He would leave tonight.
“That smells wonderful.”
She jumped, spinning around. He had followed her down the stairs and stood lounging comfortably in the doorway.
He was wearing her sheet. It was stark white against the sleek bronze of his torso. His nakedness had been imposing enough while he slept. Now the taut ripples of muscle against his lean belly seemed downright decadent.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. She wanted to be righteously angry. Her voice was faltering.
He lifted his hands innocently. “What do you mean?”
“Colonel Cameron,” she said with soft dignity, her eyes narrowing warningly upon his, “you come from a good home. I do believe, sir, that you come from a landed home, that you probably went to the best schools, and that you were raised to be a gentleman. So what are you doing in my kitchen in a sheet?”
“Well now, Mrs. Michaelson,” he taunted, blue eyes flashing, “should I have dropped the sheet?”
“This from a man who lives and walks due to my mercy,” she retorted.
He shrugged, walking across the kitchen, coming uncomfortably close to stir the stew and inhale its sweet aroma. “Mrs. Michaelson, from your comments, I assumed that you found me no more threatening in any state of dress or undress than you would find a toddling lad of two. And besides, you’ve burned my uniform. A grave injustice, I daresay, but as you’ve just reminded me, I must be grateful for your mercy. So what would you have me wear?”
“I’d have you back in bed, resting, gathering your strength, so as to leave this evening,” she told him.
He smiled and went to sweep his hat from his head, then realized that he was no longer in dress of any kind. “Ah, well, the uniform can be replaced. I was quite fond of the hat. Was it necessary to burn it too?”
“Quite,” Callie said.
“A pity.”
“I think not. There are breeches and shirts in the wardrobe in my room. The fit may not be perfect, but I’m sure you’ll manage.”
“Union uniforms?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth,” she said.
“I’m not escaping in a Union uniform, Mrs. Michaelson.”
“I’m sure that you wore blue at some point, Colonel. You mentioned that your brother was a Yankee surgeon, so I find it quite possible that you were both in the military before secession and this war of rebellion came about. It’ll not hurt you to wear blue once again.”
“I prefer the sheet, thank you.”
He stood by the pot on the stove, so intimately close to her that she felt the urge to scream. She fought for control, determined that he’d never best her. Perhaps that was part of the excitement. He made her determined to win. He challenged her on so many different levels.
She smiled sweetly, turning to stir the stew and managing to take a step farther away from him. “You plan to run through the Yankee lines in a sheet, Colonel?”
“Better a sheet than a Yankee uniform, Mrs. Michaelson.” He took the ladle from her fingers, dipped it into the stew, and tasted it. His eyes came instantly back to hers, and he arched a brow, a slow smile curling his lip. “It’s wonderful, Mrs. Michaelson. Really, Providence must have had mercy to have left me here, upon your doorstep.”
“Providence was just wonderful,” Callie muttered, snatching the ladle back from him. “Would you please go and put something on?”
He was quiet, watching her. She could feel his eyes just like she could feel the heat of a flame when a candle was too close.
“Truly, Callie, I cannot wear a Yankee uniform. I am not a spy, and would not be caught and hanged as one, unless I were, indeed, involved in some necessary subterfuge. I don’t relish the thought of dying in battle, but in the line of one’s duty, it is, at the least, an honorable way to perish. I’d not hang unless such a death could, in truth, do justice to my cause.”
“Oh!” Callie murmured. She hadn’t been thinking. It was true. If Yankee troops caught him in his own uniform, they would call him a prisoner of war. And he might waste away in a prison camp, but unless he came upon them with his sword swinging or his guns blazing, they’d not hang him. Spies were dealt with harshly in this war. Why, in Washington, they’d even imprisoned Mrs. Rose Greenhow, a lady who had once been considered a belle of the capital’s society. There were many suggestions that even she might be executed, although Callie tried to convince herself that the poor lady would not come to such an end.
“Callie, surely you did not offer me so much mercy so very tenderly, only that I should be well when I was hanged?”
“I was never tender,” she informed him.
“So, you did intend that I should be hanged.”
“No, sir, I did not,” she said irritably. She waved the ladle at him, taking a step forward, determined that he should retreat. “Colonel—”
He took the ladle back from her. “Really, Mrs. Michaelson, I have been attacked by swords and cannons and guns, but I am weary still, and haven’t the heart to defend myself from a soup ladle!”
In exasperation she grated out a soft oath. “Colonel, surely your mama would be quite horrified to see her son in a young woman’s kitchen garbed in nothing but her sheet!”
“My mother, ma’am, was a sage and careful lady and would surely have been as matter-of-fact as you yourself have been. She would be grateful that you had saved my life, however, and I’m quite convinced that she wouldn’t even ask why I found it necessary to be clad in nothing but a sheet.”
“Colonel, I am about to throw you out in that sheet!” she warned him.
“Cast me naked to the wolves, eh?”
“You forget, I am a Yankee. Those are but the wolves I run with myself.”
“No,” he said softly, “I do not forget.”
A curious shiver swept through her as he said the words and as his gaze met hers with a startling blue sizzle. Since she was hardly a danger to him at the moment, she didn’t understand the strange dread that filled her, almost like a premonition.
