She turned back to face him and met his gaze. He was looking at her with that blue fire kindled within his eyes once again. A fire that caught deep within her just because he glanced her way. A fire that evoked sweet longings and seemed to touch down upon her flesh with a dance of sweet little flames.
A fire from which she needed some distance.
“Let’s hear more about these famous—infamous!—men in gray,” she told him. “What about Lee? Is he really so great as they say?”
Daniel grinned. “There is no man greater.” He slid down from the gate, leaning against it. “Imagine, Callie. He had a beautiful home in Arlington. It still sits there, high upon a ridge, looking over the Potomac, right in Washington, D.C. And it wasn’t just his home, it was his wife’s home. And she is—”
“Martha Washington’s great-granddaughter, and the step great-grandchild of George Washington,” Callie interrupted softly. Daniel looked at her with an arched brow. “So I’ve heard,” Callie said. “Your General Lee is a legend here, just as he is in the South. Many people believe that the war would be over now if we had had him leading some of our troops. They say that he is a brilliant commander, and an extremely fine man.”
Daniel smiled ruefully. “It’s quite true; he is both of those things. And sometimes, when the war seems to drag on and on and I’m thinking of home with every breath I take, I think about Master Lee, as we sometimes call him, and his wife, Mary, and that beautiful home of theirs.”
“And what of Mary Lee?” Callie murmured.
A slow, wry curl worked its way into Daniel’s lip as he looked down at Callie. “Mary Lee loves her husband very much. And trusts in his decisions.”
“It is her home that is lost,” Callie said. “He is off riding around the countryside.”
“Skedaddling Yanks,” Daniel said lazily. She cast him a most condemning gaze and he laughed softly.
He leapt down from the barn gate and came toward her. “He’s very, very good at it.”
“Is he?” Callie said.
Daniel nodded. “Yes. All Rebs are. Look. All I’m doing is walking very slowly toward you. And you’re already trying to skedaddle.”
Her heart was thudding already. Yes, she was backing away from him. She just couldn’t feel this warm, lusty wonder every time he looked at her. It was wrong, and she had created a fool’s paradise. She had to learn to walk and talk and keep her distance from him, to regain her sense of propriety, dear God, to regain her morals!
But all that he had to do was beckon, and she felt the heat come simmering through her.
“I’m not trying to skedaddle,” she assured him.
“Then stand still.”
“But I’m not ready to surrender!” she said quickly. He was still coming. She dropped the bucket of chicken feed and veered around toward the paddock fence, making sure she kept her eyes on him all the while.
“How futile to battle when the war is already lost!” he told her.
“No, sir! The war is not lost. Battle after battle may be won, but that does not mean that the war is lost!”
“The enemy can be worn down.”
“Not a determined enemy.”
He paused for just a moment, his head cocked, a crooked smile playing into the corners of his mouth. “Have you ever made love in the hay, Mrs. Michaelson?”
Her mouth dropped, although she didn’t know why anything that he should say or do should surprise her anymore.
He didn’t wait for her answer, but came toward her again with his long, relentless stride. A sound escaped her as he came too close, and she made a beeline past him, slipping behind the barn gate and using it for a barrier between them.
“Colonel, things have happened very quickly here,” she told him, “and I think that a measure of constraint—”
“The moment is constraining me to sheer distraction, Mrs. Michaelson,” he said pleasantly enough. But then his hand touched the rim of the gate and suddenly he was leaping up and over it, and facing her.
“Daniel Cameron—”
“You never, never made love in the hay?”
She pushed away from the gate, backing away from him once again. “Well, it’s hardly the proper thing to do—”
“Callie, Callie, Callie, making love is not supposed to be a ‘proper’ thing at all. And the scent of the hay is so delicious—”
“And it surely sticks into your flesh and tangles in your hair!”
He laughed, his blue eyes sparkling and alive, even in the darkness. “Come here, woman!” he commanded. He reached for her hand, pulling her to him.
She felt as if she were melting inside. Was this love? So quickly, so easily? Or was this the effect of war?
“You behave, Reb!” she informed him regally, and she jerked free from his hold, only to fall backward with her effort—and wind up right where he wanted her, in a pile of hay.
In seconds he had fallen down beside her, his arm about her, lifting a handful of straw to breathe in its scent. “It’s wonderful, it’s fresh, it’s clean—”
“And one should be careful of cow manure!” Callie interrupted.
But his laughter rang softly around her, husky, seductive. She needed to protest, they were moving too quickly, he was the enemy.
He touched her lips with his own. She was well dressed for seduction in the hay, wearing nothing at all but a simple blue cotton day dress with a button-up bodice and full flaring skirt.
One by one, her buttons were coming open. In the darkness, she felt the stroke of his hand moving up the hem of her skirt.
Her bodice fell open, her breasts spilled free. Her skirt was shoved to her hips, and she felt the swift, sudden, and breathtaking weight of his body come boldly atop hers. His fingers stroked between her thighs, touching, probing, as he kissed her.
His lips moved from hers. He buried his face between her breasts just as he thrust his shaft deeply, firmly within her.
