Appomattox Saga Omnibus 2: Three Books In One (Appomatox Saga)

by Gilbert, Morris

  Around and around they went, until the music finally stopped. Slowly, almost regretfully, they came to a halt. Paul bowed and she curtsied. Then Paul said with a wicked grin, “I believe the next dance is mine?” he asked.

  “Let me look at my program, sir,” Frankie responded pertly. She took the small card that Marianne had given her, looked down at the blank lines, pursed her lips—A most delightful habit, indeed! Paul thought—and said, “I do think I can spare just one dance, Mr. Bristol!”

  They danced the next three dances. But Paul eventually realized he could keep her away no longer and said, “Should we go inside? Give the young fellows a shot at the prettiest girl at the ball?”

  When she only shook her head and said, “No, please—let’s stay out here!” a great gladness filled him, and he swept her back into his arms.

  They danced several more times, and finally a very slow set began. “Time for a rest, Miss Aimes,” Paul said. He drew her close, and they moved slowly around the terrace. The music was soft, and as they moved in rhythm to its beat, Frankie slowly moved closer—not purposely, but in a natural manner. Paul was acutely conscious of the firm curves of her body as they moved. If it had been any other young woman, he would have known that he was being teased on purpose, but as he looked down into Frankie’s face, he saw that the smile on her face was contented and innocent—almost as though she were unaware of her partner.

  They moved more slowly as the music died. With a sigh, she looked up and said, “The dance is over—,” but broke off as their eyes met. There was a still moment that caught at both of them. Paul knew in that moment that he had never seen anything lovelier than Frankie’s face and nothing had ever filled him with such a sense of wonder as her wide and trusting eyes. Slowly he pulled her closer. “My mother told me to do something, Frankie.”

  “What was it?”

  “She said, ‘Be gentle with Frankie, and tell her she’s the most beautiful girl at the ball.’” His arms tightened around her, and she rested her cheek against his chest, looking up at him. His eyes roamed her face, and he whispered, “You are beautiful, Frankie!” And then, without haste, he lowered his head and put his lips on hers.

  Frankie could have moved her head aside, but she did not. When his lips touched hers, she waited to feel the fear and disgust that had filled her when Alvin Buck had kissed her—but this time, she felt only a sense of trust…and joy. Paul’s arms drew her tighter, and she surrendered to his embrace, for the first time in her life knowing the richness of womanhood without shame.

  As for Bristol, he found that there was a gentleness in him that he had never felt for any woman. Frankie was soft and yielding, her lips fresh and innocent. He wanted to go on holding her, to never let her out of his arms or his life, for she stirred him as no woman ever had.

  At last he pulled his head back and said huskily, “Frankie, you are the sweetest young woman in the world—”

  At that moment the french doors swung open, and Luci DeSpain’s voice snapped across the terrace. “Well, Paul, are you quite finished?”

  Frankie stepped back, her face flushed, and Paul said hurriedly, “Now, Luci, don’t be upset—,” but that was as far as he got.

  Luci could have borne it if Paul had been chasing any other girl—any girl, at least, of class. But her voice was icy as she cut him off. “Paul, I’ve seen this coming for some time. Well, you’ve got what you want now, so I won’t stand in your way. Here!” She pulled off the ring he’d given her and thrust it at him, then turned and stalked away, her back straight.

  Paul stared at the ring, then looked up at Frankie. He saw the humiliation on her face and said quickly, “This isn’t your doing, Frankie. It’s been coming for some time. Don’t let it upset you.”

  But it had upset her, and she whispered, “Will you take me to the hotel?”

  “Of course. Let me tell my parents and get your coat.”

  It was a difficult ride, for Paul was aware of how hurt the young woman was. She kept her face averted, refusing to speak. When they got to the hotel, he started to get out, but she said, “Please…don’t come in. I—just want to be alone.”

  “Frankie—”

  “Please! I–I’ll see you in the morning, if you want.”

  “Well, all right, but tomorrow things will look better.”

