by Susan Wiggs
"Just because you don't like soldiering doesn't mean you don't love freedom, Roarke." Genevieve had to force the words from her mouth. "Don't you understand? Everything you went through in Indian country will finally make sense if you see it to the end."
He looked at her, dumbfounded. "But Gennie, it'll mean leaving you—"
"I can wait," she said with more resolution than she felt. "Virginia can't."
He swallowed hard. She was so brave, so selfless, sitting across the table from him with the tears bright in her eyes and her jaw clenched hard against trembling.
He reached across the table, eyes brimming with emotion. "Sweet Gennie," he said. "I don't deserve you."
She clasped his hands and smiled. "Go with them, Roarke," she said with sudden, fierce conviction. "Go, and win your war."
"What the hell is that?" Roarke said, moving aside a low-hanging branch to peer through the woods. They were on the road to the front, and the company had veered off into the trees at the sound of a scuffle up ahead.
Lieutenant Colonel John Mercer, whose Virginia militia was marching with Langston's legion, put a spyglass to his eye and squinted.
"By God!" he exclaimed with a laugh. " 'Tis the French cavalry! Must be the Duc de Lauzun—he's got Washington's only horse soldiers. Looks like he could use a hand, lads."
The French, resplendent in their gorgeous uniforms, had charged a British contingent, which was guarding a heavily laden wagon train and a herd of cattle. Mercer and Lang formed up their lines and marched down into the fray.
It was Roarke's initiation into European-style warfare. Rather than shooting from the cover of underbrush at darting targets, the American columns marched boldly and let fly a blast of fire directly into the British charge. Sulfuric smoke and screams filled the air. The Frenchmen babbled in their own tongue, and the Americans raised a battle cry of jubilation as they slashed and hacked their way into the heart of the British guard.
Roarke didn't want to kill again. But when a redcoat rose up before him, sword raised, Roarke sent a musket ball into the man's middle. He hated the feeling of dark victory that rose within him and ached for the peace of his farm and Gennie's arms.
Moments later, at a shout from Colonel Banastre Tarleton, the redcoats dispersed, leaving their wagon train and livestock behind. The allies sailed their hats into the air as the first flush of victory took over.
And when, three days later, it was announced that the allies would open their trenches to the infantry that night, rebel fervor reached a fever pitch. Roarke joined in the drinking and singing as lustily as the next man. But as he bedded down for the night and looked up through the trees at the winking spray of stars overhead, his only thought was for Genevieve.
He whispered her name to the October wind and closed his eyes to form her image in his mind. He was still a little in awe of the fact that she was his wife. All the years of desiring her and being denied by her were finally at an end. She was safely on her way back to Dancer's Meadow. At last they'd make their home together.
Guns rumbled in the distance. The British, who had withdrawn from their captured redoubts to the inner fortifications, were probably firing on the sappers and miners in the trenches.
Roarke opened his eyes again and lifted a silent plea to the stars. There was a time when he'd felt so hopeless on the frontier that he hadn't cared whether he lived or died. But he cared now. Because Gennie was waiting for him. Let me keep myself alive, he begged to the stars, so I can hold her in my arms again.
The cart creaked beneath the weight of the Quaker family who had agreed to accompany Genevieve as far as Scott's Landing. They were kindly, and their children seemed to respect her pensive mood, leaving her to her thoughts.
There was joy in being married to Roarke, and she clung to that. Still, when she thought about the thousands of men making their way to Yorktown, she was seized by a terrible dread. It was possible, she admitted, that Roarke might do as Cornelius Culpeper had done. He might make her a widow before she'd had a chance to be a wife.
The appearance of a small company in the road ahead tore her from her thoughts. They pulled the cart to the roadside and hid amid a cover of underbrush.
But the British raiding party spotted them almost immediately. In minutes the cart and horse were surrounded.
The Quaker man settled back, sighing with resignation and drawing his family to his breast.
But Genevieve was furious. She leaped to her feet, planting herself in front of the British commander.
