Seven
Jeremy stood by one of the wide windows in Christa’s room overlooking the maze and the garden. From this vantage point, he could see the graceful slope of lawn that rolled all the way down to the river and the dock. It was beautiful country, rich country. And the Camerons were the royalty of it, he knew. The place was Christa’s heritage.
His gaze fell from the distant dock to his wife’s head. She was to the right of the house. She had walked out back a while ago with Jesse.
She hadn’t asked him for time to be alone. He’d made it a point of telling her he’d had something to do. Maybe he needed time himself. It wasn’t that Christa would have to find herself instantly swept away—on the contrary, she had some time. He’d had a long discussion with Jesse to work out the arrangements. He had to return to Richmond right away, and from there on to Washington where he’d be taking the railroad as far as Illinois. Once there, he’d be taking steamers down to Little Rock. Some of his troops would be accompanying him from Washington, and some would be assigned to him at Little Rock. He was glad to be going ahead, and he would be glad to arrive early enough in Little Rock to ride out into the countryside alone before leading his men and some of their wives across it. It was always good to know the lay of the land. He had been assigned to the West before, and there were dangers there.
Christa would join him in Little Rock. Jesse had assured Jeremy that he could extend his leave of absence even further, and escort his sister as far as Little Rock. Christa was upset, convinced that Jesse shouldn’t leave his wife and children again, but Kiernan and Jesse had looked over her head to Jeremy. They all knew that Christa should not be traveling through the Reconstruction-era South alone, nor through some of the northern cities now either. The war was over, Kiernan insisted. She didn’t mind seeing Jesse ride away one more time. And Christa had to have time to pack her household belongings as well as her clothing, and make all the arrangements to bring one of her favorite horses too.
Jeremy would return to Little Rock two weeks after his own arrival in the area, for Christa. Then they could begin their westward journey from fort to fort, camp to camp, together.
She wasn’t saying good-bye to Cameron Hall for good today, but it felt as if she were doing so.
There was certainly no turning back for her now.
For a while he had heard the low murmur of voices on the back part of the hall’s wraparound porch. But then the two, arm in arm, had walked down to the family cemetery that lay halfway between the house and the river. He couldn’t hear what they were saying anymore, but he could see them. They were handsome people, these Camerons. Jesse, tall, with that ebony-blue of his hair, just now beginning to show a hint of silver at the temples. The war had brought on that silver early, Jeremy was certain. Jeremy had felt the division of the country very clearly—few states had been quite so wretchedly torn as Maryland. But until Callie had met and married Daniel Cameron, he’d never had kin fighting on the other side. It was a wonder Jesse wasn’t solidly gray by now. Jeremy wondered how he had ever managed to walk away from all this never knowing if he could come home or not.
A soft tinkle of laughter rose up from below. It was faint, for Christa was at a distance, but it evoked all kinds of nostalgia and wonder within him. How had they been back before it had all begun? They would have been quite remarkable here, he was certain. Jesse, Daniel, Kiernan—in love with Jesse but not yet his wife—and Christa. Christa, so very young back then, the pampered pet of both brothers, uncontested mistress here since her mother’s death. She must have been sheer elegance and beauty in those lighter days, allowing that spill of laughter to fill the halls, to brighten the days and nights of all their guests. She laughed so seldom now.
He closed his eyes. For a moment he could almost hear the clang of harness, the churn of carriage wheels. People would have gathered here from all corners of Virginia. Dignitaries had surely traveled down from as far away as Washington upon occasion. Ladies in their silks and satins. Men in their finest dress uniforms and most elegant civilian attire. Musicians would have played well into the night, and Christa would have tapped her feet and danced the night away.
What were they saying, those two Camerons below him? His eyes were sharp, and he could see her face, even as she turned to her brother at the gate before the ancient cemetery. She was smiling at him. Her head was tilted back, her hair, free and lustrous as the blue-black wing of a bird, flowed in rich waves and curls down her back, catching the sunlight. She laughed at something he said, threw her arms around him, and hugged him fiercely. Someone called from across the yard.
Daniel was back. He walked out to join his brother and sister. He slipped an arm around Christa. For a moment, the three of them were posed there, arm in arm, in a continuing triangle. Tall and handsome and beautiful and entwined by love—and that sometimes irritating Cameron honor!
He sighed, catching hold of the rise of his temper. He didn’t begrudge her her brothers, or the love or loyalty between the three of them. It was something precious to her, something that he hoped they had forever. Things weren’t so terribly different in his family. At least, not with his remaining family. The war had taken his father early. Their oldest brother, Josiah, had been reported missing in sixty-four. They’d discovered later that he’d died in some little skirmish in Tennessee. The second eldest in his family, Joshua, was back home now tending to the farm. He’d married his childhood sweetheart—who had waited out the war for him—and at least, for the two of them, there had been a happy ending. Josiah might be gone, he thought, but he and Joshua still loved Callie fiercely, and if they had been as close to the events in her life as Daniel and Jesse were to those in Christa’s, she might have had a very wretched time, indeed, trying to explain Daniel Cameron. The war had kept Jeremy from her until she’d had her baby and come south and been duly wed—he never had found out just exactly in what order it had all happened!
