Scarlet Leaves Page 3

  "After the way I treated you?" she murmured, flustered from his nearness. His seductive gaze swept over her and she felt herself blush hotly. "I can't let you shingle my barn roofnot a fine Southern gentleman like you!"

  A slow smile curved one corner of his mouth, making him devastatingly attractive. "Think nothing of it. As a Southern gentleman, it's my duty to assist you." His eyes glinted with warmth. "And, I might say, my pleasure, too."

  "Lordamercy, what about your company on the Rappahannock?" she asked, her pulse fluttering wildly.

  "I overestimated the time it would take to relocate my aunt. I still have weeks before I need to report," he answered smoothly. "Certainly long enough to shingle your roof before the bad weather sets in."

  Silky's heart lurched with excitement. The last thing she wanted to do was to become emotionally involved with a Yankee, but the handsome stranger had turned out to be a gallant Confederate lieutenant, and he would not only he sleeping in her own barn, but shingling it as well. Until this moment she hadn't known how strongly his masculinity had affected her, and she sighed, strange new emotions storming within her.

  ''A-All right," she stammered, a warm glow spreading through her like the sun's rays. "I could use some help on that roof. The weather will be hardening in a few weeks, and this high in the mountains we always have early snows, too." She smoothed back her hair, noticing her hand was none too steady. "Your horse and saddlebag are already in the barn, Lieutenant."

  Taggart gazed at her radiant face for a moment. "Fine ... I'll get to work right away." Guilt welling within him, he turned to go, surprised at how simple it had all been once she accepted him as a Southerner.

  Trying to salve his conscience, he told himself his stay in the hollow could save the lives of hundreds of Union soldiers. And after all, no harm would come to the girl. When he had his information, he'd ride on to Charlottesville and report to his contact in the North, leaving her with some warm memories and a barn ready to face another mountain winter.

  "Lieutenant?"

  He turned about, struck with how young and vulnerable she looked with the morning light streaming over her. "Yes?"

  "I just wanted you to know," she said, offering him an appealing smile, "I'll cook boiled okra three times a week while you're here."

  "Can you imagine," Silky asked, looking across the table a week later with a beaming face, "what the folks in Washington thought last summer when they saw General Early marching on the city?" Taggart noticed her eyes glistening as she added, "Folks say Lincoln himself came out to the forts with bullets whizzing all around him, just to see what was going on."

  "The fact is, though," he replied, lighting up a long cheroot, then shaking out his match, "that Early didn't have near enough men to take the capitol."

  Silky seemed affronted that he should mention it. "Maybe not, but I'll bet those folks were scared stiff as Sunday starched shirts when they spied Old Jube and his troops." She flicked a critical gaze over Taggart. "Lordamercy, sometimes you talk more like a Yankee than a Confederate officer. What makes you take such a dim view of things?"

  Taggart took a long draw from his brandy-scented cigar. Every evening for the last week, she'd predicted a Southern victory, when in both his heart and head, he knew the South was almost defeated. Despite Early's saber-rattling, most of the Confederate soldiers were without provisions, and as for the ragged civilians, they were living on little more than black-eyed peas and hope. "Merely an observation," he stated with a smile. He tried to steer the subject to something less controversial. "What do you hear from your brother?"

  "I hear quite a bit." Luscious curves strained against her soft buckskins as she rose and walked to a rough-hewn chest of drawers. "Just a minute," she said over her shoulder. "I'll read you some of his letters."

  With a flicker of pain, Taggart watched her gather up the letters, thinking of his own brother, who was a victim of the war. At sixteen, Ned, a passionate abolitionist, had lied about his age and enlisted in the infantry, only to be quickly captured by the Confederates and sent to Andersonville. Several months later, he and seven other men had been shot in reprisal for a violent Northern raid on a small Virginia town.

  The day Taggart found out about his brother's death, his whole outlook had changed, and his role in the war had suddenly become not a duty, but an intensely personal crusade. Moreover, when he'd realized that a single intelligence agent could often accomplish as much as a regiment of men, he immediately volunteered his services to General Sharpe, head of the Information Bureau, vowing to do everything within his power to see that the Union won the war.

