by Beth White
At the moment there was nothing there. “Just sunshine, water, and air,” he said, collapsing the glass and handing it back to Luc-Antoine. “What will you do when they come?”
“You mean what will we do?” Luc-Antoine gave him a sardonic look. “You’re one of us now. Aren’t you?”
“Of course,” Charlie said quickly. “I meant you specifically. Are you going to join the defense? Move into the fort?”
“When I was a boy, I survived for weeks outside Mobile with my pére and a black slave, living off what we could catch in the river and the woods—this while the Spanish and English were shooting at each other over our heads. I’m going to defend my home come what may, and no British flag—or cannon, for that matter—is gonna make me turn tail and run.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you would, sir, I just meant—” What had he meant? Digging in deeper wouldn’t help anything. “What was it like in those days? This part of the coast was British-held, wasn’t it? And the Spanish had their eye on it?”
Luc-Antoine nodded. “We French folk got caught in the middle, and picking a side wasn’t easy. My uncle had been executed by the Spanish for stirring up a rebellion, but my grandfather chose to remain neutral and managed to hold on to the family property. When the Continentals declared independence, Spain secretly supported them with arms and ammunition and gold. My sister Lyse married a Spaniard—who turned my father and my brother Simon as well—and sealed that alliance for us.” Luc-Antoine grinned. “We’ve had a carousel of nations circling through here, and you can see why.” He gestured toward the rolling expanse of the gulf to the south, and the beautiful calm bay to the north. “The port’s small, but you can’t find better fishing or a milder general climate. And we’ve all the timber you need for shipbuilding.”
Charlie found it hard to believe the British had simply given it up and slunk away. “What happened to make the Spaniards cede?”
With a skeptical look, as if wondering how Charlie could possibly be ignorant of such recent history, Luc-Antoine shrugged. “Jefferson worked an under-the-table deal with Napoleon, whose brother was on the Spanish throne at the time. Once he was in office, Madison sent the army here to garrison the fort in Mobile, but they’ve been gone since June. Speaking of under-the-table deals, I see the way you look at my niece.” He seemed determined to jolt Charlie into revealing some prevarication. “You’d best not get any ideas in that direction until we know you better. And if I find out you’ve dishonored her in any way, you’ll be a dead man.” The tone was matter-of-fact.
Charlie understood he had been duly warned—and for Fiona’s sake, he appreciated the older man’s protectiveness. But if Luc-Antoine thought Charlie was going to back away just on his say-so, he was fair and far off. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, sir.”
Luc-Antoine nodded. “You’re a smart boy, I reckon.” Suddenly he lifted the spyglass to his eye and trained it on the western end of the isthmus. “Look there. Small boats coming in at Fort Bowyer. But the uniforms aren’t British.” He handed the glass to Charlie again.
“No, they’re not,” Charlie said slowly. “Looks like the Americans are back.”
SEPTEMBER 12, 1814
FORT BOWYER, MOBILE POINT
Fiona had grown up on her mother and father’s stories of the Revolutionary War—some frightening, some thrilling, some downright funny. Uncle Rafa’s proposal of marriage to Aunt Lyse to keep her from being arrested as a traitor to the British crown, and their ongoing argument about whether it had been a “real” betrothal was a favorite. She also loved her father’s romantic tale of sneaking into Fort Charlotte to rescue his beloved Daisy from her room in officers’ quarters, right out from under her British father’s nose.
But this business of being swept from one’s home into the crude shelter of a roughly constructed fort bore little of romance and much of inconvenience and sheer terror.
Truth be told, a large part of her concern was for her horses. The first bombs had exploded this evening at sunset, while the family sat outside on the porch listening to Uncle Luc-Antoine play his guitar. The younger men jumped to their feet, while poor Sehoy shrieked, hands clapped over her ears and eyes squeezed shut. Fiona grabbed Sehoy close, trying to comfort her, while above the racket she could hear the horses screaming in fear.
“What is it, do you think?” Fiona asked Léon, who had jumped down from the porch and stood in listening position, scanning the southern skyline.
