Bride of the Night. Heather Graham

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       PROLOGUE

       Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

       November 19, 1863

      “FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

      The breeze picked up, just as President Lincoln began to speak.

      Finn Dunne heard a soft crackle from the dead and dying leaves that clung to or fell from the trees in the surrounding forests and hills. It was almost as if the earth itself mourned the tragic loss of life here.

      Still mounted atop his large thoroughbred, Finn surveyed the crowd. He had ridden near the president during the procession from the Wills House to Baltimore Street, along the Taneytown Road, and into the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Looking at the president, Finn reassured himself that others equally tasked with the duty of guarding him were likewise vigilant. Vigilant even through the last speaker, Edward Everett—ex-senator, professor and highly acclaimed orator … and certainly a long-winded fellow—had gone on for two hours before giving way to the president.

      There were children in the crowd growing very restless, prompting their mothers to take them toward the graves where their antics would be less audible. Other mothers who had lost sons stood near the speakers, dabbing at their tearstained eyes. And since life went on despite the dead, soldiers and civilians stood a little closer to the prettier women, trying to use the occasion, with all of its solemnity, to flirt.

      Soldiers, and other Pinkerton men, stood around, the soldiers obvious—some in dress uniforms and some in their well-worn fighting attire—and the Pinkerton men in various combinations of clothing, from dress shirts to frock coats to railway jackets. It was November, and the day had a nip to it: “a cold like the dead,” someone had whispered earlier.

      The victory at Gettysburg and recent successes along the Mississippi and on the western front had been encouraging. But Abraham Lincoln’s reelection remained in doubt. Even now, there were those sick of the war, those who believed they should just let the Confederacy go their own way, and good riddance, too.

      But that had not happened, and so Finn was on the lookout for Southern sympathizers, fanatics who might just want the tall, grave man who carried the world on his shoulders out.

      The president had arrived by train yesterday, and a young local man, Sergeant H. Paxton Bigham, had been assigned to guard the chief executive. Finn had met Bigham, and liked him, and his brother, Rush, as well. Neither had slept during the night. Their loyalty couldn’t be questioned. Finn wanted to believe that he could rest easily; Gettysburg was firmly entrenched in the hands of the North. But he never rested, for there was always the possibility that a Confederate spy or sympathizer might just take a shot at Lincoln.

      Never before had Finn met a man that he was so completely willing to die for. For Lincoln, he would give his all.

      Not that he’d ever die easily.

      “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

      Finn scanned the natural surroundings—acres, hills, trees and beautiful little streams where rivulets sent sparkling water dancing over the rocks by day. There were also rocky tor areas, trails that twisted and turned through narrow paths. Places like Devil’s Den …

      Where bodies had lain upon bodies … So many men had become trapped in the rugged rock formations, and mown down. More than fifty thousand casualties here alone—Northern and Southern, dead, dying, wounded and captured. Rains brought the masses of hastily buried bodies back to the surface, the decaying corpses a mortal reminder that filled every breath, and which attracted swarms of flies and herds of wild pigs intent upon consuming everything. As the summer heat following the July battle added to the wretchedness of the place, Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania had to do something, and thus the cemetery had been planned. And the president’s consecration of that land today.

      Gettysburg would never be the same again. For some, it would be a shrine. For others, it would be remembered as the site of a massacre. Finn was fairly certain that no matter how it was seen by his contemporaries, history would prove that it was the pivotal ground upon which the rest of the war would hang. Here, the South had been forced to retreat. General Lee was said to have all but wept at the loss of life, and that his chance to take the war into the North had surely been lost. And with that, likely the war, as well.

      A surge of anguish so strong it was almost physical swept through Finn. He knew General Robert E. Lee. He had been Lincoln’s first choice as a commander for his own forces. Lee, so it was said, spent a tortured night pacing the hallway of his Arlington home, trying to decide by light of his conscience and his great belief in God what was the right path to take. The grandson of Lighthorse Harry Lee, a hero of the Revolution, Lee had finally decided that he was a Virginian first, no matter his individual thoughts and feelings on secession.

      There.

      In the rear, near a gravestone but moving closer to the podium. There was a woman, her shoulders covered by a long cape, her arms and hands concealed by it. Carrying something …

      Lincoln—never truly aware of his own personal danger—gave his complete attention and heart to his words. “We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

      Finn drew his coat more tightly about him as he whispered, “Stay, boy,” to Piebald and dismounted. As he slipped through the crowd, most people barely noted him; they were silent, listening. Some, however, smiled as he passed, glad for a break from standing and staring. Many had now wandered off, Everett’s speech having left them fatigued.

      Finn looked over toward the podium.

      He