  “Good night, Paul,” she murmured and ran into the hotel without looking back. She unlocked her door and stepped inside, then closed it and threw herself on the bed and wept, muffling her sobs by pressing her face into the covers. She didn’t know how long she lay there, but after some time she sat up and held her arms across her breasts. Catching her reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite the bed, she noted with disgust that her hair was in disarray and her eyes were red and swollen.

  But that was not the worst of it. Somehow…she felt ashamed, but did not know why. Could it be that her feelings when Paul had kissed her were shameful? Had she been wrong to kiss him back? She had no experience in such things—only the few kisses Tyler had given her, and they didn’t compare in any way to what she had shared with Paul—so she just sat there until a dullness set in. Listlessly she undressed, throwing the dress across a chair with revulsion. A fine nightgown lay across the bed—a gift from Marianne—but she reached out for her familiar old nightshirt and pulled it on. Then she put out the light, slipped under the covers, and lay there in the darkness.

  Images of Paul came again and again. She remembered each step of every dance, and she remembered the laughter and the sight of his face. How young he had looked tonight! And how happy! She closed her eyes and could feel his arms around her and his lips against hers—and then all broke into disarray when she remembered Luci bursting into the little world that she had found so wonderful.

  Finally she dozed off, but her sleep was fitful and filled with restless dreams. When a sharp knock sounded on her door, she sat bolt upright. The knock came again, followed by two more.

  Tyler! That knock was the sign they had agreed on! She came out of the bed, slipped into her robe, and opened the door. Her friend stood there wearing an old black coat and a shapeless hat that she’d never seen before. His face was pale, his mouth a mere slit.

  “Tyler! What is it?” she whispered.

  He stepped into the room, saying in terse tones, “Get dressed, Frankie! Quickly!”

  She saw that he was tense as a wire and said, “Turn your back.” While she dressed in her old clothing, she asked, “What’s happened?”

  “They’re onto me—and you, too, I think.”

  “Tyler! How could they be?”

  “A double agent,” he said grimly. He related how he’d been on the move, getting what information he could about troop locations, but he’d been betrayed by a man named Henson, a Confederate spy who had managed to get into Pinkerton’s service. “I gave him the slip, but he’ll have everyone in the country on the lookout for me! We’ve got to get back through the lines—and it’s going to be tricky.”

  Dressed and ready, Frankie came to put her hand on his arm. “What are we going to do?”

  “Pinkerton’s waiting for us at a place called Miller’s Crossing. It’s pretty safe, if we can get to it. I’ve got two fast horses, and one of our agents is going to guide us through the backcountry. Are you ready?”

  “No. I—have to write a letter.”

  “There’s no time for that!”

  “You go on, then!” Frankie blazed at him. “I’ll get out on my own!”

  Tyler stared at her; then a weary smile broke across his face. “Write your letter. I’ll wait.”

  Frankie found a pen and paper and sat down at the small desk in the room. She wrote steadily for ten minutes, then put down the pen, folded the letter, and put it in an envelope. She wrote the name Paul Bristol across the front of the envelope, then put it faceup on the table. “Let me throw my things in a bag, and I’m ready.”

  Five nerve-wracking hours later, she and Tyler stood at dawn in a small room, facing
Allan Pinkerton. They had given him the positions of the Confederate Army, and when they were finished, Pinkerton said, “Good! I’ll get this to General McClellan.” He half turned, then wheeled back to say with a small smile, “You two have done well. But don’t show your faces in Richmond! Go back to Washington. I’ll send for you when I get back.”

  “Not for me, Mr. Pinkerton,” Frankie said, looking him in the eyes. “Remember what you promised.”

  Pinkerton nodded at once. “Then take with you our thanks, Frankie. You’ve served well.” He glanced at the young man, asking sharply, “You’ll see that she gets back safely?”

  “Yes, sir, I will!”

  Pinkerton left, and Tyler stood there, suddenly very tired. “Well, it’s over. I wonder if what we did was worth it all?”

  Frankie stared at him, her lips trembling. “I hope so, Tyler—but how much would that have to be to make up for betraying people who love you?”

  Tyler looked at her sharply. “People who love you…or people you love?”

