The Scandalous Miss Howard Read online

  He smiled as he approached the bed. “Shall we drink to our marriage, Laurette?”

  “By all means,” she said, badly needing a stiff drink of liquor to face what might lie before her.

  Jimmy poured generous portions of cognac into the snifters, handed her one, then sat down on the edge of the bed facing her.

  “To us, darling girl,” he said as he clinked his glass to hers, and they drank.

  Laurette, as nervous as she’d ever been in her life, drank her brandy as if it were no stronger than lemonade. Jimmy immediately poured her another. By the time she finished the second, he had risen to his feet. He took her empty glass and set it on the night table. Then he bent and blew out the lamp.

  In the moon’s silvery light spilling through the tall open windows, Laurette tensely watched as he circled the bed, his limp more pronounced as he hurried to reach the other side. There he began to undress and Laurette quickly closed her eyes. Her heart racing, her stomach churning, she silently cursed herself for agreeing to this shameful sham of a marriage. She should have turned Jimmy down. She had been unfair to him and to herself by agreeing to be his wife. He didn’t belong here in this bed with her. She didn’t want him here.

  Naked, Jimmy got into bed. Laurette tensed, felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Jimmy slid across the mattress until he was right beside her. Supporting his weight on an elbow, he leaned down and whispered, “Can you believe we are man and wife and that I’ve never even kissed you?”

  He gave her no time to reply. He kissed her and by the time his burning lips left hers, he had anxiously shoved the covering sheet down and had drawn her nightgown up around her waist. She was mortified and not at all aroused.

  He was.

  She could feel his hard flesh against her bare thigh and could hardly keep from breaking into tears and pushing him away. In seconds he was between her legs and, half apologizing for not taking more time and being more patient, he positioned himself inside her. Then she did cry, but her eyes remained dry.

  The tears were in her heart.

  She was clenched tight and bone dry and he was hurting her and she didn’t want him and she wished it was over and she wished she was dead.

  “Yes, oh yes,” Jimmy was murmuring hoarsely as he pounded into her, “I’ve dreamed of this for years. Darling, you’re so tight, so sweet. Laurette, my Laurette.”

  In pain, praying it wouldn’t last long, Laurette disengaged her mind from her body. She was not here in bed with the naked Jimmy thrusting forcefully into her. This was not happening. She willed her mind to turn to thoughts of Ladd, to remember the sweetness of their eager, urgent lovemaking.

  Silently she vowed to Ladd that in her heart she would never, ever be unfaithful to him.

  Ladd lay on his thin, dirty mattress wondering what year it was. Wondering if the war was ever going to end. Wondering if he would ever see his golden-haired angel again. Wondering if she would wait for him no matter how long it took.

  Laurette had solemnly promised that she would wait forever. He believed her. She would wait, he knew she would. One day this awful war would be over and he would be freed and he would go home to his beloved, faithful Laurette.

  That firm belief sustained Ladd. He lay for hours and daydreamed of the happy time when he would arrive in Mobile and a laughing Laurette would run into his arms.

  But in the depth of the darkest dungeon, Ladd’s sustaining hope eventually faded. His faith grew dim, slipped away. He no longer bothered praying to an Almighty God who had, he firmly believed, forgotten him.

  It seemed to him that he had been in this black, airless hole forever. He knew that if he didn’t get out soon, he would go mad. Days and nights were all the same. Darkness. Hunger. Boredom. Loneliness.

  Ladd’s despair deepened with each passing minute, minutes that seemed like hours. He was tired of the struggle. He no longer wanted to live. He wanted the agony to end and he knew that could only be achieved with his death.

  He thought it over as he lay in the darkness to which he had become accustomed. He was so used to the absence of light, he had become like an animal. His eyes gleamed and he could see in the blackness.

  But there was nothing in the blackness to see.

  Ladd quickly made up his mind. He would starve himself to death. It wouldn’t take long. In his weakened condition he surely wouldn’t last more than a week, if that. The prospect of deliverance from this unending horror made him feel light-headed, almost lighthearted.

