And One Wore Gray (20 page)

He stared at her as if she had sounded that knell herself. She felt as if her breath were leaving her. He was challenging her, accusing her—awaiting some response from her.

“What would you have me say!” she cried out. “I do not believe in slavery. If Lincoln can bring the South to her knees and end this war with such a proclamation, then I must be glad!”

He exploded with an oath, his fingers clenching into fists at his side. “Do you know what he will do eventually in Maryland, Callie? He will see that the slaves are freed here, but it will be with some type of compensation for the owners.”

“So he is not a stupid man!”

“No, he is not a stupid man at all!” Daniel spat out. “It is only to us—” He broke off, and she didn’t miss the handsome but bitter twist that curved his lip. “I keep forgetting,” he said softly. “There is no ‘us.’ You are ‘them,’ or ‘they’—the enemy. And to think—-I had almost forgotten!”

“Yes!” she cried passionately. “I am the enemy! And you should not forget it! You told me once that no man should ever forget his enemy. Your private died for hesitating before he could shoot a friend. Don’t forget your
own
lessons, Colonel!” she reminded him. She gasped, backing away as he took a sudden, menacing stride toward her. “Oh!”

He stopped, his features taut, his shoulders and his body ramrod stiff. “Damn you!” he grated out. He turned about, straight as steel, and started for the stairs. He paused, his back to her. “Enemies, madam, until the day that we die. I will be out of your house as hastily as I can manage!”

Callie stared after him, furious, shaking. As he disappeared past the upstairs landing, she felt her anger begin to fade.

He was going to leave her when he was still so furious. They might never talk again. So much for love! So much for the hunger, the need, and all the passion that had flared between them. So much for his whispers that he could not leave without having her again.

Then damn him, her pride cried out. Let him go! If he wished to see her as the enemy, then so be it! She would not apologize if her side—after defeat and humiliation and death—was finally beginning to see signs of hope. She would not say that she was sorry for her beliefs when she knew in her heart that she was right.

Daniel knew, too, that slavery was wrong. No man, black or white, should be owned, body and soul, by another. He had freed his own slaves. He was angry because Lincoln wasn’t just a ‘long drink of water’ as political opponents had labeled him. The backwoods lawyer from Illinois might prove to be one of the greatest men of their time. Daniel saw it, and he was angry because of it.

Alone upstairs, Daniel plucked a pillow from the
bed and hurtled it across the room. It felt so good that he picked up the next pillow and threw it too.

He sank down at the foot of the bed, running his fingers through his hair.

Damn Callie! Damn her.

No. Damn Lincoln. And damn the war.

If Callie had been born in the South, she might be on a different side. She had never lied to him. She had never pretended to be a southern sympathizer. She hadn’t even tried to fight him. She had simply refused to back down.

He frowned suddenly, thinking he heard something from outside. He rose and looked out the window. It must have been Callie. If he wouldn’t leave her house, then maybe she was planning on leaving it herself.

He shouldn’t be so distracted, he thought vaguely. On the battlefield, it would be deadly to lose oneself so completely to emotion.

He was going to leave now, he decided. He rose and reached for his scabbard and buckled it around his hip. He pulled on his boots and clenched his teeth against the sudden onslaught of pain that assailed him.

He was in love with her. With the beauty in her dove-gray eyes, with the fire in hair, and in her voice. With the passion of her heart.

The past half hour had proven them enemies. He had no right to stay longer. He was needed at home. And he had probably just cost them any chance of a tender good-bye with his irrational display of temper.

Walk away, he told himself. Make it easy on both of us, and walk away!

But as he started down the stairs he knew that he could not just walk away.

She waited in the parlor, her fingers wound into her palms, her palms held tautly at her sides, for what
seemed like forever. Daniel didn’t reappear. Tears stung her eyes. She refused to shed them.

He was angry, she realized, because he was losing his grasp upon his world. He was fighting with all of his heart and with all of his strength. He could ride, and he could wage battle, and he could best his enemy. But it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t be brave enough, he couldn’t be daring enough, and he couldn’t be loyal enough. The numbers were against him.

