He lowered his head, hiding a skeptical grin. “She’s a prophet?”
“Oh, no, and she’d be furious if she thought I told you such a thing. Sometimes she just ... knows things. When they happen, right before they happen. And she can find things and people and ... she’s just magic, that’s all.”
“And what is Rhiannon to you? Are you related? Do you see things as well?”
Rachel laughed. “No, I’m afraid that I can’t see things right before my eyes most of the time. Richard—her husband—was my cousin. Rhiannon watches out for me ... Come on now, sir. You do look haggard.”
He arched a brow.
“Oh, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude—you don’t look bad. You’re a very handsome man. Oh, dear, I guess it’s quite forward for me to say such a thing ...”
He started to laugh. “I’m not offended, but rather, Miss Rachel, I am deeply flattered. And I am tired, and I’m sure, quite haggard. Thank you for your kindness. Lead away.”
She brought him upstairs to a large pleasant room with a big bed, French doors leading to a balcony, and something even more inviting—a hip tub filled with steaming water.
“Like it?” she asked him, delighted by his expression.
He caught her hand and gallantly kissed it. “This might be the nicest gift I’ve received in years.”
She blushed. “I’ll get out of your way, then. There are towels on the chair, there, and some soap. We still have decent soap, by the way. From France. But it’s not perfumed or anything—it just isn’t that awful lye everyone seems to be using these days. I promise, you won’t smell funny tomorrow or anything.”
“Good. It’s terrible when your men think you smell too pretty,” he told her gravely.
She laughed. “I’ll see you in the morning, Colonel.”
“It’s a wonderful room. Thank you.”
She shrugged. “I think it was a nursery once, attached to the master’s chambers. I’m not really sure. Rhiannon inherited this property from her parents, so there haven’t been any little children around for a long time. Sleep well, sir. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She left him, and when she did so, he couldn’t get his clothes off fast enough. A bath and a change of clothing had gotten to be a luxury. At his base camp they were, in one way, lucky. The river ran cool, fresh, and beautiful quite near them, and due to the constant heat, men were drawn to the river. It wasn’t that often that he went without bathing.
He plunged into the tub, feeling a deep comfort as the steaming water soaked into him. Then, before lethargy could steal over him, he grabbed the soap—heedless of what it smelled like—and scrubbed himself energetically from head to toe. He’d already had lice twice during the war and he washed furiously at every opportunity. Thoroughly scrubbed, he leaned his head back and relaxed.
God, but the hot water felt good. And the wine had been potent—just as Mammy Nor had warned. It seemed to steal through his body, warming him, relaxing him. He felt lazy, redolent, good. Pictures of the sick and injured—soldiers writhing in pain from fever, gunshot, knife wounds, and amputations—which so often slipped into his mind, faded. He felt as if he had gone back in time. He might have been home, at Cimarron, listening to the night, feeling the air. A breeze against the heat could be so wonderful. And tonight there was a soft, cool breeze. While he lounged there, he could just hear leaves rustling, brushing against the house. It was all lulling. He hadn’t felt so relaxed in a very long time.
After a while he began to hear more than the whisper of the night. He heard a soft, muffled sobbing sound. Quiet, so wrenching that it tugged upon the heart.
He was in the old nursery, next to the master’s chambers. That meant his hostess’s room was next to his own.
It was terrible to listen to her grief. In the course of war he’d seen many men die. He’d never accustomed himself to death. He had learned, though, that he had to keep moving, steel himself to continue working mechanically, even when it went against the very fiber of his being to see a young life fade on the operating table beneath his very hands. He knew that for every man he lost, a widow grieved, a mother sobbed, or a child was left fatherless. War was brutal and cruel. He knew that. He knew the pain. He lived with it, fought it, day after day.
And still ...
The soft, muffled sobbing seemed to steal into him. He tried not to listen, to respect the privacy of her grief. But then, in the midst of it, he heard a sudden exclamation.
