“Elizabeth!” Both women jumped at Michael’s roar, but Gabrielle quickly turned away. “You’ve said a lot of things, and I don’t know if there’s a word of truth in the lot, but you’ll stop right now. You won’t visit me. You won’t come to this house again. And you’d better leave it, now, before I put you out.”

  Elizabeth flung a look at him, halfway between fear and anger, and stormed out of the house. He watched her go without regret, he realized, without a one.

  “Very impressive, darling Michael,” Gabrielle said flatly. She clapped three times as if applauding, and left the room.

  Hurriedly he followed. “Brielle, Brielle, wait.”

  “Martha awaits me in my chamber; I must go up and freshen. Will you permit me, or shall I spread myself upon the floor? I fear I’m a trifle more encumbered than your blowze.”

  “God’s teeth, woman! Will you listen? Why must you see things the worst way?”

  “And what other way is there? Your trollop was on the floor with her skirts up and her legs spread. If I’d come in a minute later, you’d have had your breeches off. And a minute after that? I don’t even want to think of it.”

  “Damn it, Brielle, you will listen to me! I didn’t bring her here. She came, and I didn’t know she was coming. And she was on the floor because I pushed her away and she fell. That’s all there was to it. Don’t you realize, Brielle, I love you.” The truth of it hit him, and all he could do was echo his own words. “I love you.”

  Her face crumpled, and she sagged. “Don’t you say that! Damn you, don’t you say that! For years I’ve waited to hear those words, wanted them, hoped for them, while you carried her miniature next to you. I won’t take them like this, with you fresh from her arms.” Weeping, she ran up the stairs.

  For a second he stared after her, then followed, running up the curving stair to get ahead of her at the landing. “I do love you, Brielle.”

  “Let me by.” She darted to his right.

  Later, he could never remember exactly what happened. He reached for her, and she stepped back out of his grasp. Suddenly her foot slipped and she tottered, eyes wide, mouth opening. He reached; his fingertips brushed hers, and she was gone. A long scream, abruptly cut off, ripped through his mind. He stood frozen, hand still outstretched, watching her tumbling, falling like a broken doll to the entry hall below.

  “Gabrielle!” He raced downstairs, not hearing Martha’s piercing shriek from the landing rail, not seeing the butler drop his salver with a yell. He knelt beside her, hands trembling. No! He mustn’t move her. Damn it, he had to control himself. She was barely breathing. “Martha! Caesar! Send for the doctor! Hurry, damn you. Hurry!”

  The pendulum of the clock in Michael’s study swung once to the left and once to the right every second, one hundred and twenty swings a minute. Twenty-five thousand three hundred forty swings were three hours, thirty-one minutes, ten seconds. Eleven seconds. Twelve seconds.

  The doctor had flung back an old-fashioned black cape, taken a grave look at Brielle, and told Michael he’d been right not to move her. Then he’d had the serving women pick her up, and they’d all disappeared upstairs. He hadn’t seen the doctor since, just maids running for more hot water, or for something from the apothecary. But he knew one thing. Those women were frightened. And so was he. Fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-nine seconds. Thirty-two minutes.

  He pulled himself away from gazing at the clock. He wasn’t frightened. He was terrified. If he hadn’t argued with her. If he hadn’t chased her up the stairs. If he hadn’t reached for her. A thousand ifs, and then she’d be all right. She’d be alive. She’d hate him, but she’d be alive. God, let her hate him, but let her live.

  What a strange thing to discover, that he was in love with the woman he’d married four years ago. Four years of her laughter and her smiles. Four years of the surprises of her. Watching her with young James. Watching her alone. Watching her change from a girl to a regal woman. A woman of appetites and life. Sometimes enough for two women. And surprises there, too. But she made him feel tender. Lying upstairs, maybe dying, she made him feel empty, and afraid.

  When the butler announced General Moultrie, he only stared.

  “Good God, Fallon. You look like dea—I mean, I heard what happened, that your lady’d had a fall. She isn’t—”

  “Dead, General?” His voice almost broke. “No. No, they’d have told me if—She’s still alive.”

  Moultrie walked to the lowboy and came back with a decanter of brandy. “Here, man. You need this. Drink it. Drink all of it.”

