Honor's Fury Read online

  Damn him! What right had he to come into her life? He had ruined her wedding night just as surely as if he had carefully planned it. He had told her that Thaddeus was without passion and went on to demonstrate how much of it he had seething beneath his dark, handsome exterior. If it hadn’t been for Damon Fowler, she would never have speculated on what might have been, never have given a thought to the possibility of another kind of lovemaking. She would have been perfectly satisfied with Thaddeus, believing without doubt that the sexual act between them was what it should be, a prelude to others with the man she loved. As for Damon Fowler, Amélie heartily wished him in hell.

  They returned to Arbormalle a week later on a blustery afternoon with the sun riding in and out of white, scudding clouds. The great oak that spread across the front lawn shading the white columned portico creaked and swayed, throwing shadows on the pink brick walls. Amélie and Thaddeus had been given rooms in the south ell until their own house was built. Plans had been drawn up but their architect was not yet free to start supervising the construction. Amélie chafed at the delay. Though Arbormalle was commodious she was eager to start housekeeping on her own. Her mother ran her household with an iron hand and in the past Amélie had submitted to rules and restrictions without complaint. But now, in her married state, she resented her mother’s domineering authority.

  Babette always had resented it and had somehow managed to do pretty much as she pleased. Amélie, well aware of her sister’s headstrong behavior, was unable to curb her. But she loved Babette and did not want to see her ridiculed or hurt by gossip.

  The bond between the girls had been forged in early childhood. Babette had sought from her older sister the love she could not seem to get from her parents. Amélie in turn had developed a maternal fondness for Babette, an affection tinged with compassion prompted in part by the knowledge that she, Amélie, was the favored child. It was this subconscious guilt that caused Amélie to excuse Babette’s flirting with every man who crossed her path. If Papa had paid more heed to Babette, Amélie often thought, instead of resenting her because she wasn’t the son he wanted, then Babette would have been the perfect lady. Or nearly perfect. For there were times, aside from her coquettishness, when even Amélie found her sister a little too much. Her intense curiosity about Amélie’s wedding night was a case in point.

  As soon as Babette could get Amélie alone she began to interrogate her. Amélie, feeling embarrassed about her own reaction to Thaddeus’s lovemaking (the situation had not improved in the week that followed), was reluctant to discuss such a private matter, even with her own sister. But Babette prodded and urged and coaxed until Amélie was forced to give a vague, mumbling account of what had transpired.

  Their intimate conversation took place in the bedroom Amélie now shared with Thaddeus, a high-ceilinged room frescoed in olive green. Amélie sat in the cushioned window seat, a piece of embroidery on her lap. Babette had thrown herself across the damask-covered bed, her arms under her head, prompting Amélie with questions. Finally Amélie said, “That’s all there is. Really, Babette. What more can I say? Except that Thaddeus is everything a husband should be.”

  “I wonder,” Babette murmured. She sat up, her red-gold hair falling in silky waves over her shoulders. “Can you keep a secret, Amélie?”

  “You know I can.”

  “Well, what would you say if I told you that I, too, am no longer a virgin?”

  Amélie stared at her, a look of shock in her blue eyes. “Are you joking?”

  “I’m not. I swear it’s true.”

  “You haven’t sneaked off to marry someone, have you?”

  “Nope. I’m not married, at least not yet.” She wound a curl around her finger. “Aren’t you going to ask who the man is?”

  “I don’t think I want to know. I’m—I’m flabbergasted! How could you do such a thing? Haven’t you any morals, any sense of decency?”

  “I might have had, Amélie, but that went by the board the minute he took me in his arms.” She closed her eyes, her lips curving in a sensuous, reflective smile.

  “He was so strong, so manly. . . . Oh, I’ll admit I had too much champagne and he, perhaps, too much whiskey, but ...” A delicious shudder ran through her body. “When he lifted me and carried me into the gazebo, I just didn’t care. He laid me down and began to undress me—’’

  “Stop! I don’t want to hear anymore!”

