daddy’s eyes and in his granddaddy’s eyes, when they were bent on killing a man.”
Old Gem sighed and moved away, with the horse patiently trailing in answer to his tug on the rein.
The hall of the house was cool and white, with a high sheen on its mahogany butterfly table and matching chairs, as Stafford came through the doors. A gilt scroll-top mirror reflected the peacock design in the wallpaper and the glass base of the chandelier hanging on its chains from the high white ceiling.
Directly ahead was the wide, white door that led out to the herb garden. A spiral stairway twisted upward to the second story. Where the wide treads began, an open door spilled the sound of a teacup clinking against a saucer.
The thick hall carpeting caught the sound of his boots as Stafford moved toward the long parlor. He stood framed in the open doorway, seeing a tall Englishman in the red uniform jacket of a colonel of the Thirty-third Foot bowing before his wife, who sat with shoulders bared in the fashionable French cut of her gown, smiling up at him.
Laura Lee did not see him. The dark magnificence of a Chippendale highboy set between the garden windows framed her flushed face and its spirals of coiling brown hair. Moisture lay on her full red lips.
Remembrance of the hours they had spent in this room, and in the herb garden beyond the far windows, swept in a flood of weakness through Stafford. Laura Lee had come to Stafford Hall as a bride, young and ardent and curious, seven years ago. Time had matured her, put a gloss and a confidence in her manner, as it had added curving flesh to the body that the British officer was surveying as he sipped his tea.
“I vow and protest, Laury,” he giggled, “you put a fever in my blood with your eternal teasings and cajolings. Promise me every dance this night. Promise me that.”
With her ivory fan she touched his chin as he bent low above her. “La, sir. Such a fire in the man! I’ll promise only the first and the last, to cool your fever.”
“But later, when the ball is over? Ah, what then? Shall we—”
He broke off and straightened. Laura Lee was staring beyond him at the door, and there was something in her wide eyes that brought him around on a boot heel. The big man in the ill-fitting riding suit standing like a frozen giant in the doorway was staring at him with eyes that were strangely disturbing.
“Billy Joe! Oh, it can’t be!” Laura Lee whispered, and put a trembling hand to the upholstered arm of the settee to rise to her slippered feet.
She swayed a little, and the Colonel took advantage of the fact to steady her by an arm about her waist. He growled, “Impertinent trespasser! Shall I throw him out on his ear, Laury?”
Her eyes touched his face a moment. “This is my husband, Colonel. Billy Joe Stafford, of Stafford Hall. Colonel Edmund Emerson.”
“God’s love!” Emerson whispered.
Stafford came forward to bow stiffly, a grim smile on his lips. Golden epaulets and a sword dangling from leather straps made Emerson seem a fine figure of a soldier to Stafford, who was used to the ragged Continentals and the buckskinned Marylanders and Virginians.
“I’ve been rude, Colonel,” Stafford said. “I should have come with bugles blowing and heralds before me. Then I wouldn’t have found you at such a loss.” He swung to Laura Lee. “Four years is a long time, Laura. I can understand your state of shock. Shall we adjourn to the upstairs parlor?”
He was deliberately cold, almost aloof, but inside him he was fighting the same sort of seething madness that had taken his grandfather to his death on a dueling plot and sent his father racing off to two wars.
Laura Lee Stafford stared from the white lips of her husband to the florid countenance of the Colonel. Her smile was forced as she said, “Of course, darling! You’ll excuse us, Colonel?”
The Colonel was profuse in his protestations of delight at being left alone. Stafford eyed the thin film of sweat on his forehead and smiled mirthlessly. He gave his elbow to Laura Lee, and noticed that the hand she rested on it trembled faintly.
With her painted satin skirts swishing crisply beside him, with her fragrance all around him, he led her to the doorway. As he turned, he saw the Colonel dabbling at his flushed face with a kerchief. Stafford bowed and closed the door.
Laura Lee took him up the spiraling staircase, wide hips swaying to each stride, past the paintings by Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds in their carved, gilded frames. Then the poplar planks of the upper floor were under their feet and she was pushing open the door to the upstairs parlor and moving into it.
Stafford followed, closing the door and putting his back to it. His eyes touched the smooth skin of her shoulders and strayed to the cleft of her bosom.
He sighed and said, “You’ve no idea how I looked forward to this home-coming, Laura. I pictured it to myself so many times. Each time it was different. Yet in all the different ways I pictured it, none mirrored the reality of your conduct with that lobsterback!”
Her ringed fingers clasped her little fan until the knuckles showed white. “Am I to be denied friends, even if they don’t wear your precious Continental rags? You ran away, Billy. You left me all alone. I was never sure you’d come back.”
His laughter was harsh. “Old Gem was sure. But then, Old Gem loves me.”
She came forward three steps, until she stood close to him. Her eyes were dark and glowing beneath their long lashes. “You didn’t run out on Old Gem! Ah, I waited. Waited and yearned for you to come back! But was I to bury myself like a nun in your absence? Don mourning clothes? I managed the plantation. I made new friends.”
“The time must have gone very swiftly, in your amusements with His Majesty’s officers!” He spoke out of the bitterness and the jealousy welling up inside him, born of the years of campfire dreams and the endless marches and retreats.
She came nearer, swaying easily, the smile on her moist red lips an intimate thing. Her body was soft and yielding as she pressed herself against him where he stood with his back to the white door. Tenderly she kissed his chin, standing on her toes. From his chin her mouth slid to the corner of his lips.
“Have you seen the house and outbuildings, the fields beyond them, dearest Billy? We have twenty more slaves and half a hundred more horses. And a fine new carriage. In the deepest part of the icehouse there are two chests buried. Each chest is filled with gold. I’ve been a good overseer in your absence.”
Despite his anger and his hurt, she was a temptation to a man. Her breath was honey, and her stayless gown permitted him to feel the softness of her thighs and middle. She laughed and writhed lazily, lifting her bared arms to coil them about his neck.
“Are you supposing I’ve been unfaithful to you, Billy Joe? Do you accuse me in your mind of bundling with every officer in a red jacket that comes with payment for the goods I sell him? Is that what eats in your heart when it should be filled only with love for me?”
“Laura, Laura,” he whispered, and moved his head so that her lips were grazing his. He shivered to their teasing while she whispered.
“We’ve a new bedroom suite,” she told him, “done in mahogany by Thomas Chippendale of London town. You’ve never seen it, Billy Joe.”
His palms were sliding up over her