  Thinking of Ned always troubled Taggart, but as Silky walked back to the table with her bundle of letters, he reined in his emotions, making his face perfectly impassive.

  "You can't imagine all that's in these letters," she commented, swinging her shining hair about her shoulders. With a tender expression, she sat down and spread the tattered envelopes over the table. "Daniel tells a lot about Uncle

  Joe," she explained, a trace of laughter in her voice. "He says he's a little half-bald fellow, but so full of fight that his eyes just sparkle."

  Taggart listened to her lulling Southern drawl as she read, and he realized that her brother's comments were merely observations about the general's character and humorous anecdotes about camp life, not anything that would be useful to him.

  After she'd finished reading, a silence fell between them, and as the wind moaned in the pines, he studied her delicate features, highlighted by the hearth's glow. Lord, was he staying because of his mission or because he wanted to take her in his arms? he wondered, noticing the spirit in her emerald eyes. He found no answer to his question, but felt his loins quicken just considering the situation. "I suppose your brother signed up right after Fort Sumter," he finally ventured, corraling his runaway thoughts.

  Her eyes snapped with amusement. "Yes, Daniel was raring to get into the war. He said it was just going to be a breakfast spell, and he'd miss all the fun." She smiled at the memory. "He spent a few days fixing up things around here; then he and the Wilkerson boys tore off faster than greased lightning to Charlottesville to join the army." She sighed heavily. "I miss him terribly, but he's faithful to write, and his letters keep me going."

  "Do you ever think about anything but the war?" he asked softly, wanting to enjoy a conversation with her that had nothing to do with generals or troop movements.

  She sat back and straightened up. "Of course," she replied, rising once more to fetch a pile of Beade's dime novels from beneath her bed. At the table she plopped them down, then reseated herself, her expressive eyes shining with pleasure. "Pa taught me to read before he died and that's the best gift anyone ever gave me." She smoothed her white hands over the soft-bound books as if they were precious volumes. "I got these from a peddler who came through before the war. There's wonderful stories on these pagesstories about the frontier and life in California." She leaned forward, revealing the tops of her creamy breasts. ''I read they found gold nuggets as big as goose eggs at Sutter's fort." Her face took on a dreamy look. "I've always dreamed of going to California."

  Taggart was touched. What a shame she'd learned to read, but hadn't received the opportunity to go to school. She was so alive, so vibrant, so unlike the jaded debutantes he'd met at West Point balls and in Washington salons. And so brave, too, he thought dryly, knowing he'd never catch one of the perfumed socialites holding a rifle on him and making it stick.

  "It sounds like you'd like to see the world."

  "Oh yes," she answered with eagerness. "I've never had enough money to get out of the county, but even when I was a little girl I'd watch the sun slide behind the ridge and wonder what was fifty miles from here, and a hundred miles from here." Her eyes kindled with memories. "I'd ask Pa what was over the far ridges and he'd say, 'More trees, child, just like the ones in Sweet Gum Hollow.'"

  They both laughed and he found himself clasping her slim fingers and wondering what she wo
uld do if she could see New York or Washington. He idly ran his thumb over her hand, fascinated with this soft, tender side of her, so different from the fiery personality she'd displayed at the pond.

  "Mama died when I was only four and I can scarce remember her," she went on, a hint of pain darkening her eyes. "She was taken away with the scarlet fever. Pa said it was her that nicknamed me Silky, for my shiny hair." She laughed self-consciously. "My real name is Mary Kathleen, after some of my Irish kinfolks who lived way back there when the devil was just a pup, but I think Silky fits me better. Don't you?"

  "Yes ... I do," Taggart replied, thinking it not only described her wonderful hair, but her creamy skin, and even the graceful way she moved.

  Silky rose and, crossing her arms, walked to the fire that sizzled pleasantly in the hearth. "I can remember playing with Daniel as a childhe's five years older than me. Although he never had a lot of book learning, he always seemed to know what was really important in life.

