by Nan Ryan
“I’m sure Colonel Lee will soon have everything under control,” Suzanna interrupted, anxious to get away from her brother, refusing to allow anything to spoil this perfect evening. “You’ll excuse me, Matt,” she said. “I was just going to freshen up.”
“Yes, of course. Go ahead.” Matthew made a move toward the ballroom. “You coming, Ty?”
“Ah…no…I…You go on,” Ty said, feeling heat rising to his face. “Think I’ll step out onto the veranda for a minute. It’s growing quite stuffy inside.”
“Good enough. See you both later,” said Matthew, and left them.
“That was close,” Ty commented.
“He doesn’t suspect a thing,” Suzanna assured him.
At the base of the grand staircase, Ty winked at Suzanna and whispered, “Five minutes.”
“Make it four.” She lifted her bronze taffeta skirts and dashed up the stairs.
On the landing, Suzanna encountered Cynthia Ann coming out of her bedroom. Suzanna immediately put her finger to her lips, then she drew her best friend close and whispered in her ear, “I’m meeting Ty Bellinggrath in the terraced back gardens!”
“Suzanna LeGrande!”
“Shh! Don’t tell a soul. We bumped into Matt downstairs and I told him I was going to your room. Should he mention my absence, assure him I am upstairs.”
Nodding, happy to share her friend’s secret, Cynthia Ann asked, “Are you going to let him…kiss you?”
“Bite your tongue, Cynthia Ann Grayson! Of course not,” Suzanna stated emphatically. Then she grinned and whispered, “But I will make him wish he could kiss me.” Both girls giggled. “I must go,” said Suzanna, hugging her friend. Then she was gone, with Cynthia Ann looking after her.
* * *
Unhurriedly, Ty crossed the wide foyer, nodding to acquaintances, exchanging respectful pleasantries with his elders. Once out the front door, he anxiously crossed the veranda and skipped down the wide stone steps. His heart beginning to beat rapidly, he sprinted around the mansion.
He found Suzanna waiting beneath a decorative marble statue, the moonlight striking her full in the face, the night breeze swirling locks of her hair around her head. In her hand she held the fragrant gardenia she had plucked from the bouquet inside the ballroom.
Ty approached.
When he reached her, neither said anything. They stood for a long moment, gazing at each other. Finally, Suzanna lifted the gardenia, carefully tucked it into Ty’s lapel, and said, “Next time I do this—put a blossom in your lapel—it will be our secret signal that you will be allowed to kiss me before the evening is over.”
Ty trembled at the prospect. He reached for her hand and took it in both of his. “Will it be long before you…?”
“We’ll see,” she teased, and knew she’d done just what she had set out to do. Ty Bellinggrath was dying to kiss her and wouldn’t rest until she let him.
“Are you cold? I could lend you my…”
“No,” she said with a provocative smile, “I’m almost as warm as you.”
Ty laughed, bewitched. Hand in hand they strolled down a pebbled path that crisscrossed the manicured gardens of the vast estate. At a white settee at the far edge of the property, they paused. Ty took a linen handkerchief from his inside breast pocket and carefully spread it on the bench. Once Suzanna was settled, he took a seat beside her.
He draped an arm along the settee’s high back behind her. Unconcerned with the chill of the autumn night, they sat in the moonlight and talked and laughed and became better acquainted. Suzanna made Ty promise that he would come to Whitehall again for dinner one evening.
“I will,” he replied.
“And not some distant date in the future,” she said. “Join us tomorrow night.”
Again he laughed. “I’ll be there,” he said. “And speaking of the future, is it true you can read palms?”
“It certainly is,” Suzanna proudly assured him. “I’ve a real talent for it. Shall I read yours?”
“Have we enough light?” He glanced up at the full white moon.
“I’m sure we do. Give me your hand and I’ll tell you what you can expect in the years ahead,” she said with authority.
Ty was smiling as he held it out, palm up. Suzanna was smiling, too. She took hold of his large hand, raised it a little closer to her face and studied the open palm for several long seconds. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. Her smile fled. Watching her intently, Ty caught the change of expression and wondered what had caused it. Suzanna lowered his hand, wrapped both of her own around it and pressed it to her waist.
