Beloved Enemy (13 page)

Giving Rob an especially warm smile, Melinda moved close to him. “What Mama means is that we have been so cooped up in the house ever since the party, we simply had to get outside and breathe. I just couldn't stand those old walls a minute longer, no matter how cold the weather is. Alexandria is so boring in the wintertime—unless there are some
interesting
people who come to call—like yourself.”

Before he could react, she looped her arm through his good one and snuggled closer against him. Rob masked his impatience. “No doubt many of your friends are also
equally bored with the cold and the snow. I am sure that they hope that you and your mother will pay them a call.”

Mrs. Winstead tittered again, though she looked a little colder than before. Melinda tightened her hold on Rob. “The very thing!” she cooed. “Why don't you accompany us home, Major Montgomery, and we shall enjoy a dish of tea and sweet cakes while we laugh at Old Man Winter?”

Rob experienced a sharp sinking feeling. He had no desire to postpone his distasteful mission any longer than necessary. With a quick twist, he freed his arm from Melinda's grasp.

“Thank you for your kind invitation, Miss Winstead, but I fear I am in Alexandria on official business. I was looking for the Chandler family cook, a Miss Hettie Perkins?”

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Winstead, huddling deeper into her cloak. “I expect she would be home by now. Just as we should be home by now,” she added, giving her daughter a meaningful lift of her brow.

“Yes, Mama,” Melinda replied, though she made no move to depart. “We'll leave in two shakes of a lamb's tail. But first, we must convince this gentleman that he would feel much better to stretch out his feet in front of our fire. No point standing out in the middle of a public thoroughfare looking for a nobody, Major. You'll catch your death of cold before you see her,” Melinda added. “Besides, meeting Hettie won't do you a parcel of good whatsoever. If it's Julia Chandler you want, you're too late.” Her charm descended into gleeful spite.

A stab of fear twisted in Rob's gut. “I beg your pardon, Miss Winstead? Has Miss Julia left town?”

Melinda laughed without warmth. “Not yet. But just
this morning, a little bird told us that Julia is to be married very soon. Fancy that!”

Behind his back, Rob clenched his good hand into a hard fist. So Julia's cousin, the toad, was hopping up to Alexandria to claim his princess. This unpleasant turn of events had happened faster than Rob had expected. “She is engaged?”

Melinda gave him a smug look. “I highly doubt that she knew it herself—until very recently. Obviously her family was quite mortified by her brazen appearance at my party. Such a blot on their good name! Why, everyone in Alexandria was talking about Julia's shameful conduct. The only man that would have her after that trick appears to be her second cousin. I expect the Chandlers will pay that poor boy a pretty penny to take her off their hands.”

Listening to Melinda's gloating voice, Rob's anger grew into a scalding fury. “Exactly
what
do you mean by that? I found Miss Chandler to be a most refined young lady, unlike many others I have recently met.”

His thinly-veiled insult rolled off Melinda like water from a duck's back. “Rubbish!” she purred. “Julia Chandler was never a prize catch, even before the war started. She's always spent more time with her nose stuck in a book than attending to important things, like learning good manners. At every party we attended, she couldn't wait to show off her book-learning, so that no one else could get a word in edgewise. With her hair pulled back and those spectacles on her nose, it's no wonder that all the boys didn't pay her any mind, except poor Frank Shaffer. I have no idea what he saw in her, but it doesn't matter now. Frank died before he could propose. Since her reputation is in shreds, Julia is very fortunate to get an offer—even if it is her cousin.”

Rob glared at Melinda and her cold-faced mother. “Any
man who marries Miss Julia Chandler would find himself most fortunate.”

Melinda curled her lip, but before she could make a retort, her mother tugged her sleeve. “The wind is picking up, my dear. I do declare that my feet have turned into ice. We must be going now, Major Montgomery.
So
nice to have seen you again.
Do
come calling on us when you are not on official business.”

Melinda looked mad enough to spit nails. She managed to throw Rob a final barb before her mother dragged her up King Street. “Forget Julia Chandler, Major. I am sure she has forgotten all about you, especially now that she is practically a married woman. Heaven help her poor cousin!”

