“Are you going to escort me back tonight?” she asked sweetly, knowing that he was supposed to be off-duty.
“I believe Major Hart has already volunteered for that pleasant assignment, ma’am,” he said, and this time the laughter in his eyes was apparent.
Colonel Beamish cleared his throat, and Sonya gave him her most brilliant smile.
“Are all of your young officers so shy, Colonel? I declare—here I see Captain Morgan almost every day, and he hasn’t even asked me to dance.”
She had him this time, there was no way in which he could escape his duty now. She saw him glance apologetically at the colonel, who growled impatiently “For heavens sake, Morgan, we don’t want Mrs. Brandon to think we’re all mannerless savages, do we?”
The musicians were playing another waltz, and Steve Morgan bowed to her again.
“I would be honored, ma’am.”
He danced well, although he did not hold her as closely as she had seen him hold the quadroon wench; and although she had half-expected him to be angry with her, he was only amused.
“You could have asked me to dance before!” she pouted, and he grinned at her teasingly.
“You’re a Senator’s wife, Sonya, sweet. Being a mere captain, I could not have presumed…”
“You presume a lot more!” she snapped at him, but he refused to be drawn into an argument with her.
“I didn’t think you would actually come today,” he said lightly. “Is it quite proper, with your husband away?”
“William knows, of course. I wrote to him, and he agreed that I should be—friendly. Especially since General Butler himself invited me. He’s an acquaintance of William’s.”
“I’m glad your husband is so understanding.”
She glanced at him sharply, but his face looked quite expressionless. And against her will, she found herself wondering if he was impatient to get back to his partner—if the girl had been his partner. Perhaps he was only being polite? She wanted to think so, but the way he had held that girl, the way she had laughed up into his face made her feel differently. How could he? How dared he? And yet, she knew him well enough by now to keep her thoughts on the subject to herself.
Steve Morgan did not ask her to dance again, and it was Major Hart who escorted Sonya back home that night. After he had left, she lay awake for hours, with sleep eluding her, even though she knew that he wouldn’t come.
The war dragged on, the spring dragged on, straggling into summer eventually; and their affair continued, somewhat cursorily.
Sonya heard regularly from her husband—he was busy in California. Politics and his other business affairs kept him away, he explained reasonably enough. Travel was extremely dangerous, she was safer where she was, although of course he missed her. Sometimes she hated William for staying away and longed for the safety and sanity that his return would bring her. What am I doing? she would wonder sometimes, despairingly. What is happening to me, what am I turning into? But she did not want to face the answers. She was Captain Morgan’s mistress, his casual light-of-love—and although she sensed that was the real extent of their relationship she refused to admit it.
Because she needed to feel that their relationship was more than a purely physical one, Sonya occasionally questioned Steve about himself, even though she had learned that he either avoided or brushed aside her curiosity as a rule. Sometimes, though he would let slip little pieces of information or trivia that intrigued her more.
He was younger than she, of course—only twenty-four, and had been sent to New Orleans because he spoke French. Had he travelled much? It was obvious he had, but he would give her no details, although just once he mentioned offhandedly that he had lived in France for two and a half years. It surprised her. How had he managed it? Did he have relatives in France? He merely grinned at her mockingly.
“My—my stepdaughter lives in Paris,” Sonya offered. “William says he will send for her when the war is over.”
“Oh?” he said without interest, and then he leaned forward to kiss her, and the subject was closed. It did not take Sonya long to realize that he knew exactly how to silence her when she was in a talkative mood.
Once, when Steve arrived late for one of their meetings in the woods, coming up softly behind her and scaring her half to death, she said petulantly, “Why, you even walk like a—a cat, or a wild Indian!”
“But I am one,” he teased her, kissing her between her breasts. “I lived with the Comanche for three years. If I’d seen you then I’d have taken all your lovely hair and worn it at my belt—” he pulled it loose as he spoke and Sonya shuddered, half-believing him.
“Well—you are like a savage, you know! There is something—something untamed and uncivilized about you. I think that you are quite without scruples or conscience, and it frightens me.”
He only laughed, his lips moving down below her navel as he unfastened the hooks that held her gown together, one by one, and she forgot, after a while, to be afraid.
Sonya Brandon thought often about the danger of their liaison and how it must eventually end—for the sake of her marriage and her own peace of mind; but when it happened she was completely unprepared for it, and the circumstances that caused it.
They had fallen into the habit of going riding together, quite openly, for after all, everyone knew that she had always enjoyed her daily rides, and his duty was to escort her. But one morning she waited for him and he did not come. Then, early in the afternoon a strange sergeant came instead, touching his hat to her.
“Where is Captain Morgan?” She was in a rage by this time, and her anger made her blunt. She wondered why the man seemed embarrassed and reluctant to speak. Imperious and insistent in turn, she finally wormed the whole sordid story from him.
There had been a duel the previous night. Over a woman. And the captain had shot and seriously wounded his superior officer of all people—a Major Hart.
“Dear God!” Sonya burst out, unable to hide her feelings. “What did they do to him? Where is he now?”
