“Jesse, you get off me!” she cried out, twisting frantically to be free from him. But this was one fight that he did not intend to lose. Before she knew it, her hands were slammed down high atop her head. He straddled her and grabbed her wrists together to hold them tightly with one hand. His fingers wound around her wrists hard, pinning them above her head.
And then his free hand was on her, on her breast. His fingers touched her bare flesh, delving with purpose into her clothing. She squirmed in wild desperation that only seemed to entangle them more fully. Buttons gave way, and her breasts seemed to spill forth over the ties of her corset and the soft, now-mangled material of her chemise.
“Jesse, you bastard!”
Her voice broke as the ties of her corset suddenly gave, and her note fell free. Still holding her with one hand, Jesse unfolded the missive with the other, holding it out to read quickly in silence.
His eyes fell upon hers, a bright, hard blue.
“You wouldn’t dream of spying, Kiernan?” he asked politely.
“Jesse, you’ve got what you wanted. Now get off me!”
But he didn’t move. His eyes raked over her in the light and shadow of the stables. Her hair, freed now, was tousled and tangled with the hay. Her face was so flushed, her eyes so wide.
And her breasts, naked, spilling forth.
She gritted down hard on her teeth, trying to force his eyes back to hers, for she could feel her nipples hardening beneath his scrutiny. As she lay exposed, she could not hide her emotions.
“I haven’t gotten what I wanted at all,” he told her.
“You must be insane!” she cried out. He was going to touch her again, she knew it. His hand was touching her clothing. “No!” she breathed, and closed her eyes. God, don’t let him touch me, because he’ll know how very much I want him. “Please!” she whispered.
But she felt the ties coming together, not apart. The velvet of her bodice was being pulled closed, covering her nakedness, not revealing it.
She opened her eyes. He was watching her still, with a dark and brooding tension. No violence remained, no breath of ruthlessness as he touched her cheek again.
“I could arrest you.”
“Then arrest me,” she told him.
“I don’t want to. I want you to stop doing what you’re doing.”
“I’m lying on a stable floor in misery. I want to stop doing that myself,” she murmured bitterly.
He smiled and sank back on his haunches, lifting her up beneath him. It felt so good, for those few moments, to have his arms around her.
“Kiernan, you can’t win this war, you just can’t. Do you know that you’re suspected as far away as Washington?”
“You—you were warned about me?” she said in dismay.
He nodded. “Don’t you see? I can’t let you go on doing what you’re doing. And I definitely can’t let you use my men.”
She tossed her head back. “Then arrest me, Jesse.”
“Surrender the fight. You’ve no right being in this war!”
“I have every right to be in this war. This is my home—Virginia is my home. I cannot—I will not—surrender, ever,” she assured him passionately.
“Kiernan—”
“No!” She pulled away from him. He didn’t try to stop her when she rose and turned away, adjusting her clothing. She swirled back around. “You surrender! You’ve no right being in this war!”
“What?” He, too, was on his feet. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve no right being in this war. I’m fighting for my home, but you’re making war on yours. What are you fighting for? Some absurd ideal? What ideal? The U.S. Congress says you’re fighting to subdue the states in rebellion! Do you think you’re fighting to end slavery? But slavery hasn’t been abolished in most northern states. What are you trying to do? Why in God’s name do you keep this up? You’ve seen the men come in to you day after day, broken, bleeding, dying! Why the hell are you on their side?”
“Because the Union has to stand!” he shouted back. “It has to stand together. Don’t you see that? The halves are nothing without the whole!”
“No, no, I don’t see it at all!” she cried back. Why did she always come so damnably near tears every time they got into one of these fights? She had lost this battle with him long before. “Damn you, Jesse!” she cried out. She had to get past him. She couldn’t burst into tears, she didn’t dare let him come close to her again. “You’ve got your message, your proof. Arrest me, hang me, do whatever it is you want to do. But let me out of here now! I cannot bear what you’ve done! I cannot bear to talk with you, to try to reason with you.”
