A Path Worth Taking

by Mariella Starr

  Beth fed Bonnie an extra large scoop of grain from a supply hidden under the loose straw in the loft and grabbed the bucket of milk. She hurried through the tunnel to the main cellar of the house.

  The secret passageways had been forbidden for family use as long as she had known about them. They had been built for the sole purpose of helping slaves escape to the north. It was of paramount importance for her family’s involvement in the network of secret routes and safe houses to remain unknown. Had their secret been discovered, her family members would have been jailed, fined or hung.

  She put the bucket down inside the passageway and argued briefly with herself. The cellar tunnels where they were hiding were cold and leaky. She was tired of being damp and cold. While the lieutenant was gone, she would run upstairs and grab extra quilts.

  The house was silent when she peered around the cellar door. The lieutenant had not returned. Beth kicked off the loud clomping boots and ran up the stairs barefooted. She gathered quilts and several warm wool-crocheted bed covers. At the last second, she grabbed her little bottle of scent. The damp earthen smell of the cellar and their body odors were becoming sickening. She was at the bottom of the main staircase when the front door knob clicked.

  Frozen in fear, Beth heard two men talking outside. She realized the lieutenant had been halted and was speaking to one of his men on the other side of the door. She bolted across the entryway losing her grip on the little bottle of scent. The stopper came out and clattered to the floor as the liquid spilled over her hand. She had no time to stop and ran to the kitchen to slip through the cellar door and down the steps.

  Lieutenant Wakefield smelled the scent as soon as he stepped into the foyer. Smelled it and recognized it. He followed it through the house and heard the cellar door close quietly. He stopped long enough to light a lantern before following. Several quilts had been dropped on the stone floor at the bottom of the stairs. He raised the lantern and saw a small figure dart past him, making a run for it. Garret was quicker and caught the culprit by the scruff of his neck, lifting the boy off his feet.

  Seconds later Garret was dodging small fists, scratching nails, and biting teeth. Getting a good grip on the boy, Garret gave him a hard shake. “Settle down, youngster!”

  The boy went limp for a few seconds and then with a sudden burst of flying fists, he broke free and scampered to the steps. Seconds behind him, Garret grabbed the boy by the back of his jacket only to have him slide out of it, and the chase was on. He caught the boy again and during the scuffle the boy’s hat was knocked off. Long brown braids fell out of the hat.

  “Stop it,” Garret ordered, giving the girl a hard shake and turning her around so he could see her. This was no child. It was a young woman in her late adolescence or early twenties.

  “Where have you been hiding?” She didn’t answer, and Garret could tell she was furious by the way her small chest was heaving.

  “Answer me.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “I have already been there, and you should be ashamed of yourself for using such language.” Garret said calmly. “I won’t hurt you. Is there anyone else hiding here?”

  There was a defiant shake of her head.

  “Then what are you doing here alone?”

  “I live here, why should I leave?”

  “Because these are dangerous times, you little idiot. It’s not safe for a young girl on her own. Isn’t there anyone who could take you in and protect you?”

  There was another negative shake of her head. “I only have my brother. The last I heard he was in Petersburg, Vicksburg.”

  The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed. “Is he a grayback or blue?” he demanded.

  “My brother is an officer in the Union Army.”

  Garret regarded the girl. “I’m letting you loose. If you fight or scratch at me again, I will put you across my knee. Do we understand each other?”

  She swallowed and nodded agreement, and he released his hold on her. She scurried a few feet from him.

  “How old are you?” Garret demanded.

  Her little chin came up in defiance. “That’s none of your business!”

  He smiled at her spirit. “You might as well answer me, if you don’t I’ll dust those boy britches you’re wearing, and you’ll tell me soon enough.”

  She sucked in a furious breath of air and her chest heaved again. He waited her out, and she turned her head so as not to face him.

  “I’m twenty-one.”

  “You’re a little liar. Try again!”

  She met his eyes, but then dropped hers. “Eighteen.”

  “When was the last time you ate properly?”

  “When your troops invaded my property without permission. You killed our hog!”

  “Spoils of war,” Garret replied.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Whoever gets here first, takes what they need. What’s your name?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  His hand gripped her shoulder, turned her around and he smacked her hard across the bottom, hard enough to elicit a yelp. “Enough with the swearing! Have you been living here since we camped outside?” he asked.

  Beth remained silent.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know the young colored man I saw when we rode in, would you? Is he a slave?”

  “My family may live in Maryland, but we have never believed in slavery!” The answer came swiftly and defiantly with a tilt of a small chin.

  “Good,” Garret said. He caught her by the shoulders and propelled her through the house.

  “What are you going to do with me?” Beth demanded.

  “I’m going to let you clean up, so you look and smell considerably better,” Garret said. “Then I’m going to feed you a decent meal. You can keep me company this evening and be sociable, or you can fight me. If you fight me, I’ll blister your backside. All I want is decent female companionship and not the kind following the army camps.