  He stopped eating that very night. When the unappetizing evening meal was served, he didn’t touch it. He steadfastly refused the meager rations that were offered him. Soon—he didn’t know how many days and nights—he would begin to feel very weak.

  The end couldn’t come soon enough to suit him.

  The next day as the starving Ladd lay listless and despondent in his cell, the heavy iron door swung open and Gilbert LaKid announced, “Noontime, Dasheroon.” He tossed a yellowed newspaper article on the cell’s dirty floor directly beside Ladd.

  “What is this?” Ladd asked, unmoving, blinking in the sudden brightness of the light streaming in from the hallway.

  “Why it’s your dinner plate,” said LaKid grinning nastily, “we ran out of dishes.”

  As LaKid spoke, an accompanying guard forked a greasy piece of rancid meat from a platter, dropped it directly atop the newsprint. Stepping back out into the hallway, the two guards temporarily left Ladd’s cell door ajar.

  Staring down at the unappetizing meal, Ladd’s attention was caught by the yellowed newspaper’s banner. The Mobile Press Register. Ladd quickly rolled off his mattress, got down on his knees and anxiously read the date. June 10, 1865. Dizzy, spots dancing before his eyes, he swiped the meat aside and saw that the article was a marriage announcement.

  Miss Laurette Howard became the bride of Major James Tigart on Saturday, the ninth of June, 1865, in…

  Ladd finished reading the article just as the cell door was slammed shut, leaving him once again in darkness. For a long, silent time he stayed there on his knees, heartsick, his emaciated body trembling with rage and disbelief.

  It all began to make sense. The terrible truth dawned and Ladd felt violently ill. Now he knew why Jimmy had ordered him thrown into the dungeon, had left him here to die. Jimmy had betrayed him in order to steal Laurette.

  Laurette was as guilty as Jimmy! She had sworn that she belonged only to him, would always belong to him. Promised that she would wait forever. But it had been a lie. She hadn’t waited, hadn’t cared what happened to him. Hadn’t bothered to find out if he was coming home. She had married Jimmy without knowing—or caring—if he was dead or alive.

  Dear God in heaven! The two people he loved most had forsaken him.

  Ladd, hugging his thin, trembling sides, began to rock back and forth in pain, moaning softly at first, then finally swearing at the top of his lungs. He railed and cursed those who had betrayed him until his throat was raw and his voice raspy. Burning tears stung his eyes and rolled down his sallow, sunken cheeks.

  Finally, he tumbled over, laid his feverish face down on the cold stone floor and wept. He cried and cried until he was sick with despair and vomiting the bitter bile from his empty stomach.

  He lay weeping like a lost child until there were no more tears left to shed. And when at last he was all cried out, he slowly lifted his aching head. Ladd looked up through the last of his tears and couldn’t believe his eyes.

  A beautiful butterfly—powdery purple wings banded in ebony—slowly floated down through the high, barred window. It landed in the palm of Ladd’s hand. Gently he held the exquisite butterfly and stared at it, amazed that after all that had happened, there was still beauty in an ugly world. As the butterfly slowly fluttered its wings, Ladd’s tearstained face hardened and he silently vowed that he would never cry again.

  He vowed as well that those who had betrayed him would one day be brought to justice.

  By him.

  He had abid
ed by the code of honor and had expected the same from others. That hadn’t happened, so from now the rule would be Lex Talionis.

  An eye for an eye.

  He would not starve himself to death. He would start eating at once and he would survive this continuing atrocity for however long it took before he was released.

  He would live!

  He would live, and one day he would get out of this dark hellhole, and when he did…

  Seventeen

  One never-ending night as he lay sleepless, Ladd heard a noise. It seemed to be coming from the wall directly beside his bed. Turning his head to listen, Ladd detected a faint scratching sound from beyond his cell, within the earth of the prison’s foundation.

  He sat up abruptly. He heard it again, but decided it must be rats—the dungeon was full of rodents. He lay back down, but the tapping continued. Ladd got up, pulled his bed away from the wall and listened intently. There it was again. Excitedly, he tapped back.

  Total silence.

