One Wore Blue (56 page)

The day passed. The long, winding wagon train of Lee’s defeated troops continued to weave its way over the Maryland countryside. Callie, appalled by the stories told her by each weary man, held her ground. She already knew something of the horror of the battlefield, for less than a year ago the battle had come here. Men in blue and in butternut and gray had died upon this very earth.

And he had come to her.…

She dared not think of him. Not today.

She lingered by the well; but toward the late afternoon
Jared began to cry, and she went into the house to tend to him.

He slept again, and she returned to the well, entranced by the flow of men.

Dusk came, and still the men continued to trickle by. She began to hear about strange places where battle had raged. Little Round Top, Big Round Top, Devil’s Den. All places where men had fought valiantly.

Darkness fell. Since all who had passed her way had been on foot, Callie was surprised to hear the sound of horse’s hooves. A spiraling of unease swept down her spine. Then she breathed more lightly as she saw a young blond horseman approach. He dismounted from his skinny roan horse and walked her way, thanking her even before he accepted the dipper she offered out to him.

“There is a God in heaven! After all that I have seen, still I have here to greet me the beauty of the very angels! Thank you, ma’am,” he told her, and she smiled even as she trembled, for in his way he reminded her of another horseman.

“I can offer you nothing but water,” she said. “Both armies have been through here, confiscating almost everything that resembles food.”

“I gratefully accept your water,” he told her. He took a sip and pushed back his hat. It was a gray felt cavalry hat, rolled up at the brim.

It, too, brought back memories. “Are you a southern sympathizer, ma’am?”

Callie shook her head, meeting his warm brown eyes levelly. “No, sir. I believe in the sanctity of the Union. But more than anything these days, I just wish that the war were over.”

“Amen!” the cavalryman muttered. He leaned against the well. “With many more battles like this one …” He shrugged. “Ma’am, it was a horror. A pure horror. Master Lee was fighting a major one for the first time without Stonewall Jackson at his side. And for once Jeb Stuart had us cavalry just too far in advance to be giving Lee the communication he needed.” He sighed and dusted off his hat. “We wound up engaged in a match with a Union general, George Custer. Can you beat that? Heck, my brother knew
Custer at West Point. He came in just about last in his class, but he managed to hold us up when he needed to. Course, he didn’t stop us. Not my company. I’ve been with Colonel Cameron since the beginning, and nothing stops him. Not even death I daresay, because Cameron just plain refuses to die. Still—”

“Cameron?” Callie whispered, interrupting him.

The cavalryman stopped, arching a brow. “You know the colonel, ma’am?”

“We’ve … met,” Callie said.

“Ah, then you do know him! Colonel Daniel Derue Cameron, he’s my man. Never seen a fiercer man on horseback. I hear he learned a lot from the Indians. He’s not one of the officers who sit back and let their men do the fighting. He’s always in the thick of it.”

Callie shook her head. “But—but he’s in prison!” she protested.

The cavalryman chuckled. “No, ma’am, no way. They tried to hold him in Washington, but they didn’t keep him two full weeks. He was wounded at the Sharpsburg battle here, but he healed up and come right out, escaped under those Yankee guards’ noses. Hell, no, ma’am—pardon my language, it’s been a while since I’ve been with such gentle company—Colonel Cameron has been back since last fall. He has led us into every major battle. Brandy Station, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg. He’ll be along here soon enough.”

She felt as if the night had gone from a balmy warmth to a searing, piercing cold. She wanted to speak, but she felt as if her jaw had frozen. She wanted desperately to push away from the well and to run. But suddenly she could not move.

The cavalryman did not seem to notice that anything was amiss. He could not realize that her heart had ceased to beat, then began a thunderous pulse. He did not seem to realize that she had ceased to breathe, then begun to gulp in air as if she would never have enough of it again.

Daniel was free. He had been free for a long, long time. He had been in the South. He had been fighting the war, just as a soldier should be fighting the war.

Perhaps he had forgotten. Perhaps he had forgiven.

No. Never.