She took another step away from him. “Well,” she murmured, “I cannot bring back your uniform. I did burn it. You’ll have to find something. There should be enough civilian clothing to choose from.” She stared him up and down. “My husband was not, perhaps, so tall, but …” She paused, then shrugged. “My father’s breeches might well fit you. And my brother’s shirts are in a trunk just down the hallway.”
“I take it that I am not invited to dinner unless I am decently clad?” he said. His voice was light, a tone that teased. Were he not naked, he might easily have had the manner of the Virginia gentleman he surely once had been. The effect upon her was both sweeping and alarming, for she smiled quickly, wishing he were not capable of being quite so charming.
“You most certainly are not,” she assured him.
He bowed to her in a courtly gesture. “Then I will return as decently clad as I can manage.”
He turned with his sheet trailing. She watched him for a moment, then sank her teeth into her lower lip, fighting the sudden temptation to cry.
War had changed everything. It had stolen everything from her. And now it had brought the enemy to her doorstep, and even robbed her of the luxury of hating him.
She turned back to the stew, impatient with herself. While he was gone, she set the table. She had had precious little time to do much about the house while she had tended him over the last hours, but she had managed to pick up the kitchen and sweep up all the glass that had littered the living room. She wondered if she hadn’t become obsessive, or partly crazed, for it seemed to her now that it was almost ridiculously important to behave as if life and the passing days were just as normal as any others.
Of course, the days weren’t normal at all. Union soldiers had passed by this afternoon, still trying to collect all of the dead from the battlefield. A sergeant to whom she had nervously offered a dipper of cold water that afternoon had been near parchment-white when he had s
tumbled onto the porch. Before realizing that he was speaking to a young lady—and that manners dictated he take grave care to make his words delicate—he had told her about a trench the Rebels had been holding, and how, at the end, a New York regiment had broken their hold on it, and shot down the Rebs until they were piled two and three deep in death.
The gulley was now called “Blood Alley.”
Fifty thousand men had perished in the one battle. More blood had been spilled here in one day than in any other battle of the war thus far.
No, life was not normal today. Not while soldiers still prowled fields where the corn had been mown down to the ground by bullets, and the blood of two great armies was still damp upon the ground.
Not normal at all. Out of twenty chickens, three remained out by the barn. Two of her goats were dead, three had just disappeared. For some miraculous reason, her horse had been spared both injury and theft, but her milk cow was long, long gone, along with numerous sacks of wheat. The garden had been trampled down to nearly nothing. Indeed, war had changed everything.
But there were certain things that she could do, she determined, and so she set the table as if she were sitting down to any meal with her family. She lit candles on the table and used the good English dishes and her mother’s fine silver, and the Irish white linen tablecloth and napkins. She dug deep into the cellar to find a bottle of vintage wine, and she was just pouring it into her best crystal wine glasses when Colonel Daniel Cameron, C.S.A., made his appearance downstairs once again.
He had chosen one of her father’s simple cotton work shirts and a pair of blue denim breeches. He’d found his boots, and they came up to his kneecaps. The whole ensemble should have given him the appearance of a farm boy, but instead he had the look of a pirate about him, dashing and dangerous, and intriguing.
“Will this do, Mrs. Michaelson?” he asked politely.
“Yes, quite,” she told him. She indicated the table, untying the apron she had been wearing about her waist. “Do sit down, Colonel.”
“Why, I thank you, Mrs. Michaelson,” he told her. But he drew out a chair and stood behind it, politely waiting. Callie dished the stew into a server and brought it to the table. Once she had set it down, she allowed Daniel Cameron to seat her.
He did not seat himself immediately, but picked up the wine she had chosen. “Ah, how nice, Mrs. Michaelson. A French burgundy, 1855.” With practiced ease, he uncorked the bottle, casually inhaled the scent of the cork, and expertly poured out the wine into their glasses. He lifted his to hers, tasted the wine carefully, and grinned. “An excellent vintage, Mrs. Michaelson. I must say, the hospitality here in the North is far more than this Rebel ever dared hope.”
The smile that had just begun to curve Callie’s lips faded. “Must you keep reminding me that you are the enemy?” she asked him irritably.
He grinned and took his seat at last. “Perhaps I should eat before I do so again, since this stew promises to offer an even sweeter treat for the senses than that given by the wine.”
Callie stared at him gravely across the table. “You do have a gift with words, Colonel.”
“Only when I mean what I say, Mrs. Michaelson. May I?” He reached for her plate, and spooned a fair portion of the stew into it. He set it down before her, then helped himself. He tasted a bite of the meat, then another. He was famished, she saw. He went through half the food on his plate before suddenly pausing, having realized that she had yet to touch her fork.
“Excuse me. I’m afraid that my manners have become atrocious as of late.”
Callie shook her head. He’d had nothing but water in almost two days. She thought lamely for something to say. “My mother, sir, raised three sons, and she’d have been delighted to see any man who had been so ill enjoy a meal with such gusto.”