  No more tapping from the other side. Nothing. Ladd anxiously tapped again, hoping that it had been a prisoner. He was certain it had been a prisoner, because the minute he’d tapped back, the tapping from the other side had ceased. In all likelihood the prisoner had stopped, fearing a guard had heard. That’s why the tapping had begun in the middle of the night. The prisoner didn’t want to be heard, had waited until the only guard on duty was old Jim, the latchkey who, after a couple of snorts of liquor, seemed to fall asleep.

  Ladd wished there was some way he could communicate, assure the other prisoner that he was not a spying guard. That he, too, was an inmate who was locked down here in the dungeon. Ladd frantically searched his cell, remembering the meat bone he’d cleaned and saved. Taking the bone in his hand he began to anxiously dig at the loose mortar around a heavy stone at the base of the wall. His heart hammering with exhilaration, he eagerly stabbed and scraped at the crumbling mortar. Perspiring and winded from exertion, Ladd continued to vigorously work until the first faint streaks of gray appeared in the tiny barred window high above.

  Wishing he could continue his work, knowing it was too risky, he placed his bed back where it had been, covering the hole he was making in the wall. He’d hardly hidden his bone knife and stretched out on his cot before the cell door opened and the jailer brought in his breakfast.

  Ladd ate the stale bread and cold meat with gusto. He was excited as he had not been in ages. He could hardly wait for night to come again so that he could move his bed and start digging.

  It was the longest day of his life. The hours dragged by as he attempted to kill time. He paced the cell. He did bending and stretching exercises. He sang songs to himself. He recited poetry. He cracked his knuckles. He kept looking at the tiny barred window, for once welcoming the thick darkness that descended with the coming of night.

  Ladd went to work the minute he felt it was safe. He dug and scraped and sweated and grunted and drew the loosened stones away. And finally, his thrusting bone jabbed nothing but air. His heart thundered in his chest. He could hardly keep himself from shouting out his triumph. A narrow tunnel was now open between his and the adjoining cell.

  Ladd wiped his sweat-streaked brow, laid his makeshift knife aside, sank back on his heels and took a deep breath. And jumped when from beyond the tunnel came a soft voice asking, “Who is there?”

  “A lowly prisoner, like yourself,” Ladd replied.

  Then he laughed hysterically with joy when he saw a head with gray tufts of hair poke through the opening. The wild-eyed, emaciated little man shimmied through the opening, looked about, frowned and muttered, “Damnation, the map I so carefully drew in my mind must have been wrong! I mistook the wall of your cell for an outside wall.” He stared glassy-eyed at Ladd.

  Smiling, happy to see a friendly face, no matter how frightening that face was, Ladd said, “The north side of your cell is an outside wall. You tunneled south. This is just another dungeon cell.”

  Shaking his shaggy head in self-disgust, the little man said, “There was a time I wouldn’t have made such an error.” He grinned then and exclaimed, “But all is not lost. I have found a Confederate friend, have I not?”

  “You have,” Ladd assured him.

  Then Ladd laughed with pleasure as the excited prisoner grabbed him and embraced him as though the younger man were his long-lost son. “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Captain Ladd Dasheroon, and yours?”

  “Major Finis Schafer, at your service, Laddie!” said the frail man dressed in tattered clothing.

  “Finis Schafer,” Ladd repeated the name. “You wouldn’t be the same Finis Schafer who is something of a legend at West Point, now would you?”

  Finis Schafer’s pale eyes lighted. “You mean they still talk about me at the academy? You went to the Point?”

  “I was there for a short time before the war started,” said Ladd. “But I heard some fascinating tales about you.”

  “Ah, well, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” said Finis with a cheerful laugh.

  Finis Schafer, who was as starved for company as Ladd, sat down on the stone floor and began to talk in hushed tones, to give a colorful biography of life, to reminisce about his escapades at the Point, embellishing the stories, enjoying himself for the first time in years. He talked a blue streak and Ladd learned that Finis—an orphan from Austin, Texas and a graduate of West Point some twenty years before Ladd’s arrival at the academy—had been locked up in this prison dungeon for the past decade.

  “You were imprisoned before the war began?” Ladd asked, baffled.