“I’ve got to move on,” the cavalryman told her. “I thank you, ma’am. You’ve been an angel of mercy within a sea of pain. I thank you.”

He set the dipper on the well. Bowed down and weary, he walked on, leading his horse.

Callie felt the night air on her face, felt the breeze caress her cheeks.

And then she heard his voice. Deep, low, rich. And taunting in both timbre and words.

“Angel of mercy indeed. Is there, perhaps, a large quantity of arsenic in that well?”

Once again her heart slammed against her chest. Then she could not feel it at all.

He was alive, and he was well. And he was free.

He had been standing there, just past the fence, beyond the range of her sight. He had dismounted and was leading his horse, a gray Thoroughbred that had once been a very fine mount but now resembled all other creatures of the Confederacy—too thin, too gaunt, with great haunted brown eyes.

Why was she looking at the horse?

Daniel was here.

He hadn’t changed: tall and towering, clad in a gray frock coat with a pale yellow sash looped around his waist, his sword at his side, buckled on by his scabbard. He wore dun trousers and high black cavalry boots, muddy, dusty cavalry boots that were the worse for wear.

He wore a cavalry hat, rolled at the brim, pulled low over his eye, a jaunty plume waving arrogantly from the top, laced to the hat at the narrow gold band around it.

She no longer gazed at his clothing but met his eyes, those blue eyes she had never been able to forget. A blue framed by ebony dark, high, arched brows and lashes. A startling, searing blue. A blue that penetrated her flesh with its fire, a blue that pierced her, raked her from head to toe. A blue that assessed, judged, condemned. That burned and smoldered with a fury that promised to explode.

They stared out at her from a face made lean by war, a face made even more handsome by the lines of character
now etched upon it. His flesh was bronzed from his days in the saddle. His nose was dead straight; his cheekbones were broad and well set. His lips were generous, sensual, and curled now in a crooked, mocking smile that nowhere touched his eyes.

“Hello, angel,” he said very softly. His voice, his drawl, was a sound she had never forgotten.

She mustn’t falter, she mustn’t fail, she decided. She wasn’t guilty, though he would never believe her. It didn’t matter. She simply could never surrender to him because he did not understand surrender himself.

Breathe
, she commanded herself,
breathe! Give no quarter, for it will not be given you. Show no fear, for he will but leap upon it. He is a horse soldier and very adept at battle
.

But her fingers trembled upon the ladle. Lightning seemed to rake her spine, and at first it was not courage that held her still and defiant before him. It was simply that she was frozen there by fear.

She had always known that she would have to see him again. There had been nights when she had lain awake, praying that when the time came, all that had gone so wrong between them might be erased. She had dreamed of him many a night, and in those dreams she savored again the taste of a sweet splendor and ecstasy that had been theirs so briefly.

She would never be able to convince him of the truth. Very little had been left to her in this war. But she still had her pride, and it was something she must cling to. She’d never beg, and she’d never plead.

Or perhaps she would, if it could do her any good! But it would not. So she would not sacrifice pride. The war, it seemed, had stripped all mercy from him. She wanted to be as cold as he.

She wished that she
had
betrayed him. With all her heart at that moment, she wished that she could hate him with the same fury and vengeance he seemed to offer her now.

Angel, he had called her. With venom, with mockery. With loathing. Surely the word had never been spoken with a tone to convey so much evil.

“Cat got your tongue?” he said, his tone still soft, his
Virginia drawl deep and cultured—and taunting. “How very unusual. Weren’t you expecting me?”

He seemed taller even as he stepped nearer her, leading his gray horse. Despite his leanness, his shoulders seemed broader than ever, his size ever more imposing, his supple grace of movement more menacing.

Run! Run now!
Blind instinct warned her.

But there was nowhere to run.

He was a gentleman, she reminded herself. An officer, a horseman. One of the last of the cavaliers, as the southerners liked to call their cavalry. He had been reared to revere women, to treat them kindly. He had been reared to prize his honor above all else, taught that pride and justice and duty were the codes by which he must live.

He had been taught mercy.

But no mercy lingered in his eyes as they fell upon her now. She nearly screamed as he reached toward her, but no sound came.

