And One Wore Gray (50 page)

“Are you really married?”

“Yes.”

“Does she want to be here?”

“No.”

“Wonderful. You’re going back to war and leaving us with a woman who despises us all!”

“She doesn’t despise you all. Just me,” he said. There was a deep, underlying bitterness there. Callie bit her lip. She had no right to be eavesdropping in the hallway. She needed to make her presence known.

“But that baby … Daniel! You didn’t—”

“I didn’t what?”

“Force her into anything, did you? I mean you didn’t—”

“Rape her? Kiernan! How the hell long have you known me?”

“I’m sorry, Daniel: But this baby! He is so beautiful! All that black hair—and the eyes. Beyond a doubt, they are Cameron eyes!”

“Yes, I know.”

“Daniel Cameron, you forced her down here because of this baby!”

“He’s my son.”

“But he is hers too!”

“And she’s my wife, Kiernan!” he said, and sounded impatient.

“But—”

“Kiernan, Lord knows how many marriages are arranged with the bride and groom scarcely knowing one another. So ours is not a love affair. She is still my wife.”

“Well, you did acquire a striking woman, Daniel. She is probably the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

Daniel sniffed loudly. Callie could hear the sound all the way into the hallway.

He spoke softly. “Yes, she is beautiful. And she knows how to weave a spell and use that beauty. My wife can be as treacherous as she is lovely, Kiernan. Remember that.”

“Where are you going?” Kiernan said.

He must have been rising. Panicked, Callie ran out to the porch.

It was dark now. She flattened herself against the wall. She was breathing far too quickly. She closed her eyes, willing her heart to beat at a more sensible pace.

She opened her eyes. Daniel was standing before her.

He had bathed and shaved elsewhere. His hair was damp, his cheeks were clean and alluring, the fullness of his mouth was twisted in a wry, rueful smile. In the
darkness, his eyes were obsidian. His scent was clean and raw, and as he moved closer to her, she nearly cried out.

“Well, well, good evening, Mrs. Cameron. Fancy finding you out here.”

She lifted her chin, and hiked up a brow. “Oh? Was I to have been confined to the house, sir? If that is the case, then you should have advised me so.”

“Careful, Mrs. Cameron, you’ll find yourself confined to your room.”

“I haven’t a room. It is your room.”

“I keep a lot of my personal property in my room,” he said casually.

She tried to kick him. He stepped out of the way, laughing, then he caught her arms and suddenly wrenched her toward him.

“I’m going to Have one dinner in this house, madam. And it’s going to be a pleasant one.”

“Perhaps I should beg a headache, and then you needn’t fear any disruption.”

“No, my dear wife, for if you were so distressed, I would consider it my duty to be with you. And we’d be locked together all of those endless hours.”

“Dinner sounds divine,” Callie said sweetly.

He took her arm. Warmth danced along her spine.

The moon suddenly appeared, shining down on them both. “You are extraordinarily beautiful,” he told her softly.

She swallowed. She wanted to say something. She wanted to beg for a truce.

“Am I?” she whispered wistfully.

“Indeed. We’ve one night, my love. Just one night.”

The warm, dancing shivers assailed her once again.

She didn’t know if the words were some kind of a threat or a promise.

Sometimes, Daniel reckoned, it was possible to forget the war.

Sometimes he could almost half close his eyes, sit back, and imagine that they had gone back to a time when the army rations weren’t always riddled with worms, when he didn’t have to look at shoeless men in rags day after day.

Sometimes there was a return to events so warm and sweet and gracious that he forgot the screams of the dying as they echoed in his head.

Like tonight.

The older children, Patricia and Jacob Miller, had determined that they weren’t going to eat with the grown-ups, but that they’d be responsible for entertaining John David until his bedtime.

Christa had determined they wouldn’t sit at the regular dining table, for it was far too large for an intimate dinner of four. The large oak table had been set far down the room, and a small square table from the kitchen had been brought in and covered with a snowy cloth.