  But Babette went on relentlessly. “He has such a beautiful body, broad shoulders with black hair curling up his chest. And he kept kissing and petting me and fondling my bosoms. Oh, Amélie, if you felt half as wonderful as I did!”

  “You ought to be horsewhipped. Wonderful, indeed!”

  “And it hurt a little at first but he was so strong and he cradled me in his arms and he went on and on—”

  Amélie sprang up and strode across the room, the fire of indignation in her eyes. “Stop!” She raised her arm. “If you don’t stop, I’ll make you. How could you? And the man! If Papa or Thaddeus knew they would call him out. He must be a cad of the first order. What Southern gentleman would take a girl of good family?”

  “He isn’t a Southerner.”

  Amélie stared down at her sister, her arm still raised. “What did you say?” she whispered hoarsely.

  “He’s that Yankee, Amélie. Damon Fowler.”

  “My God!” Something twisted inside Amélie, an emotion she did not want to recognize. Her hand came down, sweeping across Babette’s face in a stinging slap. “You fool!”

  Damon Fowler! The reprobate, the scoundrel, the . . . ! She could kill him herself. Her hand whipped across Babette’s cheek again. “You little fool! Did it ever enter your silly head that you might become pregnant?”

  “If I do,” she answered, her hand holding her reddened cheek, “he’ll have to marry me, won’t he?”

  Chapter

  ❖ 3 ❖

  Life at Arbormalle had always moved at a slow and leisurely pace. Tobacco, which had made the Townsend fortune in the early eighteenth century, was still their chief cash crop. Though depletion of the soil made it necessary to use marl and guano fertilizers now, the tobacco hogsheads were still trundled in ox carts to the wharves as they had been in 1690, the slave quarters standing beyond the creek still housed some two hundred souls, and the stables still harbored the best horseflesh money could buy. The master rode to Annapolis on court days and his wife received on Thursday afternoons, serving a high tea that would have done credit to any London hostess in Mayfair.

  The days passed in unhurried routine, broken at intervals by a hunt, a picnic, a clambake or a ball. The Townsends and their neighbors could indulge themselves. They had the money and the time. Gentlemen sat over port and cigars of an evening heatedly debating politics, their arguments mainly academic. On occasion one of their number might run for local, or even state, office but otherwise the world outside Anne Arundel rarely called them to action.

  But now the debates grew more heated as rumors of secession and war multiplied. Garvin, who resembled the stout, florid faced country squire of his English ancestry, felt that true Marylanders had no choice but to fight for the Confederacy. So fervent was he that when an old friend ventured the opinion that war solved nothing, Garvin ordered him from the house.

  Both Amélie and Thaddeus also felt the time had come to take a firm stand. If the North tried to impose its will it would find the entire South united in militant opposition. “We’ll teach them a lesson they won’t forget,’’ Thaddeus asserted. Hearing that a former classmate at St. John’s was forming a cavalry unit, he immediately wrote, asking to join. That he was one of the first to volunteer made Amélie’s heart swell with pride. She would not let herself think that battles left dead and wounded and that Thaddeus might be among them. When he raised the possibility himself it frightened her.

  “If I’m killed, Amélie—”

  “But you won’t be!’’ she interrupted, quickly crossing herself for luck.

  “I do
n’t plan on it, sweetheart, but should it happen I want you to see that I’m buried in the family plot at Bancroft. Promise?’’

  “Of course, I promise. But you’ll come back, I just know you will. Why, you might not have to go to war at all.’’

  Like most Southerners Amélie believed that once the Yankees saw the South’s determination, how their courageous young men flocked to enlist, they would hesitate to provoke hostilities. But if the Yankees did decide to fight Amélie felt certain they would be routed in a few weeks, a month at most.

  Through all this talk and preparation Babette went about with a glum face. “There won’t be any men left, just boys and graybeards,’’ she complained.

  “Is that all you can think about?” Amélie asked indignantly.

  “Yes. And you would too if you were in my shoes. Can you imagine parties and suppers without beaux?”

  “I can. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Well, I’m not!”

