Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Read online

  Chin jutting high, Kitty lifted her skirts as Nathan took her arm, and started up the steps. She was not going to let them bother her. This day belonged to Nathan, and no one else mattered.

  And then she found herself staring up into the angry eyes of Nathan’s mother, Lavinia Collins. Her gaze took in the low bodice disapprovingly, and her lips tightened even more on her pinched face. She was a short woman, rather dumpy, Kitty thought. Her dress was brown taffeta, stiff and high-collared with a trim of fine lace. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She had probably once been a pretty woman, but now she looked unpleasant and…Kitty searched for the right word…sour. That was it.

  She was standing beside Aaron Collins, and it was impossible to tell how he reacted to her presence. Known for his charm, Aaron would never be so ill-mannered as to make a guest feel uncomfortable in his home. Bowing graciously, he kissed the hand Kitty extended to him as Nathan made the introductions.

  “I’ve heard so much about you from my son, Kitty,” he said quietly. “I feel as though I should know you, since I’ve been seeing you with your father delivering honey ever since you were a child.”

  Kitty thought he resembled Nathan, except that his hair was salt-and-pepper gray, and he was taller, heavier, but still a fine figure of a man with deep-set eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled.

  “Welcome to Collins Manor.” Aaron bowed again slightly.

  Lavinia Collins did not speak, merely nodding her head curtly as the two of them passed. “She’s mad because you asked me here, isn’t she?” Kitty whispered to Nathan as they moved on up the steps.

  “Don’t pay any mind to her. If Mother doesn’t get her way about everything, she can be rather unpleasant. Daddy warned her about being polite, but I guess she didn’t trust herself and chose to keep silent instead.”

  “Then she is mad with you for bringing me here,” Kitty whispered again, this time with an urgency.

  “I think Nancy must’ve had one of her tantrums and gone crying to Mother when she found out I had no intention of bringing her here today. I told you, Kitty, I’m not going to be pushed into anything, and those two started talking marriage once the war talk got stronger. If I marry anybody, it’s going to be you.” He squeezed her arm, smiling down at her, and she thought she would melt under his gaze.

  They reached the top of the stairs and the sun-splashed veranda where several of Nathan’s young friends surged upon them. They exchanged greetings, and then someone blurted out, “Did you shoot to kill Tate, Kitty, or did you mean to only wound him?”

  “He’s still alive, isn’t he?” Her voice came out sharper than she intended, and an awkward silence followed. She did not want to spend the afternoon reliving something she would rather forget.

  “It’s over with now,” Nathan spoke firmly. “Let’s just forget about it.”

  “I agree.”

  Kitty turned to find herself looking into the sad eyes of David Stoner, and she suddenly felt uncomfortable. Was it a year ago that he had proposed to her? She couldn’t remember. She had liked David a lot—and still did. He was a handsome young man, with reddish-brown hair and deep green eyes, a firmness to his face that gave him character and an air of wisdom in spite of his youth. But she didn’t love him, and she had told him so. With tears in his eyes, he had sworn to her that he could never love another the way he did her. Ever since, when they met, he looked at her with the same expression of sadness.

  He looked from her to Nathan and nodded. It was more than a greeting, Kitty knew. He was acknowledging their relationship, painful though it was.

  “Ahh, here’s our guest of honor.” The tension of the moment was dispelled as Nathan turned to greet the short, plump man with the sharp, piercing eyes and rather long, hooked nose. “May I present Weldon Edwards from Warrenton.”

  He kissed Kitty’s hand. She thought his manner pleasant. He didn’t look like someone hysterically screaming for war and bloodshed.

  Attention turned from Kitty to the noted lawyer, as someone asked, “Mr. Edwards, I’m as anxious to get the war started and over with as anyone else. How long do you think it will be before we start fighting?”

  “Now that Lincoln’s been elected President,” another added excitedly.

  Weldon Edwards thought a moment, then said, “I think the election of Lincoln to the Presidency will trigger the secession of the states of the lower South, but unless we can get North Carolina’s secession movement to grow rapidly, I think the General Assembly, and Governor Ellis, will continue the ‘wait and see’ attitude.