The Cameron’s best silver was on the table, and their glittering Irish cut crystal. Between the women of the household and Janey and Jigger, they had created a
banquet. The meat was only ham, but there was an array of summer vegetables and fruit to tempt even a well-fed palate, let alone Daniel’s. He held an orange with amazement, but Kiernan cheerfully told him they’d had a blockade runner tied up at their dock just the week before, picking up raw produce from the plantation in exchange for all manner of commodities. The captain had just been down to Florida, and the fruit he had brought back had been exceptional.

He saw that Callie, too, studied an orange with a certain awe, and he was startled by the depth of feeling that suddenly shook him, a combination of shame and admiration.

Perhaps he really had had no right to drag her through the lines the way that he had. He’d put her through danger, and massive discomfort. She’d never once complained.

He bit into his ham, chewing hard. She’d always had courage. He’d admired it from the start. That was why he had fallen so swiftly and so completely in love with her. That was why he had followed her out of the cornfield that day.

It was why the Yanks had beaten, subdued, shackled, and imprisoned him.

But perhaps she had done it to save his life. If it weren’t for the damned war, perhaps he
could
trust her. He wanted to.

She had created the fabulous creature now being rocked by Janey in the kitchen. Jared Cameron. His son. A healthy, beautiful baby boy.

His stomach turned. Who could have ever imagined that it would feel this wonderful to be a father? He’d always liked children; he’d had some time with John Daniel as an infant to learn what they were like. And he’d loved his nephew dearly, just as he loved Jesse and Kiernan.

He’d never imagined what he would feel, looking
into Jared’s sky-blue eyes, feeling those tiny fingers close around his own.

They were all here now. He’d wanted his son home. The idea probably hadn’t even been rational at first. But he hadn’t been about to leave the boy with Callie.

Revenge?

Maybe. Or maybe he had just wanted her here. And maybe he hadn’t wanted to marry her because that would hurt her too. She had come with him anyway. She had never suggested marriage. He had.

He sat back. They were all so beautiful. Most men in his position would be convinced they had died and gone to heaven. His sister was striking with her ivory skin, coal-dark hair, and startling, deep-blue Cameron eyes. Even as a child Kiernan had been a beauty, with her classic features and wheat-blond hair, just touched by streaks of strawberry and sun.

Callie sat between them to complete the picture. Delicate, elegant, with the perfect shaping of her face, the large pools of her haunting gray eyes, the lovely bow of her mouth, and the shimmering auburn blaze of her hair to defy even the shade of a perfect sunset. She was dressed in silver this evening, silver-gray, a color that met and matched her eyes, and made them even deeper, darker, more elusive.

She truly was beautiful, he thought, extraordinarily so. In this dove-gray and silver, and in the white gown with the embroidered red flowers that Ben had procured for their wedding.

She’d been upset when they had left that gown behind. It had probably been the first gown of such elegance that she had ever owned. She had come from a small farm. Even the White wedding dress she had certainly worn to her first wedding had probably not been of the same quality.

He could never accuse her of seeking riches of any
kind. She seemed to stand up well against any calamity, be it flying bullets, poverty, hunger, hardship.

But this was the same way that he had been made the fool before, believing in her, loving her. She had the face of an angel.

She caught him studying her as she handled the orange and she flushed, placing it back on the table. She sat very stiffly, so quickly on the defensive.

And why not? Do you ever say anything even remotely kind to her? he taunted himself.

What is there to say? Tell her the truth? I love you, Callie, I love you with all of my heart. I want it just to be Jared, but I need you, I want you. So many times I have longed to bring you close beside me, to speak all that is in my heart.

But then I hear your whisper, feel the softness of your flesh….

They were all talking. His sister and Kiernan, who truly loved him, and Callie, who they were artfully drawing into the conversation. He watched as she became animated, talking about her brothers.

Her smile was beautiful; the sound of her laughter was contagious.

He wanted to love her so badly. But he was afraid. Afraid that he had killed the love between them. Afraid that he could never really trust her, not while the war raged on.

He pushed back his chair. Three pairs of startled eyes were drawn his way.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he said with an extravagant drawl. “I think I’ll go out on the porch for a cigar.”

He bowed abruptly and turned to leave them.

“But Daniel—” Christa began. “Ouch!”

Kiernan must have kicked her beneath the table, Daniel decided wryly. His sister was hurt, he knew. He had so little time with them, and it seemed that he was trying to escape them.