"You bloody thief!" she railed. "Would you steal from a woman?"
The redcoats laughed at her. " 'Tis the most expedient way," the commander joked.
Battling a pounding fear, Genevieve drew herself up. "Would you kill a woman for this cart?"
"Nay," said a voice from behind. "That won't be necessary."
Genevieve gasped. Henry Piggot insinuated himself between her and the officer and thrust her roughly aside.
"I was hoping for the chance to settle things with you, Mrs. Adair," he said, grinning. "The law has exempted you from debt, but in my mind you still owe me dearly."
"I have nothing," she told him through clenched teeth.
But Piggot shook his head. "You've a rather valuable commodity right here, Mrs. Adair," he said, nodding at the cart and Roarke's horse.
"You infernal bloody sod!" Genevieve said. The redcoats sniggered in delight at her temper.
Piggot reached for her. She closed her eyes to his avid face; the blood pounding in her ears nearly drowned out the catcalls of the redcoats.
Her eyes flew open at the sound of staccato yells from the woods above the road. Like a pack of wild dogs, a group of men descended on the raiding party. In minutes the rebels had the redcoats howling back down the road.
All except Henry Piggot. Ignoring the fighting around him, he shoved Genevieve up against the cart, incautious in his fury. She heard herself scream.
"Let her go," someone commanded. The voice was full of quiet rage. Genevieve turned with a gasp of recognition.
"Calvin Greenleaf," she said, her knees nearly buckling with relief.
With reflexes made quick by years of Indian fighting, Calvin's arm snaked out and captured the back of Piggot's collar. The Englishman was dragged away, flailing and cursing.
Too late, Genevieve saw his knife. She cried out, but the blade had already found a home in Calvin's middle. She expected the young man to faint with the pain.
He didn't. If anything, his rage increased as he wrapped his arms about Piggot's neck. There was a dreadful snapping sound, and Piggot's body went slack.
Only then did Calvin allow himself to crumble. He slithered to the ground, using Piggot's bulk to cushion his fall.
Trebell's Landing was the scene of a jostling, noisy crowd pressing its way in around the supplies that were being unloaded. The chaos was overseen by the despairing French commissary Claude Blanchard.
Genevieve looked about in a daze. Calvin's company, under the command of Major General Henry Knox, had asked for the wagon, and she'd given it gladly, along with the roan. The wagon was needed for Calvin and then to drag the allies' heavy guns over the sandy track from Trebell's Landing to the theater of war.
Genevieve sat inside a cramped tent, moving her hands absently over Calvin's sweating brow. The fever was a bad sign, the doctor had said. Infection had set in.
He was still lucid, though, and Genevieve clung to that. When he opened his eyes she forced herself to smile encouragingly.
"Can I get you something, Cal? Some water or—"
He shook his head and frowned at her. "You shouldn't be here," he grumbled. "Your husband thinks you're on your way to Dancer's Meadow."
"And so I would have been," she replied evenly. "But I had the good fortune to run into an old friend."
He grimaced and looked away.
Genevieve knew it galled Calvin that he'd been wounded by Piggot, not even in a proper battle.
"I've been talking
to your lieutenant," she said. "According to him you've acted the hero more than once." She could see Calvin's eyes glazing over. The surgeon had warned her not to let him slip away. "Tell me about the Kentucky campaigns, Cal."
"A hundred yellow feathers," he said faintly, his mind wandering. "Braves, all of them, painted up like nightmares. It had been raining for days. Our powder was useless, the men half-starved. I didn't have any choice. Took all of their stores and ordnance…"
His lips curved into a smile, and suddenly he no longer looked like the world-weary soldier who had been brought to Trebell's Landing three days ago. Now Genevieve saw him as the youth she'd known: intense, burning with the will to achieve something for himself.
Yet he looked so weak just now. He was hurting. Genevieve went to the opening of the tent and looked out. The big guns of the Americans were being loaded onto wagons or dragged away by enlisted men, but there was still no sign of the hospital equipment the French had promised.
