One Wore Blue (40 page)

Mentally, he drew a picture of the area. Harpers Ferry was far below, with Maryland Heights, the mounts and hills and crests and valleys, all around. He thought of the manors and the plantations in the region, places where he had attended balls and fêtes and where he had hunted with friends.

He remembered that the trail before him led to the ruins of the Chagall estate.

“All right, Pegasus, let’s see what she’s up to,” Jesse murmured. He tightened his thighs, urging the horse forward.

*  *  *

Some mornings when Kiernan awoke, she still prayed that she would discover that it had all been a horrible nightmare.

Jesse had never come to the house. None of the Yanks had ever come. The war had yet to touch them, and a dozen injured men were not living in her house.

At first, nothing could conceivably have been worse than having Jesse in the next room. Surely not even the fires of hell could bring so much torment as having him so near. She had not slept, just knowing that he was there. Hearing his footsteps across the wooden floor, imagining the movements that he made—she could picture his face because she knew him so well. He would be weary coming in from surgery. He would cast off his coat or his jacket, sit back in the chair at the desk, and prop his booted heels up upon it. He would sink down, close his eyes, and press his temple between his thumb and his forefinger. Then, slowly, his hand would fall, his eyes would open, and he would rise.

She could hear him moving about the room, stripping down. His boots falling to the floor, his shirt over a chair, his breeches, his belt. Then she would hear his weight as he fell upon his bed, and she would picture him again, fingers laced behind his head, his eyes upon the darkened shadows on the ceiling.

In the silence that followed she could imagine no greater anguish than lying awake and seeing him in her mind’s eyes, just feet apart from her. He was her enemy now. They had no future together. Jesse had donned blue and gone his own way, and she could never change him. She had sworn to hate him.

And she had sworn to herself that she hated him.

And she did, completely. But love died hard, she realized, no matter what color cloth covered a man.

And now she was Anthony’s widow. She had married Anthony, and Anthony was dead, and it had not been that long ago, and she should have been in deepest mourning.

But none of that mattered when Jesse was in a room. No matter how deep her fury, no matter how desperate her situation,
when he came near, smoldering sparks came alive, furnaces blazed. Her hatred was intense—and so, too, was her longing.

It was not simply Jesse’s arrival that tormented her. It was the men who camped out on the lawn. It was the men who lay in Anthony’s room across the hall. Yankees. Sick Yankees, hurt Yankees.

When she had first heard a man screaming in the surgery, she had simply stayed in her bedroom, her hands clamped over her ears. She could have sworn that the victim had died. But there he was that night, alive and well, and with a gentle smile when he saw her looking in on him. He, too, was the enemy.

But how could she wish him dead?

Then the others came. They were men with lean faces and blue eyes and brown eyes, and men with weary and worn faces. Some wore whiskers, and some did not. They, too, were the enemy. They were the same as any man, and as often as not in this region, they had kinfolk on the other side, and they prayed not so much to live as to not encounter their own loved ones at the other end of their rifles. She wanted to ignore their suffering; but she discovered that she could not bear it.

She also discovered that Jesse’s patients were a fine way to learn the movements of the Union troops. They had all come in from skirmishes in the countryside nearby, and the information they had was invaluable.

She had already left a message at the oak for foraging Confederates to vacate a place before Yankees with superior numbers could surprise them. Now she had a second opportunity to do so. It pleased her greatly. It seemed, at the very least, some recompense for the anguish of having Jesse in the house and the agony of hearing the screams that came from the surgery.

Night was coming quickly this evening, she realized, riding harder as she neared the Chagall estate. She reined in, seeing the pillars of the burned-out place, white and black and ghostly in the pale moonlight that had replaced the rays of the day’s dying sun.

The wind rustled through the trees, and haunting shadows fell over the terrain. Movements seemed to flutter all about her, and for a moment she held still, as a shiver of fear danced up and down the length of her spine.

She had been a fool to come so late at night, she thought. But there was little to fear, she told herself. The Rebs would not hurt her, and the Yanks were already living in her house.