“No, no, noooo!”
He heard something slam and he jumped up, dripping. For a moment he felt as if he were weaving—a reaction from the, alcohol content in the wine. Swearing, he reached for his towel and wrapped it around him. He staggered from the tub and steadied himself. He found his Colt on the chair where he had set it when he’d stripped. Colt in one hand, towel in the other, he was about to bound out into the hall and find out who or what had assaulted his hostess when he realized that there was a connecting door between the two rooms.
He strode pell-mell to it, tried the knob, and found it locked. Afraid that she was in real danger, he rammed the door with his shoulder.
A far flimsier door than the main one below, it gave readily—the lock simply breaking from the hinge. His impetus took him, towel around his waist, gun in hand, into the center of her room.
There was no one there. Not in the room.
Rhiannon sat in a whitewashed wooden swing out on her balcony. If not for the moonlight, he wouldn’t have seen her. Barefoot, in a long cotton gown, she sat, knees curled into her chest, rocking. Her ebony hair was loosed from its coil and streamed down her back like a silk shawl. She looked very young, a lost waif, a magical creature indeed, caught by the pale glow of the soft moonlight.
She should have heard her door break open, but it appeared that she hadn’t even noticed his arrival.
Stunned, he started walking toward her. He stopped suddenly as he stepped in liquid. Looking down, he realized that he had just missed stepping on the remnants of a shattered glass. A small pool of wine lay next to it.
He stepped around the glass and walked toward the balcony. When he had nearly reached her, she heard him at last. She leapt to her feet, spinning around to face him, startled and afraid.
“How dare you sneak up on me!”
“I hardly snuck up on you, considering the fact that I broke a door apart to reach you.”
“What in God’s name are you doing in here?”
“Trying to rescue you.”
“Rescue me?”
Her eyes skidded over his body, taking in the towel and the gun. Her eyes widened.
“Rescue me—you’re aiming a gun at me!” she said indignantly. Then some emotion passed through her eyes. “Are you going to shoot me?” she inquired a little breathlessly.
As if there might be a reason he would consider shooting her.
“Why would I shoot you?” he inquired.
“Because—” she began, and broke off. “You’re—carrying a gun. It’s aimed at me.”
“I thought you were being attacked. And I’m not aiming at you.”
“Attacked? By whom? Your men?” she queried.
He gritted his teeth, growing impatient and feeling very much a fool. His head was still swimming. He was standing in her room with a towel and a gun. “You were crying—then you screamed,” he explained.
“Don’t be absurd. I didn’t scream.”
“You did.” Damn her. He hadn’t drunk that much wine.
Suddenly her gaze slipped from his. Her words and tone faltered. “I’m—I’m sorry. I must have been dreaming, it was a ... nightmare, perhaps ...”
And then he knew.
There was something not quite right about her. Her eyes, when they met his again, were widely dilated. She held one hand behind her back, like a child hiding a forbidden toy. He frowned, stepping forward. “What have you got?”
“Nothing.” She backed away from him in such a way that he was determined to persist. He cas
t his Colt to the foot of her bed and reached for her, drawing her to him. She stiffened at his touch, her body trembling. She struggled to free herself, but he caught her wrist, wondering what it was she was so determined to hide. A gun? A knife? Had she been planning on entering his room and murdering him while he slept?
“Give it to me!” he commanded harshly. He slid his left arm around her waist, forcing her hard against the length of his body. He squeezed her wrist and forced her to drop what she held.
“Let me be!” she pleaded, for she hadn’t the strength to stop him from forcing her clenched fist open. What she held fell to the floor, and as he stopped to retrieve it, he looked quickly back up at her, startled. It was a small, corked vial. Laudanum? Or a truer form of the drug, pure opium.
He understood the look in her eyes as he rose to his feet, staring at her.
“Laudanum or pure opium?”
“None of your business!”
“You’re an addict.”
“No!” she protested. “Give it back, no ... I’m not addicted, I just ... sometimes ... please ... I need it!”
