One Wore Blue (2 page)

The Yankees were coming.

She wanted to scream, and she wanted somewhere to run. She wanted to cast this information upon one of the many gallants she had known in her life. And she wanted one of them to stand up and sweep her up and promise her that everything would be all right, that she would be cherished and protected.

But there was nowhere to run, and no one to run to. Inside the house, the children would have seen the men by now. They would be coming to her. She would have to have something to say to them. It was doubtful that she could save the house—Miller firearms had already been used too successfully against the Union. She had to save her charges, though, and the slaves dependent upon her.

But the Yankees were coming.…

A cavalry unit was leading, with infantry in the back, she realized. There must have been a hundred soldiers.

Suddenly, even as they headed nearer and nearer her, the party split. Half now headed toward her, and half toward the Freemont estate down the hill.

“Kiernan! Yankees! For the love of God, Yankees!”

Kiernan swung around. Patricia, her twelve-year-old sister-in-law,
stood on the front porch, her fingers clenched into her skirt.

It was curious how very lovely Patricia Miller looked. She, too, had dressed for dinner. Her blond hair hung in a single braid down her back, and her muslin gown filled with soft lilac flowers. She was framed by the house, the gracious and elegant house that looked so very beautiful and welcoming in the twilight.

Montemarte sat upon the hill on the outskirts of Harpers Ferry. Like others in the area, the Millers had found their riches in the production and manufacture of arms, and Montemarte was a monument to those riches. It was not a plantation home but a magnificent manor. There were stables for the horses that had once been the Miller family pride. There were gardens to feed the household, and there were gardens for beauty, but there were no fields for income—just the manor with its classic white Greek columns, and the stables and outbuildings.

“Kiernan—”

“I know, I know!” Kiernan told her softly. “The Yankees are coming.” With a sigh she squared her shoulders and fought off a last temptation to burst into tears. She lifted her skirts and hurried for the porch. “Patricia, they’re going to want to burn the house.”

“No! They can’t! What will we do? Where will we go?” Patricia asked, tears in her wide brown eyes.

Despite its beauty, Montemarte was just a house, Kiernan told herself. Their home, yes, but still just a creation of brick and wood and mortar and plaster. They were not destitute; she could bring the Miller children to her father’s home, deep in Tidewater Virginia, on the peninsula, where the Yankees would dare not come lest they met up with Stonewall Jackson or General Lee.

She knew why Patricia was so desperate. The war had scarcely begun, but already Patricia had lost everyone. If it hadn’t been for Kiernan’s reckless marriage to Patricia’s brother, not even Kiernan would be here now for the children.

“Don’t worry,” she told Patricia. “We’ll be fine, whatever happens.”

“Like hell!” snapped a voice, and Kiernan’s eyes quickly rose to meet those of Patricia’s twin brother, Jacob Miller. Brown-eyed and tow-headed like Patricia, he was already very tall and very straight, and he carried his father’s old rifle. He gazed at Kiernan with hurt and with knowledge that shouldn’t have been seen in eyes so very young. “Bad things are happening in a lot of places, Kiernan. Lots of bad things. You’d best get yourself and Patricia hid somewhere.” There was a catch in his throat. “’Tricia’s young yet, but when them Yanks see you—”

“Jacob,” Kiernan said, and lowered her head to hide a smile. He meant to defend her honor—to the death. She had heard some of the same stories about the invading Union Army that he had, but she couldn’t believe that fifty men, riding with such discipline, were coming to dishonor one lone woman. “We’re going to be all right. They’re coming because of the Miller Firearms Factories. It’s revenge, I’m afraid, but nothing more.”

“Kiernan—”

She set her hand upon the rifle, lowering it. “Jacob Miller, you can’t take on an entire Union cavalry company. In memory of your parents and Anthony, I have to make sure that you grow up and live to a ripe old age. Do you understand?”

“They’re going to burn us out.”

“Probably, yes.”

“And you want to just surrender the place to them?”

“No, Jacob.” She offered them both a grave smile. “I want to make the evening as wretched for them as we possibly can. I want you both to go back inside. One of you sit in the library and read a book. One of you go and make sure that Janey has started supper. I’ll stay and meet them on the porch, and when they order us to go, we’ll go. But on our own sweet time, and with lots of dignity.”