He exhaled with exasperation. “You’re under house arrest, Kiernan.”
“Fine. It doesn’t matter. You fool, don’t you know that Jackson or someone else will come back here? You’ll be beaten, Jesse, because the Rebs are more disciplined. And because they’re fighting for their homes.”
She gasped when his hands landed hard upon her shoulders again, and he gave her a shake that sent her head falling back and her hair cascading all around, and forced her eyes to meet his.
“Yes! Jackson will come back, or he’ll send another commander. And yes, the South can fight. They can ride, and they can shoot. They’ve been born and bred to horses and guns. And my God, yes, they’re good—they run circles around us all the time. But in the end, Kiernan, we’ll win. We’ll win because there simply are more of us. And we’ll win because we have more factories, and more clothing, and more power.”
Suddenly, she was more afraid than she had ever been. It had never occurred to her that the South could lose.
She broke free from him, staring at him hard. Her tears were hot behind her eyes now. “I hate you, Jesse!” she reminded him.
To her surprise, he smiled a slow, anguished, crooked smile. “I know,” he said, and added very softly, “and I still love you.”
“But not enough! Not enough!” she whispered desperately.
He reached for her. “Kiernan—”
“No! For the love of God, let me go!”
He freed her, and she tore away, nearly blinded by her tears as she ran back to the house as quickly as she could.
The next morning she awoke to a tremendous commotion. Rising, she hurried to the window and looked out.
Men were arriving. Two horse soldiers were leading a caravan with a wagon, and beyond the wagon, more men followed. They didn’t march like men going off to battle—they came slowly, hanging upon one another, limping men aided by ones with bloodied bandages around their arm.
They were a company of wounded, she realized.
Even as she watched, Jesse came out into the yard. He called out, and she saw that Tyne was hurrying to join him. Janey was out there, too, and then Jeremiah, and then David, and even Jacob.
The cool morning air drifted by her, and a numbness settled around her. They were all Yankees. Bluebellies. They had left behind any number of Rebel dead and wounded.
She heard a cry of agony, and the numbness drifted from her shoulders like a cloak. They were in pain, all of them. They would die, some of them.
She looked away, swallowing hard. She couldn’t worry about them, she just couldn’t. Every time Jesse patched them up, they just went back to the war, back to killing more men of the Confederacy. More Virginians.
But then Jesse was shouting orders, and everyone was running about to follow them. As she watched, he moved through the men who were able to stand, quickly assessing their wounds. Little David was hurrying about with water for them all, and as Jesse saw each man, he called to Janey to see that the man was sent either to a room or to the hallway to await surgery. He disappeared into the wagon for a moment, then reappeared and addressed Corporal O’Malley. “We’ve two dead in the wagon, Corporal. See to them, will you?”
“Right, sir!” O’Malley agreed.
A sick sensation stirred in Kiernan’s belly, and she hurried across the room to douse her face in her
wash water. Then she felt better.
She dressed quickly, then hurried downstairs. The commotion was still going on, men limping here and there, stretchers being borne in by men who were still largely whole. As she came through the great hall, she suddenly stopped dead still. There weren’t only Yankees in her hallway.
Three of the men who had been carried in were dressed in gray.
“Mrs. Miller!”
A faint, husky voice called out to her. Her heart leaped to her throat, and she moved quickly through the cots and beds to reach the fallen soldier in gray.
He was in bad shape, she thought. There was blood on the gray wool of his uniform at his stomach, and blood covered most of his left leg. His hair was matted, and his face was covered in mud. She stared at him for a long horrified moment before she recognized him.
“T.J.!” she cried, and curled her fingers over his, looking at him anxiously. She saw that David was moving among the men with a water pitcher, and she called to him.
“David, come quickly!”
He obeyed, and she poured out a cup of water and lifted T.J.’s head so that he could drink. She ripped off the bottom of her skirt to get a cloth to clean away the mud upon his face.
