LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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