Mouth grim, her brother glanced at her. “We’re under attack, so we’d best ride for the fort as fast as we can. Oliver, go to the barn and saddle horses for the girls. The rest of us will gather guns and ammunition and follow. Fiona, you’ve got time to pack only essentials before you go.”
Essentials? Fiona hurried to obey, hampered by Sehoy, who was all but catatonic with fear. By the time the two of them ducked into the barn, each carrying a small trunk filled with personal items, the sun had gone down and explosions lit the night sky along the shoreline.
Oliver had already saddled Bonnie for her and Dusty for Sehoy, and the other men were getting ready to ride by lamplight. Léon would take Washington, and the other three men had each chosen a mount from the remaining herd. When Fiona demanded to know what would become of the rest of the horses, Léon gave her an incredulous look.
“They can fend for themselves. There’s plenty of grass and water.”
“But—but—the guns! They’ll be so frightened!”
“We’ll come back to check on them as soon as it’s safe.”
“But the goats and chickens—”
“Fiona!” Léon’s formidable brows snapped together. “Get on that horse and ride for the fort. I’m not arguing with you—”
Charlie stepped between them. “I’ll stay long enough to settle the animals. Léon’s right. The British will start landing before long, and you girls mustn’t be here. Some of the soldiers won’t be gentlemen—do you understand what I mean?”
She met his eyes, saw genuine concern and fear for her there. And something else that broke through, as her brother’s shouts would never have done. She caught her breath on a little hiccup. “Yes, of course. I don’t mean to be a baby.”
“Good girl.” He cupped her face in his palm, brushing her cheek with his thumb. “I’ll come to you as quickly as I can. And you’re not a baby at all—in fact you’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.” He bent to give her a boost into the saddle.
“I don’t know how you’d know that,” she said with a trembling smile. “You don’t even remember all the people you’ve ever met.”
Charlie grinned up at her, seemingly oblivious to Léon glowering behind his back. “And for that unkind remark, you owe me a kiss and a sincere apology—which I shall collect at a more opportune time.” He handed her the reins and stepped back, allowing Luc-Antoine to lead the small caravan of horses out of the barn at a trot.
Now, as the night wore on, she huddled with Sehoy in a brick bunker in the center of the fort, listening to the American cannons firing shot after shot out toward the four warships spread across the entrance to the bay. And the British fired back. If they hit Fort Bowyer’s powder magazine, it would explode, and the fort would fall to the enemy. Periodically a small shot would whiz overhead, find a target, and a soldier would cry out.
Fiona had never known such all-encompassing terror. How many had been wounded or killed? Had her brother, her uncle, her cousin been hit? Dear God, Charlie? How could he bear to remain here while his countrymen shot at him? Did he think of them that way?
“Fiona, are you praying?”
She’d barely heard Sehoy’s frightened whisper. In the darkness she lifted her head from her knees. “Yes. There’s nothing else we can do. And it’s the best thing we can do.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, though fear had dampened her spirit.
“Will you teach me how?”
“Oh, Sehoy.” Fiona took her cousin’s hand, found it cold and trembling. “I just talk to God like any ot
her friend—except I know he already knows my thoughts. He knows how afraid we are, and he will give us courage.”
“But I don’t know God like you do. I feel there’s some spirit bigger than me, but that frightens me too.”
“That’s why God sent Jesus, so we would have a friend who knows how we feel. He faced pain and loneliness and fear and death, and yet promised not to leave us comfortless. I’m not afraid to die because he’s right here with us.”
“Does . . . Oliver know Jesus like that?”
“I’m sure he does.” Oliver, after all, was a very spiritual, tenderhearted boy. Uncle Luc had taught him well.
“I can know Jesus too? I want to.” Sehoy’s voice was eager.
“Yes, just tell him so. The Bible says if we come to him like a little child, he’ll make us new.”
