Chapter 2: Ivy

It was getting up toward midnight that moonlit evening when I finished my other Trenton chores still enjoying memories of my time with the lusty redjead, talked to all of my trusted contacts and then tapped on the Snyder's barred back door. Felicity admitted me with her finger to her smiling lips. Her boys were with their grandparents near New Brunswick, and we both hoped Ivy was sound asleep upstairs. I kissed her and held her close, pushing aside her robe and letting my hands run over the ripe, 45-year-old body I knew so well. She had brought me back to life after the British tried to beat me to death, and it was she who convinced me that I might be able to pleasure a woman again despite my painful and embarrassing injuries.

"I'm leaving in the morning, early," I told her as she dragged me toward her bedroom and quietly closed the door behind us. We shucked out of our clothes and jumped under her quilt to make good use of the hours left to us. Ginny had taken a lot out of me that afternoon, but Felicity almost always could bring me back to energetic life. After a while, she ran me through her favorite gaits, and we galloped several miles together before we lay side by side, breathing deeply and holding hands, enjoying each others taste, smell and warmth.

"I'm going to miss you, you big horse," she sighed, "but I'm glad you're going now. Ivy's just about beyond control some days. She wants to go with you, you know, wherever you go, as a camp follower if need be. I caught her packing to sneak off for West Point one day when a teamster had offered her a ride."

"Damn," I said. "I'm sorry. I've done everything but curse her."

"I know," Felicity whispered. "She even told me that you kicked her out of this bed back when she was thirteen, just after the battle."

I did not say anything but remembered the lissome body that fled, bare tailed, at her mother's approach, that long-ago night. I chuckled under my breath.

"It isn't funny," the woman said, very serious, smacking me on the belly. "You'd better get on your way. It'll be getting light pretty soon."

I kissed her gently and thanked her as sincerely as I've ever thanked anyone. She walked me to the door, patted my shoulder and said, "Come back in one piece. I like most of the parts you've got just now."

In her carriage house, I was checking my cinch strap when someone touched me on the back. I pulled Magda's thin knife from my boot and whirled, ducking low, growling, ready to stab up at whatever awaited. It was Ivy. She was wearing the British officer's coat that had covered her mother's violated body back at the time of the Battle of Trenton, that glorious day that saved Washington's army and perhaps the whole damn'd Revolution. She was not wearing anything else as far as I could tell. It took me a while to get my pulse rate down to near normal before she pushed it right back up.

The moonlight painted her silver and inky black. She spun on her toes like a dancer, lifting the coat tails and displaying herself fully. I tried not to groan.

"Please," she said, linking her fingers behind my neck. "Before you go away. Do it. Take me."

"Stop it, Ivy," I whispered, trying to pull her arms off without rubbing my body against hers. I failed and felt myself aroused, the last thing I wanted.

"Snyder!" came a cry from the front of the house followed by a banging, like someone hitting the heavy door with a hammer. "Open up in the King's name." Three more blows struck the door, and a Redcoat carrying a musket with a fixed bayonet quietly rounded the house and tried the back door. The moonlight cast his shadow clearly on the bricks. Looking back on it, I guess he saved Ivy's hymen and my neck since her mother would have killed me if I had deflowered her in that moonlit stable, and I was very close to doing it.

"Damn," I said very quietly as the girl froze with one hand on my chest, all sorts of thoughts jumbled in my head and heart, desire and fear mixing with anger and delight. "Where's your shift, your dress?"

"In the house," she whispered, pulling the jacket together and doing one button to cover her small, high breasts.

The coat she wore boasted one of those fancy aiguilettes, and I tore the golden cords from the shoulder and wrapped the ends in my fists. "Wait here," I said as the banging at the front door was repeated along with another loud demand in the name of King George.

In five long steps I was behind the tall soldier who had been sent to the back of the house, flipped the silken rope over this head and dragged him back into the bushes while I choked him cross-handed. When he stopped coughing and kicking, I tied the cord tightly, dropped his body in the deep shadows, glanced at his protruding tongue, found his musket and took it to Ivy. I checked the pan with my thumb, pulled the weapon to full cock and handed it to the girl.

"Crouch down here where it's dark," I said. "If you see one of them soldiers coming at you, aim at his belt buckle, keep your wrist away from the pan here and close your eyes before you pull the trigger. That way you won't be blinded by the flash. It there's more than one, you'll have to rely on the bayonet. Stay low and brace the butt against this post, not on your shoulder. I won't be far away." She nodded, wide-eyed.

We both heard her mother answer the front door and ask whoever had been banging on it what he wanted "at this hour." She was answered with a curse. We heard a slap and Ivy's mother cried out before the door slammed closed. I grabbed my own musket and primed its pan, hate and fear rolling though my veins like a tidal bore as I rammed the ball home.

"Stay there 'till you hear me whistle," I told Ivy. "Run if you must. Don't let 'em take you." I held her lovely, silver face in my hand and kissed her softly and then headed for the front of the house with the first taste of her in my dry mouth. Indeed, now more than thirty years later, I can still remember that taste.

I found two Redcoats peering into the Synders' home under the edge of the shutters. The dim light from the front room lit their eager faces. They were obviously fascinated by what they saw, snorting and enjoying themselves, so I had no trouble reaching a position just behind them.