And still …

The breeze was very cool, and the night seemed to have eyes.

She leaped off her horse and raced to the old oak. Just as she neared the tree, a shadow stepped out from behind it.

The shadow of a man, and not of a man …

Tall, dark, pitch-black, and menacing, the moonlight caught him in a strange silhouette, throwing his shadow far and wide across the tree and all the overgrown lawn before the house.

Kiernan screamed, reeling back, her hand flying to her mouth. Instinctively, she turned to run. She heard a shout, but in her panic, it meant nothing. She tore across the weeds and grass and fallen branches, desperate to reach her horse. The wind rose again, rustling through the trees with sudden vengeance.

She could feel him, the shadow on her back, hounding her. She ran faster, gasping, screaming desperately for every breath, running so hard that her lungs ached and threatened to burst, her legs cramped and burned, and her heart hammered.

Just feet away from her horse, the shadow devoured her. She was swept off her feet, and she screamed again in a wild panic. She felt herself falling and hitting the hard earth, the shadow on top of her.

She fought it, swinging out, kicking, screaming, slamming hard again and again against the blackness and the hard bulk as panic overwhelmed her.

“Kiernan!”

At last, her name penetrated her terrified senses. She went rigidly still.

“Kiernan!”

Jesse! It was Jesse. She should have known. She should have recognized the angle of his hat, even in a distorted silhouette. She should have known the feel of him, the scent of him.…

But when she had left the house, he was in his room! He had just finished surgery, he’d probably received messages from Washington, and he should have been involved in all that was going on in his hospital.

How had he reached the oak ahead of her?

“Jesse!” Sanity was returning to her. The wind was high, and it whistled and rustled through the trees like something alive. The moonlight came down upon them fully now, and his face was clear above her own. It was a handsome face with clear, defined features, a rugged face, with fine character lines around his eyes. It was a face she knew so well.

Suddenly, she worried that somebody might be in the area—Angus or T. J. or one of their neighbors. If they saw Jesse straddled over her like this, they might …

Kill him.

“Jesse, get off me, you fool!”

“Why, Kiernan?” he demanded. His voice was harsh, his eyes were nearly obsidian in the night. His touch was steel.

“Why?” she repeated, incredulous. “Because you’ve got me pinned to the ground! Because you just scared me half to death. Because I hate, loathe, and despise you. Because you’re the enemy. Because you’re goddamned wearing blue!”

His eyes glittered in the darkness. His hands pinned her wrists above her head. He was so close to her. She felt the warmth of his breath, sensed the heat and tension in him, felt the rippling of his muscles. It didn’t matter what she said. He ignored her.

“What the hell are you doing out here?”

“What the hell is it to you?” she spat. She stiffened in agony beneath him, praying that he would move, and quickly. He wasn’t hurting her; he was just holding her with his thighs, with his weight, with the taut ring of his fingers around her wrists.

“What are you doing out here?” he thundered again.

“I came for a ride!”

“At night?”

“Yes, it’s night, isn’t it? Bright boy. That must be why you Yanks do so well in battle.”

“Stop it!” he commanded her.

“Stop what?”

“Stop acting like that!”

“Acting! I’m not acting, Captain. This is war, remember?” She stared up at him, growing very cold against the damp earth, hating him, and suddenly afraid as she saw a ruthless glimmer in his eyes that was as cold as the night. Had his grasp slackened just a bit? She strived with all her strength to kick him. He swore, and she gasped out, rolling hard to elude his touch.

But he was right with her. Before she had moved six inches, he was on top of her again, splayed over her this time. He held her wrists together with one hand and lifted her chin with his free thumb. “I’ll ask you again. What are you doing out here?”

“I came for a ride. What are
you
doing out here?”

“Following you.”

“Jesse, I’m not going to tell you anything—”

“Kiernan, they shoot spies!”