  Michael shook his head as if dazed. “Haven’t time to get drunk. I’m supposed to, supposed to—Wagons. That’s it. Wagons, to carry forage and supplies for the Legion. It’ll be pretty uncertain at Savannah.”

  “You won’t be going to Savannah. I’ve transferred you to my command here in Charlestown. Mrs. Fallon needs you.”

  “It’s no good,” Michael said dully. “The Legion will be needed. Pulaski hasn’t enough by himself. I have to go.”

  “The Legion is going. Under the temporary command of Major Fourrier. I’m assigning you to this house until further notice.”

  Michael’s eyes stung, and he looked away angrily. “I should be saying something about duty, shouldn’t I? About my place being with the Legion? Thank you, General.”

  Moultrie pushed the decanter across the desk. “Do as I say and drink that. When it has Moll Thompson’s mark on it, it’ll soak up some of the pain. I must go, now.”

  “General,” Michael called, and Moultrie stopped at the door. “If we fail there, they’ll be coming here next.”

  “Then we won’t fail. Now drink. It’s an order.”

  He stared at the decanter for a time after Moultrie had gone. He poured a glass and stared at that. Just obey orders. Pick up the glass and drink. And then another, and another, and—Oblivion wouldn’t be far off, then. Oblivion. An hour later, when the doctor entered, he was still staring at that glass.

  “A difficult day, Mr. Fallon,” he said. He finished putting on his coat. “Ah. Brandy. Just what I need.”

  Michael leaped to his feet, reaching across the desk to grab the doctor’s lapels. Glass and decanter both toppled to the floor. “How’s my wife? Damn you. How is she?”

  “For the love of God, sir! She’s all right. Your wife lives, sir.”

  A sigh ran out of him, and the anger with it. He sank back into his chair, leaving the doctor to straighten his rumpled clothes. “Thank God,” he whispered.

  The doctor eyed him warily and took two careful paces back from the desk. “There were, I must inform you, some complications.” He put another pace between them as Michael looked up. “I was unable to save the baby.” Stunned, Michael mouthed the word. “It was, sir, you see, no more than two months along. There was no way to—Well, you understand.” He cleared his throat, and his voice became firmer. “There is, of course, no reason why Mrs. Fallon should not recover fully, in time. I’ve left laudanum with instructions for its use. Sleep is the thing, and of course all the windows must be kept shut and the curtains tightly closed. Putrid airs—Mr. Fallon? Mr. Fallon?”

  Michael got up and left without speaking. He’d heard only a word here and there after hearing about the baby. Mother of God, pray for him. If he hadn’t killed her, he’d still killed their baby. But she lived, and she’d recover. He’d heard that much. It was enough.

  He opened her bedroom door gently. He didn’t see Martha or the maids, and never noticed them leaving as he sat beside the bed. She looked so fragile, there against the pillows. Her breathing was shallow. The bedclothes, pulled up to her chin, didn’t stir with it. Almost reverently he turned back a corner to take her hand. It lay on his with only the barest hint of warmth to say there was life in it. He clung to it desperately. However long it took, he’d be there.

  Gabrielle swallowed the thin broth Martha spoonfed her and grimaced. “How many times must I tell you I’m not an invalid?”

  “Yes, Miss Gabrielle,” Martha said. “Now why don’t you take a little more of this broth? You finish it all up, and maybe Mr. Fallon come up to sit with you a while.”

  Gabrielle turned her head away. “No!”

  “Miss Gabrielle, this ain’t right, the way you treat that man. Three days now you been awake, and you won’t let him in the room. The whole two months you lay there not waking up except to scream and cry, he sat right here and held your hand. When we couldn’t get nothing into you but caudle, he spoonfed you most nearly every drop with his own hands. And now you won’t even let him come in.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Martha. I don’t want to see anyone but you and the doctor. Please.” How could she face Michael? How could she listen to his lies? He hadn’t been faithful! Oh, he’d been discreet, never flaunting, and she’d ignored it for the sake of keeping him. But this! In her house, with that woman. That unclean whore! She couldn’t ignore it. She wouldn’t.

