She had been lucky, she understood now. Officers no longer had the time to write to loved ones of their fallen men. Widows now discovered their status by reading their husband’s names aloud from the lists posted in the nearest town, or reprinted in the newspapers.
It was no good to stand on the lawn. No good to feel the air on her cheeks, to feel the coming of the darkness, the whisper of the night. For these fallen men around her would never again feel the soft caress of a breeze, or the endlessly sweet nectar of the first soft kiss of the night.
She turned, anxious not to see the faces of the men as she hurried past them.
The house, she realized, was riddled with bullets. Her front windowpanes were shattered. There was even a small cannonball lodged in the stone base of the left corner of the porch.
This was one battle Callie would never be able to forget.
She stepped back into the parlor. Her feet crunched over broken glass.
It was beginning to grow very dark and shadowy within the house, and she was anxious to light the gas lamps.
She started to move, but then her hand flew to her mouth and she tried desperately to swallow down a gasp. Fear, vivid and wild, came sweeping through her. She fought a growing sense of panic, biting down hard upon her knuckles.
She wasn’t alone.
There was someone in her house. Someone who had come through the rear door, and into the kitchen.
From the parlor through the hallway, and to the door frame that led into the kitchen she could see him standing there. He was very tall, and his height was emphasized by the plumed hat he wore at a rakish angle over his brow. She could see little of his features, for the shadows of dusk hid them.
But she could see his uniform, and it was gray. Gray trousers, rimmed in gold. Knee-high black boots. A gray frock coat, also trimmed in the same gold. He was southern cavalry, she thought quickly.
The southerners had pulled out. That’s what Captain Trent Johnston had said.
So what did this southerner want with her? She’d heard tales of what happened to lone women when men of an invading army came their way.
Don’t panic, she warned herself.
But his mind was moving in the same direction, and his warning came down upon her like a hammer.
“Don’t!” he rasped out sharply, before she had found the breath to scream.
She had to scream, she had to move. Quickly. Captain Johnston still had to be close by.
Callie spun around, ready to exit her house as swiftly as the wind. But even as her hand fell upon the doorknob the southern cavalryman fell upon her.
Her scream escaped her then, as his hand touched her arm, ripping her away from the door. “Stop it, damn you, ma’am, I am not spending the rest of the war in a prison camp!”
The voice was deep, rich, almost musical in its drawl. But it was also touched with an arrogant authority, a harshness, even a ruthlessness.
And his face …
He was the soldier she had touched! The one she could have sworn had lived.
He stared at her with eyes as sharp as steel blades beneath those imperious, high-arched, and deadly dark brows.
“No!” Callie screamed, finding breath at last. Her fingers clawed at the fingers that held her arm. She touched something warm and sticky. Blood.
She looked up into his eyes.
They were deep blue, nearly cobalt. They stared at her evenly and with a dangerous and determined warning.
“Let me go!” she demanded. Oh, Lord. She was a competent woman, she assured herself. She was not easily intimidated. She had lived here all alone since the war had begun.
She had never been so frightened before in all her life. This soldier looked at her as if he had some personal vengeance in mind.
“Let me go!” Her voice was starting to rise again. He was very tall, even allowing for the heels of his boots. He towered over her, and his frock coat emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. His jet dark brows framed his eyes, and hiked up high as he watched her. His mouth was set in a firm line within his square and unyielding chin.
“Miss, don’t—”
“No!”
She wrenched free and made for the door again. “Captain Johnston!”
The cry rose high on her lips.
“Don’t! Dammit, I do not want to hurt you!” He swung her around and planted his hands firmly on either side of her head against the door as his arms formed steel bands around her. She opened her mouth. One of his hands moved to clamp down hard over it.
She was forced to stare into those endlessly blue eyes. His face, she realized, was a strikingly handsome one. His features were cleanly sculpted, very well defined.
“Listen to me, ma’am. I do not want to …”
He broke off. He took a deep breath. Callie realized that he was struggling to remain standing.
“I do not want to …”
He blinked, ink black lashes falling over his cheeks. A wild bravado filled Callie along with her realization that he was barely standing. She thrust away his hand and pushed against his chest with all of her might. “Let go of me, Reb!” she demanded.
He fell to his knees.
And then he keeled over.
He lay flat on her floor by the door. For several seconds, she stared down at him. She prodded him with her toe to see if he would move. He did not.
Was he dead?
She wanted to swing open the door and shout for Captain Johnston, but she was certain that the horseman was long gone by now. And this Reb was no longer any danger to her.
Gingerly she bent down, trying to decide if he was dead or alive.
His hat had fallen aside, and she saw that he had a full head of near ebony hair, rich and waving just below his nape. He was handsome, and more, she thought, a sudden wave of pity sweeping over her. He had gained something more than beauty in his years. There was character to his face, something in the set of his jaw, in the fine lines etched about his eyes and his mouth.
He is the enemy, she told herself.
She saw a lock of damp, matted hair at his temple. She smoothed it back and saw that he had been grazed there by a bullet.