“Well? What did you see?” Ty was still grinning.
“Nothing,” she said in clipped tones. “I saw nothing.” She smiled once more and told him, “You were right, there’s not enough light.”
“I’m disappointed,” he said, studying her face. “I was hoping you would tell me…”
“Ty, I can’t actually predict the future. I was teasing you. It’s just something I do for fun.” Quickly changing the subject, she said, “We had better get back inside before we’re missed and my overprotective brother has you horsewhipped.”
Five
The courtship had begun.
Utterly enchanted with Suzanna, Ty Bellinggrath was ever the gentleman. He treated his beautiful sweetheart with the utmost respect at all times. He waited patiently, hopefully, for the magical moment when Suzanna would step up to him and place a blossom in his lapel.
Nights passed.
Then weeks.
Yearning to taste her soft, full lips, Ty had begun to wonder if he would ever be allowed to kiss the woman with whom he was falling deeply in love.
And then, when he least expected it, when it was the dead of winter and the trees were bare and a blanket of snow covered the ground and Christmas and New Year’s had come and gone, the unpredictable Suzanna surprised him.
On a bitterly cold February evening, as he waited with Matthew and Mrs. LeGrande in the library before a blazing fire, Suzanna, looking especially lovely in a high-necked, long-sleeved dress of rich brown velveteen, suddenly appeared. Ty and Matthew came to their feet and while Matthew mildly scolded his sister for making their dinner guest wait, Ty felt his chest tighten.
On this freezing winter’s night, Suzanna wore a fragile ivory gardenia in her blazing red hair. Would she place it in his lapel? If so, he knew what that meant. He would, at long last—if he could figure out how to get her alone for a few precious moments—be allowed to finally kiss his adored sweetheart.
Suzanna caught the look in Ty’s eyes and knew what was running through her beau’s mind. She would, she decided, let the expectation build awhile longer. She didn’t immediately place the blossom in his lapel. She made him wait. Made him wait all through a leisurely five-course dinner. Made him wait while she and her mother sipped their coffee in the library and Ty and Matthew shared a brandy. Made him wait until the tall cased clock in the foyer struck the hour of ten and Ty said he should be going. Made him wait until she saw him to the front door and he had taken his heavy caped cloak down from the coat tree, but had not yet swirled it around his shoulders.
“Good night, Ty,” Suzanna said sweetly as they stood facing each other in the foyer.
“Suzanna, I…”
She smiled as she took the gardenia from her hair and carefully tucked it into the lapel of his dark frock coat. And before he knew what was happening, Suzanna put her arms around his neck and lifted her lips for his kiss. Nervous, afraid Matthew or Mrs. LeGrande might decide to come out of the library, he nonetheless couldn’t resist. He bent his head and kissed Suzanna squarely on the lips.
It was the sweetest of kisses, a kiss he would never forget. When their lips separated, Suzanna rested her forehead against his chin for an instant.
“Promise you’ll never again kiss anyone but me,” she said.
“I promise.”
* * *
Ty waited a full year.
He formally proposed
to Suzanna on October 12, 1860, the anniversary of the night they had first met. Suzanna eagerly accepted.
“You’ll take me to Paris for our honeymoon?”
“I will, darling girl,” he promised.
Suzanna immediately expressed the strong desire to be a June bride. Ty hated to wait, especially since he was all too aware of the troubling unrest sweeping the country. But he could deny her nothing, so he agreed.
The date was set. Elaborate wedding plans were put in motion. Engraved invitations were ordered. Suzanna settled on a wedding dress of snow-white satin trimmed with thousands of tiny, hand-sewn crystal beads. Months in advance, wedding gifts began pouring into Whitehall.
Happy as only the very young can be, Suzanna looked eagerly forward to becoming the bride of Ty Bellinggrath, and Ty was anxiously counting the days.
But on April 12, 1861, two months before the big day was to take place, Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor was fired on from a Confederate artillery battery. The next day the fort surrendered to Southern forces. War Between the States was unavoidable.
