Turn OC Week: Showing Loyalties
To Go a Campaigning
May, 1780: Charleston, SC
Charleston reminded Adrienne distinctly of Boston. The slow carriage ride to Cornwallis’ headquarters felt eerily like the march to Boston’s port, it had been the first time she was ever escorted by soldiers. There were no soldiers escorting her now, but she could not seem to settle on if she wished there were or not. Adrienne reckoned the lack of a soldier’s presence was the only thing halting a mob descending upon her carriage.
The streets of the city were overcrowded at its high, or so John had told her once. Now it was more a land of ruins than a great port city with the Grand Houses her husband had described and the rare citizen walking the street had the same anger, same hunger, in their eyes as Adrienne had seen at Boston. There was a resentment here that unsettled her but not more than the British controlled harbor of warships. It was an odd feeling, being scared of them. She had never been on the other side of it before, and she found she disliked it with every fiber of her being. Perhaps that was why she jumped in fright when the carriage door opened. Even amidst the debris, Charleston was still beautiful in an oddly peaceful way like the calm after a storm.
The soldiers at the door looked at her warily before opening the doors of the grand house without a word, their redcoats clearly not protecting them any more than Adrienne’s carriage had protected her. The house appeared to be one of the only to have been spared cannon fire, and the grandeur did not surprise her from what she had heard of Cornwallis' tastes. The hall was paved with marble black and white tile, but was otherwise completely empty. It reminded her of Belvoir and was silent enough to hear a pin drop. The sound of meeting happening behind a closed door and her heels were the only sounds there to echo the corridor.
It was the emptiest headquarters she had ever seen.
The door from which the sound of voices drifted from opened, causing her to turn toward it only to be met with a familiar face greeting her.
“My Lady Fairfax,” Colonel Tarelton, in his full dress greens, spoke softly, “What a pleasure it is to see you, I hope the journey was smooth. To what does this humble office owe the honor of your visit?”
Once upon a time, those words being spoken with a smile on his face would have been normal. Now, the smile was malicious on his face, his eyes no longer kind and enthusiastic as they had been all those years ago in Philadelphia, but predatory. The papers wrote of the atrocities he had committed since they had first met. The war had touched him, he was no longer the straight laced boy of her godfather’s officer corps.
They called him Bloody Ban. No survivors.
“I come on the business of my family, Colonel.”
“Ah, on your husband’s business then?” He said, eyes darkening at the thought. “You must forgive the inconvenience we have imposed by the whole Mepkin business. This is war, I’m sure you understand.”
Adrienne would confess that traveling this far only to find they had attempted to burn Mepkin to the ground had been quite the inconvenience, but that was not her mission here.
“Mepkin may be repaired in time. I have come for an audience with General Cornwallis,” she responded, “It is the smallest of courtesies that I am owed in my status.”
“As a traitor's wife?”
“As the daughter of a Viscount.”