His eyes narrowed as he watched Christa. She was so alive, so exuberant, so vivacious! Her spirit was as deep and bewitching as her vibrant coloring. Her passions ran so very deep.
But not for him.
How would it feel if she were ever to set her eyes upon him like that? So sparkling, so brilliantly blue, so tender? And that smile …
Ah, never in a thousand years!
Heaven help him, he decided dryly, if she did. He needed a strong guard against Christa Cameron. Her will was as strong as steel. If she ever felt that she really had any power over him, she would do her best to break him. She’d be free from him, taking what she wanted on her way!
He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment. Maybe he judged her too harshly. Maybe he spent too many hours mourning a gentle blond woman who had never even thought to disagree with him. No, Jenny had been blessed with her own kind of strength. She hadn’t needed to spend endless hours fighting him tooth and nail. But he was married to Christa, and unless he missed his guess, he was expecting another child.
They were going to make it work.
Every time he saw Christa, he found himself doing things he had never intended to do. He had never intended to marry her. He had never meant to order her to come west with him. He had actually come back to say good-bye and perhaps discuss the possibility of her joining him. But once he had seen her, the order had just come out. Once he had issued it, he realized that he had meant it.
He was a married man. He didn’t intend to live without his wife, cold in the night. She might not be much of a willing partner, but she was beautiful. And in all the long nights he had been away from her, he had dreamed about her, and he had wanted her.
A slight sound from outside attracted his attention, and he took up his vigil at the window again. Jesse and Daniel were leaving her by the cemetery. She watched them go, smiling. But when they had come up the knoll leading to the house, when she felt herself sheltered by the foliage between them, she turned back to the graveyard. He saw her shoulders hunching over.
He
knew that she cried.
She leaned against the cemetery fence, then slipped slowly against it to her knees. Her shoulders shook. She did not cry, she sobbed, in great, gulping waves. He clenched his teeth, torn by a wave of sympathy.
“Actually, I don’t think it’s all just because of you!” he heard.
He turned. Callie stood in the doorway. His sister was really beautiful too. There was an added luster about her. Callie was blessed. She was a woman deeply in love and, perhaps, more deeply loved in return.
“Thanks for such a vote of confidence. And from my own sister!” he reproached her mildly.
The others might have been well fooled, but Callie? Never.
He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the wall. “What brought on such a comment? What does she say about me?”
“Never a word. Even when I ask her outright. She stares me straight in the eye and reminds me that you’re my brother, and that truly, I should understand what she has come to see in you. Then she very innocently and very sweetly, I assure you, reminds me that sometimes oil and water do mix, and that passion, hatred, and love are separated by very narrow lines, and surely I, of all people, should understand that!”
“Does she now?” he murmured. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Christa would never give herself away. Not to Callie. Not to anyone.
“You forget, I know her well, Daniel. I came here uncertain, and she—and Kiernan—were wonderful to me. She gave me the clothing off her back—”
“Hardly off her back,” he commented wryly. “Christa has enough clothing to open a fashion shop.”
Callie waved a hand in the air. “She shared everything she had with me.”
“I grant you, in some things, she has a generous nature.”
“But not in others?”
“Callie, there are certain things that are simply none of your business.”
She flashed him a quick smile and came into the bedroom, slipping her arm around his waist and staring out the window with him. “I know what she’s thinking.”
“You do?”
He felt Callie nod slowly. “She’s thinking of everyone that they’ve lost. Not just her parents. She’s thinking about Anthony Miller, Kiernan’s first husband. And about Liam. About little Joe Davis, Jeb Stuart, so many old family friends and acquaintances. Young, dashing, proud! A breed of cavaliers. The death toll was terrible, Jem.”
“Callie, my God!” he said hoarsely. “We lost our father and our brother!”
“I know, but we won the war. They lost. You have to try to remember that!”
“It’s tough,” he told her, adding dryly, “Camerons don’t surrender!”
“Don’t I know it!” Callie laughed.
Christa had risen. As he watched, she came around the corner of the little cemetery and disappeared into a cover of trees.
“Where in bloody hell is she heading now?” he demanded, then realized his language, and remembered that once upon a time he would have never thought to have been so crude in front of any lady, much less his own little sister. He closed his eyes. “Sorry, Callie—”
“It’s quite all right, I’ve most certainly heard it,” Callie said, then asked, “Why are you so angry with her?”
“I’m not angry!” he denied. But Callie was right. Fine, Christa had her wonderful Cameron pride. She wouldn’t cry in front of him.
But she was sobbing blue blazes behind his back and he wanted to shake her. He wasn’t forcing her into a life as a scullery maid.
No, just into a life with him.
“Where has she gone?” he repeated.
Callie sighed. “The summer cottage. You can just see a corner of it through the trees right there. See, it’s all whitewashed. I understand it used to be furnished quite elegantly during the summer months before the war. It overlooks the water, and if you open all the shutters the river breezes pour right in. There used to be a time when the ladies sipped mint juleps and lemonade while the male guests were offered stronger refreshment. There’s not much there now. I think Christa had an old chaise brought down there last June. She told me that they all used to go there when they were children and in trouble. It’s a habit that stayed with them all. Everyone knows it’s off limits once another member of the family is in it. She’ll come out of it soon enough, Jeremy.”