He was also bleeding from his side. There was no rip or tear in his uniform, but a crimson stain was appearing over the gray wool of his frock coat. She rose and hurried into the kitchen, soaked a towel with cool water from the pump, and hurried back out to the parlor. She bathed his forehead and determined that the wound was not bad. He might live.
She lay her hand upon his chest and waited, and then nearly jumped when she felt the beating of his heart. The blood staining his frock coat and shirt at his side disturbed her. She moved his coat back and then pulled away his shirt, gingerly pulling the tail from his breeches. A small pang struck her, and for the first time she didn’t think of him as being the enemy. His belly was taut, his chest was tightly muscled, his flesh was handsomely bronzed. His skin was very hot to her touch. Yank or Reb, this was what war brought, the loss of such men, so handsome, so gallant, so beautiful, and in their prime.
Not so gallant! she thought with a sniff.
She brought her towel up to bathe away the blood at his side.
It was an old wound, she discovered. A slash above the hip, probably from a saber or a bayonet. It had reopened, and he lay bleeding from it.
She pressed against the towel. The flow of blood seemed to stop.
“You’re going to live, Reb,” she said aloud. “Maybe,” she murmured. She wasn’t convinced that Captain Johnston wanted any Rebs to live.
And both sets of soldiers, from the North and from the South, dreaded the horror of the prison camps.
Well, it wasn’t her problem. Her house was decimated. Not far from where the soldier lay were the shattered panes of her windows. This soldier had invaded her very home. She couldn’t care what happened to him after Captain Johnston took him away.
She bit her lip, curious. He wore the insignia of a Confederate colonel of the cavalry. Southern uniforms
were often very haphazard—she’d heard that many of the great southern generals still wore their old U.S. Army breeches with jackets and shirts of their own design. But this cavalryman was well dressed in gray with yellow cavalry trim. He came from money, she thought.
There was a small leather wallet attached to the band of his scabbard. Certain that his eyes were still closed and that he remained unconscious, Callie delved into it. Hurriedly, she looked through the packet of papers she discovered within. There were a number of letters and an old pass. She glanced over the pass quickly. It had been issued to a Colonel Daniel Cameron, Army of Northern Virginia, by General J.E.B. Stuart.
Cameron. Daniel Cameron. So that was his name. She shivered, suddenly wishing that she did not know it.
The enemy should remain nameless, she thought. It made it easier to hate. But the enemy should have remained faceless too.
She had seen all those faces out on her lawn. Young faces, looking to heaven.
Stop, she commanded herself. This was war.
She thought she heard horses coming once again and relief filled her. She stuffed the papers quickly back into the wallet. All that she had to do was call Captain Johnston, and this enemy could be off her hands. She started to move, and discovered that she could not.
She looked down. Blood-stained fingers curled around the hem of her skirts. And sky-blue eyes, very much alive with a startling threat, were upon her.
He was very much alive.
She forgot that she had been feeling magnanimous toward her enemy as a swift new fear filled her. “Let go of me!” she commanded sharply.
Those blue eyes seared right through her. A lopsided grin touched his lips.
“Not on your life, angel. Not on your life,” he promised her.
———— Three ————
The riders weren’t coming to the house, she realized. Already, the sounds of their hoofbeats were fading.
To reach the Yankee horsemen, Callie would have to move quickly. She had to escape the Reb who had so menacingly come back to consciousness at exactly the wrong time.
“No!” she shrieked. She jerked firmly at her skirt, tearing herself away. She ran to the door. She nearly had it flung open when an arm snaked out from behind her and a hand encircled her waist.
An arm covered in gray. A hand reddened by blood.
Instantly, a scream tore from her throat. “Stop it!” he commanded fiercely. He swung her around. She tried to strike him again, growing more and more frantic. She jerked away from his arms and pounded against his chest.
But this time his arms encircled her, and they came crashing down on the floor together, rolling over. To her great consternation, when they came to a halt, he was on top, straddling her. She struck out wildly at him, her panic growing. Grimly, he caught her wrists. “Ma’am, I am trying damned hard not to hurt you. Can’t I get through that thick Yankee skull of yours! What were you doing? Picking a man’s pockets before he was quite cold?”
Her eyes narrowed. There was a tone of dead reckoning in his voice. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he would do so if he had to.
“I was trying to help you—”
“Oh, just like you were helping me when you dropped my head out there and left me to die? I can see where the enemy stands with you!”
“I thought you were dead!”
“You realized that I was a Rebel!”
“You are the enemy!” she snapped out. “One of those fine, gallant cavaliers, fighting for your life of chivalry, right? Is this a sampling of your fine Southern gallantry?” she demanded.
“Darlin’, I’ll tell you, there’s lots more chivalry you’re receiving right now than I’m in the mood to give. It was one hell of a battle. I was down and wounded to begin with, and you, my dear, most courteous and proper Yank, made it all the worse with that kick in the head!”
“I did not kick you in the head!” she protested.
“You did! Right after you dropped me flat, bleeding and in torment, on the ground! And to think that I thought you were an angel!”
The sharpness of his stare seemed to go beyond her for a moment, and he winced. She didn’t think it was his own pain he was feeling. She could see from the anguish in his eyes that he thought of the rows upon rows of dead in her yard.