She gasped, and breathed in the hay. The scent was sweet and titillating, just as the feel of the earth around her and the raw scent of the man atop her combined to bring within her an explosion of wild and reckless passion.
He was not so tender a lover as he had been before. When he touched her, surrounded as he was by earth and night air, it was with a wild and reckless need that boldly mingled with the scent of the dirt and the hay. He did not tease or cajole, but his lips lay claim to a response, with no protest allowed her.
His body moved with the same hard passion, not tempting or eliciting a response but, rather, provoking one. Yet all that he did was what she craved. She did feel the hay against her naked flesh, and she did feel her body pressed low and lower into the earth. The scent of his body and the scent of her own then mingled with all those other earth scents, and as he moved so boldly between her thighs, she felt again a starting, wild thunder of passion seize hold of her. In seconds it seemed that the desires that sang so within her blood and coursed through her limbs were appeased with a swift and startling volatility. Hot honey filled the very center of her. She saw blackness and then light. She did not know if the cries she heard were sounds she emitted, or part of the words he whispered tensely to her, or if the searing nectar had spilled from herself, or from him. She only knew that she lay spent on the hay when he was done, exhausted, and still drifting in distant fields of beauty.
They were silent and it was long minutes later when she again felt the prick of the hay against her flesh. She smiled, and he was suddenly over her, wickedly grinning. “Mrs. Michaelson. There is hay in your hair!”
“Oh, you wretched Rebel!” she cried, laughing, and shoved at his chest. He did not intend to let her go, and so she laughed as they rolled over in the hay together. She managed to elude him, but just as she did so, she reached the edge of the hay, and shrieked as she went teetering over the two-foot pile to the ground below. His head instantly appeared above her. Tousled, blue eyes alight with laughter, he stared down at her. “There you go, Mrs. Michaelson! See what happens to w
ayward Yanks? I daresay—”
His voice suddenly broke off and his laughter faded. He reached down a hand to her, and his voice was suddenly grave. “Callie, give me your hand. Come back up.”
He didn’t want her to look to her side—she knew it instantly.
But like Lot’s wife, she couldn’t help doing so. She turned to her left, to stare at a spot where there were just a few feet between the hay pile and the rear wall of the barn.
It was dark in the barn. Shadows were intensified and increased because of the one lamp that illuminated everything from the spot where it hung near the door. There was a moon out, but its glow was pale and did little to illuminate the corners of the barn.
Still, she could see the man and see his face, with horror. A terrible scream rose in her throat. It choked there, and the sound that came from her was simply one of horror.
He leaned against the barn wall, his hand over his abdomen. His eyes remained open, his mouth was in an O, as if he were still surprised by his own untimely end. He was a young soldier boy, a sad, pathetic figure in deep, dark, haunting blue.
“Callie!”
She couldn’t seem to move on her own. Strong arms enveloped her, and in seconds she was swept up and held tightly.
Daniel sat on the hay with her upon his lap, cradling her head against his chest, murmuring assurances. She couldn’t even hear his words.
She had seen so many dead men. She hadn’t thought that the sight of another could do this to her.
Perhaps that was it. There had been too many before. None of them had been like this poor soldier. Alone. He had crawled here, into her barn, to die. He didn’t stink yet, so he hadn’t been dead that long. He had holed up here, weak, afraid, dying. She had come and gone the last three days, feeding the animals, and she had never seen him. He had just lain there….
They had just lain in the hay, half-naked, entwined, whispering, crying out. And all the while the poor young soldier’s sightless eyes had been open upon them.
“Oh, God!” she whimpered against Daniel’s chest, and she was shaking again.
“Callie, it’s all right. It’s all over for him. He’s at peace. Callie, look at me, will you.”
She tried to stare at him. She tried to focus on him. Tears swam in her eyes and guilt riddled her.
She had spent those days tending to an enemy soldier, wanting an enemy soldier, making love with an enemy soldier. And this boy had been out here, dying.
She jumped up, pulling her bodice together. “Oh, my Lord, how could we—”
“Callie, stop it!” He was instantly on his feet, calmly belting his breeches.
She shook her head, feeling wild, as if she wanted to run and run until she made it all disappear—the hatred, the war, the guilt, the love. “No, Daniel.” She backed away from him, but his hands were quickly on her shoulders, shaking her lightly. “Callie, we’ve done nothing wrong. It’s not wrong to live, to survive! You cannot feel guilty for living!”
“I do not feel guilty for living!” she protested. “I feel guilty for—”
“For loving?” he inquired softly. She stiffened, trying to escape him, but he drew her to him, holding her very close. “Callie, we did not take his life—”
She jerked free again. “But you might have! You might have shot him down. And I might have allowed him to die by neglect!”
“Callie, I didn’t shoot him. I fell in your front yard. And nothing that you did or didn’t do could have saved him.”
“How do you know?”
“He was gut shot, Callie.”
“He didn’t die quickly. He just lay there—”
“Unconscious, Callie,” he assured her, advancing toward her.