“That’s right, she will,” he murmured. He started from the window, long legs carrying him quickly from the room. He was down the long stairway before Callie seemed to have found the energy to come after him. “Jeremy!” she called his name, but he pretended not to hear her. By the time he had left the porch behind him and passed by the extensive maze of rosebushes, he heard his sister reach the porch herself. But she was stopped there.
Daniel came beside her.
“Let them be,” he warned her.
“He’s angry, Daniel.”
“They’ll solve it. Callie, you keep reminding me—he’s your brother. I can call him out and one of us can kill the other, and the one left alive can be arrested for illegal dueling.”
“Daniel, don’t be ridiculous—”
“Then leave them be.”
The voices faded behind him. He came to where Christa had stood, to the low whitewashed fence that surrounded the graveyard. He’d come here before. Admittedly, the Cameron heritage had fascinated him, and on his first trip here he had come to the graveyard while awaiting a little time to say good-bye to his sister alone. That time he had been heading back to his troops in the field. He’d been transferred east along with General Grant, and he had left here with the very real possibility that he and Daniel might meet in combat. But they never had. In a cruel war God had, upon occasion, shown his small mercies.
He stared at the graveyard. There, in the far corner, were the first of the Camerons. Jamie and his Jassy. The tombstones were dated sometime in the late sixteen hundreds. The slate stones were very old, but the family had kept them all up and the writing remained clear. It was an oddly beautiful place, haunting, ghostly, but beautiful too. Magnificent angels hovered over some Camerons, while virgins cast their serene gazes down upon others. The funereal art was exquisite, history in itself, were there no beautiful house to grace the grounds. But of course, this meant so much more to Christa. Her parents lay within the gate. Her grandparents. Aunts, uncles, and cousins and “greats” who had lived through two centuries of Virginia’s history.
He walked around the cemetery at last. Through the foliage he could see the summer cottage. Like the main house, it seriously needed paint.
He came around the front. The door was closed but not locked and he came through it. There was a main room with a large fireplace.
With a smile he wondered if the cottage hadn’t been used frequently in winter. He could just imagine how it would feel being here, a blaze snapping warmly from the hearth, cold winds blowing beyond, and a landscape carpeted in snow.
He walked through the room, not intentionally coming in quietly.
But Christa hadn’t heard him. She was curled on a green brocade-covered lounge that looked out over large windows with a river view. The river rolled by, dark today, but enchanting. Its color, its slight turbulence, warned that fall was nearly upon them and winter was coming.
Some sound or instinct alerted her to his presence, for she turned, somewhat alarmed.
Women, he thought, didn’t look good when they cried. Their eyes usually got all puffy and their faces became a blotchy red.
But not so with Christa!
Her cheeks were damp and flushed and her eyes remained crystal with the wetness of her tears. But as she stared at him she brushed her hands over her cheeks, and the wet glimmer of tears became that of defiance. He’d never seen eyes more vividly, beautifully blue. He’d been so sorry, so touched by the pain that she had been feeling.
But seeing the mercury-quick change in her, he felt his resolve concerning her stiffen.
Her pride was greater than any emotion within her heart.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
He lifted his hands. “Have I entered some sacred domain?” he asked.
She turned back around, staring at the river. “Of course not,” she said. “It’s a cottage on the grounds, nothing more.”
He remained behind her in silence. His presence must have disturbed her though, for she was quickly up, swinging around to meet him as if she feared to have him at her back. She stared at him, and he must have betrayed some surprise at her movement, for she flushed slightly and strode toward the mantel. Her feet moved silently over the flooring. There was a handsome oilcloth on the floor, painted to look like marble. It was old and fraying now, but it had once been grand. Over that, before the hearth itself, was a rich stretch of fur rug, warm and very inviting. Christa was glancing at the fur, too, he saw. She caught his gaze, then turned away very quickly.
“I think I know why you’re doing this,” she said. She was suddenly very prim, her hands folded before her, her eyes steady on his.
He took up a military “at ease” stance, legs slightly apart, his hands together at his back. “Oh?” he said politely. “And what am I doing?”
“Making me come with you.”
“Why?”
She waved a hand in the air, unable to continue meeting his eyes. “It has something to do with Daniel and Callie. I believe you’re trying to get even with him in some way.” He was dead silent, and she continued in a sudden rush, “For taking Callie from Maryland. Well, for what happened between them in Maryland, and for taking her away. Perhaps you’re not even aware of it. But if you stop to think—”
“If I stopped too long to think,” he interrupted her at last, struggling to keep a cap on his rising temper, “I’d be tempted to wring your neck. Then your brothers would be obliged to come out and shoot me, but that’s all right, my love, we’d expire in marital bliss!”
She didn’t flinch. Her eyes narrowed and she stared him down in her very regal manner. “I didn’t think that you’d begin to understand. I—”