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Love's Rescue

By Tammy Barley

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Prologue


Carson City, Nevada Territory. April, 1860

She was going to lose him.
Jessica Hale pushed back the brown tendrils the wind whipped into her eyes, her fingers trembling. Further down the road her brother handed the last of his cases to the driver on top the stage, then tossed his hat through the coach window onto a seat with an air of resolve. He turned and strode toward her.
His long, wind-tossed sandy hair and mustache gleamed brightly in the morning sun, like gold coins intermittently hidden by shifting dust. His sky blue eyes—-eyes that had always teased her, understood her, and patiently guided her—-now attempted to disguise unspoken regret as he smoothed a hand over each of the sorrel coach horses, and calmly took in the young town he was leaving behind. She knew better. He was going to miss this, the town and their parents. But his heart called him home. Ambrose was every inch a Kentucky gentleman. He always had been. Her throat tightened.
“Jessica?”
She couldn’t help but smile. Jessica. Like always, he spoke her name with that same flowing, deep timbre of the brook they had often played in as children.
“Now what is that smile for?”
“I love the sound of your voice.”
“You do?” Ambrose’s eyes sparkled at her in amusement. “You never told me that before.”
“Well now you know.” She loved the Southern lilt of it, loved the quiet honor he wore with the same ease that he wore his greatcoat. She took a deep, steadying breath. “Are your bags loaded, then?”
“They are.” Lightly he added, “The driver was kind enough to strap them down. With the rough going, I’ll get bounced out long before they will.”
Her smile faded. “Perhaps you should stay.”
“Jess . . .” Ambrose patiently drew her hand through the crook of his arm and tipped his head toward the road. “We have a few minutes left before the stage leaves. Let’s walk a bit.”
Jess sighed in frustrated concern, but let her head fall against his shoulder as they walked. At the edge of town she looked back to Carson’s wide streets, lazy with the long morning shadows of tall buildings and of new frames that smelled of sawn wood. One by one, pedestrians appeared, striding briskly, then rattling wagons, kicking up trails of dust this way and that as people set into their day. The wind tugged at Jess’s skirt and Ambrose’s coat, and cavorted among the silvery-green sage leaves that fluttered in the desert around them. The sights and sensations which usually intrigued her had amalgamated into one frolicking, singing fool cruelly playing to her burdened heart.
Jess’s gaze followed the road out of town, then lifted to the peaks that rose high above. The Mexican people called these mountains the Sierra Nevadas, the snowy mountains. When their family arrived west the year before, she had thought them magnificent. In a wild, untamed way they reminded her of the Kentucky homeland they had left behind. Instead of the rolling green hills and broadleaf forests she had always known, the Sierras jutted boldly from the desert like a rare stone half buried in sand. Depending on the angle of the sun, its earth was gloriously red or golden.
For a moment Jess merely breathed, drawing in the fresh scent of the pinion pines that dotted the distant slopes and mingled with the earthiness of the sage. Only a few months ago winter had prevailed, and so had the glittering snows the Sierras were named for.
Ambrose—dear Ambrose—had understood her need to be outdoors. He’d convinced their father a time or two to excuse him from work, then he had taken her riding amid the stark beauty of the mountains.
Their father.
Jess frowned, pushed stinging, blowing hair out of her eyes again as longer strands tore from their heavy twist. A brusque but shrewd businessman and horse breeder from Lexington, Kentucky, their father brought the family west to escape the growing turbulence of the South, and here his import business thrived. With the recent discovery of untold millions of dollars in gold and silver, the eager-to-be rich swarmed to the Comstock from every major seaport in the world. Those fortunate enough to strike a vein of the mother lode scrambled to Hale Imports to stake their claim in society by acquiring French wines, Venetian glassware, Turkish carpets, and furnishings handcrafted of dark German woods.
A golden dream for many, perhaps, but not for her. Though her family had wealth, possessions beyond basic comforts didn’t matter to her. What did matter were her father, her mother, and Ambrose, and the strength they had always given each other, despite the threat of war between the states.
And the threat had become considerable.
Jess’s fingers tightened to a fist around Ambrose’s sleeve. He patted her hand to reassure her.
Worse, her family hadn’t left war fever behind as her father had hoped. Its effects swept across the country like the unstoppable waves of the sea. Miners and other men in town chose sides as the conflict loomed nearer. Heated discussions on political issues often erupted into fistfights on the streets. In the same way tension had escalated within her family as loyalties divided. And now Ambrose was returning to Lexington to rejoin his militia unit against their father’s will, though everyone predicted war to break out within a year. Jess had stood unflinching, stunned when he announced his intent to her and their parents two days ago. It had been two days of men yelling, two days of their mother pleading. A lifetime of paternal love burning to cinders.
Their father was still so angry about Ambrose’s decision he had refused to see him to the stage stop, and had coldly disallowed all but the briefest of goodbyes between mother and son.
Jess finally broke the silence. “I thought this place would be the answer, Ambrose. I thought here we would be safe from the war.” She stopped walking and tossed him a valiant smile. “What will I do without you?”
Ambrose sobered as he considered her. She’d hoped he would lightly tease her. Not this time. “You’re seventeen now, Jess. Most ladies at seventeen stop concerning themselves with their family and start looking for a man to marry.”
