And One Wore Gray (14 page)

“The whole Union army isn’t around anymore.”

“Enough of it is.”

“You were afraid for your friend,” he insisted.

“I didn’t care to have the inside of my house as well as the outside littered with bodies!” she returned sharply.

“Ah, a true tender heart!” he said, laughing.

“He might have slain you on the spot!” Callie stated.

“He might have. But I doubt it.”

“My, my, sir, but you are pleased with your own prowess.”

“I haven’t been pleased with anything in a long, long, time, Mr. Michaelson. And I’ve been out there for a very long time. There are few battles that I’ve missed. And even when I’ve fallen, I’ve brought down countless men before doing so.” His eyes looked old and weary, his face drawn. “I’m not pleased at all, Mrs. Michaelson, I’m sickened. But I’m a survivor, and an officer, and I’m needed. And I’m good with a sword. It’s very unlikely that I could be taken by one man. And you know it. You saved your friend’s life by not mentioning the fact that you were harboring a Rebel.”

“You are not just arrogant, you are insufferable,” Callie muttered. She determined that she couldn’t stand there any longer, and that it was one thing for him to guess that she hadn’t wanted him to clash with Eric, and quite another to know it for certain. “Do what you will!” she told him. “Although, who knows? Perhaps I should tremble for the entire Union once you are loose upon it!”

She swung around a final time, heading back for the kitchen.

She didn’t reach it. She felt his hand on her shoulder, spinning her around.

“Do you want me to go or don’t you?” he demanded, his eyes dark, nearly cobalt, his features tense.

She jerked free from him. “Yes. No. No, I don’t! I’m
sick of the death and the pain. And God help me, I do not want your death on my conscience!”

“And what of those I may kill later?” he demanded.

She inhaled sharply, staring at him, stricken with the thought. God in heaven, who had invented this horrible thing called war?

“Better a Rebel soldier now, not scores of Yankees later, eh?” he asked softly.

Callie swallowed tightly as she continued to meet his steel-blue gaze. “Do what you will, Colonel,” she repeated.

He shook his head. “No, I want to please you, Callie,” he persisted.

“What?”

Dismayed, she tried to pull free from him. Damn him! He was too close again. She could feel the things she had felt when he had kissed her. She breathed in the scent of him, the clean scent of the soap she had bathed him with, the deeper, more subtle scent that was his alone, and part of the things that made him the man he was.

She didn’t want to see his face so closely, see the fine set of his cheeks, the molding of his jaw. She didn’t want to grow attached to this man. And she certainly didn’t want to be held in his arms again, to feel the startling, overwhelming sense of desire that had risen within her. And most of all, she didn’t want to feel as if she could fall in love with him, as if loving was something that could come all too easily, as if it might be something that had already begun.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded harshly.

“I want it to be your call, Callie. You tell me to stay, or you tell me to go. Thousands of men are dead, from both sides. Thousands more are going to die before it’s over. Tens of thousands.”

“Would you stop that!” she cried out, horrified. She
backed farther away, afraid of the stubborn set to his chin.

He came toward her again, and she should have run from his touch but she did not. He cupped her chin and lifted it so that her eyes were caught in the charisma and determination of his.

“The call will be yours.”

She didn’t want him standing there. So painfully close again. So close that she wanted to forget everything.

Again, she jerked away—and retreated. “I don’t want you to die,” she said simply.

“Because I’m in your house?”

“Because I know your face.”

“More than my face,” he reminded her ruefully.

“Oh!” She let out an oath of impatience, curling her fingers into her palms. “Because you’re no longer a stranger. You’re not just a number.” He still stared at her, waiting. “All right! Because I care for you!” she admitted, but when he would have walked toward her again, she set a hand into the air, stopping him. “I don’t want you to die, but I don’t want you near me. Do you understand?”

His smile was slow, bittersweet. “Yes, I think that I understand,” he told her.

To her amazement, he walked by her.
She
was still for a minute, then she heard a clattering in the kitchen.

He was picking up the dishes that remained on the table. He ignored her when she stood in the doorway, bringing things to the counter and to the water pump to rinse them.