“Oh, T.J.!” she murmured.
His eyes opened to hers. “Don’t let them chop me up, Mrs. Miller. Don’t let them stick their saws on me.”
“T.J.—” she began, but his eyes had closed. His breathing was shallow. She placed her hand upon his heart and found that its beat was slow and weak. “Oh, T.J., don’t die on me!” she pleaded.
He needed help, and he needed it badly. Suddenly, his fingers wound around hers. “Let it be, Mrs. Miller. Some of those”—he paused, moistening his cracked lips—“some of those Yank sawbones boast that they can kill more Rebs on their operating tables than the soldiers can in the fields. If they just forget me, I can die in peace.”
“You’re not going to die, and this Yankee sawbones isn’t like the others,” Kiernan promised him quickly. “T.J., he’ll help you, I swear he will.”
But he didn’t answer her. His eyes were already closed again.
Kiernan looked across the room desperately. So many men, and they all seemed badly hurt. She saw Janey by one of the wounded men, and she hurried over to him.
“Where’s Jesse?”
Janey stared at her, amazed to see her.
“Janey! Where’s Jesse?”
Janey indicated the office. “In surgery. He ain’t gonna want to talk to you right now, Miz Kiernan.”
Kiernan ignored her and hurried to the office, bursting in. For a moment she paused in the doorway, horrified. The man on the operating table was tossing and screaming, thrashing about wildly. Jesse was shouting to Tyne to subdue him and trying to administer a dose of morphine.
The man had nothing left of his foot or lower leg, nothing but pulp that could not be recognized as human flesh.
“Jesse …” His name came out a whisper.
He looked up, saw her, and suddenly summoned her. “Kiernan, quick—I need you.”
“But Jesse—”
“I need you!”
Suddenly, she was beside him and the maimed man. He gave her an instant medical lesson, showing her the different saws that he needed for an amputation, telling her to staunch the flow of blood instantly and to keep all the sponges and bandages clean.
She looked around. There had to be someone else to help. She was going to pass out.
But there was no one. Corporal O’Malley was stitching up men with minor injuries. Jeremiah was assisting him. Janey was doing her best with the chaos in the hallway.
“Jesse, I can’t do this,” she breathed, but he didn’t seem to hear her. He was telling Tyne to use his mighty shoulders and arms to brace the man, and whether Kiernan wanted to be there or not, she was. The man was quickly prepped, and Jesse was demanding his instruments, scalpel, saw, and bone saw.
She did it. Somehow, she did it. She handed him his instruments as he demanded them, and she caught the bloodied things when he finished. She followed his every order as he packed and bandaged the leg just below the knee, where he had sewn the flesh as carefully as he dared, to give the man a chance to walk with a false limb later.
Tyne carried away the severed calf.
Then she thought she would pass out.
But Jesse shouted for water, insisted upon washing his hands, then demanded to know who was next. She remembered that this was why she had come.
“Jesse, there’s a man out there very badly wounded. He needs you quickly.”
“O’Malley will see that he’s brought in next.”
“Jesse”—she paused—“Jesse, he’s a Reb.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Corporal O’Malley?” Jesse called out. His eyes were still on her. “O’Malley, which man needs me the most?”
O’Malley, tying off a stitch in the hallway, looked up. “I guess the Reb is the next worst off. The worst off of them that’s still alive, that is.”
“See that he’s brought in,” Jesse ordered.
Janey saw that the man just out of surgery was taken to a bed. Jesse spread out a clean sheet on the table, and in a minute, O’Malley and a man with a bandaged head were bringing in T.J.
“Hey, Captain!” the stranger complained. “Why the Reb? I’ve got an awful headache, here.”
“Private Henson, I’m sure you do. But it’s a superficial wound, and you’re going to be just fine. I’ll be with you soon enough.” He looked down at T.J. “This boy is going to die if I don’t get to him soon. He might die anyway.”
“He should die—he’s a Reb,” the man said. “Doc, you shouldn’t try to save him.”