  “I want you to present and behave yourself as the young gentlewoman I believe you to be. My intention is not to hurt you, but to have a decent conversation with a pretty girl sitting across the table from me. My troops will pull out in the morning, and your farm will still be standing when we leave. You have my word.”

  Beth swallowed and raised fearful eyes to him. “Do you swear you won’t hurt me?”

  “You have my word of honor as an officer.”

  “I will shoot you right between the eyes if you’re lying,” Beth threatened.

  “So be it,” Garret agreed with a wry smile at her threat.

  ***

  Beth watched as the men rode off her land in straight line formations. She saw Lieutenant Wakefield glance once over his shoulder at the house. Then he deliberately turned and spurred his horse to take the lead. She had already memorized his tall, lanky body, his blondish-brown hair, and his dark, penetrating blue eyes.

  She was standing in her bedroom window, a ruined woman. According to her upbringing, she should feel soiled and defiled. She didn’t feel despoiled.

  At the lieutenant’s request, Beth had put on her best dress, fixed her hair, and joined him for dinner in her house at her table. As far as she was aware, none of his company knew she was in the house. While she bathed and dressed, he had closed the drapes in the two front rooms. Two meals had been delivered to the back door by his troops cook’s helper. It wasn’t the best meal she had ever eaten, but it was the first time she’d been full in a long time. They talked about their previous lives, of politics, music, and books. She only gave him her first name. Lieutenant Wakefield had been a gentleman and Beth had let down her guard. A small jug of wine had been shared between them.

  She remembered the exact moment when the tempo of their evening had changed. The lieutenant had wound one of her mother’s music boxes and listened to the song. She had known what he would do long before he kissed her. She had not had a hug or a touch from anyone except Lettie since her father died. It seemed forever since an
yone else had touched her.

  Beth discovered male contact was warm and seductive, a warm hug was security, and a gentle kiss broke down barriers. One kiss had led to another. She had wanted his kiss, had wanted to be held and to feel safe. She had wanted to feel beautiful in the eyes of a man. He made her feel all those things as she had trembled in his arms. She had not expected to want intimacy. She had not expected to feel passion or to want him as a man. The lieutenant had realized this and had offered to stop. She was the one who wanted to continue. She was the one who wanted to know what it felt like to be desired and cherished by a man.

  She looked back to her bed. The dark stain on the sheets was proof of her innocence, although it mattered to no one except her. She had given herself to a stranger.

  Beth rubbed a hand over her flat stomach. Lieutenant Garret Wakefield had made her a woman and shown her the delights of her body and his. She had not known such feelings existed. The sudden heat and desire had turned her into a sensuous woman she had not known she could be. He had made love to her several times during their shared hours together, and she wondered if she would be left with a result of his virility. She touched the whisker burns on her face, her tender breasts, and touched her stomach, again. She knew, even if she carried his child, only she would carry the disgrace. She would never see him, again.

  She had become Lieutenant Garret Wakefield’s spoils of war.

  Chapter One

  Early March 1868, Independence, Missouri

  Beth stood off to the side and out of the way, as the wagon master, Captain Claude Howell, checked their wagon for supplies. His second, Sergeant Joe Braxton, inspected the animals. Most of the men in charge of the wagon trains carried their previous military rank. It signified their ability to lead.

  The barrel-chested Captain Claude Howell gave a nod to her brother Nate. “You’re short on sorghum.”

  “I bought the last available from the trading post.”

  The wagon master glared at Beth. “Your woman?”

  “My sister,” Nate replied.

  “Where’s her husband?”

  “She isn’t married. We are traveling together.”

  “Get her married off. I don’t like unmarried women on my trains,” the man growled. “We only have thirty-eight wagons on this train. It won’t be big enough to cross safely. I don’t need women trouble on top of it.”

  “She is my responsibility,” Nate said.

  “I said marry her off. No good will come of her twitching her ass at other men!”

  “That’s enough! Do we pass muster or not?” Nate demanded.

  “You pass,” Joe Braxton interrupted. “Move your wagon into the line.

  Captain Howell held out his hand, and money was exchanged. Nate signed his part of the contract and exchanged it for a contract from the wagon master.

  Beth watched as the last of their money went into the hands of a man she neither liked nor believed they should trust. She had told her brother so, warned him, except he wouldn’t listen to her.

  Nate believed Captain Howell was their best chance of getting to Oregon. Not many wagon trains followed the famous gateway to the west now. Indian uprisings had increased in the last several years, although parts of the trail were monitored by the military. Unfortunately, according to the newspapers, most of it was isolated, treacherous lands, overrun by savages who murdered and scalped men, women and children.

  Yet, her brother persisted in the idea of going west. He believed getting to the free land of Oregon would be the end of their troubles.

  Beth knew Nate blamed her. His homecoming had not been one of glorious victory he thought his due. He had returned home at the end of the war to a worthless inheritance.