Genevieve ground her teeth in frustration. "Mr. Blanchard," she called to the harried French commissary.
He glared at her and tapped his foot impatiently. "Yes, madame, what is it?"
"The wounded men can't wait any longer, sir. Every bandage we have is soiled, and we need something to alleviate the pain."
"Sacredieu!" Blanchard exclaimed, stamping his foot. "De Grasse has ordered me to set up bake houses, and everything I need to function properly is still out on the Chesapeake!"
Genevieve could see that she'd get no help from Blanchard. He was an annoyingly fussy little man, enamored of order and precision. He was no more at home in Virginia than a lap dog on a coon hunt.
She glanced back at Calvin, who had begun to moan softly. Nearby, the surgeon was bandaging a wounded soldier and cursing the lack of medicines and equipment.
"What is it you need, sir?" she asked softly.
The doctor scowled at the unconscious man, whose face had been burned by mortar fire. Then he looked at Genevieve and rolled his eyes heavenward.
"A miracle, ma'am. That's what we need."
She gestured out at the bay. "Would some of the supplies from that ship help?"
"They'd do more good here than on the water."
It was all the impetus she needed. She ran down to the landing and lifted her skirts to wade out to a small dinghy moored at one of the docks. Behind her, she heard Blanchard's shouts of outrage. But by the time she turned to look at him, she was rowing smoothly out to the French ship.
The allied guns greeted the dawn of October 17 by belching death upon the British, who had been driven into a huddle within their crumbling fort. It had been storming through the night, preventing Cornwallis from ferrying his breakout detachments across the bay to Gloucester.
Roarke sat with his company behind the muddy trenches. He'd fought in several skirmishes over the past two weeks, killing more British than he cared to think about. The American soldiers were a tough, battle-trained lot who knew the land they were fighting for and used it to advantage.
Roarke had sustained a head wound from an explosion. The bandage kept slipping down over his shooting eye. But he was beginning to suspect that there wouldn't be much more shooting.
No more trenches needed to be dug. Now there was nothing to do but watch the artillerymen work the guns. By nine o'clock the return fire had ceased completely.
Finally, the sodden monotony was broken. A scarlet-coated man appeared on the crumbling parapet of the British horn works. The man beat with frantic desperation on a drum, although the sound was drowned out by the allied fire.
The Americans held their collective breath. By now every man was soldier enough to know what the drumming meant.
Soon after, an officer appeared, halfheartedly waving a white handkerchief. The pair began a slow trek toward the American lines.
The guns ceased to thunder. Roarke had never known a silence so profound. Only the melancholy tattoo of the drum could be heard now.
"La chamarade," a Frenchman nearby whispered. "The parley begins now."
The quiet that descended over York that night was not a peaceful one, although the rain and shooting had finally stopped. Roarke lay sleepless, wondering if a last, brash British mortar shell or cannonball would drop into their midst, killing him just when the end was in sight. He lifted his eyes to the remarkable decoration of stars in the cool, clear sky and put the notion from his head.
At dawn the harsh music of the Scots from the Seventy-sixth Regiment whined a salute to the allies. A jubilant reply came from the Royal Deux-Points regimental band. Roarke and his comrades scrambled to the parapet to see both sides crowded with men. He tried to summon rage at the enemy but found nothing within himself that resembled hatred.
The gouged, littered battlefield was all that was left of the ugly face of war.
Roarke looked away and shivered in the early morning chill. Perhaps, he told himself, the glory would come later, when the formal surrender took place. But for now there was only the silence to savor, and the thought that he'd finally be going home.
Some of the Americans were already leaving. Roarke was tempted to follow them. Then he remembered what Gene had said about seeing it through. He brushed the mud from his tattered coat and polished his boots.
The Americans and French formed a double line along the Hampton Road in readiness to receive the defeated British. In the afternoon the British marched from Yorktown to the strains of "The World Turn'd Upside Down."
