by Cat Lindler
“What happened to Tarleton?”
McFee lifted a bushy brow. “Oh, he wouldn’t give up. Not Bloody Ban. You know how he is, puffed up with his own pride. Neck or nothing, all for the glory of the Empire. He tried to turn his retreating men, shouted and sweared at them, but his soldiers ignored him. When his horse was shot out from under him, Doctor Johnson gave Tarleton his own horse, then marched over to Morgan’s army under a white flag and offered his services to the patriots.” McFee guffawed. “Can you imagine? The Butcher’s own surgeon offering to tend to the enemy?”
His hunger satisfied, Ford smiled and slouched back in the chair. “I would expect Tarleton had no liking for the good doctor’s compassion toward the rebels.”
Still chortling, McFee shook his head. “No, siree, he didn’t. He still had forty regulars of the Seventeenth Light Dragoons. He led them and fourteen officers in a charge to recover his artillery. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Washington and his cavalry stopped them and took off after Bloody Ban and a couple of officers getting away. When Washington caught up to them, they fought like a roomful of scrapping bobcats. Tarleton shot at Washington, hit his horse instead. Then Bloody Ban took off, his tail between his legs. In all, the battle lasted only one hour.”
“What was the tally?”
“Tarleton lost a hundred and ten, and Morgan captured another seven hundred and twelve. We gained quite a bit more than prisoners, however. Morgan took two artillery grasshoppers, thirty-five wagons, a hundred horses, and eight hundred muskets. He even captured the British officers’ slaves. Best of all, Cornwallis lost his entire light troops. When Tarleton returned to Cornwallis’s camp, though the old man didn’t accuse him outright, he made Tarleton understand that, as commander, the Butcher held responsibility for the defeat.”
Ford thanked McFee for the information, as well as the food and ale, and made his way back to the garrison. As he walked, he digested the importance of McFee’s words. Without British light troops to stage sudden attacks on the militia and with Tarleton virtually out of the picture, it seemed, for the first time, that Marion and the patriots had a genuine opportunity to drive the redcoats into the sea. The war might end sooner than any of them imagined. That revelation led to bitter thoughts of Willa, her bewildering bullheadedness, and marriage.
As soon as Willa walked through Willowbend’s front door, Marlene descended like a winged fury. With rage contorting her features, Marlene drew back her arm, striking Willa across the face. “You ungrateful chit,” she screeched. “Where have you been? Your father is lying upstairs near death, and you are nowhere to be found.”
Willa raised a hand to her cheek as the blood drained from her brain. She threw a bewildered glance at Quinn, who scurried to Marlene’s side.
“Now, Lady Bellingham,” Quinn said soothingly. He took the woman by the arm. “You know full well the doctor instructed you not to excite yourself. Allow me to handle this situation with Miss Wilhelmina while you retire to your bedchamber.”
Blue bolts of fire shot from Marlene’s eyes. “Indeed, Quinn,” she said in a calmer voice. “I expect I shall do that. Do not allow that girl to leave the premises. Lock her in her room if you must.” Gathering up her skirt, she pivoted on a heel, and swept up the stairs.
Willa faced Quinn. “What did Marlene mean? What happened to Papa?”
Quinn hugged an arm around her shoulders and led her into the parlor. He urged her to sit, perched beside her, and took her hands in his.
“You are frightening me,” she said at his doleful expression. “What happened?”
“Your father had a seizure of the heart, Willa.”
Tears flooded her throat. “Is he dead?” she whispered. She silently cursed Aidan for taking so long to escort her home. Deep inside, however, she knew he was not at fault. She had left Willowbend of her own free will to search for the Swamp Fox. And were it not for the snakebite, she would have returned weeks ago. She could not blame Aidan for the accident and her subsequent decision to remain and nurse him back to health.
Quinn shook his head and squeezed her hands. “He is alive, though he can neither move nor speak and seems unable to recognize any of us.”
Her throat worked painfully. “When did this transpire?”