“A husband? A husband! How could you suggest that?” She flung aside her earlier self-promise to remain calm. “This particular subject has never come up before, but since it has, let me tell you, Ambrose, I don’t need a husband running my life and ordering me about.”
“Jess—”
“I know you want to protect me, and I love you for it, but the South and its marrying traditions are a long way from here. Here women are strong and independent” —she fought to control the anger in her voice— “and so am I. I’ve seen too many wives’ hopes destroyed by their husbands’ selfish wants and ambitions. I could never live my life under some man’s boot heel. I’ll make my way on my own.”
Ambrose gave her a reluctant smile. “All right. There’s no talking you into an idea your mind is set against. Keep yourself busy, then. Tell Father you want to keep books at Hale Imports. You’ve been schooled the same as I have. You’ll do well.”
Jess’s legs nearly gave out. “Keeping his accounts is your job!” Ambrose wasn’t coming back at all—-not even after the war. She really was going to lose him.
“No, Jess. Not anymore.” He shifted his gaze to the territory around them. “This place has never fit me the way it has you. That house in Kentucky is our house. Its lands are Hale lands. I was born at Greenbriar, and raised there, and so were you. That’s my home, Jess.” He faced her squarely. “When the war comes I’ll defend it, whether the invading army be from the North or South.”
Jess’s throat ached to beg him to stay. Their friendship was special, rare, despite their growing up together amid talk of secession and war. Or perhaps because of it. She wanted to keep him close, and safe. Yet she forced down the urge to give words to her feelings. Ambrose’s blood flowed for Greenbriar, and for Lexington. A year away hadn’t changed that. Yes, she loved him. Enough to understand that. Enough to let him go.
“I guess I always knew you’d go back,” she admitted, “and I understand, I really do. I just hate knowing that you’ll be right in the middle of the fighting.” She threw up a hand. “And I hate that Father’s turned his back on you when you need him most! How could he do that to you? How could he do that to Mother?”
All at once she knew. “He’s doing this because of Broderick, isn’t he?”
Broderick died as a baby when Jess was only five. Even now she clearly remembered holding her little brother as his fever raged, remembered how helpless she had felt when she’d lain awake at night listening to his pathetic coughing in the nursery down the hall. Jess had been devastated when he died, but their mother . . . their mother had never been the same. Her joy and laughter Jess knew about only because Ambrose had told her of the way their mother had once been.
Ambrose acknowledged the fact. “Father doesn’t think Mother could bear to lose another son.”
Slowly Jess nodded. “Then you’d best stay alive.”
The corner of his sandy mustache lifted. “You’re a Hale, that’s for certain. Idealistic and stubborn, through and through.”
“Hopefully stubborn enough to get through to Father. You know I can’t let things remain the way they are between the two of you.”
“Jess, I’d like to warn you against—”
“That would be pointless.” At his gentle frown of censure, she ordered her thoughts and explained. “For as long as I can remember, you were the one who held our family together. Not Father, who was often absent, even when he was home, not Mother or anyone else, but you. You reasoned with Father when business made him unreasonable, were a constant comfort to Mother, and sat by my bed nights when storms and thunder threatened to shake the house apart.”
“You just wanted company since you were awake.” He lightly tugged a lock of her hair. “You never feared storms or anything else.”
“For the past few years I’ve feared the coming war.” She lifted her chin and, with a mental step forward that she would never retrace, left the remnants of her childhood behind. “You won’t be here to keep us together. Now I’ll take your place and do what you’ve always done, and rely on solid, Hale determination to see me through. Ambrose, don’t worry about Mother, or about Father’s anger at your decision to go. I’ll hold our family together, and I’ll do all I can to change his heart.”
Gratitude battled concern in his face as he studied her, but Jess knew that he also understood firsthand the inborn loyalty that drove her. “Just be careful you don’t jeopardize your relationship with him on my account,” he said.
“I will be careful.”
There was a movement by the stage. A mailbag was slung aboard the coach.
Jess’s heart lurched. Almost time for him to go.
“I don’t know when I’ll see you again," Ambrose said. "We’d better say goodbye.”
“No!” She shook her head, suddenly fighting tears. “I won’t say goodbye.”
“Jess, I don’t want to frighten you, but if the war comes—”
“Then the war will end! Ambrose, if we say goodbye it’s as if we won’t see each other again. I can’t do that. I have to believe—-I have to know-—that one day you’ll come back.”
“Believe it,” he said, “because I intend to.”
“Then we don’t say goodbye?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “We don’t say goodbye.”
Suddenly Jess recalled what she had wanted to do. With a quick tug she untied the green satin cording that bound the pendant at her throat, slipped the ribbon free and pressed it into his hand. “I’ll want that back one day,” she said. “Until then, keep the best memories of us all close to your heart.”
He smiled and tucked the ribbon into his shirt pocket with a little pat. “I can’t think of a better place to put them.”
Another movement drew her gaze. The coach driver climbed into his seat.
“Ambrose?”
“I’ll write to you as often as I can, I promise.”
Ambrose hurried toward the stage, Jess’s hand tucked in his. At the door he pulled her into his arms, hugged her fiercely.
“Will you write to me?”
Jess buried her face into the gray cloth of his coat. “Just try and stop me.”
He briefly hugged her tighter, then he stepped away.
Ambrose swung aboard the coach. Abruptly he turned and leaned out again. His blue eyes shone; his sandy-gold hair tossed about. “The Lord has a plan, Jess!” he called. “Remember that!”
The driver cracked the reins and the six-in-hand pulled the stage away from Carson City, away from her. Jess watched until the coach disappeared through a pass in the mountains.
Keep him safe, Lord, she prayed. Whatever lies ahead, please keep him safe.
It was all she could do not to run for her horse and go after him.