Roarke noted that every Englishman kept his eyes trained on the French lines, not even sparing a glance for the Americans. It was as if they wanted to lessen their disgrace by surrendering to the French rather than the Continental Army.
No wonder, Roarke thought. The world's most powerful war machine had been defeated by a band of tattered, defiant rebels. But the Americans weren't about to be ignored. Their band burst into a blare of "Yankee Doodle," forcing the British, who had scorned and despised them for so long, to look them in the face.
When the sullen order to ground arms was given, the British began hurling their weapons into a pile in hopes of damaging them. General Lincoln, Washington's second in command, barked a curt warning. The defiance was cut short, and the arms were laid to rest with less violence.
Roarke stood and stared at the silver and brown pile of muskets and listened to the sobs and curses of the mortified British, until at last the ranks dispersed.
Washington's forces went to occupy Yorktown, and the patchwork of smaller companies dispersed. Drinking and celebrating began in earnest that evening.
But Roarke was ready to leave. He was no less jubilant than the men who clapped one another on the back and reveled in the heady sense of victory, but his jubilation was a quiet, fierce one. He was gathering up his few belongings in preparation for the journey back to Dancer's Meadow when Will Coomes found him.
"Leaving already?" Coomes asked, cocking his head so that his hat fell askew. "They've just unbunged a good supply of Jamaica water."
Roarke shook his head. "My part in this is done. I'm going home to give my wife a proper wedding and raise my son as an American." God, but it sounded good to say it. Roarke couldn't ask anything more.
But as he trudged up the road, he was enveloped by a great wave of loneliness. It was a long trip to Dancer's Meadow, and he didn't relish going it alone.
All up and down the Hampton Road people were celebrating. A good many of them were homeless, their houses having been destroyed in the siege, but they knew they'd rebuild, and this time it would be for a new nation. Roarke trudged past embracing couples and gamboling children and listened to the music and laughter and voices raised in song.
And then he heard his name being called. Faintly at first, then with gathering strength.
"Roarke! Roarke Adair!"
He stopped and froze. An arm waved frantically from the midst of the milling crowd on the road, and then Roarke saw a gleaming sable head and the adorable face he'd longed for in his dreams for wee
ks.
"Gennie!"
She twisted her way out of the crowd and ran toward him. He met her halfway on the road, filling his arms with her and swinging her about in the golden evening light. He didn't dare question her presence for fear of waking from the dream.
As if to convince him that she was real, Genevieve pressed her mouth to his.
"Roarke," she murmured. "Oh, Roarke…" Touching the stained bandage that circled his head, she frowned. "You're hurt!"
"It's nothing, love. Nothing at all." He kissed her again, his mouth lingering over hers longingly.
"You've won your war," she said when they parted.
"It appears I have, Gennie love," he replied, giving her shoulders a squeeze.
Her eyes passed over the noisy throng in the road one last time.
"Then let's go home, Roarke. Let's go home."
Chapter Thirteen
"Bless you," Mimsy Greenleaf whispered. "Bless both of you." She bent over Calvin's supine form and touched his face. Her eyes were brimming with tears when she looked up at Roarke and Genevieve.
"You've brought my boy home to me."
Joshua and the others came running as Calvin was taken to the house. The young man moaned and thrashed a little, but he was lucid enough to smile for his mother, Genevieve saw with relief. Quickly, she told the Greenleafs of Cal's bravery and how he'd sustained the injury. Mimsy and Joshua thanked her for staying with their boy, even as the Battle of York town raged throughout the Chesapeake.
Roarke had a brief conversation with Joshua and Curtis and followed Genevieve to her house.
"I've an errand in town," he told her with a smile that was both charming and uncharacteristically mysterious. "Joshua will bring you around later."
Genevieve was a bit mystified that he couldn't wait for her to bathe and change, but she accepted his kiss without questioning him.
"I'll see you later, Mrs. Adair," he said.
She laughed with delight at her new title and declared that later was too long to wait.