And One Wore Gray (7 page)

“No!” she shrieked. She jerked firmly at her skirt, tearing herself away. She ran to the door. She nearly had it flung open when an arm snaked out from behind her and a hand encircled her waist.

An arm covered in gray. A hand reddened by blood.

Instantly, a scream tore from her throat. “Stop it!” he commanded fiercely. He swung her around. She tried to strike him again, growing more and more frantic. She jerked away from his arms and pounded against his chest.

But this time his arms encircled her, and they came crashing down on the floor together, rolling over. To her great consternation, when they came to a halt, he was on top, straddling her. She struck out wildly at him, her panic growing. Grimly, he caught her wrists. “Ma’am, I am trying damned hard not to hurt you. Can’t I get through that thick Yankee skull of yours!
What were you doing? Picking a man’s pockets before he was quite cold?”

Her eyes narrowed. There was a tone of dead reckoning in his voice. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he would do so if he had to.

“I was trying to help you—”

“Oh, just like you were helping me when you dropped my head out there and left me to die? I can see where the enemy stands with you!”

“I thought you were dead!”

“You realized that I was a Rebel!”

“You are the enemy!” she snapped out. “One of those fine, gallant cavaliers, fighting for your life of chivalry, right? Is this a sampling of your fine Southern gallantry?” she demanded.

“Darlin’, I’ll tell you, there’s lots more chivalry you’re receiving right now than I’m in the mood to give. It was one hell of a battle. I was down and wounded to begin with, and you, my dear, most courteous and proper Yank, made it all the worse with that kick in the head!”

“I did not kick you in the head!” she protested.

“You did! Right after you dropped me flat, bleeding and in torment, on the ground! And to think that I thought you were an angel!”

The sharpness of his stare seemed to go beyond her for a moment, and he winced. She didn’t think it was his own pain he was feeling. She could see from the anguish in his eyes that he thought of the rows upon rows of dead in her yard.

But now his eyes were gleaming down upon her again. “I’m not going to pass out again,” he warned her, his tone grating.

“Well, I am going to scream!” she threatened in turn, and she opened her mouth to do so.

He was so damned quick. His hand landed over her mouth again.

It was then that she heard a knocking on the door.

Her eyes widened as she stared up at the southerner. She was definitely victorious.

“Miss! It’s Captain Johnston. We’re out here to pick up our men!”

Callie squirmed furiously. She tried to sink her teeth into the Reb’s fingers.

To her amazement, he suddenly pulled a knife from a sheath at his ankle and brought the razor-sharp edge to her throat. “Don’t scream,” he hissed at her.

He wouldn’t do it. She was damned convinced that he wouldn’t do it.

She didn’t scream.

He was suddenly up, and pulling her to her feet. She still didn’t scream. He still had his knife out.

He swung her around and prodded her to the door. She felt the point of the knife right at the small of her back. “Tell him fine. Tell him that you know that he’s there, and thank him.”

Callie stood very still.

“Tell him!”

“Go ahead! Stab me!” she hissed back at him.

His fingers suddenly threaded through her hair. “Don’t tempt me!” he said.

He opened the door, standing behind her in the shadows, but keeping the blade of the knife against her all the while.

Captain Johnston stood on her porch. She opened her mouth. She meant to tell him there was a Reb in her house. She didn’t give a damn about the knife. She wasn’t afraid of the Reb, she assured herself.

She was never really sure why she didn’t turn him in right then and there. Maybe it was Captain Johnston. She was so certain that to him the only good Reb was a dead one.

What did she care? Her husband lay dead and now long buried in the yard. Her father lay dead in a mass
grave with hundreds of other Yankee soldiers. And he had fallen to a man like this one….

“Yes, Captain Johnston,” she said gravely. She didn’t allow her eyes to flicker downward. She didn’t want to see the Confederate or the Union dead.

“We should be out of here soon enough, ma’am. Can my men do anything for you?”

The knife jabbed closer against her flesh. “No, Captain, I just … I just want to be left alone.”

The captain nodded. “You see any soldiers around here, you call for me. Someone will be around. I don’t want to lose any strays. There just might be a wounded man or two separated from his company. I’ll be close. Just down in the valley by the little offshoot of the Antietam stream.”