He gritted his teeth. God, yes, laudanum, a legal drug. In times of peace so plentiful! It cured headaches and women’s ills, and yes, of course, it was good for pain.
And for forgetfulness.
It could be essential in an operating theater; he knew that because so often he didn’t have any. If not for his cousin Jerome being a blockade runner, he might never have the drugs he needed, especially since the serious fighting took place so far away. He could surely use more of the drug.
Yet laudanum was also easy to abuse. He’d never forget one of the first corpses he’d worked on in medical school. In life she had been a beautiful young woman with golden blond hair and bright blue eyes. In death, she had lain ashen and gray, naked, displayed for dissection, the victim of her need. She’d been found in a field, and no one had known who she was or where to find her kin. And so she had come to the medical school. It was later discovered that she was the child of a wealthy and prominent family, but she had run away from home after acquiring an irresistible hunger for the drug that had killed her.
“Colonel, please ...”
Her voice was husky, low, pleading. He shook his head.
He was furious. There was so much death and horror in this war! That she could be so careless with something so precious as life ... !
He gripped her by the shoulders and shook her. She was taking the drug and drinking wine. A potent combination indeed.
“What is the matter with you?”
She stiffened against his touch. “You don’t understand—”
“But I do.”
“Let me go. I must—” she began to insist angrily.
“You don’t need this.”
“I do. Just tonight.”
“I’m telling you, you don’t.”
“God damn you! Who are you to tell me anything?”
She wrenched free from him, backing away, her eyes meeting his with a challenging fire.
“So you’re free from me,” he said very softly. “You don’t think that I can stop you if I choose?”
She was alarmed at his determination. “What is it to you what I choose to do with my life?”
“You won’t have a life!” he assured her.
“Don’t be absurd, I know what I’m doing—”
“Do you? You’re fooling yourself. Opium and wine. In large quantities. You don’t think there’s enough death and misery in the world?”
“This isn’t your affair! Now, please give it to me—”
“You’ve already had too much.”
She was dead still for a moment, realizing he knew she’d already been taking the drug. Then she tilted up her chin and stared at him with a cool disinterest. “No, Colonel, I never have enough. And this is not your affair.”
He took the two steps that brought them back together and reached for her. She cried out in alarm, but he drew her close to him again, determined to get his point across. “I’m a physician, and I can tell you that this is dangerous. Listen to me—”
“Go to hell! Leave me alone! I repeat—just who do you think you are to come in here and tell me what to do?” she demanded heatedly. Her body was stiff; she struggled again to free herself from his hold. When he refused to grant the least quarter, she brought her fists up between them and slammed them hard against his naked chest.
He didn’t stop her assault, but stepped closer to her, forcing her against him so that her blows had no impetus. “Oh, do you think that you can hurt me?” he asked. “You’re drugged, weak, and pathetic.”
“Pathetic! Oh! I will hurt you—” she cried, redoubling her efforts.
He caught her wrists. She flung back her head, staring at him.
“Fight me!” he taunted. “Go on, fight me. Try it.”
She tried to wrench away, realized quickly that she could not.
He jerked her back. Her eyes blazed upon his with loathing.
“You don’t need it,” he told her. “You are going to listen to me. You can die abusing opium. You know that, don’t you? Are you trying to die? Are you really such a coward?”
She inhaled sharply, and he knew that he had at last touched the core deep within her. “I’m not a coward.”
“The worst kind,” he told her.
“You really don’t understand. It hurts. I saw him. I saw him die. I heard him call my name. I saw the blood, I saw his eyes. I can’t forget. I can’t get it out of my mind. I lie alone at night, and I hear him call my name. Over and over and over again until I can’t bear it—”
“You can’t hear him.”
“I saw it!”
“You weren’t on the battlefield.”
She shook her head, eyes meeting his searchingly as if she sought some kind of understanding. She then lowered her head, as if she were too exhausted to fight him further.