When Suzanna heard the disturbing news, she knew that her wedding plans might be postponed indefinitely. She suggested to Ty that they elope, marry quickly before the coming conflict got under way.
Ty talked her out of it, reasoning that it wouldn’t be fair to her. She wanted a big church wedding and she deserved to have one. He assured her that even with the worst happening—the Confederacy going to war against the Union—the hostility wouldn’t last. It would be over in a few short weeks and they could get married just as planned.
On the 15th of April, President Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand militia to serve for ninety days to put down “combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary mechanism of the government.” The proclamation infuriated the South and spurred the uncommitted states into action.
On April 17, Virginia seceded from the Union, along with North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee. On the twentieth, Robert E. Lee resigned his command as colonel of the First Regiment of Cavalry in the United States Army. Word spread that the decision broke Lee’s heart and that he had stated, in a missive to General Winfield Scott, “Save in defense of my native state, I never desire to again draw my sword.”
The news all over Washington was of Colonel Lee’s resignation. When Ty came to Whitehall that evening, Suzanna met him at the door and threw her arms around his neck. “Don’t go, Ty. Please don’t go.”
“He has to go, Suzanna,” Matthew said, stepping into the foyer with their mother at his side. “Just as I must go.”
On April 25 Virginia joined the Confederate States, and both Ty and Matthew warned Suzanna and Mrs. LeGrande that the two of them should quickly move to a place of safety. War was now inevitable and could explode around them at any minute.
“No! This is our home. We are not leaving Whitehall,” stated the usually gentle Emile LeGrande, demonstrating a surprising flash of mettle.
“Mrs. LeGrande,” Ty said, with respect. “Won’t you please consider closing up the house and going to New Orleans until this is over? I’ve cousins there who will be more than happy to—”
Interrupting, Suzanna said, “Mother is right, Ty. We are going nowhere.”
No amount of reasoning could change the women’s minds. Ty and Matthew prepared to ride to Richmond to join Colonel Lee’s Virginia Provisional Army.
Two short weeks after the capture of Fort Sumter, the dashing young men stood on the broad veranda of Whitehall saying goodbye. Mrs. LeGrande cupped her son’s dear face in her hands and fought back tears. Suzanna stood in Ty’s embrace and admonished him to write every day. He promised he would.
“It’s time,” said Matthew, and Ty nodded without looking up.
Disengaging himself, he held Suzanna at arm’s length and told her, “We’ll be back before you know it, sweetheart.”
She nodded, smiled, took an early blooming rose from her hair and tucked it into his lapel. “Kiss me,” she challenged.
Ty’s handsome face flushed. He had never dared kiss her in front of her family. He glanced over her head at Mrs. LeGrande and Matthew. Then, realizing it might be weeks before he could kiss her again, he tossed caution to the wind. Ty lowered his head and soundly kissed Suzanna.
Then he stepped back from her and was gone.
* * *
Suzanna stayed on the veranda long after Ty and Matthew had disappeared. Chilly despite the warmth of the sunny spring day, she fought one of those “disturbing feelings” that sometimes came over her, a strong premonition of danger.
She had never discussed those inexplicable sensations with anyone other than the understanding Cynthia Ann. Sharing such unexplainable anguish with her levelheaded brother would have brought only mild scorn and a swift reassurance that such feelings meant nothing. Had she confided in her mother, it would have further upset the older woman. And Suzanna tried never to needlessly worry the fragile Emile.
Lost in troubled thought, Suzanna blinked and came back to the present when she heard Cynthia Ann calling her name. The Grayson brougham had rolled to a stop in the driveway and Cynthia Ann was rushing up the walk. Heartened, Suzanna hurried to meet her.
As the two young women embraced, Suzanna said, “Oh, Cyn, I’m so glad you came because—”
“I know,” Cynthia Ann interrupted. “We passed Ty and Matthew riding away at a gallop. I knew you’d be upset, but they’ll soon be back and…”
“It’s more than their leaving, Cyn. It’s…I’m experiencing one of those eerie, awful feelings. Like something really terrible is going to happen.”