She was startled to realize that his free hand had moved across the table, and that his fingers had fallen over her own. Warm, intimate. His touch sent a quiver tearing raggedly down her spine. “Callie, should all Yankees have your way, war might well have been averted.”
The touch of his fingers, the sensual feel of his eyes upon her, were suddenly too much. She snatched her fingers back quickly.
“There you go again. You are the enemy. If you cannot remember that fact for a meal, then you really should eat alone.”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “It’s dangerous ever to forget the enemy,” he told her.
“Meaning?”
He shrugged. “Did you know, Mrs. Michaelson, that soldiers trade? Time and again, my Rebel troops have been encamped on one side of a stream, with Federal troops encamped on the other. And all night they send little boats of tobacco and coffee back and forth, and sometimes they get to be darned good friends. Sometimes we’re close enough to see their faces.”
His voice was harsh, his words were bitter. Callie shook her head again.
“There, sir, goes a touch of humanity within this insanity we have set upon. Why should it disturb you?”
“I’ll tell you why it should disturb me, Mrs. Michaelson. One of my young privates became very friendly with a boy from Illinois one night. And then he met his newfound friend on the field of battle the next day.”
“And?”
“And he hesitated to pull the trigger. His newfound friend did not. My private died, Mrs. Michaelson.”
Callie kept her chin high. Her lashes swept over her cheeks. “Colonel, you are not going to meet me on the battlefield, ever. Therefore, you need not worry about my status as an enemy.”
“Ah-—” he began, but then he fell silent, tense and still—listening. For a moment, Callie did not know what he heard. The sound of horses’ hooves pounding against the earth came to her ears. Someone was riding up to the front door.
He was instantly on his feet, vibrant, filled with tension and with readiness for battle. She was suddenly very afraid for him, because she knew then that no one would ever take him easily, he would always fight until the very end.
“Don’t you dare draw a knife on me again!” Callie warned him as he started to reach for her. Despite her words, he was quickly around the table, his fingers creating a vise about her arm as she stood. “Callie—”
“Let go of me!”
“I can’t—”
“I’ve already kept silent about you for two days. I didn’t mention a word about you when the soldier came by today.”
“What?”
A certain tension gripped her as he shook her arm. “Soldiers have been crawling all over the place, Colonel. If I were going to turn you in, I would have done so by now.”
Slowly, cautiously, he released her arm. Callie walked through the kitchen and the parlor, going to the front door. She threw it open and gasped. She wasn’t startled to see a Yankee soldier at her door, but she was surprised to know the officer who came this time.
It was Eric Dabney, Gregory’s friend.
“Eric!” she said.
“Callie!”
Disconcerted to say the least, Callie stared at the Union cavalry captain standing on her porch. He was a young man, in his early twenties, of medium height and build with warm brown eyes and a head full of thick brown hair. He had a sweeping mustache and well-manicured beard. He was an attractive man, Callie thought, but he’d often amused her because of his vanity. She wondered, upon occasion, just how he managed to get in much soldiering, because he was very proud of his mustache and beard, and Gregory had told her once that he spent hours grooming his facial hair.
But he was concerned for her, she knew. She should be grateful to see him on her porch.
As it was, she couldn’t think of anyone she’d less rather see at the moment.
“Callie!” he repeated.
“Eric!” she said and fell silent.
He was certainly expecting more. She had to ask him in.
“Callie, I had to make sure for myself that you were all right. What with Gregory … gone.” he said. He cleared his throat. “I have time for a cup of coffe
e.”
“Oh, of course, you’ll have to come in!” she spoke loudly. She hoped her Rebel guest heard her. She had no choice. She had to ask Eric in. She could tell he was already suspicious. She should have hugged him and told him how glad she was that he had survived the battle. She shouldn’t have left an old friend on the porch.
What was she doing? There was an enemy in her house. She should tell Eric that this minute.
No. She had made up her mind long ago—maybe right from the beginning—that she was going to shelter this particular Rebel, wrong as it might be.
Besides, she wasn’t sure that Eric alone would be any match for this Rebel, even if Daniel Cameron was wounded. There was a quality of strength about Daniel. He had grown very lean and hard. Callie was convinced that he was very adept with any weapon he might choose to use. He wouldn’t have survived this far if he were not.
The only way to best him would be when he was completely down.
For Eric’s sake, she needed to take grave care.
“I was worried through the whole battle,” Eric said as he took a step closer to her. “As soon as I saw you outside in the lull, I was worried sick. I imagined us losing this ground, I was horrified about the Rebs coming in here and finding you. A woman alone …” He touched her chin, and then he drew her against him in a warm hug. “Callie, if anything had happened to you …”
She wondered if she was being watched. They were standing in the doorway. She wondered why she should care if her uninvited Rebel guest saw her being hugged by another man.
They were enemies, but Daniel owed her for her silence, and for the care that she had given him.
Still, the thought of his watching her now with Eric made her uneasy.
She broke away, taking Eric’s hands and holding them, but creating some distance between them.
“I’m fine, Eric. And I thank God that you came through this horror alive.”
“I thank the Lord too,” he murmured. “But I mean to come out of this war all right. And I mean to come back here, Callie, for you,”