She knew then that she understood him, maybe better than he did himself. If she knew Daniel—and dear Lord, yes, she had come to know him—he would realize it all soon enough.

He had to go. He had to go back to his damnable dying cause, because if he didn’t, he’d never be able to live with himself. But he’d never, never admit—not even now—that his precious Confederacy might really lose the war.

She moistened her lips and fought the tears that stung her eyes. She turned on her heels and walked through the house to the kitchen, and then out the door to the back. She walked down the steps, not knowing exactly where she was going, except that she was leaving the house—and Daniel—behind her.

But she did have a direction in mind, she discovered. Her footsteps took her past the barn, and far out back to the little
family
graveyard. She plucked a wildflower from a thicket and dropped it atop the new mound of dirt over the Yankee soldier they had buried just the night before. She stared down at the tombstones that honored her father and Gregory, and she felt as if a rain of tears suddenly fell upon her soul. How many? How many would have to perish in this awful contest? What price this honor that all the fool men of her acquaintance seemed so desperate to shed their blood for?

She sat down atop the grass that had grown over her
husband’s grave and closed her eyes, remembering. It seemed as if they had loved and laughed in another world. He had not died very long ago, but it seemed like forever since she had seen him. He had held her, laughing, in his arms. The war would be over in just a few weeks, he had told her, and he would be back. He had seemed invincible then with blond hair curling over his collar and his blue-green eyes solemn with both his cause and his duty. But he had been so certain. All that they had to do was give the surly Rebs a good lickin’, and they’d come marching home.

Instead she’d met his body in the railway station, a lonely figure clad in black, awaiting a coffin.

She’d been so much younger before that day.

She started, hearing something by the house. She shaded her eyes and looked toward it. There was no one.

Sighing, she moved her fingers over her husband’s tombstone. It was then that she heard a soft voice, Daniel’s voice, coming to her gently from across the graveyard.

“ ‘He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone;

At his head a grass-green turf,

At his heels a stone.’”

Callie stood, dusting off her hands on her skirt, touched by the sad, haunting quality in Daniel’s voice.

He seemed so far away, so distant from her. His temper had faded. Just as he had seemed to mourn the life of the boy who had died in the barn, he seemed to mourn her husband’s life too.

“I’m sorry, Callie.”

But she wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for their argument, or if he was saying he was sorry Gregory had died.

He was ready to leave, she saw. His scabbard was buckled over his hips, and his fine cavalry sword with
its menacing edge was situated in that scabbard. He was still in her father’s breeches and cotton shirt, but he was clad in his high black boots once again, and curiously, he looked every inch the soldier. His ebony dark hair fell low on his brow, but his eyes were unobscured, and they were filled with a breath-stealing tenderness as they fell upon her.

“Shakespeare,” she murmured softly.

“Hamlet,”
he agreed.

“Ophelia’s words,” she said.

“Yes.”

She tried to smile. “You read fairly well, for a Rebel.”

His smile deepened. “Yes.”

She stared at him, over Gregory’s grave, as the breeze rose between them, lifting her hem, playing a bit of havoc with the stray tendrils of her hair. The sky was blue, the day was pleasantly cool, the sun touched down upon them over a cloudless sky.

The scent of death was gone. There seemed to be just a hint of wildflowers on the air.

It was a beautiful day. Such a beautiful day to say good-bye.

She wanted to say his name, but no sound would come. A ragged little sound escaped her, and he stepped across Gregory’s grave and took her into his arms.

His kiss was long and deep. It was filled with tenderness and with anguish, and it seemed that it lasted forever. When he raised his lips from hers, it seemed that it had lasted not at all.

He stared into her eyes as endless seconds ticked by. He was waiting for her to speak, but words would not come.

Maybe there were no words that could be said. He had to go. They both knew it.

Maybe he would return.
And maybe he would not.

He touched her cheek with his knuckles.