“Yes, thank you so much,” Callie said.

Johnston turned away. Callie almost called after him.

The door closed with a slam. Arms came around her, and she found herself sliding down to the floor with the Reb on her side.

“That wasn’t bad,” he told her.

“That was damned good, Colonel,” she said icily. “If you stick that knife at me again, I will scream until the sun comes up.”

“Lady, you do tempt fate!” he warned her roughly.

“What choice have I, cast into the company of so fine and chivalrous a cavalier!”

He gritted his teeth and exhaled. “I have to rejoin Stuart!” he told her.

“Well, you may just have to bleed to death first, Colonel,” she said sweetly.

“Will I?”

Feet suddenly came tramping up the porch. He drew her near again, his hand clamped tightly over her mouth. She could barely breathe. She struggled. It made no difference. He was built like Atlas. He might
be dying here in her living room, but his arm muscles were still in very fine shape.

It seemed forever that he held her. A strange eternity, for she’d never been closer to any man, never held so intimately, so tautly, for this length of time, even by Gregory. She had never sought more desperately to escape, and she had never been so securely held. After a time, she closed her eyes. The darkness continued to arrive. She could still hear the tramping of feet. Then it seemed that they slowly faded.

She was almost passing out, or almost sleeping. Perhaps she had been nearly asphyxiated, she wasn’t quite sure. But when the pounding came on the door a second time, he startled her until she nearly jumped out of her skin.

He was still beside her. He pulled her along with him to her feet.

Slowly, slowly, he eased his hand from her mouth. He turned her toward the door, and opened it.

Johnston was there again.

“We’re through here, ma’am.”

She looked outside. The bodies were gone. All of them. She felt as if she would fall for a minute.

All the poor young men …

“Miss? Are you all right?”

She nodded. Her mouth was very dry. She swallowed. Johnston wasn’t such a bad man. Not if you were on his side.

“Yes. I, er … Thank you, Captain.”

“Take care, then. If you need help with anything—”

“No, no, thank you. I don’t need any help.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you, miss. Captain Dabney did survive the day. He took a gash to his arm, but not a serious one, the surgeon says. Captain Dabney sends his regards, and his concern, but I took the liberty of informing him that you were very well.”

“Thank you. I am so relieved for Captain Dabney!”

Johnston saluted, then turned away. She watched him as he walked to his horse. He mounted it, signaled with his hand, and shouted out an order. His company—the group of horsemen and the wagons that now accompanied him—began to move. Callie stared after him.

A slow smile curved her lip. The Reb hadn’t held the knife on her at all, not once during the entire exchange.

The door suddenly closed. She was careful to let her self-mocking smile fade as she met the Reb’s stark blue gaze again.

“Good,” Cameron muttered. “You did well.”

“That’s because you have such a way with women, Colonel,” Callie told him sweetly.

“And you ma’am, are pure sweetness and light!” He grinned slowly. He mocked her in return, but he was surprisingly, wickedly handsome.

“Colonel—”

“Who is Captain Dabney?” he demanded.

Her brows shot up. “A friend, Colonel,” she said icily.

“A friend, or lover?”

Stunned, she felt her hand go flying through the air without the least bit of thought. He caught her hand before it could connect with his cheek, but it was no stay for her amazement and fury. “War or no war, sir, how dare you come up with a question—”

“Because I have to know if this Captain Dabney is going to come stepping into this house at any given moment!” he told her.

“You’ll just have to wonder, won’t you?” she said heatedly.

He smiled. “Ma’am, you are a Yank to match any Rebel I’ve known in all my born days. Ah, but with outrage like that, you’re probably innocent.”

“Innocent!” Callie exclaimed. She wanted to kick
him. “Mark my words! I will assuredly be as dangerous as any man you might meet on a battlefield! And Colonel, I’d be much obliged if you’d step outside the door before closing it again,” she said.

“I can’t rightly do that, ma’am,” he said, sweeping down to pick up his hat and set it upon his head. He seemed affectionately attached to that hat.

“Why?”