She watched him for a moment. “Did you—manage to eat anything?” she asked him.

“Yes, thank you. I ate just fine,” he told her. He shrugged, glancing her way. “I took my stew upstairs. Remind me. The dish is still on the floor.”

He seemed adept enough at picking up. Callie
leaned against the door frame, watching him. “You’re quite useful, so it appears,” she told him.

He glanced her way, arching a brow.

“Well, you do come from a big home, right? A plantation. And I’ll bet you grew up with lots of slaves—”

“Excuse me,” he interrupted her, setting down the plate that he had just rinsed and putting his hands on his hips to face her. “I’m the younger son. Jesse—my Yankee brother—is the one who owns them. Or owned them,” he corrected himself.

“You don’t have slaves on your plantation anymore?”

“It’s Jesse’s plantation, the main house, anyway. But yes, they’re still there. Most of them. They just aren’t slaves any longer.”

“Jesse freed them?”

“We freed them. The three of us. My brother, my sister, and I. In June. Jesse was home for a spell, and considering that he’s a Yank himself and damned unwelcome in Virginia at the moment, it seemed the time to settle some family business. We knew then that the war wasn’t going to be over in a few more weeks, or months even. We needed some things settled, what with Jesse going one way, and me going another. But don’t go applauding us, Mrs. Michaelson. We didn’t do anything spectacular. We freed our people because we could afford to do so. We can pay them. The good majority of them chose to stay on. God knows what will happen by the end of the war. I’m going to worry about some of them then.”

“Why is that?”

“Why is that?” he repeated. He smiled. “Well, now, I don’t take anything away from your Mr. Lincoln. Oddly enough, I rather admire the man. Maybe slavery—and the South’s determination to cling to that institution—is why we got so fired up over states’ rights to begin with. But Lincoln didn’t go to war to strip the
South of her slaves. Lincoln wound up fighting a war to preserve the Union. Maybe the outcome of this war will be hundreds and thousands of freed slaves. Then what? Will they all be welcome in the North? Welcome in New York City along with the thousands of immigrants that seem determined to flood these shores? I don’t know. I do know that my people—whether they are owned or free—have Work. And they have food. They have roofs over their heads. Not many of them live in the plantation house. But human life, black or white, has always been respected in my house. I just hope their lives will be worthwhile in the North, once this thing is over.”

“Any price is worth freedom,” Callie said.

“Well, now, maybe that’s true, Mrs. Michaelson. I don’t rightly know. Hunger can be a pretty fierce enemy.”

Callie shook her head. “You said that you admire Lincoln. There’s right, and there’s wrong, he said. And it’s wrong to own another person!”

Daniel Cameron lowered his eyes. She could see the small, secret smile that curved his lip. “Is that what he said, Mrs. Michaelson?”

“Well, more or less! Really, Colonel—”

“Callie,” he said, raising his eyes to hers, “I’m not making fun of you. I’m admiring your passion! God alive, Callie, I wish it could be so simple for me! Many men have decried slavery. Thomas Jefferson wanted to abolish slavery when he was writing the Declaration of Independence! And he owned slaves! But it’s not that easy. There’s an entire economy based on slavery. There are men who insist that even the Bible condones slavery. Callie, I’m not God, I don’t know!”

“So you’re a Rebel!”

“I’m a Virginian. And Virginia chose to secede from the Union.”

“But your brother—”

“My brother followed his conscience, Callie. I followed mine.”

“So he is your enemy.”

“He is my brother, and I love him.”

“But you fight him!”

“Jesu, what is this!” Daniel exploded, throwing his hands into the air. “I didn’t start this war! Sometimes, I don’t even give a damn, except that it might be over. There are days when my only real hope is that Cameron Hall survives both armies, that it will be there for me to see when at long last that day comes that I can really go home. But a man has to be what he is, and do what his heart dictates to him! Virginia seceded, and my oath, my allegiance, is to my state! I’m a cavalry officer, and I serve the cavalry. I serve Robert E. Lee, a man of ethics, grace, and honor, and in return, I serve with all the ethics, grace, and honor I may possess in turn. I cannot walk away from the war because I am tired of it. I am what I am, Callie. A Rebel. Your enemy!” He exhaled a long breath, watching her where she remained silent and wide-eyed, in the doorway. “Oh, hell!” he muttered. Tense as a jackal, he spun around and strode across the kitchen to one of the shelves. There was a whiskey bottle upon it, and he grabbed it by the neck and walked angrily toward Callie.