“Once I mocked a man for words that I heard him whisper to you. No more. For Callie, I, too, will love you until my dying day!” he told her quietly.

She tried to blink away the sheen of moisture in her eyes. Despite his words, he was building a wall between them, holding himself from her.

“And still I remain your enemy!” she cried softly.

“And I, yours,” he reminded her.

“It isn’t dark yet,” she said stiffly.

“No, it isn’t dark. Damn you, Callie, I can’t wait for the dark. Lord in heaven, I’m trying hard for just a bit of nobility here….” He pulled her close against his heart. She stiffened. No, she could not beg him to stay, she had to let him go! She could not plead, or seduce, for he was right, they had to part. God! Give her strength, give her pride!

“Ah, Callie!” he murmured.

He released her, then turned around and began to walk.

He skirted around the house, and she stared after him, unable to believe that he had really left so easily. Yes, he had to go. But not yet, oh not yet! They had to be together, they had to have their last moment.

She had to tell him.

Damn strength, and damn pride.

She had to tell him that she loved him.

“Daniel!”

She cried out his name and started to race after him. He was already around the house, starting out across the field, she thought.

“Daniel!”

She raced around the back porch and had nearly turned around the back corner of the house when suddenly fingers wound tightly around her arm, jerking her back.

She spun around astounded, gasping.

Her eyes widened with horror and alarm and she opened her mouth to call out a warning.

She came flying forward, jerked hard against her assailant. She choked and gasped, trying anew to scream, but she was swirled around and a hand clamped down hard on her mouth.

Her cry became a silent scream of anguish.

A whisper, furious, harsh, touched her ear.

“So you’ve been harboring the enemy right to your bosom, Callie Michaelson. And right over Gregory’s grave! Traitor, witch!”

He paused, so furious that words failed him. “Whore! Well, you’re going to pay for it, lady. Because you’re going to get your lover back here for me, Callie, and you’re going to render him vulnerable and harmless, or else you’re going to watch him die!”

“Eric!”

Callie tried to fight his hold upon her. He held her tight, his fingers trembling with emotion. He didn’t intend to let her go. She looked around wildly, trying to understand how he had managed to arrive at the house, with neither she nor Daniel aware of his presence.

She realized that he had probably come upon them very easily. He had probably ridden near and heard the argument ensuing in the house. Daniel was usually so wary. But he had not been so careful after Rudy Weiss had appeared and after he had read about Lincoln’s emancipating the slaves. Neither had paid heed to anything around them once they had begun to argue. They had allowed Eric the perfect opportunity to approach the house.

And he wasn’t alone, she saw quickly. Three of his men were flattened against the wall of the house.

Eric and his men had only had to dismount and leave their horses down the slope. Then all they’d had to do was slip around the house while she was out and Daniel was upstairs.

Why hadn’t they attacked him already, she wondered?
Chills sped over her spine. Why hadn’t they just drawn their swords or attempted to shoot him down?

She opened her mouth to scream out a warning again, but was jerked back hard against Eric.

“Don’t do it, Callie. I don’t want to have to try to shoot him down.”

“Why not?” she demanded, fighting his hold.

“Because I want him alive.”

“So why haven’t you taken him?”

Eric hesitated. She heard the grinding of his teeth. “Because he’s carrying that sword of his.”

“There are four of you.”

Eric’s lashes fell over his eyes, and when his gaze fell upon her fully again, it was bitter. “I guess maybe you didn’t know just who you were entertaining, Callie. That’s Daniel Cameron.”

“I know his name.”

“I’ll just bet. I’ll bet you know lots more about the man too.”

She didn’t want to flush or falter, but she felt the warm red coloring suffusing her cheeks despite her best efforts. Eric’s fingers tightened over her arms like a vise. She bit down hard on her teeth to keep from crying out with the pain.

Meeting his eyes, she realized that he hated her. As much as he might have once coveted her, he hated her now. It wasn’t because Daniel was a Confederate, she thought. It was because she had turned Eric down, and because she hadn’t been able to stay away from Daniel.