And he was sorry. He wanted very much to take her into his arms and hold her and comfort her.
She didn’t want such comfort from a stranger. All he could do was try to make her realize what she was doing.
“Don’t,” he told her softly. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“Just let me go!” she pleaded, her voice feminine, sweet, weary.
“I won’t let you do this,” he said firmly.
She wasn’t so exhausted. Her chin rose, her eyes touched his like daggers, and she went into a frenzy of struggling once again, trying to scratch, bite, hit, and kick. She knew where to aim her blows, and he realized he was struggling to keep her from hurting him. Her foot connected with his towel; it was suddenly disengaged. Swearing, trying to maintain the towel while keeping her from blackening his eye, he lifted her and carried her across the room, slamming her down on the bed and leaping down atop her, using his weight to pin her. For several seconds she continued to struggle against him—then she went dead still. She stared up at him, barely breathing, her fingers still wound around his upper arms. It was only then that he realized he’d lost the towel completely and her cotton nightgown was wound nearly to her waist.
“You are hardly behaving as a Southern gentleman,” she told him, her face rigid as her green eyes met his.
“I’m joining up with the Yanks, remember?”
Her eyes closed momentarily, then met his, and she shook her head. “The accent, sir, is Southern. There are smart Florida boys with the Union. Southern men are bred to courtesy.”
“Northerners aren’t?” he inquired.
“Of course. But not with quite the same enthusiasm. Since your place of origin has been established, I think it would be in good keeping if you would behave with honor and chivalry and get up and leave me to my own choices.”
He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Damn you, where are your manners? What was your mama doing while you grew up?” she queried, determined to shame him.
He eased back, grimly amused by her effort
s. “Well, now, ma’am, my mother did teach me to be respectful to proper ladies. But I went to medical school. And there we were taught simply to take drug addicts into hand before they hurt themselves or someone else.”
She flared. “I’m not a drug addict!”
“I wish that were true.”
“I’m not addicted. I just—” she broke off and closed her eyes, weary of the fight. “Would you just leave me be? What can this matter to you?”
The fire had left her; the last was close to a desperate plea.
He touched her cheek softly. Her eyes flew to his. “I’m a doctor,” he told her quietly. “I can’t let you destroy yourself.” He hesitated a moment. “And I’m a simple man as well, who can’t bear the thought of such youth and beauty perishing in the pursuit of a moment’s solace.”
He felt her slender frame begin to tremble beneath him. Her brows furrowed. “I think—I think I need it.”
“No.”
“I can’t face the night; I can’t sleep.”
“I’ll lie here with you.”
She shook her head. “No, no ... men think that widows, that ... you don’t understand. I loved my husband.”
“I do understand. I’ve seen far too many men die.”
“He called my name!” she whispered.
“He loved you, too.”
She fell silent, her lashes fluttering over her eyes. He stared down at her for a long moment. She didn’t speak; she didn’t struggle. He eased himself from her, lying at her side, smoothing her gown down the length of her body. His towel was at the foot of the bed. He reached for it, drawing it about himself. He wondered if she had fallen asleep. She suddenly inhaled with a deep shudder. He reached out, hesitated, then smoothed back a lock of her dark hair. Her features were fine and fragile, her skin flawless.
She curled toward him suddenly. Trustingly. He continued to stroke her hair. She needed sleep. Simple sleep, without drugs.
He was barely breathing, aware of the way her hair teased his naked chest, the soft feathering of her breath against his flesh, the delicate touch of her fingers where they brushed his side. Her scent was intoxicating. And he was not blind. Flickering gold candlelight played over the white cotton gown, creating shadow and light, falling over the fullness of her breasts, the shadowed scoop of her belly, the rise of her hip. He touched her hair, and she came even closer to him, sleeping now as peacefully and trustingly as a kitten. She’d best not move too far, he thought, or she’d brush against a piece of him so ready that she’d leap away like a bird taking flight.