  "And I remember Pa tucking me into bed every night when I was a child and telling me wild mountain stories."

  Her face lit up. "He told me about wolves and bears that could talk just like regular folks, and birds that laid square eggs."

  "Square eggs?" Taggart laughed.

  Silky's eyes twinkled. "Yeah ... they take three days to boil!"

  She put her hand on an old rocking chair that sat nearby, giving it a soft shove, and setting it creaking over the floorboards. "Pa had a beautiful voice, all rich and low, and after he told me the wild stories, he'd sing to me until I went to sleep." She ran her hands over her arms. "I get a warm feeling inside right now just thinking about it."

  Her eyes danced as she moved about the cabin. "Pa and Daniel taught me to shoot, and hunt, and even track," she explained in a low, smooth tone. "Those are Daniel's hounds outside, and when he was here we went hunting three or four times a week."

  "You're a fine shot," Taggart commented with a chuckle. "I'm only glad your lessons stopped when they did."

  She considered him, her expression sobering. "Pa died when I was ten," she continued, her soft voice quavering with emotion. "He took pneumonia one cold winter and there was nothing we could do to save him."

  Taggart sat there absorbing her every word, amazed she was revealing so much of her personal life.

  Moisture gleamed in her eyes. "We buried him on the top of a hill not far from herejust us and a handful of the folks. A person can see three days from that hill. In the spring there are clouds of sweet-smelling dogwood and red azaleas trailing down the hills like flame. And in the winter the ice makes the bare trees glisten like silver, and there's nothing but miles and miles of rolling ridges covered with snow and purple shadows." A tender expression welled in her eyes. "When it rains up there, the drops are as soft as angel tears."

  Taggart rose and, moved by an impulse he didn't understand, walked to her and brushed a shiny curl from her cheek. Somehow impelled to comfort her, he held her lightly, marveling at how beautiful she really was.

  She pulled herself up to her full height and raised her chin.

  "Don't worry about me," she said in a steadier voice. "I've always had plenty to eat and this old cabin was always filled with lots of love." She laughed a little. "Daniel is a great one for cutting up, and he plays such a lively tune on his fiddle it would make a wooden Indian step out and dance."

  She surveyed Taggart, exhaling a deep breath. "Lordamercy, I'm happy you're not a Yankee, because if you were, I just don't know what I'd do," she confessed, her voice vibrating with emotion.

  She seemed to shake off her nostalgic mood, and with a teasing light in her eyes, suddenly announced, "I think you deserve a rest from all that shingling, Lieutenant. Tomorrow I'll show you a place on a hill where we can pick wild apples."

  Outwardly Taggart grinned, but privately he wondered if he'd got himself in over his head by deciding to stay. "Fine, I'd enjoy that," he replied, suddenly realizing this would be the hardest mission he'd ever undertaken.

  She went on talking about her plans, but the sighing wind and snapping flames worked their soft magic, and, caught up in the enchantment of the moment, he heard little of what she said. Her sweet Southern voice washed through him, making him want to pull her closer, delve his fingers into her hair, and devour her lips. Lord, he thought, this lovely girl before him might technically be his mortal foe, but tonight, with the firelight playing over her face and her lips curved in a tender smile, she looked the farthest thing in the world from an enemy, and new feelings stirred within him.

  And at this particular moment Taggart would have given anything in the world to have been a farmer, or a horse trader, or even a peddler of dime novelsanything but what he was: a Federal intelligence officer whose bound duty it was to gather military information and move on.

  For one flickering moment he experienced a wild impulse to leave and forget he'd ever met Silky; then in his mind's eye he saw Ned's young face, and knew he must stay.

  Chapter Two

  It was a luscious fall morning with sparkling sunshine, a light breeze, and a blue sky graced with majestic cloudsa morning made for apple picking. Silky and Taggart rode out after breakfast and, following a woodcutter's trail, were soon in the woods, where a flickering mixture of light and shadow enveloped them like a protecting hand.

