And One Wore Gray (22 page)

He had scarcely begun to move when he heard the quick flurry of footsteps behind him. Instantly on the alert, he tried to swing around.

A fist caught him in the jaw.

The world seemed a blur, but it was a whir of blue he recognized well. Yankee soldiers! The room was crawling with them.

Far more startling than the pain that stung his jaw was the gut-wrenching agony that streaked through him.

Callie.

She had betrayed him. She had brought them here. She had seduced him like any fool, and God damn her to a million hells, he had fallen.

“Bitch!” he snarled. The blue clad arm with the fist attached was swinging again.

“Hell, no!” Daniel raged.

Then a sound filled the room. Callie, leaping from the bed to lean flat and miserable against the wall, nearly screamed with pure terror. She clasped her hands over her ears, aware that the sound had come from Daniel, and that it was the ear-piercing warning known as a Rebel yell.

Every man in the room blanched at the sound of it, just as surely as she did herself.

Shirtless, his naked shoulders and chest shimmering sleekly with his every movement, Daniel almost seemed to dance with an agile ease about the room. Eric’s three subordinates fell atop Daniel one by one, and one by one, he fought them off with his fists. A slug to one man’s jaw, a kick to the next man’s groin. Then his fists flew again, and the sickening sound of those fists against human flesh filled the room.

“Rebel, be damned!” Callie heard Eric growl, stepping into the fray.

She heard a thud again, and Eric came rolling out of the huddle of the fight, clenching his bleeding jaw with his hand.

He drew his pistol.

“No!” Callie shrieked.

But no one was listening to her. Daniel’s opponents at last managed a well-coordinated attack, one of them slamming a pistol on the back of his head just as he turned to face the two others. Gritting his teeth and holding the back of his head, he fell to his knees.

Before he could rise, Eric was behind him, the shining rod of his revolver set against the base of Daniel’s skull.

Everyone in the room heard the cock of the trigger.

“Don’t make a move, Reb,” Eric warned. “Not a move.”

Callie waited, praying.

She saw Daniel’s eyes close, saw his teeth grate down harder. He opened his eyes again.

They were a different blue from any color she had seen before. Suddenly they fixed upon her.

They were the cold blue of hatred.

He was still as one of Eric’s men carefully grasped his wrists and drew them back. Callie winced, trying not to jump as she heard the snap of steel.

They had set slave shackles around his wrists.

Eric caught hold of his shoulder, pulling Daniel to his feet. He was a tall man. Gallic hadn’t realized just how tall until she saw him rising an inch or so over Eric and his Federals.

Eric spoke to him, gloating. “How do you like the feel of them shackles, boy? It’s just what you folks do to your people down there. Kind of puts a crimp on things, eh, boy?”

Daniel suddenly spun, and his feet moved in a flash. Shackled in steel, he was still a dangerous man.

His feet hit Eric dead in his middle. Stumbling backward and turning white, Eric clutched his wounded body and swore.

Freed for the moment, Daniel took the opportunity to stalk Callie. His long strides brought him quickly across the room until he was standing just an inch from her. She could see the sheen of sweat on his chest, feel the exertion of his rapid breathing. Feel the cold ice-fire of his eyes upon her.

She felt the blood drain from her face. A trembling like a palsy swept through her.

“Daniel—” she tried to whisper.

“This steel won’t hold me forever, Callie. No chains and no bars can ever do that. And I’ll be back. I promise you that. I’ll be back for you.”

“Shut up, Reb!” Eric called to him suddenly. “She was just a good Yank, turning you in. It was a damned good job, Callie.”

She wanted to scream. A pulse ticked violently against Daniel’s throat, and she knew that he believed the very worst, that she had planned on turning him in for a long time. It was your fool life I was trying to save! she wanted to scream. But there couldn’t be any explanations, not here, not now. Not with Eric and three of his badly battered Union soldiers looking on.

She moistened her lips. She saw the mocking sneer that curled his mouth.

“Daniel, I didn’t—” she began at last.

“Poor Yank!” Eric said. “She’s a pretty piece, isn’t she, southern boy? We have our weapons here in the North too. And she’s a deadly one, isn’t she, boy?”

He didn’t turn. “It’s Colonel Cameron, Captain, not boy,” he said flatly. He smiled at Callie. A smile so cold that chills began to sweep furiously through her once again.

“I’ll be back, Callie. And when I come for you, there won’t be anywhere for you to hide. Believe me. I’ll be back. It’s a promise.”

“That’s enough!” Eric cried out sharply. “Take him, Corporal Smithers.”

Smithers didn’t move quickly enough. Daniel turned around, still smiling. They were all still afraid of his booted feet.

Callie flattened herself against the wall because Daniel was turning back to her. She could breathe in the scent of him, feel the slow, sure pounding of his heart.

And feel his eyes once again.

Eric brought the butt of his revolver down hard upon Daniel’s head. Without a whimper, without a sigh, her passionate Rebel fell at last, black lashes closing over the blue hatred in his eyes.

October, 1862

It was still daylight when the wagon carrying Daniel to Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C., stopped before the building.

Daniel was able to see it clearly. There were no shadows of darkness to take away any of the squalor of the sight before him.

Dark, dank, decaying walls greeted him. A miasma hung over the place. High plank walls surrounded it, and iron bars covered the windows.

It was a building he knew well enough, as any frequent visitor to the capital would have. Before the war, Daniel had certainly been in Washington often enough.

He had always loved the city. It had been planned and built with the purpose of being the capitol of a country. The vistas down the long mall were exquisite, the government buildings were handsome, and the wide streets and rich boulevards were inviting. In spring the river kept the scent of flowers fresh and clean, and in the fall, no place could be more beautiful.