“Private, when I took an oath to save lives, they didn’t allow me to make any distinctions in the color of the uniform a man happens to be wearing. I’ll get to you soon enough, and I’ll see that you have some time to get over that headache.”
Private Henson’s brow shot up, but he no longer argued with Jesse. He turned and left with Corporal O’Malley at his heels.
“Jesse,” Kiernan breathed.
He looked across the table at her. “You just stay right where you are. No, wash your hands first, and my instruments. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re doing it fine.”
He started on T.J. Tyne helped him rip off the uniform that covered the wounds. First Jesse sponged and cleaned the blood from T.J.’s gut, and then he began to demand things from her again—a clamp, and then a probe. She gritted her teeth hard as he searched the battered flesh for bits and pieces of metal. He seemed satisfied, then demanded more things from her—a clamp, a needle, sutures. As she stood silently before him, he began to sew. She lowered her head, then she felt his eyes on her, blue and inquisitive. “Are you going to faint?”
“I would have done so by now,” she snapped at him.
He smiled and turned back to his work. He ordered T.J.’s breeches ripped away so that he could get to the leg.
“Jesu,” he murmured. “I don’t know …”
T.J. chose that moment to rouse from his drugged stupor. A hand wound around Jesse’s wrist, and Jesse and Kiernan both looked at T.J.’s white face.
“Doc, don’t take it.”
“Soldier, I don’t know—”
T.J. fought desperately to remain conscious. “Doc, I was gut-shot. You don’t even know that I can make it now.”
“Reb, you weren’t that shot up inside. None of your major organs were torn. I did a good job taking out the metal. I can’t promise that any man will make it, but soldier, you should.”
“Sweet Jesus, Doc, don’t take my leg! I’m begging you not to take my leg. Mrs. Miller, don’t let him!”
Jesse looked across the table at Kiernan.
“Please,” she whispered.
He shrugged. “All right, Reb, I’ll try,” he said. But T.J., it seemed, had already drifted under again. He had put his faith in Kiernan and surrendered to the morphine.
“Tyne,” Jesse o
rdered, “get hold of him. Kiernan, let’s rip up these trousers the rest of the way.”
They started on his leg. T.J. screamed when the probe first touched his flesh, then he was silent. So was Jesse, dead silent as he worked. Kiernan responded instantly as he ordered clamps, and sponges, then the probe, then a scalpel, then a sponge.
It seemed to go on endlessly. She sponged up blood and more blood, and she gnawed holes in her lower lip, but she didn’t falter.
In time, Jesse sewed and swabbed the blood one last time, then wrapped the limb in clean white bandages. Kiernan watched his hands as he worked, watched the artistry. He moved confidently, competently, with skill and decision—and more. Even his most determined touch was compassionate and gentle.
He finished with T.J., his last orders being to bathe down his shoulders and face. Kiernan covered him in a clean sheet. Jesse leaned over the injured Reb one last time.
“Will he live?” Kiernan whispered.
“He’s breathing now,” Jesse told her. “Like I told him, I can’t promise any man.”
Kiernan nodded. Jesse was still staring at her. “Friend of yours?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He was still watching her. She felt a flush creep up her cheeks.
“Just a friend,” she told him.
A slow curl touched the corner of Jesse’s lip, and his eyes caught hold of hers. “I wasn’t implying anything, Mrs. Miller.”
He turned away before she could respond, calling to Corporal O’Malley to see that the Reb was made comfortable in a ward and that the next patient be brought in.
He looked at Kiernan. “Are you staying?”
She couldn’t bear any more of the blood and the screams. She had never meant to come.
But she was staying.
She had already discovered that Yanks were men, too, men who could be broken, torn, hurt, made to bleed in anguish. They were men with families, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and lovers.
They were men who might go back and kill more Rebs. But at the moment, they were men who were hurt. Jesse hadn’t hesitated to mend up a Rebel soldier. He had taken an oath to save lives, and that was what he did.