  And the baby. Oh God, the baby. Death on top of all. It was his fault. And she knew he’d blame her for it. That precious Fallon blood!

  Martha was muttering to herself, eyeing Gabrielle craftily. “Yes, ma’am. I won’t let nobody bother you none. I’ll send your brothers away.”

  “My brothers? Here? Now?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Down with Mr. Fallon in the—Miss Gabrielle, you get back in that bed. Miss Gabrielle, you don’t get back in that bed, I going to put you there.”

  Gabrielle sat on the edge of the bed, head spinning. “Be quiet, Martha. Get my robe.” A grip on the bedpost pulled her to her feet through a swarm of black and silver flecks.

  Martha gave in. As she helped Gabrielle into the robe, she kept up a worried tirade against this foolishness; but she supported her out of the room and down the stairs. Gabrielle started to open the study door but stopped with an inch-wide crack. Louis was speaking.

  “—and the Second Regiment lost worse than two out of three. The Legion—The Legion lost twenty-one dead and forty wounded.”

  Michael handed each a glass of brandy and sat across from them. They hadn’t changed in the ten years, almost, he’d known them, but now they looked their ages, and ten years more. Their faces were drawn, and fine lines webbed the corners of their eyes.

  “I’ve heard a dozen stories the past two days, and no two alike.”

  Louis looked at his brother, but Henri was silent, gazing into his brandy. “I remember you saying we mustn’t expect to take Savannah in one day. What was that? Two months ago? Seems like two years. We could have. Taken it in one day, I mean, if that day had been the first day the French landed.”

  “Ten guns,” Henri said quietly. “On that day they had ten guns mounted in Savannah.”

  “And when we finally attacked, they had over a hundred. Well over a hundred, Michael.”

  “What was Lincoln doing? He may not think particularly fast, but he must have seen.”

  Louis laughed bitterly. “He saw what he wanted to see. Or rather, what d‘Estaing told him to see. We tried to tell him what was going on. Johnny Laurens and Francis Marion raised such hell, I thought they’d both be court-martialed for insubordination. The trouble was, as soon as Lincoln realized they were contradicting d’Estaing, he’d start telling them how the Frenchie captured Grenada with only nine hundred men.”

  Henri broke in. “He acted like he was a bloody demigod. Stab me if he didn’t.”

  “Yes, that’s close enough, Michael. D’Estaing could do no wrong. But the battle. It took d’Estaing a week after landing to call for the city to surrender. And then he demanded it in the name of the King of France! I ask you! The men were suspicious enough of the French to begin with.”

  “Well, stab me, what was the use of taking the place for a French colony?”

  “A week after he demanded surrender, a week, mind, we started trenches. Then—Oh, hell, it doesn’t take long to tell. We were there for over a month, and the British sortied against us twice, before we fired our first cannon at their emplacements.”

  “Don’t forget the reinforcements, Louis.” Henri gulped his brandy and poured more. “The British got in perhaps a regiment of reinforcements by water.”

  Louis took it up. “We fired the first cannon on the fifth of October, and kept it up from then on. One of the Frenchies, a Major L’Enfant, tried to fire the abatis, but the wood was too green. Took courage. I could almost forgive them d’Estaing for L‘Enfant. Almost. Prevost asked to send out the women and children, but d’Estaing refused. Lincoln went along, but I think he was beginning to doubt for the first time. And then, after all the delays he’d caused, that whoreson Frog bastard said the Americans had been too slow. He’d been away from the French Indies too long. The British might be down there at that moment. We must raise the siege, or attack at once, because he intended sailing within the fortnight.”

  “The trenches,” Michael said. “How close were the trenches? Fifty yards? A hundred?”

  “The closest were four hundred yards from the British lines,” Louis replied, and laughed at Michael’s gasp. “Oh, there’s worse. That’s not where we attacked from. Most had to cross over half a mile of ground, and some had to wade through rice paddies.”

  “That’s insane,” Michael said.

  “Insane,” Henri laughed bitterly. “That’s the word for it.”

