Chapter 8
eight
Don’t tread on me.
Gadsden Flag
Mae returned home with Coralie in a state of high if hidden anticipation. But by full dark neither James nor the officers appeared, turning her sister as relieved as Mae was disappointed.
“One never knows when they’ll darken our door,” Coralie said as they huddled by the hearth on the sofa. “How weary I am of the unpredictability of it all—and feeling my brothers are the enemy.”
“Our brothers have admirable convictions.” Mae’s tone held a rare rebuke. “Hardly a summer soldier or sunshine patriot, shrinking from service to his country, but deserving of the love and thanks of man and woman.”
“You quote the rebel Thomas Paine.” Coralie pulled her shawl closer as the evening chill deepened. “How almighty and glorious he makes violence and bloodshed sound.”
“Wars have been fought for less noble reasons.”
“Noble? Then why are these Americans deemed traitors to the Crown? You well know they’ll be hung along with General Washington himself once the army is disbanded.”
“No matter the outcome, they’re honorable men who’ve taken a stand against oppression and tyranny.”
“Oppression and tyranny, my eye!” Coralie looked aghast. “’Tis bad enough you’re sewing with the Liberty Ladies. Are you now a Patriot too?”
“I desire peace foremost.” Mae felt it to her soul, but how did anyone stay objective or impartial? “Can you honestly say you’re neutral, given you’re affianced to a British officer? Doesn’t his allegiance sway you?”
“I believe he is on the right side, the winning side. I feel a loyalty to king and country you obviously don’t.
” Coralie stood, her skirts swirling as she turned rapidly aside.
“I’m sick to death of this conflict and all the fury it incites.
I can only pray all this madness and bloodshed soon come to an end. ”
She hurried upstairs, her irate words lingering.
Dispirited, Mae pondered whether to read or sew or follow her sister to bed.
The tall case clock in the hall struck ten, but the officers were still away.
Numerous scenarios besieged her. Had General Washington received dire news?
Had he made the decision to abandon the war?
Or had someone betrayed him? Spies were everywhere, ’twas said . . .
Mae climbed the stairs to find the door between her and Coralie’s bedchambers shut. Bending, Mae looked through the keyhole. Coralie sat at her candlelit desk, scratching out a letter. To Eben? Pouring out her turmoil?
Mae readied for bed with a heavy heart. Not even a shallow bath in the copper hip tub helped.
Brushing and braiding her hair at her dressing table found her staring back at the frowning, shivering woman in the looking glass.
Clad in her warmest nightgown, she closed the bed curtains, her feet seeking the heated brick wrapped in flannel at her feet.
By morning the water in the ewer atop her washstand would be ice and she’d need her quilted petticoat lined with eiderdown.
“Sometimes only another warm body will do,” Mama had often said in winter. Growing up, Mae and Coralie had shared a bed from the first frost to spring’s thaw.
Yawning, Mae hoped Mrs. Hurst would be snug in her two-room cottage. Her thoughts trailed to General Harlow, who seemed impervious to the cold. James slept with five blankets beneath the eave, but thus far she’d not heard his commander ask for more.
Pulling her nightcap more snugly about her head, she burrowed beneath the covers. Had Adam gotten enough wood for their guests should they reappear? She’d forgotten to check as she usually did, her earlier conversation with Coralie upsetting enough to thwart her usual nighttime routine.
The thought of the officers returning to frigid rooms brought her to her feet again. Was Coralie warm enough? She heard her sister’s soft snores in her bedchamber.
She opened the adjoining door and tiptoed through Coralie’s room, the letter her sister had been writing on the table. Curiosity got the better of her. She took the paper in hand and stood by the fire to confirm the recipient.
Dearest Eben,
We are now forced to billet my brother James and his commanding officer, General Rhys Harlow, and a Captain Casper Sperry beneath our very roof.
No doubt you are well aware of Harlow’s Rifle Corps, said to terrorize British officers foremost, unseating them from their saddles at long range with their rifles.
Take heed. I abhor this savage conduct and am entirely with you in your loyalty to king and country.
I now consider Maebel an outright rebel, though she pleads peace and neutrality so prettily.
Given these treasonous times I have decided to take action and tell you of all that conspires beneath our roof.
It is the least I can do for this glorious cause of which you play such a noble part. I trust no one here in Chatham.
The sooner I’m removed from this volatile situation, the better. I loathe being amongst those who are so blatantly disloyal and treasonous.
Stung, Mae returned the unfinished letter to the desk.