  Neither of the sisters had referred again to Damon Fowler since the night Babette made her confession. Amélie imagined the scoundrel was back in Massachusetts girding himself to crush the rebellious South. Hateful man! She was grateful Babette had not become pregnant, although, she was sure, Babette herself never gave it a thought. Amélie was hoping that her own missed monthly was a sign that a child had been started. She didn’t want to tell anyone until she was sure, least of all Thaddeus who might feel guilty about leaving her.

  When news of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter reached Arbormalle on April 12 it was almost anticlimatic. Everyone had been waiting so tensely these past few weeks for something to happen that when it did they took it as a matter of course. “About time,” Thaddeus said. “Now we know where we stand.” The Federal garrison at Sumter had surrendered. President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 militiamen to suppress insurrection and force the seceding states back into the Union put the final cap on the situation.

  Without wasting a moment’s time Thaddeus made plans to leave for Baltimore to rendezvous with his former classmates. The Maryland Rangers, as they called themselves, would go on to Richmond, Virginia where a rebel army was assembling. Thaddeus’s horse was sent on ahead while he, accompanied by Amélie, his father August, Garvin, and Babette (who had begged tearfully to go along) traveled up by boat.

  They arrived in the city to find it seething with controversy. Clusters of people stood about on the pavements arguing fiercely, some for the Union, others against. Placards hastily printed by rival factions had been stuck up on the walls, fences, and lamp posts: DEATH TO THE YANKEES! LONG LIVE THE UNION! STOP THE TYRANTS! As the little group from Anne Arundel made their way through the streets they noted the crowds gathered at the newspaper offices waiting for fresh bulletins to be posted.

  “I wonder how John Harper is faring amidst all this," Garvin speculated. They were to put up at the Harpers’ during their stay in Baltimore. “There seems to be more Northern sentiment here than I anticipated. I’m sure John doesn’t like it any more than I do.’’

  John Harper, Garvin’s cousin, lived in a four-story house on Madison Street with his wife Ella and her son, Willie, by a former marriage. Built of rusticated brown-stone, the second story had a cast-iron gallery reminiscent of those in Charleston and New Orleans, a façade that gave it an Old World elegance. Garvin, however, felt that only the nouveau riche would indulge in such fancy fretwork. John and Garvin had always gotten along like two stiff-legged dogs circling one another, looking for a fight, until the present crisis emerged. Then for the first time in their lives they shared something in common— their condemnation of the Yankees. John had already sent large sums of money to outfit Maryland regiments that would fight on the Southern side, and he was delighted that Amélie (a favorite of his) had a husband who had volunteered so quickly.

  “Willie’s joined up, too,’’ John said.

  “He most certainly has,’’ Ella added proudly. The company had settled themselves in the parlor over cups of strong tea and plates of thin bread and butter sandwiches. “The First Maryland Cavalry,’’ she continued. She was a tall woman with a long face and a strong, assertive manner. “He’ll be home any moment now. I’m sure he and Thaddeus will have much to say to one another.’’

  “I look forward to it,’’ Thaddeus assured her. “How is Willie?”

  “Shaping up, shaping up!” John said.

  Willie, twenty-four, a young man with a weak chin and a shock of the same copper-colored hair as his mother’s, was addicted to cards. Only John’s tight control of the purse strings had kept the young man from losing exorbitant sums. He was perennially in debt as it was, and it was rumored that he had a mistress, a much older woman, who paid his IOUs from time to time.

  “Baltimore is in a ferment,’’ John said, uncorking the cut glass whisky decanter and pouring shot glasses for each of the men.

  “So we’ve noticed,” Thaddeus’s father August, said, waving aside the whisky. He was a teetotaler for health reasons. A tall, fastidious man with stooped shoulders, some twenty years his wife’s senior, he watched his diet carefully, avoided drafts, and took a purgative regularly to assist his bowels.

  “Fights break out every day,” John Harper said. “Bloody brawls, although Mayor Brown has appealed to the populace again and again to refrain from acts of violence. His police force of less than four hundred men can hardly be expected to cover the entire city day and night to keep peace and order.”