Sehoy pressed her forehead against her knees as Fiona had done earlier. She spoke hesitantly, clutching Fiona’s hand. “It’s me, God, Sehoy. Nobody important, but . . . Fiona says it’s all right to talk to you. I want to know you, and I want you to know me. Mostly I want you to make me brave and keep the bombs away from Oliver. And the other men. Please please please keep them all safe and make the British go away. Oh . . .”
Then she was sobbing, and Fiona had to finish the ragged little prayer as she wrapped her arms around Sehoy. God was listening, of course.
Of course he was. And Charlie would be safe. And Léon and Luc-Antoine and Oliver and the soldiers.
At some point, Charlie realized as he shoveled powder into a cannon, he was going to stand before his father and his grandfather, both British naval officers, and give an account of the day he stood inside an American fort and helped sling cannonballs at four of His Britannic Majesty’s warships.
But until that day came, he saw no way out of the quandary in which he found himself. He must do everything in his power to protect a young woman he had come to care for deeply and in a remarkably short amount of time. And Fiona’s relatives, who mattered to her more than life, must be guarded as well.
He glanced to his left, where Oliver stood transfixed as a mortar screamed toward them. He bodily snatched the boy to the ground just in the nick of time. “Keep your head down, you idiot!” he shouted over the explosion that rocked the ground beneath them.
“Like you did?” Oliver sat up, pushing Charlie off him, his young face so pale the freckles stood out like gold dust.
Another grenade went off above them, setting the sky aflame. Knocked backward by the concussion, Charlie lay gasping for air, head throbbing like a bass drum, vision coming and going. Shards of pain sent him in and out of consciousness.
Thunder rolled—or was it cannon fire?—and bombs zigzagged overhead. Wait, no, it was only lightning. At any moment he would be swamped by the waves that crashed against the ship, rocking it all but sideways, then slamming it back into an ocean trough. He was a strong swimmer, never afraid of the water, but the fury of this storm was demonic, the wind howling against the sails, breaking the masts into timber as if they were matchsticks. Nobody could survive this—even Charlie Kincaid, who everybody said possessed the nine lives of a cat.
Something dragged him under, blackness took him.
He came to, pinned under a barrel. He struggled to free himself, shouted for help. “Easton, we’re going down. Tell the captain—” Tell the captain what? No one knew his real identity. “If you make it to Pensacola, tell the admiral—”
He went under again.
And came back clutching the oilskin pouch against his bare chest. “Don’t let anyone take this,” he choked out to nobody in particular. Death was coming again. He’d seen it before, in all its terrifying blankness, but he’d always come back. Grandfa said nobody in heaven was ready for Charlie and laughed before caning him.
But perhaps the time had arrived after all. He’d always expected to drown. Or die in a sword fight above decks. Not expire from this crushing, sickening explosion of pain in his head.
He rolled sideways and was sick and, to his astonishment, felt a gentle hand on his forehead.
How had his mama gotten aboard? “No, it’s not safe,” he mumbled, dropping onto his back again. “You can’t be here. Go home and tell Grandfa I’m sorry.”
“I will,” she whispered close to his ear, wiping his face with a damp cloth. “But the battle is over. They’ve drawn back and you’re safe. We all are.”
“Drawn back?” There had been a battle after all, which explained the shouts and explosions. But why could he not see? He strained to look, twisting his head. “Oh, God, not my sight.”
“Shhh. Close your eyes and rest, Charlie, I’m sure it will come back. You only fainted, after you tackled poor Oliver. But thank God you did, because he’s alive.” She began to cry, the tears dropping onto his face.
“Who is Oliver?” he asked before losing consciousness again.
6
Fiona sat back, one hand still on Charlie’s forehead, the other smearing away the tears that kept falling. He would waken again. Of course he would. He was simply out of his head with pain, and his body had taken the natural course, sending him into unconsciousness.
But at any moment, her brother or one of the other men would return, and if Charlie started raving about meeting admirals in Pensacola again, the fat would be truly in the fire. The oil lamp by the door flickered as she stared at the oilskin bag Charlie held against his chest. There was something dangerous inside it, something he didn’t want anyone to see. Perhaps she could get a look at it before he came to.