Shuffling his feet awkwardly the sergeant admitted that Captain Morgan was under arrest, and a prisoner in the stockade. And if the major died, which seemed likely, he would in all probability be executed.
“Oh, God!” she said again; and then, “this woman—the one they fought over, who was she?”
The man obviously did not want to tell her, but when she threatened to go to the general himself and get the story from him, it all came out.
The Captain had a woman—they said he had been keeping her, although that of course was merely rumor. True or not, he’d been walking with the woman on the street last night, in civilian clothes, when the major had come upon them. No one knew what exactly had happened—they said the major had made some disparaging remark and angry words had followed. But the captain had challenged him and the two men had fought with pistols at twenty paces in a deserted churchyard.
It was only later, from her friends in New Orleans, that Sonya heard the whole story of the scandal that had set the town gossips buzzing. The woman was a quadroon.
The long years of rigid training in etiquette and deportment that were her birthright as a Southern lady helped keep Sonya outwardly calm and unruffled. She told her friends, with a shrug of distaste that she had never liked or trusted the man—had always sensed there was something wicked about him.
“My dear—” one of the older women leaned forward, her face falsely commiserating. “I really think you should consider yourself fortunate. I mean—imagine a man like that appointed your escort! I mean, one never knows, with his kind…”
“No, one doesn’t,” Sonya agreed.
Outwardly placid and unchanged, she raged inwardly, and despised Steve Morgan completely. She hoped they would hang him. And she prayed that her husband would return to her soon, to take her away from the war and its attendant nastiness.
3
As the second week of his incarceration limped slowly by, Steve Morgan also prayed in his o
wn way that something would happen.
The major lingered, hovering on the edge of death, and Steve stayed in the small gray cell they’d put him in, with only one hour’s exercise allowed him every day.
He hated it—this impersonal imprisonment. Even worse than the thought of the hanging or the firing squad that might await him. All his life he had enjoyed the outdoors and the sense of freedom that open spaces had given him. And now, because of his own burst of temper and his too-good aim, he found himself locked in here.
He spent his time either pacing restlessly around his cell or sitting morosely at the rickety wooden table with his chin in his hands, staring into space. Occasionally, he forced himself to read. Books he hadn’t seen nor thought about since he had attended the university in Paris. He remembered a doctor from India whom he had met in London—a gentle, philosophic man who had spoken of an ancient religion he called yoga. They had travelled to Italy and to Germany together, and Gopal had tried to teach Steve about detachment and the power of the mind. But in those days, he hadn’t been quite ready for philosophy or a way of life that withdrew from life itself. Now—he had time. Too much time—or not enough. It depended on how he looked at it. At any rate, he found himself thinking and remembering more and more about Gopal, and his yoga teachings. Strength, that was it. A man’s strength comes from within himself and from the knowledge that he is part of everything that is.
“We do not look for outside help from some deity, you see,” Gopal had said once. “To us, each man is God. There is a potential in all of us that needs to be understood to be tapped.”
Trouble is, Steve thought ruefully, I’ve never been penned in before. Not for this long, anyhow. He wished, sometimes, that Major Hart would die and get it all over with.
The only visitors Steve Morgan had were his erstwhile corporal, who brought him daily bulletins on the major’s condition and the general’s mood, and Denise—the lovely quadroon girl over whom he’d fought the major. Denise, who had been the perfect mistress—uncomplicated, undemanding, and completely uninhibited. She came daily, in spite of the leering looks and ribald comments she received from the soldiers who guarded him; and she brought him books and fresh fruit and cried—every single time.
They spoke in French so that the soldiers who lounged outside his cell would not understand, and Denise blamed herself, while he reassured her impatiently and sometimes irritably. Occasionally, when he’d been angry with her, tired of her eternal tears and unnecessarily harsh, he would think that this time she wouldn’t return. But she always did.
Sonya Brandon neither came nor sent any message—but he’d expected no such thing from her in any case. Only her icy unapproachability had attracted him to her in the first place—and later, for a time at least, the surprising passion and abandonment he’d discovered in her. But she was too full of guilt feelings, and she had begun to cling and pout and demand too much. Steve put her out of his mind easily without any pangs. As a matter of fact, there had only been one woman, apart from his mother, that he had not found too easy to forget, and she had been his Comanche wife. He had married her when he was only fifteen, and she had died in an Apache raid, carrying his child. Since then, there had been many women, but he had loved none of them. He made love to them, and in a way he needed them, but he was ruthless and innately selfish in his dealings with women. One would do as well as another, and if he took the time and trouble to arouse a woman physically it was only because he preferred taking a woman who was willing and passionate. Sonya Brandon had begun to bore him, but for Denise he felt an almost unwilling kind of affection, perhaps because of her naturalness and spontaneity. At least Denise had never demanded or tried to pretend.
On the evening of the fifteenth day of Steve’s imprisonment, Major Hart finally died. Steve spent most of the night writing a long and rather difficult letter to his grandfather, who was his closest living relative. He had already been informed in no uncertain terms by General Butler himself that if the major died, his own sentence would be carried out without delay. Army officers in wartime did not engage in duels with each other, no matter what the provocation. And an example must be set, not only to the Union soldiers, but to the citizens of occupied New Orleans as well.