As his anger simmered down to a dull ache in his heart, Rob felt a chill more numbing than the wind blowing off the river. He knew that Julia would be unhappy in a forced marriage with a cousin merely to save her family's face. It was criminal to toss away such a fine woman as Julia for some misguided notion of honor—the same sort of fanatical notion that had pushed this blood-soaked war into its fourth senseless year. Southerners were all crazy, he concluded.

The pale sun sank down to the lavender horizon. One by one, the vendors in Market Square closed up their shops and trundled away their carts. The pedestrians thinned as people hurried home to their warm hearths and hot suppers. The street lamplighter began his rounds of the city. Rob found himself alone with his thoughts. A soldier wearing the armband of the provost marshal stopped and saluted him.

“Evening, Major,” he drawled in a Midwestern accent that bespoke of flatlands filled with cornstalks. “Are you lost, sir?”

Rob returned his salute. “Now that you ask, I believe that I am,” he replied with a grim note in his voice. “Can you direct me to the nearest place where a man might get a drink and something to eat?”

Grinning, the guard pointed behind Rob to a red-brick building across North Royal Street. “There's the City Hotel, sir. I reckon you'll find what you want there.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Unless you are in the mind for a bit of fun with your meal? Mrs. Shaw's Firehouse is down near the wharves on Quay Street.”

Rob shook his head. “I've had my fill of feckless women for the day, Corporal. Good night.” He stepped off the curbstone before the beardless youth could suggest another one of Alexandria's bawdy houses.

The City Hotel offered Rob the hospitality he sought—companionable noise, air heady with cigar smoke, a drop of good whiskey at a larcenous price and a surprisingly good oyster stew for a fair price. He ate his meal in silence, oblivious to the hubbub common to a saloon in a soldier-filled town on a cold winter's night. Only Melinda's words, “Julia will be married,” repeated themselves over and over in his fevered brain. Nursing his second tot of whiskey, he stared into the red-orange flames in the huge fireplace. The din around him receded as the voices inside his head grew louder.

Why should Julia's impending nuptials trouble him? He certainly had no intention of marrying her, nor anyone else for that matter. He never planned to see her again until his duty demanded it. Despite her delightful conversation and great beauty, Julia was a Confederate at heart, he reminded himself.

Julia…married. To the toad.

Sipping his hot whiskey, he allowed the sharp liquid to trickle down his raw throat. Julia shouldn't have to get
married if she didn't want to, he reasoned. She was a woman who knew her own mind much better than her parents did. With her brains and cheerful personality, she would be an excellent teacher for children. Rob grimaced as he thought of the elder Chandlers, whom he had never met. How could they be so cruel as to force their daughter into a union with a cousin merely for propriety's sake? Didn't they care about her happiness? He gripped the small glass in his good hand.
He
cared—a lot.

Patting his pocket, where his letter to Julia lay, he reminded himself of his assignment. He must meet with her tomorrow night so the Rebels could apprehend him. This morning, Colonel Lawrence's double agent in Fairfax City had alerted Mosby's Rangers of their opportunity to capture an “important officer on General Grant's staff.” Rob snorted. He had never met the famous general in person, and he prayed that none of his captors-to-be had either. His flimsy cover story had to stick, at least until he reached Richmond—and Libby Prison.

Excitement brewed in Rob's gut when he thought of the dangerous time ahead of him. Then Julia's beautiful face rose again in his imagination. He'd certainly never see her again after tomorrow night. He wished that they had met under different circumstances, with no war to divide them, no webs of intrigue to entangle them. There might have been some future for him then. He closed his eyes for a brief moment. Best not to dwell on the might-have-beens. There was no room in his life now for a romance, even if there was a woman who was willing. Rob had always been a realist, accepting his fate in all its grim truth. The day after tomorrow, Julia would be just a pleasant memory to cheer him in his prison cell. By this time next week, she would be married.

Unbidden, a new thought flashed through his mind, star
tling him from his stupor of self-pity. Nothing was scheduled to happen tonight! No plots, no weddings—only long empty hours until daybreak. He could go to the Chandler garden tonight; if nothing else, he would linger in the shelter of the magnolia. Perhaps, if the angels were kind, he would see her through a window. Maybe she would be wearing a sheer nightgown.