“Go to hell, Jesse. I’m not a spy! And if I—”

“Bitch!” he swore suddenly. He rose to his feet, drawing her up before him. His hands were so tight on hers that she almost cried out with the pain. He pulled her so tautly against him that she could scarcely bear it. His fingers wound into her hair, tight and painful. She met his gaze.

“You used my men. You acted like an angel of mercy, but you didn’t care in the least that they suffered. You’d just as soon see them dead, right? But you moved among them from that very first night for whatever little tidbit you might pick up from them—men so very grateful for the least little bounty that you offered!”

He was snaking, trembling with his rage. He had her pulled so flush against him that she could feel the beat of his heart. The heat of his words and his anger touched her lips, almost like a kiss.

“Jesse, damn you, I didn’t—”

“Damn you! Don’t lie to me!”

“Fine, fine!” she cried out. Tears stung her eyes from the pressure of his fingers upon her hair. She could not look away. “I’d use them anytime, Jesse, and I’d use you. You’re the enemy. My God, how many times do you have to be told that? I hate you, Jesse, and I hate them! They’re invading my land! They’ve taken over my house! They’ve killed my friends and my people! What the hell do you want from me?”

He was dead silent as the wind rustled through the trees again and as the night drifted all around him. He swore an oath, still furious, still shaking, his fingers curling around her shoulders. “What do I want out of you?” he repeated savagely. He teeth flashed white in the moonlight. “What do I want out of you? I want to curl my fingers around your throat. I want—”

He became still again. But only a second passed before his lips were suddenly on hers, hard and nearly as savage as her words. His mouth formed, hot and demanding upon hers, igniting an instant blaze within her, a combustion that rocketed the night, that seized hold of all her senses and left her powerless to resist.

It had been so long …

So long since he had held her so, so long since she had felt the world tremble beneath her feet, felt joy erupt in her heart and in her limbs and in the deepest, inner core of her body. She could not resist, for she was melded to his form, so tight against him that they might have been one. His arms were so powerful around her. His tongue ringed her lips and forced entry to the sweetest depths of her mouth.

He held her and kissed her. With each passing second the hot, sultry seduction of his mouth and tongue took her deeper and deeper into a no man’s land of longing and memory. Bright tears flooded her eyes as the thing that she could never deny to herself sprang into her thoughts.

She loved him.

No war could change that, no color could cover that blindness. She loved him, and she wanted him.

No! She’d never been a wife to Anthony in any sense. At the very least, she could be a decent widow.

She wrenched free from the seduction of his touch. “Jesse. No, damn you!” she cried out, and stepped back a foot, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as if she could erase what had happened.

“Kiernan—”

“No! Never! Not here, not now! Not near Anthony’s house, dear Lord!”

“Kiernan!” His voice was hard and rugged and rasping as he took a step forward.

“I’m a widow, Jesse! Anthony’s widow!” she stressed.

He went dead still, his fingers knotted tightly into fists and clenched at his side. “Damn you, Kiernan,” he muttered.

“Don’t touch me again!” she whispered. “Don’t touch me. If he was ever your friend, if you ever had any respect for him. Jesse, this is his home, his land.”

“And it was
his
home,
his
land, where we first made love!” Jesse exploded.

It was like a slap in the face—because it was true.

She spun around, anxious to reach her horse. But she didn’t get very far before he caught hold of her elbow and spun her back around to face him.

“Where are your widow’s weeds, Kiernan? Where is your black, where the hell is your mourning?”

In dismay, she stared at him. She had shed her mourning colors only a few months after she had come. Black had been so hot when she had been working in the garden. They hadn’t done laundry frequently enough to clean them.

She had loved Anthony in a way, but she had never managed to feel like his widow, and it had been easy to slip.

Jesse smiled a mocking smile and took a step back. “What a love affair it must have been!” he taunted.

She took a wild swing at him. He caught her arm and wrenched her up against him once more. She felt the awful thundering of her heart when she thought he was going to kiss her again.

“Let me go, Jesse.”

He held her still. She couldn’t best his strength. His lips would touch hers again, and she would be lost.

“He was your friend, Jesse. He fought you, but he always admired you.”