Excerpt From Historical Romance Novel Enemy of the King

By Beth Trissel

CHAPTER ONE

August 1780, Low Country, South Carolina

Dreadful screeching, like the cries of an enraged cat, tore through the muggy night and into Meriwether’s chamber.

She sat bolt upright in bed. “Demented owl,” she muttered and pushed back the short lengths of hair clinging to her forehead. Her shift was also damp from tossing. An indefinable restlessness drove her as a ship before the wind.

The clock downstairs struck two.

Meriwether stiffened at the echo of hooves on the cobblestones in the yard beneath her window. What business could anyone possibly have to conduct at this unearthly hour? Perhaps it was a courier, and perhaps he’d come before. Images of phantom horses from past nights cantered through her mind. She had thought them dreams sprung from fever, but she was much better now and wide awake.

The sound of hooves stopped and the horse snorted.

She parted the muslin curtain around her canopied bed and slid her feet to the carpet. A great golden moon bathed the room in a pearly sheen. She crept to the partly open glass--gasping as the screech owl flew at her from the live oak outside the window. Round yellow eyes stared into hers for a split second before the bird veered off into the darkness.

Meriwether breathed in sharply. The sweetness of jasmine wafted from the trellised vine as she peered down through moss-draped branches. The milky light streamed over the two men standing in the yard, their heads bent in conversation.

One man in a dark coat and black tricorn held the reins of a bay horse. Neither he nor his mount was familiar, but she knew the other gentleman well. Several inches taller than the stranger, he was simply dressed in a white shirt tucked into breeches that molded to his long legs and met his riding boots. Shadows hid his face and the chestnut hair pulled back at his neck, but there was no mistaking Jeremiah Jordan, master of Pleasant Grove and Meriwether’s guardian these past few months. Elegance cloaked him like a mantle.

Her heart quickened at the sight of Jeremiah, rarer and rarer these days. What wouldn’t she give to have him all to herself for even one single hour? That seemed as impossible as an end to this confounded war. Chest fluttering, she knelt at the window to better overhear their low voices.

“Men are gathering,” floated up to her from the stranger.

Her stomach knotted in tight twists. Was this nocturnal visit prearranged? Worse--had Jeremiah joined the Patriots? Her Loyalist sympathies recoiled at the awful possibility.

He’d never voiced any open fervor for the rebel cause. The neighbors thought him still too distraught over his wife Rachel’s death to take an active role in the war, but doubts gnawed at Meriwether. She had seen the flash of anger in Jeremiah’s blue eyes whenever British Lieutenant Major Tarleton’s name was mentioned. Perhaps it was just the effect ‘Bloody Ban’ had on any decent person, but Meriwether suspected far more lay beneath Jeremiah’s outward reserve than he’d ever revealed.

Lacy white clouds feathered the moon as she leaned out the window for a better look at the two men. Jeremiah glanced around the yard then passed what looked like a leather pouch into the stranger’s hand. She glimpsed a flap in the center and a shoulder strap like the pouch that couriers used.

“The usual place,” reached her straining ears.

Jeremiah lifted his head and stared up at Meriwether’s chamber. She sprang to her feet stumbling back. What would he say if he knew she spied on him?

Her thoughts flew like quail flushed from cover. Were his frequent absences from home truly plantation business or far more dangerous errands? With Charles Town fallen to the British and the entire Southern Garrison captured, South Carolina was rapidly becoming a crown stronghold. If Jeremiah were mixed up in this rebellion, he courted disaster.

Remaining in her chamber wouldn’t answer any questions. If she slipped down the back stairs and edged closer to the yard, she might learn more. Eavesdropping on the man who’d graciously taken her in after her father’s death smacked of disloyalty, but how else was she to discover the truth?

She hesitated only for an instant. She wasn’t Captain Steele’s daughter for nothing. Mettle accompanied the name.

Arms outstretched, she felt her way in the darkness around the clothespress and washstand, and then opened the door and tiptoed from her room out into the hall. The eerie sensation of unseen eyes sent prickles down her spine as she stole along the dim corridor. Perhaps it was the portraits of Jeremiah’s ancestors watching from the walls or perhaps even someone else, someone gone, yet not gone. She’d had this uncanny feeling before. It made her want to run outside, away from this disturbing presence.

Meriwether sped past the room where Jeremiah’s elderly aunt, Miss Anna, slept--stubbing her bare foot on the low table crouched in the blackness like a jungle cat.

“Ouch!” she cried softly and rubbed her throbbing toe, expecting footfalls on the steps.

No one came. Miss Anna could slumber through howling wolves. One clumsy young woman would not disturb her.

Wishing she’d worn her shoes, Meriwether limped to the landing. Moonlight pouring through the recessed window at the top of the stairs lit the glassy gaze of the eight point buck mounted above her. She froze, her eyes riveted on the deer’s head. A snake--perhaps venomous--wound around the antlers. Meriwether was no coward, but she’d rather face a Legion dragoon with a bayonet than this serpent. It must have slithered in through the open window.

Strangling a cry, she bolted past the writhing mass and down the steps. Let the boards creak beneath her feet. She hit the ground floor at a run and flung open the door. She flew outside, nearly forgetting why she’d come in her haste. Breathing hard, she halted in the archway.

