Mitch fell over onto his back beside Suzanna. Struggling for breath, they kidded each other about their lack of control. But when finally the laughter subsided and the gasping for breath ceased, Mitch turned onto his side by Suzanna, raised up on an elbow and laid a hand lightly on her stomach.
The tip of his forefinger circling the small indentation of her navel, he said with a sheepish grin, “I don't want you calling me the ‘five-minute man.'”
Suzanna smiled. “Then you'll have to convince me that you aren't.”
Mitch did just that.
He made love to Suzanna again, this time taking it slow and easy, stretching out the pleasure for the better part of an hour, each savoring every sweet moment of the incredible bliss.
“I've just enough time for a bath,” Mitch finally said with a yawn. “Care to join me?”
“Mmm, too lazy,” Suzanna replied, not stirring. “I might just take a catnap right here.”
“Good idea, sweetheart.” Mitch kissed her turned-up nose and agilely rose to his feet.
Once he was out of the room and safely in his tub, Suzanna quickly rose. She rushed out into the foyer and took down Mitch's black naval musette bag, which she carried into the parlor and placed atop the mahogany bar. She opened it and anxiously went through the papers, searching for pertinent dispatches.
Her eyes widened in horror as she read a document setting forth the timeline and exact location where the Union Navy planned to launch a major attack on the unsuspecting Confederate Rapidan River stronghold. Suzanna was trembling with emotion as she carefully placed all the documents back inside the musette bag and returned it to the foyer.
When Mitch walked into the room with a towel around his waist, Suzanna was just as he had left her—stretched out naked before the fire, seemingly dozing.
Mitch looked down at her and weakened. “Perhaps I could stay awhile longer.”
“Could you, darling?” she trilled, rolling up into a sitting position and tugging playfully at his covering towel.
Mitch exhaled heavily. “No. No, I really can't. I must get back to the fleet.”
Reluctantly, he got dressed. When he was once again in full dress blues, he came to her, cupped the back of her head, bent from the waist and kissed her goodbye.
When he straightened, he said, “I'm not sure when I'll be able to get away again.”
Suzanna smiled in understanding, laid her cheek against his trousered leg and said, “Kiss me as if this were the last time.”
He crouched down on his heels, kissed her passionately and said, “I love you, darling.”
“Please be careful,” she murmured in reply.
Rear Admiral Mitchell B. Longley had barely exited the cottage before Suzanna jumped up, took a sheet of vellum paper from the desk in the corner and wrote down everything she had read in the damning dispatch.
She then dressed and trudged two miles through the deepening snow to reach the landmark—a carefully chosen leaning rock near her home—beneath which she consistently hid messages laying out information she had gleaned from the unsuspecting enemy.
A fearless spy for her beloved Confederacy, Suzanna LeGrande hesitated a moment before placing this particular missive under the rock.
If she passed on this vital information, she could be endangering Mitch's life. She could be responsible for her Yankee lover's death. Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest. She felt suddenly dizzy and her cheeks were hot despite the cold of the afternoon.
Suzanna closed her eyes and strongly considered tearing up the note. But only for an instant. She drew a labored breath, hardened her heart and dutifully placed the message beneath the cold stone.
One
On a chilly autumn morning in 1859, the lively mistress of a magnificent mansion came flying down the curving staircase, her lilting laughter echoing throughout the grand residence. Eighteen-year-old Suzanna LeGrande was a happy, carefree young aristocrat who had lived all her life in this stately two-story Virginia manse on the rolling banks of the Potomac River.
The laughing young belle lived with her widowed mother, forty-nine-year-old Emile, and her older brother, twenty-two-year-old Matthew. The frail, quiet Emile LeGrande loved her daughter dearly, but the mercurial Suzanna's rambunctious behavior was prone to give her mother headaches.
The LeGrande siblings were close, and Matthew, being the man of the house, was very protective of his beautiful younger sister. Since the high-spirited Suzanna had turned sixteen, hopeful young suitors had been drawn to the vivacious miss. She was, and had always been, stunningly beautiful, with her flaming red hair, large, wide-set blue eyes and milky-white skin. But Suzanna was not vain about her looks. She had turned heads her entire life and thought nothing of it.
Besides, it was a great deal more than her startling beauty that attracted a growing army of male admirers. She possessed a great zest for life and threw herself into everything she did with such blazing intensity it charmed the young bucks and frightened her sedate mother. Suzanna had a compulsion to dramatize, which made her tremendously fascinating to all her friends.
She was high-strung, sensitive, warmhearted and endlessly entertaining. There was never a dull minute around Suzanna. At an early age she had learned—from her gregarious, red-haired father—to spin yarns that left her listeners wide-eyed and hanging on to every word. It was not only boys who found the outspoken Suzanna intriguing, but girls as well.
She was impetuous and impatient, but so filled with the joy of living that she lifted spirits with her mere presence. Added to her talent for storytelling was her unique ability to read palms and predict futures, an art she had learned from her beloved old nursemaid, now deceased. Naturally, all the young belles wanted to know what romantic adventures lay in store for them. The boys were unconcerned about the future, but looked on the palm reading as an opportunity to hold Suzanna's hand.
Suzanna was totally feminine, yet she had a masculine directness that was captivating. She spoke her mind, was never coy or ambiguous, nor was she particularly diplomatic. While Suzanna took after her deceased father, the lovable, outgoing Lawrence LeGrande, Matthew was more like their mother. He enjoyed a good time as much as the next fellow, but he had no compulsion to race through life as if the world might stop turning should he miss a picnic or party or ball.
An honor graduate of West Point, Matthew took duty, honor and country seriously. And he felt that his most important duty was to see to it no unprincipled male took advantage of his sister. While he was away at the institute, Matthew had worried about what calamity might befall the trusting Suzanna. A scholar who easily excelled in his studies, Matthew had completed his education at the ripe old age of twenty, and had immediately returned home to take up his post as head of the LeGrande household.
“For heaven sake, Suzanna,” Matthew said now, looking up as a laughing streak of flaming hair and lilac ruffles dashed past the open library doors. “Isn't it time you displayed a bit more decorum?”
Suzanna skidded to a stop at the umbrella stand in the foyer. As she reached for a woolen cape and matching bonnet, she said over her shoulder, “Do forgive me, Matt. You see, I'm in an awful hurry and really must fly.” She turned and flashed a smile at her tall, sandy-haired brother, who had stepped out into the foyer.
“At breakfast you failed to mention you were going out this morning,” Matthew casually commented.
“Did I? Well, I have a great deal on my mind, what with next week's reception at Stratford House. That's why I'm in such a hurry. I'm on my way now and—”
“You're planning to be the first guest to arrive?”
“Don't be silly!” Suzanna said as she tied her bonnet's long grosgrain streamers beneath her chin. “I promised I'd help