Footsteps
sounded outside, and she thrust the parchment back into her pocket.
"Grantly Manor," the prisoner whispered. "Ten miles to the east
as the crow flies. Outside Grantly village."
"Virginia,
this time you have gone too far," Alex said in clipped tones, pushing into
the cell, then stopping with a gasp, putting his hand over his mouth. Behind
him stood the governor, Colonel Bonham, and several others whom Ginny did not
recognize. They all reeled at the stench, stepping backward into the passage.
"It
is not pleasant, is it, gentlemen?" Ginny said coldly, getting to her
feet, deciding that attack was her best form of defense. "This man is
dying, Alex. He is sore wounded, and the wound is mortified. He has been left
to rot away. Will you not allow him the right to the with some decency?"
"He
is not my prisoner, Ginny," Alex said with a weary sigh. "I have no
authority in the matter."
"General
Marshall has no authority?" She looked at him in scathing disbelief.
"I have noticed that General Marshall has whatever authority he
chooses!"
Alex
flushed with anger, aware of the men behind him, the ordinary soldiers behind
them, all listening to the cold contempt of this slip of a girl who had caused
him nothing but trouble ever since he had first laid eyes upon her.
The
frail figure on the filthy straw laughed. It was amazing such a sound could
come from that broken form. Alex looked down at him, met the clear flash of
blue eyes that somehow retained their dignity and humanity in spite of the
appalling degradation of his position. With swift decision, he turned on his
heel and instructed the governor in cold, clear tones. "Newton, get this
man out of this hellhole immediately. I want a report on his condition after
dinner."
"I
will stay with him," Ginny said.
"You
will not," Alex said with all the force of restrained exasperation.
"He will be looked after. You have made your presence sufficiently felt
for one day; now be satisfied with that. There is always tomorrow when you will
find God-only-knows-what other matters to plague me with."
He was
only exacting natural vengeance because of the way she had spoken to him so
publicly, Ginny told herself, but it did nothing to ease her bitter anger at
this deliberately humiliating speech. There was nothing she could do about it,
however, any more than she could resist his hold on her wrist as he marched
with her out of the cell, pushing through the interested spectators, hauling
her along beside him back to the messroom.
"Sit
over
there,”
Alex instructed her curtly, pushing Ginny over to a wooden
settle against the wall. I'm sending someone to find Jed, and as soon as he gets
here, he will take you to the inn."
Ginny
said nothing but sat down, her lips set tight, her hands clasped in her lap,
staring into the middle distance. The men resumed the earlier discussion, but
the tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. The governor
looked as outraged as he felt at the general's public, unilateral usurping of
his authority, but he was outranked by General Marshall and could do nothing
but obey the order. His eyes kept sliding to the still figure of the woman on the
settle. What the devil was Alexander Marshall doing, fighting a war with a
woman in tow? A woman with a scold's tongue to boot, one she didn't scruple to
use. It didn't fit with what he had heard tell of the general—a man who took
nothing from anybody. Yet here he was, doing the bidding of some arrogant wench
who needed a taste of the birch to bring her to a proper sense of her place.
Alex,
well aware of the train of the governor's thoughts, found himself much in
agreement with them. The governor had funds that Alex wanted to get his hands
on for troops, who were in sore need of boots and stockings on this damnable
march. He could requisition some proportion of those funds, but not enough. The
rest he had to cozen out of the man, and his chances of doing that in this
atmosphere of hostility were now remote.
"General?"
The door burst open to admit an excited Diccon who came to a stammering halt as
his commander raised an eyebrow at this unceremonious entrance. "A patrol
has just returned, sir," he said more moderately. "They have a
prisoner who said there's a sizable group of Royalists holed up in some manor
house about ten miles from here.''
Ginny
went cold, but with a supreme effort of will she did not alter either her
expression or her position.
"Where
exactly and how many?" Alex inquired, unable to hide the glitter of
excitement in his eyes at the prospect of action.
Diccon
looked crestfallen. "The prisoner died, sir, before they could get any
more out of him, but they think it's the last stronghold in the area from where
the rebels have been launching attacks for the last few weeks."
"What
think you, Newton?" Alex looked at the governor. "You know the area,
and you know the nature of the rebels around here." The deliberate
deference to the governor's superior knowledge in this matter was designed
simply to placate.
Newton
pondered with a weighty frown while Ginny sat like an effigy, her ears
straining to catch every word. "There's quite a few of them, we
think," he pronounced eventually. "They've caused us some
considerable damage in losses of men, horses, equipment . . . That fellow
Calvert was one of 'em, but we couldn't get a peep out of him." He glared
at Alex who, with a bland expression, chose to ignore this reopening of an old
sore.
"Any
idea where this stronghold might be?" he asked instead. "We might as
well scoop them up whilst we're here. It should not delay us overlong."
"You
intend to go after them yourself?" Newton asked. "It is surely a task
for my troops."
"I
do not wish to offend you, Newton," Alex said with ominous quiet,
"but it seems to me you have already had ample opportunity to dispose of
this troublesome nest of rebels. Besides, my men will be glad to see some real
action again. It will be a little foretaste of what is to come."
Ginny's
scalp crawled at this cold-blooded discussion where fighting and killing were
simply facts, where Alex issued the reminder of what they were all marching to
with such blithe calm. So much had happened during the march that she had been
spared the time for reflection when she would be unable to escape the
acceptance of the battle that would end everything that was for the present
familiar—end it one way or the other.