Calm yourself, she admonished, and quietly closed the door behind her. Flattened against it, she ran her eyes over the yard. Both men were conspicuous only by their absence. Not surprising. She’d unwittingly given them warning. They might have ducked into the stable or carriage house, or melted away into the night, spiriting the horse with them.

Locusts droned, and crickets chirped as she poised in the entryway. Horses nickered from the pasture. Nothing more.

What now? She couldn’t go back inside with that snake dangling there and had nowhere else to go except the kitchen, a short distance from the manor house. Keith Daws, Jeremiah’s right hand man, and his family slept inside its stone walls. Jeremiah and Keith Daws had been friends ever since she remembered, rare between an Englishman and a black man.

Meriwether didn’t want to risk waking any of the Daws. Keith’s oldest son, York, was a light sleeper and would be more than a little curious to discover her wandering shoeless in her nightdress. Better to remain as she was than to try and find her way to the front of the house in the dark.

She sank down in the doorway, knees drawn up, feet tucked under the hem. No serpent was sliding across her bare toes. It was childish, perhaps, but couldn’t be helped. She buried her head in her arms. What a farce she’d made of spying.

“Ah, Papa,” she whispered, imagining his hearty chuckle and badly wishing he were still alive. He’d been her compass. She couldn’t find her way without him and her twin brother, Bobby, off fighting for the crown.

“Are you staying the night out here, Miss Steele?”

Meriwether jerked up her head, her heart in her throat. Jeremiah stood at the base of the brick steps that led up to her perch.

“Mister Jordan! You move like a ghost.”

“You rather resemble one in that shift, dear heart.”

Moonbeams silvered his well-muscled figure in the full sleeved shirt and thigh hugging breeches. She drank in every glorious inch. The magical light hinted at his penetrating eyes and aristocratic, almost haughty nose softened by his sensuous mouth. It could be a hard mouth when he was angry, which wasn’t often and never with her; at least, not yet.

Brown whiskers roughened his chin when he didn’t shave. The stubble was there now, masking the thin white scar at his jaw. A narrow ribbon also coursed through his left eyebrow, both stemming from some disagreement involving swords. Meriwether wasn’t privy to the details. Jeremiah kept his own counsel in most matters, but she knew every line and contour of his face; if only she knew the inner workings of his heart.

“Whatever are you doing curled in the doorway?”

She gave the first excuse she could think of. It was partly true, at least. “A huge snake--”

“Where?”

“Wrapped around the stag’s head.”

“And why were you keeping company with that old boy?” he asked, amusement hinting in his mellow voice.

“Lacked any better society, I suppose,” she said, calmer now and glad she hadn’t aroused his suspicion.

Jeremiah chuckled. “Poor girl. I didn’t realize you were in such want of company.”

“I’m not normally. Not at this hour, anyway.”

“I was just about to remark on the time.”

“Such a lovely moon,” she ventured.

“Any reason you chose this particular hour to view it?”

“Any particular reason you’re still up?” she parried, as though he would tell her the truth.

“To share this splendid orb with you, fair lady.”

She beckoned to him. “Then come, sir. Join me.”

“I’d be delighted.” He climbed the stairs. “Is this where you’re entertaining?”

“It is.”

“A fine choice.” He sat down, squeezing his solid warmth into the space between her and the door frame.

The palpable strength of this man seared through her. A cloud of butterflies fluttered in her chest, and it was impossible to breathe normally while pressed arm to arm and thigh to thigh against him. Even his scent intoxicated her, his unique masculinity, which mingled with the fragrance of French milled soap. Although he was fourteen years older than she, her feelings for him were not at all those of a little sister. She ached with the hope that his regard wasn’t that of an older brother.

“Are you quite comfortable, Miss Steele?”

She stammered, “Quite. Always the gentleman.”

“Not always. A gentleman wouldn’t be seated here with you like this.”

“Then he would miss the sky. So brilliant tonight.”

“Indeed he would, and a great deal more.”

Meriwether didn’t know how to reply to the wistfulness in his voice for fear she’d break the spell. She longed for some declaration of deeper affection from him, but he said nothing else. He was so near, and yet…night noises scented with the spiciness of herbs from the kitchen garden filled the silence as she waited, yearning to close the gap between them.

Finally, he spoke. “When you were a little girl, I used to lift you up to touch the stars.”

She envisioned the young man and the child upraised to dizzying heights. “I remember.”

“How you laughed and reached out your arms. You really thought I could raise you up to the heavens.”

“I’m still waiting, Mister Jordan,” she said softly.

He lifted his hand and smoothed her cheek. “Don’t.”

She trembled at this light touch. “I can’t help myself.”

Heaviness edged his reply. “Some things aren’t meant to be, Meriwether.”

****

Enemy of the King, my version of The Patriot, is coming to the Wild Rose Press later in 2008!

Enemy of the King has finaled in multiple contests including The Emily. For more on this and my other works, please visit me at www.bethtrissel.com

Oh, and the snake incident is true. It happened to me in our old Virginia family home.