Jacob still looked as if he wanted to start shooting. Dear God, the twins had always listened to her in the past! She prayed that Jacob wouldn’t pick this moment to defy her.

“Jacob, please, for the love of God. Help me now. I swear I won’t bear the sight of any more blood right now. They won’t want to hurt you.”

“All Yanks ever want to do is hurt southerners!” Jacob claimed, a catch in his throat. He was still just a child. He didn’t want to be hurt.

He also didn’t want to be a coward. He was the man of the house now, and a man stood up for what was his.

“That’s not true,” she said. But she herself wasn’t certain anymore. War had changed everything. It had ravaged the land, it had torn apart families.

There had once been a time when they in the South had believed that the North would just let them secede, let them go their separate way.

That time was long past.

There had also been a time when they had all thought that the southern soldiers wouldn’t need more than a few weeks to whop the North.

That time was also long past, no matter how brilliant the southern generals were, no matter how valiant her men, no matter how gallantly they rode their horses and wielded their swords. It had really started that long-ago day at nearby Harpers Ferry, when John Brown had made his move to seize the arsenal. The old fanatic had been captured and tried. He had committed treason and murder, and he had been condemned to hang.

And he had promised them all, on the day of his hanging, that the land would run red with blood.

“No one is going to hurt you. Put the rifle away.”

“I want it close at hand,” Jacob said stubbornly.

He turned to put it away. Thankfully, she thought, he wasn’t going to throw away his life in a foolhardy quest for valiance.

“Thank you,” Kiernan told him, smiling.

But the Yankees were still coming.

“Go in!” she commanded them. “Quickly—now!” She didn’t want them to hear her voice quavering.

She clenched her hands before her. She didn’t want them to see her fingers trembling.

Suddenly, Janey was on the porch with them. Plump and aging, her anxiety shone in her ink-dark eyes. “Miz Kiernan! The Yankees are coming!”

“Janey, I know that,” Kiernan said, surprised at just how calm she managed to sound. “Go back in and start supper.”

“Supper’s on this minute, Miz Kiernan. But didn’t you hear me? The—”

“Yes, yes, the Yankees are coming. Go on in, all of you. This is a house where dignity has always resided. We will go on with our lives. I will wait to greet the—er, visitors. You all go in and go about your business.”

They stared at her, all three of them, as if she had gone crazy. But then Patricia—bless her—lifted her little nose, turned about, and walked regally into the house. After a moment, Jacob followed her.

“It don’t make sense!” Janey said. Kiernan stood her ground on the porch, and Janey sniffed. “I said that it don’t make sense. You want me to go make supper so that they can burn supper to the ground too! You ought to be hightailing it out of here right now, missy, and that’s a fact! They get their hands on you, and they might not just burn the house!”

“Janey, nothing is going to happen to me. Those are obviously not guerrilla troops. Watch them march. I’m not going to be—”

“Maybe they aren’t gonna rape you,” Janey said bluntly. “But you’re the last adult remaining of the Miller family, and after the damage done by Miller firearms, why, they just might want to send you to some northern prison camp, and as I hear it, they aren’t mighty nice places to be!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Janey,” Kiernan said firmly. “They don’t do horrible things to women in the North.” A tinge of unease swept through her. They didn’t, did they? She wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. She had to stand her ground.

“I wouldn’t count on that, Miz Kiernan!”

She and Janey were good friends, even if Janey’s status was that of a slave at the moment. Anthony’s will had freed her, but all kinds of paper work still had to be done to make
her freedom a fact. It didn’t matter. Janey would never leave her. Not when they needed each other so very badly.

But for the moment, Kiernan raised her voice just slightly and used the tone she had learned all the long years back home. “Janey, I said to go in.”

Janey sniffed one more time and started into the house. “Dear Lord, give me strength! These old bones are too old to be trotting up into a snow-covered northern city to take care of the fool mistress in some jail!”

Janey paused in the doorway, sniffed once more for good measure, and started in. “Can’t see why I’m cooking no supper that no human body’s gonna get to sink teeth into! Supper’s gonna be char-broiled tonight, that it is!”