But now his eyes were gleaming down upon her again. “I’m not going to pass out again,” he warned her, his tone grating.
“Well, I am going to scream!” she threatened in turn, and she opened her mouth to do so.
He was so damned quick. His hand landed over her mouth again.
It was then that she heard a knocking on the door.
Her eyes widened as she stared up at the southerner. She was definitely victorious.
“Miss! It’s Captain Johnston. We’re out here to pick up our men!”
Callie squirmed furiously. She tried to sink her teeth into the Reb’s fingers.
To her amazement, he suddenly pulled a knife from a sheath at his ankle and brought the razor-sharp edge to her throat. “Don’t scream,” he hissed at her.
He wouldn’t do it. She was damned convinced that he wouldn’t do it.
She didn’t scream.
He was suddenly up, and pulling her to her feet. She still didn’t scream. He still had his knife out.
He swung her around and prodded her to the door. She felt the point of the knife right at the small of her back. “Tell him fine. Tell him that you know that he’s there, and thank him.”
Callie stood very still.
“Tell him!”
“Go ahead! Stab me!” she hissed back at him.
His fingers suddenly threaded through her hair. “Don’t tempt me!” he said.
He opened the door, standing behind her in the shadows, but keeping the blade of the knife against her all the while.
Captain Johnston stood on her porch. She opened her mouth. She meant to tell him there was a Reb in her house. She didn’t give a damn about the knife. She wasn’t afraid of the Reb, she assured herself.
She was never really sure why she didn’t turn him in right then and there. Maybe it was Captain Johnston. She was so certain that to him the only good Reb was a dead one.
What did she care? Her husband lay dead and now long buried in the yard. Her father lay dead in a mass grave with hundreds of other Yankee soldiers. And he had fallen to a man like this one….
“Yes, Captain Johnston,” she said gravely. She didn’t allow her eyes to flicker downward. She didn’t want to see the Confederate or the Union dead.
“We should be out of here soon enough, ma’am. Can my men do anything for you?”
The knife jabbed closer against her flesh. “No, Captain, I just … I just want to be left alone.”
The captain nodded. “You see any soldiers around here, you call for me. Someone will be around. I don’t want to lose any strays. There just might be a wounded man or two separated from his company. I’ll be close. Just down in the valley by the little offshoot of the Antietam stream.”
“Yes, thank you so much,” Callie said.
Johnston turned away. Callie almost called after him.
The door closed with a slam. Arms came around her, and she found herself sliding down to the floor with the Reb on her side.
“That wasn’t bad,” he told her.
“That was damned good, Colonel,” she said icily. “If you stick that knife at me again, I will scream until the sun comes up.”
“Lady, you do tempt fate!” he warned her roughly.
“What choice have I, cast into the company of so fine and chivalrous a cavalier!”
He gritted his teeth and exhaled. “I have to rejoin Stuart!” he told her.
“Well, you may just have to bleed to death first, Colonel,” she said sweetly.
“Will I?”
Feet suddenly came tramping up the porch. He drew her near again, his hand clamped tightly over her mouth. She could barely breathe. She struggled. It made no difference. He was built like
Atlas. He might be dying here in her living room, but his arm muscles were still in very fine shape.
It seemed forever that he held her. A strange eternity, for she’d never been closer to any man, never held so intimately, so tautly, for this length of time, even by Gregory. She had never sought more desperately to escape, and she had never been so securely held. After a time, she closed her eyes. The darkness continued to arrive. She could still hear the tramping of feet. Then it seemed that they slowly faded.
She was almost passing out, or almost sleeping. Perhaps she had been nearly asphyxiated, she wasn’t quite sure. But when the pounding came on the door a second time, he startled her until she nearly jumped out of her skin.
He was still beside her. He pulled her along with him to her feet.
Slowly, slowly, he eased his hand from her mouth. He turned her toward the door, and opened it.
Johnston was there again.
“We’re through here, ma’am.”
She looked outside. The bodies were gone. All of them. She felt as if she would fall for a minute.
All the poor young men …
“Miss? Are you all right?”
She nodded. Her mouth was very dry. She swallowed. Johnston wasn’t such a bad man. Not if you were on his side.
“Yes. I, er … Thank you, Captain.”
“Take care, then. If you need help with anything—”
“No, no, thank you. I don’t need any help.”
“Oh! I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you, miss. Captain Dabney did survive the day. He took a gash to his arm, but not a serious one, the surgeon says. Captain Dabney sends his regards, and his concern, but I took the liberty of informing him that you were very well.”
“Thank you. I am so relieved for Captain Dabney!”
Johnston saluted, then turned away. She watched him as he walked to his horse. He mounted it, signaled with his hand, and shouted out an order. His company—the group of horsemen and the wagons that now accompanied him—began to move. Callie stared after him.
A slow smile curved her lip. The Reb hadn’t held the knife on her at all, not once during the entire exchange.
The door suddenly closed. She was careful to let her self-mocking smile fade as she met the Reb’s stark blue gaze again.