  Taggart, his senses saturated with the sound of birdsong and the pungent aroma of evergreens, studied the ripely curved beauty riding beside him, thinking she was as refreshing as sunlight after a storm. The little firebrand looked deliciously appealing this morning in a red flannel shirt molded to her womanly bosom and buckskin breeches coveting her shapely legs. The sun struck fire in her long hair, and green eyes twinkled at him from the shadows of her battered hat, sending his temperature rising at least two degrees.

  She'd been in high feather all morning, and with the reins slipping through her hand, she pointed down the trail, where scarlet maples and deeper-toned blackhaw stood out vividly in the morning light. "There's a little settlement about three miles on the other side of these woodsBear Wallow. We've got a meetinghouse, a burying ground, a general store, and a tavern that does a booming business when the menfolk aren't off at war."

  Taggart chuckled, suddenly feeling better than he had since the war began. "You know every foot of these woods, don't you?"

  One hand on her hip, she sat tall in the saddle. "You bet. Folks say nothing has changed in this part of Virginia for a hundred years. My granddaddy Shanahan came up this very trail fifty years ago, straight off the boat from Ireland. He cleared the land I'm living on, then built him a good log cabin and started looking for a bride."

  "And who did he find?"

  "Little Nellie MacNaley from Snyder's Hollow. She was as pretty as sunup and sweet as a baby's kiss."

  They rode on a few yards, their bridles jangling pleasantly. "And ... " he prompted.

  "And," she answered, cutting her gaze at him, "they got married on the eighth of January, 1817. Her daddy made whiskey and he set a quart of his best on his cabin doorstep. Fellows from miles around staged a horse race to get it."

  Taggart had come to the mountains with secrets to unearth, and now found all he could think of was what it would be like to steal a kiss from her full, pouting lips. But how could any normal man look at her and not be affected? he asked himself, wondering if he might be lucky enough to steal that kiss today.

  "The winner brought the whiskey to my granddaddy to give him the first swig," she continued, amusement snapping in her eyes.

  "Being an Irishman," Taggart commented, "I'm sure he was happy to oblige."

  A grin slid over her lips. "Michael Shanahan and Nellie MacNaley had eight children. Some of the old grannies say it was because they got married on the eighth of January."

  "It sounds like Mr. Shanahan was a man of considerable virility."

  She swung a direct gaze over him. "Don't forget Sweet

  Nellie, Lieutenant. A rooster may crow, but it's always the he
n that delivers the egg."

  Taggart burst out laughing, but before he could reply, she challenged, "Come on, I'll race you to the apple trees." The words barely out of her mouth, she snapped her reins and thundered down the trail, glancing back at him with a teasing smile.

  Taggart touched his heels to his horse's flanks and raced after her, only to see her veer from the woods and head out across a strip of rich meadowland. With a silvery laugh, she sailed over a split-rail fence; then the daring minx had the audacity to rein in her horse and actually whistle at him to follow.

  Taggart tore after her and made the jump himself, feeling as lighthearted as a boy of sixteen. But as soon as he'd drawn his mount abreast of hers, she was off again, entering the forest on the other side of the meadow. Her hair streaming behind her, she urged her horse onto a winding trail that worked its way to the summit of a high wooded hill.

  He followed her up the gradually ascending trail, and a quarter of a mile later they suddenly emerged into a clearing that looked down on all the hills about them. From their elevated position, the distant land spread below them in blue, mauve, and purple ridges, wrapped in haze. A river snaked between the undulating hills like a thread of silver, and, closer in, the full flush of autumn had painted the trees in bright hues that dazzled the eye. Never in his life had Taggart seen such a concentration of beauty, and, as he rested his winded horse, he stared at the breathtaking sight, glorying in the fall colors.

  "Damn, if this isn't the prettiest place God ever made," he said, looking across the sweeping vista, "I don't know what is."

  Silky dismounted and, after loosely twining her reins about a sapling, sauntered to him. "It's a wondrous sight to behold," she stated, her face glowing with pride as she surveyed the view herself. Then a contemplative expression stole over her features and she declared, "People have always felt happy and free here. It's a shame the Yankees are trying to change our ways."