“I’m bleeding.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” she demanded, suddenly furious. “Men bled and died all over my property—”

“You must excuse us for dying. We don’t do it on purpose,” he interrupted dryly.

Callie ignored his sarcasm. “You insult me, you invade my property—”

“I invade it!” he snapped back. “Lady, if you think this is something, you should see Virginia! Your armies have ripped it to shreds. There are miles and miles where nothing grows anymore, where there isn’t a horse or a cow to be seen, where the children are half-starved! And you’re going to tell me about invasions!”

She stepped away from the pain and the passion in his eyes.

“I lied for you, Colonel. I kept you from a prison camp. Now you can go on to kill dozens more Union soldiers. You could even kill my kin.”

He leaned against the door, suddenly very weary again. “I could kill my own kin,” he said softly. Then his eyes shot open again. “I’m very sorry, but you are going to help me. I am not going to bleed to death on your property!”

He suddenly gripped her hand and dragged her along with him into the kitchen. At the sink he began to pump water. Callie gritted her teeth, but she reached for a clean towel and soaked it, and when she
had done so, she pressed it against the wound on his side. “Hold this!” she snapped.

He did so, and she dragged a chair over by the sink and stood on it and delved into a cupboard above it. She found some clean linens and brought them down, and began to rip them. “Lift your shirt!” she commanded him, and he did so.

Once again, she was uneasy at the closeness between them as she wound the linen around his bronzed torso. “It seems that whoever sewed you up didn’t do a complete job; And they slander our Yankee surgeons!” she muttered.

His fingers were suddenly digging into her arm, drawing her eyes to his as she gasped at the jolt of pain.

“A Yankee surgeon sewed me up, Miss Stars and Stripes. And a damned good one. He just wasn’t expecting me to be riding quite so hard so fast. He did the best damned job he could for me.”

Startled, Callie stared up at him. “Why, you’re kind to our side, Colonel. Why should a Yank do the best damned job for you?”

“Because he’s my brother,” he said impatiently. “Are you done?”

“Your brother?” Callie said, startled.

“My brother,” he snapped flatly in return. He didn’t intend to be questioned about his words—or his family.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so surprised. Her own brothers had asked to fight on the western front, just so that they wouldn’t be expected to shoot their neighbors or friends from Virginia. Maryland itself was a state with totally divided loyalties.

“Are you done?” He nearly bellowed the words this time.

Callie jerked away from him. “You’re—bound up the best that I can do for you. Now will you please leave?”

He pulled down his shirt and tucked it into his
breeches, wincing slightly. He strode out to the parlor, his boots crunching over the glass. In the darkness, he opened the door and stared out over the fields. He stood there for the longest time, and she wondered what horrors of war he relived as he waited.

He finally closed the door and turned around, striding back toward her.

She moved away, but he didn’t intend to touch her, it seemed. He strode in and pulled out a chair at the big oak table and sat. “Have you got anything to eat in here?” he asked her.

She didn’t know why she suddenly felt so nervous in his presence. She wasn’t afraid anymore. Despite his threats, she didn’t believe that he would have really hurt her, no matter what she had done. Perhaps his chivalry was not the spoken kind. It had been in his eyes when he had looked out on the battlefield.

She wasn’t afraid of him but she was becoming increasingly more aware of him as a man. Not as an enemy, not as a Reb. Just as a man. Aware of his height, his scent, his voice. His nearness. Even the way he sat with his long, booted legs stretched before him.

“Look, I’ve done everything that I can for you—”

“Right. There’s nothing like a good kick in the head. You definitely owe me for that!”

“I did not kick you in the head!”

“I do beg to differ, darlin’. I felt it, that tender touch of your delicate foot!”

“I certainly didn’t intend to.”

“Then you would be merciful to your enemy, eh?”

“I’ve been damned merciful!”

He tilted back his hat. He watched her with heavy-lidded, curious eyes.

“But I am the enemy?”

She gripped the back of a kitchen chair. How dare he sit there in his gray uniform with his gaunt and haggard face and say such a thing to her.

“Yes! Yes, you are the enemy! And I don’t owe you a damned thing! I’ve done far more for you than I should have done in all good conscience!”