"Bring
me a map of the area, Diccon," Alex was saying. "Let us see if we
cannot rout out these rebels once and for all." His voice was rich with
satisfaction, with the anticipation of pleasurable action, and Ginny thought of
Edmund with a silent wail of despair. Alex would find him, and this time there
would be no mercy. She had too often seen what happened when rebels were taken
to have any illusions. The best they could hope for would be a clean death by
the sword. She knew with absolute certainty that Alex would find them and
defeat them, that to hope that he would not be able to discover their
whereabouts, or to hope that they would succeed in vanquishing Parliament's
general was living in a fool's paradise.
"You
wanted me, General?" Jed appeared in the doorway.
"Oh,
yes . . ." Alex looked up, slightly distracted. In the absorption of the last
few minutes, he had forgotten all about Ginny. Now, he straightened from the
map that Diccon was spreading out on the table and glanced over his shoulder at
her. "Take Mistress Courtney to the inn, will you? See that they provide
her with a decent supper in a privy chamber, and remain with her until she
retires."
He was
disposing of her in the same way he would have given orders for his charger's
comfort and stabling. Ginny stood up, her fury for the moment superseding her
dismay at the news she had just heard. "A word with you, General, if you
please." Insolence dripped from her tongue, disdain in the tiny curtsy
accompanying what had not been a request. She walked to the door and stood
waiting for him.
The
muscle in his cheek twitched, and he curled and flexed his hands as if at any
moment they might take on a life of their own. Ginny, seeing the convulsive
movement, knew that she had gone too far but was
too
angry to care. He
would not lay hands on her here, although he would undoubtedly exact the penalty
in some way at some other time; Alex always did. He left the table and came to
the door. Jed stepped away discreetly.
"I
wish to sleep alone this night," Ginny stated in a low voice, but the
words were carefully articulated, her eyes never leaving the Arctic green of
his.
"You
need have no fear that you will be disturbed, madam," he replied. "I
would not trust myself to be alone with you." Swinging on his heel, he
returned to the table, the look on his face sending all who knew him into a
prudent attentive silence.
"What've
you been up to now?" Jed asked with his usual familiarity as they left the
castle. "Haven't seen the general so put out since the last time you
crossed swords with him." The old soldier chuckled richly.
"Yesterday, I reckon that was."
"It
is not funny, Jed," Ginny said and would say nothing more. Jed shrugged
and lapsed into the silence that he found so comfortable, quite unperturbed by
this unusual reticence. When they reached the inn, she told him that she wanted
no supper, that her head ached and she wished only to be alone behind a closed
door. This blissful condition was rapidly achieved, although Jed insisted she
take a tray behind the door with her.
Once
alone, Ginny began to pace the floor in an agony of indecision, but it was not
really indecision, since she knew what she had to do. It was just that her
heart and soul shrank from the consequences of that action. She had hoped to
slip away, to see Edmund for one last time, but then she would have come back,
would cheerfully have told Alex what she had been doing, if not where she had
been. And, while he would have been annoyed that she had broken their agreement
not to leave the camp unescorted, he would have understood. As he had said, the
Royalists were on the run; there was nothing she could do to harm Parliament's
cause any longer. But that was before he had heard of this active group of
rebels who, if she warned them of imminent attack, could escape to fight
another day. By saving Edmund, by fighting for the king's cause this one last
time, she would be directly betraying Alex, something she had not done before.
She would be using her intimacy with him to spy on and foil his plan in a
personal attack. Alex would be bound to see it differently from the holistic
conflict of Cavalier against Roundhead. It
was
different, there were no
two ways about it. And how, having betrayed him, could she return to him? A man
of such invincible principles would not be able to forgive such treachery. Even
if, by some miracle, she could keep her escape and her actions from him, she
could not live with that deceit herself.
But
she had no choice. Whatever loyalty she had toward her lover, she could not
stand by while her dearest friend, closer to her than any brother, stood in
danger of his life and she could save him. And if Edmund came to harm at Alex's
hands, she would not be able to forgive Alex. The circle was vicious in its
completion.
If
only she and Alex had not parted in animosity. Tears pricked behind her eyes,
and fiercely she swallowed the lump in her throat. There was no point in being
maudlin about a mere detail in the greater tragedy of their separation. There
would be time enough later when the task was completed. And if they had not
quarreled, her absence would have been discovered as soon as Alex returned to
the inn. As it was, he would not venture into her chamber this night, and
Diccon would be sent to summon her in the morning, by which time the the would
have been cast.
It was
always possible, of course, that Alex would set off before morning on his
expedition to mop up the rebels. Ginny stood frowning, one leg in her britches,
the other paused in midair. On horseback, they could eat up the ten miles in
less than an hour. On foot, she could not hope to do more than four miles an hour.
Jen was well out of reach, stabled in the castle with the cavalry horses. How
much of a start did she have? She finished dressing quickly, calculating all
the while. They would have to decide where the rebels were first, and it was
possible there would be several likely places that would have to be checked
out. It would be a piece of appalling ill luck if they hit upon Grantly Manor
at the first. And they had no idea that anyone might forestall them. Therein
lay her major advantage. They would dine first, also. Alex was never careless
of his men's well-being and would not throw them into a nonurgent engagement on
empty bellies. The men who would make up the party would also have to be
selected and prepared. This was not an expedition that would require an entire
division. Presumably he would take only men of horse; foot soldiers would move
too slowly.
No,
they could not possibly leave for at least four hours, Ginny decided, going to
the window. The boughs of an apple tree scraped against the second-floor
casement. She hadn't climbed a tree in years, Ginny thought, swinging one leg
over the sill, surveying the gnarled fruit tree, picking out her best route to
the ground with a practiced eye. Britches made life a great deal easier, of
course. She inched forward until she sat astride the branch, then gingerly
brought one knee up, then the other, reaching up to grab the overhead branch as
she pulled herself to her feet. The bough creaked ominously beneath her weight,
and she progressed rapidly to the safety of the sturdier trunk.