When This Cruel War Is Over Read Free Page B

we’ll have the money and the guns waiting for our volunteers.”
    â€œGood, good.”
    Hopemont’s butler, stooped, big-nosed old Joseph, appeared with a bottle of bourbon and a frosted glass of cracked ice on a tray. He put them on the folding table beside Gabriel Todd and departed without a word. Her father poured a hefty splash into the glass and sipped it reflectively.
    â€œI want to end this filthy war as soon as possible. I want to see you here, with children at your skirts, before I die. You’ll have five thousand acres in your name. I’m not pleading Adam Jameson’s case if he doesn’t stir your feelings, but—”
    Janet turned away, a gesture that made it clear she had no interest in the subject. “I’m not sure what you’ll get for dinner,” she said. “Lillibet’s taken to her bed again.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI wish you hadn’t sold Maybelle, Father.”
    â€œI thought it was for the best, Janet,” he said. “I was tryin’ to put temptation out of reach of your brothers. She was just too seductive. I’ve been in too many houses where the father has to watch his mulatto grandchildren pickin’ his corn or servin’ his supper.”
    â€œSo you’ve told me.”
    Was he also putting temptation out of his own way? Janet wondered. Jack Todd had been married and gone to Alabama when Maybelle was sold in 1861. Her brother
Andy made no secret (to Janet, at least) of finding less than respectable women in Louisville and Cincinnati.
    Incredible, the way the mind—at least her mind—thrust such ugly questions to the forefront. Would she have cared if her father took Maybelle for his mistress? Her skin was a creamy brown, suggesting that somewhere in the past a male Todd had enjoyed her grandmother or great-grandmother. More than one rumor about slave mistresses was whispered behind fans at Kentucky parties.
    â€œYou women don’t realize how fortunate you are, not bein’ subject to such … such …”
    As if he personified the unmentionable subject Gabriel Todd was trying to simultaneously evade and describe, Major Paul Stapleton leaped into vivid life in Janet’s head. He was standing on the ferry dock, smiling in a curiously confident way. His short-brimmed officer’s kepi was tilted forward on his head, suggesting a recklessness that the smile reinforced. The strong-boned sunburned face was dominated by eyes that could go from oval innocence to knowing slits in an instant, an epitome of his disconcerting blend of boyishness and maturity. He had his hands on his hips, suggesting a certain impatience with her. Yet his smile suggested he was sure she would satisfy his unspoken desires, sooner or later.
    It may be sooner than you think, Major.
    There it was again, that rebellious mind of hers, asserting a brazen indifference to conventional morality. Janet walked to the door of the gazebo and said, “Where the devil is Lucy? She promised me she was going to run all the way to the post office.”

Two
    STANDING ON THE EDGE OF the sun-scorched courthouse square in Keyport, Indiana, twenty-five-year-old Major Paul Stapleton struggled to control his wandering thoughts. A temperature of 106 degrees was turning his blue U.S. Army uniform into a sweat-soaked mess. In his head he was stripping off this symbol of his commitment to a life of discipline and duty and plunging into the wide, cool waters of the Ohio River, a few hundred yards away at the foot of Keyport’s jagged bluffs.
    On the Kentucky shore, the imaginative major picked his way over the twisted roots of gigantic cottonwood trees exposed by the Ohio’s recurring floods. Soon he was on the upper front porch of Hopemont, the most splendid mansion in Daviess County. Through the open French doors he watched a slim black maid slip a chemise over dark-haired Janet Todd’s head, flounce it over her breasts and