“No!” she shrieked. “No! You are the enemy. Don’t touch me, don’t touch me—”
But he did touch her. He took her into his arms again, and she beat furiously against his back until her energy drained from her. Tears fell down her cheeks once again.
He didn’t say anything else to her, he just held her. He smoothed back her hair, and rocked her. In time she felt the tremors that had seized her begin to fade. She sniffled raggedly, and then she felt the simple edge of exhaustion come over her.
She was dimly aware that he rose, and that he would take her back to the house. She stopped him.
“Daniel, we can’t just leave him.”
“You’re right. We can’t just leave him,” he agreed. He set her down upon the hay, and cupped her chin, lifting her face so that he could meet her eyes. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. She wasn’t all right at all. One moment she was freezing, and the next she was numb. She felt as if all the agony of the war had descended down upon her, and then it was as if she couldn’t feel anything at all.
But she nodded again, trying to assure him.
He left her sitting on the hay. She heard him moving about the barn, looking for a shovel.
It seemed forever that he was gone. She waited on the hay, and then she remembered that she was alone in the barn with the young soldier with the dead eyes that still seemed to watch her. She leapt up and started to run out of the barn.
Daniel was just coming back in. He caught her shoulders. “I dug the grave in your family plot. You may want to send his things home; I’ll collect them for you. Maybe his family will want to send for his body later too. But for tonight … tonight, we’ll just lay him to rest.”
She nodded, not realizing that she was clinging to him.
“Callie, I have to get him,” Daniel reminded her softly.
“Oh!” She released him and walked on out to the small family cemetery. There were monuments to her mother and her father, and to Gregory. Farther back were the stones for her grandparents, and for her aunt Sarah, who had died as a child of six. There, by Gregory’s grave, was a gaping new hole.
A moment later, Daniel reappeared. He had wrapped the soldier in an old horse blanket, but carried him as gently as if he were alive.
He just as gently set the body into the grave he had dug.
Watching him, Callie felt the cold close around her heart again. This poor boy, so far from home! None to mourn him, none to say a prayer.
But she was wrong. Daniel repacked the earth over the grave, and when he was done, he drew a cross in the dirt. And to her surprise, he began to speak.
“Dear Lord, this is Private Benjamin Gest, an artillery man. Brave, loyal, true, he gave his all for his cause. Into your hands, we commend his keeping. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, earth to earth. Father, look gently down upon him, for he was just a boy. Be with his loved ones, God, and give them strength.”
He stepped back from the grave, his hands dirty but folded, his chest still naked and streaked with dirt and sweat. His head bowed low, he was silent for several long seconds, and then he looked to Callie again.
She felt tears rising once more. She didn’t want to shed them.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It is the least that any man deserves.”
“You knew his name.”
“I went through his haversack. It’s in the barn, with his personal effects. There’s a letter in there for his mother. You might want to make sure that she gets it.”
Callie nodded.
“Callie, go in. Go to bed,” he told her.
“What are you doing?”
He shrugged awkwardly. “I’m covered in dirt. I’m going to clean up.”
She felt the same herself, but she was suddenly so exhausted, she didn’t know if she could stand much longer. He wanted her to go in. She didn’t know where he meant to clean up, but she didn’t ask. He obviously wanted to be alone.
She walked woodenly back to the house and up the stairs. In her room she discovered that she was desperate to wash up too. She poured out water and scrubbed her face and her throat and her arms and her breasts. She dug into her wardrobe and crawled into a white nightgown.
She caught sight of her reflection in the swivel mirror in the corner
of the room. The gown seemed mockingly virginal.
She closed her eyes, and turned away, and crawled into her bed. But once she was there, she couldn’t sleep. She lay awake, staring up at the ceiling and waiting.
She had assumed that he would come to her. But time passed, and Daniel did not come. A slow aching began to build inside her.
She got up and opened the door. She could hear him in the parlor below. Hurrying down the steps, she saw him before the fireplace, staring into the flames of a blaze he had just built against the chill of the late night. His arm rested against the hearth, his head against his arm.
“Daniel?” she said softly.
He looked up at her. Blue eyes meeting hers. She felt a special warmth grip hold of her heart. There was something very noble in the structure of his face, in the weary slope of his broad shoulders.
“You should sleep,” he told her.
“I don’t want to sleep alone,” she said.
He smiled, understanding exactly the need that she couldn’t quite voice aloud. He came up the stairs and lifted her into his arms.
He brought her back into her room and laid her down, then stretched out beside her. He took her gently into his arms, and smoothed out her hair.
She managed to close her eyes and to sleep.
All through the night she was warm and safe and protected from all the demons of war that had come to haunt her. Even in her sleep, she knew that he held her.
He might have been her enemy.
But she had never been kept more safely.
———— Nine ————
Callie slept late the next morning, and when she awoke she was alone. The bed beside her still retained a little warmth. She ran her hand over the sheets and then closed her eyes.
She had liked sleeping beside him. Feeling his arms, warm and strong, wrapped about her. Turning to rest her head against his chest. Feeling the even tremor of his breathing.