LITMIR.BIZ

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first dance belongs to me, Laura Lee,” he whispered.

      “To no one else, my darling.” She smiled, and the pressure of her fingers on his hand made his heart leap.

      He went with her across the hall, the British officers drawing back courteously. He did not see Colonel Emerson staring after him with slitted eyes, did not see him turn on a heel and move toward the tall French windows that opened onto the terrace and to the herb garden beyond.

      The nights were cool in November. Colonel Emerson moved to the stone rail of the terrace and stared out over the fall herbs and flowers in their patterned beds, biting hard at his full lower lip.

      “Milord!”

      It was only a whisper in the night from the darkness below him, but it made the Colonel freeze. He put a hand to his belt, where his service pistol hung, as he leaned over the balustrade.

      “Who’s there? Eh? Who is it?”

      “Ssssst! Not so loud, milord!”

      A big man came out of the shadows, a bulky package in a hand. He was heavy-set, with uncut black hair and small, glittering eyes.

      Emerson surveyed him, faint disdain curling his lips. “You want me, my man?”

      “You’re a Britisher, ain’t you? A Britisher interested in capturin’ a rebel posing as a loyalist and a man of property?”

      There was something in the tone of the big man that caused the Colonel to glance at the French windows off the terrace. He went and closed them, then came back to the wide stone steps that ran down to the garden. A vague hope was blooming in him as he saw the big man kneeling and undoing the green sash with which he had tied his bundle.

      Ezra Whipple spread the buckskin hunting shirt wide and laid the green sash on top of it. He held a powder horn carved almost to transparency in his hands, turning it over and over as his eyes caught at the Colonel.

      Emerson gasped. “A rebel uniform. One of Morgan’s sharpshooters!”

      “Aye! The fringes mark it for a colonel’s shirt, milord.”

      Colonel Emerson lowered his voice. “Who owns the thing, man?”

      Cunning lay deep in Whipple’s eyes. He shifted restlessly, and sighed. The beating he had taken that afternoon had put the thirst for vengeance in him, but not to such an extent that it removed the greed that was a perpetual fever in his blood.

      Putting a hand to his pocket, Emerson drew out a velvet purse. As he hunkered down, he unfastened it and poured a flood of round golden sovereigns into his palm. Silently Ezra Whipple eyed that small fortune, licking dry lips with his tongue. Impulsively he held out his hand for the gold.

      Colonel Emerson laughed softly. “Not so fast, not so fast. How do I know it’s worth my gold, this uniform you bring?”

      Whipple scowled. His narrowed eyes studied the face of the British officer, reading the sensuality that lay in his too-full mouth, in his flushed cheeks and glittering eyes. For an hour he had lain on the flagging of the terrace, staring in at the diners. He had seen the manner in which this man’s eyes roved the figure of the woman who sat at Stafford’s elbow.

      “Ye mind the man in the high splat-backed chair? The man who’s wed to the dark beauty?”

      Emerson gasped and hunched closer. “Stafford? God’s my life! Can you mean Stafford?”

      “Aye. Billy Joe Stafford. One of Dan Morgan’s colonels!”

      Emerson came to his feet. He stood rigid, letting triumph sweep across him. Stafford a rebel! Stafford, now in gentleman garb, out of uniform! He could hang him out of hand, now, to the nearest tree!

      As a man might savor old wine, so Colonel Emerson savored the thoughts he held. Now he would not be a trespasser in that big canopied bed above the ballroom. Now he could wed with Laura Lee, and own the plantation she governed. All these fine buildings, the slaves and horses, the meadows rich with wheat and cotton would be his! When the war was over, he would stay on in the colonies, perhaps helping to administer this rich territory of Virginia for the crown.

      It was a magnificent prospect to a man who had been born out of wedlock to an English earl, to a man who had been trained for war at a military academy, who expected nothing other than his officer’s pay and an occasional chance to loot a Southern plantation in return for his service.

      He swept the gold and the purse into Whipple’s hands. “Tell me how you came by them. Tell me what proof you have that they belong to him.”

      Ezra Whipple told him of the fight that afternoon, and of the blonde girl, and of the little room in the Black Thistle ordinary and the chest it held. Then he showed him the powder horn with its scrolled Stafford crest.

      “It will be enough.” Emerson laughed, and there was cruelty in the sound.

      Whipple stood up and put the gold in a pocket. He said hoarsely, “Your worship may have need of me in later times. I’ll not be far away.”

      Emerson looked at his grossness, at the pig eyes and hulking shoulders. He smiled faintly. “It may be as you say. Don’t go far away.” Then he swept up the green sash and the hunting shirt and the powder horn and paced lazily toward the deserted dining room.

      They were moving in the stately steps of a minuet as he came through the archway of the ballroom, its glass chandeliers and candles blazing, the music washing across the officers in their scarlet jackets faced in blue and silver, and over the women with their arms and shoulders bared. The paneled walls were rich with pine wainscoting, and the dark, polished flooring was so bright that it caught and held the reflections of officers’ boots and swinging panniered skirts.

      He stood with the hunting shirt and sash in a hand, savoring the moment. Laura Lee moved easily with Stafford, laughing up at him, cajoling him as she was wont to cajole himself. A few moments from now those lovely brown eyes would be wide in terror. Stafford would be wrestling against the grip of a score of hands, being dragged outward to the nearest tree!

      Laura Lee Stafford would be a widow soon. He would remain behind to comfort her, after the others were gone. The anticipation of that comforting was in him as he made his way to the musicians’ dais.

      The music ceased abruptly at the wave of his hand. In the silence, men and women turned toward him curiously. Colonel Emerson spread out the hunting shirt and sash on the spinnet.

      “Colonel Stafford, I’ve just been handed your uniform. It marks you as an officer in Morgan’s Rifles. I find you out of uniform at the moment.” The Colonel paused, savoring the stunned shock on Stafford’s face, the dismay in Laura Lee’s white cheeks. He said lazily, “I presume you know the rules of war, and what happens to a spy when his enemy catches him?”

      The gloating was clear in his voice. His hand lifted the powder horn and held it high above his head for all to see.

      “Gentlemen: his powder horn, with the Stafford crest worked into it! I ask your aid in hanging this man for a spy!”

      There were some who cried out against such a return for Stafford hospitality, but the majority of officers had seen those expert riflemen of Dan Morgan’s cut more than one command to pieces behind them, and so they surged forward now, crying out harshly, dragging at their swords with eager hands.

      Stafford stood still, the shock of discovery paralyzing his muscles.

      Laura Lee gasped beside him, her hand working tensely at his forearm, “Deny it, Billy Joe. Deny it! You can save yourself that way!”

      He could not save himself. Something in the face of Colonel Edmund Emerson whispered that he would listen to no argument. Something also told Stafford that it was not because he was a rebel that the Colonel was so eager to hang him.

      Stafford was aware that everything in his life was crystallizing at this moment. Like his father before him, he had been born on this side of the Atlantic, and the vast freedom of the pine forests and the distant blue

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