He merely pulled the dipper from her hand, sank it into the bucket, and drank deeply of the fresh well water.

“No poison? Perhaps some shards of glass?” he murmured.

He stood just inches from her. The world around her was eclipsed.

For a fleeting moment she was glad. She had thought him in prison, but she had believed, always, that he lived. No matter what he thought, what he believed, she had desperately desired that he live. Swiftly, sweetly, in a strange shining hour that passed between them, she had loved him.

No color of cloth, no label of “enemy,” no choice of flag to follow could change what dwelt deep in her heart.

She had loved him through the long months of war. Loved him even while the belief of her betrayal found root in his heart and lay there, nurtured by the months of vicious war. She had loved him, she had feared him, and now he stood before her again. So close that she could feel the wool of his coat. So close indeed that she could feel the warmth of his body, breathe in the scent of him. He had not changed. Lean and gaunt and ragged in his dress, he was still beautiful. Handsome in his build and stature, noble in his face.

He came closer still. As they touched her, those blue eyes were like the razor-sharp point of his sword blade. His voice was husky, low and tense and trembling with the heat of his emotion.

“You look as if you’re welcoming a ghost, Mrs. Michaelson. Ah, but then, perhaps you’ve wished that I were a ghost by now, long gone, dust upon the battlefield. No, angel, I am here.” He was quiet as several seconds ticked slowly past, as the breeze picked up, as it touched them both. He smiled again. “By God, Callie, but you are still so beautiful. I should throttle you. I should wind my fingers right around your very beautiful neck and throttle you. But even if you fell, you would torture me still!”

He hadn’t really touched her. Not yet. And she couldn’t afford to let him. She squared her shoulders, determined to meet his eyes, praying that she would not falter.

“Colonel, help yourself to water, and then, if you will, ride on. This is Union territory, and you are not welcome.”

To her amazement, he remained there, standing still. His brows arched as she pushed him aside and started past him. Inwardly she trembled, her show of bravado just that—a show. But there was no surrender in this. That had long ago been decided between them. Regally she walked on. She would not run. Head high, she continued on toward the house.

“Callie!”

He cried out her name. Cried it out with fury and with anguish.

The sound of his voice touched her. It ripped along her back, pierced her heart and soul, and brought both fear and longing.

She suddenly began to run. She couldn’t look back. She had to reach the house.

She picked up her skirts, and her feet scurried across the dusty earth toward the rear porch. She nearly leaped up the steps, across the wood planks, and through the back door. She leaned against it, her heart bounding.

“Callie!”

His voice thundered out her name again. She gasped and
jumped away from the door, for he was hammering it down with the weight of his shoulders.

He had warned her. There would be no place to run. No place to hide.

She backed away from the door, gnawing upon her knuckles. There had to be some place to hide!

He couldn’t strangle her. Not really. It might be war, but Rebel soldiers still didn’t strangle Yankee women. But what would he do to her?

She didn’t want to know.

“Daniel, go away! Go home, go back to your men, to your army, to your South!”

The door burst open. He stood staring at her once again, and there was no taunting in his eyes now or in his smile.

“What? Are there no troops close enough to come to your rescue once you’ve seduced me into your bed this time?”

She had never, never seduced him!

There was a coffee cup upon the kitchen table. Her fingers curled around it, and she hurled it at him. “Go away!” she commanded him.

He ducked, ably avoiding the coffee cup.

“Go away?” he repeated. “How very rude, Mrs. Michaelson! When I have waited all these months to return? I lay awake nights dreaming for a chance to come back to your side. What a fool I was, Callie! Still, I suppose I did not learn.”

He stepped into the kitchen, swept his hat from his head, and sent it flying onto the kitchen table. “Well, I have come back, angel. And I’m very anxious to pick up right where I left off. Let’s see, where was that? Your bedroom, I believe. Ah, that’s right. Your bed. Let’s see, just how were we situated?”

“Get out of my house!” Callie snapped.

“Not on your life,” he replied. His smile, a bitter, self-mocking curl, touched his face again.