“Early last week. The doctor had warned Colonel Bellingham about his heart. He recommended your father resign his commission and return to England. I gather the doctor also disapproved of Marlene, feeling such a young wife would put an additional strain on your father’s heart. His lordship, being the man he is, declined to follow the doctor’s advice regarding either his military position or his … marital activities with Marlene.”
Willa nodded. Her father revered his military service. As to Marlene, he would allow no criticism of her.
“Then last week when he received news from Cornwallis of Tarleton’s defeat, the shock sent him into a fury. His wife was with him at the time he read the letter. She reported that his lordship simply clutched his chest. His face turned red as though he were suffering an attack of apoplexy, and he fell to the floor. She waited several hours before calling for the doctor. She said she was too stricken and distraught to leave him.”
Bile surged up from Willa’s gut. “And had she sought medical help sooner, he would not be in this state.” She turned to gaze out the front window, her body stiffening to marble.
Quinn grasped her chin to bring her back around. “Look at me, Willa,” he said sternly.
Though wrath rode her hard, she raised her eyes to his face.
Quinn frowned. “I realize you desire to blame your father’s condition on Marlene. I must tell you that you have no reason to do so. According to the doctor, once Colonel Bellingham suffered his seizure, immediate medical assistance would have produced no better results. His lordship’s state is a result of the attack, not neglect.”
She listened with half an ear, unwilling to accept Quinn’s words. Yet no matter how fervently she longed to lay the disaster at Marlene’s dainty feet, she had no doubt Quinn spoke the truth. He had no love for Marlene and would not lie. But her grief demanded an outlet, and her stepmother made a suitable target.
“You should know something else,” Quinn said.
“Miss Wilhelmina!”
Willa jerked up her head at the voice, one she immediately recognized and had no desire to hear at this moment or any other. Thomas Digby stood in the parlor doorway, his uniform pristine, his blond hair curled to perfection. His inappropriate presence and insolent air elevated her anger to the boiling level.
Digby strode into the room, a saber swinging at his side, and stopped in front of her. He clasped his hands together behind his back. “I’ll not have you upsetting your mother any further,” he said in an icy tone.
She turned to Quinn. An unreadable expression settled on his face. “What is he doing here?” she hissed under her breath. But she knew; truly she did. Her stepmother’s lover was Digby, not Banastre Tarleton or any other officer. Digby was sharing Marlene’s bed while her father lay paralyzed in his sickbed. She raised her chin and glared at Digby. “Your words expose your ignorance. Marlene is my stepmother, not my mother.”
“You are insolent, child,” he said with a snort like a penned bull.
Child? At one time Digby had courted her. Now the slimy toad dared to call her a child. Her thoughts flashed back to her time with Aidan. She was most certainly no longer a child.
Digby flipped aside the tails of his regimental coat, took an armchair across from her as though he—not her father—were the master of the house, and crossed his legs. As Quinn had fallen silent before answering her, she now sent him a questioning look.
“Lady Bellingham asked me to assist with your father’s correspondence and business,” Digby replied instead, “such as the running of this estate, since Colonel Bellingham is incapable of tending to those matters himself. She graciously offered me residence as a guest to spare me the ride from town each day.”
Willa fixed him with a hard s
tare. “And you could not wait until after Papa died to crawl into Marlene’s bed, could you?”
“Willa!” Quinn said.
She’d not quite finished. “And Marlene, gracious lady and loyal wife that she is, welcomed you with open arms … and legs, did she not?”
Digby’s face turned purple. He surged to his feet, his hands balled into fists. “You will hold your tongue, you willful bitch, and take yourself to your bedchamber.”
She jumped up, stopping inches from him. Her hands shook, not from fear but from the rage pulsing through her blood. Even now she had weapons hidden on her person and weighed the wisdom of planting a knife in some vital organ of his. On reflection, she resolved to leave that pleasure to her father. “You have no authority to issue dictates to me. I know what you are and what you and Marlene have done behind Papa’s back. When he recovers from this setback, I shall inform him of your trysts with his wife in the gazebo and the stables and her cries as she urged you on. Your military career is finished, or it will be when the colonel learns of your treachery. He is not so old he cannot call you out on the field of honor and put a bullet through your sinful heart.”