But even here, a man could find the results of ill treatment and abandonment. At no place could that be seen more clearly than at Old Capitol Prison.

When the Capitol had been destroyed during the War of 1812, a brick building had been constructed for the temporary use of the government on 1st Street. Then the Congress had moved back to their permanent quarters, and the building, simply called “Old Capitol” the last time that Daniel had seen it, had begun to deteriorate.

It had been deteriorating ever since, Daniel thought wearily.

Someone prodded him in the back. “We’re here, Colonel. Your new home in the North,” his Yankee driver said with a snigger. “Get on up and out of there, now.”

It wasn’t easy for Daniel to do. His feet and wrists were still shackled. In fact, he’d lain on his side in the jouncing wagon so long that all of his body felt bruised and knotted and stiff, and trying to arise at all was difficult.

It had seemed like an endless journey from the Yankee encampment where he had first awakened to find himself so trussed. He’d been in pain from the first, aware that he’d been kicked and beaten by his captors even after he’d lost consciousness. His ribs were sore, his old wound was oozing a trickle of blood.

He hadn’t been bothered by much at the encampment. He’d seen enough soldiers, though, all coming around to peek in the tent where he’d been taken as if he were some kind of circus animal. They all wanted to see Danny Cameron, the horse soldier with the rapier sword, brought down at last. Some of them jeered. Some of them asked how it felt to be trussed up like a pig for gutting. Some of them just stared gravely. One soldier said that it just wasn’t any way to treat a man, any man.

A Union major had agreed, and before Daniel knew it, the onlookers were driven away, and he had been brought a chair to sit on and a blanket. None of it
really mattered to him at the time because he was still living in a haze of pain. But the major seemed a fine enough fellow, determined that Daniel be given good, clean water and a decent meal. His own troops were eating well enough, it seemed.

Not even the major seemed to feel safe enough around him to see that his shackles were removed. It wasn’t until Daniel told the young private assigned to look after him that he couldn’t possibly eat the meal—or take care of any other human necessities—with his hands shackled that they were undone. The nervous private faced him with a rifle aimed at him all the while he ate and attended to other necessities. Then the irons were put back on him.

The major also demanded that his prisoner be treated with respect. They’d all been brothers once, and God willing, they’d all be brothers again. It seemed that this major knew Jesse, and was appalled that any West Point graduate should be treated so shabbily.

“Beauty himself chose to ride for his homeland,” the major said wearily. “I’d not even have you cuffed so, sir, were I certain that you could not escape.”

“Sir, it would be my duty to Beauty himself to escape at any possible opening,” Daniel told him honestly.

He wondered about his damned honesty because the stinking irons remained. Night had come and he’d been left to sleep in his shackles, but had spent most of the night awake, cramped, bruised, and in pain.

He hadn’t minded the pain, he’d rather welcomed it. It had kept him from thinking.

Thinking was dangerous. Every time he dared to think, a blind red fury settled over him.

He’d been such a fool. Half the Yank army hadn’t been able to drag him down, but that little flame
haired witch with the silver eyes had only to crook her finger to do so.

Lying in agony, he’d seen it all, over and over again, every word that passed between them, his wanting to walk away, her beckoning him back.

The fury that raged in him was so strong, he wasn’t sure he cared who actually won the war anymore.

Just as long as he could go back. For her.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do to her. He just wanted it to last long. And to be unendurably agonizing. He felt his fingers jerk, and he thought that he wanted to wind them around her neck.

Too smooth. Too easy.

What then?

An ancient English torture maybe. Like the rack.

Not vicious enough …

Morning had come. His temper hadn’t eased a wit.

Another day passed with the major being a decent enough fellow. Daniel hadn’t known the man before the war, but apparently his reputation in the West before the start of the war had circulated through the night.

Maybe some of the Union soldiers hated him more for having resigned when Virginia seceded.

But for the most part, he thought that the men understood. Little things began to appear for him. A really beautiful red apple. A small flask of Irish whiskey.

That night, he played cards with the major, and it was then that he learned he’d be moved to Old Capitol in the morning.

“I’ll see to it that your brother knows where you are, safe and alive and out of action,” the major assured him.

Daniel winced. Jesse would start moving heaven and earth, and get in bad with his own side, to get Daniel out. Especially if he was worried about the wound. Jesse never stopped being a doctor.

“Thank you just the same, Major. Jesse’s got his own war to fight, and he’s busy somewhere patching up men. I don’t want him informed.”

“He’ll find out soon enough.”

“I reckon. But give it till then. I’m a big boy, and I chose my own side.” He was quiet for a moment. “And I made my own fool mistakes,” he added. He smiled to the major, just to assure him there were no hard feelings.

“I’d like to let you go, Colonel Cameron. But I can’t. You’re just too damned important. Maybe they’ll exchange you. They’re still trying to swap a private for a private, a sergeant for a sergeant—a colonel for a colonel. Sixty privates for a general. But I hear that our side is starting to say we’ve got to quit exchanging. Every time we put one of you Rebs back in the field, you just start killing Yanks all over again.”

“It is a war,” Daniel said politely.

“To our great sorrow, Colonel, yes. To our great sorrow.” He sighed, and rubbed his whiskered chin. “I can’t even make you more comfortable. If your wrists are free, I’ve got to keep the shackles on your ankles. They tell me you fight like a son of a gun. Where did you learn to fight like that?”

Daniel grinned. “Why, Major, I learned how to fight back home.”

“Your pa bring in a professional to teach you?”

“No, sir. Jesse was bigger, and we’d disagree now and then, so I had to get tougher.”

The major laughed. He shared the Irish whiskey with Daniel.