Dispassionately, Steve Morgan understood the truth behind the general’s reasoning. If he did not particularly want to die, he was not afraid of death either. It was something he had long ago learned to live with and accept as inevitable. He had been close to death many times, and the thought had ceased to frighten him. There was, in fact, a streak of recklessness in Steve’s nature that had made him, on several occasions, almost tempt death. He enjoyed taking chances and found a kind of excitement in danger. His only regret now, when he allowed himself to think about it, was that it had to be this way—locked up like an animal to wait for death, instead of going out to find it.
When they came for him the next morning, he was already dressed and waiting. Tossing the letter he had written onto the table, he asked one of the soldiers to give it to Denise when she came. He had scrawled her a short note, lightly worded, asking her to see that the letter to his grandfather was safely despatched. And he had enclosed, as well, all the money he had on his person.
Now that everything had been taken care of, Steve Morgan left his cell with the soldiers, wondering only, with a detached kind of curiosity, why they hadn’t bound his arms, or sent him a priest.
He expected to be taken out into the courtyard and summarily executed, but they escorted him, instead, to the general’s private office.
General Butler came from behind his desk, looking angry and disapproving. A medium-built, rather nondescript looking man in civilian clothes turned away from the window, where he’d been standing and glanced at Steve, studying him without seeming to, his gray eyes cool and noncommittal.
“All right—you soldiers may wait outside,” the general said brusquely. They saluted smartly and wheeled around, closing the door behind them; leaving Steve standing at attention before the general’s desk.
A frown drawing his bushy eyebrows together, Butler turned abruptly to the civilian.
“There’s your man Mr. Bishop,” he said gruffly. “A foolhardy, undisciplined ruffian, if you ask my opinion, but I suppose he might meet your qualifications.” His glance swept coldly over Steve. “Captain Morgan, you may consider yourself under orders to answer any questions Mr. Bishop may put to you. Mr. Bishop,” he added dryly, “is with the Department of the Army in Washington—Special Services. It appears he’s been studying your dossier for some time.”
Turning his back, General Butler stamped off to the window, where he remained looking out, his stiff carriage showing his patent disapproval.
With a slight, mirthless smile, Bishop walked behind the desk and sat down calmly, leafing through some papers there.
He looked up at last, and met Steve Morgan’s carefully guarded eyes with a level glance.
“Well, Captain Morgan, I think I have your complete file here, but there are a few questions I’d like to ask—a few gaps you might fill in for me, if you please.”
Jim Bishop had, at first glance, impressed Steve as being colorless and ordinary. But by the end of a half-hour Steve had formed a grudging respect for the man, who was not only coldly intelligent, but surprisingly clever and knowledgeable as well. He seemed to know more about Steven Morgan than it was possible for anyone to know—and what he did not know, his blunt questions had soon informed him of. Steve was frank with the man—after all, he had nothing left to lose, and it had soon become apparent to him that he might have something to gain—it was obvious that Bishop had something in mind; he would hardly make the journey here from Washington, or be so interested in Steve’s past history if he did not have a purpose for doing so.
All the same, he listened almost unbelievingly when Bishop offhandedly offered him a job—of a sort; and then went on to outline its risks and possible disadvantages in his concise, rather pedantic manner.
“You understand, Captain Morgan, that technically, at least, you’ll be branded a deserter. But since you are under sentence of death, it will not surprise anyone that you’d seize a chance to escape, if such an opportunity presented itself. In actuality, you will still be carried on the army payroll and will retain your present rank, although you will not be wearing a uniform. But your name will only be carried on our books.” Bishop glanced down at the papers before him for a moment before he looked up again. “You have travelled a lot, and you know several languages; that alone will be an asset to us. You will still be required to travel. Perhaps in Europe, where we are having trouble with Confederate spies trying to drum up support for their cause—and perhaps in the Western states and territories of this country. You’re a Western man, and for the most part, this area will be your base of operations. On occasion, you may be sent into Mexico.
“You’ll be contacted from time to time by—other members of our organization, and given various assignments. Needless to say, all these will carry a considerable amount of risk and danger. But you’re used to that, of course.”
Bishop’s eyes were hooded, for a moment. “If you are ever apprehended, it must be understood that naturally, we’ll disclaim all knowledge or responsibility for you or your actions.”
He looked inquiringly at Steve, who said a trifle wryly, “Oh—naturally!”
Bishop gave one of his thin smiles.
“Good—we’re beginning to understand each other, I think!” He continued, “After you leave here, I will see that you are contacted by—um—one of our more experienced men. He’ll fill you in about the type of assignment you’ll be handling, and what we’ll expect. And—as a suggestion—you should build yourself a reputation as a gunfighter—a fast draw—a man who will hire his gun out for pay. But try, if possible, to stay just on the right side of the law. I think you know what I mean, and it would save needless complications. If you have to kill a man, try to make it happen in a fair fight—in front of witnesses. Do I make myself clear?”
Sweet Savage Love Page 3