  Frankie felt a blush color her cheeks, but her gaze didn’t waver. Reading his answer in her eyes, Tyler looked stricken.

  “But—what about us, Frankie?”

  Her eyes softened, and she reached out to touch his arm lightly. “Tyler, I admire you so much…but there could never be anything more between us than friendship. There is only one man for me, Tyler—” Her voice cracked. “And I doubt he will ever want to see me again. I—I don’t know what’s ahead for me, but whatever it is, I’ll have to face it on my own.”

  He started to protest, but she halted him by holding up her hand. His eyes searched her face, and the pain he saw reflected there struck him deeply. He lowered his eyes to the floor, struggling with a sense of defeat.

  Frankie wanted to comfort him, but she knew instinctively that the greatest kindness she could show her friend was to walk away. She turned and left the room, not pausing as she walked down the hallway and out the door of the building. She mounted her horse and spurred it into a run, and Tyler had to hurry to mount and catch up. Behind them the rumble of distant cannon fire sounded, and the dark horizon flickered with tiny spurts of flame.

  Frankie rode on, her eyes half blinded with tears. She said nothing to Tyler as they rode away from the sound of the guns, and he knew that Frankie Aimes was not the same girl who had ridden out of Washington a few months earlier.

  CHAPTER 25

  “YOU’RE A WOMAN!”

  Always when the harvest had come, Silas Aimes had been aware that the most certain factor in the process would be Frankie and the work she did.

  Now as the last August sun seemed to drag itself over the inverted gray circle of the sky, it was harvesttime. But Aimes was aware that this harvest was to be different. Unless, of course, Frankie came to herself!

  He chopped wood steadily, each movement precise and machinelike, and was troubled by thought. Usually he performed routine tasks without much thought, but since Frankie had come back, he had been shaken from his routine in several ways.

  Aimes didn’t like changes. He’d been heard to say, “There’ve been a lot of changes since I was a young man, and I’ve been against every one of them!” His splitting maul struck the round cylinder, and the two pieces fell neatly to the ground. He picked up one, split it, and then grabbed the other.

  Frankie used to do some of the wood splitting. He straightened up and turned his eyes toward the house, and a frown creased his brow. What’d she come back for if she didn’t want to work?

  And yet he knew that wasn’t quite right. From the minute she’d come back three weeks ago, she had worked—but not in the old way. She’d dressed differently, acted differently. Aimes snorted. Wears a dress all the time—spends all day cooking and working inside the house!

  He piled his arms high with the split wood, walked to the house, and entered the kitchen. Dumping the sticks inside the wood box, he turned to Frankie and the two girls who were standing over the stove. “What you three up to?”

  “I’m teaching them to make candy,” Frankie said. She was wearing a simple brown dress, and somehow it bothered Silas. She looked so—so womanly in it. He’d never thought of her as a woman, not particularly. Now the very way she held the bowl and stirred it with a wooden spoon—why, she didn’t seem at all like a boy, not anymore.

  “Need some more wood split,” Aimes said, and he cast a watchful eye to see the effect his speech had on Frankie.

  “I’ll tell Monroe to do it when he comes in.” Les Monroe was the teenage neighbor who had come to take up the slack that Frankie had left. Silas had assumed that he could let the boy go and save the cost of his wages now that she was home, but it hadn’t turned out that way. He stared at Frankie, half tempted to tell her that she wasn’t too good to split a little wood—but for some reason he decided not to. He turned and stalked out of the kitchen.

  Frankie knew what was on her father’s mind but had never made an issue of it. When she’d come back, she had needed the solitude of the farm. It had taken awhile, but slowly she had lost the tense look around her lips. Now she had grown more peaceful and relaxed, though she was still unwilling to speak of what she’d done while away from the farm. A fact that caused the two younger Aimes girls no end of curiosity—or frustration, for Frankie wouldn’t answer even one of their constant questions.

  Timothy knew her best and so asked no questions at all. Not at first. He saw that she was on edge and carefully gave her his attention when she needed it and let her alone when she required that. On her first day back, she had told him about becoming a Christian, and he’d been filled with joy and relief. He’d known the time would come for Frankie to find God, and he was grateful it had finally happened. But as for the other things that troubled her…well, he would just wait until she was ready to talk about it.