Rob felt a hot stirring below his belt. No! Julia was not a woman for sporting, but for gentle loving. Not that he loved her, he reminded himself. But he
did
like, admire and respect her. In all honesty, he liked her a lot.

Tomorrow night, he knew she would be frightened by the appearance of Mosby's men, even though she was a loyal Confederate. He would not be able to soothe her fears then. Worse, because his capture would take place in the Chandlers' garden, Julia's strict, unforgiving parents would learn of her secret meetings with him—a Yankee. Rob ground his teeth together. Because of him, and the needs of the United States Army, Julia's precious reputation would indeed be lost forever. And he wouldn't be able to apologize—not tomorrow night, not ever.

But tonight, if he were very lucky, he could tell her that he loved her. No, no! That he
liked
her. Love was not an option for him. Lucy Van Tassel had taken care of that.

Rob drained his whiskey, then paid his bill and left the cheerful hotel saloon. The air outside had grown even more bitter in the past few hours. Wrapping his scarf around his neck, he tucked its ends deep inside the collar of his greatcoat. He drew on his leather glove with his teeth, then turned up Cameron Street in the direction of the Chandler home.

For the better part of the next hour, he stood under the magnolia tree, listening to the quarter chimes of the town's church bells marking the passage of the night. In frigid
silence, he kept a fruitless watch on the back of the house. Through the dimly-lit windows, he saw Carolyn in her room, and her parents in theirs, but Julia wasn't visible. She must be in a room on the front side, he decided, as one by one the lamps dimmed inside the house.

Just when he was about to give up hope, the back door opened, and Hettie picked her way down the icy steps. She carried a pan of kitchen scraps and a large wooden spoon. Humming under her breath, she walked down to the compost heap at the bottom corner of the garden, scraped the leavings onto the refuse pile, then turned back toward the house. As she passed by his hiding place, Rob called softly to her.

The woman froze on the spot but did not cry out. Instead, she formed the fingers of her left hand into a sign against evil spirits. “Who's there?” she asked in a whisper. “Who comes calling me in the middle of the night? I'm not ready yet, oh Lord, not by a country mile.”

Rob stepped out to the path in front of her. “Good evening, Mrs. Perkins,” he said calmly, though his heartbeat increased. “I, too, am not yet ready to meet my Maker, but I am very glad to see you.”

Recovered from her fright, Hettie drew herself up and narrowed her eyes. “Mighty late to be out, Major. Mighty cold to be taking a turn in someone else's garden, too.”

Rob drew closer to her so that their voices would not carry. “You are correct on both counts, ma'am, but I understand that you Southerners don't give us Yankees too much credit for intelligence.”

Though her facial features were indiscernible in the dark of the night, Rob saw the flash of her teeth when she smiled. “I never said anything like that, Major, leastwise, not to my recollection. If you're here for Miss Julia, she went to bed early.”

“You have read my mind. Do you think that she might possibly be induced to get out of bed and come down here for a visit?”

“And where were you two weeks ago when the poor lamb stood out here all alone like some statue in a park? You broke her heart.”

Rob's conscience burned him. “I am most sorry for that lapse, ma'am. I was…that is, I thought it was best to end our friendship. I do hope that Miss Julia did not take ill.”

Hettie snorted. “Oh, she's sick, all right. But in her heart—not her body. They're going to force her to marry that no-account cousin, and there's nothing she can do about it. Think you can fix that kettle of fish, Major?”

Rob clenched his jaw, then replied, “I'd like to see her, just once more, Hettie. I know I can't marry her, but perhaps I can give her some courage to go on, to keep her dreams alive.”

Hettie scrutinized him with a long, appraising look. “Miss Julia has about run out of tears by now, so I don't think seeing you again will make a particle of difference.” Her voice softened. “And if you can put some hope back in her heart and joy in her soul, that wouldn't be a bad thing, either. Like my mama always told me, pigs don't know what a pen is for. I expect that goes the same for folks too young to know what's sensible. You step back into that shadow of yours, Major, and I'll go see if Miss Julia is half as crazy as you are.”