  She and Lettie had heard the gunfire and the advancing soldiers. After living through four years of war, they were well practiced at knowing how to react. They had run and hidden in the tunnels, without knowing which army was coming. Unfortunately, Jacob had not managed to join them in time. Deep in the tunnels, they heard the gun and cannon fire exploding above ground and it had forced them further underground. They had huddled near the hidden door in case they had to run and hide in the orchards, until they had been forced into another part of the tunnels to escape the smoke. The concussion from the mortar fire shook the very ground above and below them. They knew something was burning and they could hear the screams of pain and death of men and horses.

  Much later when it was silent, Beth and Lettie had crawled out of hiding, emerging into a smoking battlefield of burned buildings and orchards. Everything was gone. The house and the barns had been reduced to piles of smoking ashes. The orchards were smoldering ruins. What had survived five generations and the long years of war was now leveled.

  Dead and wounded soldiers had been left behind as the conflict moved on. The women had no idea who had won or who had lost as the soldiers wore both uniforms. The moans and cries of the wounded and dying haunted them for days. Beth and Lettie carried water to the men and ripped their petticoats to pieces bandaging those who might have a chance to survive, provided someone came for them. Help came too late for most.

  Only a few days later, Robert E. Lee surrendered at some place called Appomattox in Virginia. The war was finally over. The Union’s victory was not a victory for the St. Claires. Their farm, that had withstood the raids and the struggles for four long years was gone. In the final days of the war, their home was burned to the ground, and their orchards charred and destroyed. Beth and Lettie moved into one of the few small cabins, that hadn’t been burned. The one room cabins were where the hired help had lived. There was nothing left, but scavengers still came and they hid in the passageways for safety.

  Union troops moved through the countryside in wagons gathering their dead and the bodies of those who had been their enemy only days before. Medic wagons carried off the few who lived. What happened on St. Claire land was not even considered a named battle, only an accidental skirmish between opposing forces. Skirmish, battle, or war—whatever name given to it meant little when the life you had known had disappeared in flames.

  Beth and Lettie had found Jacob’s body in the charred orchards and buried him. They didn’t know which side had fired his death bullet. Did it matter? Their dear friend and brother was gone. Several days later, Lettie went out to forage for food and she never returned. Beth searched for her as much as she dared. With so many soldiers moving through the area, heading north or south, it was too dangerous for a woman to be out alone.

  She never found Lettie. Grieving for her lost friends, Beth had salvaged what little she could and lived in the small cabin, grateful to have it as shelter.

  It took Nate St. Claire several months to make his way home. When he arrived, he was an angry, disillusioned man and he blamed Beth.

  Nate was angry and resentful that he had not returned from the war as a decorated hero. He had lost three fingers on his left hand, yet, since he was right-handed, the Army had not considered his injury serious enough to discharge him. He could still pull the trigger of a rifle with his right hand. He had spent so much time in an Army hospital they had accused him of malingering.

  He was angry he did not return to his former prosperous life. While he had been gone, he had held onto the belief that when the war was over, he would return home to his rightful station in life as the son of a wealthy farmer. He thought life after the war would conform to his expectations of what he considered his due. However, four years had passed since he had left and there was no indulgent father to work the farm and tend to all the details, which had allowed Nate to live a pampered life. He blamed Beth for his coming home to the ashes of his birthright. His sister was living in what he considered little more than a slave cabin. The orchards were decimated, and the fields were fallow.

  Although their family owned no slaves, the farm had been prosperous before the war. Beth had held the farm together for as long as she could following the death of their father. John St. Claire had died from a heart attac
k not long after Nate had gone to war. Nevertheless, when there was no money left for her to pay the hired labor, farm laborers moved on. Only her loyal friends, Lettie and Jacob, had remained with her.

  In the aftermath of the war with most of the country in ruins, stepping back in time was not possible. Beth might not have fought in the war, but she had lived through it. Nate seemed to think she had had it easy and should have done something to stop the armies from destroying their property. When she had demanded what, what could she have possibly done…Nate had flown into a temper and retreated into silence as he often did since his return.

  They had tried for almost three years to resurrect the farm. As it was, they could barely make ends meet and pay the taxes. Nate was not a farmer. He was a young man who had been spoiled by his father.

  John St. Claire had envisioned his son a war hero and bought him a commission in the first wave of volunteers for the Army of the Potomac. Her father had used his local influence to secure his son a position where he thought he would be safe and advance in rank.

  Nate had spent the first three years of his military career as an aide to General McDonald stationed in Washington, D. C. He organized social parties and banquets for the senior officers. He had spent those years in an office, safe and well quartered until he had been abruptly transferred. His rank had been stripped from him, and he gave Beth no explanation as to why.

  Nate had been sent to front lines of the Richmond–Petersburg Campaign. During the last nine months of the war, Union troops dug thirty miles of trench lines and bombarded the city. Their goal was to disrupt the crucial supply lines of the Confederacy. It was there, that Nate had lost his fingers.

  Her brother would not discuss his war service but bitterly blamed General McDonald for his change of duty assignment and loss of rank. Beth often felt guilty when she wondered what really happened that made the general transfer Nate directly into a battleground.