There was such a leashed passion to his stride and taut features that Callie jumped back, unnerved by the way he seemed to be bearing down upon her. But long before he reached her, he paused, his mouth twisted into a bitter facsimile of a smile.

“I’ve no intention of harming you—or touching you, Mrs. Michaelson. But if the countryside is that packed with Yanks, then I will accept your gracious hospitality for the night. And since I dare not come near you, I’m going to go and lock myself in a room. And since I don’t want to lie awake all night wondering just where
you are and what you’re doing, I’m taking the whiskey bottle. What a companion it will make!” He paused in the doorway and bowed very low to her.

He walked through the parlor and started up the stairs, the whiskey bottle tucked under his arm.

A moment later, Callie nearly jumped a mile as she heard the ferocious slamming of a door.

Indeed, it seemed that her Rebel was here for the night.

It seemed to Daniel that he spent the majority of the night leaning by the window, staring out at the darkness.

He felt surprisingly well—almost too damned well. Because of that, he had decided not to remain in his hostess’ bedroom, but had come down the hall to the second bedroom.

This room was every bit as impeccably neat as the first, but furnished with more of a masculine flair. There was a bed with a polished oak frame, a heavy desk, a large wardrobe, and a seaman’s chest at the foot of the bed. He had come here before to find the clothing he was wearing, but he hadn’t thought much about the room’s occupant. Did it belong to one of Callie’s brothers? Or had it been the private domain of her father?

Sitting on the windowsill in the darkness, Daniel took another long swig from the whiskey bottle. There was a beautiful painting of a horse that hung over the desk, and sitting on top of the desk was a fine antique compass. There was a Revolutionary War sword hung on the wall, a trophy passed down from generations before. There was a deck of cards in the bottom drawer at the base of the wardrobe—he knew that because the
cards were just beneath the breeches he had borrowed. It seemed those cards had been kept there discreetly. Somebody was a bit of a gambler.

He’d probably like the fellow who was supposed to be sleeping here. They both had a passion for horses. And Daniel liked to gamble just as much as the next man. They shared an appreciation for the past, and …

They probably shared a passion for Mrs. Callie Michaelson.

Daniel swore softly and swallowed more of the whiskey. What was it that was so damned entrancing about her? She was a beauty, but he’d known many beauties, he’d admired them, and he’d even loved one or two. This was different. Seeing her was different, listening to her was different. Touching her was different.

What was it that made him want her so badly? The war, he tried to tell himself. The days and nights of nothing but dirty water and hardtack. The endless riding, the company of soldiers.

No.

Had he spent the last months in a whirl of socials, he would still have felt such emotion for this woman. She was unique. There was wisdom in her eyes. After all, she had been a married woman. But there was innocence in them too. There was something beneath the beauty of her lips, the silk of her flesh. Something that smoldered, something electric, something so alluring and seductive that being near her was nearly more than he could stand.

“Damn! So what am I doing here?” he murmured aloud. He looked out on the darkness beyond the house. He should have moved on. He was restless, and he needed to be back. He needed to find out just how many men had been lost by Antietam Creek, and he needed badly to let Jeb Stuart know that he was alive.
His friends and superiors might well be mourning his loss this very moment.

But he couldn’t allow himself to be killed, either. He’d be no damned good to anyone that way.

He flexed and unflexed his hand, then stood and looked out the window again. He really shouldn’t let his guard down. How the hell did he know what really went on in her heart? She might care for him, but she might also have signaled that Yankee captain somehow. She hadn’t wanted them to clash in her house because Daniel would have been forced to slay her friend. But maybe she had given him some message, some clue.

They could be surrounding the house right now.

No, he determined dryly. She hadn’t given the man a message. She’d been too busy trying to dissuade him from his sudden turn of passion.