His body went so still and stiff he resembled one of the garden’s Greek statues.
Quinn came quickly to his feet, grasped Willa’s arm, and pulled her away, as though he knew she was perfectly capable of killing Digby where he stood. He rushed her from the room and up the stairs. She gave no protest, not caring where they were going.
“Jwana has fretted herself to a nub,” Quinn muttered as he moved her along beside him. “We received your note, of course, but expected your return long before now. That was a foolish action, taking off after Francis Marion alone.”
She grasped not a word of what he said, although some corner of her mind registered his voice. After throwing open the door to her bedchamber, he gently pushed her into Jwana’s arms.
A half moon sailed through the black heavens to spill its silver light through Willa’s open balcony doors. She could not sleep … a recurrent situation, it seemed. As she stood by the doors in her bare feet, a blanket swathed about her, she savored the caress of the cold air on her cheeks and looked out over her moonlit home.
Earlier, she visited her father. Her heart moved into her throat at the colonel’s condition. He seemed to have shrunk and transformed into a white-haired old man. The bedclothes nearly swallowed up his frail body. Her father was always so robust and full of life. But now, a deadened pall of shock made her limbs wooden and rooted her to the floor. Close to death, he stared unseeing at the canopy above his bed. Shallow breaths hardly lifted his thin chest. She stumbled forward and dropped into a chair by the bedside. Picking up his cold hand, covered in almost translucent skin, she spoke to him. For the barest moment, she imagined he clutched her fingers. That small movement lifted her hopes.
Afterward, dispirited by her father’s image, Willa suffered through a hellish supper with Digby presiding like a king at the head of the formal dining table. Her lip curled as she silently vented her contempt at his audacity in usurping her father’s place and at Marlene’s callousness in allowing him to do so. The price was high, but she choked down the tirade stinging her throat. It would serve no purpose. Marlene had trained Willa well in the futility of expressing her opinions. When Marlene quizzed her on her weeks of absence and hurled imprecations at her head because she refused to offer an explanation, Willa pushed back from the table and retired to her bedchamber.
The door squeaked behind her back. “I have an exceedingly sharp knife that howls for your blood, Digby,” she said without bothering to identify the intruder. “Turn right around and take yourself off, or I shall gut you with glee and feed your putrid corpse to the ‘gators. Do not make the mistake of believing I am unwilling or unable to carry out the act.”
“I have no doubts concerning your will or your abilities, wildcat,” a deep voice answered. “You forget I have personal knowledge of your expertise with a knife. Will you not give a condemned man his last earthly wish?”
Willa whirled around, her eyes lighting on a man’s tall frame leaning against the closed door. “Aidan,” she said on a whispered breath.
He reached behind him and turned the key in the lock. “Disappointed I’m not Digby?”
A smile kicked up the corners of her mouth. “To some degree. I was looking forward to slicing open his belly.”
“Ahhh,” he said, his eyes pure silver from the moonlight’s reflection. “I know you so well, my bloodthirsty, little heathen.”
She grew thoughtful at his presence in her house, in her bedchamber so late at night, but her body perceived his reason without seeking an explanation. A tingle of awareness spun through her belly to concentrate in her loins, and her heart swelled with the love inside her. ‘Twas magic. An invisible rope united them. Whenever Aidan moved, she felt it deep inside. The same sensation had struck her the first time their eyes met and held as she lured him into her trap in the swamp.
“How did you get in here?” she asked.
He smiled wistfully. “A spy has his ways.”
“Why have you come?” She silently begged him to say the words her heart longed to hear: Because I love you and cannot be without you. She swept her gaze down his tall frame. Like her, he was barefoot. Was his heart as bared and vulnerable, as well?
He pushed off the door and paced toward her in a seamless tread. “I imagined you might desire some company tonight.”
She caught the nuance of sorrow in his voice. “You heard,” she stated. “You know about Papa.”
His nod was but a slight inclination of his head. Drawing her into his arms, he pulled her against his chest and smoothed a hand up and down her spine. She released the torrent of tears bottled up until this point. Now she seemed helpless to stem the deluge.