He leaned over the porch rail and looked over the rose garden, beautiful, haunted in the moonlight. Far down the slope of the lawn, the ivory glitter of the near full orb in the sky fell upon the river, the ever moving river. It was beautiful. It was peaceful. It was his home, and he was loath to leave it again.

Far across the yard he saw the old family cemetery, and beyond, the summer cottage. He paused, struck a match to his boot and lit a thin cheroot he had taken from the huge accounts desk in the den. He puffed on the fine tobacco.

He wandered down the steps and began to walk.

Summer was hot and humid. But here, by night, no matter how bad the day had been, nightfall brought a balmy breeze that seemed to caress and envelop him. Had it always felt so good just to walk in the darkness? Or had he learned the beauty of his home once he had been forced away from it so many great lengths of time?

Traditionally, the house would come to Jesse. Cameron Hall had always been inherited by the eldest son. But Jesse had always been more interested in his medicine, and Daniel had been the one who knew the acreage and the livestock. There had never been any reason to worry about who actually owned the place. They both loved it. And the family owned more houses than they might ever need. His mother had hailed from Mississippi, but his grandmother had brought a plantation into the family, a place called Stirling Hall. Kiernan had her own home, too, just up the river, and a doting father with no one to leave the place to except to his daughter and her children. Yes, they were all rich in houses and land.

Now they were rich. But the war would eventually strip them all. So far they had been lucky. Maybe they would stay lucky.

Maybe some Union company that didn’t give a hoot
about a colonel named Cameron might come along and burn down the place.

And any company, Reb or Yank, could come by and rob it blind, “confiscating” for the troops. Just as they had confiscated through Pennsylvania and Maryland.

He had reached the graveyard. The shadowy silver light of the moon fell upon the white tombstones. A low heat fog lay on the ground, and marble angels seemed nearly to dance.

Daniel walked through the little gate and wandered to his father’s grave, and his mother’s beside it. “Who’s right, Pa? Jesse and Callie, so convinced on the one side, and Kiernan and Christa and I, ever rebels at heart!” he whispered to the night. He sighed and continued to speak out loud. “Maybe slavery is wrong, Pa, but isn’t it equally wrong for one set of people to tell another set how to live? Given time, the southern states might have begun to free their slaves—they might have voted it out. I hear tell that Vermont abolished slavery some time ago. Hell, Pa, Thomas Jefferson couldn’t deal with the question when he was writing the Constitution. The founding fathers actually left us in a bit of a bind here. And we’re killing one another over it daily now. I had to go with Virginia, Pa. That’s the way I saw it. Just like Jesse had to go north.”

And then there’s Callie, he thought, silent once again.

His father would have liked her. He would have liked her poise, and he would have liked the way that her eyes met the world, wide and steadfast. He would have liked her strength under duress, and he would have liked the beautiful smile that curved her lips every time she looked upon their son.

“Yes, then there’s Callie!” he said aloud. “How do I know what’s true within her heart and soul, Pa? How do you learn to trust someone again? I want to believe
her, but then I’m afraid. I hurt her, and God knows, I hurt myself. And if she really cared for me once I’ve managed to turn that love to dust!”

He paused in the moonlight, then smiled suddenly and turned away from the graves. He didn’t know what he had expected to find here, but he had found a curious determination.

He walked past the smokehouse and the laundry and the rows of slave quarters until he reached the barn. Quietly and quickly he walked among the horses, talking to them as he passed them, looking them all over one by one.

The Yankee bay had been a decent enough mount, but he was wasn’t taking it when he rode back to war. He wanted one of the saddle horses he had bred and trained himself.

He paused, wincing, thinking of the horses that had been killed beneath him. He chose a tall black named Zeus, patting the animal’s nose. “Maybe we’ll have better luck this time, eh, boy?” he whispered, stroking the fine neck. Zeus was half Arabian, and he had the deep dish nose and flying tail of that breed. He was a large horse, standing nearly seventeen hands high. “The Yanks might be after me just to get their hands on you, boy, but what the hell, sir, they’ll be after us no matter what. We’ll worry about that tomorrow. Tonight, well, tonight we’re out for a ride.”