Damn, Jesse, that man did get to you!” Daniel was silent for a moment, watching him. “Hell, Jesse, you can’t think that the old fanatic should get away with this.”
Jesse shook his head vehemently. “No, I don’t. As far as I’m concerned, he committed murder in Kansas, and he committed murder here. Hell, I’m no judge or jury, but it sure does look like what he did here was treason as well.” He thought of the young followers of Brown who had suddenly seemed to realize that what they were doing could be construed as treason. “Daniel, I just don’t know how to describe it. There’s a light in his eyes. He knows he’s going to die, and he knew his son was going to die. But it’s like he’s on a holy mission.”
“He’s a fanatic,
and he should hang.”
“I’d be the first to say that he should,” Jesse agreed, and exhaled slowly. “But you should meet that old man, Daniel. He’s frightening, I swear it.”
“I’ve never seen you afraid of anything, Jess,” Daniel commented.
Jesse grinned. “Then you didn’t always see real good, brother. Every living man has been afraid at some time in his life. I’m not afraid of going up against a man in battle, and I don’t even think I’m afraid of dying. But I’ve been afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of things that I can’t touch, things out of my reach, things I can’t even understand. Things that I can’t get my hands on, and things that I can’t stop from happening.”
Daniel stared at him. For a long moment, Jesse thought his brother was going to make a joke. But then, as Daniel’s eyes met his, he realized that his brother knew exactly what he was talking about.
“Only time will tell, Jesse. Only time will tell.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” They were alike in so many ways. Back at Cameron Hall, they’d grown up with the same rights and wrongs drilled into them. They both had a sound sense of ethics and loyalty and honor. And both of them would follow it.
But the paths that they followed might be completely different.
“We’re blood, Jesse, no matter what.”
Daniel had reined in and now extended his hand across the chasm between them. Jesse took his brother’s hand. “Blood, Daniel. No matter what.”
“It’s a pact.”
“It’s a pact.”
They held hands in the road, their eyes meeting, their grips firm. Then Daniel grinned. They hadn’t come to an impasse yet. “Jesse, you’re awfully damned grim tonight.”
“It was a grim day.” He thought about Kiernan, and his voice softened. “Most of it.”
“Do you know what you need? A drink!” Daniel announced, convinced.
Jesse grinned slowly. “Well, what the hell. You must be right. What I need is a drink.”
“And since we’re still both officially on leave, it seems like a right good thing to do with the rest of the evening,” Daniel told him. He kicked his horse to quicken his pace.
It was a peculiar set of circumstances that had brought them both to Harpers Ferry, just as it was a peculiar set of circumstances that had brought their West Point commander, Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee, and their old West Point and army friend, Lieutenant Jeb Stuart, in on a situation that was being manned by U.S. marines. When word of the raid had reached Washington, all that President Buchanan had on hand had been this navy unit under Israel Green. Green had immediately headed out from Washington with his troops.
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