Aidan sank into a chair and pulled her onto his lap. As he cradled her in his embrace, he rocked her while she poured out her fury and grief. “That’s it,” he whispered. “Let out all the pain.” His lips pressed to her hair, and he dropped kisses along the part on her scalp. While she sobbed into his shirt, he tightened his arms around her.
When no more tears would come, Willa lifted her face and peered into his eyes. She imagined she saw love in them and questioned whether her assessment was merely wishful thinking. What she saw could be pity rather than more tender feelings. He combed her hair back from her face and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the pads of his fingers.
“Will you remain with me tonight?” she asked between sniffles.
“Should you promise to sheath your knives, it will be my pleasure.” Aidan lowered his head to settle his mouth on hers in a kiss that burned straight to her heart.
Chapter 23
Digby splashed brandy from Bellingham’s cut-crystal decanter into a snifter. “You may have my word on it. That little bitch knows.” He raked a hand through his hair, disordering its perfection. “She had the temerity to threaten me.”
“What of it?” Marlene murmured from the sofa against the windows where she reclined, her bare feet tucked up under her bronze gown. “'Tis not as if she could act on her suspicions. George is insensate. Even were she to go so far as to inform him the moon was purple, he would not comprehend.”
He leaned back against the liquor cart. “What if dear George recovers his faculties? What then? I daresay I shall be ruined, and more likely than not, called out. Your husband is a better shot than I am, even on his worst day.”
She lowered her eyes to examine her fingernails. “Rest assured, Tom. He will not recover. I have seen to that.”
“Would that you thought to see to that viperous chit instead,” Digby said with a grimace as he stripped off his coat and tugged on the knot of his cravat.
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “When George dies, I shall send Wilhelmina to England to live with her sisters.”
His shirt hanging open, breeches half-unbuttoned, he advanced on her with angry steps. “And should she spout her s
uspicions to her sisters? What then? Do you not expect they will open an investigation into the death of their beloved father? Especially once we wed?”
She contemplated it. “I’d not considered that eventuality. Perhaps I shall arrange an accident for my imprudent daughter.”
Digby nodded and sat on the sofa to pull off his boots. She leaned over to run her hand through the hair on his chest. When she tweaked a flat nipple, he slapped her hand away and seized her jaw between his fingers to grind his mouth against her lips. Marlene moaned as excitement at his roughness shot through her lower body. After pushing her away, he continued to disrobe.
“Have you found the will?” he asked with a speaking look.
“Not yet. And I grow quite weary of your inquiring about it.” She squirmed and came up on her knees to twine her arms about his neck and suck hard at the skin below his ear. As she raised her head, she examined with satisfaction the mark she had left. “Other than the entailed estates, George willed everything to me,” she said softly. “He was quite specific regarding his intentions toward his daughter. He is done with Willa and her misbehavior. In any case, he expects her to marry well and have no need of his wealth.”
Digby untangled her arms and held them in his grip as he twisted to face her. “Can you be certain his will reflects those intentions?”
“Quite certain.” A pout formed on her mouth. “Pray cease this incessant inquiry. I want you … now.”
“Then get on your knees,” he said as he released her arms and pulled off the last of his clothing. When he came to his feet, his angry, red penis stood out in front of him like a weapon.
Marlene licked her lips like a cat lapping up cream. She flipped onto her stomach, raised her hips, and glanced back at him over her shoulder.
“Not there. I want you here.” Digby pointed to the rug before the fireplace.
She swung around with a puckered face. “The last time you took me on the rug, you left bruises on my knees.”
He cocked his head and twisted his lips in a cruel smile. “You think I care? Who will see your knees save me?” Catching her by the wrist, he dragged her off the sofa and pushed her onto her hands and knees in front of the fire. He came down behind her, lifted her skirt, and clamped his hands on her hips, lunging with a fierce thrust into her slit. Marlene threw back her head and bit down on her lower lip, drawing blood, to prevent giving voice to her ecstasy.