  “Huger’s men bogged down crossing the rice fields, and were cut up without ever making it to the British lines. Dillon lost his way in the swamp, finally extracted his men and tried to form them in daylight, under the British guns, and never managed to launch an attack at all. But the rest of us—the Frenchies, Marion, Laurens, Pulaski, MacIntosh and us—made our attack on the Spring Hill Redoubt as planned.”

  Henri lifted his glass. “To the Spring Hill Redoubt.” His face was grim.

  Louis didn’t notice the interruption. “The Irish Legion was supposed to follow close behind, to dash through and exploit any breakthrough. I saw soon enough that we’d never get the horses through the abatis, so we dismounted and went in on the flank of Marion’s Second Regiment of Foot. They went in like they were on a parade ground; you could hear their officers calling, push on, push on. Through the abatis, across the ditch, and up the slope into the redoubt, all you could hear was cannon balls striking the ground, musket balls smacking into flesh, and those men calling, push on. They had a battalion of dismounted dragoons in the redoubt, with Tories from the Carolinas. The French never made it past the rim of the redoubt, but we and the Second fought our way inside. We almost had it clear when they hit us in the flank.”

  “Sixtieth Grenadiers and Royal Marines,” Henri said.

  “They pushed us back, then. Pulaski saw what was happening and tried to break through; the artillery slashed them to pieces. We were pushed back into the ditch. We’d got our colors out of the redoubt, Sergeant Jasper died trying to rescue the Second’s, and the last I saw was when Bush fell into the ditch with them.”

  “Jasper’s dead? And Bush?”

  “And Motte,” Henri said, “and Wise, and Beraud, and Shepherd, and Hudson, and Pulaski, and—hell, think of everyone you knew and take every other name.”

  “I should’ve been there,” Michael said.

  “You couldn’t have changed anything,” Louis said wearily.

  “They’ll be coming here soon enough,” Henri added.

  “I still should’ve been there.”

  The bitterness in his voice hit Gabrielle like a blow. First that woman. Then the baby. And now this. It was too much. She couldn’t face it all. She had to get away.

  “Martha, have Caesar make the carriage ready. Now. Then go bundle James against the chill, and bring me a dress. Hurry. A word to Mr. Fallon, and I’ll—I’ll sell you. Hurry.”

  She managed to make Martha go, leaving her tottering in the entry hall. Unsteadily she made her way back to a writing desk. The first note began My Dearest Michael. After staring at the three words she tore it up and began again.

  November 10, 1779

  Dear Husband,

  I am leaving for reasons that we both know too well. What stands between us now can never be eradicated. What I had hoped we would have is irretrievably gone. There should be no need for me to say that I have little wish to see or hear from you. If you wish to come to Tir Alainn, please write to me beforehand so that I may remove to the house in Charlestown until you are gone.

  Gabrielle

  Twenty minutes later the carriage rolled out of the drive and headed out of the city.

  27

  The British transports in the North Edisto Inlet were quiet. They’d had most of General Clinton’s soldiers ashore for a month, now, since the middle of February, and they were living off the countryside. It still seemed strange to Michael that he could stand twenty miles from Charlestown and be in enemy territory.

  Even there he couldn’t keep his mind from Gabrielle at Tir Alainn. Daniel had carried letter after letter, but always returned empty-handed. But then, he’d said it, hadn’t he? Let her hate him, but let her live. He should be satisfied. God, how could he be?

  He slid back into the brush, where ten Legionnaires waited with the horses.

  “See anything, Colonel?”

  “Nothing, Sergeant Bakeman.” He stowed the glass in his saddlebags and mounted. “Looks as if the army that’s ashore now is all we have to face.”

  “That’s enough for me, Colonel,” somebody laughed.

  “The colonel ain’t interested in your opinions, Collins,” Bakeman said. “Where to now, Colonel?”

  “Back to the city, Sergeant. We’ve spent a week discovering nothing we didn’t already know.”

  They picked their way through the pine woods, keeping the marsh along the Stono always in sight to their left. Wadmalaw Island was firmly in British hands, along with John’s Island and James’s Island. The usual crossings all had sentries, and fifty men or more encamped there. Along this side of Wadmalaw, though, where the marsh thinned away to nothing, horses could be swum across. The British need never know they’d been there.