  “I’m leaving this afternoon for a secession meeting in Cleveland County,” he told the hovering group. “And next week, we meet in Wilmington. We must try to call a statewide convention of the people to determine a policy for the state—and that policy must be secession, even if it means war.”

  Kitty could contain herself no longer. “War, sir? What if secession does bring war, as it surely will. Are these young men here to die for your cause?”

  “It’s our cause, too,” Daniel Roberts, the youngest of the group spoke up, striking his fist in the air. “Yes, I’ll die for North Carolina…”

  Nathan gripped her arm so tightly that she winced with pain as he steered her away from the group and toward the front doors of the house. “Please, Kitty,” he whispered anxiously. “It’s just not proper for women to get involved in political discussions.”

  “I’m not talking about politics.” She jerked out of his grasp and faced him defiantly, not caring who heard. “I’m talking about war—death, bloodshed! And it’s my right to be concerned, too. Being a woman has nothing to do with it. I can get killed by the Yankees as quickly as a man.”

  “You aren’t going to get killed. The war won’t last over a few months, and we’ll never let them get this far. Now please, Kitty, people are staring…”

  She allowed him to steer her into the entrance foyer, and for the moment, she was so impressed with the opulence of the house that she forgot about the talk of war.

  The floors gleamed—the mahogany hand-polished to a high sheen. The walls were covered in soft gold velvet, and high above, a crystal chandelier danced in its cluster of diamond-studded prisms. On either side of the foyer, the carpeted stairway curved upward to the next floor, its railings and banisters entwined with early branches of holly for decoration. Several vases of bright yellow marigolds filled the room with fragrance.

  No one was about, and Nathan pressed his lips to her forehead as his fingertips caressed her bare shoulders. “Now you go upstairs to freshen, and I’ll get a plate of barbecue for you. We’ll eat on the back lawn, away from the others.”

  “Are you trying to keep me away from everyone because I’m so awful?” she snapped.

  “Oh, Kitty, don’t be this way.” He frowned, sighing with exasperation. “I just don’t want any trouble. I want the two of us to be happy and enjoy ourselves, not get into heated debates about war. Isn’t it enough that everyone is whispering about the fact that you shot my father’s overseer?”

  “Then why didn’t you just leave me at home if you’re so ashamed of me, Nathan? It isn’t my fault that you hire an overseer who wanders about half the time drunk and sparking for a fight. I…I wish I’d killed him,” she spat out the words furiously, “and I wish I’d stayed home and not come to your party!”

  “Kitty…”

  She hoisted her skirts and ran up the steps, taking them two at a time, not caring how unladylike it might look.

  “Kitty, won’t you please listen?” Nathan pleaded from below. “I didn’t mean to make you mad…”

  She didn’t know which direction to turn. Somewhere, she knew, a room would have been designated for female guests to freshen themselves. But which one?

  “Are you looking for something, Kitty?”

  At the sound of the voice, she whipped her head about to see Nancy Warren standing in the doorway of a nearby room. She was wearing a powdery blue hoop dress
, the bodice low but filled in with delicate lace. The sleeves were puffed, and she wore a velvet ribbon around her neck. Her dark brown hair was curled in ringlets about her face.

  Nancy would be pretty, Kitty thought fleetingly, if she did not have such a pinched, disapproving, and superior look to her face. Her lips curved upward, brown eyes flashing with malice. “Well, don’t just stand there gawking. You must hurry and get back downstairs before someone snatches Nathan away from you.” She laughed—an ugly sound. “Wouldn’t that be terrible, after the way you threw yourself at him to get him to bring you here today? But why should you worry? As coarse and rough as you are, Kitty, dear, all you have to do is shoot the girl who dares, right?”

  Kitty started to reply. All the angry words were dancing on her tongue, waiting to be unleashed. Instead, she laughed. Nancy blinked, bewildered by Kitty’s reaction.