Coralie’s prose bordered on hysterical, sure to incite Eben—and all the rest of the family if read.
Being cast in the role of enemy, not sister, cut especially deep.
Since the war began Coralie seemed to have erected a wall, a breastwork of her own making, distancing herself from them all.
Would their family recover from these divisions in time?
As quietly as she could, Mae laid another log on Coralie’s fire before venturing to the room used by Captain Sperry.
Adam hadn’t shirked his duties. The hearth was brilliantly lit, seasoned oak and hickory burning brightly.
She checked General Harlow’s next—needlessly.
His was crackling merrily too, a terrible waste of wood for unoccupied rooms.
She saw three books on his nightstand and remembered his penchant for reading.
He was self-taught, James had said. What he lacked in formal education he made up for in life experience.
She started for the books, wanting to know what filled his mind of late, but hearing a creak in the floorboards, she whirled around.
The tall shadow in the open doorway shocked then sent a shiver through her. None other than General Harlow himself.
“You’re stealthy as a fox,” she told him, as rattled by his sudden appearing as her own racing heart.
He entered the room and walked to the hearth as the thought crossed her mind to excuse herself, but her fascination fixed her to the floor.
“You’re to be thanked for tending my fire.” He extended his hands to the heat as leaping light gilded him. “I’m tempted to bed down right here.”
“You’re used to sleeping on the ground, then.”
“Mostly in the open, aye. Or atop a cot in a tent.”
She couldn’t imagine, not in Jersey. “The stories you could tell . . .”
“They’d fill more than one book, aye.” He took the poker from her. “You need to be abed, Miss Bohannon. Your hospitality borders on frostbite.”
Smiling, she simply pulled her quilted wrapping gown closer. “Are my brother and Captain Sperry here too?”
“Morristown.”
She was growing used to his one-word answers. “You officers are in Morristown so much it’s a wonder why you don’t stay there.”
“Chatham has its own charms.”
She refused to think herself among them, yet heat warmed her neck and ears at his words. Surely he meant the ongoing competition between the two villages. Comely Chatham usually won, being on the river with the surrounding foothills.
On second thought, why was he here? Did the thought of a hot fire and feather bed lure him? Or was it something more? He was, she decided, a very practical man, so she shrugged aside the romantic for the mundane.
“The eggs and milk will be frozen by morning, so I can’t promise you a decent breakfast, General Harlow.”
“Breakfast is the farthest thing from my mind, Miss Bohannon.”
Her breath suspended as he turned toward her. Though he hadn’t touched her, his nearness wrapped round her, as warm as a coverlet. She didn’t care a whit about her bare toes peeking out beneath the hem of her nightclothes or the disheveled state of her braid. His company was all that mattered.
The light called out all the fine lines in his striking face.
She’d missed him in the short time he’d been away, forever wondering where and how he’d been.
Since he’d first appeared at their door, the wind and weather didn’t seem so bitter, the pinch of supplies less vexing.
She seemed above so many earthly things when he came round . . . which wasn’t often enough.
As she thought it, he pulled something from beneath his wool coat and held it out to her. The sight of the small heart-shaped pendant dangling on a pale blue ribbon sent her emotions swirling anew.
“Mother-of-pearl,” he said when she took it. “I found it in the snow coming here in January. A pretty trinket.”
“Pretty, yes.” The firelight reflected pale pink and green hues.
“It belongs to someone like you.” His voice struck a chord she’d not heard before. “Refined. Deserving of genteel things.”
Heart overfull, she thanked him and studied it, the cold pearl becoming warm beneath her touch.
Rhys took Mae in, her presence filling him with a pleasure he hadn’t reckoned possible, at least in wartime. He’d never expected to find her in his very chamber, tending his fire and turning his thoughts to his own future home and the woman who’d be waiting.
She made him forget, for a few moments, war and wounds and enlistment numbers and desertions.
He was weary of the war. Weary, too, of fighting his feelings for her.
Could she sense that? Standing alone with her made a man lose all reason.
All his reserve and self-control were felled like a tree before her.
No woman had held any sway over him before. He was having a hard time pushing past his need of her, past the innocent seduction of her softness and scent, the silken strand of hair that fell against her left cheek with a maddening twirl, as curvaceous as all the rest of her.
I wish this was our home, our only world, and we didn’t need to say good night.
There was nothing more he wanted than to speak those words, make her his, cradle her against him till dawn intruded. As it was, the clock belowstairs chimed the late hour and reminded him they both needed rest.
“Good night, Miss Bohannon.”
“Good night, General Harlow.”