  “No,” said the shaggy-haired, unkempt little man, “I was captured in the summer of ’63. The Yankees threw me in this pigsty and I’ve been here ever since.”

  His eyes aglow, Ladd stared back at the man. “But…you…you’ve been here for ten years?”

  “That’s a fact,” replied Finis.

  Frowning, confused, Ladd said, “You’re telling me it’s…”

  Finis nodded. “Son, it’s June, 1873.”

  Shocked, disbelieving, Ladd swore, “God in heaven! The war’s still going on?”

  “No, no, the war ended in the spring of 1865,” Finis assured him. “The Confederacy lost, sad to say.”

  “If the war is over, then why am I still in prison?” asked Ladd. “Why are you?”

  “We’re political prisoners,” Finis replied. “I stole a shipment of Yankee gold headed for Washington.” He shook his shaggy gray head and admitted, “My boy, I’m afraid they’ve tarred you with the same brush. I heard the guards saying Secretary of War Stanton had charged both you and me with the gold theft.”

  “They know better than that,” Ladd replied. “Besides, even if it was true, imprisoned forever? It was a war. And it was just a gold shipment.”

  Finis looked sheepish as he confessed, “The officer guarding the gold, a Major Timothy Todd, was killed during the holdup. Todd was a nephew of Mary Todd Lincoln, Abe Lincoln’s wife.” The old man ran a hand through his dirty gray hair. “We are war criminals.”

  “God almighty!” Ladd swore and, thinking back, vaguely recalled overhearing LaKid once say to one of the guards, “If Stanton has his way, Dasheroon and Schafer will never be freed.”

  Laurette tried to be a good wife to Jimmy. She kept the mansion clean, learned to cook and washed his clothes—tasks she had never been taught how to do. And she allowed him to make love to her when he wished. Which was far too often to suit her.

  She felt that she had no grounds for refusal or complaint. She had unwisely agreed to the marriage. She would, therefore, do her best to uphold her side of the bargain. And, she had to admit that Jimmy went out of his way to try to make her happy. He loved her and he showed it in every way possible.

  He had, through a stroke of good fortune, secured a well-paying position at the Planters State Bank six months after they had wed. The bank, it was rumored, had been purchased by a group of Northern investors and Laurette suppos
ed that was the reason Jimmy had been offered employment.

  He was unfailingly generous with the money he earned. He had begun the slow process of restoring the mansion, although there was still much to do. And, hardly a week went by that he didn’t bring her a sentimental or personal gift: a porcelain figurine of a ballerina; a pair of delicate white kid gloves; a soft fringed shawl of white merino wool; a bejeweled comb for her hair; and, finally, a wispy black nightgown that left nothing to the imagination.

  She had blushed when she opened the box. But Jimmy seemed not to notice and he had said, “We’ll wait until some special occasion. I’ll let you know when to wear the gown.”

  She had nodded, stiffly, and hoped it would be a long time before he requested that she wear it. To her genuine relief, several weeks had passed since he had given her the black nightgown and he hadn’t mentioned it. Perhaps he had forgotten about the nightgown. She hoped so.

  But then one unseasonably warm, sunny February noontime, Jimmy, who never came home for the midday meal, showed up unexpectedly as the chimes in the cathedral struck the hour of twelve.

  “Jimmy?” Laurette looked up in surprise, her hair tied up in a snood, the hem of her faded cotton work dress wet from washing the kitchen floor. “I—I wasn’t expecting you. I’m sorry I’m not more presentable.”

  Jimmy limped into the foyer, placed his malacca cane in the umbrella holder and said, “That’s okay, Laurette.” He grinned then and the light gleaming in his hazel eyes made her nervous as he added, “In minutes you are going to be more than presentable. You’ll be downright desirable.”

  Reaching up to the take the snood from her blond hair, Laurette looked anxiously at her smiling husband and said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Jimmy.”

  “You soon will,” he replied, took her arm and ushered her up the stairs and into the master suite.

  Anticipating his intention, Laurette protested, “Why, James Tigart, it is the middle of the day. Decent people don’t…we can’t…” Her words trailed away as he turned and went to the mirror-doored armoire, threw it open and began pulling out drawers.