Near Perryville, Kentucky. Two and a half years later. October, 1862

His boots firm in the stirrups, Ambrose leaned over the heaving neck of the mare as he raced into the sun. Well-muscled and dappled gray, the mare’s thrashing hooves tore up stones of the turnpike while Ambrose’s cotton shirt ballooned and snapped in the blowing heat. His fear for General Bragg’s paltry command of sixteen thousand burned like liquid fire in his belly, and with heartrending despair he recalled Mr. Lincoln’s warning to his men: “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.”
His colonel’s rapidly scrawled reconnaissance report was secured in a leather pouch tucked into his waistband. It was the only warning Bragg would have that the Yankee advance at Frankfort was merely a diversion, and that the whole of General Buell’s Union army was in fact moving toward Bragg’s position.
Buell meant to take Kentucky.
The enemy was fifty-five thousand strong.
Sixteen thousand up against fifty-five. Ambrose whipped a sleeve across the sweat seeping from his hatline. If he didn’t reach Bragg in time for the general to pull back and regroup, Kentucky would fall to the Federals . . . and their torches. Ambrose tilted his head, heard the distant pum, pum of cannon fire.
Fields dotted with white and blue wildflowers sped by. This was his home, his land, and Greenbriar was his now too. Ambrose frowned as he recalled the only letter written by his stiff-necked, outraged father in which he had given him Greenbriar. His father intended the house as an accusatory monument to the heritage he believed his son had betrayed by ultimately fighting for the South. But to Ambrose, should it survive the war, it would again become his home, his livelihood, and the place his old bones would be laid. He yearned to fall in love there, to marry there. To raise children amid all its gurgling streams and grassy paddocks. Children who would love it as he always had, and as Jess had.
Memories intruded, of the day Jess was born, and the moment he first held her. He had been seven, and the tiny, warm bundle that stared up at him with curious green eyes had captivated his heart. As she grew it was to his side she had come for comfort and advice, with him she had shared her inmost thoughts. He had taught her more about the person she could be than their parents ever had, and she had garnered his strength and dedication to those she loved.
Now Jess was his proponent and confidante. She wrote to him as often as he wrote to her, discreetly hiding his letters from their father. He knew many of their letters never made it through enemy lines since, in letters he did receive, Jess frequently referred to events he was unaware of, and requested war news about which he previously penned. Even so, they both persisted in sending them. As promised, she patiently worked to sway their father’s heart toward his son.
And she remained firm in her belief that he would survive the war.
His mind turned to the letter he had written to her only a handful of hours ago. He imagined her reading it one night by candlelight, the flame’s glow on her casually knotted hair, and on the loose strands she rarely bothered with. He could almost hear the smooth flow of her Southern voice as if she were reading it aloud.