She looked around. An eerie quiet prevailed over the fort, broken intermittently by the soldiers calling to one another as they recovered from the battle. The stench of sulfur set Fiona’s stomach roiling. Outside the bunker, she could hear Sehoy tending to the flesh wound in Oliver’s calf, the two of them murmuring quietly.
While the battle raged, she and Sehoy had clung together for what seemed like hours, praying as the bombs whizzed overhead. Then that massive explosion out on the water had set Sehoy to screaming as if the world had come to an end—which, to her mind, it probably had. Fiona simply held her friend, not knowing what to expect, until the door of the bunker suddenly slammed open.
“Fiona!” Backlit by the torches along the ramparts, smoke and ash floated behind Léon’s blackened face as he peered in. “Come here quickly, I need you to—Sehoy, stop it! It’s over. They’re backing off.”
Sehoy’s screams wrenched off. “Wh—what?”
“I said they’re gone. We hit a powder store on one of the British ships, and it went up in flames. They’ve backed off to lick their wounds—hopefully for good.”
Something in her brother’s face brought Fiona to her feet, dread twisting her insides. “What is it, Léon? What else happened?”
“We need a nurse. The surgeon is busy with a couple of severe wounds, and—never mind, just come with me.”
She looked at Sehoy. “Are you coming?”
Visibly collecting herself, Sehoy rose, and they both followed Léon to the barracks that had been designated as the infirmary.
Fiona had grown up with three brothers, and the sights and sounds of bloody injury generally didn’t faze her. But she’d never seen the aftermath of battle. This . . . this was brutal. The surgeon was busy binding up the amputated arm of a young soldier, who had passed out cold on the surgical table. She didn’t want to see it, but neither could she turn away.
Then Léon put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her on, through the infirmary toward an interior door. He opened the door and pushed her inside a smaller room, where a dark-haired young man lay writhing in apparent agony upon an army blanket.
Charlie. She dropped to her knees beside the pallet.
“Take care of him, Fi. He saved Oliver’s life.” Léon ducked out of the room.
Fiona quickly examined Charlie to ascertain the location and depth of his injuries. A trickle of blood dripped from his left ear. Other than that, she saw nothing that could have caused such
wretched discomfort.
For over an hour now, she’d anxiously tended him, bathing his head as he’d flung about, eyes closed, gripped by some horrid nightmare. At first he was incoherent, apparently battling the elements in some terrific storm, but gradually his words became all too clear—until he fainted.
What admiral was he supposed to meet? Had he been on his way to Pensacola when the storm that cast him ashore at Navy Cove stole his memory? Or had he been lying to her about that the whole time? Perhaps he had been spying on her and her family, and then on the soldiers in Fort Bowyer.
But Léon said Charlie had saved Oliver’s life. Would he do that if he were a spy?
She had to know what was in that bag. Curling her fingers around his, she pried them away and moved his hand to rest on his chest. He lay relaxed, those heavy dark lashes fanned above his cheekbones, lips parted on shallow breaths.
Tugging at the drawstring, she watched to make sure his eyes stayed closed. When the mouth of the bag came open, she poked her fingers inside and withdrew a small scrap of parchment. Unrolling it, she scanned it.
Nonsense, a mishmash of letters separated into incomprehensible words—a coded message. She spent a minute trying to memorize it, but gave up frustrated. Now what? She had no materials with which to copy it down. If he were awake and lucid, she would confront him. But would he tell her the truth?
There was so much about him that she admired—the refusal to accept weakness in himself, the humor, the sheer masculine confidence. She tried to imagine what her father would have thought of him. Papa had been so protective, worse even than Léon. He would probably have tossed Charlie back into the ocean, broken head or no.
She smoothed Charlie’s hair, touched the jagged, still-raw scar above his eyebrow. Familiar yet alien. He tugged her heart in ways she barely understood.
Without warning, his eyes opened, narrowed and dangerous, and he clamped her wrist in one hand, wrapping the other arm about her waist. Before she could blink, he rolled, and she was pinned beneath him.