  “Oh, Nancy, why don’t you give up?” She shook her head from side to side, still laughing. “You really aren’t worth me worrying about, you know. I’ll admit that you used to really get under my skin. I’d run home from school and throw myself across my bed and cry for hours, because of something you’d said, making fun of me or my family. But now, all of a sudden, I find it doesn’t matter. Instead of being mad or hurt with you, I think I honestly feel sorry for you—because I’ve got the one thing you want—and can’t have.”

  Kitty had walked slowly across the room to where the curving pine washstand stood beside a window. She lifted the blue porcelain pitcher and poured water into the matching bowl. Then she dipped one hand and began to pat her face, trying to cool her flushed skin.

  “If you’re talking about having Nathan, Kitty Wright,” Nancy spluttered, eyes narrowed to angry slits as she stood just behind her. “You haven’t got him, and you’ll never get him. His parents would disown him before they let him marry the likes of trash like you…”

  “Who are you calling trash, Nancy?” Kitty whipped around, still holding the pitcher.

  Pressing, because she had obviously found a vulnerable spot in Kitty’s cool veneer, Nancy smirked. “Everybody in Wayne County knows your family is white trash. They say your daddy is a negro-lover, that he helps runaway slaves get to the underground, They say your mother is crazy. They say your daddy is too sorry and lazy to work the land he owns, and that’s why you’re dirt poor. And you dare to think you’re good enough for Nathan…”

  She didn’t plan to do it, but when Kitty heard Nancy’s tirade against her father, it was too much. Slowly, deliberately—almost under its own will, her arm raised and the pitcher of water tipped, splashing down on Nancy’s head.

  “What are you doing?” she screamed, covering her head with both hands and backing away. But it was too late. Her carefully curler-ironed tresses hung sopping wet around her face—the bodice and sleeves of her dress limp and splotched.

  Calmly, Kitty returned the pitcher to the washstand. “Think again before you go calling someone white trash, Nancy,” she said, walking toward the door.

  Nancy was sobbing and shrieking, and the sound brought several other young girls running into the room. “Look what she did! Look what that trash did!” Nancy was yelping.

  Stomping down the steps one at a time, Kitty scolded herself for having come in the first place. She didn’t belong here. What was so important about social acceptance, anyway? She’d have much preferred to go riding or hunting, and if Nathan loved her, he would just have to understand.

  A group of women stood inside the door, exchanging glances as they looked from Kitty to the direction of the sobbing and screaming. Casting a contemptuous glance in their direction, Kitty walked by them, head high. They looked like a clump of fat hens, clucking and chattering. What did they know about straddling a saddle, galloping in the song of the wind with hair blowing wildly about their faces instead of tiptoeing gracefully along in their stiff crinolines and ruffles? They would never thrill to the sound of Killer baying excitedly as he picked up the scent of a ‘coon, leading the way for the final triumphant moment. And let them scream and faint at the sight of blood. They didn’t know the goodness that spread within when a little black boy cut his finger and smiled at you with eternal devotion because you cleaned it and bandaged it and then kissed it to make it well.

  She had more than any of those sour-faced women would ever have—and what they thought of her did not matter.

  She burst onto the veranda breathlessly, gulping in the fresh air. They were still there—Weldon Edwards and David Stoner and Nathan, and the others, heatedly talking about the war.

  “We can beat them in a month…”

  “One Southerner can beat twenty Yankees…”

  “…teach them a lesson they won’t forget!”

  “Peacefully? Abe Lincoln don’t know the meanin’ of the word. He’ll never let any state secede from the union peacefully. We’ll go to war, sir.”

  War, secession, fighting, Lincoln—words Kitty was sick of hearing. “Gentlemen, you are all fools!” she exploded as heads turned, mouths dropped open in shock. “You condemn my father for not joining in your enthusiasm for war, but have any of you ever stopped to listen to the wisdom of his words? He says there’s not a factory to build cannons that lies below the Mason-Dixon Line. And what about the cotton factories? With the exception of North Carolina, there aren’t many others, and we can’t supply the whole South if war comes.”