My dearest Jessica,
Like others here, I often look ahead to the end of the war, and dream of what I will do after.
For me, it has never been a question. The day I muster out, I will come without hesitation to all of you there, to make up lost years of brothering for you and baby Emma, and to find a way to repair the damage between Father and me. I will remain until Mother’s worries for me have gone, and she sees her family healed. Until then, Jessica, you must continue to convey to her news of my well-being, and tell her of my unflagging determination to return to you all.
Then, as Grandfather would have wished for me do, I will come back home to Greenbriar and rebuild what the war has ruined. I’ll fill its paddocks again with the prized horseflesh which has always graced its lands.
I yearn to walk again the brick path leading to the porch, to step into the downstairs hall and feel it welcome me home. . . .

Startled, Ambrose entered a town huddled beneath a haze of smoke. Perryville! The mare was slick with sweat and foam, but she had a bold heart the likes of which he’d rarely seen in any animal. Spying a cluster of saddled mounts, Ambrose halted before a red brick house. The gray tugged at the reins while soldiers told him how to find General Bragg.
Immediately Ambrose headed northwest on the river road. The roar of battle grew deafening. Yankee wounded and dead lay scattered over the hills.
He topped a rise. Below, gray-clad soldiers swarmed through thick smoke into the enemy, several falling beside their comrades. All around, cannon shells burst in sprays of jagged metal and earth.
“Lord in heaven,” Ambrose murmured, “help us all.”
Urging the mare along a path behind the lines, Ambrose ducked the whizzing cannon fire. He pulled free his leather pouch, withdrew the message.

. . . to throw open the nursery doors where we played, and step into the sunshine flowing through the window glass. Do you remember how we watched newborn foals bounding about from that high window? And the way you were ever leaning over the sill for a better look, knowing that I would hold you safe? After the war I must find myself a young lady, and convince her that we should fill the room anew with children’s laughter. . . .

A cannon shell exploded, and a terrible pressure struck his chest. The mare screamed. Groaning through his teeth, Ambrose hung over her neck. To the west, rifles barked flashes of orange, as men in blue and gray surged into their enemies.
Ambrose pressed forward, searching the high ridges for the familiar starred collar and white-streaked beard of General Bragg.

. . . Lastly, I admit to looking ahead to sharing my life with someone who, like you, will write to me when I must be away, who will hold warm thoughts of me in my absence. I pray she may ever keep hope alive for our children, that I will return to them, just as you, sister, have done for our family. You have kept me alive through this war, Jess, knowing that by one, I will always be loved, always be remembered fondly, always be welcomed home. . . .

Ambrose kicked the gray forward with all the strength he had. Thankfully she lunged in response not wavering at the unsteady weight on her back. Ambrose fought through the thickening fog in his mind, gripped the dispatch tighter.
A sudden burning burst along his thigh, and the smoky daylight and soldiers’ movements began to dim. Beneath him the mare thrust ahead, pitching like a rocking chair. He imagined the stern face of General Bragg turn in surprise as he approached.

. . . I keep your ribbon in my pocket and frequently feel it there. When I think of you as I often do, the single thought that comes is this: I cannot wait to see you again. . . .

He felt himself reaching out to her, to Jess. Wanting to see her one more time, to tell her how dear she was to him, had always been. He was fading. The message. He couldn’t feel it. Did the general receive the message?
Ambrose no longer knew what direction the mare took, but threaded his fingers through her mane, imagined he was weaving hands with Jess.

. . . Your ever-loving brother, . . .

No sky fell under his eyes, only a lone field of dappled gray, oddly crossed with streams of red.
“Jess . . .” he rasped.

. . . Ambrose.

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