  He knew, of course, that some great change had taken place in her. Not just because she now shunned men’s work, seeking instead the work usually done by women. No, it went much deeper than that, and Timothy, for all his isolation, was very insightful. She’s met a man somewhere, he decided very soon. And I’d guess he let her down.

  Frankie had known they were all puzzled by her behavior but could not bear to speak of Paul or of her work for Pinkerton. She tried to block it all out of her mind, filling her days with teaching the girls the simple skills, keeping house, and reading book after book.

  That worked very well during the days, but the nights were long, and nothing seemed to stop the memories from trooping in the moment she closed her eyes. Then there were the dreams—full of images of Tyler and Pinkerton…and Paul. Many mornings she rose looking more worn out than when she’d gone to bed, and she knew Timothy watched her with concern—and prayed for her constantly.

  As the days passed, though, she began to grow calmer—the monotony of the life was good for her—and she slowly became more talkative.

  “What’s wrong with her, anyway?” Silas asked Timothy once. “She’s acting mighty strange.”

  “I don’t know about that, Pa,” Timothy said, shrugging. “I think she’s acting right for the first time.”

  Silas had glared at him, frustrated by what he sensed was criticism. He’d had his own thoughts of the thing and was a man who hated to admit he was wrong. “She was happy enough until she run off,” he grunted. “Wisht she’d never of done it!”

  Finally Silas Aimes gave up. She ain’t never gonna be no good to me except as a cook. When he came to that conclusion, the tension that had surrounded him passed, and he found himself strangely content with his family. The food was better, the house was well kept, and the work got done outside. He was vaguely relieved, feeling that he had successfully solved a problem.

  One Friday evening they were all sitting down to an early supper when they heard the sound of a horse outside. Silas looked at Timothy. “Who kin that be?” he asked, and when a knock sounded, he got up and went to the door. Opening it, he found himself facing a tall, well-dressed man who looked to be i
n his thirties.

  “I’m looking for the Aimes place,” he said.

  Frankie was standing at the stove, taking out biscuits. She turned out of curiosity to see who was at the door and, at the sound of the voice, dropped the pan of biscuits. Timothy rose and picked them up, but when he started to tease Frankie, he stopped abruptly, for her face was pale and she was trembling.

  Silas Aimes had turned around at the sound of the biscuit tin hitting the floor, and he, too, noted that Frankie was upset. At once he turned back to the man, his eyes narrowing. “I’m Silas Aimes,” he said gruffly. “Who are you?”

  Paul Bristol looked over the man’s shoulder, aware that this obviously was the father of the clan. When his eyes met Frankie’s startled stare, he smiled.

  “Well? Answer me!” Aimes demanded. “Who are you? What’ve you come here for?”

  Still holding Frankie’s gaze, Bristol drawled, “Well, Mr. Aimes, who am I? I’m the man who’s going to be your son-in-law. As for what I came for…” He paused, then stepped past Aimes and went right across the room to stand in front of Frankie. “I’ve come for you,” he said quietly.

  A dead silence fell on the room, and then Timothy said, “Well, I’m your future brother-in-law. My name’s Timothy.” He put out a thin hand and smiled. “Welcome to the family.”

  Paul returned the smile, immediately liking this young man. He took Timothy’s hand, then turned and said, “Mr. Aimes, I’ve come to ask for your daughter in marriage. I love her.” He glanced at Frankie sideways, grinning. “And I think she loves me.”

  “Well, if you don’t beat all—!” Silas Aimes burst out. “You come in here, a total stranger, and want to take my daughter? Get out!”

  Paul did not seem disturbed by the old man’s anger. He turned to Frankie and asked, “Will you come for a walk with me, Frankie?”

  Frankie’s hands were trembling, a fact she tried to hide by snatching off her apron. “Yes, but not for long!” She led the way out of the kitchen, not even noticing her blustering father, and Bristol closed the door behind them.