The door closed with a slam.

Kiernan stood still on the porch and felt the breeze move about her again, lift her hair, and rustle her skirt. The enemy was still coming.

Like the undulating wave of a deep-blue ocean—relentless, unstoppable, they came. And she waited still, silent, her heart pounding, her breath coming too quickly, despite her determination to appear calm.

The Yanks were coming to burn down her home. There would be no help—the deed would be done in retaliation for every rifle ever manufactured by the family into which she had married, the Millers.

She wondered why she was remaining. Why she didn’t just run. She couldn’t possibly stop them.

Then she knew that she was staying for her belief, for Virginia, for the Confederacy, and for herself, her soul. She couldn’t bend to the enemy, now or ever. She couldn’t run, and she couldn’t bend.

She watched the movement of the enemy troops. The first horses in front broke loose and came galloping up the rise upon which she stood. Her heart thundered. She didn’t move.

A moment later, a handsome bay was drawn up before her by a rugged-looking cavalryman with a dark moustache and beard that didn’t entirely hide his sneer.

“You must be Mrs. Miller, ma’am.”

“I am,” Kiernan said.

“Ma’am, I’m Captain Hugh Norris, and I reckon you’d best be out of the place right quick. I’ve orders to torch the house.”

“Whose orders?” she demanded.

“Why, the orders of General—”

“Your general has no jurisdiction here.”

“Ma’am, the Union is here. Your Confederates have left you. And I’m going to burn this place to the ground, so you’d best get your kin and help out of here. Lady, you ain’t smelt nothing bad until you’ve smelt burning flesh!”

Kiernan fought very hard to remain still, staring at the man, determined not to give in to his demand.

“Then you’ll just have to give me time, sir.”

“I’m torching her in ten minutes, Mrs. Miller.” He was gleeful. Obviously, his task appealed to him.

“I don’t know, sir. I think it would create an awfully bad image if it was found out that Union officers burned down houses with women and children still in them. You will just have to bide your time, sir.”

Norris stared at her in a fury. His bay pranced to and fro before the porch steps. Suddenly, he nudged the bay and brought it leaping up to the porch, very close to her. Kiernan raised her chin and didn’t take a step back despite the heavy hooves of the bay.

“Lady, let me tell you something. The day of the great southern high-brow belle is over. Real soon, you won’t dare be talking to a man like that! So take your time. I won’t burn you down. I’ll just drag you out. Then it’ll look like the darned Yank saved your hide despite your determination for suicide!”

“I think not, sir,” she told him. She was insane! What was she going to do? What
could
she do?

She needed to be rescued. She needed the whole southern cavalry under Jeb Stuart to come riding in. She needed a horseman, a hero in butternut and gray.

“Sergeant! Set some tinder!” Norris commanded.

One of his men leaped down from his horse. He called out in turn to several of the men, and they quickly joined him,
collecting dried twigs and sticks and winding them with dried hay of their own to stuff into the latticed nooks and crannies at the base of the porch. Kiernan watched them, powerless to stop them, yet suddenly so furious, she wanted to tear into the men, to scratch their eyes out, to tear their hair out by the handfuls.

But she managed to stand still and silently, condemning, upon the porch.

“Damn you!” Norris thundered. Suddenly, he raced his horse down the steps and out before his men.

“Prepare to light your torches, men!” he called out.

Kiernan remained still even as they set fire to the torches.

“Prepare to fire the house!”

They couldn’t burn it with her standing there—she was determined! The men in blue looked at her nervously, then looked at their commander, then looked back to her again.

They started forward.

A cry bellowed out, loud, harsh, and full of authority.

“Halt!”

A rider was coming from behind the others, taking the path from the town in the valley below that the others had taken.

He rode with no discipline. He rode like one born and bred to sit upon a horse, with reckless, absolute ease upon his steed. He rode as if he knew the hills and mountains and valleys and more. He rode as if he knew the very muscle and heart of his mount.

The silver horse raced, churning up dirt and grass, and its rider was heedless of the speed. Distance was swiftly breached.