Cynthia Ann squeezed Suzanna’s narrow waist. “Suz, I’m so sorry. Let me stay here with you until it passes.”
“Would you? I’m frightened and I can’t worry Mother.” She pulled back, looked at the shorter girl, and was startled to see bright tears shining in Cynthia Ann’s eyes. “What is it? Has something dreadful already happened? Is that what I sense?”
“We’re going away, Suz.”
“Going away? But…why? Where?”
“Boston. Father is sending Mother and me to stay with my maiden aunt in Boston until this is over.”
“Oh, Cyn, must you?”
“Father says there’s sure to be bloody battles right here in and around Washington.” She swallowed hard and added, “Dearest friend, you and I are to be on opposite sides in this war. Father’s pledged allegiance to the Union Army and so has my darling Davy.”
“Dear Lord, I hadn’t thought of that,” Suzanna said, realizing with horror that scenes such as this were taking place all over the city. The war was tearing apart lifelong friends, even families.
“It isn’t my fault, Suz,” said the now weeping Cynthia Ann. “Please don’t hold it against me.”
Tears spilling down her own cheeks, Suzanna said, “Darling Cyn, nothing could ever change the way I feel about you. You’re the sister I never had, and I shall love you always. None of this is your fault, nor mine. It changes nothing between us.”
“I knew you’d understand.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Mother and the servants are busy packing now and…Tomorrow. Early tomorrow morning.”
“So soon? It’s like a knife through my breast,” Suzanna said honestly. “This—your leaving me—must be responsible for the terrible feeling I have.” She looked hopefully at Cynthia Ann. “That’s it, isn’t it, Cyn? That’s the bad thing I perceived was going to happen.”
“I’m sure it is, dear. And I’m so sorry to be deserting you when you need me most.”
“I’ll be all right, truly I will. And you will write me often and I will answer. And when this conflict ends, you will come home and we will be just as we always were.”
“Yes. Yes, we will. Nothing can ever damage our friendship.”
“Absolutely not. Now come on inside and let’s enjoy our last afternoon together.”
Six
July 1861
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br /> Creamy white flowers covered the rosebushes that grew just outside the open floor-to-ceiling windows. The fragile blossoms undulated in a gentle breeze blowing out of the south. The rhythmic shimmering stirred the flowers’ seductive fragrance, sending the subtle scent wafting through the windows and into the spacious ground floor bedchamber.
“Umm, smell that,” purred a voluptuous naked woman lying stretched out on the silk-sheeted bed, arms flung above her head, midnight hair spilling across the lace-trimmed pillows. “Like the sweetest of honey.”
“I smell you,” said the man who, shedding the last of his clothes, came down onto the bed beside the woman.
“And how do I smell?” she asked, turning on her side and raking long fingernails through the coal-black hair covering his broad, muscled chest.
“Hot. Pungent. Like a highly aroused female in need of immediate sex,” he said, unworried that she might take offense.
No chance of that. Mitch Longley knew her too well. Mrs. Dawn Bell Thompson Bond Merriweather, a wealthy and beautiful twice-widowed, once-divorced brunette who was accepted in Washington society mainly because she was extremely wealthy, had let him know the night they met exactly what she wanted from him.
As they had danced in the ballroom of this very mansion—one of three grand residences she owned—she’d wasted no time in explaining why Mitch had been invited to the evening’s glittering soiree.
“Admiral Longley,” she had said, “since the afternoon when I was walking past the War Department with a good friend and you and I very nearly collided, I have thought of little else but you.”
“Madam,” Mitch had reminded her, “the incident happened only yesterday afternoon.”
She’d laughed gaily and said, “Well, you can’t very well expect a lady to live in torture forever, now can you, Admiral?”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.”
“Don’t you?” she said, and none-too-subtly insinuated her chiffon-gowned knee between his. Her gloved hand firmly urging his head down, she’d put her lips against his ear and whispered, “I want you to make love to me. Tonight. Here in my home. In my bed. After my guests leave. Or before. It’s up to you. We can go to my suite right now if you like. It’s just down the hall.” She pulled back to judge his reaction.