Sacramento: Cottage Garden
Chapter One 1865 Washington DC
"Get up, you, slacks! The General sent me to roust your butts out of here and back to the headquarters... Now!" and the Sargent bellowed into the bordello halls. He went through pounding on doors yelling. Prostitutes peeked out their doors to see if their clients were in danger.
"Send them all downstairs dressed in ten minutes."
Five young Union officers showed up in the lobby still buttoning up their uniforms. The red velvet circular settee was a good place to put on their boots and tuck in their uniforms.
Jarrod Barkley stepped up to the sergeant, "Permission to speak, sir. We had a three-day pass, sir. Has our time been rescinded or the directive changed?."
"Barkley, they don't tell me a thing. I was just told to round you all up and get you back to DC. Bigwigs higher up coming in."
"Yes sir"
They rounded up their rented horses and headed back to their base. They rode up to see their General with a man in a sea captain's uniform.
"Father?" perked up one of the young men called back to base.
"John? Good to see you son. We have some important family business to talk about. Sorry to bother your friends with bringing them back too. General says it's the military protocol to bring a detachment back as a group. I will make sure you men get some extra time after tomorrow and I will pay for some quality women."
John shrugged his shoulders and walked in with his Father.
Miller looked over at the rest of them with quizzical looks on their faces, "You don't know who John is, do you? Or should I say his family. His old man is head of the largest shipping company in the states. He supplies almost all the trade routes coming into the country. John is his only child and heir to millions from his first wife, his mother. His stepmother is young and pretty. Giving the old man some more heirs. I still can't believe he enlisted like the rest of us. "
The four other men stared at each other. Jarrod knew but played along. His friend had shared his desire to "be one of the regulars" and sincerely loved the intelligence service. He had defied his Father and won this battle to serve the Union.
They hung around in their quarters and John returned mid-afternoon.
"Well friends, I am getting married soon. Want to come?"
They crowded around for "the rest of the story".
"Beaufort Shipping is the largest shipping company in France. Jean, my father's good friend, has two daughters. He is dying and he doesn't want the company to go to an unscrupulous family member who will use them. I am marrying the oldest girl soon."
"Is she pretty?"
"Known her long?"
"What's Sally going to say, that debutante from New York with the big bubbies?"
"And that girl, you been prigging in the village?"
John laughed, "Just because I got a wife doesn't mean I am going to be a monk. Plus, her daddy doesn't want me bedding her yet. He says she's too young. My father said it's for me to decide when I see her. I want to get a look at her first of course. The old man says ``just seed her with a boy and do what I want with my time."
Jarrod and the others looked concerned, "Just how old is she?"
"I don't know exactly. Father says she is past the age of consent. The District of Columbia says 12 years old can marry. I think she's maybe 13? "
The men looked at John with disgust.
"Don't look at me that way. I am not going to take a child to bed. You know I like my women soft and with curves in the right places."
The men scattered to different parts of the room. "Jarrod, can I ask you a favor?"
"Will you stand up for me?"
Jarrod looked uncomfortable but said, "Of course."
Around twenty days later, John and his friends were called back to DC for a wedding. Jarrod had regretted saying "Yes" from the first moment but he was a man of his word, so he planned on keeping it.
The military chapel in DC was the setting. John and his friends wore their very best navy-blue officer uniforms as Supreme Court Judge Miller presided. BlackJack Jackson looked quite pleased on the front row while the Admiral looked sad and sick. A yellow hint to his skin made his reddish-gray hair look unkempt. He looked like he had just been robbed of a great gift.
A slightly built woman-child was introduced for the first time to John. Her long auburn locks were pulled up in half chignon and she wore a strand of her mother's pearls. Jarrod thought she reminded him of a muse he had seen in paintings with her large green, haunting eyes. She greeted his war comrades with aplomb much above her age.
"I am pleased to meet you Mr. Barkley." and she made direct eye contact with those large green eyes. He kissed her hand.
—&—-
"Do you John take Elizabeth Rose Marie Beaufort to be your lawfully wedded wife.?"
"I do."
"In sickness and in health till death do you part?"
"I do."
John took her down the aisle and escorted her to cut the hastily baked wedding cake and champagne toast. The men headed back to the barracks. Jarrod had a sad, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. She can't be far from the schoolroom.
"I am comforted to know that Mother and Father would never consider such a thing for Audra for all of the money in the world. But if they were dying and leaving her alone in the world, what if it were their only choice to protect her? Would they do it then?" milled Jarrod around in his head. He couldn't get the picture of her sad father with his obviously numbered days on that pew. Her little sister beside him looking frightened herself. Would this be her future too?
He was quite relieved when John showed up an hour later treating them to drinks and the lady of their choice courtesy of his father with extra leave for "his honeymoon."
"She doesn't even have a bosom yet. I will wait. She may speak three languages but she doesn't speak the one I want to hear tonight. Don't you worry, I will be teaching her soon enough. I got lots of lessons in my mind."
Jarrod looked away. He wasn't naive on how men talked about women but "for heaven's sake, that is his wife."
Jarrod spent the rest of the night at the poker table. Suddenly the youthful faces of the cathouse weren't as appealing.
Elizabeth and Adrienne Beaufort returned to a rented house by the sea with their ailing Father to wait out his days.