  Garvin ran his finger under his collar, twisting his neck forward, a habitual nervous gesture that betrayed uneasiness. He did not like a divided Baltimore. “Regardless of that, the big question is, will Maryland secede?”

  “I can’t say. You know they’ve assembled troops in Washington to protect the capital, but we’re wondering here if the real purpose is to occupy Maryland and force it to remain in the Union.”

  Babette sighed. “It’s all too much for me.” She shifted in her chair, fidgeting with her teacup, turning it round and round in the bone china saucer. Amélie could tell by the look on her face that she was bored. Well, she had wanted to come, she had begged and sobbed, claiming she was always left out of things. Now that she was here she had no one to blame but herself.

  Ella Harper rose from her chair and, going to the window, twitched a curtain aside. “I do wish Willie would hurry.”

  “Now, Mother,” John soothed, “don’t fret. Willie’s not the kind to pick a street fight.”

  Babette leaned over and whispered in Amélie’s ear, “He never was. The mollycoddle.”

  At the window Ella exclaimed, “Here he is! And what a sight!”

  Willie indeed had been transformed. He had grown a beard, disguising his chin effectively, making him appear almost handsome. But it was his uniform that wrought the greatest improvement. The gray coat with its buff-colored collar and cuffs and gilt buttons, the light blue trousers stuffed into black, polished boots, and the buckskin gauntlets carried carelessly in one hand while the other rested on the hilt of his sheathed sword, gave him a swaggering, romantic look in great contrast to his usual nondescript appearance.

  Babette’s eyes boggled. She had never considered Willie as a prospective beau. Though he was a male and therefore deserving of an occasional dimpled smile and a casual flirtatious tap of her fan, she had hardly noticed him. But she noticed him now, and Amélie, hearing Babette clear her throat, silently resigned herself to the inevitable.

  “Why, Willie, you old devil,” Babette crooned in her best honey smooth drawl. “How handsome you look! I bet you joined up just to break the girls’ hearts.”

  “Only to break yours,” he replied gallantly. Willie may have had a weak chin and an addiction for cards, but he was no fool where women were concerned. He recognized Babette’s flattery for what it was, but at the same time felt pleased. He had always coveted her.

  Thaddeus, on his feet, pumped Willie’s hand. “First Maryland, is it?”

  “And yours, the Rangers. We’re stil
l forming, but I hear your outfit is ready to go.”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow,” Thaddeus said.

  “Best to make a wide detour of Washington,” Willie advised. “For ourselves, we were thinking—”

  “Now, you men!” Babette had no intention of letting Willie get involved in a private conversation. “Must you always talk about the war? Surely there are more pleasant things to discuss."

  Thaddeus graciously acquiesced. “Perhaps you’re right, Babette.”

  “I don’t mind!’’ Amélie exclaimed. “I want to know everything.” But the topic was dropped as John Harper offered more whisky and Ella refilled teacups.

  Babette seized the lull to her advantage. “Willie! Come sit here beside me and tell me all about yourself. It’s been ages since I’ve seen you. You made yourself scarce at Amélie’s wedding and then your mother said you had to leave early, and I was so disappointed.”

  “Were you?” Willie asked, smiling through his trim, red beard, his eyes taking in the full breasts straining at mother-of-pearl buttons.

  Ella threw Babette a sour look that only Amélie caught. Ella did not like Babette; she considered her fast. Her behavior at the wedding reception, where she had totally ignored Willie and clung to some strange man’s arm (said to be a Yankee) had only gone to prove it.

  Later Amélie took Babette aside. “Must you throw yourself at Willie? It’s so obvious, carrying on in that fashion.”

  “Well, what of it?” Babette demanded, nostrils flaring. “If I waited around as I’m supposed to, a demure miss, blushing at every word, saying ‘Yes, Cousin Willie,’ ‘No Cousin Willie,’ I’d wait until the cows fly. The men are going off to war and I intend to get one before they’ve all disappeared.