  They continued to stare at her silently, a few of them coughing nervously as they darted sidelong glances at Nathan, who was shuffling uncomfortably. Then he started toward her, but she stepped back, holding up her hands to hold him away, not about to be led off once again like a naughty child.

  “The Yankees will blockade our harbors quickly, and then where will we be? Could you get cotton out to sell overseas? The Yankees have the factories and the money. The South has nothing but a bunch of patriotic-minded fools who think there is glory in war!”

  “Kitty, that’s enough!” Nathan’s voice was harsh, rasping, as he grabbed her outstretched arms and shoved them down to her sides, gripping and giving her a shake. He whispered, “Let me take you home. Obviously, you don’t feel well…”

  Jerking away from him, she cried, “I feel very well. I refuse to let you people make me sick!”

  “Nathan…” Lavinia Collins ran onto the veranda, her face white with shock, her personal maid beside her, fluttering nervously in fear that her mistress would faint. “Nathan, do you know what this…this creature has done? She’s poured water on little Nancy Warren!”

  A round of laughter went up from the young men, and one of them called out, “Nancy should be glad Kitty didn’t have a gun, or she’d be nursing a wound like your overseer.”

  Nathan’s hands fell away from his grip on her arms. It was too much. “Oh, Kitty…” he moaned, shaking his head.

  She knew she had shamed him and, turning, she ran toward the end of the veranda and the side steps. “Wait, I’ll get the carriage…” Nathan called.

  “No…I don’t need you…” Kitty cried, hoisting her skirts once again to run down the steps. “I don’t need anyone…”

  Across the lawn she ran, her carefully coiffured hair failing down around her face. She headed straight for the woods. It was a good two miles or more to her house through the woods and swamps, but she had hunted these parts for years and knew her way. The walk would be good for her, she decided, slowing down as she made her way through the thicket. She needed the time to sort out everything that had happened, before she faced her mother.

  The scream halted Kitty’s steps. Here, the woods were thick, with brambles and thickets of overgrowth. Her dress was being snagged and torn, but she’d been too angry to care.

  “Master, don’t…please don’t, the baby…”

  Turning toward the direction of the pleading cries, Kitty saw a clearing she hadn’t realized was about. Moving closer, she realized she was right next to the slave compound for the Collins plantation. There were perhaps a dozen or more wooden
shacks lined up in a circle around a clearing. The porches of the houses were clustered with frightened, wide-eyed slaves. Small children clutched their mothers’ legs, peering out from behind at the scene taking place in the middle of the clearing.

  A young black girl, swollen with child, lay writhing in the dirt at the feet of a white man who held a whip in his left hand—his right arm was wrapped in a sling.

  Luke Tate!

  “Don’t beat me, please. You’ll kill my baby…”

  “I’ll kill you, you black wench. I’ll teach you to steal…” He reached down with his left hand, still holding the whip, and with a quick yank, ripped her thin cotton dress from her body. She groveled naked at his feet, trying to wrap her arms around her bulging, unprotected stomach—and her unborn child.

  The Collins mansion stood on a hill above the, clearing, barely visible from the distance. A young black man came running from that direction, waving his arms frantically. “Don’t you hit her, Tate. You hit me instead…” He reached the clearing, face churning with fear and anger, chest heaving with exhaustion from the run. “I give her that meat. You cut off her food to punish her las’ week, and she an’ that baby were starvin’. I had to feed her, don’t you see? If you beat anybody, beat me.”

  Luke Tate turned. “I’ll beat the both of you,” he screamed, bringing the whip down with a crackling whistle through the air. The lash cut across the black man’s face, laying open the flesh. Covering his face with both hands and shrieking in pain, he slumped forward in the dirt.

  The black woman cried, struggled to her feet to reach the young man, but Luke’s whip slashed again—this time across her back. She was no match for the cutting leather, and she crumpled under the first blow—the blood already flowing from the slice that laid open her skin.

  Luke raised his arm again, but Kitty had managed to make her way out of the brambles by then and was running toward him, crying, “Stop! Stop that, you dirty bastard, Luke Tate!”