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A Rebel Spy

By Anne Greene

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July 1862 –
Falling Waters, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia.

Major Brent Bartell trailed the graceful, slender figure down the long hallway. Blast if this wasn’t the hardest duty he’d pulled since his division invaded Martinsburg and Falling Waters.
The girl was ravishing. Even after a night of dancing, being captured, and languishing in the stuffy room at headquarters she looked fresh and rested with her dewy complexion and her enormous blue eyes.
When he’d first observed her last night in the moonlight, she’d looked enchanting, her shining hair cascading down her back, and her billowing dress ethereal. He’d fought a tough inner battle before, when bound by duty, he forced himself to arrest her.
He’d come so close to turning his back and letting her slip away into the deep shadows under the heavy growth of trees near the officers’ tents. Except she tiptoed to the central tent where his senior officers bent over a map and talked in low voices as they studied the terrain with the light of a column of candles. Even then his instinct had been to let her slip away.
But he’d had no real choice. He’d had to arrest her.
Together they left the headquarters building.
He brushed the back of his hand over the perspiration beading on his brow. The sultry morning air hung heavy and unstirred by any breeze, but that wasn’t the source of his discomfort. Nor was his hot, blue woolen uniform.
His scalp tingled. General Winchester had believed her story. But he didn’t. Without a doubt, she tracked the position of his Union forces. She was a spy. “Come, Miss Garrett, which way to your home?”
Her heart-shaped face tilted up to send her blue gaze arrow-straight to his heart. In the morning sunlight, her beauty was so striking she resembled an angel. Was it possible for a woman to be so beautiful? Or had he been away from a woman so long he’d forgotten what glorious creatures they were?
“My home is close. We can walk there.” Dimples popped into her cheeks.
Those tiny indentations burned a path to his heart. Did the girl have any idea of her beauty?
A horse neighed. The driver of the buggy yelled, “You want to get killed?”
Brent shook his head and stepped back onto the curb. He must have stumbled into the street. He’d never been awkward before.
She turned down a less busy, tree-shaded street of large mansions that backed to the Potomac River. The noise and tumult of Main Street faded behind them as they strolled, her hand nesting in the crook of his arm.
She gazed up at him and rolled the clearest sky-blue eyes. “This ghastly war is so inconvenient.”
Inconvenient? Bloody and terrible, yes. Would a spy call the war inconvenient?
“Why just last year I danced in Washington, DC, at my Debutant Ball.”
A corkscrew sensation twisted down his back. “The world has changed.” Certainly, a spy wouldn’t have such gay and untroubled memories after barely escaping being hanged.
“But one good thing has come of your Union Army occupying my peaceful town.”
“Oh, what’s that?”
She drew her fingers from the angle of his arm and held out both hands to grasp his. “I met you.”
His heart melted, opened up, and embraced her. But his mind cautioned, whoa. He was just another blue-coat to this Southern Miss. Just another enemy. But his heart disagreed. Why wouldn’t he meet the love of his life at this time? He was twenty-two, single, and away from home. Maybe God orchestrated this meeting. Maybe he’d been wrong about her being a spy. General Winchester freed Sophie. The general must have found her innocent. Besides, whoever heard of a female spy?
“Indeed?” he managed, his throat so tight his voice emerged as deep as a bullfrog’s.
Whether he was just another blue-coat or someone special to her, she’d become special to him. Very special.
But he had his orders.

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